And this, then, is the vision of that Heaven of which we have heard, where those who love each other have forgiven each other,
where, for that, the leaves are green, the light a music in the air, and all is unentangled, and all is undismayed. ~Wendell Berry “To My Mother”
…I sat at a workbench at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake learning how to braid long thin plastic strips into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard or wear one, if that’s what you did with them, but that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand again and again until I had made a boxy red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts, and I gave her a lanyard. She nursed me in many a sick room, lifted spoons of medicine to my lips, laid cold face-cloths on my forehead, and then led me out into the airy light and taught me to walk and swim, and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said, and here is clothing and a good education. And here is your lanyard, I replied, which I made with a little help from a counselor. Here is a breathing body and a beating heart, strong legs, bones and teeth, and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered, and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now, is a smaller gift—not the worn truth that you can never repay your mother, but the rueful admission that when she took the two-tone lanyard from my hand, I was as sure as a boy could be that this useless, worthless thing I wove out of boredom would be enough to make us even. ~Billy Collins from “The Lanyard”
...I want to thank you truly for the wry smile you set on my lips, a smile as mild as your own; it has saved me pain and grief. And if now I shed a tear for you, and all who wait like you and do not know what they wait for, it does not matter. O gentle death, do not touch the hands, the heart of the old. Goodbye, dear one, farewell, my sweet mother. ~Salvatore Quasimodo from “Letter to My Mother”
Mother love is life and light beginning in the dark, as a special secret, until you know without a doubt you will never be just yourself again, tethered forever to another.
~this sacrificial love is a haven of abundant grace~
the tangles we make of our lives unravel, straighten and smooth, no dismay over mistakes made
I was created within you – to love my own children fully, fervently, forever and forever – as I was loved by you.
You won’t remember it—the apple orchard We wandered through one April afternoon, Climbing the hill behind the empty farm.
A city boy, I’d never seen a grove Burst in full flower or breathed the bittersweet Perfume of blossoms mingled with the dust.
A quarter mile of trees in fragrant rows Arching above us. We walked the aisle, Alone in spring’s ephemeral cathedral.
We had the luck, if you can call it that, Of having been in love but never lovers— The bright flame burning, fed by pure desire.
Nothing consumed, such secrets brought to light! There was a moment when I stood behind you, Reached out to spin you toward me…but I stopped.
What more could I have wanted from that day? Everything, of course. Perhaps that was the point— To learn that what we will not grasp is lost. ~Dana Gioia “The Apple Orchard”
Love, we are in God’s hand. How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for? ~Robert Browning from Andrea Del Sarto
As I walk down the blooming aisleways of Spring’s ephemeral cathedral, it doesn’t help to regret what could have been – if only – long ago I had reached out to hold what remained free of my grasp. Perhaps it is forever lost to me…
I am overwhelmed by all the potential surrounding me – the trees are literally bursting with blossom and leaf, an undulating green carpeting covering every rolling hill, exuberant new life bouncing and bucking in the pastures.
I wonder, at this age and stage of my life, whatever potential is left to me?
If I give up my dreams if I don’t try to hold on to what seems out of reach if I don’t remember what it feels like to want everything from life, I would wilt and wither without forming fruit.
Ah Love – I am in God’s Hand. Or what’s a heaven for?
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Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees takes off his shoes. ~Elizabeth Barrett Browningfrom “Aurora Leigh”
This week, the body of Christian believers once again traverse the holy ground of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection.
Indeed, our children and grandchildren, happy to be barefoot most of the time, are more apt than the grown ups to follow the instruction of the Lord when He told Moses:
“Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
There have long been cultures where shoes are removed before touching the surface of the floor inside a residence or temple in an intentional act of leaving the dirt of the world at the door in order to preserve the sanctity and cleanliness of the inner life.
Jesus overturned the tables of those who corrupted that sanctity within the walls of the temple. We Christians should also heed that warning.
We wear shoes into church every Sunday, having walked in figurative muck and mire of one sort or another all week. We try our best to clean up for Sunday, but we track in the detritus of our lives when we come to sit in the pews. Rather than leave it at the door, it comes right in with us, not exactly hidden and sometimes downright stinky. That is when we are in obvious need for a good overturning and cleansing ourselves – shoes, feet, soles, souls and all.
The Lord reinforced our need for a wash-up on the last night of His life, scrubbing the dusty feet of His disciples.
And then there is what God said. He asked that holy ground be respected by the removal of our sandals. We must remove any barrier that prevents us from entering fully into His presence, whether it be our attitude, our stubbornness, our unbelief, or our centering on self rather than others.
No separation, whether a thin layer of leather or our own emotional resistance, is desirable when encountering God.
We trample roughshod over holy ground all the time, blind to where our feet land and the impact they leave behind. Perhaps by shedding the covering of our eyes, our minds, and our feet, we would see earth crammed with heaven and God on fire everywhere, in every common bush and in every common heart.
