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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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.
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 thateverything 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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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.
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.
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.
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.
Beneath our clothes, our reputations, our pretensions, beneath our religion or lack of it, we are all vulnerable both to the storm without and to the storm within. ~Frederick Buechner – from Telling the Truth
This past month’s storms have been tumultuous on the outside: heavy winds toppling a large tree into our friends’ bed room at midnight narrowing missing the bed in which they slept, unexpected regional snowfall, torrential showers, dark threatening clouds on the horizon.
Yet March’s storms are not limited to just the weather: hundreds of thousands of people sickened by a virus that can kill within days or simply be spread by unwitting asymptomatic people, businesses shut down, hospitals and clinics overwhelmed, hoarding behavior resulting in shortages of products addressing basic needs.
And storms inside my cranium: at times I feel fearful for myself and my extended family living far away, my words fly out too quickly, my anxiety mixes with frustration, my tears spill too easily, I am immobilized by limitations on where I can go and who I can visit.
This past month and the months to come may well be filled with continued hardship, but I won’t blame the calendar for what has happened. I am not so easily excused from responsibility. I end up lying awake at night with regrets, wondering if I should be doing more than just telemedicine from home, yet wanting to hide myself and my M.D. degree under a rock until this unending storm blows over.
While the storm rages on, a miracle of grace is happening in many places: generous people are making a difference in small and large ways all around the world. Some take enormous personal risks to take care of strangers and loved ones. Some work endless hours and when they come home, they remain isolated to avoid contaminating their families.
Such grace only happens when the storm is confronted head on by the brilliant light of sacrifice, when the heaviest most threatening clouds begin to weep from illumination that creates a rainbow dropped from heaven.
So we know God cries too. His wept tears light the sky in a promise of salvation. He assures us of this because He won’t leave us in the darkness: His Light will prevail and this storm too shall pass.
God sees us as we are, loves us as we are, and accepts us as we are. But by His grace, He does not leave us where we are. ~Tim Keller
In Summer, in a burst of summertime Following falls and falls of rain, When the air was sweet-and-sour of the flown fineflower of Those goldnails and their gaylinks that hang along a lime; ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Cheery Beggar”
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”
Sweet and sour extends far beyond a Chinese menu; it is the daily air I breathe.
I am but a cheery beggar in this summer world, hanging tight to the sweetness of each glorious moment yet knowing it cannot last:
the startling twilight gold of a July rain, the intense green of thirsty fields, a rainbow suspended in misty haze, the clouds racing to win the day’s finish line.
But as beggars aren’t choosers, sweet rain ruins hay harvest and berries turn to mold on the vine.
The sky stooping to kiss the earth may bring mud and flood.
I breathe deeply now of petrichor: the scent of raindrops falling on dry land as if I could wear it like perfume on those sour days of drought.
