Tag: rainbow

The Beauty of a Fogbow

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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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An Exquisite View

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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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All Puppies and Rainbows

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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 Gibson
photo by Brandon Dieleman
photo by Nate Gibson

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Wonder in Their Eyes

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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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A Moment of Balance

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When summer time has come, and all
The world is in the magic thrall
Of perfumed airs that lull each sense
To fits of drowsy indolence;

Just for the joy of being there
And drinking in the summer air,
The summer sounds, and summer sights,
That set a restless mind to rights
When grief and pain and raging doubt
Of men and creeds have worn it out;

O time of rapture! time of song!
How swiftly glide thy days along
Adown the current of the years,
Above the rocks of grief and tears!
‘Tis wealth enough of joy for me
In summer time to simply be.
~Paul Laurence Dunbar from “Summertime”

Each year, on the same date, the summer solstice comes.
Consummate light: we plan for it,
the day we tell ourselves
that time is very long indeed, nearly infinite.
And in our reading and writing, preference is given
to the celebratory, the ecstatic.

What follows the light is what precedes it:
the moment of balance, of dark equivalence.

But tonight we sit in the garden in our canvas chairs
so late into the evening –
why should we look either forward or backwards?
Why should we be forced to remember:
it is in our blood, this knowledge.
Shortness of the days; darkness, coldness of winter.
It is in our blood and bones; it is in our history.
It takes a genius to forget these things.
~Louise Glück from “Solstice”

I stand, wavering in a balance
of light and shadow~
this knowledge of what’s to come next
rests deep in my bones.

I’ve been here before,
so grateful for the sun’s return.

I will not forget this gift of Light,
as darkness begins to claim the days again.

I remember,
He promised to never let darkness
overwhelm the world again.

I believe Him,
on this longest day,
and even more so,
in the midst of the longest night.

Unattainable Unbounded Joy

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I had a profound amazement
at the sovereignty of Being
becoming a dizzy sensation of tumbling endlessly
into the abyss of its mystery;

an unbounded joy at being alive,
at having been given the chance to live through
all I have lived through,
and at the fact that everything has a deep and obvious meaning –
this joy formed a strange alliance in me
with a vague horror at the inapprehensibility and unattainability
of everything I was so close to in that moment,
standing at the very “edge of the infinite”;

I was flooded with a sense of
ultimate happiness and harmony
with the world and with myself,
with that moment, with all the moments I could call up,
and with everything invisible that lies behind it and has meaning.
~Václav Havel in a letter to his wife

– for Czesław Miłosz

How unattainable life is,
it only reveals its features in memory, in nonexistence.
How unattainable afternoons,
ripe, tumultuous, leaves bursting with sap; swollen fruit,
the rustling silks of women who pass on the other side of the street,
and the shouts of boys leaving school.
Unattainable.
The simplest apple inscrutable, round.
The crowns of trees shake in warm currents of air.
Unattainably distant mountains.
Intangible rainbows.
Huge cliffs of clouds flowing slowly through the sky.
The sumptuous, unattainable afternoon.
My life, swirling, unattainable, free.
~Adam Zagajewski, “Fruit” Translated by Renata Gorczyńska and C. K. Williams

Heaven and earth are only three feet apart,
but in the thin places that distance is even smaller.
A thin place is where the veil that separates heaven and earth is lifted
and one is able to receive a glimpse of the glory of God.
~Celtic saying

Sometimes the abundance in my life is so unbounded,
I possibly can’t absorb it all,
like an endless feast that far exceeds my hunger.

At times I have no idea how hungry I am
until it is laid out before me;
I don’t know where to begin.

When I feel myself on that cliff of overwhelm,
that thin edge of knowing
I can almost reach past the finite
to touch the infinite,
I realize it is unattainable.

Not now, not yet.

We live in the already but not yet.
The all-encompassing I AM is here among us,
His Spirit surrounding us with beauty beyond imagining.
But we are waiting, wondering, wistful
as the kingdom of God is already here
and yet to come.

So He offers a glimpse and a taste
and it is so very very good.

