Tag: transformation

I Will Sing: Wakeful and Whispering

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This is the season:
Cradle of quiet,
Trees, waiting,
Naked on the hill,
Branches entwined
Like lovers holding
Hands.

Nothing is hidden.
A lone leaf quivers
On the apple tree.
Snow has yet to fall.
Waiting, the grass
Lies mute.

It could be death but
Isn’t. Yet. Wings
Quicken serrated air
As nuthatch, junco,
Chickadee flit from
Tree to tree, oblivious
To the hawk circling
Overhead, waiting,
Like the grass, for what
Comes next.

And it will come,
To all of us—there’s
No exception—
But if that frightens
You, hold it like
A stone beneath
The tongue until
Fear softens, and
You realize that
Nothing is ever lost
But is, instead,
Transformed as one
Door opens to another,
As even now light
Lifts the shadows,
And, out of sight,
Sap, wakeful, whispers
In the apple tree.
~Sarah Rossiter “Winter”

The soul’s sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. 

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;

And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well…
~T.S. Eliot – lines from “Little Gidding” in the Four Quartets

In the eternal “already, but not yet”
my wintry soul struggles to find its footing.
I can feel stuck in ice,
immobile and numb.
I wait impatiently
for a wakening thaw,
a whisper of the internal movement
caught between frozen and melting.
My soul’s sap smells the coming spring.
I tremble, anticipating a bloom that will not fade.
It may not happen quite yet,
but I know it is coming.

This Lenten season will reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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Living in the Changing Light

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It was like a church to me.
I entered it on soft foot,
Breath held like a cap in the hand.
It was quiet.
What God was there made himself felt,
Not listened to, in clean colours
That brought a moistening of the eye,
In movement of the wind over grass.

There were no prayers said. But stillness
Of the heart’s passions — that was praise
Enough; and the mind’s cession
Of its kingdom. I walked on,
Simple and poor, while the air crumbled
And broke on me generously as bread.
~R.S. Thomas “The Moor”

A strange empty day. I did not feel well, lay around….
I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. I am still pursued by a neurosis about work inherited from my father. A day where one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room, not try to be or do anything whatever. Tonight I do feel in a state of grace, limbered up, less strained.
~May Sarton from Journal of a Solitude (January 18, 1971 entry)

Once in your life you pass
Through a place so pure
It becomes tainted even
By your regard, a space
Of trees and air where
Dusk comes as perfect ripeness.
Here the only sounds are
Sighs of rain and snow,
Small rustlings of plants
As they unwrap in twilight.
This is where you will go
At last when coldness comes.
It is something you realize
When you first see it,
But instantly forget.
At the end of your life
You remember and dwell in
Its faultless light forever.
~Paul Zimmer “The Place” from Crossing to Sunlight Revisited

My family members and I have had weeks of feeling just on the verge of conquering the latest viral upper respiratory illness, but then would find ourselves welcoming the next cold as if it were a long lost friend.

I’m discouraged by ongoing fatigue and need for isolation that has accompanied these illnesses, due to our persistent sneezes and coughs.

All this has forced me to rest, take a breath and feel lucky to be alive, even if feeling unwell. I know too many folks who are dealing with much greater burdens.

Indeed, this morning brought a moment of grace for me.
I witnessed manna falling from the sky.

Often times a sunrise is as plain and gray as I am,
but at times, it is fire lit from above and beneath,
igniting and transforming the sky, completely overwhelming me.

I was swept away, transfixed by colors and swirls and shadows,
forever grateful to be fed by such heavenly bread broken over my head.

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Inch By Inch

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This yellow striped green
Caterpillar, climbing up
The steep window screen,

Constantly (for lack
Of a full set of legs) keeps
Humping up his back.

It’s as if he sent
By a sort of semaphore
Dark omegas meant

To warn of Last Things.
Although he doesn’t know it,
He will soon have wings,

And I, too, don’t know
Toward what undreamt condition
Inch by inch I go.
~Richard Wilbur “A Measuring Worm”

But as it is written: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.”
1 Corinthians 2:9

Here we are, measuring out our days as if we might determine the length and breadth of our lives by the inches we travel.

We have no idea what’s next, do we? We live, awaiting the promises we have read about, trusting to the Lord a transformation far exceeding our dreams.

Dreaming of wings? Perhaps for worms tethered by their legs to the earth.

Instead those with two legs long for eternity, measuring out inch by inch the infinite nature of God’s love for us.

