violence – Page 8 – Barnstorming

What Does Love Look Like?

June 18, 2015June 18, 2015 barnstormingblog5 Comments

What does love look like?
It has the hands to help others.
It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy.
It has eyes to see misery and want.
It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men.
That is what love looks like.
~St. Augustine

So many sighs and sorrows and tears today
for the martyring of Your people in South Carolina
for the color of their skin,
for their faith in You.

When will the hatred end?
When will we all be one people,
united in Your arms?

Only when our love looks like Your Love,
Love that sacrifices Himself for the good of others,
rather than sacrificing others for no good at all.

Lord, come quickly.

The Cruelest Month

April 15, 2013April 15, 2013 barnstormingblog2 Comments

(Eliot’s Wasteland echoes the brokenness of this day in Boston)

Burial of the Dead
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

What the Thunder Said
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
~T.S. Eliot from “The Wasteland”

Advent Cries: Overcoming Fear

December 15, 2012December 15, 2012 barnstormingblog3 Comments

We forget that God is right there, waiting for us to turn to him, no matter how dire our situation. We forget the reassuring words of his messengers: “Fear not.”
God always seeks to draw close to us — even in the depths of hell.

…it comes down to this: the only way to truly overcome our fear of death is to live life in such a way that its meaning cannot be taken away by death. It means fighting the impulse to live for ourselves, instead of for others. It means choosing generosity over greed. It also means living humbly, rather than seeking influence and power. Finally, it means being ready to die again and again — to ourselves, and to every self-serving opinion or agenda.
~Johann Christoph Arnold

There is a cacophony of debates about where to place the blame for the current epidemic of senseless mass shootings of innocent people; these arguments are flying around kitchen tables, in barber shops, through countless comments on online blogs and news reports. We want to place the blame somewhere: the easy access to the weapons used, the lack of access to mental illness treatment, the overparenting, the lack of parenting, the violence of video games and movies, the lack of foundational spiritual faith, the overabundance of fundamentalist spiritual faith.

None of it meets the real problem head on: evil exists no matter what the weapon used or the mental illness left untreated. As we learned after the airplanes-as-weapons tragedies of 911, massive expense and legislation barely keeps evil at bay, simply moving its practitioners on to some other means. No place on this earthly soil is truly secure and no amount of money nor new laws will create that place, as hard as we might want to believe that can happen.

So we must fall back on what we were told long ago: fear not.
Do not be overwhelmed with evil but overcome evil with good. We have seen it yet again in the case of the heroes in this most recent tragedy: teachers and staff who made themselves the targets, placing themselves in front of those children who depended on them.

The goal of this life is to live for others, to be ready to die, living in a way such that death cannot erase the meaning and significance of a life.
Give up our selfish agendas in order to consider the needs of the greater good.
Cherish life, all lives, especially those of our precious children — including the unborn — the unwanted, inconvenient, wrong-gendered or genetically impaired.
And we must cherish, rather than intentionally hastening, the final months, weeks, days and hours of our completely dependent and disabled terminally ill and elderly. If we do not protect the lives of the weakest among us, we are turning them over (and we will soon follow) to the darkness.

Our only defense against evil is God’s offense; only He will lead us to the light where everything sad will come untrue.
Only then will there be no more fear — not ever — ever again.

I come from Pacific Northwest farmers going back four generations: the daughter of teachers, married to a son of farmers. We have raised three children who are making a difference in the world in their professional lives and as people of faith.

While keeping my eyes and heart open to the extraordinary things around me, I have worked over forty years as a family physician as well as a steward of the small farm we call home.

What I harvest in words or pictures finds its way here.
I welcome your messages and comments sent to emilypgibson@gmail.com

…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. … And the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4: 8 -9

What is my only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
~Heidelberg Catechism

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
~Mary Oliver

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.
~ T.S. Eliot

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To live is so startling, it leaves little room for other occupations.
~Emily Dickinson

I believe in God as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
~ C. S. Lewis

Remember this. When people choose to withdraw far from a fire, the fire continues to give warmth, but they grow cold. When people choose to withdraw far from light, the light continues to be bright in itself but they are in darkness. This is also the case when people withdraw from God.
~ Augustine

Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields…Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.
~ Mary Oliver

The seed is in the ground. Now may we rest in hope while darkness does its work.
~ Wendell Berry

Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine the true poetry of life.~ Sir William Osler

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
~George Eliot’s final sentence in Middlemarch

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
~ E.B. White

Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear, in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here.~~ “The Wild Geese” Wendell Berry

Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.
~ Jane Kenyon from “Let Evening Come”

You can only come to the morning through the shadows.~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Look for what you notice but no one else sees. ~Rick Rubin

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. ~ Thomas Merton

This life therefore is not righteousness,
but growth in righteousness,
not health but healing,
not being but becoming,
not rest but exercise.
We are not yet
what we shall be,
but we are growing toward it.
The process is not finished
but it is going on.
This is not the end
but it is the road.
~Martin Luther

Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.
~ Mary Oliver

It is not your love that sustains the marriage —
but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

She has done what she could…
~Mark 14:8

What do you mean? Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good on this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?~ J. R. R. Tolkien from The Hobbit

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