Tag: Spring

Rummaging Among Clouds

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The fields are snowbound no longer;
There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green.
The snow has been caught up into the sky—
So many white clouds—and the blue of the sky is cold.
Now the sun walks in the forest,
He touches the boughs and stems with his golden fingers;
They shiver, and wake from slumber.
Over the barren branches he shakes his yellow curls. …
Yet is the forest full of the sound of tears….
A wind dances over the fields.
Shrill and clear the sound of her waking laughter,
Yet the little blue lakes tremble
And the flags of tenderest green bend and quiver.
~Katherine Mansfield “Very Early Spring”

You might say that clouds have no nationality
Being flags of no country, flaunting their innocent neutrality
Across frontiers, ignorant of boundaries;
But these clouds are clearly foreign, such an exotic clutter
Against the blue cloth of the sky
I want to rummage among them, I want to turn them over
With eager fingers, I want to bargain
For this one or that one, I want to haggle and dicker
Over the prices, and I want to see my clouds wrapped up
In sheets of old newspapers, and give them away
To young girls to pin in their hair
Or tuck them, glossy as gardenias, behind an ear,
Or stretch one out to the length of a lacy shawl
And toss it over a shoulder, or around a waist.
~Constance Urdang “Clouds”

Our farm sits about 9 miles from an international border. The sky and clouds are oblivious to the line drawn by two governments, and don’t bother to stop at the border stations controlling access of humans across that line.

The clouds are free to go where they please, so they do, while we watch. They are both a foreign and domestic cloud of witnesses to our earthbound follies and foolishness.

No passports or IDs, no being pulled into “secondary” for more intensive searches and questioning, no being “turned back” not allowed across, no deportations.

They simply float and glide where the breezes take them, assuming whatever shape, identity or characteristics they wish.

What a beautiful day in the neighborhood if one happens to be a cloud or a cloud of witnesses…

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Where You Go, I Will Go: A Trinity of Petals

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It is at the edge of a petal that love waits.
― William Carlos Williams

All the field’s a hymn!
All trilliums unfold
white flames above their trinities
of leaves…

now
make of our hearts a field
to raise your praise
~Luci Shaw from “Spring song, very early morning” from The Green Earth: Poems of Creation

The flaw is no more
noticeable, even to me,
than a new moth-hole
in my sweater, or
a very bald spot
on the fabric of
my velvet vest.

Yet when
I hold the cloth
up to the window
the sunlight
bleeds through.
~Luci Shaw “Defect”

The trillium only thrives where death has been.
The mulch of hundreds of autumns
fluffs the bed where trillium bulbs sleep,
quietly content through most of the year.

When the frost is giving way to dew,
the trillium leaves peek out, curious, testing the air.
A few stray rays of sun filtering through the overgrowth and canopy encourage the shoots to rise, spread and unfurl.

In the middle, a white bud appears in humility,
almost embarrassed to be seen at all.

In a matter of days, the petals spread wide and bold so briefly,
curl purplish, wilt and return aground.
Leaves wither and fall unnoticed, becoming dust once again.

Then, beauty will rise from decay.
Death gives way to pure triune perfection.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: All This Juice and All This Joy

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Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         
   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         
   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         
   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         
   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         
   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         
   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning. 
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Spring”

Once, we were innocent,
now, no longer.

Cloyed and clouded by sin.

Given a choice,
we chose sour over the sweetness we were born to,
giving up walks together in the cool of the day
to feed an appetite that could never be sated.

God made a choice to win us back with His own blood
as if we are worthy of Him.
He says we are.
He dies to prove it.

Every day I try to believe
our earth can be sweet and beautiful again.
And then maybe so can I.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Constant and Changeable

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Light changes slowly with subtle words
such as cautious and determined,
marking a demarcation line across the horizon,
delineating between day and night
taking over the sky. Drakes in the wetlands
are excited by the transformation.

In daylight, the moon is a white wafer.
Perception only amazes
the participant who never notices
the daily occurrences with minor variations.

What difference are the blending shades,
clouds wheeling like hawks, the way light
haunches on the edge while day begins or ends.
There is always this anticipation of the differences,
and the end results are that our expectations are met—

not in color or uncertain times for the transfers
but in the way no two days begin or end the same.
For thousands of years, the universe has palpitated,
expanded, and contracted like a heart
with such restlessness we barely notice
what is plain to the eye: the universe is constant
and changeable. We barely break the surface
of observation, and when we do, we take for granted
the drakes will migrate when marshes are ice-tinged,
and the drakes will return when spring returns,
never considering it might be otherwise.
~Martin Willitts Jr., “Transformation” from Leave Nothing Behind

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
~Jane Kenyon “Otherwise”

No two days begin or end the same way.
It is my privilege to watch and take note.

