In science we have been reading only the notes to a poem: in Christianity we find the poem itself. ~C.S. Lewis from Miracles
Science doesn’t love us despite our weakness, nor grasp and console the hand and the heart of the dying, it won’t ever become sacrifice for our sin, nor offer us everlasting forgiveness and grace.
Science dips just below the surface to discover depths of a Word that formed all that exists. Science reaches out to the cosmos to comprehend our limits within the infinite.
We see only a shimmering reflection, a mere fermata in the opus of creation as we pause to consider the profundity of His ultimate Work in our souls.
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I hope my life was penned in such a way that when time comes to write my epitaph someone might think to say not that I was good so much as kind and that I wrote quite well beyond my means because it was the wind of grace blown down that gave me words and moved my sluggish hands, and that I always sought to know the unseen things and though I loved the breadth of language for my art, my heart always seemed fixed on a day when all the sound and words would fall away, and that I was quite hopeful to the last if anyone would choose one line to inscribe my memory in stone it surely should be the simple supposition I know right: there merely is no synonym for light. ~Margaret Ingraham “Epitaph” from Exploring This Terrain
This world can feel like a fearsome place with endless stories of tragedy and loss, so much pain and suffering, blinding me in darkness so I struggle to see each day’s emerging light.
How to describe a Light transforming all that is bleak?
With these Words:
Be not afraid Come have breakfast Touch and see Follow me Do you love me? Feed my sheep Peace be with you
I am mere breath and bone, a wisp in a moment of time, so His truths anchor my heart and illuminate my soul: I am called forth into a Light which needs no other words.
Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead thou me on; The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead thou me on. Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me.
Through love to light! Oh, wonderful the way That leads from darkness to the perfect day! From darkness and from sorrow of the night To morning that comes singing o’er the sea. Through love to light! Through light, O God, to thee, Who art the love of love, the eternal light of light!
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To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings. ~Wendell Berry “To Know the Dark” from Soul Food – Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds
What is coming upon the world is the Light of the World. It is Christ. That is the comfort of it.
The challenge of it is that it has not come yet. Only the hope for it has come, only the longing for it. In the meantime we are in the dark, and the dark, God knows, is also in us.
We watch and wait for a holiness to heal us and hallow us, to liberate us from the dark. Advent is like the hush in a theater just before the curtain rises. It is like the hazy ring around the winter moon that means the coming of snow which will turn the night to silver.
Soon. But for the time being, our time, darkness is where we are. ~Frederick Buechner from The Clown in the Belfry
We enter Advent immersed in darkness; it exists both outside us and within. Somehow we must withstand it until the Light comes. It is where we are.
We are promised this in the Word: “and night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light… Revelation 22:5.
The Word in the beginning set a dark universe in motion. The Word became both flesh and Savior to a world dwelling in darkness. The Word as Spirit thrives eternally to enlighten our hearts, our minds and hands.
Advent is a time of quiet stillness, awaiting the Light brought by His Word; He is a flint struck to our wick – the darkness abolished by His illuminating glow.
This year’s Advent theme “Dawn on our Darkness” is taken from this 19th century Christmas hymn.
Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, dawn on our darknessand lend us your aid. Star of the east, the horizon adorning, guide where our infant Redeemer is laid. ~Reginald Heber -from “Brightest and Best”
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Sweet smell of phlox drifting across the lawn— an early warning of the end of summer. August is fading fast, and by September the little purple flowers will all be gone.
Season, project, and vacation done. One more year in everybody’s life. Add a notch to the old hunting knife Time keeps testing with a horny thumb.
Over the summer months hung an unspoken aura of urgency. In late July galactic pulsings filled the midnight sky like silent screaming, so that, strangely woken,
we looked at one another in the dark, then at the milky magical debris arcing across, dwarfing our meek mortality. There were two ways to live: get on with work,
redeem the time, ignore the imminence of cataclysm; or else take it slow, be as tranquil as the neighbors’ cow we love to tickle through the barbed wire fence (she paces through her days in massive innocence, or, seeing green pastures, we imagine so).
In fact, not being cows, we have no choice. Summer or winter, country, city, we are prisoners from the start and automatically, hemmed in, harangued by the one clamorous voice.
Not light but language shocks us out of sleep ideas of doom transformed to meteors we translate back to portents of the wars looming above the nervous watch we keep. ~Rachel Hadas, “The End of Summer” from Halfway Down the Hall: New and Selected Poems.
For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past… Psalm 90: 4
Each summer that passes feels more urgent; most of my summers are far behind me and I have no idea how many more are ahead. I try to take each day slowly, lingering in the moments yet time speeds ahead, irredeemable.
