Tag: smiling

Covered in Time’s Insidious Wrinkles

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Like Time’s insidious wrinkle
On a beloved Face
We clutch the Grace the tighter
Though we resent the crease
~Emily Dickinson

Let the labyrinth of wrinkles be furrowed in my brow with the red-hot iron of my own life, let my hair whiten and my step become vacillating, on condition that I can save the intelligence of my soul – let me learn just everything that others cannot teach me, what only life would be capable of marking deeply in my skin!
~Salvador Dali

kale

People are more than just the way they look.
~Madeleine L’Engle from A Wrinkle in Time

1971
1976
1980
1992
2021

Just a glance in the mirror tells me all I need to know:

my increasing folds and creases remind me
each wrinkle is grace in action,
so tangible, so telling, so mobile –
multiplying when I smile
so I try to smile often.

I don’t hide them under a mask
nor surgically tighten them away
or inject them smooth.

Instead I grin at the wrinkle of time passing,
knowing each line gained
is a grace clutched tightly
in an otherwise loosening grasp.

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Build Me Up, Buttercup

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Buttercup’s heart was a secret garden and the walls were very high…

Buttercup: “Anything there is that I can do for you, I will do for you; anything there is that I cannot do, I will learn to do.” And with that, she dared the bravest thing she’d ever done; she looked right into his eyes…

Buttercup: We’ll never survive.
Westley: Nonsense. You’re only saying that because no one ever has.

Westley: Hear this now. I will always come for you.
Buttercup: But how can you be sure?
Westley: This is true love. You think this happens every day?

That day, she was amazed to discover that when he was saying “As you wish”, what he meant was, “I love you.” And even more amazing was the day she realized she truly loved him back.
~William Golding, all above quotes from The Princess Bride

However did I find a farm boy who decades later
still makes me smile and laugh and builds me up?

This farm boy of mine says “I love you” in so many ways every day;
the walls of my secret garden heart come tumbling down…

Like butter, I am melted by his willingness to love someone like me.

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What is Possible Within Us

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Find a quiet rain.  Then a green spruce tree.  You will notice that nearly every needle has been decorated with a tiny raindrop ornament.  Look closely inside the drop and there you are. In color. Upside down. Raindrops have been collecting snapshots since objects and people were placed, to their surprise, here and there on earth.

…even if we are only on display for a moment in a water drop as it clings to a pine needle, it is expected that we be on our best behavior, hair combed, jacket buttoned, no vulgar language.  Smiling is not necessary, but a pleasant attitude is helpful, and would be, I think, appreciated.
~Tom Hennen from “Outdoor Photos” from Darkness Sticks to Everything

… We are, as we have always been, dangerous creatures, the enemies of our own happiness. But the only help we have ever found for this, the only melioration, is in mutual reverence.

God’s grace comes to us unmerited, the theologians say. But the grace we could extend to one another we consider it best to withhold in very many cases, presumptively, or in the absence of what we consider true or sufficient merit (we being more particular than God), or because few gracious acts, if they really deserve the name, would stand up to a cost-benefit analysis. This is not the consequence of a new atheism, or a systemic materialism that afflicts our age more than others. It is good old human meanness, which finds its terms and pretexts in every age. The best argument against human grandeur is the meagerness of our response to it, paradoxically enough.

And yet, the beautiful persists, and so do eloquence and depth of thought, and they belong to all of us because they are the most pregnant evidence we can have of what is possible in us.
~ Marilynne Robinson from “What Are We Doing Here?”

These past two months I’ve been trudging along feeling overheated, dry and cranky from the lack of rain — each step an effort, each thought a burden, taking every opportunity to grump about myself, the weather, the pandemic, and my fellow man. 

Now that we finally have had a good rain over the last 12 hours, I am reminded I am now preserved in the camera eye of the raindrops I pass, if only for an instant – each snapping an instagram selfie photo of my attitude.

It wouldn’t hurt me to stop rolling my eyes and cringing at the world. I might even try on a smile in a spirit of grace and forgiveness, even if the events of the day may not call for it. At least those smiles, reflected in the lens of each raindrop, will soak the soil when it is let go to fall earthward.

Planting smiles drop by drop: this overnight rain is a gift of grace to heal my grumbles – pregnant evidence of the beauty possible within me.

Needing a cure for crankiness? This new book from Barnstorming is the perfect remedy and available to order here:

Flat Affect

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I used to think the land
had something to say to us,
back when wildflowers
would come right up to your hand
as if they were tame.

Sooner or later, I thought,
the wind would begin to make sense
if I listened hard
and took notes religiously.
That was spring.

