Tag: strength

Strong Arms

barnstormingblog1 Comment

In those days, we finally chose to walk like giants
and hold the world
in arms grown strong with love.
And there may be many things we forget
in the days to come,
but this will not be one of them.
~Brian Andreas from Traveling Light: Stories & Drawings for a Quiet Mind

fos4

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees.
Hebrews 12:11-12

fos2

She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks.
~Proverbs 31:17

help

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.
~Philippians 4: 12-13

fos5

Some of us think holding on makes us strong;
but sometimes it is letting go.
~Hermann Hesse

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The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.
~Jane Hirshfield from “The Weighing” from The Beauty

A few years ago, I dislocated and broke my elbow in a clumsy fall while doing barn chores.

After a trip to the ER to have it set and put in a restrictive brace for three months, I learned letting go takes far more strength than holding on and pushing through.

I had to figure out how to “be flexible” when in reality, I felt immobilized.

I discovered how to ask for help when I’m in need which is tough for someone who has always been the helper – there was unity in our mutual need for one another.

Others watched me carefully to see if I’d quietly go stir-crazy with my new temporary limitations. Instead, I began seeing the world in a different light: what could I do on my own and what was impossible without assistance.

I needed to rely on others. For a stubborn person who thrives on self-sufficiency, this is a humbling reminder of my brokenness and frailty.

May the Lord have mercy on all those with broken wings who still endeavor to lift up the weight of the world and fly as high as ever.

Instead, may we find our strength is in Him, not in our feeble (and very breakable) arms.

IMG_0904

photos of “Feats of Strength” by Tom Otterness at Western Washington University

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Stronger Than Seems Possible

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Light comes softly through the morning mist,
splinters as it settles on dewdrops that dangle

from the web. Pulled taut and lovely, the web
stretches above a mass of leaves-

green, amethyst, and pale rose.
silken lines hold fast to spindly branches,

all anchored to the center, geometric
rings of connection, so delicate, so strong

like this catch-all we call life,
how we gather what we think we need

for sustenance, how prisms of light flash
and fade on the fragile structures we create,

how we tremble through storms
holding on, stronger than seems possible.
~Lois Edstrom “A Fragile Light” from MoonPath Press 2025

I too am feeling stretched, trying to connect between post and branch and leaf and ground.

I move between them, sometimes not sure where I’ll land or what I’ll leave behind. Connection is a hard and heavy work of strength and aspiration, not knowing what stands firm in a world where wind and rain and storms or an oblivious creature can tear things all asunder.

Sometimes what I weave is both beautifully delicate and strong.

Sometimes it is easily shredded, full of holes, and ultimately useless.

The center doesn’t always hold. 
The tethers loosen. 
The periphery sags, frays and tears.

It is a matrix of fragile light, yet holding on…

…something created with purpose and intention.
Simply that effort makes it all worthwhile.

I’ll try again tomorrow.

(Lois Edstrom is my poet friend who lives on nearby Whidbey Island; my web photo at the top of this post is the cover for her new book of poems: A Fragile Light)

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Strength Under Control

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To understand the meek
picture a great stallion at full gallop
in a meadow, who—
at his master’s voice—seizes up to a stunned
but instant halt.
So with the strain of holding that great power
in check, the muscles
along the arched neck keep eddying,
and only the velvet ears
prick forward, awaiting the next order.
~Mary Karr from “Who The Meek Are Not”

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Matthew 5:5

Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God.
James 1: 19-20

I’ve seen meekness like this, first hand.

Our stallion allowed his strength and passion to be under control.
He was eager to listen.
He wanted to see what we might ask of him.
He took instruction eagerly.
He never lashed back in anger.
He simply wanted to be with us.

Meekness and humility make no sense given
the world’s demand now for “strongman” leadership:
someone who submits to no one,
apologizes to no one,
blames others for what goes wrong,
feels compassion for no one.

Globally and individually, we have desperate need of meekness.
True strength is when someone knows the extent of their power but resists the need to prove it to anyone else.

The meek love this God who shares Himself,
who sacrifices for the bereft, and
whose great strength is obvious,
yet directed completely to our salvation.

