… Maybe they have no place to return or are lost, having gone too far from the nest.
Female bees will also burrow deep inside the shade of a squash flower: the closer to the source of nectar, the warmer and more quilt-like the air. In the cool hours of morning, look closely for the slight but tell-tale trembling in each flower cup: there, a body dropped mid-flight, mid-thought. How we all retreat behind some folded screen as work or the world presses in too soon, too close, too much. ~Luisa Igloria from “Ode to Tired Bumblebees Who Fall Asleep Inside Flowers With Pollen on Their Butts”
How can I love this spring when it’s pulling me through my life faster than any time before it? When five separate dooms are promised this decade and here I am, just trying to watch a bumblebee cling to its first purple flower. I cannot save this world. But look how it’s trying, once again, to save me. ~James Pearson “This Spring”
It isn’t unusual to find a bumblebee clinging to a spring blossom, all covered in morning dew, having overstayed its welcome as the evening chill hit the night before.
The bumble is too cold to fly, or think, or navigate. Instead it just clings through the night until the sun rises and the air once again warms its wings.
Maybe it got lost. Maybe it is simply weary from flying with such tiny wings. Maybe it has no home to retreat to in the darkness. Maybe it only wants to cling tight to beauty in a dangerous world.
I’ve known what this feels like, dear plump fluffy bumble. I think I know how you feel, patiently waiting for the descent of Love to revive my spirit and warm my wings…
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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Morning of buttered toast; of coffee, sweetened, with milk.
Out the window, snow-spruces step from their cobwebs. Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone. A single cardinal stipples an empty branch— one maple leaf lifted back.
I turn my blessings like photographs into the light; over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:
Ample litany, sparing nothing I hate or love, not-yet-silenced, not-yet-fractured; not-yet-
Not-yet-not.
I move my ear a little closer to that humming figure, I ask him only to stay. ~Jane Hirshfield “Not Yet”from The Lives of the Heart.
To wait for the “not yet” is a hard sweet tension.
There is tension in knowing that something profound is happening – today’s vernal equinox, a brilliant sunrise, a fading sunset, new life growing, but the transformation is not yet complete, and I’m unsure when it will be.
I am still unfinished business and so is everyone else.
Soon, I will be reminded of what is yet to come.
I will know the shock of the empty tomb. My heart will burn within me as more is revealed, through the simple act of bread breaking.
Waiting is never easy; it is painful to be patient, to be unfinished, staying open to possibility and hope.
Others don’t understand why I wait, nor do they comprehend what I could possibly be waiting for.
I’m all-ready, not-yet-finished, but sometime soon.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on, Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
The heart of a woman falls back with the night, And enters some alien cage in its plight, And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars. ~Georgia Douglas Johnson “The Heart of a Woman” fromThe Heart of a Woman and Other Poems
Some mornings I’m not sure what else to do with my worry, so I fling my tender heart out ahead of me, hoping I might eventually catch up with it to bring it back home before nightfall.
Sometimes it is a race to see if anyone else rescues it first or if someone even notices it out there fluttering its way through the day, trying to stay aloft.
Perhaps, in its lonely flight, it will try winging its way home and there I’ll find it patiently waiting for me on the doorstep as I return empty-handed.
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September. Second-year medical student. An early patient interview at the Massachusetts General Hospital Routine hernia repair planned, not done. Abdomen opened and closed. Filled with disease, cancer.
The patient is fifty-six, a workingman, Irish I sit with him, notice the St. Christopher medal around his neck. Can’t hurt, can it? he laughs. I have become his friend.
I bring him a coloring book picture that shows this thing, this unfamiliar organ that melted beneath our hands at dissection: Pancreas.
Leaving his room, crying, avoiding classmates, I take the back stairs. I find myself locked, coatless in the courtyard outside. ~Kelley Jean White “Pandora”
At seventeen years old, I thought I had things figured out. I had graduated near the top of my senior class, was heading off to college, and felt confident about who I was becoming. I had attended church all my life but my commitment to my faith was actually waning rather than strengthening.
In anticipation of college tuition bills, I took a summer job at a local nursing home for $1.25 an hour as a nurses’ aide. My total training was two days following a more experienced aide on her rounds of feeding, pottying, dressing and undressing, and bathing her elderly patients. Then I was assigned patients of my own and during a typical shift I carried a load of 13 patients. It didn’t take long for me to learn the rhythm of caretaking, and I enjoyed the work and my patients.
