I do remember darkness, how it snaked through the alders, their ashen flanks in our high-beams the color of stone. That hollow slap as floodwater hit the sides of the car. Was the radio on? Had I been asleep? Sometimes you have to tell a story your entire life to get it right.
Twenty-two and terrified, I had married you but barely knew you. And for forty years I’ve told this story wrong. In my memory you drove right through it, the river already rising on the road behind us, no turning around. But since your illness I recall it differently. Now that I know it’s possible to lose you, I’m finally remembering it right. That night, you threw that car in reverse, and gunned it. You found us another way home. ~Emily Ransdell, “Everywhere a River,” from New Letters
When life gets scary, we long for rescue as the world threatens to overwhelm us. And eventually it is true, this world will overwhelm us, and we’ll wonder how we will escape.
Where does our help come from?
It doesn’t always come from the direction we expect. Most often, we keep staring ahead, hoping somehow salvation lies just around the corner.
But salvation has been behind us all the while. We were created saved but need to believe it, live it out, share it with anyone open to listen.
We all need to trust in the Rescuer when we are stuck and flooded with life. It takes courage, faith and grace to be led home, either straight ahead or back the way we came.
Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer 1:
Q.
What is your only comfort in life and death?
A.
That I am not my own, 1 but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, 2to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. 3He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, 4and has set me free from all the power of the devil. 5He also preserves me in such a way 6that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; 7indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. 8Therefore, by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life 9and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for him
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I made for grief a leaden bowl and drank it, every drop. And though I thought I’d downed it all the hurting didn’t stop.
I made of hope a golden sieve to drain my world of pain. Though I was sure I’d bled it dry the void filled up again.
I made of words a silver fork and stabbed love in the heart, and when I found the sweetness gone I chewed it into art. ~Luci Shaw “What I Needed to Do”
How can I stow away our hurt and grief when it keeps refilling, leaking everywhere? Where can hope be found when all feels hopeless? When I have been loved beyond all measure, with bleeding hands and feet and side; why not turn to the Word, its sweetness never exhausted no matter how often I chew through it in my hunger.
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I went out to cut a last batch of zinnias this morning from the back fencerow and got my shanks chilled for sure: furrowy dark gray clouds with separating fringes of blue sky-grass: and the dew
beaded up heavier than the left-overs of the rain: in the zinnias, in each of two, a bumblebee stirring in slow motion. Trying to unwind the webbed drug of cold, buzzing occasionally but
with a dry rattle: bees die with the burnt honey at their mouths, at least: the fact’s established: it is not summer now and the simmering buzz is out of heat: the zucchini blossoms falling show squash
overgreen with stunted growth: the snapdragons have suckered down into a blossom or so: we passed into dark last week the even mark of day and night and what we hoped would stay we yield to change. ~A.R. Ammons “Equinox”
We yield now to the heaviness of the change; a slowing of our walk and the darkening of our days.
It is time: day and night compete, and neither wins.
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The meaning of marriage begins in the giving of words. We cannot join ourselves to one another without giving our word. And this must be an unconditional giving, for in joining ourselves to one another we join ourselves to the unknown. ~Wendell Berry from “Poetry and Marriage” in Standing By Words
Our vows to one another forty years ago today:
Before God and this gathering, I vow from my heart and spirit that I will be your wife/husband for as long as we both shall live.
I will love you with faithfulness, knowing its importance in sustaining us through good times and bad.
I will love you with respect, serving your greatest good and supporting your continued growth.
I will love you with compassion, knowing the strength and power of forgiveness.
I will love you with hope, remembering our shared belief in the grace of God and His guidance of our marriage.
“And at home, by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be–and whenever I look up, there will be you.”
(our wedding vows for our September 19, 1981 wedding at First Seattle Christian Reformed Church — the last line adapted from Thomas Hardy’s “Far From the Madding Crowd”)
Sometimes our life reminds me of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing and in that opening a house, an orchard and garden, comfortable shades, and flowers red and yellow in the sun, a pattern made in the light for the light to return to. The forest is mostly dark, its ways to be made anew day after day, the dark richer than the light and more blessed, provided we stay brave enough to keep on going in.