I spent much of seven decades barely noticing, absorbed in all but what transpired right beneath my feet and over my head.

Now I take the time and effort to appreciate each day’s uniqueness and share what I see and hear and feel.

Yes, palpitations in the world and within me catch my breath.
There is expansion and contraction
and some moments of skipped beats.

The point is that the beat goes on.

I’ll never take transformation for granted again.
I welcome it, even as it focuses and fascinates and frightens me.
I am well aware, now ever aware,
it always could be otherwise.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

English translation:

Hear, smith of the heavens,
what the poet asks.
May softly come unto me
thy mercy.
So I call on thee,
for thou hast created me.
I am thy slave,
thou art my Lord.

God, I call on thee
to heal me.
Remember me, mild one,
most we need thee.
Drive out, O king of suns,
generous and great,
human every sorrow
from the city of the heart.

Watch over me, mild one,
most we need thee,
truly every moment
in the world of men.
Send us, son of the virgin,
good causes,
all aid is from thee,
in my heart.

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Even in the Wilderness

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To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness ,
is like being commanded to be well when we are sick,
to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst,
to run when our legs are broken.
But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless.
Even in the wilderness-
especially in the wilderness –
you shall love him.   
~Frederick Buechner from A Room Called Remember

The wilderness might be a distant peak far removed from anything or anyone, where there is bleak darkness.

The wilderness might be the darkest corner of the human heart we keep far away from anything and anyone. 

From my kitchen window on a clear day, I sometimes see a distant mountain wilderness, when the cloud cover moves away. 

During decades of perching on a round stool in clinic exam rooms,  I was given access to hearts lost in the wilderness many times every day.

Sometimes the commandment to love God seems impossible. We are too self-sufficient, too broken, too frightened, too wary to trust God with our love and devotion. 

Recognizing a diagnosis of wilderness of the heart is straight forward: despair, discouragement,disappointment, lack of gratitude, lack of hope. 

The treatment is to allow the healing power of the Father who sent His own Son to navigate the wilderness in our place.

He reaches for our bitter, wary, and broken hearts that beat within our bodies, to bring us home from the dark wilderness of our souls.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Unfinished Business

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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 –
today’s vernal equinox,
a brilliant sunrise,
a fading sunset,
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.

Soon, 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 is painful to be patient,
to be unfinished,
staying open to possibility and hope.

Others don’t understand why I wait,
nor do they comprehend what I could possibly be waiting for.

I’m all-ready, not-yet-finished, but sometime soon.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: A Constant Who Never Changes

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When the moon scrapes past obscuring clouds,
there is the startle of pale-yellow light
escaping the sky onto the pasture, where
I walk my two young whippets in early spring
listening to chorus frogs shamelessly seeking
mates in the marsh-ponds spring rain has become
in my back pasture. And then coyotes too on the
far hill startling the dogs with their turbulent yips
joining the necessary summoning for more
of this tipping into spring, night-ascending prayers to
the moon and watching stars. But the moonlight’s
caught sounds of fecundity are deceiving—cold north wind
needles my cheeks, embraces my earlobes despite the
upturned hood on my too-thin jacket. A light frost
on pasture-grass licks against my winter chore boots. Despite the
whetted signs and sounds of approaching spring, there is
yet to be early crocus, daffodils filling the yard, or leaves
on the maple trees that will later shade the pigs in summer
now shivering in the night’s transition in the barnyard.
~Ed Higgins, “Transitions” from  Near Truth Only

Only another day until the spring equinox.

I confess to being impatient to transition away from winter, although we had snow and hail only a few days ago, our mornings are chilly with cold north breezes and our nights leave frosty icing on the barn roofs.

Even so, all the signs are there: the marsh frogs have been chorusing for nearly a month, coyotes are yipping it up, the pastures show a hint of green, early plum trees have broken open their tiny blossoms, crocus and daffodils have erupted in cheer and hope.

Some seasonal and life transitions are welcome.
Some not at all.
Some take my breath away.
One won’t give my breath back.

Whatever we face in this life, we will face it together,
knowing the arms of God surround us
when we’re weary,
when we’re ill,
when we’re discouraged.

His love is a sentinel beacon welcoming us home.