I tend to forget that Time, which feels so precious and burdensome to me, is of no consequence to an infinite God who built an infinite universe. He began it all with a Word, and despite all our human efforts to thwart and even destroy a perfect Creation, He remains a constant presence, guaranteeing the sun will rise again.
We are not alone; we are not abandoned. We are loved.
Good night, love! May heaven’s brightest stars watch over thee! Good angels spread their wings, and cover thee; And through the night, So dark and still, Spirits of light Charm thee from ill! My heart is hovering round thy dwelling-place, Good night, dear love! God bless thee with His grace! Good night, love! Soft lullabies the night-wind sing to thee! And on its wings sweet odours bring to thee; And in thy dreaming May all things dear, With gentle seeming, Come smiling near! My knees are bowed, my hands are clasped in prayer— Good night, dear love! God keep thee in His care! ~Frances Anne Kemble
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Before the ordinary realities, ordinary failures: hunger, coldness, anger, longing, heat. Yet one day, a thought as small as a vetch flower opens. ~Jane Hirschfield from “Flowering Vetch”
Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn’t room for any other thought? ~ Sophie Scholl
Little flower, but if I could understand what you are, root and all in all, I should know what God and man is. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson from “Flower in the Crannied Wall”
If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars? —G.K. Chesterton
Am I root, or am I bud? Am I stem or am I leaf? All in all, I am but the merest image and tiniest thought of God’s fruiting glory destined for the heavens.
I am His tears shed when seed is strewn as He is broken apart and scattered, spreading the Word to yearning hearts everywhere.
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I dream a flock of birds flying through the night Like silent stars on wings of everlasting light. I dream a flowing river, deep as a thousand years, Its fish are frozen sorrow, its water bitter tears. I dream a tree so green, branches wide and long, And ev’ry leaf and ev’ry voice a song. I dream of a babe who sleeps, a life that’s just begun. A word that waits to be spoken. The promise of a world to come. ~Bob Chilcott
We prepare to walk together through the final days of Lent, the Holy Week of Jesus’ suffering and passion, culminating in His death and Resurrection.
He was born for this, preparing for the necessity of it. His knowledge of our needs and helplessness came from being one among us. How else could the divine understand the mundane details of our every day existence?
We dream of the world He entered and how it changed as a result. The Word we waited for has come. His promise now lives and breathes among us. These next few days are a reminder we are never to give up hope in the baby in the manger destined to die on the cross so we may share eternity with Him.
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…
Sleeping child, I wonder, have you a dream to share? May I see the things you see as you slumber there? I dream a wind that speaks, like music as it blows As if it were the breath of everything that grows.
I dream a flock of birds flying through the night Like silent stars on wings of everlasting light. I dream a flowing river, deep as a thousand years, Its fish are frozen sorrow, its water bitter tears.
I dream a tree so green, branches wide and long, And ev’ry leaf and ev’ry voice a song. I dream of a babe who sleeps, a life that’s just begun. A word that waits to be spoken. The promise of a world to come.
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The seed will grow well, the vine will yield its fruit, the ground will produce its crops, and the heavens will drop their dew. I will give all these things as an inheritance to the remnant of this people. Zechariah 8:12
Listen, you heavens, and I will speak; hear, you earth, the words of my mouth. 2 Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants. Deuteronomy 32:1-2
He hath abolished the old drouth, And rivers run where all was dry, The field is sopp’d with merciful dew. The words are old, the purport new, And taught my lips to quote this word That I shall live, I shall not die… But I shall when the shocks are stored See the salvation of the Lord. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins“He hath abolished the old drouth”
To God’s people, wandering homeless in the desert for years before being allowed to enter the Promised Land, there is great hope in the possibility of words and teaching coming from heaven. The dew of heaven becomes the representation of God’s all-encompassing Spirit and gift of grace in this and other Old Testament scripture passages.
Ultimately, God’s Word descended like dew from heaven in the form of a newborn baby in a manger come to dwell among us.
Like dew, He becomes flesh at no cost to us, to be among us freely, coming in the night, into the darkness, as a gentle covering of all things dry and dying, to refresh, to restore, to soften, to make what was withered fruitful once again.
We live again because this Word of flesh quickens within us.
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”
Drop down ye heavens from above, And let the skies pour down righteousness. Come comfort ye, comfort ye my people; My salvation shall not tarry. I have blotted out as a thick cloud, Thy transgressions: Fear not, for I will save thee; For I am the Lord thy God, The holy one of Israel, thy redeemer.
