Tag: noticing

Come and See: Hidden in Plain Sight

May 24, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Some of the people of Jerusalem therefore said,
“Is not this the man whom they seek to kill?
And here he is, speaking openly, and they say nothing to him!
Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Christ? But we know where this man comes from, and when the Christ appears, no one will know where he comes from.”

So Jesus proclaimed, as he taught in the temple,
“You know me, and you know where I come from.
But I have not come of my own accord.
He who sent me is true, and him you do not know.
I know him, for I come from him, and he sent me.”

So they were seeking to arrest him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come.Yet many of the people believed in him. They said, “When the Christ appears, will he do more signs than this man has done?”

The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering these things about him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers to arrest him.
Jesus then said, “I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going to him who sent me.You will seek me and you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come.”

The Jews said to one another, “Where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? Does he intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks?

What does he mean by saying, ‘You will seek me and you will not find me,’ and, ‘Where I am you cannot come’?”
John 7:25-36

Where is my God ? what hidden place
Conceals Thee still?
What covert dare eclipse Thy face?
Is it Thy will?

O let not that of anything;
Let rather brass,
Or steel, or mountains be Thy ring,
And I will pass.

Thy will such a strange distance is,
As that to it
East and West touch, the poles do kiss,
And parallels meet.
~George Herbert from “The Search”

I try to find you, yet you are not here.
I’ve studied absence, fought to fill it in –
courage comes easier with a grasp of why.

A secret’s camouflaged when unconcealed.
I chose to not see/saw the thing too near?
Absence turns thicker, muscled by its strain.

A moon in daylight, whitest blue on blue,
surprises briefly, to appear surreal
until it slips to rights…

… plain sight goes blind through chasing clarity.
I looked for you, so couldn’t see you gone.

I sensed your not-there in its burning life.
I listened out to feel its silence beat.
It does not speak with any human mouth.
~Denise Riley from “Hiding in Plain Sight” from Say Something Back

Jesus arrived in Jerusalem in plain sight to the people there,
but they did not trust what they saw Him do
nor trust His Words, unable to fathom
He could be the long-awaited Christ.

Their partial understanding
of who they believe the Christ would be
blinds them to the Christ who is right before their eyes.

Later on, the resurrected Jesus –
appearing as a gardener,
a stranger on the road to Emmaus,
a figure cooking fish over a charcoal fire on the beach –
is the Christ hidden in plain sight.

Jesus’ presence among us –
a paradox from beginning to end.
Our limited vision and knowledge challenge us
to accept His divinity when we see only the man.
Yet He is so much more…

The veil pulls back to show us who He is.

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

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Weather Happens to All of Us

May 4, 2026 barnstormingblog2 Comments

There is weather on the day you are born
and weather on the day you die. There is
the year of drought, and the year of floods,
when everything rises and swells,
the year when winter will not stop falling,
and the year when summer lightning
burns the prairie, makes it disappear.
There are the weathervanes, dizzy
on top of farmhouses, hurricanes
curled like cats on a map of sky:
there are cows under the trees outlined
in flies. There is the weather that blows
a stranger into town and the weather
that changes suddenly: an argument,
a sickness, a baby born
too soon. Crops fail and a field becomes
a study in hunger; storm clouds
billow over the sea;
tornadoes appear like the drunk
trunks of elephants. People talking about
weather are people who don’t know what to say
and yet the weather is what happens to all of us:
the blizzard that makes our neighborhoods
strange, the flood that carries away
our plans. We are getting ready for the weather,
or cleaning up after the weather, or enduring
the weather. We are drenched in rain
or sweat: we are looking for an umbrella,
a second mitten; we are gathering
wood to build a fire.
~Faith Shearin “Weather” from Orpheus, Turning.

On the planet the winds are blowing: the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades…
Lick a finger, feel the now.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

I’m still discovering, right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from The Cost of Discipleship

Never before in the history of humanity have we had the ability to pull the weather forecast out of our pocket and know not only what to anticipate in the next 24 hours or 10 days, but even what is happening right now.

Prior to phone apps, we scanned the skies, checked the barometer, looked at where the weather vane points, monitored the thermometer, and put a licked finger up to test the wind direction.

As obsolete as those measures seem now, I confess they still make sense to me.