He is the constant when all else is in transition.

photo by Bob Tjoelker of our sentinel tree

Let nothing disturb thee,
Nothing affright thee;
All things are passing;
God never changeth;
Patient endurance attaineth to all things;
Who God possesseth in nothing is wanting;
Alone God sufficeth.
– St. Teresa of Avila “Prayer”

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: A Vast Incredible Gift

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Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there’s music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
It is no surprise 
that danger and suffering surround us.
What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,
can hear them breathing. 
Our spirit persists like a man struggling 
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.
~Jack Gilbert from  “Horses at Midnight Without a Moon”

In trees still dripping night some nameless birds
Woke, shook out their arrowy wings, and sang,
Slowly, like finches sifting through a dream.
The pink sun fell, like glass, into the fields.
Two chestnuts, and a dapple gray,
Their shoulders wet with light, their dark hair streaming,
Climbed the hill. The last mist fell away.

And under the trees, beyond time’s brittle drift,
I stood like Adam in his lonely garden
On that first morning, shaken out of sleep,
Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves,
Like tissue on some vast, incredible gift.
~Mary Oliver “Morning In a New Land” from New and Selected Poems

As if —
we are walking through the darkest woods, still stuck in the throes of winter, and catch a whiff of a floral scent, or a hint of green grass, or hear the early jingle bells song of peeper frogs in the wetlands, or feel the warm breath of horses puffing steam at night.

As if —
there is hope on the other side, refreshment and renewal and rejoicing just around the corner.

As if —
things won’t always be frozen or muddy or barren, that something is coming behind the snowdrops and crocus.

The snow is melting, imperceptibly, but melting nonetheless.
And that vast incredible gift thaws what is frozen in me…

photo by Emily Dieleman

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Anticipating the Thaw

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March. I am beginning
to anticipate a thaw. Early mornings
the earth, old unbeliever, is still crusted with frost
where the moles have nosed up their
cold castings, and the ground cover
in shadow under the cedars hasn’t softened
for months, fogs layering their slow, complicated ice
around foliage and stem
night by night,

but as the light lengthens, preacher
of good news, evangelizing leaves and branches,
his large gestures beckon green
out of gray. Pinpricks of coral bursting
from the cotoneasters. A single bee
finding the white heather. Eager lemon-yellow
aconites glowing, low to the ground like
little uplifted faces. A crocus shooting up
a purple hand here, there, as I stand
on my doorstep, my own face drinking in heat
and light like a bud welcoming resurrection,
and my hand up, too, ready to sign on
for conversion.
~Luci Shaw “Revival” from What the Light was Like

A few remaining hints of frost
drip with rain,
the frozen ground oozing
with mud and mire.

This morning has a hint of fragrance
as buds dare to peek open, testing the air.

I wake to dawn’s fiery burning light
I hear beckoning eagle chatter and frog chorus

I follow the sun wherever it may appear,
so eager for warmth and revival, grateful to be alive to notice.

The thaw is at hand; a new day is aching to bloom.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Restless in Winter’s Grip

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This morning’s sun is not the honey light
of summer, thick with golden dust and slow
as syrup pouring from a jug. It’s bright,
but thin and cold, and slanted steep and low
across the hillsides. Frost is blooming white,
these flowers forced by icy winds that blow
as hard this morning as they blew all night.
Too cold for rain, but far too dry for snow.

And I am restless, pacing to and fro
enduring winter’s grip that holds us tight.
But my camellias, which somehow know
what weather to expect—they’re always right—
have broken bud. Now scarlet petals glow
outside the window where I sit and write.
~Tiel Aisha Ansari “Camellias” from Dervish Lions

Near a shrine in Japan he’d swept the path
and then placed camellia blossoms there.

Or — we had no way of knowing — he’d swept the path
between fallen camellias.
~Carol Snow “Tour”

Camellias are hardy enough to withstand winter’s low temperatures, defying freezing winds and hard frosts with their resilience.

On windy days, full and ripe camellia blooms plop to the ground without warning, scattering about like a nubby floral throw rug. They are too bulky to step on, so the tendency is to pick a path around them, allowing them the dignity of a few more days before being swept off sidewalks.

In one sense, these fallen winter blossoms are holy messengers, gracing the paths the living must navigate. They are grounding for the passersby, a reminder our own time to let go will soon come. As we restlessly pursue our days and measure our steps, we respectfully make our way around their fading beauty.

An unexpected blessing is bestowed in the camellia’s restlessness:
in their budding,
in their breaking open,
in their full blooming,
in their falling to earth,
in their ebbing away.

The grass withers and the flowers fall,
    because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
    Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
    but the word of our God endures forever.
Isaiah 40:7-8

Mortals, born of woman,
    are of few days and full of trouble.
They spring up like flowers and wither away;
    like fleeting shadows, they do not endure.
Do you fix your eye on them?
Job 14: 1-3

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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