Tag: Worry

To Clasp Hands

barnstormingblog5 Comments

emmagibson

 

rockwell_worship
Freedom of Worship by Norman Rockwell

To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.
~Karl Barth

Prayer may be easiest for the youngest among us.  It can be amazingly spontaneous for kids — an outright exclamation of joy, a crying plea for help, a word of unprompted gratitude.   As a child I can remember making up my own songs and monologues to God as I wandered alone in our farm’s woods, enjoying His company in my semi-solitude.  I’m not sure when I began to silence myself out of self-conscious embarrassment, but I stayed silent for many years, unwilling to put voice to the prayers that rattled in my head.  In my childhood, prayer in public schools had been hushed into a mere moment of silence, and intuitively I knew silence had never changed anything.  The world became more and more disorderly in the 60’s and 70’s and in my increasingly indoctrinated mind, there was no prayer I could say that would make a difference.

How wrong could I and my secular education be?

Nothing can right the world until we are right with our Creator through talking to Him out of the depth of our need and fear.  Nothing can right the world until we submit ourselves wholly, bowed low, hands clasped, eyes closed, articulating the joy, the thanks, and the petitions weighing on our hearts.

An uprising is possible when a voice comes alive, unashamed, un-selfconscious, rising up from within us, uttering words that beseech and thank and praise.  To rise up with hands clasped together calls upon a power which needs no weapons, only words, to overcome and overwhelm the shambles left of our world.

Nothing can be more victorious than the Amen — our Amen — at the end.  So be it and so shall it be.

Amen, and Amen again.

 

stgiles

rainbowfarm3

Monday Morning

barnstormingblog6 Comments

morning11016

icepile3

 

My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me;
I stand before it like a tree;

I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death’s note wants to climb over—
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
And the song goes on, beautiful.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke from “My Life is Not This Steeply Sloping Hour”

_________________________

On Monday mornings I often feel I’m stuck immobilized in the spot in the middle between discordant notes. There is on one side of me the pressure of catch-up from what was left undone through the weekend and on the other side is the anticipated demand of the coming week. Before I arrive to work, I dwell uneasily in dead center between the unknown ahead and the known behind.

This moment of rest in the present, this trembling broken Now, is my moment of reconciliation, my Sabbath extended.

This Monday morning I allow myself an instant of silence and reflection before I surge full bore into the week, knowing that on my journey I’ll inevitably hit wrong notes, just as I do when I play, unprepared, at the piano.

But it can be beautiful nevertheless.

Even the least harmonious notes seek reconciliation within the next chord. I now move from the rest of my Sabbath back into the rhythm of my life.

Trembling, still trembling.

 

icepile

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Now and Now and Now

barnstormingblog10 Comments

bakerlight

sunset15166

 

And so you have a life that you are living only now,
now and now and now,
gone before you can speak of it,
and you must be thankful for living day by day,
moment by moment …
a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present…
~Wendell Berry

_____________________

My days are filled with anxious people, one after another after another.  They sit at the edge of their seat, struggling to hold back the flood from brimming eyes, fingers gripping the arms of the chair, legs jiggling.   Each moment, each breath, each rapid heart beat overwhelmed by panic-filled questions:  will there be another breath?  must there be another breath?   Must this life go on like this in fear of what the next moment will bring?

The only thing more frightening than the unknown is the knowledge that the next moment will be just like the last.  There is a serious gratitude deficiency going on here, a lack of recognition of a moment just passed that can never be retrieved and relived.   There is only fear of the next and the next so that the now and now and now is lost forever.

Their worry and angst is contagious as the flu.
I mask up and wash my hands of it throughout the day.
I wish a simple vaccination could protect us all from unnamed fears.

I want to say to them and myself:
Stop.  Stop this.  Stop this moment in time. Stop and stop and stop.
Stop expecting some one, some thing or some drug must fix this feeling.
Stop being blind and deaf to the gift of each breath.
Just stop.
And simply be.

I want to say:
this moment is ours,
this moment of weeping and sharing
and breath and pulse and light.
Shout for joy in it.
Celebrate it.
Be thankful for tears that can flow over grateful lips
and stop holding them back.

