Tag: Light

Reveling in Rays of Light

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A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter.
I feel no obligation to deal with politics.
I do feel a responsibility to society.
A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy;
true, not false; lively, not dull;
accurate, not full of error.
He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.

A writer must reflect and interpret his society, his world;
he must also provide inspiration and guidance and challenge.
Much writing today strikes me
as deprecating, destructive, and angry.
There are good reasons for anger, and I have nothing against anger.
But I think some writers have lost their sense of proportion,
their sense of humor, and their sense of appreciation.

I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad:
one role of the writer today is to sound the alarm.
The environment is disintegrating, the hour is late,
and not much is being done.
Instead of carting rocks from the moon,
we should be carting the feces out of Lake Erie.
…I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer
if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle,
to accept the warming rays of the sun,
and to report them, whenever,
and if ever, they happen to strike me.
~E.B. White 1969 (on writing)

It is tiresome always feeling angry
about what it is happening in the world,
feeling that everything has become political.

I’m tired of reading (and writing) words of frustration,
but want to rail against the meanness that surrounds us,
and push back the bully to seek out a balance
of kindness, perspective and insight.

When I need to feel something other than mad,
I walk as far as I can go,
look up, revel in the gift of rays of light
and bask in their warmth and promise.

I will accept what the Sun has to offer
and tell about it
so that my anger drains away
like so much waste flushed down a pipe,
never to be seen again.

Lyrics:
Even before we call on Your name
To ask You, O God,
When we seek for the words to glorify You,
You hear our prayer;
Unceasing love, O unceasing love,
Surpassing all we know.

Glory to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.

Even with darkness sealing us in,
We breathe Your name,
And through all the days that follow so fast,
We trust in You;
Endless Your grace, O endless Your grace,
Beyond all mortal dream.

Both now and forever,
And unto ages and ages,
Amen.

Feeling the Twinges of this World

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Under a canopy of leaves,
the irises, bountiful,
the calico butterfly flashing

and this one golden head
of a dazzling sunflower grasping
its cowled neck,

outweighing its stalk

in order to turn,
full bonneted,
to the absolute light.

What wonders these are:
things struggling
filament by filament,

birds twittering in a laughter
that could be weeping,
barely feeling the twinges of this world,

where the weak get stronger
or snailish with cracks

a day at a time.
~Judith Harris “Recovery”

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.

Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything.

Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Be patient and without bitterness, and realize that the least we can do is to make coming into existence no more difficult for Him than the earth does for spring when it wants to come.
~Rainier Marie Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet

We feel the twinges of struggling to live broken in difficult times; indeed, all our days are difficult times.

We won’t get out of this predicament alive, yet we are loved.

Whether we care or not about what happens
after our last breath does not alter the fact
Christ dwells alongside us;
our heavy heads bow as we turn to face
the compelling Light.

Like Mary, we must say:  “Let it be,” – not “no, not me, not now.”

We are transformed by accepting He has come on our behalf:
an oh-so-difficult faith connecting us like a slender filament to heaven:
like the bird greeting the morning with songs that weep,
like the butterfly emerging from its cracked chrysalis to try its wings,
like the cracked snail shell abandoned
because we no longer fit inside its broken confinement.

The Eyes Have It

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To look into the eye of a horse
is to see a reflection of yourself
that you might’ve forgotten.
No grief was big enough
not to be washed clean in your horse’s eye.
~Gillian Mears from Foal’s Bread

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
~e.e.cummings from “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond”

…whenever you mark a horse, or a dog,
with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye,
be sure he is an Aristotle or a Kant,
tranquilly speculating upon the mysteries in man. 
No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
They see through us at a glance.
But there is a touch of divinity ….
and a special halo about a horse…
~Herman Melville from Redburn: His First Voyage

Two whistles, one for each,
and familiar sounds draw close in darkness—
cadence of hoof on hardened bottomland,
twinned blowing of air through nostrils curious, flared.
They come deepened and muscular movements
conjured out of sleep: each small noise and scent
heavy with earth, simple beyond communion…

…and in the night, their mares’ eyes shine, reflecting stars,
the entire, outer light of the world here. 
~Jane Hirschfield from “After Work”

There is a moment after you move your eye away
when you forget where you are
because you’ve been living, it seems,
somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.

You’ve stopped being here in the world.
You’re in a different place,
a place where human life has no meaning.

