Today is one of those excellent January partly cloudies in which light chooses an unexpected part of the landscape to trick out in gilt, and then the shadow sweeps it away. You know you’re alive. You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet’s roundness arc between your feet. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
It was like a church to me. I entered it on soft foot, Breath held like a cap in the hand. It was quiet. What God there was made himself felt, Not listened to, in clean colours That brought a moistening of the eye, In a movement of the wind over grass.
There were no prayers said. But stillness Of the heart’s passions – that was praise Enough; and the mind’s cession Of its kingdom. I walked on, Simple and poor, while the air crumbled And broke on me generously as bread. ~R.S. Thomas “The Moor”
After years of rarely paying attention, too busy with whatever household, work-place, or barnyard task needed doing, I realized there are only a finite number of sunrises and sunsets left to me.
Now I stop, take a deep breath, sense the earth’s roundness and feel lucky to be alive, a witness to a moment of manna falling from the sky.
Sometimes it is as plain and gray as I am, but at times, a fire is lit from above and beneath, igniting the sky, overwhelming me.
I am swept away by light and shadow, transfixed and transformed, forever grateful to be fed by heavenly bread broken over my head.
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I’m the child of rainy Sundays. I watched time crawl Like an injured fly Over the wet windowpane. Or waited for a branch On a tree to stop shaking, While Grandmother knitted Making a ball of yarn Roll over like a kitten at her feet. I knew every clock in the house Had stopped ticking And that this day will last forever. ~Charles Simic “To Boredom”
Charles Simic died last week at the age of 84.
It has been an eternity since I’ve been bored.
My list of to-do’s and want-to-do’s and hope-to-do’s and someday-maybe-if-I’m-lucky-to-do’s is much longer than the years still left to me.
But I remember those days long ago when the clock would stop, time would suspend itself above me, ~dangling~ and the day would last forever until it finally collapsed with a gasp.
No more.
Time races and skitters and skips by, each heartbeat a grateful reminder of my continued existence as forever moves closer than ever.
Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick, And think of you Caught up in circles confusion – Is nothing new Flashback – warm nights – Almost left behind Suitcases of memories, Time after – Sometimes you picture me – I’m walking too far ahead You’re calling to me, I can’t hear What you’ve said – Then you say – go slow – I fall behind – The second hand unwinds If you’re lost you can look – and you will find me Time after time If you fall I will catch you – I’ll be waiting Time after time After my picture fades and darkness has Turned to gray Watching through windows – you’re wondering If I’m OK Secrets stolen from deep inside The drum beats out of time – ~Cyndi Lauper
The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time Any fool can do it There ain’t nothing to it Nobody knows how we got to The top of the hill But since we’re on our way down We might as well enjoy the ride. The secret of love is in opening up your heart It’s okay to feel afraid But don’t let that stand in your way ’cause anyone knows that love is the only road And since we’re only here for a while Might as well show some style Give us a smile. Isn’t it a lovely ride Sliding down Gliding down Try not to try too hard It’s just a lovely ride. Now the thing about time is that time Isn’t really real It’s just your point of view How does it feel for you Einstein said he could never understand it all Planets spinning through space The smile upon your face Welcome to the human race. Some kind of lovely ride I’ll be sliding down I’ll be gliding down Try not to try too hard It’s just a lovely ride. Isn’t it a lovely ride Sliding down Gliding down Try not to try too hard It’s just a lovely ride. ~James Taylor
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My hand, my arm, make sweeping circles. Dust climbs the ladder of light. For this infernal, endless chore, for these eternal seeds of rain: Thank you. For dust. ~Marilyn Nelson from “Dusting” from Magnificat
It comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes. The ashes of an oak in the chimney are no epitaph of that oak, to tell me how high or how large that was; it tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell and when a whirlwind hath blown the dust of the churchyard into the church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the church into the churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again… ~John Donne from “The Equality of Death”
Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better To paint a picture, or write a letter, Bake a cake, or plant a seed; Ponder the difference between want and need?
Dust if you must, but there’s not much time, With rivers to swim, and mountains to climb; Music to hear, and books to read; Friends to cherish, and life to lead.
Dust if you must, but the world’s out there With the sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair; A flutter of snow, a shower of rain, This day will not come around again.
Dust if you must, but bear in mind, Old age will come and it’s not kind. And when you go (and go you must) You, yourself, will make more dust. ~Rose Milligan “Dust If You Must”
…we all look the same in our beginning and again when the end comes… we are sifted through His hands, blown on with His breath, bled on in His sacrifice–
As varied as we are now in life, our bodies in death melt to a dustiness made manifest in His image: dust motes sprung to life forever.
