Not the bristle-bearded Igors bent under burlap sacks, not peasants knee-deep in the rice paddy muck, nor the serfs whose quarter-moon sickles make the wheat fall in waves they don’t get to eat. My friend the Franciscan nun says we misread that word meek in the Bible verse that blesses them. To understand the meek (she says) picture a great stallion at full gallop in a meadow, who— at his master’s voice—seizes up to a stunned but instant halt. So with the strain of holding that great power in check, the muscles along the arched neck keep eddying, and only the velvet ears prick forward, awaiting the next order. ~Mary Karr “Who the Meek Are Not” from Sinners Welcome
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5:5
I’ve seen meekness like this.
Our stallion allowed his strength and passion to be under control. He wanted to listen. He wanted to see what we might ask of him. He wanted to be with us.
This makes no sense given the world’s demand now for “strongman” leadership – someone who submits to no one, apologizes to no one, feels compassion for no one.
Globally and individually, we have desperate need of meekness. True strength is when someone knows the extent of their power but resists the need to prove it to anyone else.
The meek are ready, waiting for what God will have them do next.
AI image created for this post
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Had I not been awake I would have missed it, A wind that rose and whirled until the roof Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore
And got me up, the whole of me a-patter, Alive and ticking like an electric fence: Had I not been awake I would have missed it
It came and went too unexpectedly And almost it seemed dangerously, Hurtling like an animal at the house,
A courier blast that there and then Lapsed ordinary. But not ever Afterwards. And not now. ~Seamus Heaney “Had I Not Been Awake”
October is the month of the sudden warm wind-blow, usually arriving from the south, intent on scattering leaves and slamming doors on its way past to head north to Canada. Our wind chimes outside clang a cacophony rather than the usual gentle harmonic tones. The window shades become percussion instruments over our still-open windows. Anything not fastened down goes airborne.
The air blows in a rush from somewhere else, bringing new smells and sensations, surging with an electric energy even as it tries to pull power lines down to render us powerless.
Nothing feels ordinary in a windstorm; there is no easy sleep.
And just as suddenly, the autumn storm passes and is gone. The trees have been stripped, embarrassed at their sudden nakedness. Branches litter the yard and driveway like so many toothpicks. My illusion of comfort and control has been undone by such a show of force and power.
I face my own frailty in the wake of life’s storms. Had I not been awake, I might have missed that altogether.
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We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. ~T.S. Eliot from “The Hollow Men”
Here is the scarecrow, see him stand Upon the newly planted land; A figure rugged and forlorn, A silent watcher of the corn.
His dangling legs, his arms spread wide, A lone man of the countryside; Uncouth, the butt of pen and tongue, Unheralded, unsought, unsung.
To you, old scarecrow, then this lay To cheer you on your lonely way; Would that all men, their whole lives through, Served some good purpose same as you. ~Annie Stone “The Scarecrow” (written on her 103rd birthday)
Once I said to a scarecrow, “You must be tired of standing in this lonely field.”
And he said, “The joy of scaring is a deep and lasting one, and I never tire of it.”
Said I, after a minute of thought, “It is true; for I too have known that joy.”
Said he, “Only those who are stuffed with straw can know it.”
Then I left him, not knowing whether he had complimented or belittled me.
A year passed, during which the scarecrow turned philosopher.
And when I passed by him again I saw two crows building a nest under his hat. ~Kahlil Gibran “The Scarecrow”
“I’ve seen myself, Mother Rigby! I’ve seen myself for the wretched, ragged, empty thing I am. I’ll exist no longer.”
Snatching the pipe from his mouth, he flung it with all his might against the chimney, and at the same instant sank upon the floor, a medley of straw and tattered garments, with some sticks protruding from the heap and a shriveled pumpkin in the midst. The eyeholes were now lustreless but the rudely carved gap that just before had been a mouth still seemed to twist itself into a despairing grin, and was so far human.
“Poor fellow!” quoth Mother Rigby, with a rueful glance at the relics of her ill-fated contrivance. “My poor, dear, pretty Feathertop! There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world made up of just such a jumble of worn-out, forgotten and good-for-nothing trash as he was, yet they live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what they are. And why should my poor puppet be the only one to know himself and perish for it?”
