Tag: Parker Palmer

The Beginning Shall Remind us of the End: The Worst Our Kind Can Do

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It’s when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.
~Denise Levertov “The Mystery of the Incarnation”

In the Christmas story, God … takes the risk of incarnation. The flesh God chooses is not that of a warrior but of a vulnerable baby, a claim that brought me tears of wonderment when I was young. But my adult knowledge of that infant’s fate — a fate shared by so many who have devoted their lives to love, truth, and justice — brings tears of anger and grief, along with a primal fear of what might happen if I followed suit.

…I know I’m called to share in the risk of incarnation. Amid the world’s dangers, I’m asked to embody my values and beliefs, my identity and integrity, to allow good words to take flesh in me. Constrained by fear, I often fall short — yet I still aspire to incarnate words of life, however imperfectly.

What good words wait to be born in us, and how can we love one another in ways that midwife their incarnation?
~Parker Palmer from “The Risk of Incarnation”

I, like you, am entrusted to care for the Word in its earthly incarnation: born into impoverished, humble, and homeless circumstances, He has no where to dwell except within me and within you.

And that is no small price for Him to pay, as my human heart can be inhospitable, hardened, cold and cracked. I am capable of the worst our kind can do.

So it is up to me to embody the Word in what I say and do, even if it means rejection as He suffered, even knowing that is the risk I must take. For me, it feels as vulnerable as if I were a bare tree standing naked in the chill winter wind. I’m fearful I might break or topple over.
Yet if I’m created to harbor the incarnated Word, I must reach my roots deep, stand tall and find others who will stand alongside me.

This Advent, Iet us midwife the Word here on earth, to deliver it straight to receptive, warm, and loving hearts.


Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
Such a Life, as killeth death.

Come, My Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast, as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joys in love.
~George Herbert “The Call”

1.Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly-minded,
For with blessing in his hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.

2.King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth he stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
In the body and the blood;
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.

3.At his feet the six-winged seraph,
Cherubim, with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry:
Alleluia, Alleluia,
Alleluia, Lord Most High!

Day 9

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”

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Born Broken

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Man is born broken.
He lives by mending.
The grace of God is glue.
~Eugene O’Neill from Act 4, Scene 1 – The Great God Brown

None of us can “mend” another person’s life, no matter how much the other may need it, no matter how much we may want to do it.

Mending is inner work that everyone must do for him or herself. When we fail to embrace that truth the result is heartbreak for all concerned.

What we can do is walk alongside the people we care about, offering simple companionship and compassion. And if we want to do that, we must save the only life we can save, our own.
~Parker Palmer writing about Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey”

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice – – –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations – – –
though their melancholy
was terrible. It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do – –
– determined to save
the only life you could save.
~Mary Oliver “The Journey”

We are born hollering and suddenly alone,
already aware of our emptiness
from the first breath,
each tiny air sac bursting
with the air of our fallen world~
air that is never enough.

The rest of our days are spent
filling up our empty spaces
whether alveoli
or stomach
or synapses starving for understanding,
still hollering in our loneliness
and heart
broken.

So we mend ourselves
through our walk with others
also broken,
we patch up our gaps
by knitting the scraggly fragments
of lives lived together.
We become the crucial glue
boiled from gifted Grace,
all our holes
somehow made holy.

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To Live in the Layers

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I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon

How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?

Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
~Stanley Kunitz from “The Layers”

A child is asleep. Her private life unwinds inside skin and skull; only as she sheds childhood, first one decade and then another, can she locate the actual, historical stream, see the setting of her dreaming private life—the nation, the city, the neighborhood, the house where the family lives—as an actual project under way, a project living people willed, and made well or failed, and are still making, herself among them.

I breathed the air of history all unaware, and walked oblivious through its littered layers.
~Annie Dillard from An American Childhood

photo of Wiser Lake and Mt. Baker by Joel de Waard

…we become whole by having the courage to revisit and embrace all the layers of our lives, denying none of them, so that we’re finally able to say, “Yes, all of this is me, and all of this has helped make me who I am.”

When we get to that point, amazingly, we can look at all the layers together and see the beauty of the whole.
~Parker Palmer from “Embracing All the Layers of Your Life” in On Being

My favorite scenes are ones where there are several “layers” to study, whether it is a still life of petals or a deep landscape with a foreground, middle and backdrop. The challenge is to decide where to look first, what to draw into sharp focus, and how to absorb it all as a whole. In fact, if I only see one aspect, I miss the entire point of the composition. It is wonderfully multi-faceted and multi-layered because that is how my own life is – complex with so much diverse and subtle shading.

If I try to suppress some darker part of my own life I wish to forget and blur out, I ignore the beauty of the contrast with the light that illuminates the rest.

The layers reflect who I was created to be as an image-bearer – complex, nuanced, illuminated in the presence of dark.

Beautifully composed and ultimately transformed.

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How Possibility Gets Planted

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I’ve come to understand that life “composts” and “seeds” us as autumn does the Earth. I’ve seen how possibility gets planted in us even in the hardest of times.

