Tag: harmony

Unchangeable Harmony

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Spend your life trying to understand it, and you will lose your mind; but deny it and you will lose your soul.
~St. Augustine in his work “On the Trinity”

Here are two mysteries for the price of one —
the plurality of persons within the unity of God,
and the union of Godhead and manhood in the person of Jesus. . . .
Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation.
~J. L. Packer from Knowing God

It is not easy to find a name that will suitably express so great an excellence, unless it is better to speak in this way:
the Trinity, one God, of whom are all things,
through whom are all things, in whom are all things. 
Thus the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
and each of these by Himself, is God,
and at the same time they are all one God;
and each of them by Himself is a complete substance,
and yet they are all one substance.

The Father is not the Son nor the Holy Spirit;
the Son is not the Father nor the Holy Spirit;
the Holy Spirit is not the Father nor the Son:
but the Father is only Father,
the Son is only Son,
and the Holy Spirit is only Holy Spirit.

To all three belong
the same eternity,
the same unchangeableness,
the same majesty,
the same power.
In the Father is unity,
in the Son equality,
in the Holy Spirit the harmony of unity and equality.

And these three attributes are
all one because of the Father,
all equal because of the Son, and
all harmonious because of the Holy Spirit.
–Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Doctrine, I.V.5.

The story goes that Augustine of Hippo was walking on the beach contemplating the mystery of the Trinity.  Then he saw a boy in front of him who had dug a hole in the sand and was going out to the sea again and again and bringing some water to pour into the hole.

Augustine asked him, “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to pour the entire ocean into this hole.”
“That is impossible, the whole ocean will not fit in the hole you have made” said Augustine.
The boy replied, “And you cannot fit the Trinity in your tiny little brain.”

I accept that my tiny brain, ever so much tinier than St. Augustine’s,  cannot possibly absorb or explain the Trinity–I will not try to put the entire ocean in that small hole.  The many analogies used to help human understanding of the Trinity are dangerously limited in scope:


three candles, one light

vapor, water, ice


shell, yolk, albumin


height, width, depth


apple peel, flesh, core


past, present, future.

It is sufficient for me to know, as expressed by the 19th century Anglican pastor J.C. Ryle:  It was the whole Trinity, which at the beginning of creation said, “Let us make man”. It was the whole Trinity again, which at the beginning of the Gospel seemed to say, “Let us save man”.

All one, equal, harmonious, unchangeable, bound together to save us from ourselves.

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Lifted on the Breeze

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a gentle breeze was
lightly tussling shells and stones
meant to strike on each other to sibilate,
hiss, and whisper your own
freshly loosed thoughts
back into your soul.
like voices afar off
the jangling of each woven shroud
brought sundry pitch and textured sounds
awakening new areas of my mind.
deep breaths of open musing
rose and fell with the wind as it
returned to tantalize the ornamental chimes
that had waited so long in silence.
Lifted on the breeze
freed to manifest each ubiquitous interval
and send forth vibrations into
nature’s lonely sentiment.
I close my eyes and feel the sounds
made so effortlessly
that tranquilize my worries
and open my heart to hear
the rapture of the universe.
–so fortunate to be sitting here.
~Suzanne Eaton “windchimes”

She goes out to hang the windchime
in her nightie and her work boots.
It’s six-thirty in the morning
and she’s standing on the plastic ice chest
tiptoe to reach the crossbeam of the porch,
windchime in her left hand,
hammer in her right, the nail
gripped tight between her teeth
but nothing happens next because
she’s trying to figure out
how to switch #1 with #3.

She must have been standing in the kitchen,
coffee in her hand, asleep,
when she heard it—the wind blowing
through the sound the windchime
wasn’t making
because it wasn’t there...
~Tony Hoagland from “Windchime”

Once upon a time, nearly 5 decades ago, I attended a university with a bell carillon in a tower that frequently played wonderful concerts. I missed spontaneous music floating on the air after I graduated. Living rural, we are nowhere near a bell tower, nor can we hear our church bells ringing in our Chapel belfry a few miles away.

