Tag: Spring

That Kind of Day

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If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze
that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house
and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,
a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies
seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking
a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,
releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage
so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting
into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.
~Billy Collins  “Today”

This is the kind of morning that begs to be admired from dawn’s first moment:  everything emerges from the fog so sharp, vividly bathed in golden light.

It takes my breath away at the same time as it delivers it deep within me.

How might I spring others free as I now have been sprung?

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Reasons to Hum

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Thank you for this day made
of wind and rain and sun and the scent
of old-fashioned lilacs. Thank you

for the pond and the slippery tadpole
and the wild iris that opened beside the pond
last week, so pale, so nearly purple,

their stems already flagged and bent.
Thank you for the yellow morels hiding in the field grass,
the ones we can only see when we are already

on our knees. And thank you for the humming
that rises out of the morning as if mornings
are simply reasons to hum. What a gift,

this being alive, this chance to encounter the world.
What a gift, this being a witness to spring—
spring in everything. Spring in the way

that we greet each other. Spring in the way the golden eagle
takes to the thermals and spirals up to where
we can barely see the great span of its wings.

Spring in the words we have known
since our births. Like glory. Like celebrate.
~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “In Case I Forget to Say It Enough” from All the Honey

…maybe I should just say

how I wish I had a voice
like the meadowlark’s,

sweet, clear, and reliably
slurring all day long

its thrill-song, its anthem, its thanks, its
alleluia. Alleluia, oh Lord.
~Mary Oliver from “While I Am Writing A Poem to Celebrate Summer, the Meadowlark Begins to Sing”

Sing to the God who turns our sighs into a song
Sing to the One who mends our broken hearts with music.
Sing to the One who fills our empty hearts with love.
Sing to the One who gives us light to step into the darkest night.
Sing to the God who turns our sighs into a song.
~Susan Boersma

Each spring day begins new possibility
with a sigh, a deep breath and thankfulness-

even when there are tears, sometimes heartbreak,
and flat out fear of what may come next.

Even so,
through it all
I hum along in celebration,
singing a song of praise, an alleluia
that reminds me why I am
and who I live for.

All is well,
it is well with my soul.

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Spring Pledge Drive

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Just before the green begins there is the hint of green
a blush of color, and the red buds thicken
the ends of the maple’s branches and everything
is poised before the start of a new world,
which is really the same world
just moving forward from bud
to flower to blossom to fruit
to harvest to sweet sleep, and the roots
await the next signal, every signal
every call a miracle and the switchboard
is lighting up and the operators are
standing by in the pledge drive we’ve
all been listening to: Go make the call.
~Stuart Kestenbaum “April Prayer”

The buds have been poised for weeks and then,
as if all responding to an identical summons to action,
let go of all their pent up potential,
exploding with harmonious energy
enough to make us want to donate all we have,
over and over again.

How much might I pledge to witness this miracle?

Nothing, nothing at all.
It’s delightfully free every April. Totally wonderfully free.

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Glimpsing Gold Beneath the Rags

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April is like the raggedy, wandering gypsy lad of the fairy tale.
When he moves, streaks of gold show beneath his torn garments
and you suspect that this elfin creature is actually a prince in disguise.

April is just that.

There are raggedy, cold days, dark black ones,
but all through the month for a second, for an hour, or for three days at a stretch you glimpse pure gold.

The weeks pass and the rags slip away, a shred at a time.
Toward the end of the month his royal highness stands before you.
~Jean Hersey from The Shape of a Year

I avoid spending much time in front of mirrors now as I age. Clothed in rags, I’m thinning here, thickening there, sagging and stretching, wrinkled and patched up.

Still, if I look closely past the rags and sags, I see the same eyes as my younger self peering back at me. There are some things that age does not disguise.

The lightness and freshness of youth might be covered up with the trappings of aging, but I’m still delighted to be here, just as I am. Every once in awhile, I believe I glimpse a little gold under the surface. This farm girl isn’t a queen or a princess in disguise, but breathing in the scents of certain golden days of April can make me feel like one.

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Filling the Empty Spaces

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If I could peer far enough down
a robin’s pulsing throat, would I see
notes piled there waiting to be flung
into freshness of morning?
 
If I close my eyes and burrow
my face into peony’s petals,
would I discover the source 
of its scent, a sacred offering?
 
Can I plunge inside 
and find a lifetime of words
spooled tightly inside my heart
ready for a tug?
 
If I dig beneath the bedrock 
will I find love there, 
solid like iron or does it flow like magma
filling in all of the empty spaces?
~Christine Valters Paintner “Origins”

photo by Harry Rodenberger

I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can’t and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.
~Mary Oliver “What Gorgeous Thing” from Blue Horses 

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth.

leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs–leaving you
(it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.
~Rainer Maria Rilke  “Sunset” (Trans. by Robert Bly) from The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy

We are born with one hand still grasping tight to the star-studded heaven from which we came, still dusty from creation.  The other hand grabs hold of whatever it finds here on earth and won’t let go, whether the symphony of birds, the scents from the garden, the richness of relationship or the coldness of stone.

It can take decades, but our firm hold on heaven loosens so that we forget the dusty origins of our miraculous being.  We tend to forget Who made us and why.

We can’t decide, tangled up in the threads of this life:  dust of earth, stone heart?  Or dust of stars, child of Heaven?

We are daily reminded by the Light which clothes us in new colors – early in the morning as it crests the eastern hills and late as it descends in the west.  Heaven will still reach down once again to grasp our hand, making sure we know the way home.

photo by Josh Scholten
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A Secret Hallowing

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This fevers me, this sun on green,
On grass glowing, this young spring.
The secret hallowing is come,
Regenerate sudden incarnation,
Mystery made visible
In growth, yet subtly veiled in all,
Ununderstandable in grass,
In flowers, and in the human heart,
This lyric mortal loveliness,
The earth breathing, and the sun…
~Richard Eberhart from “This Fevers Me”

I go my way,
and my left foot says ‘Glory,’
and my right foot says ‘Amen’:
in and out of Shadow Creek,
upstream and down,
exultant,
in a daze, dancing,
to the twin silver trumpets of praise.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Every day should be a day of dancing
and loveliness and breathing deeply,
of celebrating the fact we woke afresh,
a new start of a secret hallowing.

If I’m honest, I don’t always feel like dancing,
my feet each going their own way
with my head barely attached to my neck.

As I stumble about in my morning daze,
readying myself for the onslaught to come,
I step out the back door, look at the mountain
and mumble “Glory”
and then blink a few times and murmur “Amen”
and breathe it out again a little louder
until I really feel it.

I believe the ununderstandable
and know it in my bones.

A little praise never hurt anyone.
A little worship goes a long way.
It’s the only way mystery becomes visible,
tangible, touchable, tastable and understandable.

Amen
and Amen again.

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Let April Rain

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Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.
~Langston Hughes “April Rain Song”

The hills are smothered in a fog,
The sky is somber-grey,
The rain is coming in a mist,
A cheerless rainy day.

To me the trees are weeping,
With their branches drooping low,
Their tears are steady falling,
With heavy drops, yet slow.

The birds they all are silent,
And not one sweet silvery note,
Re-echoes through the forest,
From our feathered songster’s throat.

Not one thing to break the silence,
Save the rain-drops as they fall,
As I watch the clouds roll onward,
Or climb the mountain wall.

And somehow I feel so happy,
Though the world seems full of pain,
So I let my gaze go farther,
When the sun will shine again.

The trees and flowers and grasses,
They will all the fresher seem,
And the laughter will be louder
From the rippling mountain stream.

The birds will sing far sweeter
Than they did in days gone by,
The air will be the fresher,
And of bluer tint the sky.

We all do love the sunshine,
We love the moonlight, too,
We also love the twilight,
And the falling of the dew;

But I never growl or grumble,
Only this I wish to say;—
That this world would be a desert
Without you, oh! Rainy Day!
~James Whilt “The Rainy Day”

Spring is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine…
~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Some days in April, the skies start out gray with indecision and it doesn’t really rain nor does the sun really ever shine —  a truly lukewarm day.  The days that are most interesting, however, are those that declare themselves “clear” or “soaking wet” and then switch somewhere in the middle in a stormy transition.

A day can start with pouring rain — no half-hearted drizzle, this — with no hope of clearing, no peek of blue sky, no mountains on the horizon as if everything is covered in gray cotton wool.