You’re not a creature in a body.
You exist as the stars exist,
participating in their stillness, their immensity.
~Louise Glück from “Telescope” in Averno

It’s tempting to fall headfirst into each eye’s fathomless well –
These eyes rivet me as they search my own:
a retinal magnet drawing me into
such incalculable depths.

Yet I am merely reflected like starlight;
only dancing on this shining mirrored surface
when I long to dive deep
to understand what they see in me:
so lost I long to be found.

Preoccupied by Tiny Flowers

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Still, 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.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing —
that the light is everything —
that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
~Mary Oliver from “The Ponds” from House of Light

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
~Emily Dickinson 1263

Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn’t room for any other thought?
~ Sophie Scholl from At the Heart of the White Rose

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
~Li-Young Lee from “From Blossoms”

I can’t always handle all the truth all at once,
especially when it hurts. 

It is best if truth
coaxes me slowly out of the shadows
where I like to hunker down, preoccupied,
like a tight little bud refusing to open.

Truth told slant is an illuminating back drop,
encouraging me to peek out from the darkness,
open up, dazzled by the light.

And then, perhaps,
~just maybe~
I too may become almost
dazzling to behold.

Come and See: Let Us Also Go…

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Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”  Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days,  and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

“But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”

Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light.  It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”

After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”

His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.

So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
John 11: 1-16

There were moments, hours even,
when it was clear what I

was meant to do, as if
a landscape had revealed itself

in the morning light.
I could see the road

plainly now, imagining myself
walking towards the distant mountains

like a pilgrim in the old stories—
ready to take on any danger,

hapless but always hopeful,
certain that my simple belief

in the light
would be enough.
~Joyce Sutphen “Those Hours” from Carrying Water to the Field

All the paths of the Lord are loving and faithful.
Psalm 25:10

All does not mean “all – except the paths I am walking in now”
or “nearly all” – except this especially difficult and painful path.

All must mean all.

So, your path with its unexplained sorrow or turmoil,
and mine with its sharp flints and briers –
and both our paths,
with their unexplained perplexity,
their sheer mystery –
they are His paths,
on which he will show Himself loving and faithful.
Nothing else; nothing less.
~Amy Carmichael–from You Are My Hiding Place

When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “The Cost of Discipleship”

When I need to walk down the grassy slope to the barn from our house at night, I risk falling without carrying a light to shine ahead of me. In darkness, I stumble and trip, unable to see where the ground dips or rises unexpectedly when I take a step.

Jesus is pointing out the obvious to his disciples: travel is safest in the daylight. What is not as obvious to them is what lies ahead for Him and them.

Nor is it obvious to us as we try to see through a glass darkly.

We know only that all paths of the Lord are loving and faithful, even when full of potholes, thorns, obstacles and hazards.

Our belief in His Light and His Word is enough.
Nothing else; nothing less.

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

Lyrics:

In love, we find our way
With trust, hope remains

I’ll be here
Stay right here
Don’t you fear

In love, we find our way through the night
In love, we find our way

In love, we find a way
Your love leads the way

Tell me, where is the road
I can call my own,
That I left, that I lost
So long ago?
All these years I have wandered,
Oh when will I know
There’s a way, there’s a road
That will lead me home?

After wind, after rain,
When the dark is done,
As I wake from a dream
In the gold of day,
Through the air there’s a calling
From far away,
There’s a voice I can hear
That will lead me home.

Rise up, follow me,
Come away, is the call,
With the love in your heart
As the only song;
There is no such beauty
As where you belong;
Rise up, follow me,
I will lead you home.

And Light Splashed…

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Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.
So I have shut the doors of my house,
so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
so I am sitting in semi-dark
hunched over my desk
with nothing for a view
to tempt me
but a bloated compost heap,
steamy old stinkpile,
under my window;
and I pick my notebook up
and I start to read aloud
and still-wet words I scribbled
on the blotted page:
“Light splashed…”

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.
~Stanley Kunitz  “The Round” from Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected

It is too easy to be ground to a pulp by the various irritations of the day – aggravations are too easily expressed, worries never seem to wane – all of it sucks gladness out of me. 

When my feelings become four-dimensional and surround and drown me, I lose all perspective on what got me out of bed to begin the day.

