Tag: water

Water into Grapes

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3rgrapes

The miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread.

Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine – which was, after all, a very small miracle.

We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.
~Wendell Berry from Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community

rainylily

trumpeters12316

The miraculous escapes our attention every day ~
we are blinded to the wonder of it all,
accepting as mundane that which warrants our awe and overwhelm.

How can the scales be lifted from our eyes?
How can we be offered up such astonishment and never be satiated?

Be amazed.   Be humbled.

Stay hungry for this daily bread.

featherrose3

grapes2

deccorn1

Where the Land Leaves Off

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kingston3

kingstondock

Then I came to an edge of very calm
But couldn’t stay there. It was the washed greenblue mapmakers use to indicate
Inlets and coves, softbroken contours where the land leaves off
And water lies plainly, as if lamped by its own justice. I hardly know how to say how it was
Though it spoke to me most kindly,
Unlike a hard afterwards or the motions of forestalling.

Now in evening light the far-off ridge carries marks of burning.
The hills turn thundercolored, and my thoughts move toward them, rough skins
Without their bodies. What is the part of us that feels it isn’t named, that doesn’t know
How to respond to any name? That scarcely or not at all can lift its head
Into the blue and so unfold there?
~Laurie Sheck “And Water Lies Plainly”

kitsapsunset

Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
~William Wordsworth from Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 1802

kingston

We feel restless about the tail end of summer when it is too hot for anything to grow or thrive without water.  There is a longing to settle in, like going down for a nap–to drift off in comfort instead of sweating, to sink deep and untroubled tucked under blankets that instead are folded away, unused.

Our long uninterrupted sleep waits so we must take our rest at intervals.  There is some daylight left.

We take our calm as it comes, as a serene moment of reflection, looking out from the edge where the land leaves off and wonder at the still waters to come, to ponder what is waiting on the other side.

ferry1

Between Midnight and Dawn: Thirsting for God

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ahmama

As the deer pants for streams of water,
    so my soul pants for you, my God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
    When can I go and meet with God?
3 My tears have been my food
    day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
    “Where is your God?”
~from Psalm 42

 

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible and so why not.

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished and so why not.

A root seeks water.
Tenderness only breaks open the earth.
This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.
~Jane Hirschfield from “Standing Deer”

 

Most days, at some point, I start feeling thirsty.

Not for water, which, living in the northwest,  I’m fortunate to have close by at almost any moment.

Not for alcohol, which puts me to sleep and makes me too fuzzy to function after a couple of swallows.

Not for milk which was all I ever drank growing up on a farm with three Guernsey cows that produced more than a family of five could possibly consume in a day.

No, I’m ashamed to admit I thirst for a Starbucks mocha.  With whip.

No, I didn’t give it up for Lent.  I acknowledge it is not truly thirst I am feeling but only a desire. I’m not panting and dehydrated.  This is a want rather than a need.  I will not die without my mocha.

Like any psychological (or physical) addiction, it just feels as if I might.

Instead I should thirst daily for God with the same visceral fervor and singlemindedness.   If I could dive into His word daily and savor it like I do my mocha, I would be much less fluffy in stature, and much more solid in faith.

This psalm reminds me of my constant thirstiness and how no mocha, no glass of water, indeed nothing of this earth will truly slake it.  I must wait to meet the Lord to know what it feels like to no longer thirst and no longer want, and then all needs, indeed all desires, are fulfilled.

“You have made us for Yourself, and we cannot find rest until we find it in You.”  
~St. Augustine

wwudeer2

 

wwudeer1

 

During this Lenten season, I will be drawing inspiration from the new devotional collection edited by Sarah Arthur —Between Midnight and Dawn

Against the Hard Edges

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

In all the woods that day I was
the only living thing
fretful, exhausted, or unsure.
Giant fir and spruce and cedar trees
that had stood their ground
three hundred years
stretched in sunlight calmly
unimpressed by whatever
it was that held me
hunched and tense above the stream,
biting my nails, calculating all
my impossibilities.
Nor did the water pause
to reflect or enter into
my considerations.
It found its way
over and around a crowd
of rocks in easy flourishes,
in laughing evasions and
shifts in direction.
Nothing could slow it down for long.
It even made a little song
out of all the things
that got in its way,
a music against the hard edges
of whatever might interrupt its going.
~John Brehm “Passage”

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Lenten Grace — Merciful Dew

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

He hath abolished the old drought
And rivers run where all was dry,
The field is sopp’d with merciful dew
He hath put a new song in my mouth.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins

When I have no voice left, He gives me a song I can still sing.
When I run dry, He replenishes.
When I wither, His merciful dew
restores and readies me for a new day.

