Tag: Lent

A Bright Sadness: Being and Breath

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With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears

Though earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And Thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in thee

There is not room for Death
Nor atom that his might could render void
Since thou art Being and Breath
And what thou art may never be destroyed.
~Emily Bronte from “No Coward Soul is Mine” The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Bronte

There is nothing apart from God,
There is nothing apart from His breath and being.

Not even death sets us apart
in the already, but not yet.

Why then do we struggle to know Him
and to be known?

Our DNA pulses with His image~
our very atoms designed to celebrate and worship Him.

So let us listen, for a change, to our atoms
and blossom richly with His spirit.

It’s time already.


A Bright Sadness: A Twig of Evidence

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This World is not Conclusion.
A Species stands beyond –
Invisible, as Music –
But positive, as Sound –
It beckons, and it baffles –
Philosophy, don’t know –
And through a Riddle, at the last –
Sagacity, must go –
To guess it, puzzles scholars –
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown –
Faith slips – and laughs, and rallies –
Blushes, if any see –
Plucks at a twig of Evidence –
And asks a Vane, the way –
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit –
Strong Hallelujahs roll –
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul –
~Emily Dickinson

Doubt can feel like the bare branches of winter – plenty of bleak bark, and nothing that feels alive or real or even meaningful.

Yet spring ushers in such profound intervention that doubt is ushered out with little ceremony. What was mere potential is now bud and bloom. What was mere twig is now glorious.

And so, with the resurrection, are we.

A Bright Sadness: Fiery and Sweet as Honey

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May the power of your love, Lord Christ, 
fiery and sweet as honey, 
so absorb our hearts 
as to withdraw them 
from all that is under heaven. 
Grant that we may be ready to die 
for love of your love, 
as you died for love of our love. 
~St. Francis of Assisi

Lent is a time of letting go while still holding on.

If I am to see Jesus and know the power of His love,
I must let go of this life and walk with Him with every step to the cross.
As Dan and I flew into Tokyo today, through two landing attempts at Narita Airport that had to be aborted at the last few seconds due to dangerously gusting winds, we felt the tenuous grip we have on our lives and our utter dependency on the Lord taking care of us, in this world and in His kingdom in the next.

Just in the evens of Holy Week, we learn a few basics:
No falling asleep.
No selling out.
No turning and running away.
No hiding my face in denial.
No looking back.
No clinging to the comforts of the world.

But of course I fail again and again.
My heart resists leaving behind what I know.

Plucked from the crowd,
I must grasp and carry the load, my load, alongside Him.
Now is my turn to hold on and not let go, as if life depends on it.
Which it does, requiring no nails.

The fire of His love leaves my sin in ashes.
From those ashes rises new life.
Love of His love of our love.

h


A Bright Sadness: A Light Exists in Spring

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A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the year
At any other period –
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Hills
That Science cannot overtake,
But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn;
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope we know;
It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step,
Or Noons report away,
Without the Formula of sound,
It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
Affecting our Content,
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.
~Emily Dickinson – 85- Part two: Nature

Maybe it is the particular tilt of the globe on its axis,
or the suffusion of clouds mixing with the atmosphere
or perhaps that darkness no longer claims us

but the lighting of March melting into April
belongs not just all around us
but framed on gallery walls for perpetuity
to be admired at any time of the year,
whenever we want to be immersed

surrounding sacrament without and within,
our life in the Lord:
gently glowing.

A Bright Sadness: All Human Eloquence is Mute

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He was created of a mother whom He created.
He was carried by hands that He formed.
He cried in the manger in wordless infancy,
He the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute.
~Augustine

It turns the mind inside out~
created inside His creation,
cradled within an earthly embrace by way of heaven,
bathed while cleansing the bather
filled from emptying breast to become food for the hungry.

In the beginning
the Word breathed and articulated life
with such eloquence,
knowing its utterance must
come from human lips and tongue and throat

whether as
infant’s cry,
toddler’s chuckle,
child’s whisper,
adult’s prayer of praise,
the aged’s last sigh.

We, who are ineloquent
aside from the Word,
are speechless, listening.

A Bright Sadness: Trust Our Own Greening

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…every year
the dull and dead in us
meets our Easter challenge:

to be open to the unexpected,
to believe beyond our security,
to welcome God in every form,
and trust in our own greening.
~Joyce Rupp from Out of the Ordinary: Prayers, Poems, and Reflections for Every Season

The challenge after each Sabbath
is to go back to an every day routine
as if nothing has happened
when everything has happened.

There is laundry to do
floors to mop
patients to comfort
barns to clean
taxes to pay.

Nothing seemingly has changed,
yet…
everything is changed.

Now I know why,
though dead and pruned,
after every Sabbath I sprout green ~
I am alive only
because He is.

Traditionally, Lent does not include the five Sundays before Easter as every Sabbath is a celebration of Christ’s resurrection. We should let Him Easter in us every week!

