Tag: hope

All Puppies and Rainbows

barnstormingblog5 Comments

The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening.  It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
~Henry David Thoreau from Walden

I don’t know about you, but there are some days I wake up just longing for my life to be all puppies and rainbows.

I hope to find sparkling magic around every corner, little wiggly fur balls surrounding me, happy tails a-wagging with a promise of glee and glitter. I’m eager to feel pure joy untainted by the realities of every day.

Perhaps I’m clutching at a kind of cartoon version of life without considering the wicked witches and monsters present in the ever-present dark forbidding woods of our human existence. Life just isn’t all puppies and rainbows. I know this…

Of course, puppies grow up. Rainbows fade and become just a memory. And I am growing older with all the aches and pains and uncertainties of aging. Even so, I still tend to clutch a “puppies and rainbows” state of mind when I open my eyes in the morning and when I close my eyes for sleep – hoping for a bit of stardust to hold.

I believe in promises. I believe in the God who made those promises. He is who I can hold onto and know with certainty, He won’t ever let go of me.

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Brandon Dieleman
photo by Nate Gibson

If you enjoy these daily Barnstorming posts, you’ll love this new book from Barnstorming available to order here:

Spin Until I’m Dizzy

barnstormingblog2 Comments

Tomorrow
there will be sun, scalloped by clouds,
ushered in by a waterfall of birdsong.
It will be a temperate seventy-five, low
humidity. For twenty-four hours,
all politicians will be silent. Reality
programs will vanish from TV, replaced
by the “snow” that used to decorate
our screens when reception wasn’t
working. Soldiers will toss their weapons
in the grass. The oceans will stop
their inexorable rise. No one
will have to sit on a committee.
When twilight falls, the aurora borealis
will cut off cell phones, scramble the internet.
We’ll play flashlight tag, hide and seek,
decorate our hair with fireflies, spin
until we’re dizzy, collapse
on the dew-decked lawn and look up,
perhaps for the first time, to read the long lines
of cold code written in the stars….
~Barbara Crooker “Tomorrow” from Some Glad Morning.

Might I hope for a better tomorrow?

Awash in this world of technological and political complexity, I forget the simple pleasure of lying in the grass, looking up and staring at the stars spinning above me.

I become dizzy with the possibilities.

A new book from Barnstorming is available for order here:

Mostly Dead

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.
Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well,
with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do –
Go through his clothes and look for loose change.
~William Goldman – the wisdom of Miracle Max in The Princess Bride

You who believe,
and you who sometimes believe
and sometimes don’t believe much of anything,
and you who would give almost anything to believe if only you could.

You happy ones
and you who can hardly remember what it was like once to be happy.

You who know where you’re going and how to get there
and you who much of the time aren’t sure you’re getting anywhere.

“Get up,” he says, all of you – all of you! –
and the power that is in him
is the power to give life not just to the dead like the child,

but to those who are only partly alive,
which is to say to people like you and me

who much of the time live with our lives
closed to the wild beauty and miracle of things,
including the wild beauty and miracle of every day we live
and even of ourselves.
~Frederick Buechner -Originally published in Secrets in the Dark

May I not settle for being slightly alive or mostly dead –

I want to be fully alive
to the wild beauty and miracle of things,
to the wild beauty and miracle of every day,
and even the wild beauty and miracle of myself~~

I have known what it is to doubt,
to be discouraged, defeated, and grieved.

It is part of the package:
shadows appear when the Sun is the brightest and hottest.
I have no doubt the Sun exists, especially after the last few days.

So I must “get up!” even if I don’t know where to go next.

And then I will believe
~truly believe~
I am created to be mostly and absolutely alive this day and every day.

A new book from Barnstorming is available for order here:

Waiting at the Edge of a Petal

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Life is a stream 
On which we strew 
Petal by petal the flower of our heart; 
The end lost in dream, 
They float past our view, 
We only watch their glad, early start. 

Freighted with hope, 
Crimsoned with joy, 
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose; 
Their widening scope, 
Their distant employ, 
We never shall know. And the stream as it flows 
Sweeps them away, 
Each one is gone 
Ever beyond into infinite ways. 
We alone stay 
While years hurry on, 
The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays. 
~Amy Lowell “Petals”

It is at the edge of a petal that love waits.
~William Carlos Williams from Spring and All (1923)

Here is the fringy edge where elements meet and realms mingle, where time and eternity spatter each other with foam.
~Annie Dillard from Holy the Firm

It is common to look for love only inside the heart of things,
watching it pulse as both showpiece and show off,
reverberating from deep within,
yet loud enough for all the world to bear witness.

But as I advance on life’s road,
I find love lying waiting at the periphery of my heart,
fragile and easily torn as a petal edge – 
clinging to the fringe of my life,
holding on through storms and trials.

This love is ever-present,
protects and cherishes,
fed by fine little veins which branch
from the center to the tender margins of infinity.

It is on that delicate edge of forever I dwell,
waiting to be fed and trembling with anticipation.

A new book from Barnstorming is available for order here:

The Reddening Light

barnstormingblog2 Comments

Near dusk, near a path, near a brook,
we stopped, I in disquiet and dismay
for the suffering of someone I loved,
the doe in her always incipient alarm.

All that moved was her pivoting ear
the reddening sun was shining through
transformed to a color I’d only seen
in a photo of a new child in a womb.

Nothing else stirred, not a leaf,
not the air, but she startled and bolted
away from me into the crackling brush.

