Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom, Winging wildly across the white Orchards and dark-green fields; on—on—and out of sight.
Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted; And beauty came like the setting sun: My heart was shaken with tears; and horror Drifted away. . . O, but Everyone Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done. ~Siegried Sassoon “Everyone Sang”
“Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – And sore must be the storm – That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land – And on the strangest Sea – Yet – never – in Extremity, It asked a crumb – of me. ~Emily Dickinson “Hope is the thing with feathers”
When it feels like the world is rent in two, and the gulf into which we topple too wide and dark to climb without help, we can look to the sky and see the birds’ stitching and hear their wordless singing, the careful caring line of connection pulling us out of a hopeless hole, startled and grateful to be made whole. Hope borne on feathered wings: may we fly threaded and knitted to one another, singing.
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Today we feel the wind beneath our wings Today the hidden fountain flows and plays Today the church draws breath at last and sings As every flame becomes a Tongue of praise. This is the feast of fire, air, and water Poured out and breathed and kindled into earth. The earth herself awakens to her maker And is translated out of death to birth. The right words come today in their right order And every word spells freedom and release Today the gospel crosses every border All tongues are loosened by the Prince of Peace Today the lost are found in His translation. Whose mother tongue is Love in every nation. ~Malcolm Guite “Pentecost” from Sounding the Seasons
I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. ~Acts 2:19-21 The Holy Spirit Comes At Pentecost
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment
Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter. ~T.S. Eliot from “East Coker”
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed.
And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”
Today, when we feel we are without hope, when faith feels frail, when love seems distant…
We wait, stilled, for the moment we are lit afire~ the Living God chose us to be seen, heard, named, loved, known.
God forever burning in our hearts in this moment and for a lifetime.
It is the dearest freshest deep down thing…
AI image created for this post
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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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The clouds had given their all – two days of rain and then a break in which we walked,
the waterlogged earth gulping for breath at our feet as we skirted the lake, silent and apart,
until the swans came and stopped us with a show of tipping in unison. As if rolling weights down their bodies to their heads
they halved themselves in the dark water, icebergs of white feather, paused before returning again like boats righting in rough weather.
‘They mate for life’ you said as they left, porcelain over the stilling water. I didn’t reply but as we moved on through the afternoon light,
slow-stepping in the lake’s shingle and sand, I noticed our hands, that had, somehow, swum the distance between us
and folded, one over the other, like a pair of wings settling after flight. ~Owen Sheers “Winter Swans”
We are created to be folded together to one another – bound to our God and Savior.
We belong here in tandem, even when there is temptation to fly – away from what is painful and difficult away from the cold, the dark, the storm
We are called home folding our fingers and wings together as a kept promise of unity not just for now, but for ever.
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
Yesterday our children, playing in a tree, watched as the tiniest bird fell from above them, where it belonged, to land below them, where it did not. The dog, animal and eager, stepped on the bird, then lowered his head. Our daughter screamed, hauled him back, then cupped her trembling hands around the trembling bird, Its one wing stretched and bent. Our son ran inside, obedient to our daughter’s instructions. I was in the shower, useless. You found a shoebox, sheltered the bird, helped our children find leaves and twigs, perched the box in the tree. At supper, we prayed for the bird while its mother visited the shoebox, her beak full. She fretted and fluttered. She couldn’t do anything, and we couldn’t do anything, and after supper, we found the trowel. Dust to dust, I said. O how I longed to gather you, you said, as a mother hen gathers her young beneath her wings. Our son pushed a stick into the soft earth. Our daughter told him not to push too far. ~Shea Tuttle “After reading our daughter’s poem”from Image Journal
Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me. ~Emily Dickinson
I have known the helplessness of watching life ebb away from a living creature and not be able to do a thing to change what is happening.
As a teenage nurse aide in a rest home for the elderly, I saw much of dying over those years before going to medical school – some deaths were anticipated and some unexpected. What was most apparent to me in that setting is that my primary role was to be a caring witness and comforter. I could not change what was happening but I could be there, not leaving my patients to die alone. I hoped that I was useful in some way.
Later, when I worked as a physician in a hospital, there were certainly things we would do to respond to a sudden cardiac event, and it was very dramatic to see someone’s pulse restored and stabilized due to our intervention. But more often than not, what we could do wouldn’t change the reality – dying still happened and we were gathered to witness the end. We often left the bedside feeling useless.
Now I have grandchildren who are learning about death through observing the natural cycles of animals living and dying on our farm. They discover a dead bird or vole on the ground; they were aware one of our elderly horses recently died. They are aware our beloved farm dogs are aging and so are grandma and grandpa.
