Tag: soul

The Grandest Spectacle

barnstormingblog1 Comment

There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.
~Victor Hugo from Les Misérables

There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.
~John Calvin quoted in John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait 

Already the end of August.
As another summer wraps up, I am blinded to the glory surrounding me in the seemingly commonplace.

I can’t remember the last time I celebrated a blade of grass, given how focused I am at mowing it into conformity.

I didn’t notice how the morning light was illuminating our walnut tree until I saw the perfect reflection of it in our koi pond — why had I marveled at a reflection instead of the real thing itself?

I mistook a spider’s overnight artwork in the grass: from a distance, it looked like a dew-soaked tissue draped like a tent over the green blades. When I went to go pick it up to throw it away in the trash, I realized I was staring at a small creature’s masterpiece.

I miss opportunities to rejoice innumerable times a day. It takes only a moment of recognition and appreciation to feel the joy, and in that moment time stands still. Life stretches a little longer when I stop to acknowledge the intention of creation as an endless reservoir of rejoicing. 

If the sea and the sky, a blade of grass, a leaf turning color, a chance reflection, a delicately woven web — if all this is made for joy, then maybe so am I.

Colorless, plain and commonplace me – created an image-bearer and intended reflector of Light?

Grandest of all is the spectacle of the interior of the soul;
yes then, so am I.

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

I Will Sing: Wakeful and Whispering

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

This is the season:
Cradle of quiet,
Trees, waiting,
Naked on the hill,
Branches entwined
Like lovers holding
Hands.

Nothing is hidden.
A lone leaf quivers
On the apple tree.
Snow has yet to fall.
Waiting, the grass
Lies mute.

It could be death but
Isn’t. Yet. Wings
Quicken serrated air
As nuthatch, junco,
Chickadee flit from
Tree to tree, oblivious
To the hawk circling
Overhead, waiting,
Like the grass, for what
Comes next.

And it will come,
To all of us—there’s
No exception—
But if that frightens
You, hold it like
A stone beneath
The tongue until
Fear softens, and
You realize that
Nothing is ever lost
But is, instead,
Transformed as one
Door opens to another,
As even now light
Lifts the shadows,
And, out of sight,
Sap, wakeful, whispers
In the apple tree.
~Sarah Rossiter “Winter”

The soul’s sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. 

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;

And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well…
~T.S. Eliot – lines from “Little Gidding” in the Four Quartets

In the eternal “already, but not yet”
my wintry soul struggles to find its footing.
I can feel stuck in ice,
immobile and numb.
I wait impatiently
for a wakening thaw,
a whisper of the internal movement
caught between frozen and melting.
My soul’s sap smells the coming spring.
I tremble, anticipating a bloom that will not fade.
It may not happen quite yet,
but I know it is coming.

This Lenten season will reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Stumbling Through Soulful Sweetness

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Cherry cobbler is a shortcake with a soul…
~Edna Ferber

Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world

except the way I stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving

someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.

I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn’t leave a stain,
no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet.

Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don’t care

where it’s been, or what bitter road
it’s traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.
~Stephen Dunn from “Sweetness”

When the soft cushion of sunset lingers
with residual stains of dappled cobbler clouds,
predicting the soul of sweetness in next day’s dawn~
I’m reminded to “remember this, this moment, this feeling”…

I realize this too will be lost, slipping away from me
in mere moments, a sacramental fading away.
I can barely remember the sweetness of its taste,
so what’s left is the stain of its loss.

Balancing as best I can on life’s cobbled path,
stumbling and tripping over rough unforgiving spots,
I ponder the sweet messy kindness
of today’s helping of soulful shortcake,
treasure it up, stains and all,
knowing I would never miss it this much
if I hadn’t been allowed a taste,
and savored it to begin with.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

¤10.00
¤25.00
¤50.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00

Or enter a custom amount

¤

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Breaking the Lock

barnstormingblog1 Comment

And yes it is necessary to admit
walking in the forest
the heart is a lock

it has inviolable chambers
like the woods, fallen trees
that block

access to the river
snowdrops surprising its edges
moss crystalline with frost

What I thought I wanted what I have tried to be
was the slender instrument that opened

a key: presence moving deeper into the forest
that releases the birds from the trees
and sends them   ascends them
to sky   by definition
open

but now there is nothing left to be solved like a riddle

this time the lock must be broken
what’s left has to be seized

because God only loves the strong thief
I mean the man who breaks his heart for God
~Jennifer Grotz, “Locked” from Window Left Open

All my life I wanted to be an effective key, unlocking life’s mysteries and opening up the world to those who are hopeless, stifled and trapped. Doctor training gave me a few locksmith tools. I found my patients taught me far more about their pain and suffering than my professors did.

Yet profound mysteries remain: some illnesses are rare or unique enough to defy diagnosis, some just don’t respond to available tools, while illnesses as well understood and treatable as depression or COVID infection still kill and incapacitate with abandon. The keys I may have accumulated don’t fit every lock. They don’t necessarily open the doors to freedom from fear or worry.

At times I feel aimless, wondering what tools I still have and if I remember how to use them. Simple knowledge is only one key, while brute force – breaking and entering – may be necessary to break the hardest lock of all – access to the troubled heart and soul.

God wants in, to pick up our broken pieces and put us back together. He doesn’t need a key to enter what He Himself has built from scratch. He owns the place.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

¤10.00
¤20.00
¤50.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00
¤5.00
¤15.00
¤100.00

Or enter a custom amount

¤

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Feeling Blue

barnstormingblog3 Comments

The world is blue at its edges and in its depths.

This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue.

The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.

For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains.

“Longing,” says the poet Robert Hass, “because desire is full of endless distances.”

Blue is the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in…
~Rebecca Solnit from A Field Guide for Getting Lost

photo by Philip Gibson

I become easily lost in a horizon of blue mountains
or a vivid sky with clouds
or by merely peering into the innards of a blue iris.

I realize I can never actually be there, but only here,
longing for what I see but cannot touch.

These are landscapes in my mind
forever beyond my reach,
where I can never actually go,
but dwell nevertheless
simply by opening my eyes to see.

My heart forgets me not.
My soul, though lost,
will be found.

Waiting in Wilderness: All Surrounding Grace

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

You are great, O Lord, and greatly to be praised.
Great is your power, and infinite is your wisdom.
You are worthy of our praise,
though we are but a speck in your creation.
You awaken our hearts to delight in your praise.
You made us for yourself,
and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
 St. Augustine of Hippo, 354-430, Confessions, Book I, Chapter 1

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.
~Denise Levertov “The Avowal”

Do I truly trust what holds me up, like the hawk gliding in the air or the swimmer afloat on water?

Instead I work restlessly to earn something tangible to rely on, putting my faith in all the wrong things in my search for comfort, for wholeness, for purpose, for identity and meaning.

But that’s not what God’s plan requires. That is not what He asks of me. I don’t have to earn anything through my effort.

I am sought out. I am held up. I can rest in Him and stop searching restlessly.
I am only asked to open up to receive His all surrounding and endless grace.

O Beauty ancient, O Beauty so new
Late have I loved Thee and feebly yet do.
Though you were with me, I was not with You.
Then You shone Your face and I was blind no more

Chorus:
My heart searches restlessly and finds no rest ‘till it rests in Thee.
O Seeker You sought for me, Your love has found me;
I am taken by thee.

I sought this world and chased its finer things,
Yet were these not in You, they would not have been.
My ceaseless longing hid the deeper truth,
In all my desirings, I was desiring You.

Lord, in my deafness You cried out to me.
I drew my breath and now Your fragrance I breathe
O Fount of Life, You are forever the same;
O Fire of Love, come set me aflame.
~Daniel Purkapile, “Prayer of St. Augustine”

To Be Seen and Heard

barnstormingblog3 Comments

If we want to support each other’s inner lives,
we must remember a simple truth:
the human soul does not want to be fixed,
it wants simply to be seen and heard.

If we want to see and hear a person’s soul,
there is another truth we must remember:
the soul is like a wild animal –
tough, resilient, and yet shy.

When we go crashing through the woods
shouting for it to come out so we can help it,
the soul will stay in hiding.
But if we are willing to sit quietly
and wait for a while,
the soul may show itself.
~Parker Palmer from The Courage to Teach

I tend to be a crash-through-the-woods kind of person, searching out those in hiding needing help whether they want it or not. Part of this is my medical training: I’m not subtle, I can be brash and bold as I go where no one else wants to go.

Friends have reminded me this actually isn’t helpful much of the time and certainly doesn’t translate well in non-clinical settings. They have a good point. Undoing what I’ve learned isn’t easy, but I’m trying.

Before I trained in clinical medicine, I knew how to blend into my surroundings, to simply wait and listen and take note of what I observe. I never would have been part of a research team observing wild chimpanzee behavior without being born with that skill. The wild and shy around me eventually did show themselves, but it took time and patience and a willingness to let things happen without my making it happen.

I’m trying to relearn what I knew intuitively fifty years ago and unlearn what I was trained to do forty years ago as a “fix-it” clinician. It helps when people remind me to tone it down, back off and simply “be.”

I just might see and hear and understand more than I ever have before.

Each Sunrise Sees a New Soul Born

barnstormingblog5 Comments

The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.
– G.K. Chesterton

… we can make a house called tomorrow.
What we bring, finally, into the new day, every day,

Is ourselves.  And that’s all we need
To start.  That’s everything we require to keep going. 

Look back only for as long as you must,
Then go forward into the history you will make.

Be good, then better.  Write books.  Cure disease.
Make us proud.  Make yourself proud.

And those who came before you?  When you hear thunder,
Hear it as their applause.
~Albert Rios from “A House Called Tomorrow”

All days are sacred days to wake
New gladness in the sunny air.
Only a night from old to new;
Only a sleep from night to morn.
The new is but the old come true;
Each sunrise sees a new year born.
~Helen Hunt Jackson from “New Year’s Morning”

Let other mornings honor the miraculous.
Eternity has festivals enough.
This is the feast of our mortality,
The most mundane and human holiday.

The new year always brings us what we want
Simply by bringing us along—to see
A calendar with every day uncrossed,
A field of snow without a single footprint.
~Dana Gioia, “New Year’s” from Interrogations at Noon

Now that all the Advent anticipation is spent and New Year’s Day 2021 is here, I find my energy waning just as the work of Christmas must begin.

Instead of the Twelve Days of Christmas it should be the Twelve Weeks, or better yet, Twelve Months of Christmas – maybe the lights should stay up until St. Patrick’s Day at least, just to keep us out of the shadows, inertia and doldrums of this pandemic winter – anything to push aside the dark.

As I swept up the last of the fir needles left on the floor from the Christmas tree, I realized I too have been drying up. I feel helpless in sweeping up the pandemic of suffering of the past year: the grief and loss, homelessness, hunger, disease, conflict, addictions, depression and pain.

It is overwhelming.

As a broken part of this broken world, I am called to the year-long work of Christmas begun by an infant in a manger, being swaddled into a new soul and a new life in Him.

Amen.

The Narrow Way

barnstormingblog2 Comments

 

O Lord,
The house of my soul is narrow;
enlarge it that you may enter in.
~Augustine of Hippo

 

passage

…the miracle of God comes not only from above;
it also comes through us; 
it is also dwelling in us.  
It has been given to every person,
and it lies in every soul as something divine, 
and it waits.
Calling,
it waits for the hour when the soul shall open itself,
having found its God and its home.  
When this is so,
the soul will not keep its wealth to itself, 
but will let it flow out into the world.
~Eberhard Arnold

 

dansouterrain2

…small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life,
and only a few find it.
Matthew 7:14

When I feel squeezed through a narrow passage,
compressed by the pressures of life from all sides,
discouraged by limitations,
unable to clearly see ahead or behind,
longing for wide open spaces,
of being able to once again do anything,
go anywhere,
feel anything I please~

I remember how this path was a choice,
it is the way I will go, one step at a time.
No one, certainly not God,
promised an easy journey.

Yet He promised He would light the way
to walk alongside me
so I do not dwell in darkness.

Gladness to the Soul

barnstormingblog2 Comments

Dry is all food of the soul
if it is not sprinkled with the oil of Christ.
When thou writest, promise me nothing,
unless I read Jesus in it.
When thou conversest with me on religious themes,
promise me nothing if I hear not Jesus’ voice.
Jesus—melody to the ear,
gladness to the soul,
honey to the taste.
~Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)

The world, to our limited vision, exists as light and shadow.
Without shadow, nothing has depth or detail.
Without light, there will be no shadow.

There is no flower that blooms, no story told, no song sung, no food eaten that doesn’t bear the color and melody and sweetness of Jesus himself.

He infiltrates all because He encompasses all.
He is shadow, He is light, He is why we are at all.
Our eyes, our ears, our tongues fill with gladness whose Name is Jesus.