Tag: prayer

To Walk Alongside

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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”

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.

Only when I’m in possession of my own heart can I be present for another in a healing, encouraging, empowering way. Then I have a gift to offer, the best gift I possess—the gift of a self that is whole, that stands in the world on its own two feet.
~Parker Palmer writing about Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey”

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

We are born hollering, suddenly set apart,
already aware of our emptiness
from the first breath,
each tiny air sac bursting
with the air of a fallen world~

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

So we are mended
through our walk with others
who are 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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Stalk the Gaps

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The gaps are the thing. 
The gaps are the spirit’s one home, 
the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean 
that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. 
The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; 
they are fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, 
the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. 
Go up into the gaps. 
If you can find them; 
they shift and vanish too. 
Stalk the gaps. 
Squeak into a gap in the soil, 
turn, and unlock…
a universe.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed … We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.
~Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water

There is a yawning separation threatening us all right now as we peer over the frightening edge of another tight election.

Once again there is a fissuring gap between us.

People who have eaten at our tables, who were good friends, who we have worshiped alongside – became estranged. This separation was buoyed by blowing of the chill wind of politics where once there had been warmth and nurture and caring. 

We disagreed then and continue to disagree. We no longer understand one another’s points of view.

How did we allow these gaps between us to develop?
How do we close these fissures so something new and vital can grow?
How can we stalk the gaps together?

Not one of us has the corner on the Truth; if we are honest with ourselves and each other, we cower together for safety in the cracks of this world, watching helplessly as the backside of God passes by, His face too holy for us to gaze upon.

He places us there together for our own good. I see you there alongside me.

We are weaker together when one side wins and the other loses. We are dependent together. We need to hold each other up as we look over the edge of the upcoming cliff.

Only His Word – nothing else –
can fill the open gaping hollow before us.
His Grace is great enough
to fill every hole
bridge every gap
bring hope to the hopeless
plant seeds for the future
and restore us wholly to each other.

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Now in Age I Bud Again

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How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean 

Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring; 

         To which, besides their own demean, 

The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. 

                      Grief melts away 

                      Like snow in May, 

         As if there were no such cold thing. 

         Who would have thought my shriveled heart 

Could have recovered greenness? It was gone 

         Quite underground; as flowers depart 

To see their mother-root, when they have blown, 

                      Where they together 

                      All the hard weather, 

         Dead to the world, keep house unknown. 

         These are thy wonders, Lord of power, 

Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell 

         And up to heaven in an hour; 

Making a chiming of a passing-bell. 

                      We say amiss 

                      This or that is: 

         Thy word is all, if we could spell. 

         Oh that I once past changing were, 

Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither! 

         Many a spring I shoot up fair, 

Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither; 

                      Nor doth my flower 

                      Want a spring shower, 

         My sins and I joining together. 

         But while I grow in a straight line, 

Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own, 

         Thy anger comes, and I decline: 

What frost to that? what pole is not the zone 

                      Where all things burn, 

                      When thou dost turn, 

         And the least frown of thine is shown? 

         And now in age I bud again, 

After so many deaths I live and write; 

         I once more smell the dew and rain, 

And relish versing. Oh, my only light, 

                      It cannot be 

                      That I am he 

         On whom thy tempests fell all night. 

         These are thy wonders, Lord of love, 

To make us see we are but flowers that glide; 

         Which when we once can find and prove, 

Thou hast a garden for us where to bide; 

                      Who would be more, 

                      Swelling through store, 

         Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.
~George Herbert “The Flower”

Our small church has several gracious and kind gardeners who share the produce from their yards each week to provide a fresh bouquet to sit on the table in front of our humble wooden pulpit.

It is a treat to walk into church and see what has been brought to the altar on Sunday morning. I have started to keep a photo album of these very special Sunday “pulpit posies.”

Why are these special? After all, almost every church displays a floral arrangement every Sunday.

These are special as most of these flowers are seeded, watered, fertilized and nurtured by one of our own, grown with love and caring, just as God cares for each of His children.

These are special as some are considered simple weeds, and are picked from ditches and hedges. They are still part of God’s creation and have a wild beauty that can be as breathtaking as a hothouse orchid.