This is one of six Easter reflections on Barnstorming during the next few weeks. We wait for the glorious day when we can meet as Christ’s body on April 21, first on our farm’s hill at dawn, and then later inside our church’s sanctuary to feel the full impact of “He is Risen!”

A Bright Sadness: Emptied and Hollow

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Experiencing the present purely is being emptied and hollow; 
you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

waterfall by Josh Scholten

I am often unprepared for the rush of challenges each clinic day brings.  Each call, each message, each tug on my arm, each box of kleenex handed over, each look of desperate hopelessness  —  I empty out continuously throughout the day to try to fill the gaping holes I see. 

If I’m down and dry, hollowed to the core with no more left to give, I pray for more than I could possibly deserve.

And so it pours over me, torrential and flooding, and I only have a mere cup to hold out for filling.  There is far more cascading grace than I can even conceive of, far more love descending than this cup of mine could ever hold, far more hope ascending from the mist and mystery of doctoring,  over and over again.

I am never left empty for long,  grateful for hallowed hollows.

A Bright Sadness: Merciful Dew

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He hath abolished the old drought
and rivers run where all was dry,
The field is sopp’d with merciful dew
He hath put a new song in my mouth
the words are old, the purport new,
And taught my lips to quote this word
That I shall live, I shall not die,
But I shall when the shocks are stored
See the salvation of the Lord.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins




When I have no voice left,
He gives me a song I can still sing.
When I run dry, He replenishes.
When I wither, His merciful dew
restores and readies me for a new day.

I am stopped astonished,
sopped and mopping up,
spilling over in His grace.

Are you thirsty
Are you empty
Come and drink these Living Waters
Time unbroken
Peace unspoken
Rest beside these Living Waters
Christ is calling
Find refreshing
At the cross of Living Waters
Lay your life down
On Thee, all come
Rise up in these Living Waters

There’s a river that flows
With mercy and love
Bringing joy to the city of our God
There our hope is secure
Do not fear anymore
Praise the Lord of Living Waters

Spirit moving
Mercy washing
Healing in these living waters
Lead your children to the shore line
Life is in these Living Waters

There’s a river that flows
With mercy and love
Bringing joy to the city of our God
There our hope is secure
Do not fear anymore
Praise the Lord of Living Waters

A Bright Sadness: A Box Full of Darkness

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Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
~Mary Oliver, “The Uses of Sorrow”

The bright sadness of Lent
is a box full of darkness
given to us by Someone who loves us.

It takes a lifetime to understand,
if we ever do,
this gift with which we are entrusted
is meant to
hand off to another and another
whom we love just as well.

Opening the box
allows light in
where none was before.
Light pouring through our brokenness.

Sorrow shines bright
reaching up
from the deep well
of our loving
and being loved.

Another sleepless night
I’m turning in my bed
Long before the red sun rises
In these early hours
I’m falling again
Into the river of my worries
When the river runs away
I find a shelter in your name

Jesus, only light on the shore
Only hope in the storm
Jesus, let me fly to your side
There I would hide, Jesus

Hear my anxious prayer
The beating of my heart
The pulse and the measure of my unbelief
Speak your words to me
Before I come apart
Help me believe in what I cannot see
Before the river runs away
I will call upon your name

Jesus, only light on the shore
Only hope in the storm
Jesus, let me fly to your side
There I would hide, Jesus
~Elaine Rubenstein, Fernando Ortega

A Bright Sadness: Let Him Easter in Us

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Let Him easter in us,
be a dayspring to the dimness of us,
be a crimson-cresseted east.
~Gerard Manley Hopkin

There is a fragrance in the air, 
a certain passage of a song, 
an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book, 
the sound of somebody’s voice in the hall 
that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears. 
Who can say when or how it will be 
that something easters up out of the dimness 
to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?
God himself does not give answers. He gives himself.
~Frederick Buechner from Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale

Traditionally, Lent does not include the five Sundays before Easter as every Sabbath is a celebration of Christ’s resurrection. We should let Him Easter in us every week!

So this is my first of six Easter reflections on Barnstorming during the next few weeks. We wait for the glorious day when we can meet as Christ’s body on April 21, first on our farm’s hill at dawn, and then later inside our church’s sanctuary to feel the full impact of “He is Risen!”

It is a slow coming of spring this year, seeming in no hurry whatsoever.  Snow remains in residual drifts around the farm from the storms of a month ago, the foothills are still white and the greening of the fields has yet to begin. The flowering plum and cherry trees remain dormant in the continued chill. 

Like Narnia, winter still has its terrible grip on us.

We wait, frozen in a darkened world, for a sun that shines and actually warms us from our dormancy.

This is exactly what eastering is.  It is awakening out of a restless sleep, opening a door to let in fresh air, and the stone that locked us in the dark rolled back.

Overnight all will be changed, changed utterly.

He is not only risen.  He is given indeed.