Every morning, cup of coffee in hand, I look out at the mountain. Ordinarily, it’s blue, but today it’s the color of an eggplant. And the sky turns from gray to pale apricot as the sun rolls up…
I study the cat’s face and find a trace of white around each eye, as if he made himself up today for a part in the opera. ~Jane Kenyon, from “In Several Colors” from Collected Poems.
If you notice anything it leads you to notice more and more.
And anyway I was so full of energy. I was always running around, looking at this and that.
If I stopped the pain was unbearable.
If I stopped and thought, maybe the world can’t be saved, the pain was unbearable. ~Mary Oliver from “The Moths” from Dream Work
I try to see things in a new way as I wander about my day, my eyes scanning for how to transform all my mundane, dusty corners exposed by a penetrating sunbeam when its angle is just right.
My attempts to describe plain ordinary as extraordinary feels futile in a messed-up upside-down world.
Such efforts can be painful: it means getting tired and muddy in the muck, falling down again and again and being willing to get back up.
If I stop getting dirty, if I by-pass every day grunginess, if I give up the work of salvage and renewal, I then abandon God’s promise to see the world changed.
He’s still here, ready and waiting, handing me a broom, a shovel and cleaning rags, so I can keep at it – mopping up my messy ordinary.
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I dream a flock of birds flying through the night Like silent stars on wings of everlasting light. I dream a flowing river, deep as a thousand years, Its fish are frozen sorrow, its water bitter tears. I dream a tree so green, branches wide and long, And ev’ry leaf and ev’ry voice a song. I dream of a babe who sleeps, a life that’s just begun. A word that waits to be spoken. The promise of a world to come. ~Bob Chilcott
We prepare to walk together through the final days of Lent, the Holy Week of Jesus’ suffering and passion, culminating in His death and Resurrection.
He was born for this, preparing for the necessity of it. His knowledge of our needs and helplessness came from being one among us. How else could the divine understand the mundane details of our every day existence?
We dream of the world He entered and how it changed as a result. The Word we waited for has come. His promise now lives and breathes among us. These next few days are a reminder we are never to give up hope in the baby in the manger destined to die on the cross so we may share eternity with Him.
This year’s Lenten theme for Barnstorming is a daily selection from songs and hymns about Christ’s profound sacrifice on our behalf.
If we remain silent about Him, the stones themselves will shout out and start to sing (Luke 19:40).
In His name, may we sing…
Sleeping child, I wonder, have you a dream to share? May I see the things you see as you slumber there? I dream a wind that speaks, like music as it blows As if it were the breath of everything that grows.
I dream a flock of birds flying through the night Like silent stars on wings of everlasting light. I dream a flowing river, deep as a thousand years, Its fish are frozen sorrow, its water bitter tears.
I dream a tree so green, branches wide and long, And ev’ry leaf and ev’ry voice a song. I dream of a babe who sleeps, a life that’s just begun. A word that waits to be spoken. The promise of a world to come.
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Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. ~Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost
I wish one could press snowflakes in a book like flowers. ~James Schuyler from “February 13, 1975”
When a January night lingers long, beginning too early and lasting too late, I find myself in my own insistent winter, wanting to hide away from trouble deep in a peaceful snowy woods, knowing I choose to avoid doing what is needed when it is needed.
I look inward when I must focus outside myself. I muffle my ears to deafen voices crying in need. I turn away rather than meet a stranger’s gaze.
A wintry soul is a cold and empty place, not lovely, dark and deep.
I appeal to my Creator who knows my darkness. He expects me to keep my promises because He keeps His promises. His buds of hope and warmth and color and fruit will arise from my bare branches.
He brings me out of the night to finish what He brought me here to do.
A book from Barnstorming combining the beauty of Lois Edstrom’s words and Barnstorming photography, available for order here:
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The waning October moon reluctantly rose, pulling back from the full globe of a few nights before.
I drive a night darkened country road, white lines sweeping past, aware of advancing frost in the evening haze, anxious to return home to fireplace light.
Nearing a familiar corner, a stop sign loomed, to the right, a rural cemetery sits silently expectant.
