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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The simple words no longer work. Neither do the grand ones. Something about The hanging bits of dark Mixed with your hair. The everlasting quietness Attached to the deserted barn Made me think I’d discovered you But you already knew all about yourself As we stood on the edge of a forest With your dress as languid as the air, The day made of spring wind and daffodils. Then the sky appeared in blue patches Among slow clouds, Oak leaves came out on the trees, Grass suddenly became green, Filled with small animals that sing. All the parts of spring were gathering, The earth was being created all over again One piece at a time Just for you. ~Tom Hennen “Found on the Earth” From Darkness Sticks To Everything
I’m waking from wintry doldrums, to earlier mornings, longer evenings, healing from weeks of cold and weariness.
It is as if all has been rebirthed, vivid with light and songs and color and smells – I cannot imagine not sharing it all.
This renewal feels so personal, as if just for me – yet I know others are waking too.
I face the morning sun in silence, my eyelids closed and glowing, warming in the light.
So I offer up this blessed cup of quiet, steeped and ready to pour out, just for you.
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God makes us happy as only children can be happy. God wants to always be with us, wherever we may be – in our sin, in our suffering and death. We are no longer alone; God is with us. We are no longer homeless; a bit of the eternal home itself has moved unto us. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Today is my mother’s birthday, but she’s not here to celebrate by opening a flowery card or looking calmly out a window.
If my mother were alive, she’d be 114 years old, and I am guessing neither of us would be enjoying her birthday very much.
Mother, I would love to see you again to take you shopping or to sit in your sunny apartment with a pot of tea, but it wouldn’t be the same at 114.
And I’m no prize either, almost 20 years older than the last time you saw me sitting by your deathbed. Some days, I look worse than yesterday’s oatmeal.
It must have been frigid that morning in the hour just before dawn on your first December 1st at the family farm a hundred miles north of Toronto.
Happy Birthday, anyway. Happy Birthday to you. ~Billy Collins from “December 1”
December 1st is not my mother’s birthday; this was her death day fifteen years ago.
Yet it felt a bit like a birth.
The call came from the care center about 5:30 AM that Monday after Thanksgiving on a frozen morning: the nurse gently said her breathing had changed, it wasn’t long now until she’d be gone. My daughter and I quickly dressed and went out into a bleak and icy darkness to make the ten minute drive to her bedside.
Mom had been wearily existing since a femur fracture 9 months earlier on a cruel April 1st morning. Everything changed for her after nearly 88 years of being active at home. It was the beginning of the end for her, unable to care for herself.
She had been born in the isolation of a Palouse wheat and lentil farm in eastern Washington, delivered into this life in a two story white house located down a long lane and nestled in a draw between the undulating hills.
It occurred to me as we drove to her bedside: the past nine months had been a different type of gestation, anticipating the end of her life. After nearly dying at age 13 from a ruptured appendix in a pre-antibiotic era, she now was facing her long-awaited yet long-feared transition to death. That near-miss in childhood seemed to haunt her, filling her with worry that it was a mistake that she survived that episode at all. Yet she had thrived despite the anxiety, and ended up, much to her surprise, living a long life full of family, fruitfulness, and faith.
Elna Schmitz Polis – age 87
We arrived to a room darkened, except for the multicolored lights on the table top artificial Christmas tree I had brought her a few days earlier. It cast colorful shadows onto the walls and the white bedspread on her hospital bed. It even made her look like she had color to her cheeks where there actually was none.
There was no one home any longer.
She had already left, flown away while we drove the few miles to come to her. There was no reaching her now. Her skin was cooling, her face hollowed by the lack of effort to breathe, her body stilled and sunken.
I could not weep at that point – it was time for her to leave us behind. She was so very tired, so very weary, so very ready for heaven. And I, weary too, felt much like yesterday’s oatmeal, something she actually very much loved during her life, cooking up a big batch a couple times a week, enough to last several days.
I knew, seeing what was left of her there in that bed, Mom was no longer settling for yesterday’s oatmeal and no longer homeless. I knew now she was present for a feast, would never suffer insomnia again, would no longer be fearful of dying, that her cheeks would be forever full of color.
I knew this was her new beginning: the glory of rebirth thanks to her Savior who had gently taken her by the hand to a land where joy would never end.
Happy Birthday today, Mom. Happy December 1st Birthday to you.
I’ll fly away, oh glory I’ll fly away in the morning When I die hallelujah by and by I’ll fly away
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You might not know this old tree by its bark, Which once was striate, smooth, and glossy-dark, So deep now are the rifts that separate Its roughened surface into flake and plate.
