The sound of quiet. The sky indigo, steeping deeper from the top, like tea. In the absence of anything else, my own breathing became obscene. I heard the beating of bats’ wings before the air troubled above my head, turned to look and saw them gone. On the surface of the black lake, a swan and the moon stayed perfectly still. I knew this was a perfect moment. Which would only hurt me to remember and never live again. My God. How lucky to have lived a life I would die for. ~Leila Chatti “I Went Out to Hear” from Wildness Before Something Sublime
Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars
of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment,
the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders
of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is
nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned
in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side
is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world
you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it
against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. ~Mary Oliver “In Blackwater Woods” from Devotions
(thinking today of God’s gift to the world of Jane Goodall, whose life was about keeping promises)
When the earth and all that is in it glows indigo in the angled light of October; opening my eyes as witness to beauty takes my breath away.
I can’t imagine letting go this life, yet the other side of ashes and loss is salvation.
My God. I am so finite. I hold this close to my bones with miles to go before I sleep.
My life depends on realizing I’m living a life I would die for.
“Peasant women digging potatoes” Van Gogh 1885 Kröller-Müller Museum The Netherlands
“Do you know a cure for me?” “Why yes,” he said, “I know a cure for everything. Salt water.” “Salt water?” I asked him. “Yes,” he said, “in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.” ~Isak Dinesen from Seven Gothic Tales
A good night sleep, or a ten minute bawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine. ~Ray Bradbury from Dandelion Wine
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 from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
If there is anything I learned in 42 years of doctoring, it’s that physicians “practice” every day in the pursuit of getting it right. As much as MDs emphasize the science of what we do through “evidence-based” decision-making, there were still days when a fair amount of educated guessing and a gut feeling was based on past experience, along with my best hunch.
Many patients don’t arrive with classic cookbook symptoms that fit the standardized diagnostic and treatment algorithms. The nuances of their stories require interpretation, discernment, and flexibility. A surprise once in awhile made me look at a patient in a new or unexpected way and taught me something I didn’t know before. It kept me coming back with more questions, to figure out the mystery and dig a little deeper.
I also learned that though much medical treatment comes through some intervention using surgical procedures, pills or injections, those aren’t the only options in our doctor bag.
A simple good night’s sleep can do wonders for what ails a mind and body, especially when we’ve kept our promises.
At times the most appropriate cure is simple salt water in all its forms – just feeling ocean waves lapping at our feet, or sweating it out with exertion, or feeling the flow of tears down our cheeks.
How many of us allow ourselves a good cry when we feel it welling up behind our eyes? It could be a sentimental moment–a song that brings back bittersweet memories, a movie that touches just the right chord of feeling and connection. It may be a moment of frustration and anger when nothing seems to go right. It could be the pain of physical illness or injury or emotional turmoil.
Or just maybe there is weeping when everything is absolutely perfect and there cannot be another moment just like it, so it is tough to let it go without our tears spilling over.
And lastly, aside from the obvious curative properties of salt water, the healing found in chocolate is unquestioned by this physician. It can fix most everything that ails a person – at least for an hour or so.
It doesn’t always take an M.D. degree to determine the best medicine. It just takes a degree in common sense.
Healing tools to consider when all else fails: sleep, weep, keep ( promises), and reap (chocolate!)
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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.
Whatever harm I may have done In all my life in all your wide creation If I cannot repair it I beg you to repair it,
And then there are all the wounded The poor the deaf the lonely and the old Whom I have roughly dismissed As if I were not one of them. Where I have wronged them by it And cannot make amends I ask you To comfort them to overflowing,
And where there are lives I may have withered around me, Or lives of strangers far or near That I’ve destroyed in blind complicity, And if I cannot find them Or have no way to serve them,
Remember them. I beg you to remember them
When winter is over And all your unimaginable promises Burst into song on death’s bare branches. ~Anne Porter “A Short Testament” from Living Things.
While this end of the year’s darkness lingers, beginning too early and lasting too late, I find myself hiding in my own wintry soul, knowing I have too often failed to do what is needed when it is needed.
I tend to look inward when I need to focus outside myself. I muffle my ears to unhear supplicating voices. I turn away rather than meet a stranger’s gaze.
I appeal to God who knows my darkness needs His Light, who unimaginably promises buds of hope and warmth and color and fruit will arise from my barest branches.
He brings me forth out of hiding, to be impossibly transformed.