It’s a little silly if my phone says it is raining at “my location” and I can’t find a single cloud.

I want to know what is happening around me from my own observation,
trust my own eyes,
feel my own sweat in the heat,
my chilly goose bumps in the cold,
my wet head in the rain,
my hair messy in the wind.

I want to know we’re all in this together, right now.

I want to live completely in this world, living now, finger held to the wind.

Then, having the information I need, I throw myself completely into the arms of God.

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Quietly Write Something Down…

April 23, 2026 barnstormingblog4 Comments

At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats
with the possible company of my death,
this sprawling miscellany of people—
carry-on bags and paperbacks—

that could be gathered in a flash
into a band of pilgrims on the last open road.
Not that I think
if our plane crumpled into a mountain

we would all ascend together,
holding hands like a ring of skydivers,
into a sudden gasp of brightness,
or that there would be some common place

for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,
some spaceless, pillarless Greece
where we could, at the count of three,
toss our ashes into the sunny air.

It’s just that the way that man has his briefcase
so carefully arranged,
the way that girl is cooling her tea,
and the flow of the comb that woman

passes through her daughter’s hair . . .
and when you consider the altitude,
the secret parts of the engines,
and all the hard water and the deep canyons below . . .

well, I just think it would be good if one of us
maybe stood up and said a few words,
or, so as not to involve the police,
at least quietly wrote something down.
~Billy Collins “Passengers”

Tell us of a bypassed heart beating in 12C,
how the woman holds a stranger’s hand
to the battery sewn in beneath her collarbone,
and says feel this. Tell us of the man’s ear
listening across the aisle, hugging itself,
a fist long since blistered by blaze.
Outside, morning sun buckling up.
Inside, twitching bonesacks of bat, birdsong
erupting as light cracks the far jungle canopy.
Ten thousand feet below ours, a grey cat
tongues the morning’s butter left out to soft.
Last night we broke open the sweet folds
around two paper fortunes. One said variety.
One said caution. The woman in 12C would hold that
her heart needs its hidden spark, but the man shows
how some live the rest of their lives with half a face
remembering its before expression. Who was it
that said our souls know one another
by smell, like horses?
~Jenny Browne “Love Letter to a Stranger”

These days, I spend as little time as possible in airports and airplanes among strangers. As an introvert who prefers to read quietly and stay securely in my shell, I politely converse with the people next to me but prefer a book and silence.

It is always a wonder to me when seat partners across from me or in front of me will spend the trip finding out all about each other’s lives, destinations and feelings about the state of the world.

Even so, like Billy Collins in his poem, I’m struck by the affinity I feel for my fellow passengers as we embark on a trip by air – so different from each of us independently traveling down a highway in our individual vehicles.

In an airplane, our fates are lashed together. What happens to one will happen to all.

Because we are bound together – sometimes randomly, sometimes not – I do believe that we should try to find kindred and sympathetic souls in a mysterious way when we are thrust among strangers.

We are created for connection, whether by smell or sight or spirit.

And perhaps, scrolling through the internet, as we all do at times, you ran across this Barnstorming blog…not expecting a connection to happen.

And here we are –connected because I wrote something quietly down.
One never knows how we may become bound together.

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Trusting All This to Be True

April 16, 2026April 16, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Trust that there is a tiger, muscular
Tasmanian, and sly, which has never been
seen and never will be seen by any human
eye. Trust that thirty thousand sword-
fish will never near a ship, that far
from cameras or cars elephant herds live
long elephant lives. Believe that bees
by the billions find unidentified flowers
on unmapped marshes and mountains. Safe
in caves of contentment, bears sleep.
Through vast canyons, horses run while slowly
snakes stretch beyond their skins in the sun.
I must trust all this to be true, though
the few birds at my feeder watch the window
with small flutters of fear, so like my own.
~Susan Kinsolving “Trust”

It’s like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.
The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.
The theft that could have happened doesn’t.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.
And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can’t read the address.
~Thomas Smith “Trust”

When I stand at the window watching the flickers, sparrows, finches, juncos, grosbeaks, chickadees, and red-winged blackbirds come and go from the feeders, I wonder who is watching who.

They remain wary of me, fluttering away quickly if I approach with lens in hand. They fear capture, even within a camera. They have a life to be lived without my witness or participation. So much happens that I never see or know about.