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Promises Promises

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The flown, the fallen,
the golden ones,
the deciduous dead, all gone
to ground, to dust, to sand,
borne on the shoulders of the wind.

Listen! They are whispering…

Look at the trees!

Every leaf-scar is a bud
expecting a future.
The earth speaks in parables.
The burning bush. The rainbow.
Promises. Promises.
~Gillian Clarke from “The Year’s Midnight” From Selected Poems

Having turned the ragged corner into a new year,
I search for any signs of recovery from
what was fallen and flown from last year.
Instead there is rain upon rain and water levels rise.

I step cautiously upon the sponge of soaked leaves underfoot,
recalling their crisp vibrancy when still attached
to branches that are now picked clean
to bare bones, all flesh devoured.

Yet, as I examine those skeletal remains,
I see their scars swelling with potential,
even now, even in early winter there is expectancy.

These bushes will not burn to ashes;
this rain will cease to flood.
This sky, these trees will light up once again
with promises made
and promises kept.

The Marvelous Light

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 Lord,
              when you send the rain
              think about it, please,
              a little?
      Do
              not get carried away
              by the sound of falling water,
              the marvelous light
              on the falling water.
          I
              am beneath that water.
              It falls with great force
              and the light
Blinds
              me to the light.
~James Baldwin, “Untitled” from Jimmy’s Blues

The good Lord sends what He knows we need even if we don’t know we need it. Then we’re puzzled and not just a little perturbed, especially when it doesn’t fit our plans, our timeline, our desires, our hopes and dreams.

Anyone ask for this year’s chaos and grief? Can I see a show of hands?

No one I know sent up prayers
for a viral scourge to sicken 40 million
and kill over a one million in a matter of months,
or for ever-widening political divides and disagreements,
or increasing distrust and less cooperation between nuclear powers,
or devastating unemployment and economic hardship,
or triggers for riots in the streets,
or being unable to visit my 100 year old aunt in her long term care facility.

Maybe, just maybe,
we are too blinded by the force of this deluge pounding and battering us
to acknowledge the nearly-drowned soaking we bring upon ourselves.

Maybe, just maybe,
the Lord thinks a bit about what He sends,
just as He has done before
and has ever promised to do:
a Light in the midst of the storm,
that Marvelous Light,
if only we would open our eyes enough to see it.

Rainbow Hidden Within the Clouds

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God put the rainbow in the clouds, not just in the sky….
It is wise to realize we already have rainbows in our clouds,
or we wouldn’t be here.
If the rainbow is in the clouds,
then in the worst of times,
there is the possibility of seeing hope….
We can say, ‘I can be a rainbow in the clouds for someone yet to be.’ That may be our calling.
~Maya Angelou (Harrisburg Forum, November 30, 2001)

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life.
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.
~Lord Byron

Painting the indescribable with words necessitates subtlety, sound and rhythm.  The best word color portraits I know are by Gerard Manley Hopkins who described what he saw using startling combinations:  “crimson-cresseted”, “couple-colour”, “rose-moles”, “fresh-firecoal”, “adazzle, dim”, “dapple-dawn-drawn”, “blue-bleak embers”, “gash gold-vermillion”.

My facility with words doesn’t measure up so I rely on pictures to show the hope I see when I look at the sky. I keep reaching for the rainbow hiding within the clouds, searching for the prophetic promise that preserves my days and nights forever.

After all, in the beginning was the Word, and no one says it better than He does.


Send Me Dreams

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Still and calm,
In purple robes of kings,
The low-lying mountains
sleep at the edge of the world.
The forests cover them like mantles;
Day and night
Rise and fall over them
like the wash of waves. 
Asleep, they reign.
Silent, they say all.
Hush me, O slumbering mountains –
Send me dreams.
~Harriet Monroe “The Blue Ridge”

I live where the surrounding hills circle like wagons,
strong shoulders promising protection,
lying steadfast day after day,
while the palette of sky changes with the season.

These are friends in whose shadows I sleep;
they will be here long after I take my rest,
but I will remember, even in my dreams,
I will long remember
how light emerges hopeful over the crest
at the breaking of dawn.