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It’s when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart: not to a flower, not to a dolphin, to no innocent form but to this creature vainly sure it and no other is god-like, God (out of compassion for our ugly failure to evolve) entrusts, as guest, as brother, the Word. ~Denise Levertov “The Mystery of the Incarnation”
In the Christmas story, God … takes the risk of incarnation. The flesh God chooses is not that of a warrior but of a vulnerable baby, a claim that brought me tears of wonderment when I was young. But my adult knowledge of that infant’s fate — a fate shared by so many who have devoted their lives to love, truth, and justice — brings tears of anger and grief, along with a primal fear of what might happen if I followed suit.
…I know I’m called to share in the risk of incarnation. Amid the world’s dangers, I’m asked to embody my values and beliefs, my identity and integrity, to allow good words to take flesh in me. Constrained by fear, I often fall short — yet I still aspire to incarnate words of life, however imperfectly.
What good words wait to be born in us, and how can we love one another in ways that midwife their incarnation? ~Parker Palmer from “The Risk of Incarnation”
I, like you, am entrusted to care for the Word in its earthly incarnation: born into impoverished, humble, and homeless circumstances, He has no where to dwell except within me and within you.
And that is no small price for Him to pay, as my human heart can be inhospitable, hardened, cold and cracked. I am capable of the worst our kind can do.
So it is up to me to embody the Word in what I say and do, even if it means rejection as He suffered, even knowing that is the risk I must take. For me, it feels as vulnerable as if I were a bare tree standing naked in the chill winter wind. I’m fearful I might break or topple over. Yet if I’m created to harbor the incarnated Word, I must reach my roots deep, stand tall and find others who will stand alongside me.
This Advent, Iet us midwife the Word here on earth, to deliver it straight to receptive, warm, and loving hearts.
Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life: Such a Way, as gives us breath: Such a Truth, as ends all strife: Such a Life, as killeth death.
Come, My Light, my Feast, my Strength: Such a Light, as shows a feast: Such a Feast, as mends in length: Such a Strength, as makes his guest.
Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart: Such a Joy, as none can move: Such a Love, as none can part: Such a Heart, as joys in love. ~George Herbert “The Call”
1.Let all mortal flesh keep silence, And with fear and trembling stand; Ponder nothing earthly-minded, For with blessing in his hand, Christ our God to earth descendeth, Our full homage to demand.
2.King of kings, yet born of Mary, As of old on earth he stood, Lord of lords, in human vesture, In the body and the blood; He will give to all the faithful His own self for heavenly food.
3.At his feet the six-winged seraph, Cherubim, with sleepless eye, Veil their faces to the presence, As with ceaseless voice they cry: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Lord Most High!
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”
…like dandelion seeds the Child will blow across His room, this sentence with its riverbed of stars, this sentence that carries you too the way a leaf is pulled downstream, because this you begin to realize, is not the song of a seed fallen on stone, not some light scorched into the dunes of the sky, but a phrase whose wings fill the room, and you,–– you are that word which had remained unnoticed in this sentence, and you begin to speak with that light that quivers like a branch, your own lips slightly moving like a petal the bee has just left, and you begin to realize you have lived your whole life in this sentence gradually unfolding towards its end, the way the moon now ploys the sky, the way what you once thought was a mere star now turns out to be a galaxy. ~Richard Jackson “Annunciation” from Tidings in Poems of Devotion
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.He was with God in the beginning.Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1: 1-5
I tend to forget that in the beginning, God is Word first, speaking the world into being, speaking Himself into being from the darkness of a womb, born to speak the Word until His moment of death, then rising so His being and Words are borne as Light within the darkness of my heart.
God as Word gradually unfolds within us until He utters His Last Word: He is the Alpha and Omega, HIs sentences announce the Beginning and the End.
Let the stable still astonish: Straw-dirt floor, dull eyes, Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen; Crumbling, crooked walls; No bed to carry that pain, And then, the child, rag-wrapped laid to cry In a trough. Who would have chosen this? Who would have said: “Yes, Let the God of Heaven and Earth be born in this place.”
Who but the same God Who stands in the darker, fouler rooms of our hearts And says, “Yes, let the God of Heaven and Earth be born in THIS place.” ~Leslie Leyland Fields – “Let the Stable Still Astonish”
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”
I made for grief a leaden bowl and drank it, every drop. And though I thought I’d downed it all the hurting didn’t stop.
I made of hope a golden sieve to drain my world of pain. Though I was sure I’d bled it dry the void filled up again.
I made of words a silver fork and stabbed love in the heart, and when I found the sweetness gone I chewed it into art. ~Luci Shaw “What I Needed to Do”
How can I stow away our hurt and grief when it keeps refilling, leaking everywhere? Where can hope be found when all feels hopeless? When I have been loved beyond all measure, with bleeding hands and feet and side; why not turn to the Word, its sweetness never exhausted no matter how often I chew through it in my hunger.
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