Tag: joy

None of These

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Not only the leaf shivering with delight

No,

Not only the morning grass shrugging off the weight of frost

No,

Not only the wings of the crane fly consumed by fire

No,

Not only steam rising from the horse’s back

No,

Not only the sound of the sunflower roaring

No,

Not only the golden spider spinning

No,

Not only the cathedral window deep inside the raindrop

No,

Not only the door opening at the back of the clouds,

No,

Not only flakes of light settling like snow 

No,

Not only the sky as blue and smooth as an egg

No,

Not only these things

No,

But without you none of these things.
~Brian Patten “Not Only”

The world is more vivid and beautiful when I am with people I love. Being with family after months apart reminds me how much I am missing.

“And when my love for life is running dry, you come and pour yourself on me.” (Bread – “If”)

If only I could be two places at one time…

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A Bit of Heaven

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I love color.
I love flaming reds,
And vivid greens,
And royal flaunting purples.
I love the startled rose of the sun at dawning,
And the blazing orange of it at twilight.

I love color.
I love the drowsy blue of the fringed gentian,
And the yellow of the goldenrod,
And the rich russet of the leaves
That turn at autumn-time….
I love rainbows,
And prisms,
And the tinsel glitter
Of every shop-window.

I love color.
And yet today,
I saw a brown little bird
Perched on the dull-gray fence
Of a weed-filled city yard.
And as I watched him
The little bird
Threw back his head
Defiantly, almost,
And sang a song
That was full of gay ripples,
And poignant sweetness,
And half-hidden melody.

I love color….
I love crimson, and azure,
And the glowing purity of white.
And yet today,
I saw a living bit of brown,
A vague oasis on a streak of gray,
That brought heaven
Very near to me.
~Margaret Sangster “The Colors”

My eye is always looking for the glow of colors or combination of hues like a harmonious chord blending together. It is like a symphony to my retinas…

But if I don’t look closely enough, I miss the beauty of subtle color hidden in a background of drab. They sing, transcending the ordinary.

Today, it was these house sparrows, busy eating grass seeds behind a city building. I heard their chirping before I saw them, they were so camouflaged. They are also known as “gutter birds” given their plain and common appearance. Yet, hearing them and then watching their enthusiastic feeding, there was nothing plain about them.

They had brought a bit of heaven to earth. After all, the Word tells us His eyes are on the sparrow…

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An Ache Nothing Can Satisfy

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At the alder-darkened brink
Where the stream slows to a lucid jet
I lean to the water, dinting its top with sweat,
And see, before I can drink,

A startled inchling trout
Of spotted near-transparency,
Trawling a shadow solider than he.
He swerves now, darting out

To where, in a flicked slew
Of sparks and glittering silt, he weaves
Through stream-bed rocks, disturbing foundered leaves,
And butts then out of view

Beneath a sliding glass
Crazed by the skimming of a brace
Of burnished dragon-flies across its face,
In which deep cloudlets pass

And a white precipice
Of mirrored birch-trees plunges down
Toward where the azures of the zenith drown.
How shall I drink all this?

Joy’s trick is to supply
Dry lips with what can cool and slake,
Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache
Nothing can satisfy.
~Richard Wilbur “Hamlen Brook”

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

How can I take it all in?

Like so many others right now, I’m thirsty for honest, respectful discussion and debate about the state of the world. Instead, I’m left dry and wanting, ready to blow away with the next gust.

So I ache to witness fading colors, fallen leaves, swift winds and pouring rain, as all creatures great and small prepare for winter’s chill. There is stark honesty among all soon to fall asleep.

I yearn to hear God’s Truth spoken out loud.
How amazing it would be — to be dumbstruck with joy.

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Intended for Joy

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There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.
~John Calvin as quoted in  John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait (Oxford, 1988) by William J. Bouwsma

It is too easy to become blinded to the glory surrounding us if we allow it to seem routine and commonplace. 

I can’t remember the last time I celebrated a blade of grass, given how focused I am in mowing it into conformity and submission. 

During the summer months, I’m seldom up early enough to witness the pink sunrise. In the winter, I’m too busy making dinner to take time to watch the sun paint the sky red as it sets.

I miss opportunities to stop and notice what surrounds me innumerable times a day. It takes only a moment of recognition and appreciation to feel the joy, and for that moment time stands still.  So life stretches a little longer when I stop to acknowledge the intention of creation as an endless reservoir of rejoicing.  

If a blade of grass, if a palette of color,
if all this is made for joy,
then perhaps, so am I.
Even colorless, commonplace, sometimes stormy me.
Indeed, so am I.

