Tag: longing

Watchers in the Sun

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We are walking with the month
To a quiet place.
See, only here and there the gentians stand!
Tonight the homing loon
Will fly across the moon,
Over the tired land. 
We were the idlers and the sowers,
The watchers in the sun,
The harvesters who laid away the grain.
Now there’s a sign in every vacant tree,
Now there’s a hint in every stubble field,
Something we must not forget
When the blossoms fly again.
Give me your hand!

There were too many promises in June.
Human-tinted buds of spring
Told only half the truth.
The withering leaf beneath our feet,
That wrinkled apple overhead,
Say more than vital boughs have said
When we went walking
In this growing place. 
There is something in this hour 
More honest than a flower 
Or laughter from a sunny face.
~Scudder Middleton “Song in the Key of Autumn”

I walk through the scant remainder of September
wistful~~
a witness to the harvest of
unfulfilled spring promises.

Watching sunlit days fade to
blustery rain-filled nights.

I knew the growing season wouldn’t last.
I knew the time to lie fallow would come.

Give me your hand.
We’ll walk through this darkening time together,
waiting, watching,
for, once more, the promises of spring.

Winslow Homer – Veteran in a New Field, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Arriving at its Destination

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Cork, Ireland
Poetry in small language
is like a church bell 
in some remote village 
tolling mutely in the evening
through the musty provincial air 
self-obliviously 
and quite self-sufficiently  
—one might add—
if it weren’t for the pair of those 
ragged sheep 
huddled before the rain 
on the empty lot 
in front of a stone barn 
bobbing their whitish little heads 
here and there 
just to let you know 
that regardless of medium 
the message will always 
arrive at the destination.
~Damir Šodan “Poetry in Small Language”
translated from the Croatian by James Meetze

Sometimes poetry needs no words.
It might be bells ringing from a church belfry,
or raindrops streaming like tears on my face.
It is how the light plays across the clouds,
or watching new lambs leap together.
Unless I’m watching or listening for it,
I might miss the poetry in the air altogether.
Yet somewhere, someone does, sometime.
It finds just the person who needs it at that moment.

Long for the Longing

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The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing —
to reach the Mountain,
to find the place where all the beauty came from —
my country,
the place where I ought to have been born.
Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing?
The longing for home?
For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.
~ C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

The soul must long for God
in order to be set aflame by God’s love.
But if the soul cannot yet feel this longing,
then it must long for the longing.
To long for the longing is also from God.
~Meister Eckhart from Freedom from Sinful Thoughts

I tend to get distracted,
losing my sense of purpose and the reason I’m here;
I become too absorbed by the troubles of the moment,
or dwelling on the troubles of the past,
or anticipating the troubles of tomorrow.

My feelings end up overwhelming all else –
am I uncomfortable? restless? discouraged? peevish? worried? empty?

When my spirit grows cold, I need igniting. I long for the spark of God to set me aflame again, even at the risk of getting singed.

We’re all His kindling ready to be lit.
I long for longing at the beginning and ending of every day.

Lyrics:
From the love of my own comfort
From the fear of having nothing
From a life of worldly passions
Deliver me O God

From the need to be understood
From the need to be accepted
From the fear of being lonely
Deliver me O God Deliver me O God

And I shall not want,
I shall not want when I taste Your goodness
I shall not want when I taste Your goodness
I shall not want

From the fear of serving others
From the fear of death or trial
From the fear of humility
Deliver me O God Deliver me O God

An Everlasting Party

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In the home of God, there is a never-ending festival…
~St. Augustine in Exposition on Psalm 42

Some small bone in your foot is longing for heaven
                          —Robert Bly

This twinge at first stir
too modest for throb,
more diffident
than tug,
not an itch,
not the most

incurious twitch
of a hook,
not a jerk,
but the tease
of brustle
of the fine, stiff pinions
of every curtained
saint and cherub.
~Hailey Leithauser “Some Small Bone,”

Even the smallest part of us
~each cell, each skin pore, each little bone~
longs to know what to believe about what comes next.