One woman in particular remains vivid in my memory 52 years later. Irene was in her 80’s with no nearby family, bedridden with a painful bone disease that had crippled her for a decade or more. She was unable to do any of her own self care but her mind remained sharp and her eyes bright. Her hearty greeting cheered me when I’d come in her room several times a shift to turn her on her egg-crate mattress bed to prevent pressure sores on her hips and shoulders.
The simple act of turning her in her bed was an ordeal beyond imagining – it always hurt her. I felt as though I was impaling her on hundreds of sharp needles.
I would prepare her for the turn by cushioning her little body with pads and pillows, but no matter how careful I was, her brittle bones would crackle and crunch like Rice Crispies cereal with every movement. Tears would flow from her eyes and she’d always call out “Oh Oh Oh Oh” during the process but then once settled in her new position, she’d look up at me and say “thank you, dear, for making that so much easier for me.”
I would nearly weep in gratitude at her graciousness when I could do so little to alleviate her suffering.
Before I’d leave the room, Irene would grab my hand and ask when I would be returning. Then she’d say “I know the Lord prepared you to take care of me” and she would murmur a prayer to herself.
As difficult as each “turning” was for both of us, I started to look forward to it. I knew she prayed not only for herself, but I knew she prayed for me as well. I felt her blessing each time I walked into her room knowing she was waiting for me. She trusted me to do my best.
One evening I came to work and was told Irene was running a high fever, and struggling to breathe. She was being given oxygen and was having difficulty taking fluids. The nurse I worked under asked that I check Irene more frequently than my usual routine.
As I approached her bed, Irene reached out and held my hand. She was still alert but very weak. She looked me in the eye and said “You know the Lord is coming for me today?” All I could say was “I know you have waited for Him a long time.” She murmured “Come back soon” and closed her eyes.
I returned to her room as often as I could and found her becoming less responsive, yet still breathing, sometimes short shallow breaths and sometimes long and deep. Near the end of my shift, as morning was dawning, when I entered the room, I knew He had come for her.
She lay silent and relaxed for the first time since I had met her. Her little body, so tight with pain only hours before, seemed at ease. It was my job to prepare her for the mortuary workers who would soon come for her. Her body still warm to touch, I washed and dried her skin and brushed her hair and wrapped her in a fresh sheet, wondering at how I could now turn her easily with no pain and no tears. I could see a trace of a smile at the corners of her mouth. I knew then the Lord had lifted her soul from her imprisonment. He had rewarded her faithful perseverance.
I rejoice in the hope of the glory of the Lord, thanks to Irene. She showed me what it means to watch for the morning when He will come. Though immobile in bed, crippled and wracked with pain, her perseverance led to loving a young teenager uncertain in her faith, and helped point me to my future profession in medicine.
Irene brought the Lord home to me when she went home to Him.
And werejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance Romans 5:2b-3
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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This yellow striped green Caterpillar, climbing up The steep window screen,
Constantly (for lack Of a full set of legs) keeps Humping up his back.
It’s as if he sent By a sort of semaphore Dark omegas meant
To warn of Last Things. Although he doesn’t know it, He will soon have wings,
And I, too, don’t know Toward what undreamt condition Inch by inch I go. ~Richard Wilbur “A Measuring Worm”
But as it is written: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9
Here we are, measuring out our days as if we might determine the length and breadth of our lives by the inches we travel.
We have no idea what’s next, do we? We live, awaiting the promises we have read about, trusting to the Lord a transformation far exceeding our dreams.
Dreaming of wings? Perhaps for worms tethered by their legs to the earth.
Instead those with two legs long for eternity, measuring out inch by inch the infinite nature of God’s love for us.
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You are not surprised at the force of the storm— you have seen it growing. The trees flee. Now you must go out into your heart as onto a vast plain. Now the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains. It is what you have. Be earth now, and evensong. Be the ground lying under that sky. Be modest now, like a thing ripened until it is real, so that he who began it all can feel you when he reaches for you. ~Rainer Maria Rilke from “Onto a Vast Plain”
I feel autumn rain Trying to explain something I do not want to know. ~Richard Wright “Haiku”
I know what this heavy autumn rainfall is trying to tell me –
Be buffed smooth by the winds, and lose your sharp edges Be restored after too many hot weeks of drought and dust Be humbled walking through mud and slosh and slick soppiness Be grateful for this newly opened landscape as trees shed leaves Be aware that sadness has its place this time of year, seeking solace Be balm to ones who are lonely and hunger for encouragement Be ready to remain still, listen, and content with what comes each day.