So we may see. So we may listen. So we may feast together. So we may weep at what we have done, yet stand forgiven. So we may celebrate as our Risen Lord startles us by calling our name. So we remove our sandals so our bare feet and souls may touch His holy ground.
sculpture by Mark Greine
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…
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Whatever’s the matter Whatever’s been done I will be your home In this fearful fallen place ~Michael Card
Through the bright darkness of Lent, as He himself hangs dying, suffering on our behalf, this is Christ’s message to each of us who asks: when we want to be remembered, when we truly and wholly ask for forgiveness for whatever is the matter, for whatever we have done, we find our only hope and comfort is in Him. He brings us home from this fearful fallen place. Homeless no longer, lost no longer, forgotten no longer.
Home.
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…
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Weary traveler Beat down from the storms that you have weathered Feels like this road just might go on forever Carry on ~Jordan St. Cyr
There are so many who are weary right now: -refugees who have walked for miles to reach safety, with no idea where to go next. -hopeful immigrants who seek a new life and a new start, but bogged down in government process and paperwork -those who are struggling to stay alive in the midst of debilitating illness, both physical and mental -those who have given of themselves to care for those who struggle -those who have lived many years and now feel ready to be taken home, yet wake again to a new day -those whose faith feels beaten down by the loss of community and congregational consolation during two years of pandemic anger and disagreement -those who mourn deeply for those they have lost.
God knows our grief. God knows our weary bodies and minds need rest and restoration. God knows the struggle as He too walked this weary road, too often alone.
Yet He carried on then and carries on today and will be there alongside us tomorrow.
Carry on. Someday we will make it home.
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…
Weary traveler Beat down from the storms that you have weathered Feels like this road just might go on forever Carry on
You keep on giving But every day this world just keeps on taking Your tired heart is on the edge of breaking Carry on
Weary traveler, restless soul You were never meant to walk this road alone It’ll all be worth it so just hold on
Weary traveler You won’t be weary long No more searching
Heaven’s healing’s gonna find where all the hurt is When Jesus calls we’ll lay down all our heavy burdens Carry on Someday soon we’re gonna make it home
Neon lights flickering Outside the cafe Ice on the windshield Stars in a black sea On a winter road Flurries of snow I’m ready to go
Past farmhouse and pasture Our voices together Rise to the drumming Of big-rigs and trailers Long hours to daylight A rumbling bus Our bed and our board
Heavenly Father Remember the traveler Bring us safely home Heavenly Father Remember the traveler Bring us safely home Safely home
In the towns off this highway The people are kind They welcome us in I sing in their church halls Old hymns and prayer songs With lifted hearts We rejoice in the Lord
I long for my family And friends to remind me Of where I have been And where I am going And where I come from
Heavenly Father Remember the traveler Bring us safely home Heavenly Father Remember the traveler Bring us safely home Safely home
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I do not like to think about my life, one lived too often without original fire.
I would rather walk among the serious trees, hooded by important weather, by immense silences.
I’d rather unravel the wind’s calligraphies, letter by letter, and spell myself into the world,
a glittering altar of atoms, all aswirl. Who can know what will happen to each of us,
as time’s currents bend and assail us, as gravity pulls us further into ourselves?
Better to be buoyed skyward, to modestly reach out to the palaver of raindrops, to the silky leaves,
so that the air’s amazement stirs an answering ripple among my own heavy branches.
Let me lose myself in the star’s mute company, among the steady wanderers of night
whose eyes ignite a cupola of yearnings. Crown me with a wreath of stars unmoored
from desire, untampered by this ache for a blaze beyond the tremor of my fingertips. ~Maurya Simon, “A Thousand Acres of Light” from Cartographies
I take myself too seriously, thinking everything in my life must be planned so I am prepared for what could happen next –
Of course it is impossible as who can know?
Each day the unexpected happens if I am willing to recognize it: the rush of the wind, the drenching of raindrops, the tingle of the winter sun on my face.
In that moment I might find endless perfection.
Even the thriving among us may lie down this night and fail to wake tomorrow, atoms toppled over, leaves shriveled, roots exposed, no longer needing to breathe much sooner than planned.
Let me lose myself in that thought: what is lost here is more than replaced by the joy of beholding the Face of the Eternal God.
Faire is the heav’n, where happy souls have place, In full enjoyment of felicitie, Whence they doe still behold the glorious face Of the divine, eternall Majestie…
Yet farre more faire be those bright Cherubins Which all with golden wings are overdight, And those eternall burning Seraphins, Which from their faces dart out fierie light; Yer fairer than they both, and much more bright, Be th’ Angels and Archangels which attend On God’s owne person, without rest or end.