~perhaps heaven is as light and gentle
as a touch of a feather.

~maybe heaven is as rich as the glow
of a full blood moon.

~or heaven is like the ever-changing colors
of the northern lights illuminating the skies.

~certainly heaven is eternal felicity,
where we join an everlasting party.

yet despite the discomfort of
our questions, quandaries and doubts,
or perhaps, because of them…

it is the Lord in heaven who longs for,
and believes in,
us.

Finding a Fermata

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In science we have been reading only the notes to a poem:
in Christianity we find the poem itself.
~C.S. Lewis from Miracles

Science itself fails
to love us when we’re alone,
to feed us when we’re starving,
to lead us to water when we’re thirsty,
to grasp the hand of the dying,
to give hope to the weak and afraid,
to become sacrifice for our sin,
to offer us everlasting forgiveness and grace.

Science is only one of God’s footnotes within His poetic Word,
a well-timed fermata allowing His creation to pause and listen,
reflecting for a moment on the symphony of His redeeming Work.

Where You Go, I Will Go: Even in the Wilderness

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To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness ,
is like being commanded to be well when we are sick,
to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst,
to run when our legs are broken.
But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless.
Even in the wilderness-
especially in the wilderness –
you shall love him.   
~Frederick Buechner from A Room Called Remember

The wilderness might be a distant peak far removed from anything or anyone, where there is bleak darkness.

The wilderness might be the darkest corner of the human heart we keep far away from anything and anyone. 

From my kitchen window on a clear day, I sometimes see a distant mountain wilderness, when the cloud cover moves away. 

During decades of perching on a round stool in clinic exam rooms,  I was given access to hearts lost in the wilderness many times every day.

Sometimes the commandment to love God seems impossible. We are too self-sufficient, too broken, too frightened, too wary to trust God with our love and devotion. 

Recognizing a diagnosis of wilderness of the heart is straight forward: despair, discouragement,disappointment, lack of gratitude, lack of hope. 

The treatment is to allow the healing power of the Father who sent His own Son to navigate the wilderness in our place.

He reaches for our bitter, wary, and broken hearts that beat within our bodies, to bring us home from the dark wilderness of our souls.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: An Ache Like Homesickness

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When I was a child
I once sat sobbing on the floor
Beside my mother’s piano
As she played and sang
For there was in her singing
A shy yet solemn glory
My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked
Why I was crying
I had no words for it
I only shook my head
And went on crying

Why is it that music
At its most beautiful
Opens a wound in us
An ache a desolation
Deep as a homesickness
For some far-off
And half-forgotten country

I’ve never understood
Why this is so

But there’s an ancient legend
From the other side of the world
That gives away the secret
Of this mysterious sorrow

For centuries on centuries
We have been wandering
But we were made for Paradise
As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.
~Anne Porter “Music” from Living Things

One evening, when our daughter was only a toddler,
just learning the words to tell us what she needed,
I was preparing dinner, humming to
a choral music piece playing in the background.

She sat on the kitchen floor, looking up at me,
her eyes welling full with tears
like pools of reflected light spilling over
from some deep-remembered reservoir.

At first I thought she was hurt or upset
but then could see she was feeling
an ache a desolation
deep as a homesickness
as she wept for wonder
at the sad beauty of the music
that spoke for her
the words she could not express:

Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wandered where we wander.

For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever…
2Corinthians 4:17-18

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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When All Hope Seems Lost

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Oh the starving Winter-lapse!
 Ice-bound, hunger-pinched and dim;
Dormant roots recall their saps,
 Empty nests show black and grim,
Short-lived sunshine gives no heat,
Undue buds are nipped by frost,
Snow sets forth a winding-sheet,
 And all hope of life seems lost.
~Christina Rossetti “Winter” from “Seasons”

I sought the wood in winter
When every leaf was dead;
Behind the wind-whipped branches
The winter sun set red.
The coldest star was rising
To greet that bitter air,
The oaks were writhen giants;
Nor bud nor bloom was there.
The birches, white and slender,
In deathless marble stood,
The brook, a white immortal,
Slept silent in the wood.
~Willa Cather from “I Sought the Wood in Winter”

A wintry soul
can be a cold and empty place.

