Tag: Spring

Marching Orders

barnstormingblog7 Comments

sunrise22616

baker32916

sunset329161

All my life I have risen regularly at four o’clock and have gone into the woods and talked to God. There He gives me my orders for the day.
George Washington Carver

To rise early is to know the quiet solitude before dawn and look out with anticipation upon the expanse of an unwritten day. The ordained details are unknown to me and that is just as well. If I knew what was coming,  I might dive back under the covers, trying in vain to hide.

So when I do get up early and talk to God, mostly I listen. I am asked to trust and leave the details up to Him.

Then I try to obey, as best I can muster. Too often I mess up: I head off in the wrong direction, turn left instead of right, trip over my own feet, fall flat on my face.

So I’m pulled up out of the dirt yet again, dusted off, and sent marching on all day into the sunset, the way clearly demarcated, the pathway straight.

Even I can’t miss it and can’t mess it up.

Thank God.

sunset329162

sunset329166

What Man has Made of Man

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

cherry232716

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
~William Wordsworth from “Lines Written in Early Spring”
cherry316
As shy spring emerges from this morning’s haze,
I can’t let go the fog of lament
about what we’ve become
and the mess we’ve made of things:
man cannot fix man.

We are irretrievably lost
if repair was up to us.
We need our
heaven-sent rescue
~divinity clothed inside
a human soul~
fixed to bloom fully
in our broken hearts.

cherry32716

Wax and Wane

barnstormingblog5 Comments

chestnutspring3

 

chestnutspring4

chestnutspring5

 

Out in the rain a world is growing green,
   On half the trees quick buds are seen
       Where glued-up buds have been.
Out in the rain God’s Acre stretches green,
   Its harvest quick tho’ still unseen:
       For there the Life hath been.

If Christ hath died His brethren well may die,
   Sing in the gate of death, lay by
       This life without a sigh:
For Christ hath died and good it is to die;
   To sleep when so He lays us by,
       Then wake without a sigh.

Yea, Christ hath died, yea, Christ is risen again:
   Wherefore both life and death grow plain
       To us who wax and wane;
For Christ Who rose shall die no more again:
   Amen: till He makes all things plain
       Let us wax on and wane.
~Christina Rossetti “Easter Monday”

 

chestnutspring6

chestnutspring7

chestnutspring8

On this day after Easter, this Easter Monday, we can too quickly settle back to routine as if nothing special happened. This was not the case when Jesus would appear in a room of people, joining others walking on a road, cooking breakfast for His friends by the lake.

So we look for Him to make things plain to us: we watch the waxing and waning of the seasons, of the living and dying around us, indeed, our own waxing and waning, living and dying. The transformation from death to life yesterday is everywhere we look, if we look.

The huge chestnut tree in our front yard is filled with such chrysalises of metamorphosis, from bud to green-winged butterfly leaf.

We are waxing on in Christ who shall die no more.

Amen and Amen.

 

chestnutspring9

 

chestnuttexture

 

Between Midnight and Dawn: Laboring in Me

barnstormingblog4 Comments

spring232116

God looks down from heaven
    on all mankind
to see if there are any who understand,
    any who seek God.
Psalm 53:2

 

All creatures are doing their best
to help God in His birth
of Himself.

Enough talk for the night.
He is laboring in me;

I need to be silent
for a while,

worlds are forming
in my heart.    
~Meister Eckhart from “Expands His Being”

 

258503_2023255813320_4029126_o
photo by Josh Scholten

The first day of spring is a traditional celebration of the rebirth of nature’s seasonal rhythms, and God’s inner renewal of our hearts.

Instead this morning was pitch black, looking and feeling like the bleakest of October mornings about to plunge into the death spiral of deep autumn and winter all over again.

One would think no self-respecting God would birth Himself into something like this: a dawn as dark as night.

But this God would.

He labors in our darkest of hearts for good reason.  We are unformed and unready to meet Him in the light, clinging as we do to our dark ways and thoughts.  Though we are called to celebrate the renewal of springtime, it is just so much talk until we accept the change of being transformed ourselves.