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The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit: a broken and contrite heart… Psalm 51:17
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 12 So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. 16 Therefore we do not lose heart. 2 Corinthians: 6-12, 16
The great mystery of God’s love is that we are not asked to live as if we are not hurting, as if we are not broken. In fact, we are invited to recognize our brokenness as a brokenness in which we can come in touch with the unique way that God loves us. The great invitation is to live your brokenness under the blessing. I cannot take people’s brokenness away and people cannot take my brokenness away. But how do you live in your brokenness? Do you live your brokenness under the blessing or under the curse? The great call of Jesus is to put your brokenness under the blessing. ~Henri Nouwen from a Lecture at Scarritt-Bennett Center
Every day, as the sun goes down, I pause, broken, remembering how often I messed up that day, in big and small ways. I’m cracked open, my mistakes illuminated, weighing down my heart, impossible to forget. Yet, as I pray for mercy, there follows a peacefulness, as my errors are blotted out.
My slate, one more time, is wiped clean.
This ceramic pot is meant specially for our kitchen table — handmade by a friend using the abstract artistry of mane hairs from our farm’s Haflinger horses burnt onto the sides. But it hit the floor and broke into many pieces, looking completely beyond repair.
It is back on our table, repaired with love and care by another friend, using nothing more than copious amounts of Elmer’s Glue. This is the glue of every child’s school desk, the glue of every mother’s junk drawer, the glue of every heart that needs mending. Elmer’s is not the gold of the Japanese art of kintsugi, where broken vessels are repaired with precious metals, creating an object even more valuable and beautiful than before, with streaks and tracks of gold highlighting their shattered history.
Yet this ceramic is now even more precious to me. Someone we love cared deeply enough to make it in the first place, and another we love cared deeply to repair it, making it more beautiful and blessed in its brokenness, highlighting ragged pieces made whole again.
Someone made us. Someone repairs us when we fall apart. Someone blesses our brokenness with a glued-together beauty that makes us whole.
Therefore do not lose heart…
~Allegri’s Miserere — setting of Psalm 51
Translation: Have mercy upon me, O God, after Thy great goodness According to the multitude of Thy mercies do away mine offenses.
Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness: and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my faults: and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that Thou mightest be justified in Thy saying, and clear when Thou art judged.
Behold, I was shaped in wickedness: and in sin hath my mother conceived me. But lo, Thou requirest truth in the inward parts: and shalt make me to understand wisdom secretly.
Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness: that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice.
Turn Thy face from my sins: and put out all my misdeeds.
Make me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from Thy presence: and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.
O give me the comfort of Thy help again: and establish me with Thy free Spirit. Then shall I teach Thy ways unto the wicked: and sinners shall be converted unto Thee.
Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, Thou that art the God of my health: and my tongue shall sing of Thy righteousness. Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord: and my mouth shall shew Thy praise.
For Thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it Thee: but Thou delightest not in burnt-offerings. The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt Thou not despise.
O be favorable and gracious unto Sion: build Thou the walls of Jerusalem. Then shalt Thou be pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness, with the burnt-offerings and oblations: then shall they offer young bullocks upon Thine altar.
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Days pass when I forget the mystery. Problems insoluble and problems offering their own ignored solutions jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing their colored clothes; cap and bells. And then once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng’s clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, O Lord, Creator, Hallowed One, You still, hour by hour sustain it. ~Denise Levertov “Primary Wonder” from Selected Poems
Here is the mystery, the secret, one might almost say the cunning, of the deep love of God: that it is bound to draw upon itself the hatred and pain and shame and anger and bitterness and rejection of the world, but to draw all those things on to itself is precisely the means chosen from all eternity by the generous, loving God, by which to rid his world of the evils which have resulted from human abuse of God-given freedom. ~N.T.Wright from The Crown and The Fire
When I’m embittered and overwhelmed by the bad news of the world and I am buried in my own troubles such as COVID visiting our household, I cling to the mystery of God’s magnetism for my weaknesses and flaws.
He willingly pulls evil onto Himself, out of each of us. Hatred and pain and shame and anger disappear into the vortex of His love and beauty, the mucky corners of my heart vacuumed spotless.
We are let in on a secret: God is not sullied by absorbing the dirty messes of our lives as He came here to do just that. God leaves no void behind; He fills all emptiness with Himself.
Created in His image, we are sustained and saved through Him, thus bound to reflect His glory – how can we not be transformed and healed by His Love?
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In this kingdom the sun never sets; under the pale oval of the sky there seems no way in or out, and though there is a sea here there is no tide. For the egg itself is a moon glowing faintly in the galaxy of the barn, safe but for the spoon’s ominous thunder, the first delicate crack of lightning. ~Linda Pastan, “Egg”
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad. C. S. Lewis from Mere Christianity
I try hard to be the good egg- smooth on the surface, gooey inside, often a bit scrambled, yet ordinary and decent, indistinguishable from others, blending in, not making waves.
It’s not been bad staying just as I am. Except I can no longer remain like this.
A dent or two have appeared in my outer shell from bumps along the way, and a crack up one side extends daily.
It has come time to change or face inevitable rot.
Nothing can be the same again: the fragments of shell left behind must be abandoned as useless confinement.
Newly hatched and transformed: now there is the wind beneath my wings. I’ll soar toward an endless horizon where the sun never sets. and stretches beyond eternity.
I will no longer be merely ordinary.
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October is the treasurer of the year, And all the months pay bounty to her store; The fields and orchards still their tribute bear, And fill her brimming coffers more and more. But she, with youthful lavishness, Spends all her wealth in gaudy dress, And decks herself in garments bold Of scarlet, purple, red, and gold.
She heedeth not how swift the hours fly, But smiles and sings her happy life along; She only sees above a shining sky; She only hears the breezes’ voice in song. Her garments trail the woodlands through, And gather pearls of early dew That sparkle, till the roguish Sun Creeps up and steals them every one.
But what cares she that jewels should be lost, When all of Nature’s bounteous wealth is hers? Though princely fortunes may have been their cost, Not one regret her calm demeanor stirs. Whole-hearted, happy, careless, free, She lives her life out joyously, Nor cares when Frost stalks o’er her way And turns her auburn locks to gray. ~Paul Laurence Dunbar “October”
Frost arrives this week as pearls of dew freeze into place, dangling – strings of liquid gems transform to icy diamonds.
A rich and mellow October gives way to crisp and colorless November – a sorrowful undressing.
All fades to gray; so do I.
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The best kind of rain, of course, is a cozy rain. This is the kind of rain that falls on a day when you’d just as soon stay in bed a little longer, write letters or read a good book by the fire, take early tea with hot scones and jam, and look out the streaked window with complacency. ~ Susan Allen Tothfrom England for All Seasons
Cozy rains typically don’t happen on weekdays. There are always things to do, places to be, people to impress, rain or shine. On weekdays rain tends to be a drag-us-down, smotheringly gray inconvenience of wet shoes, damp jackets, impossibly limp hair in school and work place.
But on a Saturday? The same drops from the same cloudy skies become a comfy, tuck-me-in-once-again and snuggle-down kind of rain. There is no schedule to follow, no structured day, no required attendance, no need to even poke my nose out the door (unless living on a farm with hungry critters in the barn).
This is why most northwest natives are rainophilics, anticipating this quiet time of year with great longing. We are granted permission by precipitation to be complacent, slowed down, contemplative, and yes, even lazy… * * * Okay, enough of that. Gotta get up, get going, laundry to do, house to clean, barn to muck out, bills to pay, meals to prepare.
Maybe in the morning the rain will still be falling and there will be a chance to sit with hot tea cup in hand after church, gazing through streaked windows. Cozy rain all day on a Sabbath Sunday. With scones. And jam. Bliss… that is, until Monday.
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“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.” ~J.R.R.Tolkienspeaking through SamWise Gamgee in The Two Towers
shadow of the lone fir cast upon the woods at sunset
Of course, in life there are moments of darkness. There are periods of discouragement. There are times when we lose sight of the beauty of the sky for all the clouds. You may have to bear severe sickness, or deal with tremendous pain, or you may be disappointed in this or that. But remember, whatever difficulty you have to face, it will not last. It is only a cloud. For God has made each of us with a purpose.
We are made for joy. But this joy can never be fully experienced here on earth. God’s joy is ultimately realized in eternity. To be a Christian is to understand that the cross, and the suffering of the cross, has meaning, and that suffering is part of our state on this earth. Don’t expect paradise on earth. Don’t. But there is meaning, and this meaning is the love of God and gratitude for life on this earth. Whatever your state, whatever your situation, whatever your purpose, always remember that you are made for joy. ~Alice Von Hildebrand “Made for Joy”
When I feel overwhelmed and discouraged, when it seems all is in shadow, I know we are part of a great story and the plot progression is a mystery.
We are promised light and joy at the end. We emerge through the shadows, the clouds clear away and the darkness passes over, under and through us, never to return, never to surround us again.
Save me from all oppression, conspiracy, and rebellion; from violence, battle, and murder; and from dying suddenly and unprepared. ~The Book of Common Prayer
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I sit with braided fingers and closed eyes in a span of late sunlight. The spokes are closing. It is fall: warm milk of light, though from an aging breast. I do not mean to pray. The posture for thanks or supplication is the same as for weariness or relief. But I am glad for the luck of light. Surely it is godly, that it makes all things begin, and appear, and become actual to each other. Light that’s sucked into the eye, warming the brain with wires of color. Light that hatched life out of the cold egg of earth. ~May Swenson from “October”
portrait of Dan’s mom, Emma Gibson, praying, by granddaughter Sara Lenssen
We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. ~C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory
photo of Wiser Lake Chapel by Barbara Hoelle
I do mean to pray.
I will sit in an old wooden pew this Sabbath day, my fingers tightly braided together in gratitude for bathing in yet another feast of Light. I will be fed as surely as if I were being cradled at a warm breast, as if I were a newborn holding tightly with a mighty grip.
We were created to be nurtured like this, held close to beauty and stirred to life, immersed within a nest made for us out of cold dust.
So I drink deeply of the warm milk of beauty whenever offered. Perhaps you can too.
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