Blown By a Generous Breath

All at once I saw what looked like a Martian spaceship whirling towards me in the air. It flashed borrowed light like a propeller. Its forward motion greatly outran its fall. As I watched, transfixed, it rose, just before it would have touched a thistle, and hovered pirouetting in one spot, then twirled on and finally came to rest. I found it in the grass; it was a maple key, a single winged seed from a pair.

Hullo.

I threw it into the wind and it flew off again, bristling with animate purpose, not like a thing dropped or windblown

O maple key, I thought, I must confess I thought, o welcome, cheers.

And the bell under my ribs rang a true note, a flourish as of blended horns, clarion, sweet, and making a long dim sense I will try at length to explain. Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world. Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath. That breath never ceases to kindle, exuberant, abandoned; frayed splinters spatter in every direction and burgeon into flame. And now when I sway to a fitful wind, alone and listing, I will think, maple key. When I shake your hand or meet your eyes I will think, two maple keys. If I am a maple key falling, at least I can twirl…

Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock- more than a maple- a universe.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

The set seed and the first bulbs showing.
The silence that brings the deer.

The trees are full of handles and hinges;
you can make out keyholes, latches in the leaves.

Buds tick and crack in the sun, break open
slowly in a spur of green.

*

That woody clack of antlers.
In yellow and red, the many griefs of autumn.

The dawn light through amber leaves
and the trees are lanterned, blown

the next day to empty stars.
Smoke in the air; the air, turning.

*

Under a sky of stone and pink
faring in from the north and promising snow:

the blackbird.
In his beak, a victory of worms.

The winged seed of the maple,
the lost keys under the ash.
~Robin Robertson from “Finding the Keys”


I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven

Matthew 16:19

Let us seek words as plentiful
as those keys that twirl from the maple branch —

Words once freed, spoken and blown by a generous breath,
ready to unlatch life’s secrets
and push ajar the doors of heavy hearts.

May we somehow use
the Word we have been given
to open up just enough
to listen,
to unlock horns,
and welcome what grace may fall
into our empty and longing arms.

I am a helicopter child
Whirling, swirling, sailing
Into the wide unknown
Dancing, arcing
Into the future.

Wind carry me upward
Wind blow me onward
Wind sail me outward.

O The great tree my mother
The green tree my father:
Send me into the world
To plant new hope
To grow new dreams.

Wind carry me upward
Wind blow me onward
Wind sail me outward.

I was born in high branches
Swaying, singing, growing
Now I seek a new home
Earth to welcome me
Soil to feed me
I am tomorrow.

Wind carry me upward
Wind blow me onward
Wind sail me outward.
I am tomorrow.
~Marion Saunderson

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

Cold Water on a Tender Tooth

Last evening,
As I drove into this small valley,
I saw a low-hanging cloud
Wandering through the trees.
It circled like a school of fish
Around the dun-colored hay bales.
Reaching out its foggy hands
To stroke the legs of a perfect doe
Quietly grazing in a neighbor’s mule pasture.

  I stopped the car
And stepping out into the blue twilight,
A wet mist brushed my face,
And then it was gone.
It was not unfriendly,
But it was not inclined to tell its secrets.

  I am in love with the untamed things,
The cloud, the doe,
Water, air and light.
I am filled with such tenderness
For ordinary things:
The practical mule, the pasture,
A perfect spiral of gathered hay.
And although I should not be,
Consistent as it is,
I am always surprised
By the way my heart will open
So completely and unexpectedly,
With a rush and an ache,
Like a sip of cold water
On a tender tooth.
~Carrie Newcomer “In the Hayfield” from A Permeable Life: Poems & Essays

deer running in the foreground

Cool water on a tender tooth describes it exactly:

a moment of absolute wonder
brings exquisite tears to my eyes.
I’m so opened and exposed as to be painful,
feeling a clarity of being both sharp and focused.

it’s gone as quickly as it came,
but knowing it was there – unforgettable –
and knowing it is forever
only a memory,
both hurts,
and comforts…

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

The Rising Tide

As the tide rises, the closed mollusc
Opens a fraction to the ocean’s food,
Bathed in its riches. Do not ask
What force would do, or if force could.


A knife is of no use against a fortress.
You might break it to pieces as gulls do.
No, only the rising tide and its slow progress
Opens the shell. Lovers, I tell you true.

You who have held yourselves closed hard
Against warm sun and wind, shelled up in fears
And hostile to a touch or tender word—
The ocean rises, salt as unshed tears.

Now you are floated on this gentle flood
That cannot force or be forced, welcome food
Salt as your tears, the rich ocean’s blood,
Eat, rest, be nourished on the tide of love.

~May Sarton “Of Molluscs” from Complete Poems

photo by Josh Scholten

No question when I was younger, I tried to be a tough shell to crack. Over my years of medical training, I was warned to keep what is soft and tender closed and protected, or I would be picked clean, with my hard remains exposed and emptied.

Yet during those stressful years as a young physician, as one of a handful of female students, I didn’t feel attacked, nor was I forced to float through battering tides to hostile shores. Bathed in salty tears at times, I was comforted when the stormy winds came. My teachers were kind and gentle. Soothing words and heartfelt praise flowed around and through me.

I was treated just as I wanted to treat my patients: with respect and nurture.

All these years later, I have not forgotten this gift of love I was shown by my teachers and colleagues. Even when buried in the muck and sand up to my eyeballs, I could trust enough to open up my hard and crusty parts so I could feel the tide rise over and carry me home.

Hey little boy, whatcha got there?
Kind sir it’s a mollusk i’ve found
Did you find it in the sandy ground?
Does it emulate the ocean’s sound?
Yes I found it on the ground
Emulating the ocean’s sound
Bring forth the mollusk cast unto me
Let’s be forever let forever be free

Hey little boy come walk with me
And bring your new found mollusk along
Does it speaketh of the trinity
Can it gaze at the sun with its wandering eye
Yes it speaks of the trinity
Casting light at the sun with its wandering eye
Bring forth the mollusk, cast unto me
Let’s be forever let forever be free

You see there are three things that spur the mollusk from the sand
The waking of all creatures that live on the land
And with just one faint glance, back into the sea
The mollusk lingers, with it’s wandering eye
~Gene Ween

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

Fixing Eyes on the Unseen – A Door Left Open

The world hides God from us,
or we hide ourselves from God,
or for reasons of his own God hides himself from us,
but however you account for it,
he is often more conspicuous by his absence than by his presence,
and his absence is much of what we labor under and are heavy laden by.
Just as sacramental theology speaks of a doctrine of the Real Presence,
maybe it should speak also of a doctrine of the Real Absence
because absence can be sacramental, too,
a door left open,

a chamber of the heart kept ready and waiting.
~Frederick Buechner from Telling the Truth

…my faith has weathered in a holy way;
it’s larger, gentler, especially as I have learned to bear the needs of others,
to pour myself out at least a little bit like God does for me.
In that offering, I’ve learned a lot about God’s quiet, ever-present nourishment.
A larger, patient acceptance has come to me.
I haven’t found every answer, I still ‘want’ so much more of God than I have,
and yet, I also have learned to live with the holy hunger that is the groaning

of God’s Spirit within me as I wait for the full coming of the Kingdom.⁣
~Sarah Clarkson reflecting on Buechner’s quote above

For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
Romans 8:24-25

To wait is a hard sweet paradox in the Christian life.  It is hard not yet having what we are promised will be coming – truly Real Absence for now.  But it is sweet to have certainty it is coming because of the footprints we have seen:

He has been here among us. 

Like the labor of childbirth, we groan knowing what it will take to get there, yet we are full to brimming already.

The waiting won’t be easy; it will often be painful to be patient, staying alert to possibility and hope when we are exhausted, barely able to function.  Others won’t understand why we wait, nor do they comprehend what we could possibly be waiting for. 

We persevere together, with patience, watching and hoping; we are a community groaning together in sweet expectation.

This year’s Lenten theme:
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4: 18

Dawn on our Darkness: The Gates are Drawn Apart

What seemed to be the end proved to be the beginning…
Suddenly a wall becomes a gate.
~Henri Nouwen from  A Letter of Consolation

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 “What the Bird Said Early in the Year”

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning
~T.S. Eliot from “Little Gidding” The Four Quartets

I expect gates in my neighborhood to be closed – in the farming business, a gate left open is an invitation to disaster. Likewise, barn doors are often locked, to keep things safe inside and leave the unwanted out.

So it is true of the heart, where my most cherished treasures are stored and protected – a lockbox of faith and love. But the Lord knocks at the locked doors and closed gates of our hearts, expecting a response. He came to earth to enter into our lives, not be kept outside waiting. From the very beginning of His life, we refused Him entry to share our comfortable inn, relegating Him to a stone trough, and at the end, a stone tomb.

A gate never opened becomes a wall. A heart that does not bleed joy and tears and sorrow becomes nothing but stone.

He has come to turn the key and we are unlocked forever.

This year’s Advent theme “Dawn on our Darkness” is taken from this 19th century Christmas hymn.

Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
dawn on our darkness and lend us your aid.
Star of the east, the horizon adorning,
guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.
~Reginald Heber -from “Brightest and Best”

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
¤20.00
¤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

Is There Anybody There?

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
   Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
   Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
   Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
   ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
   No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
   Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
   That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
   To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
   That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
   By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
   Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
   ’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
   Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
   That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
   Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
   From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
   And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
   When the plunging hoofs were gone.

~Walter de la Mare “The Listeners”

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
Revelation 3:20

This poetic tale of a mysterious traveller, knocking but getting no response from a house of silent apparitions, has been cited as an appropriate ghost story for Halloween. This is a day of trick or treat knocks on doors everywhere.

I read the poem differently: to me this describes the return of Christ to retrieve us on the final day, just as He said He would.

If we are the phantom listeners, ignoring His knocks on our door despite hearing His announcement of arrival, we have lost the opportunity to open the door and welcome Him in.

Is anybody there?

It isn’t enough to be just a listener. We must respond and answer the door, welcoming the Son of Man who is doing exactly as He promised.

Let Him in. There can be no better treat.

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
¤20.00
¤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

Secret Purple Wisdom

There’s always an iris
amusing and amazing.
Today, wildly purple stretching
to search dark colors,
open and about to reach.
Reach.

Even the vase holds on,
shows courage for both
who touch the beautiful,
alive and color to color,
evoking how one can love another.
Longer to live, shorter to die.
~Eloise Klein Healy “Iris”

What word informs the world,
and moves the worm along in his blind tunnel?

What secret purple wisdom tells the iris edges
to unfold in frills? What juiced and emerald thrill

urges the sap until the bud resolves
its tight riddle? What irresistible command

unfurls this cloud above this greening hill,
or one more wave — its spreading foam and foil —

across the flats of sand? What minor thrust
of energy issues up from humus in a froth

of ferns? Delicate as a laser, it filigrees
the snow, the stars. Listen close — What silver sound

thaws winter into spring? Speaks clamor into singing?
Gives love for loneliness? It is this

un-terrestrial pulse, deep as heaven, that folds you
in its tingling embrace, gongs in your echo heart.

~Luci Shaw “What Secret Purple Wisdom”  The Green Earth: Poems of Creation 

He gave Himself to us
to wrest joy from our misery-

A mystery is too much to accept
such sacrifice is possible.

We are blind-hearted to the possibility:
He who cannot be measured unfolds before us
to reach us, overwhelming our darkness. 

I prefer remaining closed in my bud,
hidden in the little room of my heart
rather than risk opening by loving another
in full blossom and fruitfulness.

Lord, give me grace to open my tight fist of a bud.

Prepare me for embracing your mystery. 
Prepare me to unfurl,
to reach out beyond myself.
Prepare me to bloom wildly purple.

What is the crying at Jordan?
Who hears, O God, the prophecy?
Dark is the season, dark
our hearts and shut to mystery.

Who then shall stir in this darkness
prepare for joy in the winter night?
Mortal in darkness we
lie down, blind-hearted, seeing no light.

Lord, give us grace to awake us,
to see the branch that begins to bloom;
in great humility
is hid all heaven in a little room.

Now comes the day of salvation,
in joy and terror the Word is born!
God gives himself into our lives;
Oh, let salvation dawn!
~Carol Christopher Drake

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

¤5.00
¤10.00
¤20.00
¤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

Lost and Precious

How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom

as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious
~Lisel Mueller “In Passing”

None of us will remain as we are now.

For some, that is a source of deep regret as outer beauty fades, hair is lost or graying, skin wrinkles and strength weakens. Pulled along time’s ever-rolling stream to something new and eternal, we will become something far more precious than what our frail bodies could ever yield.

It is a special mystery with which God surrounds us: a thousand years is like an evening gone to Him. He guards us through our troubles now like irreplaceable treasures, even when we feel hopelessly lost.

We are mere buds now, waiting to open wide to a world far more glorious.

A thousand ages in thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.

The busy tribes of flesh and blood,
With all their lives and cares,
Are carried downwards by thy flood,
And lost in following years.

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.

Like flowery fields the nations stand,
Pleased with the morning light;
The flowers beneath the mower’s hand
Lie withering e’er ’tis night.

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.

~Isaac Watts

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support Barnstorming

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

¤5.00
¤10.00
¤20.00
¤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

The Beginning Shall Remind Us of the End: Unlocked and Opened Wide

What seemed to be the end proved to be the beginning…
Suddenly a wall becomes a gate.
~Henri Nouwen from Gracias! A Letter of Consolation

As Christians we do not believe in walls,
but that life lies open before us;
that the gate can always be unbarred;
that there is no final abandonment or desertion.
We do not believe that it can ever be “too late.”