Open iron gates and tenebrous headstones, in the middle path, incongruous, a car’s headlights beam bright. I slowed, thinking: lovers or vandals would seek inky cover of night.
Instead, these lights illuminate a lone figure, kneeling graveside, one hand resting heavily on a stone, head bowed in prayer.
A stark moment of solitary sorrow, invisible grieving of the heart focused by twin beams.
A benediction of mourning; light piercing their blackness, as gentle fingertips trace the engraved letters of a beloved name.
An uneasy witness, I withdraw as if touched myself and drive on into the night, struggling to see through the thickening mist of my eyes and the road.
Angel of Grief–Stanford University
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We don’t need to understand why a rainbow or fogbow is formed in order to appreciate its beauty, of course, but understanding the physics of rainbows does give us a new set of eyes. I call this the beauty of knowledge. ~Walter Lewin from For the Love of Physics
Ghaist o a gaw that few hae seen paintit on fog lyk a fugue o thi scheme Noah supposit thi Lord tae mean when aa were drooned, ither hauf o yin o His een thon runic roond.
Rope o smoke lyk a loop on a cable, Grisaille Cain tae thi rainbow’s Abel, ultra-blank tae infra-sable, auld noose o tow; Yin that’s strang whaur Yang is faible: faur are ye now? ~WN Herbert“The Fogbow” from Omnesia
(this is my best guess of the meaning of Herbert’s inventive English/Gaelic/Scottish)
Ghost of a rainbow bruise that few have seen painted on fog like a fugue of this scheme Noah supposed the Lord to mean when all were drowned the other half of the dark cold earth is a mysterious rune ruined.
A rope of smoke like a loop on a cable a gray pallid Cain to the rainbow’s Abel, outer-white to inner-black old noose in tow; the cold and dark is strong where warmth and light is feeble: where are you now?
Look at a rainbow. While it lasts, it is or appears to be, a great arc of many colours occupying a position out there in space…. And now, before it fades, recollect all you have ever been told about the rainbow and its causes, and ask yourself the question, Is it really there? You know from memory that if you walked to the place where the rainbow ends, or seems to end, it would certainly not be ‘there’. In a word, reflection will assure you that the rainbow is the outcome of the sun, the raindrops and your own vision. ~Owen Barfield writing about “The Rainbow”
We saw our first “fogbow” or “ghost rainbow” early yesterday on our morning walk. It happened as we were heading east toward the sun, with the fog thickening, filling in behind us. We had just turned around to check the road to be sure no cars were coming before we crossed to the other side and there was this spectral image of foggy columns curving upward over the road to barely touch one another at the top. As we moved away from it, it vanished, as they say, “into thin air.”
This is an unusual phenomenon where the light and moisture in the air needs to be just right – reading about the physics of the fogbow helps to explain it and to render it even more beautiful. But the knowledge of how it happens isn’t nearly as impactful as the fact it was there at all for us to witness. Without our vision, it wasn’t really “there.”
The “bruised” rainbow color in the sky is God’s Old Testament promise to Noah to never destroy the world by flood again, establishing an everlasting covenant with His people while giving us the capacity to witness His promise. Perhaps the fogbow is ghostly reminder of those who have perished, whose blood, like Abel’s, cried out to God from the earth.
But where are we now? Do we seek to understand, believing the promises God made to us? Or do we walk right past God and His miraculous physics of creation, oblivious to what would not even exist without our ability to see it?
Somewhere, over the fogbow, way up high…
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How often do we miss the fainter note Or fail to see the more exquisite hue, Blind to the tiny streamlet at our feet, Eyes fixed upon some other, further view. What chimes of harmonies escape our ears, How many rainbows must elude our sight, We see a field but do not see the grass, Each blade a miracle of shade and light. How then to keep the greater end in eye And watch the sunlight on the distant peak, And yet not tread on any leaf of love, Nor miss a word the eager children speak? Ah, what demand upon the narrow heart, To seek the whole, yet not ignore the part. ~Philip Britts “Sonnet 1”
I saw the lovely arch Of Rainbow span the sky, The gold sun burning As the rain swept by.