Stop me before I write,
out of my own anxiety,
yet another prescription
you don’t really need.

Just be–
and be blessed–
in the now and now and now.

 

sunset17163

Saved By a Storm

barnstormingblog6 Comments

leawedding

 

Your rolling and stretching had grown quieter that stormy winter night
twenty three years ago, but no labor came as it should.
A week overdue post-Christmas,
you clung to amnion and womb, not yet ready.
Then the wind blew more wicked
and snow flew sideways, landing in piling drifts,
the roads becoming impassable, nearly impossible to traverse.

So your dad and I tried,
worried about being stranded on the farm far from town.
Our little car got stuck in a snowpile in the deep darkness,
our tires spinning, whining against the snow.
A nearby neighbor’s bulldozer dug us out to freedom.
You floated silent and still, knowing your time was not yet.

Creeping slowly through the dark night blizzard,
we arrived to the warm glow of the hospital.
You slept.
I, not at all.

Morning sun glistened off sculptured snow outside our window,
and your heart had ominously slowed in the night.
We both were jostled, turned, oxygenated, but nothing changed.
You beat even more slowly, letting loose your tenuous grip on life.

The nurses’ eyes told me we had trouble.
The doctor, grim faced, announced
delivery must happen quickly,
taking you now, hoping we were not too late.
I was rolled, numbed, stunned,
clasping your father’s hand, closing my eyes,
not wanting to see the bustle around me,
trying not to hear the shouted orders,
the tension in the voices,
the quiet at the moment of opening
when it was unknown what would be found.

And then you cried. A hearty healthy husky cry, a welcomed song.
Perturbed and disturbed from the warmth of womb,
to the cold shock of a bright lit operating room,
your first vocal solo brought applause
from the surrounding audience who admired your pink skin,
your shock of damp red hair, your blue eyes squeezed tight,
then blinking open, wondering and wondrous,
emerging saved from the storm within and without.

You were brought wrapped for me to see and touch
before you were whisked away to be checked over thoroughly,
your father trailing behind the parade to the nursery.
I closed my eyes, swirling in a brain blizzard of what-ifs.

If no snow storm had come,
you would have fallen asleep forever within my womb,
no longer nurtured by my aging placenta,
cut off from what you needed to stay alive.
There would have been only our soft weeping,
knowing what could have been if we had only known,
if God provided a sign to go for help.

Saved by a storm and dug out from a drift:
I celebrate each time I hear your voice singing.

 

*my annual “happy birthday” to Lea,
now a college graduate and school teacher*

leawheaton2

 

Just checking to see if she is real...
Just checking to see if she is real…

A farmer's daughter

lea004

The Clinging Mist

barnstormingblog7 Comments

mistyfence

 

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My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
     Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
     She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
     She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted gray
     Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
     The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
     And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
     The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
     And they are better for her praise.
~Robert Frost “My November Guest”

 

November,
the month of darkening,
transforms
to a recounting of gratitude
of daily thanksgiving and blessings~~

it is good to dwell on our gifts,
even so, it is right
to invite Sorrow
to sit in silence with us,
her tears blending with ours.

These deepening days
of bare stripped branches
feed our growing need
for the covering grace
of His coming light.

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fog10936

 

witheredtree

 

mistyfrontyard

 

Let Your Heart Go Forth

barnstormingblog3 Comments

sunset102215

sunset81115

westsky

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The season of sunset as it draws a veil over the day,
befits that repose of the soul
when earthborn cares yield to the joys of heavenly communion.
The glory of the setting sun excites our wonder,
and the solemnity of approaching night awakens our awe.
If the business of this day will permit it, it will be well, dear reader,
if you can spare an hour to walk in the field at eventide,
but if not,
the Lord is in the town too,
and will meet with you in your chamber or in the crowded street.
Let your heart go forth to meet Him.
~Charles Spurgeon from his Morning and Evening Devotionals

 

Many of the young adults I see in my practice struggle to sleep at night. Their minds are racing, they can’t stop worrying, their bodies are tight with tension.
Their hope is I might prescribe a pill since they’ve tried marijuana and several shots of vodka, and that isn’t helping.