Looking back, I see how the job I lost pushed me to find work that was mine to do, how the “Road Closed” sign turned me toward terrain I’m glad I traveled, how losses that felt irredeemable forced me to find new sources of meaning. In each of these experiences, it felt as though something was dying, and so it was. Yet deep down, amid all the falling, the seeds of new life were always being silently and lavishly sown.
~Parker Palmer

I know disappointment feels particularly bitter when I’m the one at fault, realizing I could have done things differently, not letting go when I kept hanging on.

I know that my failings, like leaves that flame out as everything around turns cold and brisk and unforgiving, eventually fall to the ground, to be forgotten compost by spring. Yet I don’t forget.

I know hard times become the seeds and nurture for new growth and new life, like a planting of possibilities in the soil of regret.

I’m given chances, again and again, to try to get it right. All is grace.

Twice Seen

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sunrisepond22115

 

The winter woods beside a solemn
river are twice seen–
once as they pierce the brittle air,
once as they dance in grace beneath the stream.

In air these trees stand rough and raw,
branch angular in stark design–
in water shimmer constantly,
disconnect as in a dream,
shadowy but more alive
than what stands stiff and cold before our eyes.

Our eyes at peace are solemn streams
and twice the world itself is seen–
once as it is outside our heads,
hard frozen now and winter-dead,
once as it undulates and shine
beneath the silent waters of our minds.

When rivers churn or cloud with ice
the world is not seen twice–
yet still is there beneath
the blinded surface of the stream,
livelier and lovelier than we can comprehend
and waiting, always waiting, to be seen.
~Parker Palmer “The Winter Woods”

 

icedropspond2

 

May today there be peace within.
May I trust God that I am exactly where I am meant to be.
May I not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May I use those gifts that I have received, and pass on the love that has been given to me.
May I be content knowing I am a child of God.
Let this presence settle into my bones, and allow my soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of us.
― adapted from Thérèse de Lisieux

 

sunrisepond1

 

And which am I today?

…the naked bones of trunk and branches reaching stark into the gray winter sky
or a shimmering reflection, soft and variable, in the water-mirror at my feet?

…do I change with the wind or the surfacing of a fish, one moment still and quiet and another moment churned and churning?

…or do I remain steadfast and predictable, unchanging in the storm?

Knowing there are infinite possibilities, I am content to be both, knowing as reflection, I’m still called to be an image of God, sometimes clear and unquestioning, and other times cloudy and barely discernible.

Yet I know, without seeing or reflecting Him perfectly,  He is there.

 

winterpond

Walking Alongside

barnstormingblog7 Comments

josehomer

 

 

thebuds

 

None of us can “mend” another person’s life, no matter how much the other may need it, no matter how much we may want to do it.

Mending is inner work that everyone must do for him or herself. When we fail to embrace that truth the result is heartbreak for all concerned.

What we can do is walk alongside the people we care about, offering simple companionship and compassion. And if we want to do that, we must save the only life we can save, our own.
~Parker Palmer writing about Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey”

 

 

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One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice – – –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations – – –
though their melancholy
was terrible. It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do – – – determined to save
the only life you could save.
~Mary Oliver “The Journey”

 

emmachan711173

 

outforawalk1

 

 

Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.
~Eugene O’Neill

 

 

mapleponygold

 

kittensjuly27172

 

We are born hollering and suddenly alone,
already aware of our emptiness
from the first breath,
each tiny air sac bursting
with the air of our fallen world~
air that is never enough.

The rest of our days are spent
filling up our empty spaces
whether alveoli
or stomach
or synapses starving for understanding,
still hollering in our loneliness
and heart
broken.

So we mend ourselves
through our walk with others
also broken,
we patch up our gaps
by knitting the scraggly fragments
of lives lived together.
We become the crucial glue
boiled from gifted Grace,
all our holes
somehow made holy.

 

 

brothers

 

 

eaglecouple2

 

 

3musketeers2

 

 

homerhooter

 

 

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Over the Brink of the Day

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marchdawn1

In the silence of the morning
your Spirit hovers over the brink of the day
and a new light pierces the darkness of the night.
In the silence of the morning
life begins to stir around me
and I listen for the day’s utterances.
In earth, sea and sky
and in the landscape of my own soul
I listen for utterances of your love, O God.
I listen for utterances of your love.
~J Philip Newell from Celtic Benediction, Morning and Night Prayer

sunsetkids

tammingasunset

….she approaches the world with only one giant, indiscriminate expectation: delight me.
…the gift of having a child is rediscovering discovery, of reuniting with awe. It’s perhaps my second favorite part of parenting, second only to the slow, mind-blowing, heartsploding reveal of who our tiniest teacher is.
~Courtney Martin from “Reuniting with Awe”

noaanya

barnboy3

boys5

What I know for sure is this: We come from mystery and we return to mystery. I arrived here with no bad memories of wherever I’d come from, so I have no good reason to fear the place to which I’ll return. And I know this, too: Standing closer to the reality of death awakens my awe at the gift of life.

I’m old enough to know that the world can delight me, so my expectation is not of the world but of myself:

Delight in the gift of life and be grateful.
~Parker Palmer “On the Brink of Everything“

farmgirls

 

windyday
photo of a windy day at Manna Farm — Nate Lovegren

To Walk Alongside

barnstormingblog8 Comments

josehomer

thebuds

None of us can “mend” another person’s life, no matter how much the other may need it, no matter how much we may want to do it.

Mending is inner work that everyone must do for him or herself. When we fail to embrace that truth the result is heartbreak for all concerned.

What we can do is walk alongside the people we care about, offering simple companionship and compassion. And if we want to do that, we must save the only life we can save, our own.
~Parker Palmer writing about Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey”

outforawalk1

Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.
~Eugene O’Neill

mapleponygold

We are born hollering and suddenly alone,
already aware of our emptiness
from the first breath,
each tiny air sac bursting
with the air of our fallen world~
air that is never enough.

The rest of our days are spent
filling up our empty spaces
whether alveoli
or stomach
or synapses starving for understanding,
still hollering in our loneliness
and heart
broken.

So we mend ourselves
through our walk with others
also broken,
we patch up our gaps
by knitting the scraggly fragments
of lives lived together.
We become the crucial glue
boiled from gifted Grace,
all our holes
somehow made holy.

brothers

eaglecouple2

3musketeers2

homerhooter

Seeking Sanctuary

barnstormingblog4 Comments

eveninghaybarn

barn81416

Today… in a world that’s both astonishingly beautiful and horrifically cruel, “sanctuary” is as vital as breathing to me. Sometimes I find it in churches, monasteries, and other sites designated as sacred. But more often I find it in places sacred to my soul: in the natural world, in the company of a trustworthy friend, in solitary or shared silence, in the ambience of a good poem or good music.

Sanctuary is wherever I find safe space to regain my bearings, reclaim my soul, heal my wounds, and return to the world as a wounded healer. It’s not merely about finding shelter from the storm: it’s about spiritual survival.

Fed by the taproot some call the soul, we need neither to flee from the world, nor exploit it. Instead, we can love the world with all of its (and our) flaws by trying to live in a way that models life’s finest possibilities.

That kind of love is possible, I believe, only if we know when and where to seek sanctuary, reclaiming our souls in order to engage the world in life-giving ways.
~Parker Palmer from “Seeking Sanctuary in our own Sacred Spaces”

sunrise926

cropped-febbarn3

When I go to our 100+ year old hay barn to fetch a couple of bales for the horses, I stop to marvel at the continual miracle of this barn that I call my sanctuary.  It is breaking down along its roof crest, yes.  It is sorely in need of another coat of paint, yes.  It has leaks where the winter winds have blown shingles off so the rain and snow come straight indoors, yes.

Yet these old growth beams and rafters, recycled from a nearby dismantled saw mill over a century ago, continue to do their job of holding up the world encased within.  This home of pigeons, swallows, bats, barn owls, mice, rats, raccoons, skunks and possum remains a steadfast sanctuary for the harvest of our hill.  For decades it has remained steep and silent, serene and solace-filled.

Every cubic inch of this place, its streams of light and its shadowy dark, inside and out, is wonder-full, even when it is empty in the late spring and especially when packed to the rafters, as it is now, with this summer’s hay crop.  The miraculous is grown, cut, dried, raked, baled, hauled, stacked and piece by piece, stem by stem, as it sustains living creatures through three seasons of the year.

As it sustains me…

I have the privilege of entering here every day and witnessing the miracle year after year.
I know nothing else but miracles, despite my own sagging, my weakening foundation and some *occasional* inopportune leaking of my own.

I know where and to whom I belong.

sunbeambarn3

sunrise916166

 

Gone Underground

barnstormingblog4 Comments

fogdrops

snowdrop11915

…times of dormancy and deep rest are essential to all living things. Despite all appearances, of course, nature is not dead in winter–it has gone underground to renew itself and prepare for spring. Winter is a time when we are admonished, and even inclined, to do the same for ourselves.

Our inward winters take many forms–failure, betrayal, depression, death. But every one of them, in my experience, yields to the same advice: “The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.” Until we enter boldly into the fears we most want to avoid, those fears will dominate our lives. But when we walk directly into them–protected from frostbite by the warm garb of friendship or inner discipline or spiritual guidance–we can learn what they have to teach us. Then, we discover once again that the cycle of the seasons is trustworthy and life-giving, even in winter, the most dismaying season of all.
~Parker Palmer

 

Why has “Let It Go” from the Disney movie “Frozen” resonated as the universal pop anthem of the past year for people of all ages and backgrounds?
Maybe we heed the call to emerge from our dormancy, to reach out in our God-given ability to overcome despite everything the outward and inward winters blow at us.

I trust, from all I’ve learned in His Word  —  I have only gone underground temporarily and will soon emerge in renewal.

The cold never bothered me anyway?
Yes, of course it did, but it is not the end of the story.

 

treelayers

fogtree