Tag: mercy

The Air Charged With Blessings

barnstormingblog1 Comment

I thought of happiness, how it is woven
Out of the silence in the empty house each day
And how it is not sudden and it is not given
But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.
No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.
No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,
But the tree is lifted by this inward work
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.

For what is happiness but growth in peace,
And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir
The shining leaves of present happiness?
No one has heard thought or listened to a mind,
But where people have lived in inwardness
The air is charged with blessing and does bless;
Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind.
~ May Sarton, from “The Work of Happiness”  in  Collected Poems, 1930-1993

The settled happiness and security which we all desire,
God withholds from us by the very nature of the world:
but joy, pleasure, and merriment, he has scattered broadcast.
We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy.
It is not hard to see why.

The security we crave would teach us
to rest our hearts in this world
and oppose an obstacle to our return to God:
a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony,
a merry meeting with our friends, a bath
or a football match, have no such tendency.

Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns,
but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
~C.S. Lewis from The Problem of Pain

I am reminded every day, as headlines proclaim bad news:
this is not our home. I am only a wayfarer, not a settler.

Just like the distress of my four year old grandson, staying overnight and waking with a bad dream, appearing at my bedside at 3 AM, saying simply “I need a hug!”

We need reassurance that all this scary stuff is not forever.

Sometimes I lose focus on the “why” of my journey
on this troubled earth:
so much of my time and energy is understandably spent
seeking safety and security, striving on a journey
I hope will be filled with happiness, joy and contentment,
as if that is my ultimate destination and purpose.

Yet the nature of a fallen world filled with faltering souls such as myself leads me down boulder-strewn paths filled with potholes and sheer cliffs and yes, bad dreams.

At times nowhere feels safe or secure and I overthink my next step.

God hears my fear of the unknown destination, as only He can know what lies ahead on my or anyone’s journey. God in His mercy does not leave us homeless, without hope and unable to wake from the bad dream.

We breathe air charged with His blessing. He gifts Himself; I can breathe because of Him.

I need a hug…

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

In the Best Possible Way

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Let us go forward quietly,
forever making for the light,
and lifting up our hearts
in the knowledge that we are as others are
(and that others are as we are),
and that it is right to love one another
in the best possible way – believing all things,
hoping for all things,
and enduring all things. 
~Vincent Van Gogh from “Letters to Theo”

We like to blame our DNA for our tribal nature, to justify setting ourselves apart from the “other.” We tend to be discontent with whatever we are given — but that belief is exactly how humanity’s troubles began.

Every election and convention season only intensifies our sense of “otherness”, further putting wedges between us, driving us apart and further into the darkness.

We are slaves to divisiveness: even worshiping it in the name of “becoming great again”, emphasizing our own “truth” in the name of “unity.”

I simply can’t listen to it.
There is so much anger in the voices of our self-appointed “leaders.”

I want to know it is still possible to love each other in all our differences in the best possible way, with quiet endurance and hope. No shouting, no shootings, no need for a cascade of dropping balloons, and no ridiculous rancorous rhetoric.

We are as others are — others are as we are — denying it is folly. Believing it is the beginning of a selfless love for the “other”, something God did intend for our DNA, as His children who are no longer animals.

Indeed, God Himself became the “Other” living among us to show us just how it can be done.

It’s in every one of us. Now we must make it so.

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Restored to the World

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

What
if you were
a beetle,
and a soft wind

and a certain allowance of time
had summoned you
out of your wrappings,
and there you were,

so many legs
hardening,
maybe even
more than one pair of eyes

and the whole world
in front of you?
And what if you had wings
and flew

into the garden,
then fell
into the up-tipped
face

of a white flower,
and what if you had
a sort of mouth,
a lip

to place close
to the skim
of honey
that kept offering itself –

what would you think then
of the world
as, night and day,
you were kept there –

oh happy prisoner –
sighing, humming,
roaming
that deep cup?
~Mary Oliver “How Everything Adores Being Alive” from “Why I Wake Early?”

We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.
~Annie Dillard from The Force That Drives the Flower

What inference might one draw about the nature of God from a study of his works? An inordinate fondness for beetles. The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand, and for beetles on the other.
~ J.B.S. Haldane, British biologist

Beetles haven’t figured out a way to help each other get back on their feet (whereas an upside down turtle helps his friend), but a bug depends on help from beyond their kind.

Indeed, we stranded folk have encountered a God who flips us back onto our feet when we lie helplessly waving our arms and legs in the air, stuck and pitiful. God knows all about the helplessness of suffering and hears our cry for mercy.