Now I’m not so sure:
the cloudless sky has a flat affect
and the fields plowed down after harvest
seem so expressionless,
keeping their own counsel.

This afternoon, nut tree leaves
blow across them
as if autumn had written us a long letter,
changed its mind,
and tore it into little scraps.
~Don Thompson October

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

We’re in a time of seasonal abundance but our emotions are spent from containment through lock-down, shelter-in, social distancing, zoom-in and zoom-out.

As I meet with my patients via a televisit, I try to read their faces and find that along with the flatness of our screens, our emotions are flat too. My usual gentle humor to lighten things up becomes pointless – it is hard to elicit smiles these days. On the other hand, there no longer is a need for abundant tissues for tearful conversations because no one will weep on screen. There may be a hint of emotion in a catch in a voice, but I have yet to see anyone actually cry in two months of telehealth conversations. That would be too vulnerable – somehow being on camera suggests we need to put the actor-mask on, be expression-less, strong and invulnerable. And somehow my patient knows I can’t reach out as I would in an exam room, literally and verbally, to reassure them I’m present and listening. I’m not really present on a screen even though I’m listening.

And while out in society, we must literally hide ourselves behind a mask that conceals our smiles as well as our grim-faced frowns.

So our social and clinical interactions are as flat as the screens they play out on.

We need some unchecked tears about now, as well as endless belly laughs. Perhaps there will be a reawakening to the range of emotions we have taken for granted before finding ourselves in this time of restraint and restriction.

As we reintegrate and reunite, slowly, carefully and compassionately, let us re-experience in 3-D what we have been missing in our virtual meetings: tears that accompany joyous reunion as well as the lament of all we’re lost during this time.

Please pass the tissues.

Best Behavior

barnstormingblog12 Comments

frozenpineneedles

Find a quiet rain.  Then a green spruce tree.  You will notice that nearly every needle has been decorated with a tiny raindrop ornament.  Look closely inside the drop and there you are. In color. Upside down. Raindrops have been collecting snapshots since objects and people were placed, to their surprise, here and there on earth.

…even if we are only on display for a moment in a water drop as it clings to a pine needle, it is expected that we be on our best behavior, hair combed, jacket buttoned, no vulgar language.  Smiling is not necessary, but a pleasant attitude is helpful, and would be, I think, appreciated.
~Tom Hennen from “Outdoor Photos”

 

Some days I choose to trudge along dry and cranky — each step an effort, each thought a burden, each moment an opportunity to grump.  It is good to be reminded I am preserved, as is, for an instant, in the camera eye of the raindrops I pass, each snapping a photo of my attitude.

It wouldn’t hurt me to smile, even if the events of the day may not call for it.  At least those smiles, reflected in the lens of each raindrop, will soak the soil when let go to fall earthward. There is no better place for them to bloom and grow, ready for a new day.

 

rainjewels2

 

raindrops1126

novemberdropclose

Lenten Reflection–In the End, It’s All One

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photo by Josh Scholten


Even in laughter the heart may ache, and rejoicing may end in grief.
Proverbs 14:13
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
Luke 6:21

Laugh till you weep. Weep till there’s nothing left but to laugh at your weeping. In the end it’s all one.
Frederick Buechner

I work in a place where there are kleenex tissue boxes everywhere you turn. On any given day hundreds of tissues cover sneezes and coughs and blow over 120 runny noses. That is reason enough, but they are essential for those tender and vulnerable moments when eyes start to well up and overflow, and the tears start to stream. There is nothing more helpless than crying and having it leak and puddle all around you with nothing to catch the stream. Handing someone a tissue is one of my most nurturing acts. My standard line is a variation of Buechner’s quote: “sometimes our feelings are so overwhelmed we aren’t sure whether to laugh or cry, so we end up doing both–just let it flow.” It almost always gets a smile and chuckle even from the biggest toughest guy who is sobbing his heart out over a lost love or his parents’ divorce, or the confirmed cry baby who has been designated the “town crier” by her roommates because she can’t not cry at every little thing.

I know something about this personally as I’m an easy crier as well, though these days it is primarily my family who is aware of it. In fact, it has become a contest to see how early on Christmas Day will Mom start to cry. Certain movies will always trigger my tears. Even certain commercials–remember those old Kodak commercials with the song “Turn Around”? And especially the whistled version of Greensleeves for the old “Lassie” show. Gets me every time.

Our joy and sorrow become so intertwined in our hearts and minds that we actually dwell inside both at once. That is the essence of Lent–the Bright Sadness of our long journey through His pain and suffering to find that His death–our death–has been transformed to eternal life.

Laugh through the tears and cry through the giggles. In the end, it’s all one.