nature – Page 55 – Barnstorming

Linked Together

July 31, 2014 barnstormingblog4 Comments

…humanity is like an enormous spider web, so that if you touch it anywhere, you set the whole thing trembling…Just as John Donne believed that any man’s death, when we are confronted by it, reminds us of our common destiny as human beings: to be born, to live, to struggle a while, and finally to die. We are all of us in it together…As we move around this world and as we act with kindness, perhaps, or with indifference, or with hostility, toward the people we meet, we too are setting the great spider web a-tremble. The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt. Our lives are linked together. No man is an island.
~Frederick Buechner

Time At Arm’s Length

July 30, 2014 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Light wakes us – there’s the sun
climbing the mountains’ rim, spilling across the valley,
finding our faces.
It is July,
between the hay and harvest,
a time at arm’s length from all other time…

It is the time
to set aside all vigil, good or ill,
to loosen the fixed gaze of our attention
as dandelions let seedlings to the wind.
Wake with the light.
Get up and go about the day and watch
its surfaces that brighten with the sun.
~Kerry Hardie from “Sleep in Summer”

Putting It Off

July 29, 2014 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Sitting in windows at night
black cats and their masters
look out on summer; the moon
feeds their yellow visions,
the opened windows cool them…

…One wants nothing to happen
forever, and thinks of those
who perhaps are ready to die,
except that it is summer
and they are putting it off.
~Robley Wilson from “In Summer, Nothing Happens”

Go Light

July 28, 2014 barnstormingblog2 Comments

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us,
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light
~Gary Snyder “For the Children”

Unlocking Summer

July 22, 2014 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

The mind’s bright chambers, life unlocks
Each summer with the hollyhocks.
~Edgar Guest from “Hollyhocks”

Heartbreaking Summer

July 21, 2014 barnstormingblog3 Comments

Heartbreaking summer beyond taste,
Ripeness and frost are soon to know;
But might such color hold the west,
And time, and time, be honey-slow…
~Léonie Adams from “Midsummer”

Quieter Beneath the Quiet

July 20, 2014 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Our shadows bring them from the shadows:

a yolk-yellow one with a navy pattern

like a Japanese woodblock print of fish scales.

A fat 18-karat one splashed with gaudy purple

and a patch of gray. One with a gold head,

a body skim-milk-white, trailing ventral fins

like half-folded fans of lace.

A poppy-red, faintly disheveled one,

and one, compact, all indigo in faint green water.

They wear comical whiskers and gather beneath us

as we lean on the cement railing

in indecisive late-December light,

and because we do not feed them, they pass,

then they loop and circle back. Loop and circle. Loop.

“Look,” you say, “beneath them.” Beneath them,

like a subplot or a motive, is a school

of uniformly dark ones, smaller, unadorned,

perhaps another species, living in the shadow

of the gold, purple, yellow, indigo, and white,

seeking the mired roots and dusky grasses,

unliveried, the quieter beneath the quiet.
~Susan Kolodny “Koi Pond, Oakland Museum”

Summer Will Come True

July 18, 2014July 18, 2014 barnstormingblog1 Comment

I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear:
This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees
This year nor want of rain destroy the peas.

This year time’s nature will no more defeat you.
Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

This time they will not lead you round and back
To Autumn, one year older, by the well worn track.

This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,
We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.

Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,
Quick, quick, quick, quick! – the gates are drawn apart.
~C.S. Lewis

A Flying Flower

July 16, 2014 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

The butterfly is a flying flower,
The flower a tethered butterfly.
~Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun

In almost thirty years of walking around on the grass of the world, she couldn’t recall having spent two minutes alone with a butterfly.
~Barbara Kingsolver from Flight Behavior

When Light is Put Away

July 15, 2014 barnstormingblog1 Comment

We grow accustomed to the Dark –

When Light is put away –

As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp

To witness her Good bye –

A Moment – We uncertain step

For newness of the night –

Then – fit our Vision to the Dark –

And meet the Road – erect –

And so of larger – Darknesses –

Those Evenings of the Brain –

When not a Moon disclose a sign –

Or Star – come out – within –

The Bravest – grope a little –

And sometimes hit a Tree

Directly in the Forehead –

But as they learn to see –

Either the Darkness alters –

Or something in the sight

Adjusts itself to Midnight –

And Life steps almost straight.
~Emily Dickinson

10511534_10202290221084507_4123148144039696205_o — photo by Tomomi Gibson of reflected sunset (facing east)

I come from Pacific Northwest farmers going back four generations: the daughter of teachers, married to a son of farmers. We have raised three children who are making a difference in the world in their professional lives and as people of faith.

While keeping my eyes and heart open to the extraordinary things around me, I have worked over forty years as a family physician as well as a steward of the small farm we call home.

What I harvest in words or pictures finds its way here.
I welcome your messages and comments sent to emilypgibson@gmail.com

…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. … And the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4: 8 -9

What is my only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
~Heidelberg Catechism

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
~Mary Oliver

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.
~ T.S. Eliot

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To live is so startling, it leaves little room for other occupations.
~Emily Dickinson

I believe in God as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
~ C. S. Lewis

Remember this. When people choose to withdraw far from a fire, the fire continues to give warmth, but they grow cold. When people choose to withdraw far from light, the light continues to be bright in itself but they are in darkness. This is also the case when people withdraw from God.
~ Augustine

Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields…Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.
~ Mary Oliver

The seed is in the ground. Now may we rest in hope while darkness does its work.
~ Wendell Berry

Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine the true poetry of life.~ Sir William Osler

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
~George Eliot’s final sentence in Middlemarch

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
~ E.B. White

Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear, in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here.~~ “The Wild Geese” Wendell Berry

Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.
~ Jane Kenyon from “Let Evening Come”

You can only come to the morning through the shadows.~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Look for what you notice but no one else sees. ~Rick Rubin

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. ~ Thomas Merton

This life therefore is not righteousness,
but growth in righteousness,
not health but healing,
not being but becoming,
not rest but exercise.
We are not yet
what we shall be,
but we are growing toward it.
The process is not finished
but it is going on.
This is not the end
but it is the road.
~Martin Luther

Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.
~ Mary Oliver

It is not your love that sustains the marriage —
but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

She has done what she could…
~Mark 14:8

What do you mean? Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good on this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?~ J. R. R. Tolkien from The Hobbit

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