We are silenced as He prepares us, as He prepares Himself for birth within us.   The labor pains are His, not ours;  we become awed witnesses to His first and last breath when He makes all things, including us, new again.

The world is reborn — even where dark reigned before, even where it is bleakest, especially inside our broken hearts now healing.

 

10523998_10205922980805935_5739538639980692388_n
photo by Josh Scholten

 

Between Midnight and Dawn: Beginning to Anticipate

barnstormingblog2 Comments

drizzlemoss3

dilly6

quince2161

 

…in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells. So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation.
2 Peter 3: 13-15

 

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”

 

Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom,
the moon only when it is cloudless? 
To long for the moon while looking on the rain,
to lower the blinds and be unaware
of the passing of the spring –
these are even more deeply moving. 
Branches about to blossom
or gardens strewn with flowers
are worthier of our admiration.
~Yoshida Kenko

morningsky3416

I know this longing, this anticipation, as I know my own back yard:
waiting for a view of the mountain from my kitchen window

There are more days its snowy peak is hidden
than days it is blossom-stark floating cloud-like above the horizon of our barn roof

Visitors to the farm are too often told “the mountain is right there”~~~
as I point to a bank of nondescript gray clouds

My loving and longing for it, my knowing it is always there, in hiding,
moves me more than the days it is simply given to me.

The beauty of anticipation,
confident of fulfillment to come
my thirstiness
to be slaked
my hunger to be
satisfied.

drizzlemoss2

fallcrocus

wlccroci

 

During this Lenten season, I will be drawing inspiration from the new devotional collection edited by Sarah Arthur —Between Midnight and Dawn

Between Midnight and Dawn: From Decay, Beauty

barnstormingblog1 Comment

trilliumweeping

I remember my affliction and my wandering,
    the bitterness and the gall.
20 I well remember them,
    and my soul is downcast within me.
21 Yet this I call to mind
    and therefore I have hope:

22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3: 19-23

 

trilliumheart

I wished to wade in the trillium
and be warmed near the white flames.
I imagined the arch of my foot
massaged by the mosses.
This field immersed in gravity
defying growth.  Green and glorious.
It let me know that out of the
soil came I, and green I shall be.
Whether an unnamed weed or a
wild strawberry I will join in
the hymn.
~Luci Shaw from “Spring Song, Very Early Morning”

 

The trillium only thrives where death has been.

The mulch of hundreds of autumns fluffs the bed where trillium bulbs sleep, 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.
There is pure declaration of triune perfection.

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.

Beauty arises from decay.
Death gives way to pure perfection.

trilliumviolet

trilliumbud

During this Lenten season, I will be drawing inspiration from the new devotional collection edited by Sarah Arthur —Between Midnight and Dawn

Between Midnight and Dawn: No Flower Can Wither

barnstormingblog1 Comment

 skagitwillow

daff20162

For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.  For,

“All people are like grass,
    and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
    but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

And this is the word that was preached to you.
1 Peter 1:23-25

 conwaychurch1

How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;
         To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
                      Grief melts away
                      Like snow in May,

         As if there were no such cold thing.

         Who would have thought my shriveled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
         Quite underground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
                      Where they together
                      All the hard weather,
         Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
         These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell
         And up to heaven in an hour;

Making a chiming of a passing-bell.

                      We say amiss
                      This or that is:
         Thy word is all, if we could spell.
         Oh that I once past changing were,
Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!
         Many a spring I shoot up fair,
Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither;

         And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
         I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. Oh, my only light,
                      It cannot be
                      That I am he
         On whom thy tempests fell all night.
         These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide;
         Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide;
                      Who would be more,
                      Swelling through store,
         Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.
~George Herbert “The Flower”

 

drizzlecrocus
primula2

As they are meant to do,
the crocuses creep skyward,
snowdrops flourish,
the orchard tree buds swell
daffodil bulbs awaken bright from their autumn burial.

Bird song is plentiful again in the gray and frozen mornings
and frogs’ chorus rejoices again in the evenings.

There will be spring again in only a few short weeks,
despite how dark things feel now.
Exhaustion will be replaced by renewal
and fresh air filled with the sweetness of cherry and apple blossoms.

Our fields will grow lush and soft
with the sun warm on our horses’ withers.

It isn’t enough to celebrate the defeat of winter
by blooming where we are planted;
may we be forever past changing
by never withering again.

skagitflats516
During this Lenten season, I will be drawing inspiration from the new devotional collection edited by Sarah Arthur —Between Midnight and Dawn

In a Dark Place

barnstormingblog3 Comments

futuredaffodil

snowdrop2162

crocus216

Sometimes when you’re in a dark place
you think you’ve been buried,
but actually you’ve been planted.
~Christine Caine

_______________

We don’t understand
while buried in the dark,
that we rest planted in holy ground,
waiting for the wakening
that calls us forth to bloom and fruit.

croci216

amaryllisbud

snowdrops2163

swallowedup

SunDay2716

How Do You Know?

barnstormingblog5 Comments

snowcrocus2

peonybud

How do you know, deep underground,
Hid in your bed from sight and sound,
Without a turn in temperature,
With weather life can scarce endure,
That light has won a fraction’s strength,
And day put on some moments’ length,
Whereof in merest rote will come,
Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb;
O crocus root, how do you know,
How do you know?
~Thomas Hardy from “The Year’s Awakening”

______________

Only a handful of days with temperatures over 50 degrees F and the ground begins to crack with sprouting bulbs.  They are emerging early, sadly misled that winter is done.  In any case, it is glorious to see them. I won’t be surprised to hear the peepers starting their night chorus before long.

The year awakens despite the darkness when I leave for work in the morning and the darkness when I return.  We are turning a corner, staggering and bleary-eyed, emerging from the underground, preparing to face the light.

snowdrops12316

fallcrocus

Bereft in Winter

barnstormingblog2 Comments

starlingmurmur3

starlingmurmur

Silence and darkness grow apace,
broken only by the crack of a hunter’s gun in the woods.
Songbirds abandon us so gradually that,
until the day when we hear no birdsong at all but the scolding of the jay,
we haven’t fully realized that we are bereft — as after a death.
Even the sun has gone off somewhere…
Now we all come in, having put the garden to bed,
and we wait for winter to pull a chilly sheet over its head.  
~Jane Kenyon from “Good-by and Keep Cold”

___________

Every day now we hear hunters firing in the woods and the wetlands around our farm, most likely aiming for the few ducks that have stayed in the marshes through the winter, or possibly a Canadian goose or a deer to bring home for the freezer.   The usual day-long symphony of birdsong of the rest of the year is replaced by shotguns popping, hawks and eagle screams and chittering, the occasional dog barking, with the bluejays and squirrels arguing over the last of the filbert nuts.

In the clear cold evenings, when coyotes aren’t howling in the moonlight, the owls hoot to each other across the fields from one patch of woods to another, their gentle resonant conversation echoing back and forth.    The horses confined to their stalls in the barns snort and blow as they bury their noses in flakes of summer-bound hay.

Last weekend I was startled by the cacophony of a starling murmuration or “rumble”, hundreds rising and falling together in mass over the farm, landing brashly in our treetops and bleaching the ground beneath with their droppings, shattering the silence for an hour before moving on to another piece of real estate.  Our farm was quiet once again.

The chilly silence of the darkened days is now interrupted by gunfire percussion, no melody at all.  There are no morning birdsong arias,  leaving me bereft of their blending musical tapestry that in a few short months will wake me at 4 AM. There is no peeper orchestra from the swamps in the evenings, their symphonies rising and falling on the breeze.

It is too too quiet and I’m left bereft, hungry for a song, any song. I listen intently for the familiar early morning and evening serenades returning.

It’s not long now.

 

starlingmurmur2