Tag: Thanksgiving

The Small and The Good

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There was an entire aspect to my life that I had been blind to — the small, good things that came in abundance.
~Mary Karr from The Art of Memoir

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Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it — every, every minute?
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
~Thornton Wilder, quotes from “Our Town”

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I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see…
~John Newton from “Amazing Grace”

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~~And so I continue to work in the soil of this life, this work, this farm, this faith
to find what yearns to grow, to bloom, to fruit and be harvested to share with others.

With deep gratitude to those of you who visit here and let me know it makes a difference in your day — here is the small and the good from my harvest of words and pictures for you.

With blessings for our joint Thanksgiving,
Emily

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A Next Breath, or Not

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Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing. 
~Scout Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

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How can I appreciate something
so constant and reliable,
like breathing the next breath,
so predictable
it never registers
in my consciousness
until the moment
it might be rent asunder,
lost forever,
as delicate and transitory as a web
hanging heavy with evening frost?

Knowing
the breath I rely on
for my very existence
is not a given,
it then becomes
the most precious thing of all.

For our ephemeral fragility on this earth,
for our dependency on our Maker,
who, solid as a mountain,
gives us our next breath,
or not,
I am truly and forever
thankful.

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Humbly Take Heart

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Time out of mind
at this turn of the seasons
when the hardy oak leaves rustle in the wind
and the frost gives a tang to the air
and the dusk falls early
and the friendly evenings
lengthen under the heel of Orion,
it has seemed good to our people
to join together in praising the Creator and Preserver,
who has brought us by a way that we did not know
to the end of another year.
In observance of this custom,
I appoint Thursday, the twenty-sixth of November,
as a day of public Thanksgiving
for the blessings that have been our common lot
— for all the creature comforts:
the yield of the soil that has fed us
and the richer yield from labor of every kind
that has sustained our lives
— and for all those things,
as dear as breath to the body,
that nourish and strengthen our spirit
to do the great work still before us:
for the brotherly word and act;
for honor held above price;
for steadfast courage and zeal
in the long, long search after truth;
for liberty and for justice
freely granted by each to his fellow
and so as freely enjoyed;
and for the crowning glory and mercy of peace upon our land;
— that we may humbly take heart of these blessings
as we gather once again with solemn and festive rites
to keep our Harvest Home.
~Connecticut Governor Wilbur Cross — Thanksgiving Proclamation November 26, 1936

 

These words written almost 80 years ago this day still ring true.
Then a country crushed under the Great Depression,
now a country staggering under a Great Depression of the spirit~
ever more connected electronically,
yet more isolated from family, friends, faith,
more economically secure,
yet emotionally bankrupt.
May we humbly take heart
in the midst of creature comforts
we hardly acknowledge~
that we are able, in our abundance,
to care for others in need, just as
God, in His everlasting recognition
of our perpetual need of Him,
cares for us,
even when we don’t believe
we need Him.

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The Clinging Mist

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My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
     Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
     She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
     She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted gray
     Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
     The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
     And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
     The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
     And they are better for her praise.
~Robert Frost “My November Guest”

 

November,
the month of darkening,
transforms
to a recounting of gratitude
of daily thanksgiving and blessings~~

it is good to dwell on our gifts,
even so, it is right
to invite Sorrow
to sit in silence with us,
her tears blending with ours.

These deepening days
of bare stripped branches
feed our growing need
for the covering grace
of His coming light.

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Lonely Light

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barnyardlightour first snowfall of the season just started

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.
~Ted Kooser “Flying at Night”

 

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Every Every Minute

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haywagonHappy Thanksgiving from our farm to yours….

We all know that something is eternal.
And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names,
and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars
. . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal,
and that something has to do with human beings.
All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that
for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised
how people are always losing hold of it.
There’s something way down deep
that’s eternal about every human being.

Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it — every, every minute?

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

~Thorton Wilder, quotes from “Our Town”

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Worn Out Gloves

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farmglovesAt our annual  Wiser Lake Chapel Thanksgiving service last night, we were asked to participate by bringing a token of something we are thankful for.  This is what I brought.

This is what my farm work gloves look like after a year of service.  They keep me from blistering while forking innumerable loads of smelly manure into wheelbarrows, but also help me unkink frozen hoses, tear away blackberry vines from fencing, pull thistle from the field and heavy hay bales from the haymow.  Over the years, I’ve gone through several dozen gloves, which have protected my hands as I’ve cleaned and bandaged deep wounds on legs and hooves, pulled on foals during the hard contractions of difficult births, held the head of dying animals as they sleep one final time.

Without my work gloves over the years, my hands would look very much like these do, full of rips and holes from the thorns and barbs of the world, sustaining scratches, callouses and blisters from the hard work of life.

But they don’t.
Thanks to these gloves, I’m presentable for my “day” work as a doctor where I don a different set of gloves many times a day.

But the gloves don’t tell the whole story of my gratitude.

I’m thankful to a Creator God who doesn’t need to wear gloves when He goes to work in our world.
Who gathers us up even when we are dirty, smelly, and unworthy.
Who eases us into this life when we are vulnerable and weak,
and carries us gently home as we leave this world, weak and vulnerable.
Who holds us as we bleed from self and other-inflicted wounds.
Who won’t let us go, even when we fight back, or try not to pay attention, or care who He is.

And who came to us
with hands like ours~
tender, beautiful, easy to wound hands
that bled
because He didn’t need to wear gloves~~His love made evident
to us all.

 

Just to Be

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Before the adults we call our children arrive with their children in tow
  for Thanksgiving,

we take our morning walk down the lane of oaks and hemlocks, mist
  a smell of rain by nightfall—underfoot,

the crunch of leathery leaves released by yesterday’s big wind.

You’re ahead of me, striding into the arch of oaks that opens onto the fields
  and stone walls of the road—

as a V of geese honk a path overhead, and you stop—

in an instant, without thought, raising your arms toward sky, your hands
  flapping from the wrists,

and I can read in the echo your body makes of these wild geese going
  where they must,

such joy, such wordless unity and delight, you are once again the child
  who knows by instinct, by birthright,

just to be is a blessing. In a fictional present, I write the moment down.
  You embodied it.
~Margaret Gibson “Moment” (featured today on The Writer’s Almanac)

 

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Harvest Hurrah

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Mt. Baker at dawn today
Mt. Baker at dawn today
Mt. Baker last night with fresh snow
Mt. Baker last night with fresh snow

As a celebration of harvest time, our church shared a harvest meal together this weekend, and this beautiful Hopkins poem came to mind.  Hopkins himself wrote, “The Hurrahing sonnet was the outcome of half an hour of extreme enthusiasm as I walked home alone one day from fishing in the Elwy.”    And how else can we approach the gift of harvest than with “extreme enthusiasm”?

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet give you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic – as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! –
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Hurrahing in Harvest”

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a specially laid table at the Harvest potluck
A gathering of over 90 church family and friends, including two special people over 90 years of age!
A gathering of over 90 church family and friends, including two special people over 90 years of age!

The Gift of Fragility

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web1Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing. 
Scout Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

How might I appreciate something
that is such a constant,
like my next heart beat or
breathing my next breath,
so unquestioningly predictable
it never registers
in my consciousness
until the moment
it might be rent asunder,
as delicate as a shattered web
hanging heavy with morning frost?

In knowing it will be someday lost,
my lungs emptied and heart stilled,
comes the realization:
the air I rely on
for my very existence
is the most precious gift of all.

For that ephemeral knowledge
of my fragility on this earth,
in learning that I love
my utter dependency on my Maker
who gifts me my next breath,
or not,
I am truly and forever
thankful.