What if you slept And what if In your sleep You dreamed And what if In your dream You went to heaven And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower And what if When you awoke You had that flower in your hand Ah, what then? ~Samuel Coleridge “What if you slept”
What do our dreams tell us of heaven?
Perhaps our dreams are lush with exotic flowers never imagined growing in earthly soil.
We hold tightly to a vision of divinely strange and beautiful, to remind us of heaven in our waking hours.
My dream of heaven blooms plain and simple, strangely beautiful in its familiarity, held firmly in my hand each day.
The dreams welcome me home, asleep or awake.
Ah, what then? What if heaven is the divine brought home in our hand?
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies On water; it glides So from the walker, it turns Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.
The beautiful changes as a forest is changed By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it; As a mantis, arranged On a green leaf, grows Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.
Your hands hold roses always in a way that says They are not only yours; the beautiful changes In such kind ways, Wishing ever to sunder Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose For a moment all that it touches back to wonder. ~Richard Wilbur “The Beautiful Changes”
I am changed again, as I blend into autumn.
We can’t help but be transformed by everything around us, you know.
Beautiful is the dying meadow, the shedding of dry reddened leaves, the tidal wave of wildflowers nodding goodbye until next summer.
Beauty is beheld with wonder and then lost to the ages. We cannot change what we see, but treasure its transience, as we cherish our own brief moments here.
We hold on lightly, ready to let go when the time comes. What comes next is beautiful beyond imagining.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
We should always endeavour to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more about the earth. ~ G.K. Chestertonfrom ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS, October 21, 1905
As a physician, I was trained to perform physical examinations by learning first what was normal about the human body. As young, theoretically healthy, medical students, we practiced physical examinations on each other, and then had to demonstrate our skills in front of a professor for our class grade in physical assessments.
Since I went to medical school at a time when fewer than 1 in 5 students was a woman, each female student was placed in a physical exam group of three men, taught by a male physician, and then evaluated by a male professor. These were full examinations, including internal assessments, conducted in a typical open-backed hospital gown, in a classroom with long black lab tables to substitute for exam tables.
It was the ultimate feeling of vulnerability to be exposed to one’s classmates, supervisors and evaluators in such a way. Yet, it helped me understand the naked vulnerability of a patient undressing for a physician’s evaluation in the exam room.
After learning to assess and document what was normal in the physical exam, I was then trained to take note of the exceptions – the human body equivalent of an eclipse or an earthquake, a wildfire or drought, a hurricane or flood, or merely an annoying pothole or molehill.
A physician’s attention is rarely focused on everything that is going well with the human body, but instead concentrating on what is aberrant, failing, or could be made better.
This is unfortunate; there is much beauty and amazing design to behold in every person I meet, especially those with chronic illness who feel nothing is as it should be — they feel despair and frustration at how their mind or body is aging, failing or faltering.
To counter this tendency to just find what’s wrong and needed fixing, I learned over the years to talk out loud as I was trained to do during those medical school physical assessments: you have no concerning skin lesions, your eardrums look clear, your eyes react normally, your tonsils are fine, your thyroid feels smooth, your lymph nodes are tiny, your lungs auscultate clear, your heart sounds are perfect, your breasts reveal no palpable lumps, your belly exam is reassuring, your reflexes are symmetrical, your prostate is smooth and normal, your cervix, uterus and ovaries are healthy, your emotional response to your stress level and your tears are completely understandable.
I also wrote messages to patients meant to reassure: your labs are in a typical range or are getting better or at least maintaining, your xray shows no concerns, or isn’t getting worse, those medication side effects are to be expected and could go away.
I chose to acknowledge what was working well before attempting to intervene in what is not.
I’m not sure how much difference it made to my patient. But it made a difference to me to wonder first at who this whole patient was before I focused in on what was broken and causing dis-ease.
I remain startled nearly 50 years later, and always astonished, by the sheer wonder that is our bodies – the Artist’s masterpiece.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Part of the joy of beauty is the realization that it is part of a larger whole, most of which appears to be just out of sight. We are drawn forward toward something… and left waiting, wondering. ~N.T. Wright from Life, God and Other Small Topics
Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake, up to my neck in that most precious element of all,
I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather floating on the tension of the water
at the very instant when a dragonfly, like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,
hovered over it, then lit, and rested. That’s all.