So when the merest breeze is able to make music, I find it a hopeful reminder the earth itself has its own breath and rhythm and holds its own concerts if given the tools.

We have four windchimes of varying size and tuning hanging from our front porch and back yard, each with its own song and personality. Depending on where we are in the house, we hear different harmony and pitch. The largest sounds like church bells, deep and resonant, another is a pentatonix of harmony, one plays the notes of “Amazing Grace” and the last is just random tintinnabulation.

In certain seasons, our area can get strong northeast or southerly winds that blow over 50 mph. In that case, we take the windchimes down temporarily – the battering clatter and clanging becomes more unsettling than the storm itself. Once the winds die down again, it is too quiet – the silence reminds me to replace the chimes on their hooks.

As I wake in the night to hear their gentle melodies through our open window, my worries are soothed and my heart lifts and floats along with the breeze.

The earth continues to breath and so, for now, will I.

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Forgive Me For Forgetting

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Please forgive me for forgetting.
I wanted to go outside and look for you.
I was told this was impossible.
 
I was instructed to stay indoors.
But my words for you need sun.
My heart needs air.
 
I love you Spring.
I miss your warmth.
Come unlock my door.
~Ethelbert Miller “Beloved”

I love you, Spring.
But where are you? Nearly a week of chill winds and freezing temperatures put me back inside the house wanting to hide under the covers. Water buckets in the barn were frozen again, walkways were slick with ice, once friendly breezes threatened to knock me over with their force. This is not the Spring promised.

Come unlock my door, Spring.
When our old apple tree toppled over in the northeast blow earlier this week, I identified a bit too much. The wind took advantage of a hollowed out rotten core the tree had been hiding for years. What might I be hiding inside that makes me just as vulnerable to forces knocking on me, even though I bear fruit as usual?

Please forgive me for forgetting:
this world is at war with evil – families hiding in basements, subways filling with refugees, apartment buildings bombed. Now is when we are most fragile, exposed and wounded. Our lumpy exteriors are on full display waiting for spring to renew and cover us up.

I wanted to go look for you:
Our farm cat decided the old apple tree lying on its side was a new perfect perch to keep surveillance for curious (and irritating) farm dogs without having to climb up high. There he sat on the fallen trunk, far enough above a corgi dog’s head to be essentially invisible although Homer could absolutely smell there was a cat with threatening claws nearby … somewhere. Just where that cat could be remained a mystery to a dog who is distinctly height-challenged.

Like my cat, I wait now in late winter — seeking the sun for my words and fresh air for my heart. And like my dog, I sense something potentially threatening is near, but because of my own limitations of perception, I have no idea just how close.

I was told this was impossible:
may we weather the storms together
may there be peace and warmth for all people
may we find harmony as winter melts into spring.

cat hiding in plain sight, Homer too short to figure it out

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is,
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine.
But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.
So let us raise this melody together,
Beneath the stars that guide us through the night;
If we choose love, each storm we’ll learn to weather,
Until true peace and harmony we find,
This is our song, a hymn we raise together;
A dream of peace, uniting humankind.
~Lloyd Stone and Blake Morgan

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Too Many Dwindled Dawns

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Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.
~Emily Dickinson in a letter to a friend April 1885

Over the years, the most common search term bringing new readers to my Barnstorming blog is “dwindled dawn.”

I have written about Emily Dickinson’s “dwindles” on a number of occasions before when I miss having a house full of our three children, now spread far with families of their own. Even so, I had not really been diagnosed with a serious case myself until the last two years of COVID-time.

I am clearly not the only one. “Dwindles” have spread across the globe during the COVID pandemic more quickly than the virus.

There really isn’t a pill or other therapy that works well for dwindling. One of the most effective treatments is breaking bread with friends and family all in the same room, at the same table, lingering over conversation or singing together in harmony, because there really is nothing more vital for us to do.