“I could easily give him another chance, and send him forth again tomorrow. But no! His feelings are too tender–his sensibilities too deep. He seems to have too much heart to bustle for his own advantage in such an empty and heartless world. Well, well! I’ll make a scarecrow of him, after all. ‘Tis an innocent and useful vocation, and will suit my darling well; and if each of his human brethren had as fit a one, ‘twould be the better for mankind.” ~Nathaniel Hawthorne from “Feathertop”(the story of a scarecrow brought to life)
We don’t see many real working scarecrows around anymore. Corn and grain fields are so vast and abundant, the loss of a few kernels to raccoons or crows is not devastating to the farmer, so why frighten them away?
Instead, scarecrows have become the stuff of cheerful autumn decorations, standing alongside cornstalks and hay bales on porches, scaring no one. Or they are portrayed as horribly sinister and menacing in Halloween movies and haunted houses – a poor scarecrow’s original purpose twisted to frighten away far more than hungry critters.
Perhaps scarier, as our election season progresses, we’re seeing “hollow” politicians portraying themselves as something far more than they really are. We watch them “lean together, headpiece filled with straw.” It doesn’t take long to be exposed as“wretched, ragged, and empty.”
The worthy politician with good goals and purpose “seems to have too much heart to bustle for his own advantage in such an empty and heartless world.” Sometimes they decide to simply retire into obscurity and the garden.
…or they should…
The honest and genuine scarecrow returns to his post in the cornfield – such an innocent and useful vocation. If only we each had as fit a job, it would be all the better for mankind.
(A personal note: back in 1972, I combined Eliot’s “Hollow Men” and Hawthorne’s “Feathertop” in a scarecrow-themed interpretive reading that garnered Washington State’s top high school prize, sending me to nationals at Wake Forest in North Carolina. There I, a true country bumpkin, was soundly and deservedly trounced by far more talented high schoolers from all over the country.
At least I was able to say “I went to nationals…,” a very “hollow men” thing to claim.)
…I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors into the temple. ~Mary Oliver from “Today” from A Thousand Mornings
Some days warrant stillness. On this Sabbath day of rest, I seek to be quiet as a feather, silently in place, listening.
Maybe, to hear each other breathe again. Surely, to hear the Word and breath of God.
A funny thing about feathers: alone, each one is merely fluff and air. Together — feathers become lift and power, with strength and will to soar beyond the tether of gravity’s pull on our flawed humanity to return back to dust.
As quiet as a feather, joined and united, one overlapping another, we can rise above and fly as far as life and breath can take us.
May peace be still.
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With great power there must also come great responsibility… ~The “Peter Parker Principle” from Spiderman Comics (1962)
From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. Luke 12:48b (NIV)
Jesus concludes his parable of the wise and faithful servant with this line, which has become a modern mantra – thanks to Spiderman, the U.S. Supreme Court, Winston Churchill, Bill Gates and a few recent U.S. presidents.
Yet no one actually quotes the full New Testament parable itself ending with this very concept.
The story Jesus tells in Luke 12: 42-48 makes us wince, just as it is meant to:
42 The Lord answered, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? 43 It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. 44 Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions.45 But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk. 46 The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.47 “The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. 48 But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.
The same story as told in the gospel of Matthew ends not only with “a few blows” but with “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Somehow that part is left out of Spiderman’s story, even though Spiderman experiences plenty of weeping in accepting his fate. Still, this is a bit too close to home for those in power and those with immense wealth — like Peter Parker’s reluctant acceptance of his Spidey powers, we know all too well the reality of just how fragile and weak we really are despite American’s relative wealth compared to the rest of the world.
Those who live as Christians have particular responsibility and accountability, identifying by name with Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who made the ultimate sacrifice for humanity. He took the blows so we would be spared – no more weeping and gnashing of teeth.
On this federal holiday honoring our government’s top executive position, we must continually hold our elected leaders to their vowed oaths of responsibility and accountability. As individual citizens entrusted with much, we have much to give even before we’re asked.