The part of my pain which sometimes
releases me from it fled with her, the rest,
in the rake of the late light, stayed.
~C. K. Williams  “The Doe” from The Singing

Oh little one
who was to have been born this week in June
thirty eight years ago~
so wanted
so anticipated
but lost too soon.

Gone as swiftly in a clot of red
as a doe disappearing soundlessly into a thicket:
so long ago it makes me question
if you were real,
until my heart clenches again at the memory.

But you were
and you are
and someday
I’ll know you when I see you
and curious about who I am,
you won’t flee this time,
but stay to find out.

A new book from Barnstorming is available to order here:

In Full Glory Reflected

barnstormingblog1 Comment

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
~Francis Scott Key (rarely sung 2nd verse of The Star-Spangled Banner)

I grew up with a flag pole in our front yard: the American flag was raised every morning by my WWII veteran father and lowered at dusk every evening. This was far more than a ritual for my father; he saw it as his obligation and privilege after the three years he spent as a Marine in the South Pacific. He had the freedom, as well as the necessity, to declare our continued liberty to any who passed by. His flag was his reminder, a tangible symbol of having fought beneath it watching others shed blood and die for it.

My father was not one to weep – ever. But his eyes filled up when we visited the original The Star-Spangled banner in its display at the Smithsonian Institute in the 1960s, and again as we stood before the Iwo Jima Memorial Marine flag-raising sculpture. The fact the flag meant so much to him impressed and imprinted upon me.

He would have been horrified at how the flag is currently misused as a symbol of “my patriotism is more true and pure than yours” — waving from the back of jacked-up pickups and held by the rioters who stormed the Capitol building on January 6. The flag has been through many tough times – burned as an expression of free speech and ignored when people are asked to recite “The Pledge of Allegiance.” The flag now seems to symbolize our deep divisions rather than our unity.

June 14 (Flag Day) no longer has the impact that it had back in the early 1900s when it was first declared and widely celebrated through the 20th century. My mother, growing up in the isolation of the Palouse wheat farms in eastern Washington state, reminisced about pre-WWII Flag Day parades, picnics and celebrations in the small farming communities of Waverly and Fairfield. This day was a warm up for the all-out patriotic gatherings on July 4 – unity on display.

As I place our flag out on our porch today, I am honoring this symbol of the sacrifice of those who gave themselves so that this banner could fly freely for many generations to come. I’m making no other statement than that and no other statement is necessary.

Here is the proof, through all the dark and contentious nights of our country’s history, that our flag is still here.

Glory, Glory Hallelujah!

A new book from Barnstorming is available to order here:

This Garden Entrusted to Me

barnstormingblog1 Comment

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

This Water-Lily World

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

In spring there’s hope,
in fall the exquisite, necessary diminishing,
in winter I am as sleepy
as any beast in its leafy cave,
but in summer there is
everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts,
the hospitality of the Lord
and my inadequate answers as
I row my beautiful, temporary body
through this water-lily world.
~Mary Oliver from “Six Recognitions of the Lord”

what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
~Mary Oliver from “The Ponds”

I admit to being oblivious to the wonders going on beneath my feet, around my middle and above my head. My nose is to the grindstone, doing what needs to be done.

When a moment comes out of nowhere and I’m dazzled by something I’ve seen or heard or smelled, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. It has always been there; I’m simply waking to it.

Lord, lift my head in the midst of my blind hunger to see what you have already prepared for me.

Translation from Icelandic:

Hear, smith of heavens.
The poet seeketh.
In thy still small voice
Mayest thou show grace.
As I call on thee,
Thou my creator.
I am thy servant,
Thou art my true Lord.

God, I call on thee;
For thee to heal me.
Bid me, prince of peace,
Thou my supreme need.
Ever I need thee,
Generous and great,
O’er all human woe,
City of thy heart.

Guard me, my savior.
Ever I need thee,
Through ev’ry moment
In this world so wide.
Virgin–born, send me
Noble motives now.
Aid cometh from thee,
To my deepest heart.

A new book available from Barnstorming – more information about ordering here

Standing Ajar

barnstormingblog3 Comments
It is enough to enter

the templar
halls of museums, for

example, or
the chambers of churches,

and admire
no more than the beauty

there, or
remember the graveness

of stone, or
whatever. You don’t

have to do any
better. You don’t have to

understand
the liturgy or know history

to feel holy
in a gallery or presbytery.

It is enough
to have come just so far.

You need
not be opened any more

than does
a door, standing ajar.
~Todd Boss “It is Enough to Enter”
photo by Barb Hoelle

It is enough to be open.

It is enough to have come this far.

I don’t need to have my questions answered.

I don’t need to have places to be, things to do, people to see.

It is enough to stand ajar like an unlocked door, looking in and wondering what or who might pass through.

Who knows what might happen next?

the wardrobe from C.S. Lewis’ childhood home built by his grandfather, later to serve as his inspiration for “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” from his home “The Kilns” at Oxford. Now at the Marion Wade Center at Wheaton College, Illinois

A new book from Barnstorming available to order here:

Each One Knows What the Other Knows

barnstormingblog2 Comments

They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.
~Wendell Berry “They Sit Together on the Porch”

Over our multiple decades together, the more often we see others who sat together on the porches of their lives, and one has now already gone through that darkened doorway, bidding Goodnight.

The other remains sitting alone for a time.

We know what the other knows in our one mind together: we don’t know who will bid Goodnight before the other and who will sit on for awhile.

But we know it is okay either way because this is how it is and how it is meant to be. This is why we treasure up each porch-sitting, breathing the fresh evening air together, sighing wordlessly together, knowing, and not knowing, what will come next.

A new book from Barnstorming, available to order here: