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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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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There comes the strangest moment in your life, when everything you thought before breaks free— what you relied upon, as ground-rule and as rite looks upside down from how it used to be.
Your heart’s in retrograde. You simply have no choice. Things people told you turn out to be true. You have to hold that body, hear that voice. You’d have sworn no one knew you more than you.
This disease of being “busy” (and let’s call it what it is, the dis-ease of being busy, when we are never at ease) is spiritually destructive to our health and wellbeing.
It saps our ability to be fully present with those we love the most in our families, and keeps us from forming the kind of community that we all so desperately crave.
Tell me you remember you are still a human being, not just a human doing. Tell me you’re more than just a machine, checking off items from your to-do list. Have that conversation, that glance, that touch. Be a healing conversation, one filled with grace and presence.
Put your hand on my arm, look me in the eye, and connect with me for one second. Tell me something about your heart, and awaken my heart. Help me remember that I too am a full and complete human being… ~Omid Safi from The Disease of Being Busy
It has been nearly three years since I hung up my stethoscope. I’m no longer paid to be very busy. It isn’t feeling strange to wake up with no “job” to go to.
I still am vigorously treading water but with no destination in mind other than to stay afloat. It’s enough to just move and breathe in this new and strangely unfamiliar territory.
It was scary at first, backing off from all-consuming clinic responsibilities, yet knowing I was becoming less effective due to my diminishing passion and energy for the work. I’d been working in some capacity for over fifty years, starting in high school.
I could barely remember who I was before I became a physician.
So here I am — changed and changing — volunteering here and there, budding and blooming in new colors and shapes, exercising a different part of my brain, and simply praying I make good use of the time left to me, being something as worthwhile as what I had been doing.
So, once again, my days have become… strangely beautiful… in ways I could never have imagined.
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Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil… ~Isaiah 64:1-2
I was your rebellious son, do you remember? Sometimes I wonder if you do remember, so complete has your forgiveness been.
So complete has your forgiveness been I wonder sometimes if it did not precede my wrong, and I erred, safe found, within your love,
prepared ahead of me, the way home, or my bed at night, so that almost I should forgive you, who perhaps foresaw the worst that I might do,
and forgave before I could act, causing me to smile now, looking back, to see how paltry was my worst, compared to your forgiveness of it
already given. And this, then, is the vision of that Heaven of which we have heard, where those who love each other have forgiven each other,
where, for that, the leaves are green, the light a music in the air, and all is unentangled, and all is undismayed. -Wendell Berry “To My Mother” from Entries
It was a summer morning six years ago, beginning much like this one: something woke me early at 4:45 AM.
Perhaps it was the orange glow bathing my face through the curtains. Never one to miss a light show, I heeded the call and got up and dressed.
Once outside, I was amazed to see storm clouds boiling – shifting and swirling in unrest as if something or someone may emerge momentarily.
No trumpets though. The music in the air was the usual early morning bird song, and sherbet-orange leaves normalized to green.
Within a minute, the heavens settled. Unentangled from my dismay, so did I.
Yet for a moment that morning, I did wonder what might become of us all. That thought still occurs to me each morning, as I realize how much merciful grace embodies the heavens above.
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I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time — waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God — it changes me. ~attributed to C.S. Lewis in “Shadowlands”
A recovering Faye with her sister Merry
Last week, on May 1, I found a surprise hanging on our front door – a little May Day basket full of little perennial blooms, along with a cheery message and a rainbow sticker. It hung from the door handle as a symbol of spring renewal, as well as a bit of a mystery – the flowers came with no hint of who had left them.
So I did a little sleuthing (actually A LOT of sleuthing) and found out they were delivered by our nearby neighbor Faye, who turned 11 just last week. She has a very special history some of you may remember:
Nine years ago, on this Barnstorming blog, I wrote about our little neighbor, two year old Faye, sickened by E.Coli 0157 infection/toxin to the point of becoming critically ill with Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (plummeting cell counts and renal failure requiring dialysis to keep her alive). My original post about her illness is found here. I asked for your prayers on her (and others’) behalf.
At the worst point of her hospitalization at Seattle Children’s, when the doctors were sounding very worried on her behalf, Faye’s mother Danyale, in the midst of her helplessness, wrote to our Wiser Lake Chapel Pastor Bert Hitchcock with a plea for prayers from our church.
Here is how Pastor Bert responded to Danyale and her husband Jesse who remained at home, caring for their four other children:
“I understand that Faye (and everyone dealing with her) is fighting for her life. And that’s the way I am praying: that God in his merciful power, would deliver her, even if her condition looks hopeless.
If you were able to be in church this morning, you might hear my sense of urgency, for I have chosen this benediction, with which to close the service — and I give it to you right now, from the mouth of our Lord:
Jesus said: “Do not be afraid, Danyale! I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One. I died, but look – I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave.
Neither you nor I know how this will turn out — the possibilities are terrifying. But we do know who holds the keys of life and health and death; He is the Life-giver, who heals all our diseases — nothing can rip our lives (or little Faye’s life) out of His hands. And, when He does allow these bodies to give out, He promises to give us glorious new life, safe forever in His presence. These are not pious platitudes; these are the rock-hard promises of the one who loves us more than life, and who is absolutely in control of what is happening today.
Safe in the arms of Jesus, Safe on His gentle breast; There by His love o’ershaded, Sweetly my soul shall rest.
I’m praying for you all; and your Chapel Family will be praying this morning, as we gather in the Lord’s presence.
Love you, and yours, Danyale, Pastor Bert Hitchcock
That week, Faye’s renal failure reversed itself. She was able to return home with normal kidney function and improved cell counts, having also survived a bout with pneumonia.
Here is what her mother wrote to share with you all once she came home:
“Dear Friends and readers of Barnstorming,
Some of you we know, but so many of you we do not. Whichever the case, Emily tells me you have prayed for our little girl, Faye, throughout her sickness and into her recovery. What can parents say when people–many of whom we may never be privileged to meet in this life–have come alongside us to beseech the Lord for our daughter’s life and pray for her healing? Thank you. Thank you!
Faye is doing so well; stronger every day, more and more herself! It is wonderful to see.
This week we head back down to Seattle Children’s for a check up–we’ll get to say hello to the good folks who saw her through her sickness. A special stop will be made on the dialysis unit to see Nurse Kathy, a favorite of Faye’s. We anticipate a good report!
Thanks again for your love and support, far and wide. Truly astounding. Danyale and Jesse, for Faye, too
—————————————
Now Faye is a delightful, healthy eleven year old girl who secretly blessed me with a basket of May Day flowers. She doesn’t remember the crisis that nearly took her from us nine years ago, but she does know about God’s rainbow promises. And she certainly knows about the power of prayer in the face of helplessness.
As Pastor Bert said: our faith in an unchanging and steadfast God who loves and holds us, can change us – forever.
And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver. See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair Is, hair of the head, numbered. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Golden Echo”
…writing was one way to let something of lasting value emerge from the pains and fears of my little, quickly passing life. Each time life required me to take a new step into unknown spiritual territory, I felt a deep, inner urge to tell my story to others– Perhaps as a need for companionship but maybe, too, out of an awareness that my deepest vocation is to be a witness to the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch. ~Henri Nouwenfrom Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
“Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
For too much of my life I have focused on my foreshortening future, bypassing the present in my headlong rush to what lies ahead. There is always a goal to achieve, a conclusion becoming commencement of the next phase, a sunset turning right around in a few hours to become sunrise.
Yet the most precious times occur when the present is so over-whelming, so riveting, so tenderly full of beauty that I believe I can see a brief glimpse of God. I must grab hold with all my strength to try and secret it away and keep it forever. Of course the present still slips away from me, elusive and evasive, torn to bits by the unrelenting movement of time.
Even when I’m able to take a photo to lock it to a page or screen, it is not enough. No matter how I choose to preserve the essence of this moment, it is already passed, ebbing away, never to return.
So I write to harvest those times to make them last a little bit longer although they will inevitably be lost downstream into the ether of unread words.
Where have all the words, all the flowers, all those moments gone?
Even if unread, I am learning that words, which had power in the Beginning to create life itself, still can bring tenderness and meaning back to my life. How blessed to live the gift twice: not just in the moment itself but in recording in words that preserve and treasure it all up, if only for that ephemeral blooming moment.
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What words or harder gift does the light require of me carving from the dark this difficult tree?
What place or farther peace do I almost see emerging from the night and heart of me?
The sky whitens, goes on and on. Fields wrinkle into rows of cotton, go on and on. Night like a fling of crows disperses and is gone.
What song, what home, what calm or one clarity can I not quite come to, never quite see: this field, this sky, this tree. ~Christian Wiman, “Hard Night”
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself. So, a woman will lift her head from the sieve of her hands and stare at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth enters our hearts, that small familiar pain; then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth in the distant Latin chanting of a train.
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales console the lodger looking out across a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls a child’s name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer — Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre. ~Carol Ann Duffy “Prayer”
photo by Bob Tjoelker
As a child falling asleep, I prayed to God with moans and groans echoing in my ears.
Growing up on a small farm located about two miles from a bay in Puget Sound, I found myself praying for safety on foggy nights as fog horns moaned in the distance. Scattered throughout the inlet, the horns called out mournful groans of warning to passing freighter ships. The resonant lowing of the horns carried miles over the surrounding landscape due to countless water particles in the fog transmitting sound waves so effectively. The louder the foghorn moan heard on our farm, the thicker and more hazardous the mist in the air. Those horns would make me unspeakably sad for reasons I could only articulate to God. Thus I prayed for the ships, and I prayed for my own shaky navigation through life.
Navigating blind in a fog necessitates taking unpredictable risks. The future can seem a murky mess. I cannot see what lies ahead: I navigate by my wits, by my best guess, but particularly by listening for the low-throated warnings coming from the rocky shores and shallows of those who have gone ahead of me.