We enter, willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy. ~Wendell Berry from “A Country of Marriage”
…Marriage… joins two living souls as closely as, in this world, they can be joined. This joining of two who know, love, and trust one another brings them in the same breath into the freedom of sexual consent and into the fullest earthly realization of the image of God. From their joining, other living souls come into being, and with them great responsibilities that are unending, fearful, and joyful. The marriage of two lovers joins them to one another, to forebears, to descendants, to the community, to heaven and earth. It is the fundamental connection without which nothing holds, and trust is its necessity. ~Wendell Berry from Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community
We married in our Seattle church with our pastor officiating, with a small group of family and friends as witnesses.
It was a wedding created by two frugal people with little to spend – I sewed my dress and Dan’s shirt from muslin, we grew our own flowers, our families helped potluck the lunch afterward and our tiered carrot cake was made by a friend.
Yet our vows to one another were not frugal and held nothing back. They were extravagant and comprehensive, coming from our hearts and spirits. The music we asked our amazing organist to play (versions below) inspired us by its simplicity and complexity – very much like the families that raised us and the God we worship.
Our vows have taken us from the city to the countryside, to the raising and rejoicing in three amazing children (each of whom wrote movingly to us today) and now four grandchildren. We served more than forty years as a public-employed attorney and physician, have laid down those responsibilities, and picked up the tools of farm and garden along with church and community service for as long as we are able.
We treasure each day of living together in faithfulness, respect, compassion and hope – knowing that how we love and find joy in one another mirrors how God loves and revels in His people.
We are praying for many more days to fill us with what endures.
A pot of red lentils simmers on the kitchen stove. All afternoon dense kernels surrender to the fertile juices, their tender bellies swelling with delight.
In the yard we plant rhubarb, cauliflower, and artichokes, cupping wet earth over tubers, our labor the germ of later sustenance and renewal.
Across the field the sound of a baby crying as we carry in the last carrots, whorls of butter lettuce, a basket of red potatoes.
I want to remember us this way— late September sun streaming through the window, bread loaves and golden bunches of grapes on the table, spoonfuls of hot soup rising to our lips, filling us with what endures. ~Peter Pereira from “A Pot of Red Lentils”
Here are versions of the organ music we selected for prelude, processional, recessional and postlude
My great grandfather had some fields in North Carolina and he willed those fields to his sons and his sons willed them to their sons so there is a two-hundred-year-old farm house on that land where several generations of my family fried chicken and laughed and hung
their laundry beneath the trees. There are things you know when your family has lived close to the earth: things that make magic seem likely. Dig a hole on the new of the moon and you will have dirt to throw away but dig one on the old of the moon and you won’t have
enough to fill it back up again: I learned this trick in the backyard of childhood with my hands. If you know the way the moon pulls at everything then you can feel it on the streets of a city where you cannot see the sky.
I may walk the streets of this century and make my living in an office but my blood is old farming blood and my true self is underground like a potato.
I have taken root in my grandfather’s fields: I am hanging my laundry beneath his trees. ~Faith Shearin from “Fields”
It just isn’t possible to completely take me off the farm – I have generations of farmers extending back on both sides of my family, so I have dug myself a hole here, resting easy in the soil like a potato and ventured out only as I needed to in order to actually make a living.
A gathering of all my vaccinated clinic colleagues came to our farm yesterday to help me celebrate my retiring from office life. They brought beautiful flowers, plentiful food, kind and restoring words, thirty year old photos and lovely parting gifts, as well as my singing doctor buddy sharing a sea shanty about bittersweet parting. It is helping ease my sorrow at leaving regular doctoring behind, knowing there are more days to come, more time to grow things in the ground, more blissing out over sunrises and sunsets and more hanging laundry on the clothesline.
My dear friends know where they can find me – on the hill above our farm – we may or might never, meet here again but it was such a fine time together yesterday, thank you!