These then is faire each other farre excelling As to the Highest they approach more neare, Yet is that Highest farre beyond all telling Fairer than all the rest which there appeare, Though all their beauties joynd together were: How then can mortall tongue hope to expresse The image of such endlesse perfectnesse? ~Edmund Spenser
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I thought of happiness, how it is woven Out of the silence in the empty house each day And how it is not sudden and it is not given But is creation itself like the growth of a tree. No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark Another circle is growing in the expanding ring. No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark, But the tree is lifted by this inward work And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.
For what is happiness but growth in peace, And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir The shining leaves of present happiness? No one has heard thought or listened to a mind, But where people have lived in inwardness The air is charged with blessing and does bless; Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind. ~ May Sarton, from “The Work of Happiness” in Collected Poems, 1930-1993
The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, he has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why.
The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bath or a football match, have no such tendency.
Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home. ~C.S. Lewis from The Problem of Pain
I am reminded every day, as every headline shouts bad news: this is not our home.
I am only a wayfarer seeking out air charged with blessings to soak up like a dry sponge.
I sometimes lose focus on the “why” of my journey on this troubled earth: so much of my time and energy is understandably spent seeking out safety and security, striving for a road filled with happiness, joy and contentment, as if that is my ultimate destination and purpose.
Yet the nature of a fallen world filled with faltering souls such as myself leads me down boulder-strewn paths filled with potholes and sheer cliffs.
At times nowhere feels safe or secure and I overthink my next step.
God acknowledges my fear of the unknown destination, as only He can know what lies ahead on anyone’s journey.
God in His mercy never leaves any of us homeless or without hope. He charges the very air we breathe with blessing. Yet He knows even our need for air to survive is simply not enough to sustain us for eternity.
He gifts Himself and I can breathe in Him. Only He will last forever.
We pray for blessings, we pray for peace Comfort for family, protection while we sleep We pray for healing, for prosperity We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering And all the while, You hear each spoken need Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things
‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops What if Your healing comes through tears What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise .
We pray for wisdom, Your voice to hear We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love As if every promise from Your word is not enough And all the while, You hear each desperate plea And long that we’d have faith to believe .
When friends betray us When darkness seems to win We know the pain reminds this heart That this is not This is not our home . It’s not our home . ~Laura Story
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when my father had been dead a week I woke with his voice in my ear I sat up in bed and held my breath and stared at the pale closed door
white apples and the taste of stone
if he called again I would put on my coat and galoshes ~Donald Hall “White Apples”
She skimmed the yellow water like a moth, Trailing her feet across the shallow stream; She saw the berries, paused and sampled them Where a slight spider cleaned his narrow tooth. Light in the air, she fluttered up the path, So delicate to shun the leaves and damp, Like some young wife, holding a slender lamp To find her stray child, or the moon, or both. Even before she reached the empty house, She beat her wings ever so lightly, rose, Followed a bee where apples blew like snow; And then, forgetting what she wanted there, Too full of blossom and green light to care, She hurried to the ground, and slipped below. ~James Wright “My Grandmother’s Ghost from Above the River: The Complete Poems
I saw my grandma’s ghost once.
She was my only grandparent I actually knew and who actually knew me — the others were lost before I was born or too young to realize what I had lost.
She had lived a hard life: losing her mother when she was 12, taking over the household duties for her father and younger brother while leaving school forever. She married too young to an abusive alcoholic, lost her first child to lymphoma at age 8 before treatment was possible and took her three remaining children to safety away from their father for a year to live above a seedy restaurant where she cooked seven days a week to make ends meet.
But there was grace too. The marriage somehow got patched together after Grandpa found God and sobriety – after his sudden death sitting in church, Grandma’s faith never wavered. Her garden soil yielded beautiful flowers she planted and nurtured and picked to sell, her children and grandchildren welcomed her many open armed visits and hugs.
She was busy planning her first overseas trip of a lifetime at age 72 when we noticed her eyes looked yellow. Only two weeks later she was bed-bound in unrelenting pain due to pancreatic cancer, gazing heaven-ward instead of Europe-bound. Her dreams had been dashed so quickly, she barely realized her itinerary and destination had changed.
I was 16 at the time, too absorbed in my own teenage cares and concerns to really notice how quickly she was fading and failing like a wilted flower. Instead I was picking fights with my stressed parents, worrying over taking my driver’s license driving test, distracted by all the typical social pressures of high school life.
Her funeral was unbearable as I had never really said goodbye – only one brief hospital visit when she was hardly recognizable in her anguish and jaundice. I didn’t even get to hold her hand.
Soon after she had been lowered into the ground next to her husband and young daughter, she came back to me in a dream.
I was asleep when my bedroom door opened into the dark, wakening me as the bright hallway light pushed its way via a shimmering beam to my bed. Grandma Kittie stood in my bedroom doorway, backlit by the light surrounding her silhouette. She silently stood there, just looking at me.