Once we are righted back to our feet, we walk forth changed forever. We are restored to the world, ready to help anyone we encounter who finds themselves stuck upside down in their misery.

When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles
and the bottle’s on a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles…
…they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle.
~ Dr. Seuss from Fox in Socks

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Rending the Heavens

barnstormingblog2 Comments

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!
As when fire sets twigs ablaze
and causes water to boil…
~Isaiah 64:1-2

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which 
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.
-Wendell Berry “To My Mother” from Entries

It was a summer morning six years ago, beginning much like this one: something woke me early at 4:45 AM.  

Perhaps it was the orange glow bathing my face through the curtains. Never one to miss a light show, I heeded the call and got up and dressed.

Once outside, I was amazed to see storm clouds boiling –  shifting and swirling in unrest as if something or someone may emerge momentarily.

No trumpets though.
The music in the air was the usual early morning bird song,
and sherbet-orange leaves normalized to green.

Within a minute, the heavens settled. Unentangled from my dismay, so did I.

Yet for a moment that morning, I did wonder what might become of us all. That thought still occurs to me each morning, as I realize how much merciful grace embodies the heavens above.

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Understanding Meekness

barnstormingblog3 Comments

Not the bristle-bearded Igors bent
under burlap sacks, not peasants knee-deep
              in the rice paddy muck,
nor the serfs whose quarter-moon sickles
              make the wheat fall in waves
they don’t get to eat. My friend the Franciscan
              nun says we misread
that word meek in the Bible verse that blesses them.
              To understand the meek
(she says) picture a great stallion at full gallop
              in a meadow, who—
at his master’s voice—seizes up to a stunned
              but instant halt.
So with the strain of holding that great power
              in check, the muscles
along the arched neck keep eddying,
              and only the velvet ears
prick forward, awaiting the next order.
~Mary Karr “Who the Meek Are Not” from Sinners Welcome

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Matthew 5:5

I’ve seen meekness like this.

Our stallion allowed his strength and passion to be under control. He wanted to listen. He wanted to see what we might ask of him. He wanted to be with us.

This makes no sense given the world’s demand now for “strongman” leadership – someone who submits to no one, apologizes to no one, feels compassion for no one.

Globally and individually, we have desperate need of meekness. True strength is when someone knows the extent of their power but resists the need to prove it to anyone else.

The meek are ready, waiting for what God will have them do next.

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Helpless Prayer

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

I pray because I can’t help myself.
I pray because I’m helpless.
I pray because the need flows out of me all the time —
waking and sleeping.
It doesn’t change God — it changes me.
~attributed to C.S. Lewis in “Shadowlands”

A recovering Faye with her sister Merry

Last week, on May 1, I found a surprise hanging on our front door – a little May Day basket full of little perennial blooms, along with a cheery message and a rainbow sticker. It hung from the door handle as a symbol of spring renewal, as well as a bit of a mystery – the flowers came with no hint of who had left them.

So I did a little sleuthing (actually A LOT of sleuthing) and found out they were delivered by our nearby neighbor Faye, who turned 11 just last week. She has a very special history some of you may remember:

Nine years ago, on this Barnstorming blog, I wrote about our little neighbor, two year old Faye, sickened by E.Coli 0157 infection/toxin to the point of becoming critically ill with Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (plummeting cell counts and renal failure requiring dialysis to keep her alive).  My original post about her illness is found here. I asked for your prayers on her (and others’) behalf.

At the worst point of her hospitalization at Seattle Children’s, when the doctors were sounding very worried on her behalf, Faye’s mother Danyale, in the midst of her helplessness, wrote to our Wiser Lake Chapel Pastor Bert Hitchcock with a plea for prayers from our church.

Here is how Pastor Bert responded to Danyale and her husband Jesse who remained at home, caring for their four other children:

“I understand that Faye (and everyone dealing with her) is fighting for her life. And that’s the way I am praying: that God in his merciful power, would deliver her, even if her condition looks hopeless.

If you were able to be in church this morning, you might hear my sense of urgency, for I have chosen this benediction, with which to close the service — and I give it to you right now, from the mouth of our Lord:

Jesus said: “Do not be afraid, Danyale!
I am the First and the Last.
I am the Living One.
I died, but look – I am alive forever and ever!
And I hold the keys of death and the grave.