I understand: I fear being captured too. I prefer to remain an enigma.

Even if only for a moment as an image preserved forever, I know it doesn’t represent all I am, all I’ve done, all I feel, all my moments put together. The birds and bees and snakes and horses are, and I am, so much more than one moment.

Only God sees us fully in every moment, witness to our freedom and captivity, our loneliness and grief, our joy and tears, our sleeping and waking, knowing our best and our worst.

And because He knows us so well and knows the address to which we will be delivered – in Him we must trust.

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Bring to Light the Mystery: Where Are You?

March 2, 2026March 6, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
Genesis 3:8-9

We’ve moved into a bigger house.
Now our voices wander among the rooms
calling, Where are you?

And what we can’t forget
of other houses confuses us
as we answer back and forth, Over here!

It’s a little like returning to the village
where you were born, the sad bewilderment
of discrepancies between
what you remember and what’s there.

No. It’s more like a memory of heaven.
Voices coming closer, voices moving away,

and what we thought we knew
about life on earth confounding us.

And then that question
from which all the other questions begin.
~Li-Young Lee “Discrepancies, Happy and Sad” from Book of My Nights

You can hide nothing from God.
The mask you wear before men will do you no good before Him.
He wants to see you as you are,
He wants to be gracious to you.
You do not have to go on lying to yourself and your brothers,
as if you were without sin;
you can dare to be a sinner.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Life Together

Ready or not, you tell me, here I come!
And so I know I’m hiding, and I know
My hiding-place is useless. You will come
And find me. You are searching high and low.
Today I’m hiding low, down here, below,
Below the sunlit surface others see.
Oh find me quickly, quickly come to me.
And here you come and here I come to you.
I come to you because you come to me.
You know my hiding places. I know you,
I reach you through your hiding-places too;
Touching the slender thread, but now I see –
Even in darkness I can see you shine,
Risen in bread, and revelling in wine.
~Malcolm Guite “Hide and Seek”

When I go to the doctor, I trust I’m seeing someone who tries to know me thoroughly enough that they will help me move out of illness into better health. There are times when, as a patient, I need to be asked: Where are you in your life right now?
What are your worries and fears?
How can I support you through this?

This is how acceptance feels: trusting someone enough to come out of hiding, even when ashamed or fearful or feeling hopeless.

As a physician myself, I am reminded by the amount of “noticing” I needed to do in the course of my work over the decades. Each patient (and there were so many) deserved my full attention for the few minutes we are together. I started my clinical evaluation the minute we sat down together and I began taking in all the complex verbal and non-verbal clues they offered up, sometimes unwittingly.

As their audience, I become a witness to their struggle; even more, I must understand it in order to best assist them. My brain must rise to the occasion of taking in another person, accepting them for who they are, offering them the gift of compassion and simply be there for them – just them – right then.

God doesn’t struggle in His Holy work as I did in my clinical duties. He knows us so thoroughly because He made us; He knows our thoughts before we put them into words.
There is no point in hiding from Him.

He can hold us in His Hand, discerns our secret heartbeats.

We, the no longer hidden, are His. His alone.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Leaning Lest We Fall

February 17, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Today we both fell.

Eventually balance moves
out of us into the world;
it’s the pull of rabbits
grazing on the lawn
as we talk, the slow talk
of where and when,
determining what
and who we will become
as we age.

We admire the new plants
and the rings of mulch you made,
we praise the rabbits eating
the weeds’ sweet yellow flowers.

Behind our words the days
serve each other as mother,
father, cook, builder, and fixer;
these float like the clouds
beyond the trees.

It is a simple life, now,
children grown, our living made
and saved, our years our own,
husband and wife,

but in our daily stride, the one
that rises with the sun,
the chosen pride,
we lean on our other selves,
lest we fall
into a consuming fire
and lose it all.
~Richard Maxson, “Otherwise” from Searching for Arkansas

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
I fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) I want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
~e.e. cummings “i carry your heart with me”

May the sun bring you new energy by day,
May the moon softly restore you by night,
May the rain wash away your worries,
May the breeze blow new strength into your being.

May you walk gently through the world,
And know it’s beauty all the days of your life.
~Apache Blessing

Our days are slower now, less rushed, more reading and writing, walking and pondering, taking it all in and wondering what comes next.