Startled, I sat up in my bed and said to her, “Grandma, why are you here? You died and we buried you!”
She nodded and smiled. And then she said to me:
“I want you to know I’m okay and always will be. You will be too.”
She gave a little wave, turned and left, closing the door behind her. I woke suddenly with a gasp in my darkened bedroom and knew I had just been visited.
She hadn’t come to say goodbye or to tell me she loved me — that I knew already.
She had come to shine with her light blossoming around her, mending my broken heart by planting it with peace.
Grandma Kittie and Grandpa Leslie in their courting days
You’re in a better place I’ve heard a thousand times And at least a thousand times I’ve rejoiced for you
But the reason why I’m broken The reason why I cry Is how long must I wait to be with you
I close my eyes and I see your face If home’s where my heart is then I’m out of place Lord, won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow I’ve never been more homesick than now
Help me Lord cause I don’t understand your ways The reason why I wonder if I’ll ever know But, even if you showed me The hurt would be the same Cause I’m still here so far away from home
In Christ, there are no goodbyes And in Christ, there is no end
So I’ll hold onto Jesus With all that I have To see you again To see you again
And I close my eyes and I see your face If home’s where my heart is then I’m out of place Lord, won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow
Won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow Won’t you give me strength To make it through somehow I’ve never been more homesick than now ~Millard Bart Marshall
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Body is something you need in order to stay on this planet and you only get one. And no matter which one you get, it will not be satisfactory. It will not be beautiful enough, it will not be fast enough, it will not keep on for days at a time, but will pull you down into a sleepy swamp and demand apples and coffee and chocolate cake.
Body is a thing you have to carry from one day into the next. Always the same eyebrows over the same eyes in the same skin when you look in the mirror, and the same creaky knee when you get up from the floor and the same wrist under the watchband. The changes you can make are small and costly—better to leave it as it is.
Body is a thing that you have to leave eventually. You know that because you have seen others do it, others who were once like you, living inside their pile of bones and flesh, smiling at you, loving you, leaning in the doorway, talking to you for hours and then one day they are gone. No forwarding address. ~Joyce Sutphen, “Living in the Body” from Coming Back to the Body.
All bodies are fragile vessels, right from the beginning. I know this because I live inside an aging one and experience its limitations daily. Yet it is the only one I’ll ever have, though an imperfect reflection of my Creator – like it or not. Frankly, I greatly respect it having kept me going for 68 years so far and hoping for a few more.
I grieve for the young and strong who are often dissatisfied with the body they are given, spending immense time and resources to change what they can and agonizing over what is unchangeable.
What is unchangeable is that we’ll leave this empty husk behind at some point when we move on, leaving no forwarding address other than @heavenabove. We have watched it happen to those we love who have died too young because of system failure from an impossible-to-survive insult, and it happens to those who simply ran out of breaths after multiple decades of functioning heart and lungs.
My imperfect body doesn’t define me as it didn’t define those who have left before me. It isn’t who I was when I came to be, and it isn’t who I will be after I depart. But it deserves my ongoing admiration, awe and honor, along with my commitment to keep it in running order as long as I am able.
And I’ll try to confirm a forwarding address before I go.
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Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning from “Aurora Leigh”
(Jesus said) I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! Luke 12:49
It is difficult to undo our own damage… It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. ~Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone to Talk
When I drink in the stars and upward sink into the theater your words have wrought, I touch unfelt immensity and think— like Grandma used to pause in patient thought before an ordinary flower, awed by intricacies hidden in plain view, then say, You didn’t have to do that, God!— Surely a smaller universe would do!
But you have walled us in with open seas unconquerable, wild with distant shores whose raging dawns are but your filigree across our vaulted skies. This art of yours, what Grandma held and I behold, these flames, frame truth which awes us more: You know our names. ~Michael Stalcup “The Shallows”
I need to turn aside and look, to see, as if for the first and last time, the kindled fire that illuminates even the darkest day and never dies away.
We are invited by name, by no less than God Himself, through the burning bush that is never consumed to shed our shoes, to walk barefoot and vulnerable, and approach the bright and burning dawn, even when it is the darkest midnight, even when it is a babe in a manger lighting a fire in each one of us.
Only then, only then can I say: “Here I am! Consume me!”
This year’s Barnstorming Advent theme “… the Beginning shall remind us of the End” is taken from the final lines in T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees”
Within our darkest night, you kindle the fire that never dies away, that never dies away. Within our darkest night, you kindle the fire that never dies away, that never dies away. ~Taize
I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been; Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were, with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair. I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see. For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood in every spring there is a different green. I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago and people who will see a world that I shall never know. But all the while I sit and think of times there were before, I listen for returning feet and voices at the door. ~J.R.R. Tolkien
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