Just being together is the ultimate cure.

Maybe experiencing friend and family deficiency will help us understand how crucial we are to one another. Sadly, due to the pandemic, too many are now gone forever, lost to further gatherings together. It is high time to replenish the reservoir before we all dwindle away to nothing.

So if you are visiting these words for the first time because you too searched for “dwindled dawn” — welcome to Barnstorming. We can stave off the dwindles by joining together in our shared isolation.

Because mornings without you all diminishes me.
I just want you to know.

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Mending the Fraying Tapestry of Time

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Now winter downs the dying of the year,   
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show   
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,   
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin   
And still allows some stirring down within.

These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.
~Richard Wilbur from “Year’s End”

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
~Lord Alfred Tennyson “Ring Out, Wild Bells”

I know there are still communities where the New Year begins at midnight with church bells ringing, just as in days of old.

Here in the frontier of the rural Pacific Northwest, all we can hear from our farm are gun shots, bottle rockets and (what sounds like) explosions of cannon fire and mortar shells.

So much for larger hearts and kindlier hands.

Even without being able to hear wild bells ringing out the old and ringing in the new, I want to begin the new year with singing in harmony, mending the frays in the tapestry of time, behaving with good manners and care for those around me, and abandoning a thousand years of war to find a thousand years of peace.

Let the darkness make room for the Light
that was and is and will ever be.

Amen and hallelujah!

I will sing with the spirit
Hallelujah, hallelujah

And I will sing with the understanding also
Hallelujah, hallelujah

I will sing (I will sing)
With the spirit (sing hallelujah)
I will sing with the spirit
Hallelujah, hallelujah

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On a Monday

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My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me;
I stand before it like a tree;

I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death’s note wants to climb over—
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
And the song goes on, beautiful.
― Rainer Maria Rilke from “My Life is Not This Steeply Sloping Hour”

photo by Josh Scholten

On Monday mornings I often feel I’m stuck immobilized in the spot in the middle between discordant notes.

There is on one side of me the pressure of catch-up from what was left undone through the weekend and on the other side is the anticipated demand of the coming week of stressful work I am committed to doing. Before I arrive to work, I dwell uneasily in dead center between the unknown ahead and the known behind.

This moment of rest in the present, this trembling broken Now, is my moment of reconciliation, my Sabbath extended.

This Monday morning I allow myself an instant of silence and reflection before I surge full bore into the week, knowing that on my journey I’ll inevitably hit wrong notes, just as I do when I play, unprepared, at the piano.

But it can be beautiful nevertheless.

Even the least harmonious notes seek reconciliation within the next chord. I now move from the rest of my Sabbath back into the rhythm of my life.

Trembling, still trembling.

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

Madly in Love

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How is it they live for eons in such harmony
– the billions of stars –
when most men can barely go a minute
without declaring war in their mind
against someone they know.

There are wars where no one marches with a flag,
though that does not keep casualties from mounting.

Our hearts irrigate this earth. 
We are fields before each other.
How can we live in harmony?

First we need to know 
we are all madly in love
with the same God.

O Lord my God, make me
submissive without protest,
poor without discouragement,
chaste without regret,
patient without complaint,
humble without posturing,
cheerful without frivolity,
mature without gloom,
and quick-witted without flippancy.

Grant that I may know
what You require me to do.
Bestow upon me
the power to accomplish Your will,
as is necessary and fitting
for the salvation of my soul.
~St. Thomas Aquinas

I look at headline news through my fingers, cringing.  

Amid the centuries of posturing between governments and every imaginable tribe and faction, the names and faces change but the nature of hatred of the “other” doesn’t.

We’ve seen this all before, over and over through history.  Over 150 years ago it was in the Gettysburg fields that blood of rival armies intermingled and irrigated U.S. soil.  Though now we stand side by side with Germany and Japan, our bitter adversaries a mere eighty years ago, our world continually brews new enemies and ignites new conflicts.