These are special because they often go home with a congregant or visitor who will enjoy their loveliness for many more days, as if they represent the manifestation of God’s Word itself.

Some of us are dahlias, zinnias and roses. Some of us are rare gardenias and orchids. Most of us are dandelions, sagebrush, fireweed, burdock, and daisies populating the ditches.

No matter which roots we sprout from, or where, we are the wonders of this gardening God of love.

As we age, we bud afresh for Him.

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A Painful Wuthering

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Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.
~Emily Brontë “Fall, Leaves, Fall”

It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.
~Emily Brontë from Wuthering Heights

The loudest crows
cawing over the tops of the oaks
call me to autumn already,
and though my back is to the window,

I know the sky must be a gray wuthering,
and the curlews are crying. The wind
must be moaning as it goes sweeping
across heath and moors and the spikes
of purple heather thousands of miles away
from where my body sits; yet

I feel the gorse
grazing my ankles as I go.
~Andrea Potos “Brontean Morning” from Her Joy Becomes

I avoid watching sad movies and will close a book that is clearly heading for a weepy ending.

I don’t need to wrap myself around things that hurt when there is enough sadness and pain in the world already. Deep emotion sticks to me like velcro, even when I know the tragedy is not my own. I take it on as if it is.

As a result, the Brontë novel Wuthering Heights is not my cup of tea. I suffered through the book as well as the movie versions. It is grim with wild, destructive passions that only lead to more sorrow. I become immersed in those desperately gray “wuthering” scenes feeling the sharp thorns of the words I read that end up drawing blood from me.

But most suffering is not at all fictional. When I become aware of tragedy happening far away, when the hurricane leaves behind terrible devastation or bombs and bullets rip communities to shreds, even though there is little I can physically do to help, I can’t turn away and not look. I can’t close the book that makes me sad and uncomfortable.

I too must feel the hurt, embracing the thorns rather than avoiding them.

Jesus did just that, taking it all upon Himself. He never turned away and still, now, today, He is pierced, bloodied for our sake.

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A Web of Light

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Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening
into the house and gate of heav’n:
to enter into that gate and dwell in that house,
where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling,
but one equal light;
no noise nor silence,
but one equal music;
no fears nor hopes,
but one equal possession;
no ends nor beginnings,
but one equal eternity;
in the habitation of thy glory and dominion,
world without end.
Amen.
~John Donne – a prayer

God made sun and moon to distinguish seasons,
and day and night, and
we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons;
but God hath made no decree
to distinguish the seasons of His mercies;
in Paradise, the fruits were ripe the first minute,
and in Heaven it is always autumn,
His mercies are ever in their maturity.

He brought light out of darkness,
not out of a lesser light;
He can bring thy summer out of winter,
though thou have no spring;
though in the ways of fortune,
or understanding, or conscience,
thou have been benighted till now,
wintered and frozen,
clouded and eclipsed,
damped and benumbed,
smothered and stupified till now:

Now God comes to thee,
not as in the dawning of the day,
not as in the bud of the spring,
but as the sun at noon,
to illustrate all shadows,
as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries,
all occasions invite His mercies,
and all times are His seasons.
~John Donne in Christmas Day Sermon 1624

In the center of my chest,
a kindling there in the hollow,
as if a match had just been struck,
or the blinds snapped up on a sealed room,
gold suffusing the air,
and through the wide windows,
a solstice unfolding,
mine for the lengthening days.
~Andrea Potts “On Reading John Donne for the First Time” from Her Joy Becomes

…humanity is like an enormous spider web, so that if you touch it anywhere, you set the whole thing trembling…

Just as John Donne believed that any man’s death, when we are confronted by it, reminds us of our common destiny as human beings: to be born, to live, to struggle a while, and finally to die.

We are all of us in it together…As we move around this world and as we act with kindness, perhaps, or with indifference, or with hostility, toward the people we meet, we too are setting the great spider web a-tremble. The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt.

Our lives are linked together. No man is an island.
~Frederick Buechner from The Hungering Dark

Words written by a pastor over 400 years ago still illuminate,
shining a light through the centuries.