I appeal to my Creator
who knows my struggle.

He asks me to keep my promises
because He keeps His promises.
His buds of hope and light and warmth
still grace my bare branches.

He brings me out of the dark night’s chill,
into the freshness of a frosty dawn,
to finish what He brought me here to do.

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A Weary Hope

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Yesterday it was still January and I drove home
and the roads were wet and the fields were wet
and a palette knife

had spread a slab of dark blue forestry across the hill.
A splashed white van appeared from a side road
then turned off and I drove on into the drab morning

which was mudded and plain
and there was a kind of weary happiness
that nothing was trying to be anything much and nothing
was being suggested. I don’t know how else to explain

the calm of this grey wetness with hardly a glimmer of light or life,
only my car tyres swishing the lying water,
and the crows balanced and rocking on the windy lines.
~Kerry Hardie “Acceptance”

For some time I thought there was time
and that there would always be time
for what I had a mind to do
and what I could imagine
going back to and finding it
as I had found it the first time
but by this time I do not know
what I thought when I thought back then

there is no time yet it grows less
there is the sound of rain at night
arriving unknown in the leaves
once without before or after
then I hear the thrush waking
at daybreak singing the new song
~W.S.Merwin “The New Song” from The Moon Before Morning, 2014

I leant upon a coppice gate 
    When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
    The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
    Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
    Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
    The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
    The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
    Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
    Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
    The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
    Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
    In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
    Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
    Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
    Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
    His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
    And I was unaware.
~Thomas Hardy “The Darkling Thrush”

photo by Josh Scholten
artwork of The Darkling Thrush by Linda Richardson

I need reminding that what I offer up from my own heart predicts what I receive there.

If I’m grumbling and falling apart like a dying vine
instead of a vibrant green tree~~~
coming up empty and hollow with discouragement,
entangled in the soppy cobwebs and mildew of worry,
only grumbling and grousing~~~
then no singing bird will come.

It is so much better to nurture the singers of joy and gladness with a heart budding with grace and gratitude, anticipatory and expectant.

I’ve swept my welcome mat; it is out and waiting.
The symphony can begin any time now…

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We Are No Longer Alone: Fed and Filling

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The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.
~J.I. Packer from  Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus: Experiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever.
~John 6:51



Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
~Matthew 14:16

He has filled the hungry with good things…
~Luke 1:53

If there is one thing universal about human beings, it is that we must eat to grow, stay healthy, and stay alive. Feeding a hungry person is one of the most nurturing and loving actions available to us in our outreach to others.

I learned this first as a nurses’ aide in a rest home when I was a teenager. The most disabled residents depended on me to feed them, bite full by bite full. I could not rush them or they might not swallow properly and could aspirate. I needed to be aware of what they liked and didn’t like or it might end up back in my lap in much less appetizing form.

Later, as a mother feeding my children, especially late at night rocking in our rocking chair, I found those times to be some of the most precious hours I ever spent with them. I was able to make a tangible difference in their lives with a gift from myself — of myself.

So too, we are fed by God–from His Word, from His Spirit, from His Hand at the Supper as He breaks the bread, from His Body. Our eyes are opened, our hearts burn within us.

But the ironic truth is that with the Incarnation, the world – we mere human beings – fed and nourished God Himself. He thrived, grew, and lived among us because His mother nourished Him from her own body and His earthly father had a trade that made it possible to feed his family.

Feeding others as we are fed.
Feeding God when He chose to be helpless in our hands,
trusting and needing us as much as we trust and need Him.

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This year’s Advent theme is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sermon on the First Sunday in Advent, December 2, 1928:

The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manager.

God comes.

He is, and always will be now, with us in our sin, in our suffering, and at our death. We are no longer alone. God is with us and we are no longer homeless.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer – from Christmas Sermons