ordinary – Page 6 – Barnstorming

The Solace of Ordinary

May 2, 2018 barnstormingblog5 Comments

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is a way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples, and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.
~William Martin from The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity.
~John Ruskin

We know the solace in the ordinary as life throws flowers at our feet.

Ordinary is each breath, each heart beat, each tear, each smile, one after another and another.

We are offered the gift of each ordinary moment; only grace makes it extraordinary.

Watch Where I Step

January 29, 2018 barnstormingblog3 Comments

I watch where I step and see
that the fallen leaf, old broken glass,
an icy stone are placed in
exactly the right spot on the earth, carefully,
royalty in their own country.

~ Tom Hennen, “Looking For The Differences”
from Darkness Sticks To Everything: Collected and New Poems.

If the pebble, the leaf, the walnut shell, the moss, the fallen feather
are placed exactly right where they belong,
then so am I
~even when I may rather be elsewhere~
even when I could get stepped on,
even when I would rather hide in a hole,
even when exactly right feels exactly wrong.

I’m placed right here to watch where I step
for some reason beyond understanding:
a simple peasant
asked to serve a royal purpose.

Best of Barnstorming Photos Summer/Fall 2017

January 1, 2018May 28, 2018 barnstormingblog13 Comments

Morning In A New Land

In trees still dripping night some nameless birds
Woke, shook out their arrowy wings, and sang,
Slowly, like finches sifting through a dream.
The pink sun fell, like glass, into the fields.
Two chestnuts, and a dapple gray,
Their shoulders wet with light, their dark hair streaming,
Climbed the hill. The last mist fell away,

And under the trees, beyond time’s brittle drift,
I stood like Adam in his lonely garden
On that first morning, shaken out of sleep,
Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves,
Like tissue on some vast, incredible gift.
~Mary Oliver (New Year’s Day Poem shared today on Facebook)

All days are sacred days to wake
New gladness in the sunny air.
Only a night from old to new;
Only a sleep from night to morn.
The new is but the old come true;
Each sunrise sees a new year born.
~Helen Hunt Jackson from “New Year’s Morning”

We awake glad,
breathe deeply of the sacred around us
glistening in the light of a soft sunrise.
Each day is a fresh start,
a gift from beyond,
content to renew covenant
with God and one another.
~EPG

No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference.
~Charles Lamb, from the January 1821 London Magazine

The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.
– G.K. Chesterton

so this is the sound of you

here and now whether or not

anyone hears it this is

where we have come with our age

our knowledge such as it is

and our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible
~W.S. Merwin from “To the New Year”

There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something.
You certainly usually find something, if you look,
but it is not always quite the something you were after.
— J.R.R. Tolkien

And to you, the many faithful readers of the Barnstorming blog,

may you open to the extraordinary in the ordinary right outside your back door~

beauty may be found where you least expect it.

Blessings for a peaceful 2018!

Emily

For more “Best of Barnstorming” photos:

Seasons on the Farm:

BriarCroft in Summer, in Autumn, in Winter,
at Year’s End

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Stopping for the Messy Ordinary

August 20, 2017August 24, 2017 barnstormingblog4 Comments

If you notice anything
it leads you to notice
more
and more.

And anyway
I was so full of energy.
I was always running around, looking
at this and that.

If I stopped
the pain
was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe
the world can’t be saved,
the pain
was unbearable.
~Mary Oliver from “The Moths” from Dream Work

No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes are in the airing cupboard.

The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.
~C.S. Lewis (from Letters)

I see in a new way now as I wander about,
my eyes scanning for the plain and mundane,
searching for what needs noticing and safe-keeping.

Saving even a little part of our world
involves getting tired and muddy,
falling down again and again
and being willing to get back up.

If I stop getting dirty,
if I by-pass the every day,
if I give up the work of salvage,
I abandon the promises of God.

He’s there, ready and waiting
for the mop up of our messy ordinary.

Financial Support for the Barnstorming Blog from our Readers

Your financial support helps to keep this blog an ad-free daily offering. Your contribution of any amount is encouragement to me and deeply appreciated.

$10.00

Into Light All Things Must Fall

May 7, 2017 barnstormingblog2 Comments

The hen flings a single pebble aside
with her yellow, reptilian foot.
Never in eternity the same sound–
a small stone falling on a red leaf.

The juncture of twig and branch,
scarred with lichen, is a gate
we might enter, singing.

The mouse pulls batting
from a hundred-year-old quilt.
She chewed a hole in a blue star
to get it, and now she thrives…
Now is her time to thrive.

Things: simply lasting, then
failing to last: water, a blue heron’s
eye, and the light passing
between them: into light all things
must fall, glad at last to have fallen.
~Jane Kenyon “Things”

Things we think will last won’t.

As transient as a storm-birthed rainbow,
Light passes between things and us,
illuminating a pathway
to something far more lasting.

So we follow, falling, always falling,
failing ourselves to last
until lifted up into the light
at last.

Gladly we reflect the Light
ourselves.

Turn Aside and Look: We Would See Him

March 12, 2017 barnstormingblog3 Comments

The sacred moments,
the moments of miracle,
are often the everyday moments,
the moments which,
if we do not look with more than our eyes or listen with more than our ears reveal only…
a gardener,
a stranger coming down the road behind us,
a meal like any other meal.
But if we look with our hearts,
if we listen with all our being and imagination..
what we may see is Jesus himself.
~Frederick Buechner from The Magnificent Defeat

We can be blinded by the everyday-ness of it:
A simple loaf of bread is only that.
A gardener crouches in a row of weeds, trying to restore order in chaos.
A wanderer along the road engages in conversation.

Every day contains millions of everyday moments that are lost and forgotten, seemingly meaningless.

We would see Jesus if we only opened our eyes and listened with our ears.
At the table, on the road, in the garden.

By turning aside and looking, we discover:
there is nothing everyday about the miracle of Him abiding with us.

Could’ve come like a mighty storm

with all the strength of a hurricane

You could’ve come like a forest fire

with the power of heaven in your flame

Chorus

But you came like a winter snow

quiet and soft and slow

Falling from the sky in the night

to the earth below

Could’ve swept in like a tidal wave

or an ocean to ravish our hearts

You could have come through like a roaring flood

to wipe away the things we’ve scarred

Bridge

No, your voice wasn’t in a bush burning

No, your voice wasn’t in a rushing wind

It was still, it was small, it was hidden
by Audrey Assad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpHiAmL8-b0

Turn Aside and Look: Heaven in Ordinary

March 11, 2017 barnstormingblog4 Comments

God sees us as we are,
loves us as we are,
and accepts us as we are.
But by his grace,
he does not leave us as we are.
~Tim Keller

Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,

God’s breath in man returning to his birth,

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth

Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six-days world transposing in an hour,

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

Exalted manna, gladness of the best,

Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,

The land of spices; something understood.
~George Herbert “Prayer”

Considering the distance between us and God,
seemingly insurmountable to overcome,
how amazing it only takes a few words to Him,
our gratitude and praise,
our pleas and pain,
our breath hot in His ear~
unhesitating
He plummets to us;
then we are lifted to Him.Heaven dwells in the ordinary,
in our plainness,
dresses us up,
prepares us to be loved,
prepares us to be accepted and understood
prepares us to be transformed
by no less than our very Creator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiShDRA1ixA

Water into Grapes

January 28, 2017January 28, 2017 barnstormingblog1 Comment

The miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread.

Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine – which was, after all, a very small miracle.

We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.
~Wendell Berry from Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community

The miraculous escapes our attention every day ~
we are blinded to the wonder of it all,
accepting as mundane that which warrants our awe and overwhelm.

How can the scales be lifted from our eyes?
How can we be offered up such astonishment and never be satiated?

Be amazed. Be humbled.

Stay hungry for this daily bread.

deccorn1

A Day of Grace in the Dead of Winter

January 24, 2017 barnstormingblog3 Comments

Leaning by the counter,
we steal a long slow kiss,
tasting of coffee and cream.
The chicken’s diminished to skin & skeleton,
the moon to a comma, a sliver of white,
but this has been a day of grace
in the dead of winter,
the hard knuckle of the year,
a day that unwrapped itself
like an unexpected gift,
and the stars turn on,
order themselves
into the winter night.
~Barbara Crooker from “Ordinary Life”

…it’s easy to forget that the ordinary is just the extraordinary that’s happened over and over again. Sometimes the beauty of your life is apparent. Sometimes you have to go looking for it. And just because you have to look for it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
God, grant me the grace of a normal day.
~Billy Coffey

…there is no such thing as a charmed life, not for any of us, no matter where we live or how mindfully we attend to the tasks at hand. But there are charmed moments, all the time, in every life and in every day, if we are only awake enough to experience them when they come and wise enough to appreciate them.
~Katrina Kenison from The Gift of an Ordinary Day

These dead of winter days are lengthening, slowly and surely, but I still leave the farm in darkness to head to my work in town, and I return in darkness at the end of the workday. Barn chores at either end of the day happen under moonlight and starlight.

Each day, so extraordinary in its ordinariness, is full of grace if I awake to really see it, even under cover of darkness.

The bones of the trees, and the bones of me, illuminated.

sunset121172

The Small and The Good

November 23, 2016November 23, 2016 barnstormingblog19 Comments

There was an entire aspect to my life that I had been blind to — the small, good things that came in abundance.
~Mary Karr from The Art of Memoir

Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it — every, every minute?
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
~Thornton Wilder, quotes from “Our Town”

I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see…
~John Newton from “Amazing Grace”

~~And so I continue to work in the soil of this life, this work, this farm, this faith
to find what yearns to grow, to bloom, to fruit and be harvested to share with others.

With deep gratitude to those of you who visit here and let me know it makes a difference in your day — here is the small and the good from my harvest of words and pictures for you.

With blessings for our joint Thanksgiving,
Emily

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