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We think of him as safe beneath the steeple, Or cosy in a crib beside the font, But he is with a million displaced people On the long road of weariness and want. For even as we sing our final carol His family is up and on that road, Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel, Glancing behind and shouldering their load. Whilst Herod rages still from his dark tower Christ clings to Mary, fingers tightly curled, The lambs are slaughtered by the men of power, And death squads spread their curse across the world. But every Herod dies, and comes alone To stand before the Lamb upon the throne. ~Malcolm Guite “Refugee”
We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard heartedness, all indifference, and all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet. ~Hermann Hesse, from Vivos Voco, 1919
For centuries, too many people have had to make the choice of living (and likely dying) oppressed in the midst of conflict and war or they attempt their escape to an uncertain fate on the other side of a border, a fence, or a turbulent sea. Some are given no options and are sold into slavery, taken where their captors wish, or have been rounded up and forced to live far from their ancestral homes.
Some of us descend from people who made the difficult decision to escape war, or hunger, or oppression, or extreme poverty. We live and thrive by the grace and mercy of God to these ancestors.
This God was a refugee Himself, fleeing from a king who sought Him dead. This God knows what it is like to be hated and pursued. He knows the wrath and cruelty of His fellow man.
This God has a name, He has a face and a voice and it is He who ultimately holds our fate in His hands.
This God is not forgotten nor has He forgotten us. He will return to forever banish the darkness surrounding us.
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”
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I heard an old man speak once, someone who had been sober for fifty years, a very prominent doctor. He said that he’d finally figured out a few years ago that his profound sense of control, in the world and over his life, is another addiction and a total illusion. He said that when he sees little kids sitting in the back seat of cars, in those car seats that have steering wheels, with grim expressions of concentration on their faces, clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car to do whatever it is doing, he thinks of himself and his relationship with God: God who drives along silently, gently amused, in the real driver’s seat. ~Anne Lamott from Operating Instructions
We want to steer life in the way we want it to go: our plans, our timing, our chosen destination, our hopes and dreams matter first and foremost.
And then life happens and suddenly the road ceases to look familiar and we don’t seem to be going the direction we intended.
Who is doing the driving anyway?
We are under the illusion that we are in control:
Sadness and hopelessness, frustration and anger stem from discouragement over our lack of control over where we are headed. We feel there is no turning back, unable to see the road signs to another path to a different future.
There is an epidemic of hopelessness and helplessness especially among children and young adults – their path is murky, their debts too great, their reserves too limited, their foundations too shaky, their hope nonexistent, their future too dim.
Relinquishing control by giving up the driver’s seat is not in our nature. We want to be seen as competent and feel as though we are prepared to be the captain of our fate.
Instead we need to give up our carefully planned-out life to the God who created us and has it all planned for us.
We turn over the steering wheel saying: may it be to me as you say.
May it be. Your plans, Your purpose, Your promise. Let it be.
Even if it may pierce my soul as with a sword: You are there to plug the bleeding hole.
And I will follow wherever you steer me.
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Usually, after turning out that forgotten barn light, I sit on the edge of the tractor bucket for a few minutes and let my eyes adjust to the night outside. City people always notice the darkness here, but it’s never very dark if you wait till your eyes owl out a little….
I’m always glad to have to walk down to the barn in the night, and I always forget that it makes me glad. I heave on my coat, stomp into my barn boots and trudge down toward the barn light, muttering at myself. But then I sit in the dark, and I remember this gladness, and I walk back up to the gleaming house, listening for the horses. ~Verlyn Klinkenborg from A Light in the Barn
Inside the barn the sheep were standing, pushed close to one another. Some were dozing, some had eyes wide open listening in the dark. Some had no doubt heard of wolves. They looked weary with all the burdens they had to carry, like being thought of as stupid and cowardly, disliked by cowboys for the way they eat grass about an inch into the dirt, the silly look they have just after shearing, of being one of the symbols of the Christian religion. In the darkness of the barn their woolly backs were full of light gathered on summer pastures. Above them their white breath was suspended, while far off in the pine woods, night was deep in silence. The owl and rabbit were wondering, along with the trees, if the air would soon fill with snowflakes, but the power that moves through the world and makes our hair stand on end was keeping the answer to itself. ~Tom Hennen “Sheep in the Winter Night” from Darkness Sticks to Everything: Collected and New Poems.
