Tag: growth

Fixing Eyes on the Unseen- Where I Am Right

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From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.

The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.

But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.
~Yehuda Amichai “The Place Where We are Right”

plowing match photo by http://www.ninalintonphotography.com

I’ve learned the hard way that my being “right” may discourage whatever sprouts and grows and blooms. Rather than find their way through my crustiness, they remain underground, safe from my strenuous protests and insistence. If they bravely try to surface, they might be trampled and broken.

Instead of being right, I need to turn over that hard ground, revealing my doubts and worries, exposed to new light and warmth.

Instead of being right, I need to love and listen and be open to the whispering of that still small voice telling the truth.

Instead of insisting on being right, I rebuild what I have ruined.

Then we may all have a chance to bloom.

This year’s Lenten theme:
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4: 18

A Green Sprouting Thing

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Now wind torments the field,
turning the white surface back
on itself, back and back on itself,
like an animal licking a wound.

Nothing but white–the air, the light;
only one brown milkweed pod
bobbing in the gully, smallest
brown boat on the immense tide.

A single green sprouting thing
would restore me . . .

Then think of the tall delphinium,
swaying, or the bee when it comes
to the tongue of the burgundy lily.
~Jane Kenyon “February: Thinking of Flowers”

Turning the page on the calendar last week or watching for groundhog predictions didn’t magically bring spring.  We’ve had more arctic wind and southerly blows as well. The sun has kept its face hidden behind its gray veil.

By this time of winter, I’m like a dog tormented by my own open and raw flesh, trying my best to lick it healed, unable to think of anything or anyone else, going over it again and again – how weary I feel, how bruised I am by the wind, how uprooted I feel, how impossibly long it will be until I feel warm again.

Then I see the photos from Turkey and Syria after the recent devastating series of building-shattering earthquakes leaving many dead, injured and homeless in mid-winter. I realize I truly have no idea how deep wounds can be…

Despite it all, green sprouts are trying to push up even while frozen by snow and ice. Soon fresh blooms will once again grace the barnyard and with that renewal of life and hope, I just might be distracted from my own wound-licking.

photo by Nate Gibson
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Operators are Standing By

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Just before the green begins there is the hint of green
a blush of color, and the red buds thicken
the ends of the maple’s branches and everything
is poised before the start of a new world,
which is really the same world
just moving forward from bud
to flower to blossom to fruit
to harvest to sweet sleep, and the roots
await the next signal, every signal
every call a miracle and the switchboard
is lighting up and the operators are
standing by in the pledge drive we’ve
all been listening to: Go make the call.
~Stuart Kestenbaum “April Prayer”

These buds have been poised for weeks and then,
as if responding to the Conductor’s uplifted arms,
readying for a momentous downstroke,
they let go of all their pent up potential~
exploding with harmonious energy
enough to carry them all the way to autumn
when they fly, gone with the wind.

We wait impatiently until next spring,
operators standing by to take our pledge,
for the next encore performance.

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The Stones Themselves Will Start to Sing: I Will Rise

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Underground is where life begins
My heart will rejoice in the hiddenness
Beyond the burial there’s a resurrection
~Kristene DiMarco

 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption…
Galatians 4: 4-5

“In the fullness of time” is one of my favorite expressions to remind myself that God’s timing is not linear so much as it is spherical – we find ourselves in the midst of His plans, surrounded by Him rather than journeying from point A to point B.

The sowing of the seed,
its hidden growth underground,
its taking root and sprouting,
its dependency on the soil and water and sun to rise up,
its development and maturation and fruition,
its harvest and completion
to feed and become seed yet again.

It is a circle, not a line.

I must rise boldly when He calls me forth from the darkness.

This year’s Lenten theme for Barnstorming is a daily selection from songs and hymns about Christ’s profound sacrifice on our behalf.

If we remain silent about Him, the stones themselves will shout out and start to sing (Luke 19:40).

In His name, may we sing…

In the quiet of the morning
When no one knows and no one needs to know
You speak to me, You give me strength
There’s nothing like the secret place

Underground is where life begins
My heart will rejoice in the hiddenness
Beyond the burial there’s a resurrection
Your will be done in me In the stillness all around
You are working all the details out
What’s in me will grow someday
I trust Your timing and Your ways

Underground is where life begins
My heart will rejoice in the hiddenness
Beyond the burial there’s a resurrection

Your will be done in me
Oh let my roots go deep
I will rise, I will rise
He holds the time that I will rise
I will rise, I will rise
He holds the time that I will rise I will rise,
I will rise God through my life be lifted high I will rise,
I will rise God through my life be lifted high
Let Jesus rise,
Jesus rise God through my life be glorified

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I Am Partly Tuber

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Some of us . . . are darkness-lovers.
We do not dislike the early and late daylight of June,
but we cherish the gradually increasing dark of November,
which we wrap around ourselves in the prosperous warmth
of woodstove, oil, electric blanket, storm window, and insulation.

We are partly tuber, partly bear.
Inside our warmth we fold ourselves
in the dark and its cold –
around us, outside us,
safely away from us;
we tuck ourselves up
in the long sleep
and comfort of cold’s opposite,
warming ourselves
by thought of the cold,
lighting ourselves by darkness’s idea.
~Donald Hall from “Seasons at Eagle Pond”

I confess to a love of the dark of January winter mornings
as much as the pervasive light of mid-summer.

Drawn away from our warm bed
without need for an alarm,
I awake before sunrise
in inky blackness
to this yet uncharted day.