God is in these intricate details, whether the splash of light on a petal or the smell of rotting compost; it is my job to notice this. It is tempting to look past His ubiquitous presence in all things, to seek out only the elegant grandeur of creation and bypass the plain and smelly and homely.

Yet even what lacks beauty from my limited perspective is worthy of His divine attention. He knows the value and purpose of each thing He created, including me and the things that aggravate me no end – like mosquitos.

The time has come to be refreshed and renewed
even when surrounded by decay.
His care is revealed in the tiniest way.
He is worthy of my attention because I am constantly worthy of His.

If I rise early enough, I can see each new day’s light splash everything awake. By the time I come in to sit down to record my words and photos, I’m thoroughly washed by a fresh dawn. I can scarcely wait to take on what this day will bring.

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.

Waking with the Light

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Light wakes us – there’s the sun
climbing the mountains’ rim, spilling across the valley,
finding our faces.
It is July,
between the hay and harvest,
a time at arm’s length from all other time,
the roads ragged with meadowsweet and mallow,
with splays of seedheads, slubbed and coarse, rough linen.
The fields above the house, clotted with sheep all spring,
are empty now and froth with flowering grasses,
still in the morning light. Birds move around
the leafy fields, the leafy garden.

It is the time
to set aside all vigil, good or ill,
to loosen the fixed gaze of our attention
as dandelions let seedlings to the wind.
Wake with the light.
Get up and go about the day and watch
its surfaces that brighten with the sun.

And later, when the light is drowsed and heavy
go find the burdened fruit trees where the shade
lies splashed and opened-out across the ground.
Spread over it a quilt worn soft by other bodies,
then curl and fall down into sleep at light.

Awaken to a world of long, loose grass-stems,
and leaves above,
and birds, breaking out of the leaves.
~Kerry Hardie from “Sleep in Summer”

Saying good-bye to July last week
meant admitting summer is already half-baked
and so are we–

we who are still doughy,
not nearly done enough.

The rush to autumn is breathless.
We want to hold on tight
to our longish days,
fall asleep in the grasses,
endure sweaty nights
for just a little while longer…

Please, oh please
grant us unending light
and steady us for the task
of getting ready for letting go.

A new series of summer photo notecards from our farm is now available as a thank you gift to you for your financial support of Barnstorming — details here

A Road to Lead Me Home

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It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door.
You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet,
there is no knowing where you might be swept off too.
~J.R.R. Tolkien – Bilbo to Frodo in Fellowship of the Rings

What if this road, that has held no surprises
these many years, decided not to go
home after all; what if it could turn
left or right with no more ado
than a kite-tail? What if its tarry skin
were like a long, supple bolt of cloth,
that is shaken and rolled out, and takes
a new shape from the contours beneath?
And if it chose to lay itself down
in a new way, around a blind corner,
across hills you must climb without knowing
what’s on the other side, who would not hanker
to be going, at all risks? Who wants to know
a story’s end, or where a road will go?
~Sheenagh Pugh “What if This Road?”

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish;
but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road.
~C.S. Lewis from The Great Divorce

We grow accustomed to the Dark —
When Light is put away —
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Good bye —

A Moment — We Uncertain step
For newness of the night —
Then — fit our Vision to the Dark —
And meet the Road — erect —

And so of larger — Darknesses —
Those Evenings of the Brain —
When not a Moon disclose a sign —
Or Star — come out — within —

The Bravest — grope a little —
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead —
But as they learn to see —

Either the Darkness alters —
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight —
And Life steps almost straight.
~Emily Dickinson

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.
~Jane Hirschfield from “The Weighing”

I admit I stumble if not careful,
bearing some bruises and scrapes from
hazards hidden in darkness.

My eyes slowly adjust to such bare illumination,
when the Lamp is dim and the road unfamiliar.

I’m feeling my way through uncertainty in this time of life.

I suspect there are fellow darkness travelers
who also have lost their way and their Light,
giving away what they can
and sometimes more than they have.

And so, blinded as we each are,
we run forehead-first into the Tree
which has always been there and always will be,
the symbol of our salvation.

Because of who we are and Who loves us,
we, now free and forgiven,
safely follow a darkened road made nearly straight,
all the way Home.

Lyrics: Tell me where is the road I can call my own,
That I left, that I lost, so long ago.
All these years I have wondered, oh when will I know,
There’s a way, there’s a road that will lead me home.

After wind, After rain, when the dark is done,
As I wake from a dream, in the gold of day,
Through the air there’s a calling from far away,
There’s a voice I can hear that will lead me home.

Rise up, follow me, come away is the call
With (the) love in your heart as the only song
There is no such beauty as where you belong
Rise up, follow me, I will lead you home.

Flare Up Like A Flame

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God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Go the the Limits of Your Longing” from Book of Hours

…you mustn’t be frightened …
if a sadness rises in front of you,
larger than any you have ever seen;
if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows,
moves over your hands and over everything you do.
You must realize that something is happening to you,
that life has not forgotten you,
that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.
Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness,
any misery, any depression, since after all
you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you?
~Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet

We were made for difficult times such as these:
we feel things deeply,
our joys and awe and fears ~
so much so we can feel swept away.

Feelings are not the final say
yet they both motivate and immobilize us.

God has told us to be His Light in the shadows;
we will find Him if we long for Him.

Though we may feel lost,
wandering, uncertain, hopeless
He takes us by the hand and leads us through.

Grab hold and hang on tight.

Imagining Glory Beyond Measure

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The night of the Perseid shower,
thick fog descended
but I would not be denied.
I had put the children to bed,
knelt with them,
and later
in the quiet kitchen
as tall red candles
burned on the table between us,
I’d listened to my wife’s sweet imprecations,
her entreaties to see a physician.
But at the peak hour—
after she had gone to bed,
and neighboring houses
stood solemn and dark—
I felt no human obligation
and went without hope into the yard.
In the white mist
beneath the soaked and dripping trees,
I lifted my eyes
into a blind nothingness of sky
and shivered in a white robe.
I couldn’t see the outline
of the neighbor’s willows,
much less the host of streaking meteorites
no bigger than grains of sand
blazing across the sky.
I questioned the mind, my troubled thinking,
and chided myself to go in,
but looking up,
I thought of the earth
on which I stood,
my own
scanty plot of ground,
and as the lights passed unseen
I imagined glory beyond all measure.
Then I turned to the lights in the windows—
the children’s nightlights,
and my wife’s reading lamp, still burning.
~Richard Jones “The Manifestation”

Perhaps as a child you had the chicken pox
and your mother, to soothe you in your fever
or to help you fall asleep, came into your room
and read to you from some favorite book,
Charlotte’s Web or Little House on the Prairie,
a long story that she quietly took you through
until your eyes became magnets for your shuttering
lids and she saw your breathing go slow. And then
she read on, this time silently and to herself,
not because she didn’t know the story,
it seemed to her that there had never been a time
when she didn’t know this story—the young girl
and her benevolence, the young girl in her sod house—
but because she did not yet want to leave your side
though she knew there was nothing more
she could do for you. And you, not asleep but simply weak,
listened to her turn the pages, still feeling
the lamp warm against one cheek, knowing the shape
of the rocking chair’s shadow as it slid across
your chest. So that now, these many years later,
when you are clenched in the damp fist of a hospital bed,
or signing the papers that say you won’t love him anymore,
when you are bent at your son’s gravesite or haunted
by a war that makes you wake with the gun
cocked in your hand, you would like to believe
that such generosity comes from God, too,
who now, when you have the strength to ask, might begin
the story again, just as your mother would,
from the place where you have both left off.
~Keetje Kuipers “Prayer”

photo by Josh Scholten

Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world.
Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

How could it be possible? 

The five year old me had a sudden terrifying revelation that I would some day cease to walk this earth.

The much older me is more afraid of the faster and faster rush of the days than of their end. 

The world hurtles through space and time at a pace that leaves me breathless. Throughout my seventy-plus years, I have felt flung all too frequently, bruised and weary from hurry and hubbub.

I have need of Someone to stop me for a moment, sit down and begin the Story again with me, starting right where we left off.

Now, with retirement from daily work obligations: breathing space. 
I’m lifted lighter, drifting where I’m blown, less weighted down
by the next thing to do and the next place to be.

Instead I can just be…
part of the story to be told,
part of the wonder. 
Blown by breath that loves,
fills and nurtures,
a generous promise hopeful and fulfilled.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to see, even in the dark,
a manifestation of glory and love just beyond my vision,
praying that one day I will see and know it clearly.

The old me ~ 
Blown upon.

If only the five year old me could have known.