Children naturally ask “why?” and we do our best to explain there is always hope and comfort, even when physical bodies are dust in the ground, marked by a stick or stone or only a memory.
It is “Hope” that sings alive within us, even when we’re naked and featherless, even if we fall far from the nest we were born to. We are caught and safe under our Savior’s wings for the rest of eternity, never to be “just dust” again.
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I
A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter—winged, horned, and spined—
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;
While 'mid my page there idly stands
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands...
II
Thus meet we five, in this still place,
At this point of time, at this point in space.
—My guests besmear my new-penned line,
Or bang at the lamp and fall supine.
"God's humblest, they!" I muse. Yet why?
They know Earth-secrets that know not I.~Thomas Hardy "An August Midnight"
There are so many more of them than us. Yes, insects appear where we don’t expect them, they sting and bite and crawl and fly in our mouths and are generally annoying. But without God’s humblest knowing the secrets of the inner workings of the soil, the pollinator and the blossom, we’d have no fruit, no seeds, no earth as we know it.
Even more humble are our microscopic live-in neighbors — the biome of our skin and gut affecting, managing and raising havoc with our internal chemistry and physiology in ways we are only beginning to understand.
God created us all, each and every one, from the turning and cycles of smallest of atoms and microbes to the expanding swirl of galaxies far beyond us.
Perhaps the humblest of all, found smack-dab in the middle of this astounding creation, would be us: the intended Imago Dei.
Two legs not six or eight, two eyes not many, no wings with which we might fly away, no antennae, no stinger.
Just us with our one fragile and loving heart.
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When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Acts 2: 1-4
Today we feel the wind beneath our wings Today the hidden fountain flows and plays Today the church draws breath at last and sings As every flame becomes a Tongue of praise. This is the feast of fire, air, and water Poured out and breathed and kindled into earth. The earth herself awakens to her maker And is translated out of death to birth. The right words come today in their right order And every word spells freedom and release Today the gospel crosses every border All tongues are loosened by the Prince of Peace Today the lost are found in His translation. Whose mother tongue is Love in every nation. ~Malcolm Guite “Pentecost” from Sounding the Seasons
Love flows from God into man, Like a bird Who rivers the air Without moving her wings. Thus we move in His world, One in body and soul, Though outwardly separate in form. As the Source strikes the note, Humanity sings– The Holy Spirit is our harpist, And all strings Which are touched in Love Must sound. ~Mechtild of Magdeburg 1207-1297 “Effortlessly” trans. Jane Hirshfield
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment
Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter. ~T.S. Eliot from “East Coker”
When we feel we are without hope, when faith feels frail, when love seems distant, if we feel abandoned… we wait, stilled, for the moment we are lit afire~
when the Living God is seen, heard, named, loved, known, forever burning in our hearts in this moment and for a lifetime.
As we are consumed, carried as His breath and words into multicolor clouds to the ends of the earth, here and now ceases to matter.
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White egret glided over grasses, fiddlehead and fern, then landed, as I was caring for young children by a pond.
Angelic, her wing span fanned its gentle wave across the shore
and no one noticed. No one applauded or knelt upon the grass.
But the children, eyes and mouths as round as moons, stopped and held her for that moment,
watched as she preened her wings, leaving them one feather in the midst of spring green. ~Jesse LoVasco, from Native
Every day, there is so much I miss seeing, sounds I fail to hear, a nurturing softness that eludes me, all because I am wrapped in my own worries.
The wonders I miss may never come my way again, so Lord, give me the eyes and ears and hands of a child seeing and hearing and touching everything for the first time.
To notice the beauty that surrounds me, let me marvel at a Creation that started as mere Word and Thought and Hope, left behind like a feather for me to hold on to.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – And sore must be the storm – That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land – And on the strangest Sea – Yet – never – in Extremity, It asked a crumb – of me. ~Emily Dickinson
Deep in the tarn the mountain A mighty phantom gleamed, She leaned out into the midnight, And the summer wind went by, The scent of the rose on its silken wing And a song its sigh. And, in depths below, the waters Answered some mystic height, As a star stooped out of the depths above With its lance of light.
And she thought, in the dark and the fragrance, How vast was the wonder wrought If the sweet world were but the beauty born In its Maker’s thought. ~Harriet Prescott Spofford
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For you have been the help of my life; you take and keep me under your wing… ~from Psalm 63
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “God’s Grandeur”
Next week we read of the crushing of Christ in the Garden of the Oil Press, Gethsemane.