Fancy might less remind you of a birch Than of mosaic columns in a church Like Ara Coeli or the Lateran Or the trenched features of an agèd man.
Still, do not be too much persuaded by These knotty furrows and these tesserae To think of patterns made from outside in Or finished wisdom in a shriveled skin.
Old trees are doomed to annual rebirth, New wood, new life, new compass, greater girth, And this is all their wisdom and their art— To grow, stretch, crack, and not yet come apart. ~Richard Wilbur “A Black Birch in Winter”
When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy’s been swinging them. But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust— Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves: You may see their trunks arching in the woods Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows— Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, Whose only play was what he found himself, Summer or winter, and could play alone. One by one he subdued his father’s trees By riding them down over and over again Until he took the stiffness out of them, And not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer. He learned all there was To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It’s when I’m weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig’s having lashed across it open. I’d like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love: I don’t know where it’s likely to go better. I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. ~Robert Frost “Birches”
Old trees are doomed to annual rebirth, New wood, new life, new compass, greater girth, And this is all their wisdom and their art— To grow, stretch, crack, and not yet come apart.
The poet understands as we (and trees) age, we are no longer smooth on the surface, developing cracks and furrows, a flaking and peeling skin surrounding a steadfast trunk. Yet we still grow, even if not as recognizable in our old skin – our innards are still working, in particular enhancing a “greater girth.” (!)
Our farm’s twin birch trees have had some rough winters, having been bent double in a previous ice storm. One has not survived the trauma – the other continues to struggle. There are times when these flexible trees can bear no more bending despite their strength and perseverance.
As I am no longer a swinger of birches (and in truth, never was), I hope instead for the “finished wisdom in shriveled skin” of the aging tree. I admire how the birches renew themselves each spring, not giving up hope despite everything they have been through. They keep reaching higher up to the sky, while a slender branch just might touch the hem of heaven oh so gently.
1. See the lovely birch in the meadow, Curly leaves all dancing when the wind blows. Loo-lee-loo, when the wind blows, Loo-lee-loo, when the wind blows.
2. Oh, my little tree, I need branches, For the silver flutes I need branches. Loo-lee-loo, three branches, Loo-lee-loo, three branches.
3. From another birch I will make now, I will make a tingling balalaika. Loo-lee-loo, balalaika, Loo-lee-loo, balalaika.
4. When I play my new balalaika, I will think of you, my lovely birch tree. Loo-lee-loo, lovely birch tree, Loo-lee-loo, lovely birch tree.
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Today is my mother’s birthday, but she’s not here to celebrate by opening a flowery card or looking calmly out a window.
If my mother were alive, she’d be 114 years old, and I am guessing neither of us would be enjoying her birthday very much.
Mother, I would love to see you again to take you shopping or to sit in your sunny apartment with a pot of tea, but it wouldn’t be the same at 114.
And I’m no prize either, almost 20 years older than the last time you saw me sitting by your deathbed. Some days, I look worse than yesterday’s oatmeal.
It must have been frigid that morning in the hour just before dawn on your first December 1st at the family farm a hundred miles north of Toronto.
Happy Birthday, anyway. Happy Birthday to you. ~Billy Collins from “December 1”
December 1st is not my mother’s birthday but it was her death day thirteen years ago.
Yet it felt a bit like a birth.
The call came from the care center about 5:30 AM on the Monday after Thanksgiving on a frozen morning: the nurse gently said her breathing had changed, it wasn’t long now until she’d be gone.
My daughter and I quickly dressed and went out into bleak darkness to make the ten minute drive to where she lay. Mom had been wearily existing since a femur fracture 9 months earlier on a cruel April 1st morning. Everything changed for her at 87 years of being active at home. It was the beginning of the end for her, unable to care for herself at home.
These nine months had been her gestation time to transition to a new life. It occurred to me as I drove – she was about to be born in her long-awaited yet long-feared transition to death.
Her room was darkened except for the multicolored lights on the table top artificial Christmas tree I had brought her a few days earlier. It cast colorful shadows onto the walls and the white bedspread on her hospital bed. It even made her look like she had color to her cheeks where there actually was none.
There was no one home.
She had already left, flown away while we drove the few miles to come to her. There was no reaching her now. Her skin was cooling, her face hollowed by the lack of effort, her body stilled and sunken.
I could not weep at that point – it was time for her to leave us behind. She was so very tired, so very weary, so very ready for heaven. And I, weary too, felt much like yesterday’s oatmeal, something she actually very much loved during her life, cooking up a big batch a couple times a week, enough to last several days.
I knew, seeing what was left of her there in that bed, Mom was no longer settling for yesterday’s oatmeal and no longer homeless. I knew she now she was present for a feast, would never suffer insomnia again, would no longer be fearful of dying, that her cheeks would be forever full of color.
I knew she had a new beginning: the glory of rebirth thanks to her Savior who had gently taken her by the hand to a land where joy would never end.
Happy Birthday, Mom. Happy December 1st Birthday to you.
I’ll fly away, oh glory I’ll fly away in the morning When I die hallelujah by and by I’ll fly away
God makes us happy as only children can be happy. God wants to always be with us, wherever we may be – in our sin, in our suffering and death. We are no longer alone; God is with us. We are no longer homeless; a bit of the eternal home itself has moved unto us. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Some bright morning when this life is over I’ll fly away To that home on God’s celestial shore I’ll fly away
I’ll fly away, oh glory I’ll fly away in the morning When I die hallelujah by and by I’ll fly away
When the shadows of this life have gone I’ll fly away Like a bird from these prison walls I’ll fly I’ll fly away
Oh how glad and happy when we meet I’ll fly away No more cold iron shackles on my feet I’ll fly away
Just a few more weary days and then I’ll fly away To a land where joys will never end I’ll fly away
I’ll fly away oh glory I’ll fly away in the morning When I die hallelujah by and by I’ll fly away I’ll fly away ~Albert Brumley
This year’s Barnstorming Advent theme “… the Beginning shall remind us of the End” is taken from the final lines in T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees”
A book of beauty in words and photography, available to order here:
There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do – Go through his clothes and look for loose change. ~William Goldman – the wisdom of Miracle Max in The Princess Bride
You who believe, and you who sometimes believe and sometimes don’t believe much of anything, and you who would give almost anything to believe if only you could.
You happy ones and you who can hardly remember what it was like once to be happy.
You who know where you’re going and how to get there and you who much of the time aren’t sure you’re getting anywhere.
“Get up,” he says, all of you – all of you! – and the power that is in him is the power to give life not just to the dead like the child,
but to those who are only partly alive, which is to say to people like you and me
who much of the time live with our lives closed to the wild beauty and miracle of things, including the wild beauty and miracle of every day we live and even of ourselves. ~Frederick Buechner -Originally published inSecrets in the Dark
May I not settle for being slightly alive or mostly dead –
I want to be fully alive to the wild beauty and miracle of things, to the wild beauty and miracle of every day, and even the wild beauty and miracle of myself~~
I have known what it is to doubt, to be discouraged, defeated, and grieved.
It is part of the package: shadows appear when the Sun is the brightest and hottest. I have no doubt the Sun exists, especially after the last few days.
So I must “get up!” even if I don’t know where to go next.
And then I will believe ~truly believe~ I am created to be mostly and absolutely alive this day and every day.
A new book from Barnstorming is available for order here:
Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. ~Stanley Horowitz, a poem in Readers’ Digest Nov. 1983
WinterWinter
L’Inverno (Winter) Opus 8, No. 4, in F minor
I. Allegro non molto– Frozen and trembling in the icy snow, In the severe blast of the horrible wind, As we run, we constantly stamp our feet, And our teeth chatter in the cold. II. Largo– To spend happy and quiet days near the fire, While, outside, the rain soaks hundreds. III. Allegro– We walk on the ice with slow steps, And tread carefully, for fear of falling. Symphony, If we go quickly, we slip and fall to the ground. Again we run on the ice, Until it cracks and opens. We hear, from closed doors, Sirocco, Boreas, and all the winds in battle. This is winter, but it brings joy. ~Vivaldi (Winter poem)
SpringSpringSpringSpring
La Primavera (Spring) Opus 8, No. 1, in E Major
I. Allegro– Festive Spring has arrived, The birds salute it with their happy song. And the brooks, caressed by little Zephyrs, Flow with a sweet murmur. The sky is covered with a black mantle, And thunder, and lightning, announce a storm. When they are silent, the birds Return to sing their lovely song. II. Largo e pianissimo sempre– And in the meadow, rich with flowers, To the sweet murmur of leaves and plants, The goatherd sleeps, with his faithful dog at his side. III. Danza pastorale. Allegro– To the festive sound of pastoral bagpipes, Dance nymphs and shepherds, At Spring’s brilliant appearance. ~Vivaldi (Spring poem)
SummerSummerSummerSummer
L’Estate (Summer) Opus 8, No. 2, in G minor
I. Allegro non molto– Under the heat of the burning summer sun, Languish man and flock; the pine is parched. The cuckoo finds its voice, and suddenly, The turtledove and goldfinch sing. A gentle breeze blows, But suddenly, the north wind appears. The shepherd weeps because, overhead, Lies the fierce storm, and his destiny. II. Adagio; Presto– His tired limbs are deprived of rest By his fear of lightning and fierce thunder, And by furious swarms of flies and hornets. III. Presto– Alas, how just are his fears, Thunder and lightening fill the Heavens, and the hail Slices the tops of the corn and other grain. ~Vivaldi (Summer poem)
AutumnAutumnAutumnAutumnAutumn
L’Autunno (Autumn) Opus 8, No. 3, in F Major
I. Allegro– The peasants celebrate with dance and song, The joy of a rich harvest. And, full of Bacchus’s liquor, They finish their celebration with sleep. II. Adagio molto– Each peasant ceases his dance and song. The mild air gives pleasure, And the season invites many To enjoy a sweet slumber. III. Allegro– The hunters, at the break of dawn, go to the hunt. With horns, guns, and dogs they are off, The beast flees, and they follow its trail. Already fearful and exhausted by the great noise, Of guns and dogs, and wounded, The exhausted beast tries to flee, but dies. ~Vivaldi (Autumn poem)
I walk this path to stand at the same spot countless times through the year, to witness the palette changing around me.
The Artist chooses His color and technique lovingly, with a gentle touch for each season.
My life too is painted with richness and variety: from the bare lines of winter, to a green emergence of spring, a summer sweet fruitfulness and a mosaic crescendo of autumn.
This ever-new pathway extends beyond the reach of the canvas.
Just as we lose hope she ambles in, a late guest dragging her hem of wildflowers, her torn veil of mist, of light rain, blowing her dandelion breath in our ears; and we forgive her, turning from chilly winter ways, we throw off our faithful sweaters and open our arms. ~Linda Pastan “Spring” from Heroes in Disguise: Poems
The ground is slowly coming to life again; snowdrops and daffodils are surfacing from months of dormancy, buds are swelling the spring chorus frogs have come from the mud to sing again and birds now greet the lazy dawn.
Everything, everyone, has been so dead, so hidden; His touch calls us back to life, love is come again to the fallow fields of our hearts.
Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain, Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain; Love lives again, that with the dead has been: Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.
In the grave they laid him, love whom men had slain, Thinking that never he would wake again. Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen: Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green,
Forth he came at Easter, like the risen grain, He that for three days in the grave had lain. Quick from the dead my risen Lord is seen: Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.
When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain, Thy touch can call us back to life again; Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been: Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green. ~John Crum
God called Abram to leave the familiar and go, go on a road he would make by going, to a place he would know by finding.
Jesus led Nicodemus to the threshold of a birth, a newness he could only know by going through it.
Only what’s behind us, not ahead, keeps us from going on, from entering the impossible womb of starting new.
The stones of disappointment in your pockets, the grave marker of the old life, they can’t come with you.
The path is not a test. It’s our freedom. Many a prisoner has looked into the tunnel, the Beloved waiting in the light, and said no.
Where is the Spirit calling you, the wind blowing? Where is the thin place between your habits and a new birth?
These pangs, this heavy breathing: the Beloved is trying to birth you. Let it happen. ~Steve Garnaass-Holmes “A new birth”
Like most people, I cling fast to the safe and familiar, sometimes wishing to retreat back to what feels most secure and safest. Yet, it is an impossible womb that would allow me back – it is clear I am meant to be fully launched, for better or worse. So carrying my checkered history stuffed deeply in my pockets, I embark on this life’s journey led by the Spirit and blown by His breath, uncertain where it will take me or how long it takes to get there.
There is an unsurpassed freedom in the path from womb to tomb; if I let His breath carry me, I’ll go so far beyond the place where my bones someday are laid.
If we could, like the trees, practice dying, do it every year just as something we do— like going on vacation or celebrating birthdays— it would become as easy a part of us as our hair or clothing.
Someone would show us how to lie down and fade away as if in deepest meditation, and we would learn about the fine dark emptiness, both knowing it and not knowing it, and coming back would be irrelevant.
Whatever it is the trees know when they stand undone, surprisingly intricate, we need to know also so we can allow that last thing to happen to us as if it were only any ordinary thing,
leaves and lives falling away, the spirit, complex, waiting in the fine darkness to learn which way it will go. ~Grace Butcher, “Learning from Trees” from Poetry of Presence
If I were to die as a leaf, I would want to change my clothes just bit by bit, overnight oozing gradually to scarlet, bleeding into the green a little bit more, until I’m so unrecognizable, I’ll seem brand new.
That would be ideal.
The reality is a fading to grey and brown, my edges withered and torn, bug-bitten with holes and weather-beaten bruised, dangling and fearful of letting go and so forgotten.
So I remember: no one, not one, falls without its Maker knowing. No one, not one, dies without being made brand new.