I mention this in the same way that I fold the corner of a page
in certain library books, so that the next reader will know
…God’s attention is indeed fixed on the little things. But this is not because God is a great cosmic cop, eager to catch us in minor transgressions, but simply because God loves us–loves us so much that the divine presence is revealed even in the meaningless workings of daily life. It is in the ordinary, the here-and-now, that God asks us to recognize that the creation is indeed refreshed like dew-laden grass that is “renewed in the morning” or to put it in more personal and also theological terms, “our inner nature is being renewed everyday”. ~Kathleen Norrisfrom The Quotidian Mysteries
We do not want merely to see beauty… we want something else which can hardly be put into words- to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.
We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get in. ~C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory
Whether it is in a favorite book of fiction or poetry, or from the Word itself, or as I keep my eyes open to the daily wonders around me, I feel compelled to share the good parts with those of you who visit here.
It is easy to be ground to a pulp by the little things: waiting in line too long, heavy traffic, an insistent alarm clock, a mouse (or more) in the house, miserable spring-time pollen allergies, so much misery in the headlines.
God is in the details, from dew drop to tear drop and even to nose snot. His ubiquitous presence is in all things, large and small, not just the “good parts” of His exquisite grandeur.
It isn’t all elegance from our limited perspective, but still, they are all good parts worthy of His divine attention.
The time has come to be refreshed and renewed by His care revealed in the tiniest ways. I feel immersed in His wonder.
He has my attention and perhaps, in some small way, I now have yours.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness.
And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand.
That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive, Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.
O my love, where are they, where are they going The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles. I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder. ~ Czeslaw Milosz “Encounter”
She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year;… her own birthday and every other day, individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought one afternoon that there was yet another date of greater importance, her own death… A day which lay sly and unseen among all other days of the year… but not the less surely there. When was it? ~Thomas Hardy from Tess of the d’Urbervilles
We do not know the day or the hour of our death day. We must not be lulled into complacency by the routines of daily life; it could be tomorrow or the next day or maybe it was yesterday.
Each moment is a gift, like the flash of a blossom or the transparency of a rabbit’s ear, pulsing with each heart beat as our blood flows and sustains.
And we know – blood was shed, just as blossoms shed, covering us all.
Keeping watch, keeping watch – there is a day when we go home.
fallen sakura petals in Tokyo (photo by Nate Gibson)
Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour. Matthew 25: 1-13
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift. ~Robin Wall Kimmerer from Braiding Sweetgrass
Tonight at sunset walking on the snowy road, my shoes crunching on the frozen gravel, first
through the woods, then out into the open fields past a couple of trailers and some pickup trucks, I stop
and look at the sky. Suddenly: orange, red, pink, blue, green, purple, yellow, gray, all at once and everywhere.
I pause in this moment at the beginning of my old age and I say a prayer of gratitude for getting to this evening
a prayer for being here, today, now, alive in this life, in this evening, under this sky. ~David Budbill “Winter: Tonight: Sunset”from While We’ve Still Got Feet
I try to remember this each day, no matter how things feel, no matter how tired or distracted I am, no matter how worried, or fearful or heartsick–
I can grumble with the best of the them. There is camaraderie in shared grumbling, as well as an exponential increase in dissatisfaction as everyone shares their misery. Some relationships, indeed even political movements, are based on collaborative cynicism, dark humor and just plain complaining.
But I know better. I’ve seen where grousing leads and I feel it aching in my bones when I’m steeped in it. The sky is grayer, the clouds are thicker, the cold is chillier, the night is darker–on and on to its overwhelming suffocating conclusion.
I have the privilege to choose joy, to turn away from the bleak. I can find the single ray of sun and stand in it, absorbing and equipping myself to be radiant when others need it more than me. This is not putting on a “happy face” — instead joy adopts me, holds me close in the tough times and won’t abandon me. Though at times joy may be temporarily behind a cloud, I know it is there even when I can’t see it.