I would like to prescribe an hour with God at sunset but that is not permissible at a public institution.

Instead, I’m allowed to speak of emotional support animals, or yoga, or an evening stroll, or “meditation” or even a labyrinth walk, but never letting one’s heart go forth to meet God.

Spurgeon, out of his own anxiety and depression, knows the healing of a walk with God at sunset.
It is throwing the cares of the heart out to Him and knowing He will catch and hold them tight.

octobermoon

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In the Dusk

barnstormingblog5 Comments

evening115157

evening115156

 

Sap withdraws from the upper reaches
of maples; the squirrel digs deeper
and deeper in the moss
to bury the acorns that fall
all around, distracting him.

I’m out here in the dusk…
where the wild asters, last blossoms
of the season, straggle uphill.
Frost flowers, I’ve heard them called.
The white ones have yellow centers
at first: later they darken
to a rosy copper.  They’re mostly done.
Then the blue ones come on. It’s blue
all around me now, though the color
has gone with the sun.

There is no one home but me—
and I’m not at home; I’m up here on the hill,
looking at the dark windows below.
Let them be dark…

…The air is damp and cold
and by now I am a little hungry…
The squirrel is high in the oak,
gone to his nest , and night has silenced
the last loud rupture of the calm.
~Jane Kenyon from “Frost Flowers”

 

Even when the load grows too heavy,
our misery rolling in like a fog that
covers all that was once vibrant,even then
even then
there waits a nest of nurture,
a place of calm
where we are fed
when we are tired and hungry.
We will be filled;
we will be restored.

 

evening11515

evening1151513

Hard to Take to Heart

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downtothree
IMG_4394
octrose3

The thistles, rooted out, throng in again;
The single regal rose is mobbed by weeds;
The plums, the pears, the ripening apples, rain
In the sun; and past summer plants new seeds.

Here, or there, these common yearly things
Repeat, repeat, and gardens do not range:
Yet thistles, roses, fruit trees, birds, and stings
Come to an end, and the church bells sound a change.

These many soft declensions of the day,
So hard to take to heart, bear life away.
~Dunstan Thompson from “Passage”

 

This winding down,
this descent into
shorter days and longer nights,
this preparation for an autumn austerity,
reminds me of my ongoing emptying,
once so full of fruit and seed,
now clinging to what is left me~
the joys, the tears,
the eyes of my brimming heart.

 

pears9614

appledew2

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Holding Up All This Falling

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,octleaves4

tjoelkertree2

sunrise102115

 

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.”
And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.
We’re all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It’s in them all.
And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Autumn” translated by Robert Bly

 

 

Sometimes I wake from my sleep
with a palpitating start:
dreaming of falling,
my body pitching and tumbling
yet somehow I land,
~oh so softly~
in my bed,
my fear quashed and cushioned by
awaking safe.

I feel caught up,
held tightly,
rescued amid the fall
we all will do,
like leaves drifting down
from heaven’s orchard,
like seeds released like kisses
into the air,
the earth rises to meet me
and Someone cradles me there.

 

leaningtoweroffidalgo

scanlonwindown

octleaf15

sosoft2

 

The Danger of Going Out the Door

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morning6615

image

It’s a dangerous business… going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.
— J.R.R. Tolkien

Every day I embark on new adventure, like it or not.  The moment I wake from dreams and acknowledge a new morning, when my eyes and ears open and take it in, when I first step onto the floor and start my journey–I pray the road rises to meet me and leads me where I need to go.

Inside my head and inside my house, all appears routine and certain.  The moment I walk out the door, down the steps and make my way into the day, there awaits an unpredictable and often hostile world.   Rather than armor myself, girding for disaster, I need to “keep my feet.”  If I know where I’m about to step, I’m more likely to be ready for the one after–less likely to stroll blindly into a deep ditch, stumble oblivious into a hornet’s nest, disappear unexpectedly into a hidden crevasse, swept completely away in a gust of wind.

It’s a dangerous business, this waking up and living.

But someone has to do it.

 

hiveaugust

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