Neither you nor I know how this will turn out — the possibilities are terrifying. But we do know who holds the keys of life and health and death; He is the Life-giver, who heals all our diseases — nothing can rip our lives (or little Faye’s life) out of His hands. And, when He does allow these bodies to give out, He promises to give us glorious new life, safe forever in His presence. These are not pious platitudes; these are the rock-hard promises of the one who loves us more than life, and who is absolutely in control of what is happening today.

Safe in the arms of Jesus,
Safe on His gentle breast;
There by His love o’ershaded,
Sweetly my soul shall rest.

I’m praying for you all; and your Chapel Family will be praying this morning, as we gather in the Lord’s presence.

Love you, and yours, Danyale,
Pastor Bert Hitchcock

That week, Faye’s renal failure reversed itself. She was able to return home with normal kidney function and improved cell counts, having also survived a bout with pneumonia.

Here is what her mother wrote to share with you all once she came home:

“Dear Friends and readers of Barnstorming,

Some of you we know, but so many of you we do not. Whichever the case, Emily tells me you have prayed for our little girl, Faye, throughout her sickness and into her recovery. What can parents say when people–many of whom we may never be privileged to meet in this life–have come alongside us to beseech the Lord for our daughter’s life and pray for her healing? Thank you. Thank you!

Faye is doing so well; stronger every day, more and more herself! It is wonderful to see.

This week we head back down to Seattle Children’s for a check up–we’ll get to say hello to the good folks who saw her through her sickness. A special stop will be made on the dialysis unit to see Nurse Kathy, a favorite of Faye’s. We anticipate a good report!

Thanks again for your love and support, far and wide. Truly astounding.
Danyale and Jesse, for Faye, too

—————————————

Now Faye is a delightful, healthy eleven year old girl who secretly blessed me with a basket of May Day flowers. She doesn’t remember the crisis that nearly took her from us nine years ago, but she does know about God’s rainbow promises. And she certainly knows about the power of prayer in the face of helplessness.

As Pastor Bert said: our faith in an unchanging and steadfast God who loves and holds us, can change us – forever.

Amen and Amen

Faye, age 2, after her recovery

Let Live

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Let us not with one stone kill one bird, 
much less two. Let us never put a cat 
in a bag nor skin them, regardless 
of how many ways there are to do so. 
And let us never take the bull, especially 
by his gorgeous horns. What I mean is 

we could watch our tongues or keep 
silent. What I mean is we could scrub 
the violence from our speech. And if we find
truth in a horse’s mouth, let us bless her

ground-down molars, no matter how 
old she is, especially if she was given 
as a gift. Again, let’s open her mouth——that of the horse, 
I mean——let us touch that interdental space where 
no teeth grow, where the cold bit was made to grip. 
Touch her there, gently now, touch that gentle 

empty between her incisors and molars, rub her 
aching, vulnerable gums. Don’t worry: doing so calms her. 
Besides, she’s old now; she’s what we call 
broken; she won’t bite. She’s lived through 
two thirteen-year emergences of cicadas

and thought their rising a god infestation, 
thought each insect roiling up an iteration 
of the many names of god, because god to her is 
the grasses so what comes up from grass is
god. She would not say it that way. Nor would she

say the word cicada——words are hindrances 
to what can be spoken through the body, are 
what she tolerates when straddled, 
giddy-up on one side then whoa on the other. After, 
it’s all good girl, Mable, good girl, 
before the saddle sweat is rinsed cool 
with water from the hose and a carrot is offered 
flat from the palm. Yes, words being 

generally useless she listens instead 
to the confused rooster stuttering when the sun
burns overhead, when it’s warm enough
for those time-keepers to tunnel up from the 
dark and fill their wings to make them 
stiff and capable of flight. To her, it is the sound 

of winter-coming in her mane 
or the sound of winter-leaving in her mane——
yes, that sound——a liquid shushing 
like the blood-fill of stallion desire she knew once 
but crisper, a dry crinkle of fall 
leaves. Yes, that sound, as they fill their new wings 
then lumber to the canopy to demand
come here, come here, come 
here, now come. 

If this is a parable you don’t understand, 
then, dear human, stop listening for words. 
Listen instead for mane, wind, wings, 
wind, mane, wings, wings, wings. 
The lesson here is of the mare 
and of the insects, even of the rooster 
puffed and strutting past. Because now, 
now there is only one thing worth hearing, 
and it is the plea of every living being in that field 
we call ours, is the two-word commandment 
trilling from the trees: let live, let live, let live. 
Can you hear it? Please, they say. Please.
Let us live.  
~Nickole Brown “Parable”

When a governor writes about her decision to shoot her wayward dog and stinky goat, our reaction is about the injustice perpetrated on the dog more than her decision to play god with any animal she has responsibility for. I feel a twinge of guilt at the accusation. Who among us can throw stones?

God is clear we are meant to be caretakers of His Creation. Yet I still swat flies and trap mice – there is no pleasure in doing so, so I still ask for forgiveness for my lack of charity and decision to make my own existence more comfortable at the expense of another living thing.

I admit I fail Creation in myriad ways.

I have owned animals whose behavior brought me to my knees, sometimes literally with my face in the muck. I have wept over the loss of a deformed stillbirth foal and a pond of koi frozen in a bitter winter storm. The stories abound of my helplessness in the face of sadness and loss and frustration but I never wanted to become executioner.

I don’t live with cycles of cicada population booms but have experienced their overwhelming din and understood we are mere witnesses and not in control. We are not “little g” gods on this earth. We are its stewards.

Let us live and thrive together.

Please let us live.

photo by Emily Vander Haak

It is Here God Lives…

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Here God lives, burrowing among
the petals, cross-
pollinating. Here is Christ’s mind
juiced, joined, fleshed, celled.

Here is the clash,
the roil, an invasion, not gentle
as dew; the rose is unfurled
violently until the scent explodes
and detonates in the air

And oh, it trembles—
thousands of seeds ripen in it as
it reels in the wind.
~Luci Shaw from “Flower Head”

I often awake with my mind as askew as my hair,
brushing away the cobwebs of dreams,
smoothing down ever present worries,
curling the whiff of long forgotten memories.

And I realize these same molecules transmitting thoughts
also carried Christ’s while He walked this earth,
the earthbound inner thoughts of God Himself,
borne by His creative integration of chemistry and ions,
through millions of electrical explosions per second.

My mind is ready to burst with the thought of it:

Here God lives, here He thinks, here He loves,
here He is – always.

Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.
Matthew 28, v.20
I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. At that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
John 14, vv. 18–21, 27

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Let Me Go There…

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows; a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
                        On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.
~R.S. Thomas “The Coming”

You have answered
us with the image of yourself
on a hewn tree, suffering
injustice, pardoning it;
pointing as though in either
direction; horrifying us
with the possibility of dislocation.
Ah, love, with your arms out
wide, tell us how much more
they must still be stretched
to embrace a universe drawing
away from us at the speed of light.
~R.S.Thomas “Tell Us”

“Let me go there”
And You did. Knowing what awaited You.

Your arms out wide
to embrace us
who try to grasp
a heaven which eludes us.

This heaven, Your heaven
You brought down to us,
knowing our terrible need.

You wanted to come here,
knowing all this.

Holding us firmly
within your wounded grip,
You the Son
handed us back to heaven.

Mostly months of dirt rows
Plain and unnoticed.
Could be corn, could be beans
Could be anything;
Drive-by fly-over dull.

Yet April ignites an explosion:
Dazzling retinal hues
Singed and scorched, crying
Grateful tears for such as this
Grounded rainbow on Earth

Transient, incandescent
Brilliance hoped for.
Remembered in dreams,
Promises realized,
Housed in crystal before shattering.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

This Was The Day

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Opening the book at a bright window
above a wide pasture after five years
I find I am still standing on a stone bridge
looking down with my mother at dusk into a river
hearing the current as hers in her lifetime

now it comes to me that that was the day
she told me of seeing my father alive for the last time
and he waved her back from the door as she was leaving
took her hand for a while and said
nothing

at some signal
in a band of sunlight all the black cows flow down the pasture together
to turn uphill and stand as the dark rain touches them.
~W.S. Merwin “Sun and Rain” from Flower & Hand.

All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning
~W. S. Merwin “Rain Light” from The Shadow of Sirius 

We want so much to leave a legacy for our children that will carry them through their lives, long after we are gone. Then they pass that on to their children, and on and on, like the strands of DNA we leave behind in our descendants.

But words and rituals of faith and covenant can be lost so quickly from one generation to the next. Our DNA passed down is a given, but nothing surpasses the teaching about the eternal love of God and His purpose for His people.

This day, three of our young grandsons are baptized by their church, ushering them into a life in fulfillment of God’s promise within them. As children, they may not yet fully understand how this manifests in their lives, but with the love and guidance of their church, parents, extended family and godparents, they will know His Love as they witness it in His people.

The washing with water from God’s creation, like rain from heaven, gives me hope for the future.

Though the world may be burning, Jesus is right alongside us through it all – I know our children and grandchildren will be all right.