Tag: Light

Be Struck Through With Light

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Bird on the bare branch,
flinging your frail song
on the bleak air,
tenuous and brave –
like love in a bleak world,
and like love,
pierced
with everlastingness!
O praise
that we too
may be struck through with light,
may shatter the barren cold
with pure melody
and sing
for thy sake
till the hills are lit with love
and the deserts come
to bloom.
~Jane Tyson Clement from The Heart’s Necessities

Birdsong starts around 4:15 AM these days – at first gentle twittering and chirping in the near-dark becoming a full-throated Hallelujah chorus as the sun overcomes the horizon.

Visitors to our farm can’t quite get used to waking to the birds tuning up loudly every morning when this insistent symphony is launched. It is impossible to ignore by diving under the blankets and covering our head with pillows — nor should we.

I for one appreciate the reminder we should wake up singing to the glory of the sunrise. The light has returned. That is surely something to shout about.

Lifting the Dusky Gauze

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Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, 
and by degrees 
the forms and colours of things are restored to them, 
and we watch the dawn 
remaking the world in its antique pattern.
~Oscar Wilde from The Picture of Dorian Gray

Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. 
Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.
~Leonora Carrington

In the moments before dawn
when glow gently tints
the inside of horizon’s eyelids,
the black of midnight
waxes to mere shadow,
the fear forgotten for but a few hours.

Gloaming dusk
fades into gleaming dawn,
its backlit silhouettes stark
as the darkening earth
slowly opens her eyes
to greet a new and glorious morn.

As If Death Were Nowhere in the Background

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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”

These are impossible mornings of color and cool breezes.
A hope of immortality extends across the sky as far as the eye can see.
Impossible — because we know it won’t last;
these ordinary days, this precious time is ephemeral.
Still I revel in it,
moving from joy to joy to joy,
from tulip to tulip to tulip,
rising up so vividly alive from mere dirt,
eventually to sink back down to dust so gently,
~oh so gently~
to rest in the promise, that vibrant living promise
that spring someday will last forever.

Creatures of Solitary Light

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Here, on this surge of hill, I find myself
not as I am or will be or once was,
not as the measure of days defines my soul;
beyond all that a being of breath and bone,
partaker of wind and sun and air and earth,
I stand on the surge of hill and know myself
Below, the stars sink landward, and above
I breathe with their slow glimmer; fields are gone,
the woods are fallen into the speechless dark;
no claim, no voice, no motion, no demand.
It is alone we end then and alone
we go, creatures of solitary light;
the finger of truth is laid upon my heart:
See and be wise and unafraid, a part
of stars and earth-wind and the deepening night.
~Jane Tyson Clement “Here On This Surge of Hill”

The world feels like a fearsome place
with endless stories of tragedy and loss,
too much pain and suffering,
blinding me in its darkness.

Yet I listen to my risen Creator and Savior:
Be not afraid
Come have breakfast
Touch and see
Follow me
Peace be with you

As I am but mere breath and bone,
a wisp in a moment of time,
this truth anchors my heart:
I am called by His solitary light.

People gathering for Easter Sunrise Service on our farm 4/21/19 Photo by Joel DeWaard





Holding Wonder Like a Cup

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Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children’s faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit’s still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.
~Sara Teasdale “Barter”

photo by Nate Gibson

Some days I wish to keep hold forever:
when the light is just right in the trees,
the breezes fill with blossom fragrance,
the congregation sings with joy as I play accompaniment,
a smiling child climbs up on my lap just because,
a meal is enjoyed by all who join together.

I know I barter for these moments
by giving up some piece of me,
knowing the sowing of self
will reap the rich harvest of an overflowing heart.

A Bright Sadness: The Corpse Light of April

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Lined with light
the twigs are stubby arrows.
A gilded trunk writhes
Upward from the roots,
from the pit of the black tentacles.

In the book of spring
a bare-limbed torso
is the first illustration.

Light teaches the tree
to beget leaves,
to embroider itself all over
with green reality,
until summer becomes
its steady portrait
and birds bring their lifetime
to the boughs.