I am raw with underground ripening,
belonging to earth and dust
until the Light comes
to force me forth to seek out sun.

Only from darkness could I
sprout so boldly to find out
what comes next.

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Remaining As I Was

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Our final dogwood leans
over the forest floor

offering berries
to the birds, the squirrels.

It’s a relic
of the days when dogwoods

flourished—creamy lace in April,
spilled milk in May—

their beauty delicate
but commonplace.

When I took for granted
that the world would remain

as it was, and I
would remain with it.
~Linda Pastan “Elegy”

The inevitable change of the seasons, as portrayed by the branches of our aging pink dogwood tree, is a reminder nothing stays the same.

Like this old tree, I lean over more, I have a few bare branches with no leaves, I have my share of broken limbs, I have my share of blight and curl.

Yet each stage and transition has its own beauty: 
a breathtaking depth of color flourishes on what once was bare.

Nothing is to be taken for granted.  Nothing remains as it was.

Especially me. Oh, especially me.

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A book of beauty in words and photography, available to order here:

Sunburst Petals

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When I pray I go in, and close the door,
But what, really, do we mean by prayer?
Isn’t it anything done with full attention
Whether sinking into silent depths, or
Relishing a sun-ripe peach, or gazing
At the zinnias freshly picked this early
Morning, these multi-petaled shouts of joy,
Lemon yellow, orange, reds, a carnival of
Flame-filled light, the sweet green scent
Summer flowers.
~Sarah Rossiter “Zinnias”

My father’s mother grew a garden of zinnias
to divide the house from the woods:

pop art tops in every color—cream,
peach, royal purple, and even envy

—the sunburst petals…

the heads little suns you watch die
on the stem if you want the bloom back.
~Tyler Mills “Zinnias”

As an eight year old, I grew zinnias
from a tiny package of seeds tucked inside
a Christmas card by my third grade teacher
whose rapt attention turned to her backyard garden
when school doors closed in the summer.

She nurtured each of us students
like one of her cream-colored zinnia buds
arising boldly on a single sturdy stem,
growing tall almost before her eyes, yet still undefined.

Watered and fed, her warm light shining on our bright faces,
we opened expectantly under her steady gaze,
each one a sunburst bloom smiling back at her,
which kept her coming back, year after year,
to sow a few more celebratory seeds with her sprinkling of wisdom.

Thank you to Chris and Jan Lovegren for sharing their zinnias!

Consider a gift of this new Barnstorming book to someone who loves beautiful pictures and words – available to order here:

This Garden Entrusted to Me

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The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

“In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I’d like all the odor of your roses.”

“I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead.”

“Well then, I’ll take the withered petals
and the yellowed leaves and the waters of the fountain.”

The wind left.  And I wept. And I said to myself:
“What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?”
~Antonio Machado “The Wind, One Brilliant Day” translated by Robert Bly

This garden bloomed with potential,
entrusted to me for 32 years:
the health and well-being of 16,000 students,
most thriving and flourishing,
some withering, their petals falling,
a few have been lost altogether.

As the winds of time sweep away
another group of graduates from my care,
to be blown to places unknown,
their beauty and fragrance gone from here.

I marvel at their growth,
but also weary weep for those who left too soon,
wondering if I failed to water them enough –
or is it I who am parched in this garden
with a thirst unceasing, my roots reaching deep
into drought-stricken soil,
ever so slowly drying out?

A new book from Barnstorming available for order here:


New Book Available: Almanac of Quiet Days

Rippling of the Land

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The air was soft, the ground still cold.
In the dull pasture where I strolled
Was something I could not believe.
Dead grass appeared to slide and heave,
Though still too frozen-flat to stir,
And rocks to twitch and all to blur.
What was this rippling of the land?
Was matter getting out of hand
And making free with natural law,
I stopped and blinked, and then I saw
A fact as eerie as a dream.
There was a subtle flood of steam
Moving upon the face of things.
It came from standing pools and springs
And what of snow was still around;
It came of winter’s giving ground
So that the freeze was coming out,
As when a set mind, blessed by doubt,
Relaxes into mother-wit.
Flowers, I said, will come of it.
~Richard Wilbur “April 5, 1974”

As the ground softens with the warming sun,
so do I.
Winter freeze was comforting
as nothing appeared to change, day after day.

Neither did I,
staying stolid and fixed and frozen.

But now the fixed is flexing its muscles,
steaming in its labor,
greening and growing transformed.

So must I,
giving ground
and birth
to blooms.

Waiting in Wilderness: Just As We Lose Hope

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Just as we lose hope
she ambles in,
a late guest
dragging her hem
of wildflowers,
her torn
veil of mist,
of light rain,
blowing
her dandelion
breath
in our ears;
and we forgive her,
turning from
chilly winter
ways,
we throw off
our faithful
sweaters
and open
our arms.
~Linda Pastan “Spring” from Heroes in Disguise: Poems 

The ground is slowly coming to life again;
snowdrops and daffodils are surfacing from months of dormancy,
buds are swelling
the spring chorus frogs have come from the mud to sing again
and birds now greet the lazy dawn.

Everything, everyone, has been so dead, so hidden;
His touch calls us back to life,
love is come again
to the fallow fields of our hearts.

Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,
Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

In the grave they laid him, love whom men had slain,
Thinking that never he would wake again.
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green,

Forth he came at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain.
Quick from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,
Thy touch can call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.
~John Crum