Tag: praise

To Clasp Hands

barnstormingblog5 Comments

emmagibson

 

rockwell_worship
Freedom of Worship by Norman Rockwell

To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.
~Karl Barth

Prayer may be easiest for the youngest among us.  It can be amazingly spontaneous for kids — an outright exclamation of joy, a crying plea for help, a word of unprompted gratitude.   As a child I can remember making up my own songs and monologues to God as I wandered alone in our farm’s woods, enjoying His company in my semi-solitude.  I’m not sure when I began to silence myself out of self-conscious embarrassment, but I stayed silent for many years, unwilling to put voice to the prayers that rattled in my head.  In my childhood, prayer in public schools had been hushed into a mere moment of silence, and intuitively I knew silence had never changed anything.  The world became more and more disorderly in the 60’s and 70’s and in my increasingly indoctrinated mind, there was no prayer I could say that would make a difference.

How wrong could I and my secular education be?

Nothing can right the world until we are right with our Creator through talking to Him out of the depth of our need and fear.  Nothing can right the world until we submit ourselves wholly, bowed low, hands clasped, eyes closed, articulating the joy, the thanks, and the petitions weighing on our hearts.

An uprising is possible when a voice comes alive, unashamed, un-selfconscious, rising up from within us, uttering words that beseech and thank and praise.  To rise up with hands clasped together calls upon a power which needs no weapons, only words, to overcome and overwhelm the shambles left of our world.

Nothing can be more victorious than the Amen — our Amen — at the end.  So be it and so shall it be.

Amen, and Amen again.

 

stgiles

rainbowfarm3

Everything Brief and Finite

barnstormingblog8 Comments

scanlon1

bluestskies

octobertwinlakes20

photo by Joel DeWaard
above  photo by Joel DeWaard

morningleaf1

Another October. The maples have done their slick trick
of turning yellow almost overnight; summer’s hazy skies
are cobalt blue.

I want to praise things
that cannot last. The scarlet and orange leaves
are already gone, blown down by a cold rain,
crushed and trampled. They rise again in leaf meal
and wood smoke. The Great Blue Heron’s returned to the pond,
settles in the reeds like a steady flame.
Geese cut a wedge out of the sky, drag the gray days
behind them like a skein of old wool.
I want to praise everything brief and finite.
Overhead, the Pleiades fall into place; Orion rises.
Great Horned Owls muffle the night with their calls;
night falls swiftly, tucking us in her black velvet robe,
the stitches showing through, all those little lights,
our little lives, rising and falling.
~Barbara Crooker from her poem “Equinox” in Selected Poems. © Future Cycle Press, 2015

This fading transitional October
renders us transient ourselves-
only visitors here,
not laying down claims
but passing through
while enjoying the scenery,
knowing that this too won’t last
but it is sweet
~let me say it again~
oh so sweet
while we’re here.

sunrisepond22115

geesesouth

fulmoon2

God’s Play With Creation

barnstormingblog4 Comments

sunsetgrasses71615

sunset72615

sunset726152

Worship grounds me again
in the real world of God’s creation,
dislodging me from whatever world
I have imagined for myself.

I have come to believe
when we despair of praise,
when the wonder of creation and our place in it are lost to us,
it’s often because we’ve lost sight of our true role as creatures

– we have tried to do too much,
pretending to be in such control of things
that we are indispensable.

It’s a hedge against mortality and,
if you’re like me,
you take a kind of comfort in being busy.

The danger is that we will come to feel
too useful,
so full of purpose
and the necessity of fulfilling obligations
that we lose sight
of God’s play with creation,
and with ourselves.
~Kathleen Norris from The Quotidian Mysteries

 

Too busy to notice,
too busy to care,
losing sight in our real purpose:
we are here as creatures,
not creators.

So we must cease all other pursuits
and pursue worship,
praising God that we are made
in His image,
not He in our image.

seattledaisy

roses71415

wwuredsquare

bouganvillae

seattleflorist

Singing Its Alleluia

barnstormingblog4 Comments

tennant62119

sunset626152

daisygrass

Sixty-seven years, oh Lord, to look at the clouds,
the trees in deep, moist summer,
daisies and morning glories
opening every morning

their small, ecstatic faces—
Or maybe I should just say

how I wish I had a voice
like the meadowlark’s,

sweet, clear, and reliably
slurring all day long

from the fencepost, or the long grass
where it lives

in a tiny but adequate grass hut
beside the mullein and the everlasting,

the faint-pink roses
that have never been improved, but come to bud

then open like little soft sighs
under the meadowlark’s whistle, its breath-praise,

its thrill-song, its anthem, its thanks, its
alleluia. Alleluia, oh Lord.
~Mary Oliver “While I am Writing a Poem to Celebrate Summer, the Meadowlark Begins to Sing”

 

Each day opens to new possibility
with a sigh, a breath and thankfulness,
once in awhile tears, sometimes heartbreak,
and flat out fear of what comes next.