Humble and Human, willing to bend
You are Fashioned of flesh and the fire of life,
You are Not too proud to wear our skin
To know this weary world we’re in
Humble, humble Jesus

Humble in sorrow,
You gladly carried Your cross
Never refusing Your life to the weakest of us
Not too proud to bear our sin
To feel this brokenness we’re in

Humble, humble Jesus
We bow our knees
We must decrease You must increase
We lift You high

Humble in greatness, born in the likeness of man
Name above all names, holding our world in Your hands
Not too proud to dwell with us, to live in us, to die for us

Humble, humble Jesus
We bow our knees
We must decrease You must increase
We lift You high
We bow our knees
We must decrease You must increase
We lift You high

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Understanding Meekness

barnstormingblog3 Comments

Not the bristle-bearded Igors bent
under burlap sacks, not peasants knee-deep
              in the rice paddy muck,
nor the serfs whose quarter-moon sickles
              make the wheat fall in waves
they don’t get to eat. My friend the Franciscan
              nun says we misread
that word meek in the Bible verse that blesses them.
              To understand the meek
(she says) picture a great stallion at full gallop
              in a meadow, who—
at his master’s voice—seizes up to a stunned
              but instant halt.
So with the strain of holding that great power
              in check, the muscles
along the arched neck keep eddying,
              and only the velvet ears
prick forward, awaiting the next order.
~Mary Karr “Who the Meek Are Not” from Sinners Welcome

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Matthew 5:5

I’ve seen meekness like this.

Our stallion allowed his strength and passion to be under control. He wanted to listen. He wanted to see what we might ask of him. He wanted to be with us.

This makes no sense given the world’s demand now for “strongman” leadership – someone who submits to no one, apologizes to no one, feels compassion for no one.

Globally and individually, we have desperate need of meekness. True strength is when someone knows the extent of their power but resists the need to prove it to anyone else.

The meek are ready, waiting for what God will have them do next.

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Having the Strength to Ask

barnstormingblog5 Comments

Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world. Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Andrew Wyeth – Wind from the Sea, 1947

Perhaps as a child you had the chicken pox
and your mother, to soothe you in your fever
or to help you fall asleep, came into your room
and read to you from some favorite book,
Charlotte’s Web or Little House on the Prairie,
a long story that she quietly took you through
until your eyes became magnets for your shuttering
lids and she saw your breathing go slow. And then
she read on, this time silently and to herself,
not because she didn’t know the story,
it seemed to her that there had never been a time
when she didn’t know this story—the young girl
and her benevolence, the young girl in her sod house—
but because she did not yet want to leave your side
though she knew there was nothing more
she could do for you. And you, not asleep but simply weak,
listened to her turn the pages, still feeling
the lamp warm against one cheek, knowing the shape
of the rocking chair’s shadow as it slid across
your chest. So that now, these many years later,
when you are clenched in the damp fist of a hospital bed,
or signing the papers that say you won’t love him anymore,
when you are bent at your son’s gravesite or haunted
by a war that makes you wake with the gun
cocked in your hand, you would like to believe
that such generosity comes from God, too,
who now, when you have the strength to ask, might begin
the story again, just as your mother would,
from the place where you have both left off.
~Keetje Kuipers “Prayer”

How is it possible 64 years have flown by and I still need the same story to be told to me again? 

Long ago the 5-year old me had a sudden terrifying revelation that I would someday cease to walk this earth. Now a nearly 70-year old me is more intimidated at the head-long rush of the days-months-years than at the inevitable end to come. The world hurtles through space and time at a pace that leaves me breathless. Indeed, I have been flung at times, bruised and weary from all the hurry and hubbub.

I want to find the strength to ask God to begin telling the reassuring story again, starting right where we left off. I know I will be blown away again – blown by God’s breath that loves, fills and nurtures with a generous promise both hopeful and fulfilled.

Utterly blown away by what comes next.

If only the five year old me could have known.