Donne could not have known how his insights would remain a beacon in the darkness of our inhumanity, or how his poetry of love and faith continues to tug inside the web of human connection.

A touch within the web, whether slight or seemingly insignificant, gentle or hostile, sets us all trembling. We are linked together, journeying toward an equal light in a world without end.

Amen and amen.

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Tell About It

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Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
― Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields…
Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.
~Mary Oliver from “Why I Wake Early”

(to remind myself)

i  

Make a place to sit down.  
Sit down. Be quiet.  
You must depend upon  
affection, reading, knowledge,  
skill—more of each  
than you have—inspiration,  
work, growing older, patience,  
for patience joins time  
to eternity.

ii  

Breathe with unconditional breath  
the unconditioned air.  
Stay away from anything  
that obscures the place it is in.  
There are no unsacred places;  
there are only sacred places  
and desecrated places.  

iii  

Accept what comes from silence.  
Make the best you can of it.  
Of the little words that come  
out of the silence, like prayers  
prayed back to the one who prays,  
make a poem that does not disturb  
the silence from which it came.
~Wendell Berry from “How to Be a Poet”

Here I am, telling you what I pluck out of silence every morning,
tossing my prayer to the world to share
what is astonishing to me
so as not to forget each moment.

Here you are, listening to this silence every morning,
reacting with kindness, receiving my heart –
this is even more astonishing to me
and sacred.

Thank you for being here to see what I find.
Thank you for sharing with others in your life.
Thank you for letting me know it makes a difference.
Thank you for making the best of my little words and pictures.

Welcome back, each and every day.
Happy you are here.

If you are interested in receiving some newly created photo note cards as a thank you gift for your financial support of this website, the new cards and donation information can be found here.

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A World Too Beautiful

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O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with color! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,– Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,– let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay “God’s World”

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? 
I’m ready to go back. I should have listened to you.
That’s all human beings are!
Just blind people.
~Thornton Wilder, from Emily’s monologue in Our Town

Let me not wear blinders through my days.
Let me see and hear and feel it all
even when it seems too much to bear.

Lord,  prepare me to be so whelmed at your world, that
Heaven itself will be familiar, and not that far,
Just round the corner.

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The Sweetness in Ripening

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How joyful to be together, alone
as when we first were joined
in our little house by the river
long ago, except that now we know

each other, as we did not then;
and now instead of two stories fumbling
to meet, we belong to one story
that the two, joining, made. And now

we touch each other with the tenderness
of mortals, who know themselves:
how joyful to feel the heart quake

at the sight of a grandmother,
old friend in the morning light,
beautiful in her blue robe!
~Wendell Berry “The Blue Robe” from New Collected Poems

Our hair turns white with our ripening
as though to fly away in some
coming wind, bearing the seed
of what we know. It was bitter to learn
that we come to death as we come
to love, bitter to face
the just and solving welcome
that death prepares. But that is bitter
only to the ignorant, who pray
it will not happen. Having come
the bitter way to better prayer, we have
the sweetness of ripening. How sweet
to know you by the signs of this world!
~Wendell Berry from “Ripening”

My husband and I have spent 43 years of late summer evenings together – much like this one – breathing in the smell of ripening cornfields and freshly mowed silage grass lying in windrows waiting to be picked up for winter forage.   

Just down the road is the smaller farm we first bought when we wished to leave the city behind for a new life amid quieter surroundings. 

The seedling trees my husband planted there are now a thick grove and effective windbreak from the bitter howling northeasters we endured. Our oldest son and his family live in that farm house now, moving home after more than a decade of mission work in Japan.

There is such sweetness knowing the first home we owned together is home for two of our grandchildren.

Our three children were raised on this road and they strolled these roads with us many times, before flying far away for their life’s work. My husband and I continue our walk together, just the two of us, pondering how the passage of time could be so swift that our hair has turned white.

We are going to seed when it was only yesterday we were so young.

Indeed we have ripened before we’re feeling ready. It is bitter sweetness relinquishing the youth we once knew, to face a future we can never know.

It is the mystery that keeps us coming back, walking the same steps those younger legs once did, admiring the same setting sun, smelling the same late summer smells.  But we are not the same as we were, having progressed to a fruitfulness God intended all along.

Ripening and readying, our seed now flies with the wind.

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A Pseudo-Saintly Bug

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From whence arrived the praying mantis?
From outer space, or lost Atlantis?
glimpse the grin, green metal mug
at masks the pseudo-saintly bug,
Orthopterous, also carnivorous,
And faintly whisper, Lord deliver us.
~Ogden Nash “The Praying Mantis”

Crouching on a cabbage leaf,
there’s a mantis, praying.
Sneak up very quietly –
You will hear him saying:

Bless the cricket,
Bless the slug.
Bless the fly
and ladybug.
Bless the aphid.
Bless the bee.
Bless the spider
and the flea.
Bless the lacewing.
Bless the gnat.
Make them healthy.
Make them fat.
Guide them over.
Light their way.
That’s all I ask –
these things I prey.
~B.J. Lee “A Garden Prayer”

When I spot a praying mantis in our garden, or crawling up the opening to our century-old hay barn, I say a prayer myself:

thank you that I’m not a random bug about to become a meal.

The mantis, like few other predators, disarms its potential prey by cleverly blending in with its surroundings, innocently folding its arms together in an attitude of prayer, but actually readying to make the fatal grab.

So a word to the wise:
those with multiple legs, buggy eyes, wings or a hairy thorax,

or those of us who scan the news headlines every day
worrying what might happen next:

it could be worse…

if someone invites you to a meal,
it is possible you are the tasty morsel to be consumed,
so consider carefully who appears to be praying (preying?)
next to you and why…

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Holding Up the Darkness

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See how the trees
Reach up and outward
As if their entire existence
Were an elegant gesture of prayer.
See how they welcome the breath of spirit,
In all its visible and invisible forms.
See how the roots reach downward and out,
Embracing the physical,
The body and bones
Of its soul of earth and stone,
Allowing half its life to be sheltered
in the most quiet and secret places.

Oh, if I could be more like a tree on this Sunday morning,
To feel the breath of invisible spirit
Touch me as tenderly as a kiss on the forehead.
If I could courageously and confidently
Dig down into the dark
Where the ground water runs deep,
Where shelter and sanctuary
Can be had and held.

Ah, to be like a tree
With all its bent and unbent places,
A whole and holy thing
From its topmost twigs
To the deepest taproot
To all the good and graceful
Spaces between.
~Carrie Newcomer “To Be Like a Tree” from The Beautiful Not Yet: Poems, Essays & Lyrics


I love the accomplishments of trees,
How they try to restrain great storms
And pacify the very worms that eat them.
Even their deaths seem to be considered.
I fear for trees, loving them so much.
I am nervous about each scar on bark,
Each leaf that browns. I want to
Lie in their crotches and sigh,
Whisper of sun and rains to come.

Sometimes on summer evenings I step
Out of my house to look at trees
Propping darkness up to the silence.

When I die I want to slant up
Through those trunks so slowly
I will see each rib of bark, each whorl;
Up through the canopy, the subtle veins
And lobes touching me with final affection;
Then to hover above and look down
One last time on the rich upliftings,
The circle that loves the sun and moon,
To see at last what held the darkness up.
~Paul Zimmer “A Final Affection” from Crossing to Sunlight.

The old farmer who sold us this farm 35 years ago made sure we were equipped for a most important role: becoming the caretakers of trees he had planted and watered and loved for decades.

He exacted a promise we would not remove any tree before its time. For the most part, we have been able to do what he asked.

Most trees we’ve lost have succumbed to wind or disease or crippling old age. The old row of poplars became quite hazardous with their breaking branches and invading roots, and a couple old orchard trees gave way for our addition of a garage. For the record, we did feel appropriately guilty about taking their lives.

We have added numerous trees to replace those we have lost. Now we know exactly how that old farmer felt: they become like our children – growing, thriving and fruiting long past our presence here.

These sturdy trunks stand solid, holding the darkness up with their branches, as if in constant prayer to care for us creatures living below.

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