Then even the corpse
light copies from below
may shimmer, dreaming it feels
the cheeks of blossom.
~May Swenson “April Light”

In April we wait for the corpse light~
a mysterious illumination which comes alive
on a bright Sabbath Easter morning,
taking bare stubs of people,
hardly alive,
begetting them green,
bursting them into blossom,
their cheeks pink with life,
in promise of faithful fruitfulness.

A Bright Sadness: Blessed By Doubt

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The air was soft, the ground still cold.
In the dull pasture where I strolled
Was something I could not believe.
Dead grass appeared to slide and heave,
Though still too frozen-flat to stir,
And rocks to twitch and all to blur.
What was this rippling of the land?
Was matter getting out of hand
And making free with natural law,
I stopped and blinked, and then I saw
A fact as eerie as a dream.
There was a subtle flood of steam
Moving upon the face of things.
It came from standing pools and springs
And what of snow was still around;
It came of winter’s giving ground
So that the freeze was coming out,
As when a set mind, blessed by doubt,
Relaxes into mother-wit.
Flowers, I said, will come of it.
~Richard Wilbur “April 5, 1974”

photo by Nate Gibson

As the ground softens with spring,
so do I.
Somehow the solid winter freeze was comforting
as nothing appeared to change and stayed static,
so did I,
remaining stolid and fixed,
resisting doubt and uncertainty.

But now, with light and warmth,
the fixed is flexing,
steaming in its labor,
and so must I find
blessing in giving ground
and giving birth
to what will follow.
Flowers will come of it.


A Bright Sadness: The Dimness 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 Hopkins from “The Wreck of the Deutschland“

On this Sabbath, we anticipate the bright light of Easter morning in two weeks.

Each Sabbath, each Sunday celebration of Resurrection Day dims over time as I return to my daily routine on Monday. The humdrum replaces the extraordinary, tragedy overcomes festivity, darkness overwhelms dawn. The world encourages this, and I don’t muster enough resistance. I climb right back into the tomb of my sin, move the huge stone back in place, and remain there, waiting for rot to settle in.

I am not alone. I have plenty of company with me behind the stone. There is no excuse for us to still be there.

The stone was pushed aside, the burden shouldered, the debt completely paid.

How can we not allow His light to dayspring our dimness?

He is risen. We are eastered. No need to sink down in darkness. None.

What wondrous love is this?

A Bright Sadness: Through a Glass Darkly

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A cross and nails are not always necessary.  
There are a thousand ways to kill him, 
some of them as obvious as choosing where you will stand 
when the showdown between the weak and the strong comes along, 
others of them as subtle as keeping your mouth shut 
when someone asks if you know him.

Today, while he dies, do not turn away.  
Make yourself look in the mirror.  
Today no one gets away 
without being shamed by his beauty.  
Today no one flees
without being laid bare by his light.
~Barbara Brown Taylor

 

teahouseceiling

Shame is considered old-fashioned these days;
too erosive to self-esteem,
a drag on our self-worth,
an inconvenient truth.

Yet how else do we see ourselves
through the glass darkly
than to see our shame convicted,
and be convinced in our guilt:
our darkness exposed
by a Light that reveals all shadows,
forgiving as it illuminates all –
there is no place to hide,
nor should we want to.

 

window


For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
1Corinthians 13:12

 

graymirror

A Bright Sadness: Leave the Light On

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What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.

It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you feel you can’t believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind.

Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God.
~Flannery O’Connor from The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor

It is easy to lose faith: one bad outcome, one prayer seemingly unanswered, one loss leaving a gaping hole.

It can feel like God has up and left.

Much harder to sustain is faith that keeps an open mind in the darkness of the deep pit, in the midst of interminable waiting, or while facing the disappointment of lost hopes and dreams.

When belief is elusive, the worst possible reaction is to abandon it, to close the door and shutter the windows and remain in the dark. Prayer for faith in the middle of the struggle is to leave the light on even if you aren’t sure God will come back anytime soon.

He knows you’ve left the light on for Him.
He’ll be back.
Because He never left.