We can barely go a minute without declaring war in our minds even against our neighbor, even those we consider friends and family. There is yelling from the streets in angry protest and screaming at school board meetings. Casualties mount in our bitterness toward one another.

And who am I to point fingers or squint through them at the news of the day?
I am as prone to this as anyone.

Am I myself capable of submission without protest, remaining patient and uncomplaining even when I disagree? Can I embody humility without having a hidden agenda? Can I remain selfless when my true nature is wholly selfish?

How can there ever be harmony? 
How can I overcome my own rancorous heart?

As critical as it seems, It is not love for one another that comes first.
I must first know, love and trust the only God who has loved the unloveable so much He became one with us, overpowering our tendency to hate one another by taking it all upon Himself.

Jesus found us dying in a world desperately drying up; His bleeding heart poured itself out onto our thirsting soil. We have been handed salvation.

It is, in fact, God who is madly in love with us and though we’ve done nothing to deserve it, it is our turn to show love to one another.

A book from Barnstorming is available for order here:

Stitching Broken Pieces Together

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“I make them warm to keep my family from freezing;
I make them beautiful to keep my heart from breaking.”
–From the journal of a prairie woman, 1870

To keep a husband and five children warm,
she quilts them covers thick as drifts against
the door. Through every fleshy square white threads
needle their almost invisible tracks; her hours
count each small suture that holds together
the raw-cut, uncolored edges of her life.
She pieces each one beautiful, and summer bright
to thaw her frozen soul. Under her fingers
the scraps grow to green birds and purple
improbable leaves; deeper than calico, her mid-winter
mind bursts into flowers. She watches them unfold
between the double stars, the wedding rings.
~Luci Shaw “Quiltmaker”

Perhaps the world was made this way:
piecemeal, the parts fitting together exactly
as if made for one another~
the unique, disparate and separate
coming together in a glorious harmony.

The point of its creation is
forever functional and full of love –
a blanket of warmth and security
for generations to come.
Our legacy is to preserve this
beauty arising from scraps,
this broken stitched to broken
in a tapestry holy and whole.

all quilts here are on display this week at the Northwest Washington Fair
see previous year’s artwork here and here and here and here

This new Barnstorming book is like a quilt made of pieces of poetry and photographs – available for order here:

A Harmony in Autumn

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Like hues and harmonies of evening,               
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,               
Like memory of music fled,               
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

The day becomes more solemn and serene         
When noon is past; there is a harmony         
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
~Percy Bysshe Shelley from “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”


Noon has passed here;
our spring long spent
and now we come upon
a time of subtle beauty,
of hue and harmony~
a solemn serenity
no longer overwhelmed
by the clamor of summer.

The evening of autumn thus descends,
its lustrous limn-light
a curtain of grace
cloaking and comforting,
readying us for winter.

In the Dark, Reconciled

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I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death’s note wants to climb over—
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
And the song goes on, beautiful.
~Rainer Maria Rilke from “My Life is Not This Steeply Sloping Hour”

 

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sunset125182

 

On Sunday evenings I often feel I’m the spot in the middle between discordant notes. There is on one side of me the pressure of catch-up from what was left undone through a too-brief weekend and on the other side is the anticipated demand of the coming week. As I prepare to sleep at the end of a Sabbath day, I feel uneasily in dead center, immobilized by the unknown ahead and the known behind.

This moment of rest in the present, between the trembling past and uncertain future, is my moment of reconciliation: my Sabbath extended.

This evening, I will allow myself a steeply sloping hour of silence and reflection before I surge ahead into the week, knowing that on my journey I’ll inevitably hit wrong notes, yet beautiful nevertheless.

Even the least harmonious notes resolve within the next chord. I will move from the rest of my Sabbath back into the rhythm of my life.

Trembling, still trembling, always trembling at what is to come.

 

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photo by Josh Scholten

 

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photo by Lea Gibson