Joy is mine to choose because joy has chosen me, so I share it here with you – our very existence distilled down to this moment of beauty.
One breath, one blink, one pause, one whispered word: thanks.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king- dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing.
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Windhover”
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air – An armful of white blossoms, A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies, Biting the air with its black beak? Did you hear it, fluting and whistling A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall Knifing down the black ledges? And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds – A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life? ~Mary Oliver from “The Swan”
I hold my heart in hiding, trying to protect that tender core of who I am from being pierced and shredded by the slings and arrows of every day life. It can be a bruising and bumpy ride.
Yet to live fully, as I am created to live, I must fling myself into the open, wimpling wings spread, the wind holding me up, hovering and ready to soar.
To stay aloft, I must change as the wind changes around me.
I take my chances, knowing the fall will come. My wounds shall be healed, even as they bleed.
There is no lack of wonder. So stirred. So much beauty to behold. So much heart to take out of hiding and share freely, no matter the buffeting.
Ah… Ah, my dear.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
We were familiar with the night. We knew its favourite colours, its sullen silence and its small, disturbing sounds, its unprovoked rages, its savage dreams.
We slept by turns, attentive to the flock. We said little. Night after night, there was little to say. But sometimes one of us, skilled in that way, would pipe a tune of how things were for us.
They say that once, almost before time, the stars with shining voices serenaded the new born world. The night could not contain their boundless praise.
We thought that just a poem — until the night a song of solar glory, unutterable, unearthly, eclipsed the luminaries of the night, as though the world were exorcised of dark and, coming to itself, began again.
Later we returned to the flock. The night was ominously black. The stars were silent as the sheep. Nights pass, year on year. We clutch our meagre cloaks against the cold. Our aging piper’s fumbling fingers play, night after night, an earthly echo of the song that banished dark. It has stayed with us. ~Richard Bauckham “Song of the Shepherds”
There is no specific “song of the shepherds” recorded in scripture. They were unlikely people inspired to use flowery words and memorable turns of phrase. Scripture says simply they looked at each other and agreed to get to Bethlehem as fast as possible and see for themselves what they had been told by God. There was no time to waste singing out praises and thanksgiving; they “went with haste” to a dark and primitive place that served the purpose of housing animals.
It most assuredly was plain and humble, smelling of manure and urine, and animal fur. Yet it also would have smelled of the sweetness of stored forage, and there would have been the reassuring sounds of animals chewing and breathing deeply. It was truly the only place a group of scruffy shepherds could have felt welcomed without being tossed out as unsuitable visitors– they undoubtedly arrived at the threshold in bad need of a bath, smelly, dirty and terrified and yet left transformed, returning to their fields full of praise and wonder, telling all they met what they had seen.
There could not have been a more suitable place for this birth that was to change the world: the promise of cleansing hope and peace in the midst of filth. Despite our sorry state, we are welcomed into the sanctuary of the stable, sown, grown, pruned and harvested to become seed and food for others.
Witnessing an appearance of the heavenly host followed by seeing for themselves the incarnation of the living God in a manger must have been overwhelming to those who otherwise spent much time alone. They must have been simply bubbling over with everything they had heard and been shown, shocking anyone they met. At least scripture does tell us the effect the shepherds’ witnessing words had on others: “and all who heard it wondered…”
I don’t think people wondered if the shepherds were embroidering the story, or had a group hallucination, or were flat out fabricating for reasons of their own. I suspect Mary and Joseph and the townspeople who heard what the shepherds had to say were flabbergasted at the passion and excitement being shared about what had just taken place. Seeing became believing and all could see how completely the shepherds believed by how enthusiastically they shared everything they knew. If the shepherds had become a harvest of hope, then surely so can we.
We know what the shepherds had to say, minimalist conversationalists that they are. So we too should respond with similar wonder at what they have told us all.
And simply believe it was (and is) as wonderful as they say.
Advent 2023 theme …because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song
We stood on the hills, Lady, Our day’s work done, Watching the frosted meadows That winter had won.
The evening was calm, Lady, The air so still, Silence more lovely than music Folded the hill.