Then in a mighty switch near sunset, a wind blows in and takes the gray away with a sweep of the hand.  The skies clear, the mountains reappear with even more snow cover than the day before, and everything around shines with the glistening wash that has taken place.

It is spring, it is April – all things are reborn wet and shimmering.  Let the rain drench with irresistible light.

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Fixing Eyes on the Unseen – Living in a Prayer

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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 Time Between” from Practicing to Walk Like a Heron.

“Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It’ll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they’ll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields… and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?”
―  J.R.R. Tolkien

In our despairing and wintery moments,
we recollect and hold on to memories most precious to us, like a prayer,
recalling what makes each moment, indeed life itself, special and worthwhile. 

Something so seemingly simple becomes most cherished and retrievable:
the aroma of cinnamon in a warm kitchen,
the splash of new buds forming on orchard branches,
the cooing of mourning doves as spring light begins to dawn,
the velvety softness of a newborn foal’s fur,
the taste of sweet berries in late spring.

Renewal is happening around us –
and if we dig deep in our longing hearts,
renewal happens within as well.

Death will not have the final word.

Amen and again, Amen.

Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo?  Do you remember?

This year’s Lenten theme:
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4: 18

Fixing Eyes on the Unseen – Break Through to Bright Air

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Oh let me fall as grain to the good earth
And die away from all dry separation,
Die to my sole self, and find new birth
Within that very death, a dark fruition,
Deep in this crowded underground, to learn
The earthy otherness of every other,
To know that nothing is achieved alone
But only where these other fallen gather.

If I bear fruit and break through to bright air,
Then fall upon me with your freeing flail
To shuck this husk and leave me sheer and clear
As heaven-handled Hopkins, that my fall
May be more fruitful and my autumn still
A golden evening where your barns are full.
~Malcolm Guite “Unless a Grain of Wheat Falls Into the Ground and Dies”

…new life starts in the dark.
Whether it is a seed in the ground,
a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb,
it starts in the dark.
~Barbara Brown Taylor from Learning to Walk in the Dark

The ground is slowly coming to life again;
snowdrops, crocus, 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.

The seed shakes off the darkness surrounding it as growth begins.

I too began a mere seed, plain and simple, lying dormant
in the darkness of my mother’s body.

Just as the spring murmurs life to the seed in the ground,
so the Word calls a human seed of life to stir and swell,
becoming at once both an animate and intimate reflection of Himself.

I was awakened in the dark to sprout, bloom and fruit, 
to reach as far as my tethered roots allow,
aiming beyond earthly bounds to touch the light.

Everything, everyone, so hidden;
His touch calls us back to life.
Love is come again
to the fallow fields of our hearts.

This year’s Lenten theme:
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4: 18

Fixing Eyes on the Unseen – Not Yet Not

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For in this hope we were saved.
But hope that is seen is no hope at all.
Who hopes for what they already have?
But if we hope for what we do not yet have,
we wait for it patiently.
Romans 8:24-25

Morning of buttered toast;
of coffee, sweetened, with milk.

Out the window,
snow-spruces step from their cobwebs.
Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone.
A single cardinal stipples an empty branch—
one maple leaf lifted back.

I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:

Not-yet-dead, not-yet-lost, not-yet-taken.
Not-yet-shattered, not-yet-sectioned,
not-yet-strewn.

Ample litany, sparing nothing I hate or love,
not-yet-silenced, not-yet-fractured; not-yet-

Not-yet-not.

I move my ear a little closer to that humming figure,
I ask him only to stay.
~Jane Hirshfield “Not Yet” from The Lives of the Heart.

To wait for the “not yet” is a hard sweet tension.

There is tension in knowing that something profound is happening – a vernal equinox, a brilliant sunrise, a fading sunset, a new life growing, but the transformation is not yet complete, and I’m unsure when it will be.

I am still unfinished business and so is everyone else.

In less than three weeks I will be reminded of what is yet to come. I will know the shock of the empty tomb. My heart will burn within me as more is revealed, through the simple act of bread breaking.

Waiting is never easy;
it can be painful to be patient,
staying alert to possibility and hope.
Others won’t understand why I wait,
nor do they comprehend what I could possibly be waiting for.

I’m all-ready, not-yet-finished, not-yet-not.

By waiting and by calm you shall be saved,
In quiet and in trust your strength lies.
~Isaiah 30:15

This year’s Lenten theme:
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4: 18