The Ravaged Field

Aerial photo of Moore Oklahoma following May 20 earthquake taken by Steve Gooch for the Associated Press

Yes, long shadows go out
from the bales; and yes, the soul
must part from the body:
what else could it do?

…These things happen … the soul’s bliss
and suffering are bound together
like the grasses …

The last, sweet exhalations
of timothy and vetch
go out with the song of the bird;
the ravaged field
grows wet with dew.
~Jane Kenyon from “Twilight: After Haying”

Celebration is a sign of life in the rubble, the bliss of those arising from an ash heap to walk and breathe again.  Heartache is the sight of death in the rubble, the suffering of those trapped and crushed by a roaring force too immense to imagine yet devastatingly real.

Bliss and suffering are bound together like the grasses; we are grasses torn from our roots, ravaged.

Tears flow as they must, wetting the stubble left behind like dew.  We weep in sorrow for those lost; we weep in joy for those spared.

What else can a soul do but weep at parting and weep at welcoming?

These things happen, oh yes, these awe-full awful things, they happen.

Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die.
~Psalm 103: 15

Out for a Walk

God is at home, it’s we who have gone out for a walk.
~Meister Eckhart

Sometimes an excursion from home is more like a sprint, as far and as fast as possible.
Sometimes it is a spontaneous trek into the unknown, just to prove it can be done.
Sometimes it is a climb into the dark, with precipices and crumbling ledges under our feet.
Sometimes it is a tentative journey of curiosity to see what may be around the corner.

No matter why or where or how far we wander,
the path home shines just bright enough
to show us the way back
when we are ready.
He is there, waiting.
He keeps the light on for us.

Waiting to be Filled

photo by Josh Scholten

My God, I look at the creek. It is the answer to Merton’s prayer, “Give us time!”  It never stops…. You don’t run down the present, pursue it with baited hooks and nets.  You wait for it, empty-handed, and you are filled.  You’ll have fish left over.  The creek is the one great giver.  It is, by definition, Christmas, the incarnation.  This old rock planet gets the present for a present on its birthday every day. 
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Good things as well as bad, you know are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?
~C.S. Lewis- Mere Christianity

…the room was filled by a presence that in a strange way was both about me and within me like a light or warmth. I was overwhelming possessed by someone who was not myself.  And yet, I felt more myself than ever before.  I was filled with intense happiness and almost unbearable joy as I had never known before or never known since.  And overall, there was a deep sense of peace and security and certainty.
~C. S. Lewis

Sweet and Sour Air

photo of Mt. Rainier sunrise by Kathy Yates

In Summer, in a burst of summertime
Following falls and falls of rain,
When the air was sweet-and-sour of the flown fineflower of
Those goldnails and their gaylinks that hang along a lime;
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Cheery Beggar”

Sweet and sour extends far beyond a Chinese menu; it is the daily air I breathe.  Dichotomy is so much of my life and times,  more distinct than the bittersweet of simple pleasures laced with twinges and tears.

I am but a cheery beggar in this world, desiring to hang tight to the overwhelming sweetness of each glorious moment — the startling sunrise, the lush green and golden blooms following spring showers, the warm hug of a compassionate word, the house filled with love and laughter.  But as beggars aren’t choosers, I can’t only have sweet alone;  I must endure the sour that comes as part of the package — the deepening dark of a sleepless night, the muddy muck of endless rain, the sting of a biting critique, the loneliness of an home emptying and much too quiet.

So I slog through sour to revel some day, even more so, in sweet.  Months of manure-permeated air is overcome one miraculous morning by the unexpected and undeserved fragrance of apple blossoms, so sweet, so pure, so full of promise of the fruit to come.  The manure makes the sweet sweeter.

And I breathe in deeply, content and grateful for a moment of grace and bliss, wanting to hold it in the depths of my lungs forever.

photo by Kathy Yates

angel trumpet plant courtesy of HGTV

apple blossoms

At Least I Can Twirl

photo by Josh Scholten

All at once I saw what looked like a Martian spaceship whirling towards me in the air. It flashed borrowed light like a propeller. Its forward motion greatly outran its fall. As I watched, transfixed, it rose, just before it would have touched a thistle, and hovered pirouetting in one spot, then twirled on and finally came to rest. I found it in the grass; it was a maple key, a single winged seed from a pair. Hullo. I threw it into the wind and it flew off again, bristling with animate purpose, not like a thing dropped or windblown, pushed by the witless winds of convection currents hauling round the world’s rondure where they must, but like a creature muscled and vigorous, or a creature spread thin to that other wind, the wind of the spirit which bloweth where it listeth, lighting, and raising up, and easing down. O maple key, I thought, I must confess I thought, o welcome, cheers.