Kind Friend and Companions, Come join me in rhyme, Come lift up your voices, In chorus with mine, Come lift up your voices, all grief to refrain, For we may or might never, all meet here again Here’s a health to the company and one to my lass, Let us drink and be merry, all out of one glass, Let us drink and be merry, all grief to refrain For we may or might never, all meet here again Here’s a health to the dear lass, that I love so well, For her style and her beauty, sure none can excel, There’s a smile on her countenance, as she sits on my knee, There’s no man in this wide world, as happy as me, Here’s a health to the company, and one to my lass Let us drink and be merry, all out of one glass, Let us drink and be merry, all grief to refrain For we may or might never, all meet here again, Our ship lies at anchor, she’s ready to dock, I wish her safe landing, without any shock, If ever I should meet you, by land or by sea, I will always remember, your kindness to me, Here’s a health to the company and one to my lass, Let us drink and be merry, all out of one glass, Let us drink and be merry, all grief to refrain For we may or might never, all meet here again Here’s a health to the company and one to my lass, Let us drink and be merry, all out of one glass, Let us drink and be merry, all grief to refrain For we may or might never, all meet here again
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Echo of the clocktower, footstep in the alleyway, sweep of the wind sifting the leaves.
Jeweller of the spiderweb, connoisseur of autumn’s opulence, blade of lightning harvesting the sky.
Keeper of the small gate, choreographer of entrances and exits, midnight whisper travelling the wires.
Seducer, healer, deity, or thief, I will see you soon enough– in the shadow of the rainfall, in the brief violet darkening a sunset — but until then I pray watch over him as a mountain guards its covert ore
and the harsh falcon its flightless young. ~Dana Gioia “The Prayer” (written in memory of his infant son who died of SIDS)
When we think of those who wait for us on the other side, including our baby lost before birth 38 years ago…
We pray those from whom we are parted are loved as we have loved.
I know God will watch over all these reunions; He knows the moment when our fractured hearts heal whole once again.
I will see you soon enough, sweet one. Soon enough.
photo by Kate Steensma
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Let me enjoy this late-summer day of my heart while the leaves are still green and I won’t look so close as to see that first tint of pale yellow slowly creep in. I will cease endless running and then look to the sky ask the sun to embrace me and then hope she won’t tell of tomorrows less long than today. Let me spend just this time in the slow-cooling glow of warm afternoon light and I’d think I will still have the strength for just one more last fling of my heart. – Jonathan Bohrn, Late August
August rushes by like desert rainfall, A flood of frenzied upheaval, Expected, But still catching me unprepared. Like a match flame Bursting on the scene, Heat and haze of crimson sunsets. Like a dream Of moon and dark barely recalled, A moment, Shadows caught in a blink. Like a quick kiss; One wishes for more But it suddenly turns to leave, Dragging summer away. – Elizabeth Maua Taylor, August
I’m in the time of life when what is to come is ever so much shorter than what has been. I muse now at my sudden revelation as a five year old that a time would come when I would cease to be on this earth. I had no idea how soon that would come or whether I would have many years to think about how I might come to an end. That knowledge has colored all my days, knowing they are numbered and finite.
Now, like the drying leaves, I watch my edges curling and changing color in preparation – a kind of beauty preceding an eventual letting go.
I remember thinking, in my kindergarten-size brain, that I could not waste a minute of this life and needed to pay attention to everything. That has been much harder than I imagined: there is pain in attending to wars and famine, illness and injury, tragedy and tribulation. I was given my ears to hear, my eyes to see, my mouth to speak – for good reason. Though my heart hurts to read headlines, I must fling it into the messiness around me.
Even the leaves bleed red as tomorrow is less long.
It is the waning light and shortening days that colors my view like smoky haze in the sky painting a sunset deep orange. The coming darkness is temporary and, like me, is inevitably finite; it will never conquer the light that is everlasting.
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I remember the first day, how I looked down, hoping you wouldn’t see me, and when I glanced up, I saw your smile shining like a soft light from deep inside you.
“I’m listening,” you encourage us. “Come on! Join our conversation, let us hear your neon certainties, thorny doubts, tangled angers,” but for weeks I hid inside.
I read and reread your notes praising my writing, and you whispered, “We need you and your stories and questions that like a fresh path will take us to new vistas.”
Slowly, your faith grew into my courage and for you— instead of handing you a note or apple or flowers— I raised my hand.
I carry your smile and faith inside like I carry my dog’s face, my sister’s laugh, creamy melodies, the softness of sunrise, steady blessings of stars, autumn smell of gingerbread, the security of a sweater on a chilly day. ~Pat Mora, “Ode To Teachers” from Dizzy in Your Eyes.
School is back in session for some and will be soon for others. We cross our fingers it can remain in person, masked face-to-masked face, rather than via screens.
Students and teachers will find their way back to one another – learning each other’s stories and how to transform one another through sharing those stories.
Two of our children are school teachers – one at elementary level and the other in high school, while the third spent two years teaching high school math on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. They were transformed by their own teachers, inspired to do what had made such a difference in their own lives. They have become the teachers who I wish would teach me.
Some of my own teachers helped transform me in those early years, encouraging me in my shyness to raise my hand despite my thorny doubts, tell my story despite my tangled angers, share something of myself when I felt I had nothing of value to give.
I think of you and thank you – Mrs. Neil, Mr. Duffy, Mrs. MacMurray – for helping me break out of my broken shell in my grade school years. You taught me to wholly trust to this day those who love enough to push me to become a better me.
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Behind the house in a field there’s a metal box I buried full of childhood treasure, a map of my secret place, a few lead pennies from 1943. The rest I’ve forgotten, forgotten even the exact spot I covered with moss and loam. Now I’m back and twenty years have made so little difference I suspect they never happened, this face in the mirror aged with pencil and putty. I suspect even the box has moved as a mole would move to a new place long ago. ~Dan Gerber “The Cache” from Particles
Icame upon an oak where once when I was twelve I had climbed up and screamed for Skip to get me down. It was a thousand miles to earth. I shut my eyes and yelled. My brother, richly compelled to mirth, gave shouts of laughter And scaled up to rescue me. “What were you doing there?” he said. I did not tell. Rather drop me dead. But I was there to place a note within a squirrel nest On which I’d written some old secret thing now long forgot.
{Now} I lay upon the limb a long while, thinking. I drank in all the leaves and clouds and weathers Going by as mindless As the days. What, what, what if? I thought. But no. Some forty years beyond!
I brought forth: The note.
I opened it. For now I had to know. I opened it, and wept. I clung then to the tree And let the tears flow out and down my chin. Dear boy, strange child, who must have known the years And reckoned time and smelled sweet death from flowers In the far churchyard. It was a message to the future, to myself. Knowing one day I must arrive, come, seek, return. From the young one to the old. From the me that was small And fresh to the me that was large and no longer new. What did it say that made me weep?
I remember you. I remember you. ~Ray Bradbury from “Remembrance”
As a child, I left secret notes to my future self, in hidden crevices of old barns, and attic lofts up rickety stairs, and yes, even in trees, but never went back to retrieve them except in my rare dreams of growing up on Friendly Grove Road.
Back then my ten year old heart tried to imagine me sixty some years hence (counting out how old I would be in 2020 something) as I squirreled away in some secret place.
What fears and joys would pass through like pumping blood, what wounds would I bear and cause to bleed, what smiles and tears would trace my face?
I have not forgotten who I was then.
No, I have never forgotten that girl who kept secrets, who dreamed of a someday gray-haired grandma who now looks back to my secret places, and remembers being remembered.
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How often do we miss the fainter note Or fail to see the more exquisite hue, Blind to the tiny streamlet at our feet, Eyes fixed upon some other, further view. What chimes of harmonies escape our ears, How many rainbows must elude our sight, We see a field but do not see the grass, Each blade a miracle of shade and light. How then to keep the greater end in eye And watch the sunlight on the distant peak, And yet not tread on any leaf of love, Nor miss a word the eager children speak? Ah, what demand upon the narrow heart, To seek the whole, yet not ignore the part. ~Philip Britts “Sonnet 1”
I saw the lovely arch Of Rainbow span the sky, The gold sun burning As the rain swept by.
In bright-ringed solitude The showery foliage shone One lovely moment, And the Bow was gone. ~Walter De La Mare “The Rainbow”
We are born nearly blinded, focused solely on our emptiness – a hunger to be filled and our need to be held. As we grow, our focus sharpens to fall in love with those who feed and nurture us.
Eventually we discover, challenge and worship He who made us.
This world is often too much for us to take in as a whole — our exquisite view of shadow and light, color and gray, loneliness and embrace, sorrow and joy.
With more years and a broader vision, we scan for the finer details within the whole before it disappears with the changing light. Time’s a wasting (and so are we) as we try to capture it all with the lenses of our eyes and hearts.
The end of life comes too soon, when once again our vision blurs and the world fades away from view.
We hunger yet again to be filled and held.
And then heaven itself will seem almost too much to take in – our hearts full to bursting with light and promise for the rest of eternity.
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