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A blue horse turns into a streak of lightning, then the sun — relating the difference between sadness and the need to praise that which makes us joyful, I can’t calculate how the earth tips hungrily toward the sun – then soaks up rain — or the density of this unbearable need to be next to you. It’s a palpable thing — this earth philosophy and familiar in the dark like your skin under my hand. We are a small earth. It’s no simple thing. Eventually we will be dust together; can be used to make a house, to stop a flood or grow food for those who will never remember who we were, or know that we loved fiercely. Laughter and sadness eventually become the same song turning us toward the nearest star — a star constructed of eternity and elements of dust barely visible in the twilight as you travel east. I run with the blue horses of electricity who surround the heart and imagine a promise made when no promise was possible. ~Joy Harjo “Promise of Blue Horses” from How We Became Human
Birds embody the shapes of my heart these days
holding the warmth of a hug in their feathers
the gleam of a kiss in their eyes
building a home for my love in their beaks
and spreading, with their song, the promise of blue horses.
“A blue horse turns into a streak of lightning, then the sun— relating the difference between sadness and the need to praise that which makes us joyful.” ~Marjorie Moorhead, “That Which Makes Us Joyful” from Literary North
Even when my heart isn’t feeling it, especially when I’m blue (along with much of the rest of the world on this September 11 anniversary), I need to remember to whisper hymns of praise to the Creator of all that is blue as well as every other color.
I’m reminded of the goodness of a God who provides me with the words to sing and a voice to sing them out loud.
That reality alone makes me joyful. That alone is reason to worship Him. That alone is enough to turn blue days, blue horses and blue hearts gold again.
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O gather up the brokenness And bring it to me now The fragrance of those promises You never dared to vow
The splinters that you carry The cross you left behind Come healing of the body Come healing of the mind
And let the heavens hear it The penitential hymn Come healing of the spirit Come healing of the limb
Behold the gates of mercy In arbitrary space And none of us deserving The cruelty or the grace
O solitude of longing Where love has been confined Come healing of the body Come healing of the mind
O see the darkness yielding That tore the light apart Come healing of the reason Come healing of the heart
O troubled dust concealing An undivided love The heart beneath is teaching To the broken heart above
Let the heavens falter Let the earth proclaim Come healing of the altar Come healing of the name
O longing of the branches To lift the little bud O longing of the arteries To purify the blood
And let the heavens hear it The penitential hymn Come healing of the spirit Come healing of the limb ~Leonard Cohen “Come healing”
We are all in need of healing, none more so than those who have been affected by the pandemic, either dealing themselves with the illness and its long-lasting effects, or grieving the untimely loss of family and friends.
There is need for healing in relationships, either because of too much proximity or not nearly enough due to quarantine.
There is need for a sense of purpose without a schedule of regular employment or schooling to occupy our days.
There is need for healing for the wrongs we do, intentionally or unintentionally.
Our hardships are meager compared to the plagues of the past but they are nevertheless real and undeserved, so we pray for relief, we pray for grace and mercy, we pray for healing of mind, body and spirit.
Even a tiny blue forget-me-not blossom reminds us: we need to seek the fragrance of promises made and harvest the fruit of promises kept.
God does not make promises to please us, like a politician in an election year. He keeps promises because He knows we need to believe they will happen according to His plan— He forgets-us-not because we are the troubled dust upon which He has blown sweet and fragrant breath.
Whatever harm I may have done In all my life in all your wide creation If I cannot repair it I beg you to repair it,
And then there are all the wounded The poor the deaf the lonely and the old Whom I have roughly dismissed As if I were not one of them. Where I have wronged them by it And cannot make amends I ask you To comfort them to overflowing,
And where there are lives I may have withered around me, Or lives of strangers far or near That I’ve destroyed in blind complicity, And if I cannot find them Or have no way to serve them,
Remember them. I beg you to remember them
When winter is over And all your unimaginable promises Burst into song on death’s bare branches. ~Anne Porter “A Short Testament” from Living Things.
When the night’s darkness lingers, beginning too early and lasting too late, I dwell within my own persistent winter, knowing I too often fail to do what is needed when it is needed.
How I look inward when I need to focus beyond myself. How I muffle my ears to unhear supplicating voices. How I turn away rather than meet a stranger’s gaze.
The wintry soul is a cold and empty place.
I appeal to God who dwells not only within my darkness, but unimaginably promises His buds of hope and warmth and color and fruit will indeed arise from my bare winter branches. He will bring me out of the night.
The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul. ~G.K. Chesterton
No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference.
It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left.