Even so,
through it all
there is a song of praise, that alleluia
that reminds us why we are
and who we live for.
All is well,
it is well with my soul.

begonia622155

rose611151

rosewwu

wwubird

Shatter Me

barnstormingblog6 Comments

img_0118

 

As through a long-abandoned half-standing house
only someone lost could find,

which, with its paneless windows and sagging crossbeams,
its hundred crevices in which a hundred creatures hoard and nest,

seems both ghost of the life that happened there
and living spirit of this wasted place,

wind seeks and sings every wound in the wood
that is open enough to receive it,

shatter me God into my thousand sounds.

~Christian Wiman “Small Prayer in a Hard Wind”

 

May I,
though sagging and graying,
leaning perilously,
be porous enough
to allow life’s gusts
through me
without being pushed over
in a heap.

So the wind
makes me sing
filling my every crack
and defect,
shattered into pieces,
a mosaic of praises.
~E Gibson

The Pulse of Day

barnstormingblog2 Comments

sunrise824143

mooraskrigg

Praise the wet snow
       falling early.
Praise the shadow
       my neighbor’s chimney casts on the tile roof
even this gray October day that should, they say,
have been golden.
               Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
      the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney’s shadow.
Praise
god or the gods, the unknown,
that which imagined us, which stays
our hand,
our murderous hand,
                   and gives us
still,
in the shadow of death,
           our daily life,
           and the dream still
of goodwill, of peace on earth.
Praise
flow and change, night and
the pulse of day.
~Denise Levertov from “Gloria”

mistybarn

sunrise10126

 

Joy in the Making

barnstormingblog1 Comment

sunrise102714

rosemountain

I love all beauteous things,
        I seek and adore them;
God hath no better praise,
And man in his hasty days
        Is honoured for them.

I too will something make
        And joy in the making;
Altho’ to-morrow it seem
Like the empty words of a dream
        Remembered on waking.
~Robert Bridges

sunriseleaf

sunrise1027144

sunriseleaf2

A Dialect of Pure Being

barnstormingblog1 Comment

fallleaves10141

fallleaves1014

rockies2

The world does not need words.
It articulates itself in sunlight, leaves, and shadows.
The stones on the path are no less real
for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only
the dialect of pure being.

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always–
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.
~Dana Giola from “Words”

rainsun102314

falleaves10143

Uprising

barnstormingblog3 Comments

To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.
~Karl Barth

Prayer is easier for the youngest among us.  It can be amazingly spontaneous for kids — an outright exclamation of joy, a crying plea for help, a word of unprompted gratitude.   As a child I can remember making up my own songs and monologues to God as I wandered alone in our farm’s woods, enjoying His company in my semi-solitude.  I’m not sure when I began to silence myself out of self-conscious embarrassment, but I stayed silent for many years, unwilling to put voice to the prayers that rattled in my head.  In my childhood, prayer in public schools had been hushed into a mere moment of silence, and intuitively I knew silence never changed anything.  The world became more and more disorderly in the 60’s and 70’s and in my increasingly indoctrinated mind, there was no prayer I could say that would make a difference either.

How wrong could I and my education be.  Nothing can right the world until we are right with God through talking to Him out of our depth of need and fear.  Nothing can right the world until we submit ourselves wholly, bowed low, hands clasped, eyes closed, articulating the joy, the thanks, and the petitions weighing on our hearts.

An uprising is possible when a voice comes alive, unashamed, un-selfconscious, rising up from within us, uttering words that beseech and thank and praise.  To rise up with hands clasped together calls upon a power needing no weapons, only words, to overcome and overwhelm the shambles left of our world.

Nothing can be more victorious than the Amen, our Amen, at the end.  So be it and so shall it be.

Amen, and Amen again.

 

A Faint Tracing

barnstormingblog2 Comments
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

“Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.”
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

We were meant to be more than mere blemish, more than a sullied spot or gaping hole on the surface, imperfect and inconvenient.
We were created as air and water and flesh and bones, from the covering of skin to our deeper darkened cavities that fill and empty.
We were created out of Word and Silence.
We were created to weep and praise, praise and weep.

We were meant to be mystery, perfect in our imperfection.  Blemish made beautiful.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten