Tag: Trust

The Beginning Shall Remind Us of the End: A Rare Radiant Descent

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On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can’t honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then —
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.
~Sylvia Plath “Black Rook in Rainy Weather”

Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this?
Luke 1:18

“How will this be?” Mary asked the angel…
Luke 1:34

Zechariah asks:
How can I be sure of what I’m told?
How can I trust this is true
even when it doesn’t make sense in my every day world?
How can the mundane be made divine?
How can I trust God to accomplish this?

These are not the questions to be asked
– this lack of trust for God’s sovereignty –
so he was struck mute,
speechless until immersed in the miracle of impossibility
and only then assured by the Lord and released from silence,
he sang loudly with praise for God’s tender mercy.

Instead, we should ask, like Mary:
How can this be?
How am I worthy?
How am I to be calm comprehending
this ineffable mystery?
How will I be different than I was before?

It is when we are most naked,
in our most vulnerable and emptiest circumstance –
then we are clothed and filled with God’s glorious assurance.
We do not need to know the details
to accept the moment of radiance He has brought upon us.
We just need willingness to be…
changed.

This year’s Barnstorming Advent theme “… the Beginning shall remind us of the End” is taken from the final lines in T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees”

The Beginning Shall Remind Us of the End: Tenderness Begins to Form

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This is the honest grace of her body:
that she is afraid, and in this moment does not
hide her fear...
Until in the cave of her body
she might feel without willing it a tenderness
begin to form. Like the small, ghostly
clover of the meadow; the deer hidden
in the hills. A tenderness like mourning.
The source of love, she thinks, is mourning.
…the child that will soon form
inside her body, this loss by which we come
to bend before the given, its arms that open
unexplained, and take us in.
~Laurie Sheck from “The Annunciation”

Like Mary, we have no way of knowing… We can ask for courage, however, and trust that God has not led us into this new land only to abandon us there.
~Kathleen Norris from God With Us

As if until that moment
nothing real
had happened since Creation

As if outside the world were empty
so that she and he were all
there was — he mover, she moved upon

As if her submission were the most
dynamic of all works: as if
no one had ever said Yes like that

As if one day the sun had no place
in all the universe to pour its gold
but her small room
~Luci Shaw “Virgin”

Like most people, I want my life to be the way I want it:
my plans, my timing, my hopes and dreams first and foremost.

And then stuff happens and suddenly nothing looks the way it was supposed to be. I feel emptied of the future I had envisioned.

Yet only then, as an empty vessel, can I be filled.

In the annunciation of the angel, Mary’s response to this overwhelming circumstance is a model for us all when we are hit by a wave of circumstances we didn’t expect and had not prepared for.

She is prepared; she has studied and knows God’s Word and His promise to His people, even in the midst of trouble. She is able to articulate it beautifully in the song she sings as her response. She gives up her so-carefully-planned-out life to give life to God within her.

Her resilience sings through the ages and to each one of us in our troubles:
may it be to me as you say.

May it be.
Your plans, Your purpose, Your promise.
Let it be.
Even if it may pierce my soul as with a sword.
You are there with your exquisite tenderness to stem the bleeding so I sing through my fear, through my weariness, and through my tears.

The angel Gabriel from heaven came
His wings as drifted snow his eyes as flame
“All hail” said he “thou lowly maiden
Mary, Most highly favored lady,” Gloria!

“For known a blessed mother thou shalt be,
All generations laud and honor thee,
Thy Son shall be Emanuel, by seers foretold
Most highly favored lady,” Gloria!

Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head
“To me be as it pleaseth God,” she said,
“My soul shall laud and magnify his holy name.”
Most highly favored lady. Gloria!

Of her, Emmanuel, the Christ was born
In Bethlehem, all on a Christmas morn
And Christian folk throughout the world will ever say:
“Most highly favored lady,” Gloria!

This year’s Barnstorming Advent theme “… the Beginning shall remind us of the End” is taken from the final lines in T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees”

Just Strength to Believe

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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

A book of beauty in words and photography, available for order here:

Another Way Home

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I do remember darkness, how it snaked
through the alders, their ashen flanks
in our high-beams the color of stone.
That hollow slap as floodwater hit
the sides of the car. Was the radio on?
Had I been asleep?
Sometimes you have to tell a story
your entire life to get it right.

Twenty-two and terrified, I had married you
but barely knew you. And for forty years
I’ve told this story wrong. In my memory
you drove right through it, the river
already rising on the road behind us,
no turning around.
But since your illness I recall it
differently. Now that I know it’s possible
to lose you, I’m finally remembering
it right. That night,
you threw that car in reverse,
and gunned it. You found us
another way home.
~Emily Ransdell, “Everywhere a River,” from New Letters

When life gets scary, we long for rescue as the world threatens to overwhelm us. And eventually it is true, this world will overwhelm us, and we’ll wonder how we will escape.

Where does our help come from?

It doesn’t always come from the direction we expect. Most often, we keep staring ahead, hoping somehow salvation lies just around the corner.

But salvation has been behind us all the while. We were created saved but need to believe it, live it out, share it with anyone open to listen.

We all need to trust in the Rescuer when we are stuck and flooded with life. It takes courage, faith and grace to be led home, either straight ahead or back the way we came.

Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer 1:

Q.What is your only comfort in life and death?
A.That I am not my own, 1
but belong with body and soul,
both in life and in death, 
2to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. 
3He has fully paid for all my sins
with his precious blood, 
4and has set me free
from all the power of the devil. 
5He also preserves me in such a way 
6that without the will of my heavenly Father
not a hair can fall from my head; 
7indeed, all things must work together
for my salvation. 
8Therefore, by his Holy Spirit
he also assures me
of eternal life 
9and makes me heartily willing and ready
from now on to live for him

A book of beauty and hope in words and photography, available for order here:

Generous Indefatigable Love

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And what if I never get it right,
this loving, this giving of the self
to the other? And what if I die

before learning how to offer
my everything? What if, though
I say I want this generous,

indefatigable love, what if
I forever find a way to hold
some corner back? I don’t want

to find out the answer
to that. I want to be the sun
that gives and gives until it burns out,

the sea that kisses the shore
and only moves away so that
it might rush up to kiss it again.
~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “And Again” from Hush

The beach at Tohoku, Japan where the tsunami hit in 2011

What is it about us
that always holds something back
when loving others,
keeping in reserve
some little piece of ourselves
that we can’t quite let go?

Even so, we ourselves want to be loved
wholly, fully, completely, unconditionally
yet something in us doesn’t trust
it could be true –
we know how undeserving we are.

When we are offered such
generous indefatigable love,
we hold back part of ourselves
because we are afraid
we’ll be left desolate, never to be filled again –
a sun burned out and darkened,
a shore left high and dry.

Once we experience our Creator’s love
as wholly generous,
completely tireless and persistent,
unconditionally grace-filled,
we can stop fearing our emptiness.

He pours more than enough love into us
without holding back,
filling us so full that we might spill over to others,
again and again and again,
with our light and heart and spirit unbound.

A new book from Barnstorming is available to order here:

Madly in Love

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How is it they live for eons in such harmony
– the billions of stars –
when most men can barely go a minute
without declaring war in their mind
against someone they know.

There are wars where no one marches with a flag,
though that does not keep casualties from mounting.

Our hearts irrigate this earth. 
We are fields before each other.
How can we live in harmony?

First we need to know 
we are all madly in love
with the same God.

O Lord my God, make me
submissive without protest,
poor without discouragement,
chaste without regret,
patient without complaint,
humble without posturing,
cheerful without frivolity,
mature without gloom,
and quick-witted without flippancy.

Grant that I may know
what You require me to do.
Bestow upon me
the power to accomplish Your will,
as is necessary and fitting
for the salvation of my soul.
~St. Thomas Aquinas

I look at headline news through my fingers, cringing.  

Amid the centuries of posturing between governments and every imaginable tribe and faction, the names and faces change but the nature of hatred of the “other” doesn’t.

We’ve seen this all before, over and over through history.  Over 150 years ago it was in the Gettysburg fields that blood of rival armies intermingled and irrigated U.S. soil.  Though now we stand side by side with Germany and Japan, our bitter adversaries a mere eighty years ago, our world continually brews new enemies and ignites new conflicts.

We can barely go a minute without declaring war in our minds even against our neighbor, even those we consider friends and family. There is yelling from the streets in angry protest and screaming at school board meetings. Casualties mount in our bitterness toward one another.

And who am I to point fingers or squint through them at the news of the day?
I am as prone to this as anyone.

Am I myself capable of submission without protest, remaining patient and uncomplaining even when I disagree? Can I embody humility without having a hidden agenda? Can I remain selfless when my true nature is wholly selfish?

How can there ever be harmony? 
How can I overcome my own rancorous heart?

As critical as it seems, It is not love for one another that comes first.
I must first know, love and trust the only God who has loved the unloveable so much He became one with us, overpowering our tendency to hate one another by taking it all upon Himself.

Jesus found us dying in a world desperately drying up; His bleeding heart poured itself out onto our thirsting soil. We have been handed salvation.

It is, in fact, God who is madly in love with us and though we’ve done nothing to deserve it, it is our turn to show love to one another.

A book from Barnstorming is available for order here:

Thorny Doubts and Tangled Angers

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I remember
the first day,
how I looked down,
hoping you wouldn’t see
me,
and when I glanced up,
I saw your smile
shining like a soft light
from deep inside you.

“I’m listening,” you encourage us.
“Come on!
Join our conversation,
let us hear your neon certainties,
thorny doubts, tangled angers,”
but for weeks I hid inside.

I read and reread your notes
praising
my writing,
and you whispered,
“We need you
and your stories
and questions
that like a fresh path
will take us to new vistas.”

Slowly, your faith grew
into my courage
and for you—
instead of handing you
a note or apple or flowers—
I raised my hand.

I carry your smile
and faith inside like I carry
my dog’s face,
my sister’s laugh,
creamy melodies,
the softness of sunrise,
steady blessings of stars,
autumn smell of gingerbread,
the security of a sweater on a chilly day.
~Pat Mora, “Ode To Teachers” from Dizzy in Your Eyes.

School is back in session for some and will be soon for others. We cross our fingers it can remain in person, masked face-to-masked face, rather than via screens.

Students and teachers will find their way back to one another – learning each other’s stories and how to transform one another through sharing those stories.

Two of our children are school teachers – one at elementary level and the other in high school, while the third spent two years teaching high school math on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. They were transformed by their own teachers, inspired to do what had made such a difference in their own lives. They have become the teachers who I wish would teach me.

Some of my own teachers helped transform me in those early years, encouraging me in my shyness to raise my hand despite my thorny doubts, tell my story despite my tangled angers, share something of myself when I felt I had nothing of value to give.

I think of you and thank you – Mrs. Neil, Mr. Duffy, Mrs. MacMurray – for helping me break out of my broken shell in my grade school years. You taught me to wholly trust to this day those who love enough to push me to become a better me.

Looking for a book of beauty in photos and words? Consider this book available for order here:

Don’t Worry. You’ll Make It

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To the shepherd herding his flock
through the gorge below, it must appear as if I walk
on the sky. I feel that too: so little between me

and The Fall. But this is how faith works its craft.
One foot set in front of the other, while the wind
rattles the cage of the living and the rocks down there

cheer every wobble, your threads keep
this braided business almost intact saying: Don’t worry.
I’ve been here a long time. You’ll make it across.
~Matthew Olzmann “Letter to a Bridge Made of Rope”

rope bridge photo from https://www.causewaycoast.holiday/locations/carrick-a-rede

I have never walked a rope bridge though I’ve seen one from a distance in Northern Ireland. It swayed far above a rocky gorge, hanging almost miraculously in the air as walkers trekked blithely across.

Not for me, I said.

I feel disoriented and dizzy when the surface beneath my feet sways and moves with the wind and due to my own movement. I make my own wobbling worse with my fear. The rocks below seem menacing; I don’t trust my own ability to navigate over and through them.

Oh, me of little faith. So little between me and The Fall.

Simply crossing a narrow wooden bridge built over a fallen large old-growth tree trunk takes all my courage. I try to focus on my feet taking each step, testing the solid wood beneath me rather than looking down at the rushing water and sharp rocks below.

In the course of life, I have to take steps that feel uncertain and unsupported. I freeze in place, afraid to move forward, reluctant to leave the security of where I am to do what it takes to get safely to the other side.

Yet I need to trust what holds firm for others will hold firm for me.

Christ is the bridge for those like me who fear, who don’t trust their own feet, who can’t stop looking at the taunting and daunting rocks below. He has braided Himself around me to keep me safe, no matter what and no matter where. He’s been here a long time and will always be.

I can step out in that confidence.

If you enjoy these daily Barnstorming posts, you might consider this book of Barnstorming photos and poetry from Lois Edstrom here:

The Forgiveness of Sleep

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The children have gone to bed.
We are so tired we could fold ourselves neatly
behind our eyes and sleep mid-word, sleep standing
warm among the creatures in the barn, lean together
and sleep, forgetting each other completely in the velvet,
the forgiveness of that sleep.

Then the one small cry:
one strike of the match-head of sound:
one child’s voice:
and the hundred names of love are lit
as we rise and walk down the hall.

One hundred nights we wake like this,
wake out of our nowhere
to kneel by small beds in darkness.
One hundred flowers open in our hands,
a name for love written in each one.
~Annie Lighthart “The Hundred Names of Love”

In the lull of evening, your son nested in your arms
becomes heavier and with a sigh his body
sloughs off its weight like an anchor into deep sleep,
until his small breath is the only thing that exists.

And as you move the slow dance through the dim hall
to his bedroom and bow down to deliver his sleeping form,
arms parting, each muscle defining its arc and release—
you remember the feeling of childhood,

traveling beneath a full moon,
your mother’s unmistakable laugh, a field of wild grass,
windows open and the night rushing in
as headlights trace wands of light across your face—

there was a narrative you were braiding,
meanings you wanted to pluck from the air,
but the touch of a hand eased it from your brow
and with each stroke you waded further

into the certainty of knowing your sleeping form
would be ushered by good and true arms
into the calm ocean that is your bed.
 — Alexandra Lytton Regalado, “The T’ai Chi of Putting a Sleeping Child to Bed” author of Matria

Each of those countless nights of a child wakening,
each of the hundreds of hours of lulling them in the moonlit dark,
leading them back to the soft forgiveness of sleep.

I remember the moves of that hypnotic dance,
a head nestled snug into my neck,
their chest pressed into mine,
our hearts beating in synchrony
as if they were still inside.

Even when our sleep was spare and our rest was sparse,
those night times rocking in unison
were worth every waking moment, trusting
we’re in this together, no matter what,
no matter how long.

We’re in this together.

A new book from Barnstorming is available to order here:


The Daylights

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When I wake up earlier than you and you
are turned to face me, face
on the pillow and hair spread around,
I take a chance and stare at you,
amazed in love and afraid
that you might open your eyes and have
the daylights scared out of you.
But maybe with the daylights gone
you’d see how much my chest and head
implode for you, their voices trapped
inside like unborn children fearing
they will never see the light of day.
The opening in the wall now dimly glows
its rainy blue and gray. I tie my shoes
and go downstairs to put the coffee on.
~Ron Padgett, “Glow” from Collected Poems.

It is my morning routine to wake early
and I take a moment to look at you still asleep,
your slow even breaths and peaceful face-
I’m thankful for every day I get to spend with you.

I know you know this~
we remind each other each day
in many ways, to never forget.

What blessing comes from a love
openly expressed and never hidden~
thriving in the dark of night,
yet never shining brighter
than in the delights and daylights
of each new morning together.