It is the nativity of our common Adam. ~Charles Lamb
We come to this new year
naked as dormant branches
in the freezing night.
Mere potential barely budded,
nothing covered up,
no hiding in shame.
A shared and common birthday of renewal,
a still life nativity in a winter garden,
a roaring fire refining what is no longer of use,
another chance to make it right.
Grant, O Lord, that as the years change, I may find rest in Your eternal changelessness.
May I meet this new year bravely, secure in the faith that, while we come and go, and life changes around us,
You are always the same, guiding us with Your wisdom, and protecting us with Your love.
Amen. ~William Temple (1881–1944)
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. Psalm 130: 5-6 from a Song of Ascents
Waiting is essential to the spiritual life. But waiting as a disciple of Jesus is not an empty waiting. It is a waiting with a promise in our hearts that makes already present what we are waiting for. We wait during Advent for the birth of Jesus. We wait after Easter for the coming of the Spirit, and after the ascension of Jesus we wait for his coming again in glory. We are always waiting, but it is a waiting in the conviction that we have already seen God’s footsteps. — Henri Nouwen from Bread For The Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith
To wait is hard when we know the value of the gift that awaits us. We know exactly what is in the package since we have watched it being carefully chosen, wrapped and presented to us to open.
Not yet though, not quite yet. So we wait.
Even more so, we wait and hope for what we do not see but know is coming, like a groaning in the labor of childbirth.
The waiting is never easy; it is painful to be patient, staying alert to possibility and hope when we are exhausted, barely able to function. Others won’t understand why we wait, nor do they comprehend what we could possibly be waiting for when it remains unseen.
Yet we persevere together, with patience, watching and hoping, like Mary and Joseph, like Elizabeth and Zechariah, like the shepherds, like the Magi of the east, like Simeon and Anna in the temple.
This is the meaning of Advent:
we are a community groaning together in sweet anticipation and expectation of the gift of Morning to come.
For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Romans 8:24-25
We are waiting, we are trusting
We are longing for Your blessings,
Lord And our faith is firmly anchored On Your never-changing Word Spirit fall down, fill our souls now
Lord, we gather in Your name Your power All Your promises we claim Together bind us with grace The body of Christ All for Your presence we wait
We are waiting we are trusting We are longing, Lord descend Let a flame of love be kindled While before Your throne we bend Spirit fall down, fill our souls now
Lord, we gather in Your name Your power All Your promises we claim Together bind us with grace The body of Christ All for Your presence we wait
We are waiting, we are trusting We are longing, Lord revive Death is fading, hope is rising In Your Spirit we’re alive
Lord, we gather in Your name Your power All Your promises we claim Together bind us with grace The body of Christ All for Your presence we wait
Lord, we gather in Your name Your power All Your promises we claim Together bind us with grace The body of Christ
All for Your presence we wait All for Your presence we wait All for Your presence we wait ~All Sons & Daughters
Before God and this gathering, I vow from my heart and spirit that I will be your wife/husband for as long as we both shall live.
I will love you with faithfulness, knowing its importance in sustaining us through good times and bad.
I will love you with respect, serving your greatest good and supporting your continued growth.
I will love you with compassion, knowing the strength and power of forgiveness.
I will love you with hope, remembering our shared belief in the grace of God and His guidance of our marriage.
“And at home, by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be–and whenever I look up, there will be you.”
(our wedding vows for our September 19, 1981 wedding at First Seattle Christian Reformed Church — the last line adapted from Thomas Hardy’s “Far From the Madding Crowd”)
I want to remember us this way— late September sun streaming through the window, bread loaves and golden bunches of grapes on the table, spoonfuls of hot soup rising to our lips, filling us with what endures. ~Peter Pereira from “A Pot of Red Lentils”
I cherish the moments that are most basic, plain, and simple and have the best chance of happening again. I’m not talking about exotic travels, nor the extravagant meal out, nor the once in a lifetime experience. My most cherished moments are everyday, and I store them up to fill the decades full.
Most cherished of all is “that look” that says “I want to look into your eyes forever and get lost there.”
I am lucky enough to know what that feels like. I get that butterfly in the stomach feeling anytime it happens. My husband held my eyes with his from across a room early in our relationship, and thirtyseven years later, he still holds them when he looks at me, even over bowls of soup at the kitchen table.
And I look at him just that way as well. The eyes say what words cannot. The eyes don’t lie. The eyes never change even though the years bring gray hair and crow’s feet.
It is what endures. I want to look at you forever, just like this, just as you are, wherever you are because of who you are.
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