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A Man Who Loves His Home

barnstormingblog8 Comments

I wait for you
In the grassland
Where small lilies bloom.
On the corners of the field,
The rainbow shows up.
小百合さく 小草がなかに 君まてば  野末にほいて 虹あらはれぬ
~Yosano Akiko Tanka Poem (1878-1942)

Who loves the rain    
    And loves his home, 
And looks on life with quiet eyes,  
     Him will I follow through the storm;    
     And at his hearth-fire keep me warm;
Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise,    
     Who loves the rain, 
     And loves his home, 
And looks on life with quiet eyes.
~Frances Shaw, “Who loves the rain” from Look To the Rainbow

For Dan’s 70th birthday…

In this journey together,
we inhabit each other,
however long may be the road we travel;
you have become the air I breathe,
refreshing, renewing, restoring~~
you are that necessary to me,
and that beloved.

Each year, as we grow older together:
grayer, softer, gentler
with ourselves,
each other,
and the world.

I pause,
on this day you were born,
to thank God yet again
for bringing you to earth
so we could meet,
raise our three amazing children,
and now our grandchildren,
walking life together
with faith and hope and dreams.

It was your quiet brown eyes I trusted first
and just knew
I’d follow you anywhere
and I have…

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A Beautiful Softness of Being Human

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Sometimes when you start to ramble
or rather when you feel you are starting to ramble
you will say Well, now I’m rambling
though I don’t think you ever are.
And if you ever are I don’t really care.
And not just because I and everyone really 
at times falls into our own unspooling
—which really I think is a beautiful softness
of being human, trying to show someone else
the color of all our threads, wanting another to know 
everything in us we are trying to show them—
but in the specific, 
in the specific of you
here in this car that you are driving
and in which I am sitting beside you
with regards to you 
and your specific mouth
parting to give way
to the specific sweetness that is
the water of your voice 
tumbling forth—like I said 
I don’t ever really mind
how much more 
you might keep speaking
as it simply means 
I get to hear you 
speak for longer. 
What was a stream 
now a river.
~Anis Mojgani “To the Sea”

I always thought
softness was weakness
that by letting my
body relax
or gentleness live
on my fingertips
that I was somehow
letting go
somehow sacrificing
my bravery

now I see, to be soft
is majestically courageous
~Juniper Klatt from I was raised in a house of water

I’ve always wanted to be tougher than I am. So soft, I’m ready to burst into tears too much of the time, whether from sadness, worry, or joy. I wish I could be less transparent with my big feelings.

Yet I wouldn’t change my softness for you. I want to always be unspooling myself, to finally reveal what is underneath all the woven threads.

So much of this life is about having the courage to trust even when things are rocky, to follow the flow of things rather than creating obstruction, to lead when everyone else hangs back, to be gentle when the world needs kindness.

May I always be soft enough if you need a cushion to land upon and a pillow to rest your thoughts.

The sun went down and the moon came out
On the day that you were born
The stars were more than we could count
On the day that you were born
On a morning that was old and new
On the day that you were born
The world opened up to welcome you
On the day that you were born

It’s all mystery and motion
How the wheels of this world open
There were gentle rains and summer storms
On the day that you were born

The winds blew patterns through the trees
On the day that you were born
The waters wandered toward the sea
On the day that you were born

The redbuds fade and bloom again
On the day that you were born
The birds knew where and they knew when
On the day that you were born

In the clouds and vapor and the quiet lakes
On the day that you were born
In the deepest currents and waves that break
On the day that you were born

In the prayers and psalms that whisper through the trees
In the secret places only God can see
In the things we feel but cannot be said
We all hold hands and bow our heads

Seasons pass and seasons grow
On the day that you were born
There were things we’ll never know
On the day that you were born
But love is all and love is true
On the day that you were born
And love will always welcome you
On the day that you were born
~Carrie Newcomer

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Only the Lost Could Find It

barnstormingblog1 Comment

As through a long-abandoned half-standing house
only someone lost could find,

which, with its paneless windows and sagging crossbeams,
its hundred crevices in which a hundred creatures hoard and nest,

seems both ghost of the life that happened there
and living spirit of this wasted place,

wind seeks and sings every wound in the wood
that is open enough to receive it,

shatter me God into my thousand sounds.
~Christian Wiman “Small Prayer in a Hard Wind” from Every Riven Thing

May I,
though sagging and gray,
perilously leaning,
be porous enough
to allow life’s gusts to
blow through me
without pushing me over
in a heap.

The wind may
fill my every crack, crevice, and defect,
causing me to sing out.