And the bell under my ribs rang a true note, a flourish as of blended horns, clarion, sweet, and making a long dim sense I will try at length to explain. Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world. Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath. That breath never ceases to kindle, exuberant, abandoned; frayed splinters spatter in every direction and burgeon into flame. And now when I sway to a fitful wind, alone and listing, I will think, maple key. When I see a photograph of earth from space, the planet so startlingly painterly and hung, I will think, maple key. When I shake your hand or meet your eyes I will think, two maple keys. If I am a maple key falling, at least I can twirl.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

photo by Josh Scholten

Watching the Mountain Do Its Tricks

This is it, I think, this is it, right now, the present, this empty gas station, here, this western wind, this tang of coffee on the tongue, and I am patting the puppy, I am watching the mountain. And the second I verbalize this awareness in my brain, I cease to see the mountain or feel the puppy. I am opaque, so much black asphalt. But at the same second, the second I know I’ve lost it, I also realize that the puppy is still squirming on his back under my hand. Nothing has changed for him. He draws his legs down to stretch the skin taut so he feels every fingertip’s stroke along his furred and arching side, his flank, his flung-back throat.

I sip my coffee. I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once your lover in another country years ago: with fond nostalgia, and recognition, but no real feeling save a secret astonishment that you are now strangers. Thanks. For the memories. It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator — our very self-consciousness — is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution, cutting us off at both ends. I get in the car and drive home.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

photo by Nate Gibson

Startle and Wonder

photo by Josh Scholten

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. Chesterton

As a physician, I’m trained to notice the exceptions.  Ordinarily I’m not particularly attentive to everything that is going well with the human body, instead concentrating on what is aberrant or could be made better.  This is unfortunate; there is much beauty and perfect design to behold in every person I meet.

Instead I am looking past the every day miracles to find what’s wrong.

To counter this tendency to just find flaws, I’ve learned over the years to talk out loud as I do physical assessments:  your eardrums look just as they should, your eyes react normally, your tonsils look fine, your thyroid feels smooth, your lymph nodes are tiny , your lungs are clear, your heart sounds are perfect, your belly exam is reassuring, your reflexes are symmetrical, your emotional response to a stress and your tears are completely appropriate.  I want to acknowledge what is working well, as it should, as it was designed to be.  I want a wonder of the human body and mind to extend to the person who inhabits it as well.

When the exception occurs, it is likely to startle and frighten the patient but I don’t want it to surprise me.  We must tackle it with everything we’ve got.

What gives us the strength to deal with the exception is how much in every person is right and wondrous.

Just as it was meant to be.

Call for the Soil

Dundas, Prince Edward Island plowing match by http://www.ninalintonphotography.com

“When the April wind wakes the call for the soil,
I hold the plough as my only hold upon the earth,
and, as I follow through the fresh and fragrant furrow,
I am planted with every foot-step,
growing, budding, blooming into a spirit of spring.”
-  Dallas Lore Sharp, 1870-1929

To watch the soil turn over in the spring, whether by horse power with mane and tail or horse power with tires and engine, is to know my own inner soil needs turning upside down as well.  A grip on the handles of the plow connects the dirt and the soul.

The fresh earth ploughed, its face once hidden, surfaces, teeming with life.  There is the glisten of moist dirt, the wiggle of worms slithering quickly back into the depths, the roots of the old giving way to the nurture of new planting.

The spirit buds and blossoms once the soil is turned and smoothed into its new position, ready for seeds that will be fed from the heavens.  As the worm forgives the plow,  so we are forgiven for turning things upside down.  We must start over to bloom.  We are ready to get our hands and feet dirty in order to be fruitful.

A Mere Mist

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
James 4:14

photo by Josh Scholten

…Noticing
a spider’s web under the olive trees
splendidly hung with early drops, already
vanishing up the vortex of the air
…a heaven-sent refreshment? or a curtain
cutting out the light?
And I must ask it now
(small moisture that I am)under the sun of God’s great grace on me:
Which am I–dew, or fog?
~Luci Shaw from “…for you are a mist“

To be mist that clarifies
rather than opacifies,
that reflects
rather than absorbs,
that replenishes
rather than depletes~

to evaporate within His warmth,
glistening with descended grace.

 

 

Rough Edges Smoothed

photo by Josh Scholten

What does it feel like to be alive?
Living, you stand under a waterfall…
It is time pounding at you, time.
Knowing you are alive is watching on every side
your generation’s short time falling away
as fast as rivers drop through air,
and feeling it hit.
~Annie Dillard from An American Childhood

I had hopes for my rough edges. I wanted to use them as a can opener, to cut myself a hole in the world’s surface, and exit through it.
~Annie Dillard from An American Childhood

Mothering is like standing under a waterfall, barely able to breathe, barraged by the firehose of birthing and raising children, so much so fast.  Nothing rough remains after child rearing — all becomes soft and cushiony, designed to gather in, hold tight, and then reluctantly and necessarily, let go.

I’m well aware, even after my children have grown and flown, my rough edges still surface, like Godzilla from the primordial swamp, unbidden and unwarranted.  I want the sharpness gone, sanded down by the waterfalls of life, and smoothed to a fine finish.

My children continue to polish me, now from afar.  Time pounds away at me.  I can feel it hitting, every drop a blessing.