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So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear…
The tremendous figure which fills the Gospel never concealed His tears. Yet He concealed something…
He never restrained His anger. Yet He restrained something…
There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or imperious isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth. G.K. Chesterton in his closing words of Orthodoxy
The Starry Night -Vincent Van Gogh from MOMA
We see humor in the Bible–irony, puns, absurdity, parodies, paradox- yet we miss hearing the laughter of the heavens as we are simply too close to the joke to get it. In fact, we are likely the punch line of the joke more often than not.
God shows remarkable restraint when it comes to observing the absurd and hilarious antics of His children. We don’t see verses such as, “Jesus laughed” or “Jesus smiled” or “Jesus stifled a chuckle” even though He surely had plenty of opportunity. Either that or He perhaps God wrote us off as a big mistake.
Obviously, He hasn’t written us off. We’re still here and so is He.
We often take ourselves too seriously. A little joy and joke can’t hurt. Listening carefully, we just might hear the laughter of heaven itself.
photo by Emily Vander Haak
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Each one is a gift, no doubt, mysteriously placed in your waking hand or set upon your forehead moments before you open your eyes…
Through the calm eye of the window everything is in its place but so precariously this day might be resting somehow
on the one before it, all the days of the past stacked high like the impossible tower of dishes entertainers used to build on stage.
No wonder you find yourself perched on the top of a tall ladder hoping to add one more. Just another Wednesday
you whisper, then holding your breath, place this cup on yesterday’s saucer without the slightest clink. ~Billy Collins, “Day” from The Art of Drowning
Some days feel like this: teetering at the top of a finite number of minutes and hours, trying to not topple over a life so carefully balanced, even as the wind blows and the fencing sharp and the ladder of time feels rickety.
It is a balancing act – this waking up to try on a new day while juggling everything still in the air from the days before.
To stay on solid ground, while flowing with the river of time, I anchor deep into the calm eye of your unchanging love, reminded, once again, I’m held up from above when everything beneath me feels precarious.
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Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.
I who don’t know the secret wrote the line. They told me
(through a third person) they had found it but not what it was not even
what line it was. No doubt by now, more than a week later, they have forgotten the secret,
the line, the name of the poem. I love them for finding what I can’t find,
and for loving me for the line I wrote, and for forgetting it so that
a thousand times, till death finds them, they may discover it again, in other lines
in other happenings. And for wanting to know it, for
assuming there is such a secret, yes, for that most of all. ~Denise Levertov “The Secret”
The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought.
The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise.
I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return from the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name.
Litanies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth. Ailinon, alleluia! ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand? For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light… Mark 4: 21-22
We all want to know it: learning the elusive secret that would resolve the mystery of our existence. Why are we here at all and for what purpose do we live and breathe?
Some are untroubled by not knowing. They live out each day one step at a time, not looking back and not too worried about what is coming up around the bend while others are always looking for meaning, evaluating the significance of each moment.
Some of us seek middle ground. I am eager to have life’s mysteries cleared up, but content to give the unknown the time it demands. Each day I search for something that asks for my complete attention, whether a line of poetry or a slant of light in the sky, or my grandchild’s arms around my neck. That is enough for me to settle in with gratitude for simply being here. And it feels right to share what I see and read and hear and experience.
So here is one person’s secret of life: don’t give up the search and share what you find along the way…
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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
Morning of buttered toast; of coffee, sweetened, with milk.
Out the window, snow-spruces step from their cobwebs. Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone. A single cardinal stipples an empty branch— one maple leaf lifted back.
I turn my blessings like photographs into the light; over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:
Ample litany, sparing nothing I hate or love, not-yet-silenced, not-yet-fractured; not-yet-
Not-yet-not.
I move my ear a little closer to that humming figure, I ask him only to stay. ~Jane Hirshfield “Not Yet”from The Lives of the Heart.
To wait for the “not yet” is a hard sweet tension.
There is tension in knowing that something profound is happening – a vernal equinox, a brilliant sunrise, a fading sunset, a new life growing, but the transformation is not yet complete, and I’m unsure when it will be.
I am still unfinished business and so is everyone else.
In less than three weeks I will be reminded of what is yet to come. I will know the shock of the empty tomb. My heart will burn within me as more is revealed, through the simple act of bread breaking.
Waiting is never easy; it can be painful to be patient, staying alert to possibility and hope. Others won’t understand why I wait, nor do they comprehend what I could possibly be waiting for.
I’m all-ready, not-yet-finished, not-yet-not.
By waiting and by calm you shall be saved, In quiet and in trust your strength lies. ~Isaiah 30:15
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
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