This hour along the valley this light at the end of summer lengthening as it begins to go this whisper in the tawny grass this feather floating in the air this house of half a life or so this blue door open to the lingering sun this stillness echoing from the rooms like an unfinished sound this fraying of voices at the edge of the village beyond the dusty gardens this breath of knowing without knowing anything this old branch from which years and faces go on falling this presence already far away this restless alien in the cherished place this motion with no measure this moment peopled with absences with everything that I remember here eyes the wheeze of the gate greetings birdsongs in winter the heart dividing dividing and everything that has slipped my mind as I consider the shadow all this has occurred to somebody else who has gone as I am told and indeed it has happened again and again and I go on trying to understand how that could ever be and all I know of them is what they felt in the light here in this late summer ~ W.S. Merwin “Season”
I’m not the first, nor am I the last, to wistfully watch how life and light fades away with the summer:
this hour this light this whisper this feather this house this door this stillness this fraying this breath this branch this presence this restless this motion this moment this occurred this late summer
This day, everything slips my mind and I struggle to find my way. As I write and you read, I know, without knowing, what you are going through in your life right now. With our hearts dividing and weeping and rejoicing, we daily become a presence in our absence.
We are here together, feeling this cherished light of late summer.
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Toward the end of August I begin to dream about fall, how this place will empty of people, the air will get cold and leaves begin to turn. Everything will quiet down, everything will become a skeleton of its summer self. Toward
the end of August I get nostalgic for what’s to come, for that quiet time, time alone, peace and stillness, calm, all those things the summer doesn’t have. The woodshed is already full, the kindling’s in, the last of the garden soon
will be harvested, and then there will be nothing left to do but watch fall play itself out, the earth freeze, winter come. ~David Budbill, “Toward the End of August” from Tumbling Toward the End.
As the calendar page flipped to September this past week, I felt nostalgic for what is coming, especially for our grandchildren who are starting new classes tomorrow.
Summer is filled with so much overwhelming activity due to ~18 hours of daylight accompanying weeks of unending sunny weather resulting in never-enough-sleep. Waking on a summer morning feels so brim full with possibilities: there are places to go, people to see, new things to explore and of course, a garden and orchard always bearing and fruiting out of control.
As early September days usher us toward autumn, we long for the more predictable routine of school days, so ripe with new learning opportunities. One early September a few years ago, my teacher friend Bonnie orchestrated an innovative introduction to fifth grade by asking her students, with some parental assistance, to make (from scratch) their own personalized school desks that went home with them at the end of the year. These students created their own learning center with their brains and hands, with wood-burned and painted designs, pictures and quotes for daily encouragement.
For those students, their desks will always represent a solid reminder of what has been and what is to come.
So too, I welcome September’s quieting times ushering in a new cool freshness in the air as breezes pluck and toss a few drying leaves from the trees. I will watch the days play themselves out rather than feeling I must direct each moment. I can be a sponge, ready to take in what the world is trying to teach me.
…I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors into the temple. ~Mary Oliver from “Today” from A Thousand Mornings
Some days warrant stillness. On this Sabbath day of rest, I seek to be quiet as a feather, silently in place, listening.
Maybe, to hear each other breathe again. Surely, to hear the Word and breath of God.
A funny thing about feathers: alone, each one is merely fluff and air. Together — feathers become lift and power, with strength and will to soar beyond the tether of gravity’s pull on our flawed humanity to return back to dust.
As quiet as a feather, joined and united, one overlapping another, we can rise above and fly as far as life and breath can take us.
May peace be still.
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To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings. ~Wendell Berry “To Know the Dark” from Soul Food – Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds
What is coming upon the world is the Light of the World. It is Christ. That is the comfort of it.
The challenge of it is that it has not come yet. Only the hope for it has come, only the longing for it. In the meantime we are in the dark, and the dark, God knows, is also in us.
We watch and wait for a holiness to heal us and hallow us, to liberate us from the dark. Advent is like the hush in a theater just before the curtain rises. It is like the hazy ring around the winter moon that means the coming of snow which will turn the night to silver.
Soon. But for the time being, our time, darkness is where we are. ~Frederick Buechner from The Clown in the Belfry
We enter Advent immersed in darkness; it exists both outside us and within. Somehow we must withstand it until the Light comes. It is where we are.
We are promised this in the Word: “and night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light… Revelation 22:5.
The Word in the beginning set a dark universe in motion. The Word became both flesh and Savior to a world dwelling in darkness. The Word as Spirit thrives eternally to enlighten our hearts, our minds and hands.
Advent is a time of quiet stillness, awaiting the Light brought by His Word; He is a flint struck to our wick – the darkness abolished by His illuminating glow.
This year’s Advent theme “Dawn on our Darkness” is taken from this 19th century Christmas hymn.
Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, dawn on our darknessand lend us your aid. Star of the east, the horizon adorning, guide where our infant Redeemer is laid. ~Reginald Heber -from “Brightest and Best”
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The difficulty to think at the end of day, When the shapeless shadow covers the sun And nothing is left except light on your fur—
There was the cat slopping its milk all day, Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk and August the most peaceful month.
To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time, Without that monument of cat, The cat forgotten on the moon; And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light In which everything is meant for you And nothing need be explained;
Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself; And east rushes west and west rushes down, No matter. The grass is full
And full of yourself. The trees around are for you, The whole of the wideness of night is for you, A self that touches all edges,
You become a self that fills the four corners of night. The red cat hides away in the fur-light And there you are humped high, humped up,
You are humped higher and higher, black as stone — You sit with your head like a carving in space And the little green cat is a bug in the grass. ~Wallace Stevens, from “A Rabbit As King of the Ghosts”
This summer has brimmed with fullness ready for emptying: a spilling over of light and sun and heat and life, almost too much to take in.
I tried to blend in, almost disappear into my surroundings, as evening fell, catching me just-so, immobile, captured by failing light as the day darkened.
Then I prepared to dream unthinkingly peaceful in the night when all is stilled anticipation.
With pulsing vessels in twitching transparent ears, both warming and cooling, aglow yet fading, my empty spaces are filled.
I welcome the relief of sitting still as a statue in the cool whiff of this misty August morning.
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What’s incomplete in me seeks refuge in blackberry bramble and beech trees, where creatures live without dogma and water moves in patterns more ancient than philosophy. I stand still, child eavesdropping on her elders. I don’t speak the language but my body translates best it can, wakening skin and gut, summoning the long kinship we share with everything. ~Laura Grace Weldon, “Common Ground” from Blackbird
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. ~Wendell Berry “The Peace of Wild Things”
Nearly thirty months of pandemic separation and I long to share our farm with our far-flung grandchildren who live across the ocean, to watch them discover the joys and sorrows of this place we inhabit. I will tell them there is light beyond this darkness, there is refuge amid the brambles, there is kinship with what surrounds us, there is peace amid the chaos, there is a smile behind the tears, there is stillness within the noisiness, there is rescue when all seems hopeless, there is grace as the old gives way to new.
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…to break through earth and stone of the faithless world back to the cold sepulchre, tearstained stifling shroud; to break from them back into breath and heartbeat, and walk the world again, closed into days and weeks again, wounds of His anguish open, and Spirit streaming through every cell of flesh so that if mortal sight could bear to perceive it, it would be seen His mortal flesh was lit from within, now, and aching for home. He must return, first, In Divine patience, and know hunger again, and give to humble friends the joy of giving Him food – fish and a honeycomb. ~Denise Levertov “Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell” from A Door in the Hive
The Holy Saturday of our life must be the preparation for Easter, the persistent hope for the final glory of God. The virtue of our daily life is the hope which does what is possible and expects God to do the impossible. To express it somewhat paradoxically, but nevertheless seriously: the worst has actually already happened; we exist, and even death cannot deprive us of this. Now is the Holy Saturday of our ordinary life, but there will also be Easter, our true and eternal life. ~Karl Rahner “Holy Saturday” in The Great Church Year
This in-between day after all had gone so wrong: the rejection, the denials, the trumped-up charges, the beatings, the burden, the jeering, the mocking, the thorns, the nails, the thirst, the suffocation, the despair of being forsaken.
This already but not yet day before all will go so right: the forgiveness and compassion, the grace and sacrifice, the debt paid in full, mortal flesh lit from within, an immovable stone rolled away, our names on His lips, our hearts burning to hear His words.
What does it take to move such a stone? When it is an effort to till the untillable, creating a place where simple seed can drop, be covered and sprout and thrive, thanks to muscle and sweat and blisters and tears.
What does it take to move the stone? When it is a day when no one will speak out of fear, the silent will be moved to cry out the truth, heard and known and never forgotten.
What does it take to move the stone? When it is a day when all had given up, gone behind locked doors in grief. When two came to tend the dead, there would be no dead to tend.
Only a gaping hole left Only an empty tomb Only a weeping weary silence broken by Love calling our name and we turn to greet Him as if hearing it for the first time.
We cannot imagine what is to come at dawn tomorrow as the stone lifted and rolled, giving way so our separation is bridged, darkness overwhelmed by light, dead flesh lit and warmed and animated, the crushed and broken rising to dance, and inexplicably, from the waiting stillness He stirs and we, finding death emptied, greet Him with trembling… We are forever moved and we cry out, singing, like an immovable stone that cannot remain silent.
This year’s Lenten theme for Barnstorming is a daily selection from songs and hymns about Christ’s profound sacrifice on our behalf.
If we remain silent about Him, the stones themselves will shout out and start to sing (Luke 19:40).
In His name, may we sing…
They have been saying all our plans are empty. They have been saying “Where is their God now?” Roll away the stone see the Glory of God. Roll away the stone.
They have been saying no one will remember. They have been saying Power rules the world. Roll away the stone see the Glory of God. Roll away the stone.
They have been saying no one hears the singing. They have been saying all our strength is gone. Roll away the stone see the Glory of God. Roll away the stone.
They have been saying “All of us are dying.” They have been saying “All of us are dead.” Roll away the stone see the Glory of God. Roll away the stone. ~Tom Conry
I see his blood upon the rose And in the stars the glory of his eyes, His body gleams amid eternal snows, His tears fall from the skies.
I see his face in every flower; The thunder and the singing of the birds Are but his voice-and carven by his power Rocks are his written words.
All pathways by his feet are worn, His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea, His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn, His cross is every tree. ~Joseph Plunkett “I See His Blood Upon the Rose”
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If we should falter when trouble surrounds us When the wind and the waves are wild and high We will look away to Him who rules the waters; Who speaks His Peace into the angry tide. ~Fernando Ortega
Sweet Jesus, talking his melancholy madness, stood up in the boat and the sea lay down,
silky and sorry. So everybody was saved that night… Nobody knows what the soul is.
It comes and goes like the wind over the water — sometimes, for days, you don’t think of it.
Maybe, after the sermon, after the multitude was fed, one or two of them felt the soul slip forth
like a tremor of pure sunlight before exhaustion, that wants to swallow everything, gripped their bones and left them
miserable and sleepy, as they are now, forgetting how the wind tore at the sails before he rose and talked to it —
tender and luminous and demanding as he always was — a thousand times more frightening than the killer storm. ~Mary Oliver from “Maybe”
Could it be?
Could it be that I am more frightened of the power of Christ to say “Peace be still!” to the storm threatening to drown us all (and it heeds His command!) than I am of the waves themselves?
I sleep through my diminishing days, not nearly focused enough on each passing moment that never is to come again. Those moments crash to shore and then pull back to be lost forever.
I tend to be blinded to what is inevitably coming, how I have tumbled over the years like waves, overcome by their passage.
He is tender and luminous and demanding as He talks to my heart, not just to the relentless stormy destructive sea.
Peace be still!
And so I obey, forgiven, and am saved by grace, so silky and sorry.
Take heart, my friend. The Lord is with us.
This year’s Lenten theme for Barnstorming is a daily selection from songs and hymns about Christ’s profound sacrifice on our behalf.
If we remain silent about Him, the stones themselves will shout out and start to sing (Luke 19:40).
In His name, may we sing…
Take heart, my Friend, we’ll go together This uncertain road that lies ahead Our faithful God has always gone before us And He will lead the Way once again.
Take heart, my Friend, we can walk together And if our burdens become too great We can hold up and help one another In God’s LOVE, in God’s Grace.
Take heart my Friend, the Lord is with us As He has been all the days of our lives Our assurance every morning Our Defender in the Night.
If we should falter when trouble surrounds us When the wind and the waves are wild and high We will look away to HIM who rules the waters; Who speaks His Peace into the angry tide.
He is our Comfort, our Sustainer He is our Help in time of need When we wander, He is our Shepherd He who watches over us NEVER sleeps.
Take heart my friend, the Lord is with us As He has been all the days of our lives Our Assurance every morning Our Defender every night.
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The birds do not sing in these mornings. The skies are white all day. The Canadian geese fly over high up in the moonlight with the lonely sound of their discontent. Going south. Now the rains and soon the snow. The black trees are leafless, the flowers gone. Only cabbages are left in the bedraggled garden. Truth becomes visible, the architecture of the soul begins to show through. God has put off his panoply and is at home with us. We are returned to what lay beneath the beauty. We have resumed our lives. There is no hurry now. We make love without rushing and find ourselves afterward with someone we know well. Time to be what we are getting ready to be next. This loving, this relishing, our gladness, this being puts down roots and comes back again year after year. ~Jack Gilbert “Half the Truth”
Time to be what we are getting ready to be next.
Once again comes a slowing of days and lengthening of nights; some may be on the move but I am being prepared for months of stillness and silence without the rush and hurry of madding lives.
I relish this time peering past the vanishing beauty to discern the Truth of Who is at home with us.
He put down roots here. Though He flew away, He will return.
A book of beauty in words and photography available to order here:
…I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors into the temple. ~Mary Oliver from “Today” from A Thousand Mornings
Some days warrant stillness. On this Sabbath day of rest, seek to be quiet as a feather, silently in place, listening.
Maybe, hear each other again. Surely, hear the Word of God.
A funny thing about feathers: alone, each one is merely fluff and air. Together — feathers become lift and power, with strength and will to soar beyond the tether of gravity’s pull on our flawed humanity back to dust.
As quiet as a feather, joined and united, one overlapping another, rise above and fly as far as your life and breath can take you.
May peace be still.
Thank you, once again, to the chickens displayed at the NW Washington Fair in Lynden last week, who struggled to be still in their cages for these close-up feather photos….
More Barnstorming photos and poems from Lois Edstrom are available in this book from Barnstorming. Order here:
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