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January Light

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Today is one of those excellent January partly cloudies in which light chooses an unexpected part of the landscape to trick out in gilt, and then the shadow sweeps it away. You know you’re alive. You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet’s roundness arc between your feet.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

After years of rarely paying attention,
too busy with work or household or barnyard tasks needing doing,
I realized only a finite number of sunrises and sunsets are left to me.

I don’t want to miss them, so now I stop, take a deep breath
and feel lucky to be alive, a witness to that moment.

My feet are planted on the ground beneath me.
My face feels the light from above,
then a shadow sweeps it away,
just for now, not forever.

Sometimes sunrises and sunsets are plain and gray,
just as I am,
but there are days lit from above and beneath
with a fire that ignites across the sky.

I too am engulfed for a moment or two,
until sun or shadow sweeps me away,
transfixed and transformed,
yet forever grateful for the moment of light.

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August Ends with a Quick Kiss

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The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes from Songs of Many Seasons 1862-1874

Let me enjoy this late-summer day of my heart while the leaves are still green and I won’t look so close as to see that first tint of pale yellow slowly creep in. I will cease endless running and then look to the sky ask the sun to embrace me and then hope she won’t tell of tomorrows less long than today. Let me spend just this time in the slow-cooling glow of warm afternoon light and I’d think I will still have the strength for just one more last fling of my heart.
– John Bohrn ” Late August “

August rushes by like desert rainfall,
A flood of frenzied upheaval,
Expected,
But still catching me unprepared.
Like a match flame
Bursting on the scene,
Heat and haze of crimson sunsets.
Like a dream
Of moon and dark barely recalled,
A moment,
Shadows caught in a blink.
Like a quick kiss;
One wishes for more
But it suddenly turns to leave,
Dragging summer away.
– Elizabeth Maua Taylor “August”

Everything is made to perish;
the wonder of anything at all is that it has not already done so.
No, he thought.
The wonder of anything is that it was made in the first place.
What persists beyond this cataclysm of making and unmaking?
~Paul Harding from Tinkers

Earthly contentment
~perhaps a house stayed dry in a flood
or a forest was passed over in a wildfire
or a devastating diagnosis was averted
or a bank account contained sufficient funds
or gray hairs remain successfully hidden~
won’t last.

Like a quick kiss, it is done and gone, and cannot last.

May I not settle for comfort and contentment
but seek to fill
my overwhelming needs
with what will not perish,
even as the leaves turn yellow
and the light begins to fade,
and rest assured
as the seasons pass, altering the landscape,
I too must be changed.

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The Rising Tide

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As the tide rises, the closed mollusc
Opens a fraction to the ocean’s food,
Bathed in its riches. Do not ask
What force would do, or if force could.

A knife is of no use against a fortress.
You might break it to pieces as gulls do.
No, only the rising tide and its slow progress
Opens the shell. Lovers, I tell you true.

You who have held yourselves closed hard
Against warm sun and wind, shelled up in fears
And hostile to a touch or tender word—
The ocean rises, salt as unshed tears.

Now you are floated on this gentle flood
That cannot force or be forced, welcome food
Salt as your tears, the rich ocean’s blood,
Eat, rest, be nourished on the tide of love.
~May Sarton “Of Molluscs” from Complete Poems

photo by Josh Scholten

No question when I was younger, I tried to be a tough shell to crack. Over my years of medical training, I was warned to keep what is soft and tender closed and protected, or I would be picked clean, with my hard remains exposed and emptied.

Yet during those stressful years as a young physician, as one of a handful of female students, I didn’t feel attacked, nor was I forced to float through battering tides to hostile shores. Bathed in salty tears at times, I was comforted when the stormy winds came. My teachers were kind and gentle. Soothing words and heartfelt praise flowed around and through me.

I was treated just as I wanted to treat my patients: with respect and nurture.

All these years later, I have not forgotten this gift of love I was shown by my teachers and colleagues. Even when buried in the muck and sand up to my eyeballs, I could trust enough to open up my hard and crusty parts so I could feel the tide rise over and carry me home.

Hey little boy, whatcha got there?
Kind sir it’s a mollusk i’ve found
Did you find it in the sandy ground?
Does it emulate the ocean’s sound?
Yes I found it on the ground
Emulating the ocean’s sound
Bring forth the mollusk cast unto me
Let’s be forever let forever be free

Hey little boy come walk with me
And bring your new found mollusk along
Does it speaketh of the trinity
Can it gaze at the sun with its wandering eye
Yes it speaks of the trinity
Casting light at the sun with its wandering eye
Bring forth the mollusk, cast unto me
Let’s be forever let forever be free

You see there are three things that spur the mollusk from the sand
The waking of all creatures that live on the land
And with just one faint glance, back into the sea
The mollusk lingers, with it’s wandering eye
~Gene Ween

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Fixing Eyes on the Unseen – Imaged in God’s Eye

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As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “As kingfishers catch fire”

photo by Josh Scholten

We are far more than a simple flash of wing or a clarion ring of stone or bell ~
We who are imaged in God’s eye, first imagined, then brought to life.