I am stopped astonished,
sopped and mopping up,
spilling over in His grace.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Lenten Grace — Then Water Enters

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten
Rebuked, she turned and ran
uphill to the barn. Anger, the inner   
arsonist, held a match to her brain.   
She observed her life: against her will   
it survived the unwavering flame.
The barn was empty of animals.   
Only a swallow tilted
near the beams, and bats
hung from the rafters
the roof sagged between.

Her breath became steady
where, years past, the farmer cooled  
the big tin amphoræ of milk.
The stone trough was still
filled with water: she watched it  
and received its calm.

So it is when we retreat in anger:  
we think we burn alone
and there is no balm.
Then water enters, though it makes  
no sound.
~Jane Kenyon from “Portrait of a Figure Near Water”

There is a balm badly needed for souls scorched by their own anger.

Allowing anger to smolder only leaves us awash in ashes.  I am witness through my own eyes how my indignation inflames like an “inner arsonist”, leaving behind the shadows that forever cloud my vision.  I will not see clearly until I stop feeding the fire.

Time to let the water enter in, to flood and cool the flame, to cleanse, renew and forgive,  to restore a calm, silent and serene.

That is the balm badly needed.  That is the balm freely given.

I just need to apply it to where it hurts the most.

Lenten Grace — Quintessence of Dust

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

What a piece of work is a man!
…And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”
~ William Shakespeare in Hamlet’s monologue 

This dust left of man:
earth, air, water and fire
prove inadequate
to quell its significance.

Only the transcendent hope
of eternal life restored
can breathe glory
into the plainest of ash.

We therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ;
who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body…
Committal service from The Common Book of Prayer

Advent Sings: Spring Up, O Well

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

16 From there they continued on to Beer, the well where the Lord said to Moses, “Gather the people together and I will give them water.”
17 Then Israel sang this song:
“Spring up, O well!
    Sing about it,
18 about the well that the princes dug,
    that the nobles of the people sank—
    the nobles with scepters and staffs.”
Numbers 21: 16-18

Like the homeless Israelites of the wilderness years, we are prone to grumble as we wander through life.  Despite our many struggles, we are provided with what is needed when it is needed, day to day, to live.  In Numbers, ancient Israel sang of the wellspring of water that seemed to appear in the desert, no matter where they were,  in answer to their desperate pleading.    The wells of the ancients provided for their bodily needs, through God’s provision of water to the parched.

So too we are surrounded in the desert of modern society, desperately thirsty and needy for something, anything that will sustain us.  Our groanings and grumblings are answered, overflowing:

“The poor and needy search for water,
    but there is none;
    their tongues are parched with thirst.
But I the Lord will answer them;
    I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.
18 I will make rivers flow on barren heights,
    and springs within the valleys.
I will turn the desert into pools of water,
    and the parched ground into springs.
Isaiah 41: 17-18

The deepest well of all was born that night in Bethlehem, producing an endless stream of life flowing through the dry and dying landscape of human suffering and sin.   It was as if he had sprung up from the desert, miraculously appearing when desperately needed by the people.

10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
John 4: 10-15

Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for a drink at the well although he was the deep wellspring himself.    He dwells with us and like us,  needing the basics of water that can never truly satisfy.  He knows our body’s thirst as he feels just as we do.  Yet in responding to his bodily thirst,  we are engaged as never before, finding in him the quenching of our spiritual thirst.

Though Jesus needed nurturing and provision while on earth–as a helpless and hungry infant dependent on his parents, as a wandering teacher in the desert thirsty from the long hot miles, and hanging from the cross suffering from thirst and asking from relief–he is the deepest well from which we can possibly draw.

Let us sing of it this Advent.

Each Round Drop

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photo by Josh Scholten

And when the Sun comes out,
After this Rain shall stop,
A wondrous Light will fill
Each dark, round drop…

William Henry Davies from “The Rain”

I don’t ever remember mud in July, only dust.

The sun is finally predicted to come out from behind the clouds tomorrow and stay for awhile.  Until then we continue to see copious bleak tears spilling unchecked from a shrouded heaven.  Wet cracking cherries have hung unripe for a week, untouched even by the birds who know to wait for a sweeter day.

Nothing now illuminates these perfect round spheres as they roll off leaves and petals to huddle puddled together in community on the ground.  The wait for Light is long.

It will come sooner than I can imagine, that moment of seeing a glistening crystalline reflection of the universe in a droplet, when Light returns undimmed, its taste ambrosial.

Noticing the Dirt

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photo by Josh Scholten

“No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes are in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.” ― C.S. Lewis

I am a big fan of hot baths, always have been. No matter how long the day, how sweaty the work, how gritty the accumulated grime, a bath takes care of it. That cleansing is something to look forward to: staying dirty is only temporary, not a permanent condition.

Somehow I manage to stumble and fall regularly, get mussed and messy, and need to get clean all over again. And again. Thankfully there is plenty of hot water, clouds of soap suds, and a stiff scrub brush.

Time for the tub…again.

photo by Josh Scholten