In bright-ringed solitude The showery foliage shone One lovely moment, And the Bow was gone. ~Walter De La Mare “The Rainbow”
We are born nearly blinded, focused solely on our emptiness – a hunger to be filled and our need to be held. As we grow, our focus sharpens to fall in love with those who feed and nurture us.
Eventually we discover, challenge and worship He who made us.
This world is often too much for us to take in as a whole — our exquisite view of shadow and light, color and gray, loneliness and embrace, sorrow and joy.
With more years and a broader vision, we scan for the finer details within the whole before it disappears with the changing light. Time’s a wasting (and so are we) as we try to capture it all with the lenses of our eyes and hearts.
The end of life comes too soon, when once again our vision blurs and the world fades away from view.
We hunger yet again to be filled and held.
And then heaven itself will seem almost too much to take in – our hearts full to bursting with light and promise for the rest of eternity.
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Open the window, and let the air Freshly blow upon face and hair, And fill the room, as it fills the night, With the breath of the rain’s sweet might.
Nought will I have, not a window-pane, ‘Twixt me and the air and the great good rain, Which ever shall sing me sharp lullabies; And God’s own darkness shall close mine eyes; And I will sleep, with all things blest, In the pure earth-shadow of natural rest. ~James Henry Leigh Hunt from “A Night-Rain in Summer”
Each morning for nearly two months, we have searched the sky for a hint of rain.
Will those few clouds grow heavier and more burdened or only tease and blow on to drip elsewhere?
Throughout the house, our windows stand open waiting for a breeze with a breath of moisture.
Last night, it came: the smell wafted in before we heard the patter. A few brief scent of petrichor and then as quickly as it came, it was gone again.
That incomparable fragrance of raindrops falling on brown and thirsty ground – I wish I could wear it like a perfumed promise of relief during more long dry days of dusty drought.
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To be a poet… you must believe in the uniqueness of every person, and therefore in your own.
To find your voice you must forget about finding it, and trust that if you pay sufficient attention to life you will be found to have something to say which no one else can say.
And that will be your voice, unsought, singing out from you of itself.
At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your fists, your back, your brain, and then – and only then -it is handed to you.
Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?
Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Why are we reading, if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage and the hope of meaningfulness, and press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and which reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? ~Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop”
Some days my voice feels so weakened I am unable to sing out from myself, knowing I have said too much that means so little.
I swing and I miss, over and over swishing the air – hoping, listening, looking, living for a connection made through sharing images and words.
I am bewildered by life most of the time – how figurative and literal smoke and haze can permeate and discolor our days and nights.
What I must do is lay bare the beauty I see, seeking a way to make a sad and suffering world less mystifying.
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The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. ~Henry David Thoreau from Walden
I don’t know about you, but there are some days I wake up just longing for my life to be all puppies and rainbows.
I hope to find sparkling magic around every corner, little wiggly fur balls surrounding me, happy tails a-wagging with a promise of glee and glitter. I’m eager to feel pure joy untainted by the realities of every day.
Perhaps I’m clutching at a kind of cartoon version of life without considering the wicked witches and monsters present in the ever-present dark forbidding woods of our human existence. Life just isn’t all puppies and rainbows. I know this…
Of course, puppies grow up. Rainbows fade and become just a memory. And I am growing older with all the aches and pains and uncertainties of aging. Even so, I still tend to clutch a “puppies and rainbows” state of mind when I open my eyes in the morning and when I close my eyes for sleep – hoping for a bit of stardust to hold.
I believe in promises. I believe in the God who made those promises. He is who I can hold onto and know with certainty, He won’t ever let go of me.