We believe that the world is full of doors that can be opened. Between us and others.
Between the people around us.
Between today and tomorrow.
Our own inner person can be unlocked too:
even within our own selves,
there are doors that need to be opened.

If we open them and enter,
we can unlock ourselves, too,
and so await whatever is coming to free us and make us whole.
~ Jörg Zink from “Doors to the Feast”

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
~T.S. Eliot from “Little Gidding” The Four Quartets


We stand outside the gate, incapable of opening it ourselves,
watching as God Himself throws it open wide. 
We choose to enter this unknown unremembered gate
into the endless length of days,
or we choose to remain outside,
lingering in the familiar confines of what we know,
though it destroys us.

There we shall rest and we shall see;
we shall see and we shall love;
we shall love and we shall praise.
Behold what shall be in the end and shall not end.
~Augustine of Hippo

1 Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates; 
behold, the King of glory waits; 
the King of kings is drawing near; 
the Savior of the world is here!

2 Fling wide the portals of your heart; 
make it a temple, set apart 
from earthly use for heaven’s employ, 
adorned with prayer and love and joy.

3 Redeemer, come, with us abide; 
our hearts to thee we open wide; 
let us thy inner presence feel; 
thy grace and love in us reveal.

4 Thy Holy Spirit lead us on 
until our glorious goal is won; 
eternal praise, eternal fame 
be offered, Savior, to thy name!

This year’s Barnstorming Advent theme “… the Beginning shall remind us of the End” is taken from the final lines in T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees”

A book of beauty in words and photography, available to order here:

The Beginning That Reminds Us of the End: Open Wide Then

What next, she wonders,
with the angel disappearing, and her room
suddenly gone dark.

The loneliness of her news
possesses her. She ponders
how to tell her mother.

Still, the secret at her heart burns like
a sun rising. How to hold it in—
that which cannot be contained.

She nestles into herself, half-convinced
it was some kind of good dream,
she its visionary.

But then, part dazzled, part prescient—
she hugs her body, a pod with a seed
that will split her.
~Luci Shaw “Mary Considers Her Situation”

What matters is what occurs occurs
Between them, not to them. It’s only that
The angel doesn’t matter, nor the virgin.
A blade of light scissors the air

Between them. To them it’s only that:
A glancing blow, or a kind of cleaving,
A blade of light. Scissor the air
Wide open, then it happens:

A glance, a blow, error a kind of cleaving—
Of? Or to? So something else can enter.
Open wide then. It happens
Those two forget themselves, not knowing—

What, or who?—so something else can enter
And, in entering, replace them.
We can’t forget ourselves. Knowing
Carelessness has brought us to the point

Where in entering we replace them.
The angel doesn’t matter, nor the virgin.
Carelessness has brought us to the point.
What is matters. What occurs occurs.
~Katherine Coles “Annunciation”

Sometimes
for the light to illuminate
where darkness thrives,
there must be wounding,
that tears us open;
there is a crack in everything,
cleaving us so joy can infiltrate and heal
where we hurt the most.

When time sweeps yesterday away,
It leaves behind an empty heart,
Weeping through the night so dark and long.
When words are lost among the tears,
When sadness steals another day,
God hears our cries and turns our sighs into a song.

Sing to the One who mends our broken hearts with music.
Sing to the One who fills our empty hearts with love.
Sing to the One who gives us light to step into the darkest night.
Sing to the God who turns our sighs into a song.

From heaven falls a mercy sweet,
The time for weeping now is gone;
God hears our sighs and gives us His eternal song.

Sing to the One who mends our broken hearts with music.
Sing to the One who fills our empty hearts with love.
Sing to the One who gives us light to step into the darkest night.
Sing to the God who turns our sighs into a song.

Sing to the One who mends our broken hearts with music.
Sing to the One who fills our empty hearts with love.
Sing to the One who gives us light to step into the darkest night.
Sing to the God who turns our sighs into a song.
~Susan Boersma

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be

Ah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free

You can add up the parts
but you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
~Leonard Cohen from “Anthem”

This year’s Barnstorming Advent theme “… the Beginning shall remind us of the End” is taken from the final lines in T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees”

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation to support Barnstorming

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

¤5.00
¤10.00
¤20.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00

Or enter a custom amount

¤

Your contribution is deeply appreciated and helps to make these daily posts possible.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly