Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan, O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear. Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod, Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer. Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Carrion Comfort”
Once again, the mounting deaths by one’s own hand make grim headlines announcing solemn statistics.
I heard it over and over during decades in my clinic; patient after patient said the same thing: I can no more...
this agonizing struggle with despair makes one frantic to avoid the fight and flee, to feel no more bruising and bleed no more, to become nothing but chaff and ashes.
suicide seems a solution when one can not feel the love of a God who, in reality, cares enough to wrestle with us relentlessly– who heaven-handling flung us here by breathing life into our nostrils –
and continues to breathe with us…
perhaps we can’t possibly imagine a God caring enough to be killed for us (He Himself created us who doubt, us who are so sore afraid)
because He loves us, no one is ever now, nor ever will be,
~nothing~
My God! such darkness is now done forever.
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At times, particularly at night, I’m keenly aware of all the unknowable and uncountable lives happening behind closed doors and curtained windows, each one living their own sacred moment in time.
So many meals being eaten, baths taken, tears shed, stories told, prayers recited, kisses shared.
These moments are the blessings of a quotidian predictability that we try to pass on to our children. In our routines, we may become oblivious to the mysteries happening all around us: innumerable stars shining, fragile moths fluttering and sweetening apples hanging heavy — yet there is mystery within each of us as well.
In the dark of night, despite our weariness: We are remarkably loved and loving. We try our best in difficult times and circumstances. We grieve losses while struggling to survive sorrows. We seek purpose and meaning, despite feeling unworthy.
Each passing moment becomes one to cherish. Each moment mysteriously holy and sweet.
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The work, not of men, but of angels. —Gerald of Wales
With quills and ink of iron gall on folded vellum, monks in their cells labored in hives of stone, producing pages that glistened like honey, sweetening the word of God. On this page, the chi commands the eye, its arm swooping to the left in an elegant scrawl, the smaller rho and iota nestled to the right. Knotwork fills each letter to the brim. Three angels fly from the crossed arms, heaven and earth intertwined, coiled spirals connected by curves. Despite the gleam, no gold is used, just layers of color built up like enamel. In the interstices, creatures of air: birds and moths; creatures of sea: fish and otters; creatures of land: cats and mice. For the whole world was holy, not just parts of it. The world was the Book of God. The alphabet shimmered and buzzed with beauty. ~Barbara Crooker “Book of Kells: Chi Rho”
In the summer of 2013, Dan and I wrapped up our 3 week Ireland trip with one day in Dublin before flying home. I wasn’t sure I could take in one more thing into my super-saturated brain but am grateful Dan gently led me to the exhibit of the Book of Kells at Trinity College along with the incredible library right above it.
I needed to see the amazing things of which man is capable. My weariness was paltry compared to the immense effort of these dedicated writers and artists.
The Book of Kells is an intricately illustrated ninth century version of the four Gospels on the Isle of Iona, meticulously decorated by young Irish monks with quill pens and the finest of brushes and artistic flourish. Two original pages are on display at the library, changed every eight weeks – the brief look one is allowed scarcely does justice to the painstaking detail contained in every shimmering letter and design. No photography is allowed of the book itself.
Upstairs, is the “Long Room” of 200,000 antiquarian books dating back centuries, lined by busts of writers and philosophers. It is inspiring to think of the millions of hours of illuminated thought contained within those leather bindings.
The written word is precious but so transient on earth; it takes preservationist specialists to keep these ancient books from crumbling to dust, a slowly disintegrating alphabet of letters potentially lost forever to future generations.
The original Word is even more precious, abiding forever in the hearts and minds of men, and exists everlasting sitting at the right hand of God, never to turn to dust. He is the inspiration for the intricate beauty of the illustrated Gospels we saw that day.
God is the ultimate source of wisdom for civilization’s greatest writers and poets. He alone has turned darkness into light even in man’s most desperate hours. Our weariness dissipates along with the shadows.
God is no stranger to us – He meets us in His Word and our reading is our ladder up to Him. In that meeting, we are forever His.
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Every now and then, I forget to turn off the lights in the barn. I usually notice just before I go to bed, when the farm’s boundaries seem to have drawn in close. That light makes the barn seem farther away than it is — a distance I’m going to have to travel before I sleep. The weather makes no difference. Neither does the time of year.
Usually, after turning out that forgotten barn light, I sit on the edge of the tractor bucket for a few minutes and let my eyes adjust to the night outside. City people always notice the darkness here, but it’s never very dark if you wait till your eyes owl out a little….I’m always glad to have to walk down to the barn in the night, and I always forget that it makes me glad. I heave on my coat, stomp into my barn boots and trudge down toward the barn light, muttering at myself. But then I sit in the dark, and I remember this gladness, and I walk back up to the gleaming house, listening for the horses. ~Verlyn Klinkenborg from A Light in the Barn
I sometimes forget to turn the lights off in the barn. If I try to finish chores in too big a rush before it gets dark before 5 PM, I might leave the barn too distracted, assuming the illumination inside is from the setting sun, not light bulbs.
Later, after dinner, I look out my kitchen window to see the barn is still lit up. The horses won’t rest easy (and I won’t either) until I shut off the lights above them. So I throw on my barn jacket, put on my boots and head down to the barn again, all a-mutter.
Then I remember I am glad for this moment. I like owls flying almost noiselessly overhead, the dogs sticking close at my side, horses chewing hay and blowing sweet breath, barn cats circling for a late night treat.
Then my favorite thing is walking back up from the barn at night and looking at the lights in our house, knowing my life and love happens there, though each of our children and their families now live elsewhere in gleaming houses of their own. Dan and I have adjusted to a “just two again” life together, hoping we can stay on the farm as many years as God grants us.
It is our home, it is work, it is light, it is love. If all it takes is a walk from a darkened barn to remind me of this, I’ll leave the lights on in the barn at night more often.
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The woods is shining this morning. Red, gold and green, the leaves lie on the ground, or fall, or hang full of light in the air still. Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes the place it has been coming to forever. It has not hastened here, or lagged. See how surely it has sought itself, its roots passing lordly through the earth. See how without confusion it is all that it is, and how flawless its grace is. Running or walking, the way is the same. Be still. Be still. “He moves your bones, and the way is clear.” ~Wendell Berry “Grace”
If I’m confused (as I often am) about where I’ve been, where I am, where I’m going, I look to the cycles of the seasons to be reminded all things (and I) come round
what is barren will warm to the sun and bud, what buds will open up in blossom, what blossoms will grow lush and fruit, what flourishes will feed, fade and fall, come to rest and be still.
All things come round, making the way clear. Grace forges a path my bones must follow.
To shine in His stillness. How flawless His grace.
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Be comforted; the world is very old, And generations pass, as they have passed, A troop of shadows moving with the sun; Thousands of times has the old tale been told; The world belongs to those who come the last, They will find hope and strength as we have done. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “A Shadow”
The shadow’s the thing. If I no longer see shadows as “dark marks,” as do the newly sighted, then I see them as making some sort of sense of the light. They give the light distance; they put it in its place. They inform my eyes of my location here, here O Israel, here in the world’s flawed sculpture, here in the flickering shade of the nothingness between me and the light. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
A shadow is hard to seize by the throat and dash to the ground. ~Victor Hugo from Les Miserables
In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t. ~Blaise Pascal
These days I find myself seeking safety hiding in the shadows under a rock where “not-really-conservative and not-really-liberal” moderates like me tend to gather to seek safety and commiserate together.
Extremist views predominate simply for the sake of differentiating one’s political turf from the opposition. There is barely any discussion of compromise, negotiation or collaboration as that would be perceived as a sign of weakness.
Instead it is “my way or the wrong way.”
I say “no way,” as both sides act intolerably intolerant of the other.
The chasm particularly gapes wider in any discussion of faith issues. Religion and politics have become angry neighbors constantly arguing over how high to build the fence between them, what it should be made out of, what color it should be, should there be peek holes, should it be electrified with barbed wire to prevent moving back and forth, should there be a gate with or without a lock, who pays for the labor and whether an immigrant with a work permit is available to do the labor. In a country founded on the principle of freedom of religion and the pursuit of happiness, far more people now believe our forefathers’ blood was shed for freedom from religion in order to be happy.
Give us the right to believe in nothing whatsoever or give us death. Perhaps both go together.
And so it goes. We bring out the worst in potential leaders as facts are distorted, ethics abandoned, the truth stretched or completely abandoned, unseemly pandering abounds and curried favors are served for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Enough already.
In the midst of this morass, we who want to believe will still choose to believe and our next challenge is for believers to actually get along with one another. This is no longer a given. We have chosen to reside in the shadows of conflict, argument, and abuse of our fellow believers.
Still, there is Light for those who seek it out. No need to remain hiding in the shadowlands.
I’ll come out from under my rock to face the onslaught, if you do.
In fact…I think I just did.
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how the pale disk of moon caves to its own defeat,
cold as yesterday’s fish left over in the pan,
or miserly as a sliver of dried soap in a dish.
Oh for a sparkling froth of cloud, a little heat
from the sun! I shiver at the window where I plant
one perfect moon-round breath, as I liked to do as a girl
against the filthy glass of the yellow school bus
laboring up the hill, not thinking what I meant
but passionate, as if I were kissing my own life. ~Mary Jo Salter “Moon-Breath” from The Surveyors
At times, I’m amazed at the heat of my own breath. Forming a cloudy mist on a cold day, a round fog on the mirror or window, a warming of ungloved fingers.
This breath that I was given at my beginning is a gift I rarely think about, a gift I take for granted.
Nightly, as the moon honors the sun, reflecting its glory like a faint echo, I treasure the heat and heart of that first gift of breath so long ago.
Soli deo Gloria.
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Now in the blessed days of more and less when the news about time is that each day there is less of it I know none of that as I walk out through the early garden only the day and I are here with no before or after and the dew looks up without a number or a present age ~W.S. Merwin “Dew Light” from The Moon Before Morning
A walk around our farm in October is more or less, before or after, now and then, a timelessness of shifting seasons and fading days.
A prayer becomes like dew from above, me looking up to the God who was, is and ever will be, who already knows what I am about to say. He knows I don’t tend to say anything new.
He blesses me with the light of His dew.
I write every day to explain myself to people I will never meet. Perhaps, every day, I am trying to explain myself to God.
God is, (if I stop to look and listen), yesterday, today, tomorrow – more or less, before or after, now and then, but most especially forever and ever.
Amen.
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In a hundred trillion years— an actual number though we can’t begin to grasp it—the last traces of our universe will be not even a memory with no memory to lament it.
The last dust of the last star will not drift in the great nothing out of which everything we love or imagine eventually comes.
Yet every day, every four hours around the clock, Debbie prepares her goat’s-milk mix for the orphaned filly who sucks down all three liters of it, gratefully, it seems, as if it matters more than anything in the universe— and it does—at this moment while the sun is still four hours from rising on the only day that matters.
Over eight years ago, our Haflinger mare Marlee passed on to her forever home, far sooner than we planned. She was only twenty two, born only two months after our daughter’s birth, much too young an age for a Haflinger to die.
But something dire was happening to her over the previous two weeks — not eating much, an expanding girth, then shortness of breath. It was confirmed she had untreatable lymphoma.
Her bright eyes were shining to the end so it was very hard to ask the vet to turn the light off. But the time had clearly come.
Marlee M&B came to us as a six month old “runty orphan” baby by the lovely stallion Sterling Silver, but she was suddenly weaned at three days when her mama Melissa died of sepsis. She never really weaned from her around the clock bottle/bucket feeding humans Stefan and Andrea Bundshuh at M&B Farm in Canada. From them she knew people’s behavior, learned their nonverbal language, and understood human subtleties that most horses never learn. This made her quite a challenge as a youngster as it also meant there was no natural reserve nor natural respect for people. She had no boundaries taught by a mother, so we tried to teach her the proper social cues.
When turned out with the herd as a youngster, she was completely clueless–she’d approach the dominant alpha mare incorrectly, without proper submission, get herself bitten and kicked and was the bottom of the social heap for years, a lonesome little filly with few friends and very few social skills. She had never learned submission with people either, and had to have many remedial lessons on her training path. Once she was a mature working mare, her relationship with people markedly improved as there was structure to her work and predictability for her, and after having her own foals, she picked up cues and signals that helped her keep her foal safe, though she was one of our most relaxed “do whatever you need to do” mothers when we handled her foals as she simply never learned that she needed to be concerned.
Over the years, as the herd changed, Marlee became the alpha mare, largely by default and seniority, so I don’t believe she really trusted her position as “real”. She tended to bully, and react too quickly out of her own insecurity about her inherited position. She was very skilled with her ears but she was also a master at the tail “whip” and the tensed upper lip–no teeth, just a slight wrinkling of the lip. The herd scattered when they saw her face change. The irony of it all is that when she was “on top” of the herd hierarchy, she was more lonely than when she was at the bottom. And I think a whole lot less happy as she had few grooming partners any more.
She accompanied us to the fair for a week of display of our Haflingers year after year after year — she could be always counted on to greet the public and enjoy days of braiding and petting and kids sitting on her back.
The day she started formal under saddle training was when the light bulb went off in her head–this was a job she could do! This was constant communication and interaction with a human being, which she craved! This was what she was meant for! And she thrived under saddle, advancing quickly in her skills, almost too fast, as she wanted so much to please her trainer.
For a time, she had an unequaled record among North American Haflingers. She was not only regional champion in her beginner novice division of eventing as a pregnant 5 year old, but also received USDF Horse of the Year awards in First and Second Level dressage that year as the highest scoring Haflinger.
She had a career of mothering along with intermittent riding work, with 5 foals –Winterstraum, Marquisse, Myst, Wintermond, and Nordstrom—each from different stallions, and each very different from one another.
This mare had such a remarkable work ethic, was “fine-tuned” so perfectly with a sensitivity to cues–that our daughter said: “Mom, it’s going to make me such a better rider because I know she pays attention to everything I do with my body–whether my heels are down, whether I’m sitting up straight or not.” Marlee was, to put it simply, trained to train her riders.
I miss her high pitched whinny from the barn whenever she heard the back door to the house open. I miss her pushy head butt on the stall door when it was time to close it up for the night. I miss that beautiful unforgettable face and those large deep brown eyes where the light was always on. Keeping that orphan alive when she was so vulnerable in the first two months was all that mattered.
What a ride she had for twenty two years, that dear little orphan. What a ride she gave to many who trained her and who she trained over the years. Though I never climbed on her back, what joy she gave me all those years, as the surrogate mom who loved and fed her. May I meet her in my memories, whenever I feel lonesome for her, still unable to resist those bright eyes forever now closed in peace.
Marlee’s photo album:
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I’ve fallen many times: the usual stumbles over secret schoolgirl crushes, head-over-heels for teen heartthrobs. I loved them all.
I’ve fallen so many times: tripped down the aisle over husband, daughter, son. Madly and deeply, I love them all.
I’ve fallen again and again: new friends, a mentor, a muse, numerous books, a few authors, four dear pups and a stranger, or two. I loved them all.
I’ve fallen farther, fallen faster, now captivated, I tumble— enthralled with my grandchildren. I love them each, ever and all. ~Jane Attanucci, “Falling” from First Mud
Six grandchildren in less than seven years brings a bounty of baby hugs and snuggles.
With each one, I fall farther and faster than ever before.
In a lifetime of falling head over heels for those most precious to me, a loving husband, two sons and a daughter, dear friends and mentors, numerous pups and ponies…
still none could prepare me for this ~
the blessing of loving our children’s children, their smiles and giggles and arms wrapped around us
these have become most cherished each, ever and all.
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