Tag: restored

He Sees Us As We Are: Shedding the Fluff

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In the morning I take out
most of what I put in last night.

I cross out everything that seems
excessive, every frill and fandango,

anything fluffy—a word that should
never again appear in a poem,

along with blossom and awesome.
Once I have deleted everything

except the title—which now seems
to have been written by a poet

who knows something I don’t,
I delete that as well and turn

the page. All that empty space
is waiting. What will I say?
~Joyce Sutphen “The Art of Revision”

It is shedding season on the farm. Suddenly it feels like everything is being purged, leaving a blank slate, an empty canvas, a wordless page.

Someone who knows something that I don’t is directing all this dropping of the burdensome to make space for the shiny and new.

I wish my own extra insulation could just be brushed out and thrown away like horse and dog hair.  Mine clings to me through cold weather and warm, padding my hips and my middle and a few other spots I’d rather not disclose.  I know I don’t really need all this extra fluff, and I know what I must do to shed it, but somehow knowing and doing are not always in synch.

In fact I hang on to a lot that I don’t need, some of which only makes me more miserable, as it is no longer useful and is downright detrimental.    Some of it is tangible accumulation, in not-just-a-few piles and closets.  Some is not visible but is deeply seeded nevertheless.  The excess hurts to have it pulled out by the roots.

Yes, it is time to revise, start fresh, and figure out what is next.

I have an undercoat that I cling to because it guards my heart,  providing an insulated layer buffering against the chill and sharp edges of life.  I need a good stiff brushing from a strong arm.  The time has come for the coat to blow.  I’ll be smooth and free once again, feeling the breezes right through my skin, all the way to my heart.

I remain fluffy at my peril. It is time to figure out what comes next.

This year’s Lenten theme on Barnstorming:

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

A Faithless Tree

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Each year I mark one lone outstanding tree,
Clad in its robings of the summer past,
Dry, wan, and shivering in the wintry blast.
It will not pay the season’s rightful fee,—
It will not set its frost-burnt leafage free;
But like some palsied miser all aghast,
Who hoards his sordid treasure to the last,
It sighs, it moans, it sings in eldritch glee.
A foolish tree, to dote on summers gone;
A faithless tree, that never feels how spring
Creeps up the world to make a leafy dawn,
And recompense for all despoilment bring!
Oh, let me not, heyday and youth withdrawn,
With failing hands to their vain semblance cling!
~Edith Matilda Thomas “Winter Leafage”

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Decades ago, while I worked as a nurses’ aide in a nursing home, I cared for a little slip of a lady almost 100 years of age who would not go down the hall to breakfast without her make up on.  Wearing makeup was more important than putting on clothing to her, so our daily morning routine was prolonged considerably as she meticulously penciled over her invisible eyebrows, caked on powder on her forehead, nose and cheeks to cover the wrinkles, and tremulously applied a wavery thick border of red lipstick on her thin lips.  I tried to tell her how lovely she was without a mask on, how her weathered skin deserved to be seen and admired, how her eyes shone more brightly without the crumbling mascara on non-existent eyelashes.  She would have none of it.  She had never appeared in public without her makeup since her teenage years, and she was not about to start now.

She clung to the fading leaves of her youth, holding on with all her might to what she believed kept her beautiful, so we continued to preserve her “frost-burnt leafage”,  covering up her thin bones and her wrinkled face.

She died quietly in her sleep one night so my morning duty was to prepare her body for the coming mortician.  I washed her lovely face clean for the last time, admiring her without the cover, appreciating each wrinkle’s fold and crevice, knowing she now was made new in a leafy dawn I could only imagine.

The mortician would do what was needed to dress her up to her specifications.  But only I had seen the beauty underneath.

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