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The Sweetness in Ripening

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How joyful to be together, alone
as when we first were joined
in our little house by the river
long ago, except that now we know

each other, as we did not then;
and now instead of two stories fumbling
to meet, we belong to one story
that the two, joining, made. And now

we touch each other with the tenderness
of mortals, who know themselves:
how joyful to feel the heart quake

at the sight of a grandmother,
old friend in the morning light,
beautiful in her blue robe!
~Wendell Berry “The Blue Robe” from New Collected Poems

Our hair turns white with our ripening
as though to fly away in some
coming wind, bearing the seed
of what we know. It was bitter to learn
that we come to death as we come
to love, bitter to face
the just and solving welcome
that death prepares. But that is bitter
only to the ignorant, who pray
it will not happen. Having come
the bitter way to better prayer, we have
the sweetness of ripening. How sweet
to know you by the signs of this world!
~Wendell Berry from “Ripening”

My husband and I have spent 43 years of late summer evenings together – much like this one – breathing in the smell of ripening cornfields and freshly mowed silage grass lying in windrows waiting to be picked up for winter forage.   

Just down the road is the smaller farm we first bought when we wished to leave the city behind for a new life amid quieter surroundings. 

The seedling trees my husband planted there are now a thick grove and effective windbreak from the bitter howling northeasters we endured. Our oldest son and his family live in that farm house now, moving home after more than a decade of mission work in Japan.

There is such sweetness knowing the first home we owned together is home for two of our grandchildren.

Our three children were raised on this road and they strolled these roads with us many times, before flying far away for their life’s work. My husband and I continue our walk together, just the two of us, pondering how the passage of time could be so swift that our hair has turned white.

We are going to seed when it was only yesterday we were so young.

Indeed we have ripened before we’re feeling ready. It is bitter sweetness relinquishing the youth we once knew, to face a future we can never know.

It is the mystery that keeps us coming back, walking the same steps those younger legs once did, admiring the same setting sun, smelling the same late summer smells.  But we are not the same as we were, having progressed to a fruitfulness God intended all along.

Ripening and readying, our seed now flies with the wind.

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Upon the Bough of Morning

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The crust of sleep is broken
Abruptly—
I look drowsily
Through the wide crack.
I do not know whether I see
Three minds, bird-shaped,
Flashing upon the bough of morning;
Or three delicately tinted souls
Butterflying in the sun;
Or three brown-fleshed, husky children
Sprawling hilarious
Over my bed
And me.
~Jeanne D’Orge “Matins” (published in 1917)

This morning I broke through the misty tides of my dreams,
surfacing to cool morning air and prelude of a dawn bird chorus.

Today I wake imagining who I might be from a myriad of dreams…

Sometimes I wake as if once again a young girl,
sun coming through frilly curtains to shower my face with a warming light.

Sometimes I wake as if once again a sleep-thirsty student, hoping to snooze another 15 minutes before class.

Sometimes I wake once again as if a new mother,
dripping and leaking at the sound of my baby’s cries.

Sometimes I wake as if once again a weary farmer, up much of the night with a laboring mare and slow-to-suck foal.

Sometimes I wake as if once again a preoccupied physician, mentally reviewing the night’s phone calls and concerns.

Today I wake as a grandma, wishing my bed would bounce with a pile of birds and butterflies and jubilant children, wishing me good morning and eager to see me up and at ’em.

So who am I?

I was, I am, I will be all those things, as I hang tight to the bough of morning.

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The Grandest Spectacle

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There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.
~Victor Hugo from Les Misérables

There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.
~John Calvin quoted in John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait 

Already the end of August.
As another summer wraps up, I am blinded to the glory surrounding me in the seemingly commonplace.

I can’t remember the last time I celebrated a blade of grass, given how focused I am at mowing it into conformity.

I didn’t notice how the morning light was illuminating our walnut tree until I saw the perfect reflection of it in our koi pond — why had I marveled at a reflection instead of the real thing itself?

I mistook a spider’s overnight artwork in the grass: from a distance, it looked like a dew-soaked tissue draped like a tent over the green blades. When I went to go pick it up to throw it away in the trash, I realized I was staring at a small creature’s masterpiece.

I miss opportunities to rejoice innumerable times a day. It takes only a moment of recognition and appreciation to feel the joy, and in that moment time stands still. Life stretches a little longer when I stop to acknowledge the intention of creation as an endless reservoir of rejoicing. 