photo by Nate Gibsonphoto by Brandon Dielemanphoto by Nate Gibson
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Serene the silver fishes glide, Stern-lipped, and pale, and wonder-eyed! As through the aged deeps of ocean, They glide with wan and wavy motion. They have no pathway where they go, They flow like water to and fro, They watch with never-winking eyes, They watch with staring, cold surprise, The level people in the air, The people peering, peering there: Who wander also to and fro, And know not why or where they go, Yet have a wonder in their eyes, Sometimes a pale and cold surprise. ~ Max Eastman, “At the Aquarium” Max Eastman: A Life
The fish are drifting calmly in their tank between the green reeds, lit by a white glow that passes for the sun. Blindly, the blank glass that holds them in displays their slow progress from end to end, familiar rocks set into the gravel, murmuring rows of filters, a universe the flying fox and glass cats, Congo tetras, bristle-nose pleocostemus all take for granted. Yet the platys, gold and red, persist in leaping occasionally, as if they can’t quite let alone a possibility—of wings, maybe, once they reach the air? They die on the rug. We find them there, eyes open in surprise. ~Kim Addonizio “Aquarium,” from The Philosopher’s Club
Our shadows bring them from the shadows: a yolk-yellow one with a navy pattern like a Japanese woodblock print of fish scales. A fat 18-karat one splashed with gaudy purple and a patch of gray. One with a gold head, a body skim-milk-white, trailing ventral fins like half-folded fans of lace. A poppy-red, faintly disheveled one, and one, compact, all indigo in faint green water. They wear comical whiskers and gather beneath us as we lean on the cement railing in indecisive late-December light, and because we do not feed them, they pass, then they loop and circle back. Loop and circle. Loop. “Look,” you say, “beneath them.” Beneath them, like a subplot or a motive, is a school of uniformly dark ones, smaller, unadorned, perhaps another species, living in the shadow of the gold, purple, yellow, indigo, and white, seeking the mired roots and dusky grasses, unliveried, the quieter beneath the quiet. ~Susan Kolodny “Koi Pond, Oakland Museum”
The water going dark only makes the orange seem brighter, as you race, and kiss, and spar for food, pretending not to notice me. For this gift of your indifference, I am grateful. I will sit until the pond goes black, the last orange spark extinguished. ~Robert Peake from “Koi Pond”
…the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish.When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. Matthew 13: 47-48
I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth. He didn’t fight. He hadn’t fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely. I looked into his eyes which were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed, the irises backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses of old scratched isinglass. They shifted a little, but not to return my stare. – It was more like the tipping of an object toward the light. I admired his sullen face, the mechanism of his jaw, and then I saw that from his lower lip – if you could call it a lip grim, wet, and weaponlike, hung five old pieces of fish-line, or four and a wire leader with the swivel still attached, with all their five big hooks grown firmly in his mouth. Like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering, a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw. I stared and stared and victory filled up the little rented boat, from the pool of bilge where oil had spread a rainbow around the rusted engine to the bailer rusted orange, the sun-cracked thwarts, the oarlocks on their strings, the gunnels- until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! And I let the fish go. ~Elizabeth Bishop from “The Fish”
All my life, I’ve taken care of a variety of fish in tanks and ponds. As a child, I would watch, mesmerized, as our tropical fish glided around, happily exploring their little ten gallon world. I willingly cleaned away the algae, rinsed the gravel and changed the filter. As a teenager, I boasted at least three different tanks aerating away in my bedroom, my own little aqua-cultural world of bubbles and fins.
During college and medical school, I chose to share my room with goldfish and bettas, thriving on their apparent contentment within a clear glass bowl. I didn’t think of them as emotional support animals, but there was a joy obvious in their albeit limited existence: they still thrived when I was away, not missing me, but were always thrilled when I fed them, and tolerated my messing with their home maintenance.
My current thirty gallon aquarium is decades old and boasts over two dozen fish and plenty of furry algae and plants. Some of my watery friends have lived ten years or more and when they pass, I miss them. Even the dozen koi and goldfish in our farm pond have expressive faces and individual personalities that I’ve gotten to know well as they come when I call.
I know the heart of compassion I feel for any creature I’m responsible for, as I know and have experienced the compassion of our Creator.
I would hope when the time comes that I end up in His net, that He’ll look me in the eye, see the wonder there as I gape at Him. He’ll count my blemishes and wounds and the number of hooks in my mouth from the times I’ve been caught and escaped, and if He’s not yet ready to take me home, or deems me not yet ready to leave this world, He’ll throw me back rather than throw me away to keep trying to get it right.
He has promised us that.
Rainbows, rainbows, rainbows indeed…
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