Someday, when I do shatter,
toppling over into pieces into the ground,
it will be amidst
a mosaic of praises.

same abandoned school house near Rapalje, Montana – 2012 photo by Joel DeWaard
2012 photo by Joel DeWaard
2013 photo by Joel De Waard, a few days after the school collapsed
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Lean with the Fury

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Today, I planted a young Horsechestnut tree.

So slim and flexible
I could have rung my fingers round that skinny trunk.
Oh, you are built to survive a vernal storm.
Listen to me, though—

endure the wind’s force without resistance.
Lean with the fury.

When you’re nearly bowed over
think broad trunk think sturdy bark.
Someday you won’t bend nearly so—

and to that scared little girl
the one I saw yesterday in the department store

hiding under the dress rack
enduring a mother’s torrent—

I’m sorry.
You won’t bend nearly so
after you’re grown.
~Christine Bodine, “late apology to the scared little girl in the department store” from Souvenirs of Myself

I know a psychiatrist colleague, soon to be 80 years old and still seeing patients, who recommends people should aim to be more like a willow than a chestnut tree. His long clinical practice has given him a perspective of who survives and who becomes irretrievably broken when the forces of life hit hard.

I know I am not one to freely yield to the wind or ice storm. More chestnut than willow or birch, I can tend toward inflexibility rather than suppleness.

This means I easily break when anger and fury abound in the world around me, rather than leaning and bending. What’s left is broken pieces awaiting salvage, feeding the flames of the brush pile with all the rest of the rigid and unyielding.

Yea, if I don’t bow like a willow, I fall broken upon the rock.

photo by Harry Rodenberger

I will bow and be simple,
I will bow and be free,
I will bow and be humble,
Yea, bow like the willow tree.

I will bow, this is the token,
I will wear the easy yoke,
I will bow and will be broken,
Yea, I’ll fall upon the rock.
Shaker melody

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Just Strength to Believe

barnstormingblog1 Comment

The care of the disciples was the care for the day,
not for the morrow; the word morrow must stand
for any and every point of the future.
The next hour, the next moment,
is as much beyond our grasp and as much in God’s care,
as that a hundred years away.
Care for the next minute is just as foolish
as care for the morrow,
or for a day in the next thousand years–
in neither can we do anything,
in both God is doing everything.
Those claims only of the morrow
which have to be prepared to-day
are of the duty of to-day;
the moment which coincides with work to be done,
is the moment to be minded;
the next is nowhere till God has made it.
~George McDonald “The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity” from Unspoken Sermons

I come from a long line of worriers, so it comes quite naturally to me to anticipate the cares and concerns not only of this very moment, but every moment to come.

Unfortunately, medical training did little to calm that tendency as every worst-case-scenario is emphasized by every teacher to prepare the doctor-novice for any potential eventuality. Knowing about all the bad things that can happen is essential for disaster-preparedness in order to be ready to leap into action. Hospital rounds focus on the “what-ifs” as much as the “what-is” to be sure that all possible research and due diligence had been done in a particular patient’s case.

So for Jesus to say to His disciples (and us) “Do you not understand?” hits me hard because I’ve spent my life working hard to understand. My training and my human nature tells me to care in advance so I’ll be ready for what is to come; yet, true to form, just as He says, it doesn’t change what will happen.

As I watch the sun rise yet again, watching the fire in the sky light and then slowly fade, I know Who is in control, and it surely is not me. There will be enough for today, enough for tomorrow and enough for all the years to come, because God is enough.

It takes strength to believe that. And that understanding has to be enough.

Thank you to Amy Baik Lee in her essay, which led me to George McDonald’s “Unspoken Sermons” and the song below.

Late nights, long hours
Questions are drawn like a thin red line
No comfort left over
No safe harbor in sight

Really we don’t need much
Just strength to believe
There’s honey in the rock,
There’s more than we see
In these patches of joy
These stretches of sorrow
There’s enough for today
There will be enough tomorrow

Upstairs a child is sleeping
What a light in our strain and stress
We pray without speaking
Lord help us wait in kindness

Really we don’t need much
Just strength to believe
There’s honey in the rock,
There’s more than we see
In these patches of joy
These stretches of sorrow
There’s enough for today
There will be enough tomorrow
Songwriters: Sara Groves / Julie Ann Lee / Sarah Dark

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