There is so much about this world I don’t understand – headline news of each day seems to cause more questions and a sense of even deeper mystery. There are times when I feel all my hairs rising in gooseflesh at my privilege of being alive witnessing history as it plays out now, and wondering where it will lead to.
I don’t have to have answers now to appreciate the mystery of the gift given to me each day.
Half a lifetime ago, I was far more confident of the extent of my learned knowledge after so many years in school and training; now I am far more content about knowing there is much I will never understand.
All shall be revealed in the fullness of time. And time is getting fuller by the minute.
I want to know why too many are taken from us too young, why there is persisting darkness and evil causing us fear and suffering, why we stumble and fall and fail before we can ever consider flying. I want to know why we can’t trust one another or trust God when there are simply things that can’t be known yet.
Most of all I need faith that God has my life and your life in His hands. His power moving through our hearts is real and true and trustworthy even if we don’t know all the answers to our questions yet.
So like sheep, huddled and frightened, we wait for our Shepherd’s voice to tell us what comes next. He leaves the light on for us when we are overwhelmed by the darkness.
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…I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors into the temple. ~Mary Oliver from “Today” from A Thousand Mornings
Some days warrant stillness. On this Sabbath day of rest, seek to be quiet as a feather, silently in place, listening.
Maybe, hear each other again. Surely, hear the Word of God.
A funny thing about feathers: alone, each one is merely fluff and air. Together — feathers become lift and power, with strength and will to soar beyond the tether of gravity’s pull on our flawed humanity back to dust.
As quiet as a feather, joined and united, one overlapping another, rise above and fly as far as your life and breath can take you.
May peace be still.
Thank you, once again, to the chickens displayed at the NW Washington Fair in Lynden last week, who struggled to be still in their cages for these close-up feather photos….
More Barnstorming photos and poems from Lois Edstrom are available in this book from Barnstorming. Order here:
I am still skeptical about the reasons some seek spirituality in the land, for the spirituality the land offers is anything but easy.
It is the spirituality of a God who would, with lightening and earthquakes, sneeze away the bland moralism preached in many pulpits, a wildly free, undomesticated divinity, the same God who demands of Moses from a burning bush, “Remove your shoes, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
When God appears to Job, the comforting sentiments we might expect to feel are absent because such sentiments are at most God’s trappings, not the infinite himself. The God who speaks to Job from the whirlwind reminds him that, comforting or terrifying, he alone is God. To be satisfied with anything less would be the spiritual catastrophe the Old Testament calls idolatry.
Some of our idols shatter in the West’s rugged vastness, others remain.
Perhaps God leaves exposed the land’s brokenness – the scars of forest fires, the fossils of extinct biospheres, rifts showing ancient continents now scattered like puzzle pieces – to remind us that he is greater than the icon, too.
The heavens and earth will wear out like a garment, the Psalmist says, like clothes that are changed.
“But You neither change, nor have an end.” Psalm 102:27 ~Anthony Lusvardi from “Nature is Your Church?”
We are now 45 days into a hotter dry spell this summer with a slight possibility of some rain next week. Everything here in the Pacific Northwest is looking as it would in late August with the snow melt in the Cascades much accelerated from its usual timeline. With the fires already happening for weeks on the eastern side of the state, as well as to the north of us in British Columbia and south in Oregon and California, we are looking at a withering August of smoke and ash.
Dan and I headed up the Mt. Baker Highway yesterday evening to see how bare Baker and Shuksan look up close. We wonder what snow will be left before our typical precipitation begins in earnest in early October. These seemingly unchanging monoliths are being stripped of their usual garments, now naked and vulnerable. They are subject to God’s transforming power just as surely as we are.
When I stand at the foot of these peaks, I never fail to be awed to a whisper, as if I were inside an immense cathedral. God reminds us to remove our shoes out of respect for His holy ground. Yet I worship not the mountains nor the awe-inspiring landscape they are placed in, but worship their Creator whose strength and love is greater than all.
I tread lightly. I speak softly. I remove my shoes. I witness the fading light.
God, the eternal, the unchangeable, takes my breath away, as only He can..
Here is an opportunity to own a Barnstorming book of more photos like these along with poems written for each poem by Lois Edstrom. It is available to order here:
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