I am easily lost in the fog of my fears – disconnected, afloat and circling aimlessly, searching for a touch point of purpose and direction. The isolation I sometimes feel may simply be my own self-absorbed state of mind, sucking me in deep until I’m soaked, dripping and shivering from the smothering gray. If only I trust the fog horn warnings and reassurances from the Word of God, I could charge into the future undaunted.
He is in the pea soup alongside me, awaiting the Sun’s dissipation of the fog. Now I know, nearly seventy years into this voyage, the fog eventually clears. The journey continues on beyond these shores.
Even so, I will keep praying with the resonant voices of wisdom and caution from shore, like the nightly tradition of the BBC radio shipping forecasts that calm so many to sleep to this day. Even a Finisterre (the end of the land) prayer holds us in safety as we find our way home.
Instead of echoing the anxious moans and groans of my childhood prayers, may my voice be heard singing an anthem of hope and promise.
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Here in the time between snow and the bud of the rhododendron, we watch the robins, look into
the gray, and narrow our view to the patches of wild grasses coming green. The pile of ashes
in the fireplace, haphazard sticks on the paths and gardens, leaves tangled in the ivy and periwinkle
lie in wait against our will. This drawing near of renewal, of stems and blossoms, the hesitant return
of the anarchy of mud and seed says not yet to the blood’s crawl. When the deer along the stream
look back at us, we know again we have left them. We pull a blanket over us when we sleep.
As if living in a prayer, we say amen to the late arrival of red, the stun of green, the muted yellow
at the end of every twig. We will lift up our eyes unto the trees hoping to discover a gnarled nest within
the branches’ negative space. And we will watch for a fox sparrow rustling in the dead leaves underneath. ~Jack Ridl “Here in the Time Between” from Practicing to Walk Like a Heron
We live in an in-between time: we see the coming glory of spring and rebirth yet winter’s mud and ice still grasps at us.
We want to crawl back under the blankets, hoping to wake again on a brighter day.
Praying to emerge from the mud of in-between and not-yet, we are ready to bud and blossom and wholly bloom.
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Opening the book at a bright window above a wide pasture after five years I find I am still standing on a stone bridge looking down with my mother at dusk into a river hearing the current as hers in her lifetime
now it comes to me that that was the day she told me of seeing my father alive for the last time and he waved her back from the door as she was leaving took her hand for a while and said nothing
at some signal in a band of sunlight all the black cows flow down the pasture together to turn uphill and stand as the dark rain touches them. ~W.S. Merwin “Sun and Rain” from Flower & Hand.
All day the stars watch from long ago my mother said I am going now when you are alone you will be all right whether or not you know you will know look at the old house in the dawn rain all the flowers are forms of water the sun reminds them through a white cloud touches the patchwork spread on the hill the washed colors of the afterlife that lived there long before you were born see how they wake without a question even though the whole world is burning ~W. S. Merwin “Rain Light”from The Shadow of Sirius
We want so much to leave a legacy for our children that will carry them through their lives, long after we are gone. Then they pass that on to their children, and on and on, like the strands of DNA we leave behind in our descendants.
But words and rituals of faith and covenant can be lost so quickly from one generation to the next. Our DNA passed down is a given, but nothing surpasses the teaching about the eternal love of God and His purpose for His people.
This day, three of our young grandsons are baptized by their church, ushering them into a life in fulfillment of God’s promise within them. As children, they may not yet fully understand how this manifests in their lives, but with the love and guidance of their church, parents, extended family and godparents, they will know His Love as they witness it in His people.
The washing with water from God’s creation, like rain from heaven, gives me hope for the future.
Though the world may be burning, Jesus is right alongside us through it all – I know our children and grandchildren will be all right.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “God’s Grandeur”
Today marks the crushing of Christ in the Garden of the Oil Press, Gethsemane.
“Gethsemane” means “oil press” –a place of olive trees treasured for the fine oil delivered from their fruit. And so, on this Thursday night, the pressure is turned up high on the disciples, not just on Jesus.
The disciples are expected, indeed commanded, to keep watch alongside the Master, to be filled with prayer, to avoid the temptation of weakened flesh thrown at them at every turn.
But they fail pressure testing and fall apart.
Like them, I am easily lulled by complacency, by my over-indulged satiety for material comforts that do not truly fill hunger or quench thirst, by my belief that being called a follower of Jesus is enough.
It is not enough. I fail the pressure test as well.
I fall asleep through His anguish. I dream, oblivious, while He sweats blood. I might even deny I know Him when pressed hard.
Yet, the moment of betrayal becomes the moment He is glorified, thereby God is glorified.
Crushed, bleeding, poured out over the world — from precious loving wings that brood and cover us — He becomes the sacrifice that anoints us.
Incredibly, indeed miraculously, He, the crushed, loves us, bent and flattened as we are – anyway.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Luke 13:34
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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