We are His retina’s reflection of who walks in His creation,
ten thousand times ten thousand.

We are created lovely, meant to be lovely in His eyes,
so much more than light and sound~

We are inscaped in Christ, steeped
in His holy justice and sanctity~

We who keep all his goings graces,
for that He came down,
for that He indwells,
for that He was sacrificed.

We cannot help but be changed.

This year’s Lenten theme:
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4: 18

But For Rain…

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Every valley drinks,
        Every dell and hollow:
    Where the kind rain sinks and sinks,
        Green of Spring will follow.
 
    Yet a lapse of weeks
        Buds will burst their edges,
    Strip their wool-coats, glue-coats, streaks,
        In the woods and hedges;

    But for fattening rain
        We should have no flowers,
    Never a bud or leaf again
        But for soaking showers;

    We should find no moss
        In the shadiest places,
    Find no waving meadow grass
        Pied with broad-eyed daisies:
 
    But miles of barren sand,
        With never a son or daughter,
    Not a lily on the land,
        Or lily on the water.
~Christina Georgina Rossetti from “Winter Rain” from  Poems of Christina Rossetti (1904)

Reading the news of ongoing drought in the U.S. Southwest being the worst in over a thousand years, I look at our over-filled Northwest rain gauges with renewed appreciation and gratitude. We’ve had more “fattening” rain than typical over the last several months, which at times resulted in devastating flooding and damage, impacting hundreds of homes and businesses. Yet, but for rain, we too would become miles and miles of barren sand, with nothing able to thrive and grow, no sons or daughters or the beauty of the lilies.

I love our “kind” rain: the wet, the drizzle, the mist, the gray, the clouds, the mud, the moss, the slosh and the “evening dews and damps.”

“In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea…”
The rain transfigures us all.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
                       His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
                       His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
                       Since God is marching on.”

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
                       Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
                       While God is marching on.
~Julia Ward Howe (published 1862)

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To Make Truth

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What is beauty for—
sunset searing my soul
without thought or plan?

Dawn green beauty, bee hum honey,
stone in hand so silky the long sea
worked centuries to ravish?

And what for pain—thorn
in heart for my hurt child,
dumb ache for my brother gone

thirty years, slow burn of disgrace
when I fail at what I am to do: to see
my country bruised and torn?

So, to make good things—
a song, a kind act, a friendship—
feed on beauty at every turn.

And to make truth, feed on sorrows,
gnash their salty structures,
bite the bitter rind.
~Kim Stafford, “Advice from a Raindrop” from Singer Come From Afar

Beauty is always right outside my back door, whether it is growing in the soil, as ephemeral as a raindrop, unfurling in a frosty dawn or settling into an early twilight serenade. 

The truth of beauty heals me after an imperfect day and an imperfect night’s sleep.

Today I want to be different. I will strive to be a steward for serenity, striving to find beauty in all things and all people, aiding their growth and helping them flourish.

Never perfect but I’m not giving up on the truth. 
Never perfect but serene with the responsibility of always trying, always wanting to be different than I am
and change what I can in this little part of the world.

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Bagging Gold

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All afternoon his tractor pulls a flat wagon
with bales to the barn, then back to the waiting
chopped field. It trails a feather of smoke.
Down the block we bend with the season:
shoes to polish for a big game,
storm windows to batten or patch.
And how like a field is the whole sky now
that the maples have shed their leaves, too.
It makes us believers—stationed in groups,
leaning on rakes, looking into space. We rub blisters
over billows of leaf smoke. Or stand alone,
bagging gold for the cold days to come.
~David Baker “Neighbors in October”

There is a desperation to these October days:
the leaves torn from branches by unrelenting gusts
with no thought to where they may land~
upon which patch of grass or gravel will be their final resting place
to wilt and wither in the rain,
under frost,
buried by eventual peaceful snowbanks
until they return to dust.

Or in my need to hold on to what I can
of what was,
I preserve a few like precious treasure,
tucked between book pages
to remain forever neighbors
with the words they embrace.

A book with beautiful words and photography (but no leaves tucked inside) is available to order here: