Tag: nature

Trees Are Undressing

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The trees are undressing, and fling in many places—
On the gray road, the roof, the window-sill—
Their radiant robes and ribbons and yellow laces;
A leaf each second so is flung at will,
Here, there, another and another, still and still.

A spider’s web has caught one while downcoming,
That stays there dangling when the rest pass on;
Like a suspended criminal hangs he, mumming
In golden garb, while one yet green, high yon,
Trembles, as fearing such a fate for himself anon.
~Thomas Hardy “Last Week in October”

So we too will be flung into the unknown,
trembling in the chill wind,
unready to let go of what sustains us,
fated to land wherever the storm blows.

If caught up by a silken thread,
left to dangle suspended by faith
to await the hope of rescue, alone and together,
another and another, still and still.

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Liquid Gold in the Air

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The thistledown’s flying, though the winds are all still,
On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,
The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;
Through stones past the counting it bubbles red-hot.

The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,
The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.
The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,
And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.
Hill-tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,
And the rivers we’re eying burn to gold as they run;
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;
Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.
~John Clare “Autumn”
As October wraps up here,
there are golden mornings,
golden nightfalls
and golden in-betweens,
all compressed
into diminishing daylight hours
more precious than gold~
may this last forever
or at least until November…
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Beauty Past Change

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Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                Praise him.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Pied Beauty”
There is no perfection outside of Him;
His reflected beauty has no uniformity.
We give Him glory in our imperfection,
the defects and blemishes which
only He can make whole.
Who knows why He does this?
Yet He does.
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Begin the Hours Slow

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O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.
~Robert Frost “October”
I long to be beguiled by slower days;
each leaf of mine dropped
one at a time, sorely missed
until there is none of me left.
Slow me down slowly,
hushed and enchanted.
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Making the Cosmos New

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Grace does not remain outside
or above
or beside nature
but rather permeates
and wholly renews it.
And thus nature,
reborn by grace,
will be brought to its highest revelation.
That situation will again return in which
we serve God freely and happily,
without compulsion or fear,
simply out of love,
and in harmony with our true nature.
Christianity does not introduce
a single substantial foreign element
into the creation.
It creates no new cosmos
but rather makes the cosmos new.
It restores what was corrupted by sin.
It atones the guilty
and cures what is sick;
the wounded it heals.
~Herman Bavinck from “Common Grace”
As we wither, our colors changing
as we die,
we are cured,
our nature reborn
by transforming amazing grace.
Renewed,
we respond
in love.
Let it be with me
as You have said.
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Every Small Fold

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It is not enough to offer a silent thank you,
looking down at dark mums and the garden’s final offerings
of autumn—late-planted greens, their small leaves
fragile and pale. And bright orange peppers,
the odd liveliness of their color signaling an end.
It is not enough to welcome God
into every small fold of the day’s passing.
To call upon some unknown force
to let the meat be fresh, the house not burn,
the evening to find us all here again. Yet,
we are here again. And we have witnessed
the miracle of nothing. A slight turning of empty time,
bare of grief and illness and pain. We have lived
nondescript this season, this day, these sixty-minutes.
But it is not enough. To bow our heads in silence.
To close our eyes and see in each moment
of each second the uneventful wonder
of none.
~Pamela Steed Hill “The Miracle of Nothing”

 

As I ponder the tragic commonness of a loved one lost
in the midst of a routine day:
in a classroom
in a church
in a crosswalkon a downed airplane
or sinking boat
taken suddenly without goodbyes,
I realize the miracle of a day of nothing much happening
makes it very special indeed.
God dwells in the folds of our existence;
we dare to risk its unfolding
to set Him free.

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Every Flake of World

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Nature’s silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block.

The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega, it is God’s brooding over the face of the waters…
Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing.
~Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone to Talk

 

I listen for silence, and in my listening make noise,
distracting me from the beginning and the end
that is noiseless.
I listen while praying,
having been taught
this is all there is
and ever will be.

Amen.

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The Wild Lands

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Mt. Shuksan yesterday, photo by Emily Gibson
                                                  Mt. Shuksan yesterday, photo by Emily Gibson

 

He found himself wondering at times,
especially in the autumn,
about the wild lands,
and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.
~J.R.R. Tolkien Fellowship of the Rings

 

Mt. Baker from the north yesterday
                                                            Mt. Baker from Artist Point yesterday

 

Thank God who seasons thus the year,
And sometimes kindly slants his rays;
For in his winter he’s most near
And plainest seen upon the shortest days.

I scent my med’cine from afar,
Where the rude simpler of the year
October leads the rustling war,
And strews his honors on the summer’s bier.

The evening of the year draws on,
The fields a later aspect wear;
Since Summer’s garishness is gone,
Some grains of night tincture the noontide air.
~Henry David Thoreau, selected stanzas from “The Fall of the Leaf”

octobertwinlakes11Twin Lakes Mt. Baker National Forest

Wandering in a wild land of beauty,
especially in the coolness of autumn,
with the dry hot melting “garishness” of summer past,
God is most plain in these places,
His slanting rays touching
everything and all.

shuksan6Mt. Shuksan yesterday, from Artist Point

Called to Make a Comment

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And that is just the point… how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. “Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”
~Mary Oliver

Some mornings it is impossible to stay a silent observer of the world.  It demands a response.
The overnight wind and rain have pulled down nearly every leaf, the ground is carpeted with the dying evidence of last spring’s rebirth, the dropping temperatures robing the surrounding foothills and peaks in a bright new snow covering.

There can be no complacency in witnessing this startling transition in progress.   It blusters, rips, drenches, encompasses, buries. Nothing remains as it was.

And here I am, alive.
Awed.
A witness.
Called to comment.
Dying to respond.

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