There was a star, Lady, Shone in the night, Larger than Venus it was And bright, so bright.
Oh, a voice from the sky, Lady, It seemed to us then Telling of God being born In the world of men.
And so we have come, Lady, Our day’s work done, Our love, our hopes, ourselves, We give to your son. ~Bob Chillcott “The Shepherd’s Carol”
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
God came to us because he wanted to join us on the road, to listen toour story, and to help us realize that we are not walking in circles but moving towards the house of peace and joy. This is the great mystery of Christmas that continues to give us comfort and consolation: we are not alone on our journey. The God of love who gave us life sent his only Son to be with us at all times and in all places, so that we never have to feel lost in our struggles but always can trust that he walks with us.
The challenge is to let God be who he wants to be. A part of us clingsto our aloneness and does not allow God to touch us where we are most in pain. Often we hide from him precisely those places in ourselves where we feel guilty, ashamed, confused, and lost. Thus we do not give him a chance to be with us where we feel most alone.
Christmas is the renewed invitation not to be afraid and to let him – whose love is greater than our own hearts and minds can comprehend – be our companion. ~Henri Nouwen from Gracias: A Latin American Journal
13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. 14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” Luke 24: 13-15, 31-32
I tend to walk through life blinded to what is really important, essential and necessary. Self-absorbed, immersed in my own troubles and concerns, I stare down at my own feet as I take each step, rather than looking forward at the road ahead.
Instead, I could be enrapt and listening to the Companion who has always walked beside me.
This living breathing walking God on the road to Emmaus feeds us from His word. I hunger for even more, my heart burning within me.
Jesus makes plain how He Himself addresses my most basic needs: He is the bread of life so I am fed. He is the living water so I no longer thirst. He is the light of dawn so I am never left in darkness. He shares my yoke so my burden is easier. He clothes me with righteousness so I am never naked. He cleanses me when I am at my most soiled and repugnant. He is the open door–always welcoming, with a room prepared for me.
So when I encounter Him along the road of my life — even if I don’t seem to be making progress, staying frozen in the same place — I need to be ready to recognize him, listen, invite Him in to stay, share whatever I have with Him. When He breaks bread and hands me my piece, I want to accept it with open eyes of gratitude, knowing the gift He hands me is nothing less than Himself and I’ll never be the same again. I hunger for even more, my heart burning within me.
Advent 2023 theme …because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song
I wonder as I wander out under the sky How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die For poor on’ry people like you and like I; I wonder as I wander out under the sky.
When Mary birthed Jesus ’twas in a cow’s stall With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all But high from God’s heaven, a star’s light did fall And the promise of ages it then did recall.
If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing A star in the sky or a bird on the wing Or all of God’s Angels in heaven to sing He surely could have it, ’cause he was the King
I wonder as I wander out under the sky How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die For poor on’ry people like you and like I; I wonder as I wander out under the sky ~Appalachian Carol
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support Barnstorming
Hear me: sometimes thunder is just thunder. The dog barking is only a dog. Leaves fall from the trees because the days are getting shorter, by which I mean not the days we have left, but the actual length of time, given the tilt of earth and distance from the sun. My nephew used to see a therapist who mentioned that, at play, he sank a toy ship and tried to save the captain. Not, he said, that we want to read anything into that. Who can read the world? Its paragraphs of cloud and alphabets of dust. Just now a night bird outside my window made a single, plaintive cry that wafted up between the trees. Not, I’m sure, that it was meant for me. ~Danusa Laméris “Night Bird” from Poetry
These days, I tend to read meaning into nearly everything.
Somehow, I imagine a purpose for whatever takes place, whether quotidian and mundane, or the dramatic and unforgettable. It seems to me I should derive meaning from all around me, learn from it, be inspired by it, or grieve over it.
How do we live out the days we have left – an unknowable number? I want to not miss a thing, knowing, through inattention and distraction and carelessness, I have missed so much over the past seventy years.
Even so, here I am now, reading the world for all it has to offer – even the fine print – trying to make sense of the messiness, the orneriness, the unexplainable, and the breathtaking.
Surely it is the only way to know what is true. I need to witness it all, and wonder.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