If the sea and the sky, a blade of grass, a leaf turning color, a chance reflection, a delicately woven web — if all this is made for joy, then maybe so am I.

Colorless, plain and commonplace me – created an image-bearer and intended reflector of Light?

Grandest of all is the spectacle of the interior of the soul;
yes then, so am I.

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Going Back and Forth

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We were very tired, we were very merry —
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable —
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry —
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay “Recuerdo”

Over my eight decades, I’ve taken many ferry rides between the islands and mainland in the local Salish Sea, sailed through the inland passage from Vancouver Island almost to Alaska, taken a multi-level behemoth between Ireland and Scotland, and overnighted in a bunk bed on a Lake Victoria steamship between Kenya and Tanzania.

Each ride might have been an exotic adventure, wonderfully escapist. Yet the point was always the destination. I needed to get there from here or return from there to here, rather than simply enjoying the back and forth.

I’ve been incapable of being carefree and merry, full of impulse and joy, especially when it costs me a night’s sleep.

Have I ever done anything just for the heck of it?

It’s true. Being born a stick-in-the-mud, a drudge, an “old soul” and a grind is a heavy burden to live with for seventy years.

Perhaps I’m overdue for simply cherishing the voyage without worrying about the details of how I’m getting there or whether it will be on time.

I’m not only thriving on the sweet nectar of apples and pears growing in our orchard, but must share what I don’t use with someone who needs it more than I do.

Then, at some point, having been back and forth and forth and back, I’ll be ready to head home, tired yet carefree and merry and sated, infinitely blissed and eternally blessed.

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A Joy To Simply Be…

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Each year, on the same date, the summer solstice comes.
Consummate light: we plan for it,
the day we tell ourselves
that time is very long indeed, nearly infinite.
And in our reading and writing, preference is given
to the celebratory, the ecstatic.

What follows the light is what precedes it:
the moment of balance, of dark equivalence.

But tonight we sit in the garden in our canvas chairs
so late into the evening –
why should we look either forward or backwards?
Why should we be forced to remember:
it is in our blood, this knowledge.
Shortness of the days; darkness, coldness of winter.
It is in our blood and bones; it is in our history.
It takes a genius to forget these things.
~Louise Glück from “Solstice”

When summer time has come, and all
The world is in the magic thrall
Of perfumed airs that lull each sense
To fits of drowsy indolence;

Just for the joy of being there
And drinking in the summer air,
The summer sounds, and summer sights,
That set a restless mind to rights
When grief and pain and raging doubt
Of men and creeds have worn it out;

O time of rapture! time of song!
How swiftly glide thy days along
Adown the current of the years,
Above the rocks of grief and tears!
‘Tis wealth enough of joy for me
In summer time to simply be.
~Paul Laurence Dunbar from “Summertime”

Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy.
These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.
~C.S. Lewis from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

On this solstice day, I am wavering in a balance
of light and shadow~
this knowledge of what’s to come next
rests deep in my bones.

I’ve been here before,
so grateful for the sun’s return.

I will not forget this gift of Light,
as darkness begins to claim the days again.

I remember,
He promised to never let darkness
overwhelm the world again.

I believe Him,
on this longest day,
and even more so,
in the midst of the longest night.

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This Was The Day

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Opening the book at a bright window
above a wide pasture after five years
I find I am still standing on a stone bridge
looking down with my mother at dusk into a river
hearing the current as hers in her lifetime

now it comes to me that that was the day
she told me of seeing my father alive for the last time
and he waved her back from the door as she was leaving
took her hand for a while and said
nothing

at some signal
in a band of sunlight all the black cows flow down the pasture together
to turn uphill and stand as the dark rain touches them.
~W.S. Merwin “Sun and Rain” from Flower & Hand.

All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning
~W. S. Merwin “Rain Light” from The Shadow of Sirius 

We want so much to leave a legacy for our children that will carry them through their lives, long after we are gone. Then they pass that on to their children, and on and on, like the strands of DNA we leave behind in our descendants.

But words and rituals of faith and covenant can be lost so quickly from one generation to the next. Our DNA passed down is a given, but nothing surpasses the teaching about the eternal love of God and His purpose for His people.

This day, three of our young grandsons are baptized by their church, ushering them into a life in fulfillment of God’s promise within them. As children, they may not yet fully understand how this manifests in their lives, but with the love and guidance of their church, parents, extended family and godparents, they will know His Love as they witness it in His people.

The washing with water from God’s creation, like rain from heaven, gives me hope for the future.

Though the world may be burning, Jesus is right alongside us through it all – I know our children and grandchildren will be all right.