Even there, the moment of betrayal is the moment He is glorified, as He glorifies God. Crushed, bleeding, pouring out over the world — He becomes the wings that brood and cover us.
Jesus is the sacrifice that anoints us.
This year’s Lenten theme for Barnstorming is a daily selection from songs and hymns about Christ’s profound sacrifice on our behalf.
If we remain silent about Him, the stones themselves will shout out and start to sing (Luke 19:40).
In His name, may we sing…
1 O God eternal, you are my God!
for you I long in body and soul;
as in a dry and waterless land
I search, I thirst, I faint for you.
2 On holy ground your glory I saw;
your steadfast love is better than life;
I'll bless your name as long as I live
and lift my hands to you in prayer.
3 You feed my soul as if with a feast
I sing your praise with jubilant lips;
upon my bed I call you to mind
and meditate on you at night.
4 For you have been the help of my life;
you take and keep me under your wing;
I cling to you, and find your support;
O God my joy, you are my God!
~Christopher Idle
Oh God, you are my God Earnestly I seek you My Soul thirsts for you, My flesh yearns for you In a dry and weary land Where there is no water
I remember you at night Through the watches of the night in the shadow of your wings I sing because you helped me My soul clings to you And your hand upholds me You alone
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Cold morning. November, taking a walk, when up ahead, suddenly, the trees unleave, and thousands of starlings lift off, an immense river of noise; they braid and unbraid themselves over my head, the gray silk sky embroidered with black kisses, the whoosh of their wings, their chattering clatter, patterns broken/formed/ reformed, a scarf of ragged ribbons. Dumb- struck, mouth open, I say holy and I say moley, And then, they’re gone. ~Barbara Crooker, “Murmuration” from Some Glad Morning.
Out of the dimming sky a speck appeared, then another, and another. It was the starlings going to roost. They gathered deep in the distance, flock sifting into flock, and strayed towards me, transparent and whirling, like smoke. They seemed to unravel as they flew, lengthening in curves, like a loosened skein. I didn’t move; they flew directly over my head for half an hour.
Each individual bird bobbed and knitted up and down in the flight at apparent random, for no known reason except that that’s how starlings fly, yet all remained perfectly spaced. The flocks each tapered at either end from a rounded middle, like an eye.Overhead I heard a sound of beaten air, like a million shook rugs, a muffled whuff.Into the woods they sifted without shifting a twig,right through the crowns of trees, intricate and rushing, like wind.
Could tiny birds be sifting through me right now, birds winging through the gaps between my cells, touching nothing, but quickening in my tissues, fleet? ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
There comes a time in every fall before the leaves begin to turn when blackbirds group and flock and gather choosing a tree, a branch, together to click and call and chorus and clamor announcing the season has come for travel.
Then comes a time when all those birds without a sound or backward glance pour from every branch and limb into the air, as if on a whim but it’s a dynamic, choreographed mass a swoop, a swerve, a mystery, a dance
and now the tree stands breathless, amazed at how it was chosen, how it was changed. ~Julie Cadwallader Staub “Turning” from Wing Over Wing
…yesterday I heard a new sound above my head a rustling, ruffling quietness in the spring air
and when I turned my face upward I saw a flock of blackbirds rounding a curve I didn’t know was there and the sound was simply all those wings, all those feathers against air, against gravity and such a beautiful winning: the whole flock taking a long, wide turn as if of one body and one mind.
How do they do that?
If we lived only in human society what a puny existence that would be
but instead we live and move and have our being here, in this curving and soaring world that is not our own so when mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives and when, even more rarely, we unite and move together toward a common good,
we can think to ourselves:
ah yes, this is how it’s meant to be. ~Julie Cadwallader Staub from “Blackbirds” from Wing Over Wing
Watching the starlings’ murmuration is a visceral experience – my heart leaps to see it happen above me. I feel queasy following its looping amoebic folding and unfolding path.
Thousands of individual birds move in sync with one another to form one massive organism existing solely because each tiny component anticipates and cooperates to avoid mid-air collisions. It could explode into chaos but it doesn’t. It could result in massive casualties but it doesn’t. They could avoid each other altogether but they don’t – they come together with a purpose and reasoning beyond our imagining. Even the silence of their movement has a discernible sound of air rushing past wings.
We humans are made up of just such cooperating component parts, that which is deep in our tissues, programmed in our DNA. Yet we don’t learn from our designed and carefully constructed building blocks. We have become frighteningly disparate and independent creatures, each going our own way bumping and crashing without care.
We have lost our internal moral compass for how it is meant to be.
The rustling ruffling quiet of wings in the air is like muffled weeping.
Barnstorming 