I am so grateful not to hurry to work every day, planning how I should parcel out each moment when my energy and strength is waning.

Should I stay busy cooking, cleaning, sorting, giving away, simplifying our possessions so our children someday won’t have to?
Might our grandchildren tire of my attention? Or should I find ways to be of service off the farm to feel worthy of each new day, each new breath?

This time of life is a gift of grace, waking most days with no agenda and few appointments. What comes next remains uncertain, as it always has been. In my busyness, I simply didn’t pay enough attention before.

So I lean lest I fall.
I notice beauty and write about it.
I carry as many hearts as I can hold.
I keep breathing lest I forget how.

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Finding a Lovely Thing

February 16, 2026 barnstormingblog2 Comments

Look for a lovely thing and you will find it,
It is not far —
It never will be far.
~Sara Teasdale from “Night”

Queen Anne’s lace

a hardly

prized but

all the same it isn’t

idle look

how it

stands straight on its

thin stems how it

scrubs its white faces

with the

rays of the sun how it

makes all the

loveliness

it can.
~Mary Oliver “Passing the Unworked Field“

Until I opened my eyes to see,

I passed by lovely things all the time,
my thoughts grousing in the grayness of the day.
Oblivious and self-absorbed,
blinded to the gifts around me.

It only takes a heart open
to unexpected beauty,
not far,
really never far–
right there in our own back yard.

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A Thousand Thoughts

February 2, 2026February 2, 2026 barnstormingblog2 Comments

Yes, I know my mind is a fickle little bee
doting on a thousand thoughts, but I’m getting
better at chasing my mind back to the moment

so I can see the spiderwebs making hammocks
the color of the moon. My son tries to photograph
a rainbow outside the car window. It’s impossible,

of course, this wonder, the trying to hold it.
But I do what I can. I’ve stopped waiting to enjoy
the cinnamon tea. I take deeper breaths and listen

to the flutter of strings floating down from café
speakers. I don’t want to be a pilgrim of memory
anymore. I want to pop the champagne and salute

this now, and this one with soft brie, dried apricots,
and the sunset celebration another anniversary
of light while I eat fists of grapes the same shade

and sweetness of night. Congratulations, Time. Look
at you and your gorgeous minutes full of everything.
Three cheers for the temp agency that hired this

particular day, these particular clouds, this set
of honking geese migrating through it. I want to be
better at being alive, so I’ve been picturing my heart

as a fox—which means wild and nocturnal, not
terrorizing the neighbor’s chickens. My love says
most equations in quantum field theory give infinity

as an answer, which is not meaningful because all
infinities are the same. In that case, let’s stop reaching
so hard for it. I’ll take this infinity’s morning where

my son and I confused falling leaves for monarchs.
Every time we thought we saw a butterfly, it was
just a leaf with the gentlest falling. We laughed at

every mistake, and he said, That was a beautiful
confusion. Sometimes when the moment doesn’t offer
a praying mantis on the porch or a charismatic sky,

I imagine my heart is my son’s face, and I am back
in love with the day, its astonishments like hot-air
balloons, and the daily present of power lines strung

with starlings like dozens of music notes. Let me
be more bound to my living in each moment, be held
by this hum, that cloud, this breath, that shroud.
~Traci Brimhall “This Beautiful Confusion” from Love Prodigal

Some Monday mornings, my mind is going in a thousand different directions. So I follow, knowing there will never be another Monday morning quite like this one. I hope there will be a few hundred more Monday mornings to come.

I want to be better at being alive,
noticing, remembering, connecting,
and grateful to be breathing.

Perhaps you are here because — you do too…

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Time to Say Grace

November 2, 2025 barnstormingblog5 Comments

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
~G.K. Chesterton

Norman Rockwell’s 1951 painting *Saying Grace*

Chesterton has it right. No matter what I embark on, I should say grace first. Even my breathing, my waking, and my sleeping. Even the brilliance right outside my back door.

Continual and constant thanks and praise to the Creator for all things bright and beautiful, and helping us through the dark times.

Instead I am plagued with inconstancy and inconsistency, with a stubborn tendency to take it all for granted.

As I “dip pen in ink” this morning, join me in saying grace:

He is worthy. Amen and Amen.

Even more so. Ever more now.

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