photo taken to the north from the farm by Emily Gibson
All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.
~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Every time I open my eyes, I am reminded how precious is this moment, how intense is each breath and each heartbeat.
We are created for this. We are meant to wonder with ceasing.
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing…
- Edna St. Vincent Millay, from “Spring”
I know that we cannot depend on the return of Spring to heal us~
it is balm not cure.
I know that none of its beauty can bloom without it dying before~
it is a shroud thrown over to cover our decay.
I know I cannot be transformed by the warmth of the sun~
it is not enough for my skin to sweat when my heart lies still and cold.
I know I must dig deeper in holy ground for the truth~
it does not lie in perfumed blossoms and sweet blue skies.
I know what I know~
life in itself is nothing unless
death is overcome yet again
and our hearts, once broken,
begin to pulse red once more.
photo by Kathy Yates
The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side.
~G. K. Chesterton
…love has always sought to put back together that which hate has broken.
…our hands have always been able to heal as much as harm.
…since the dawn of humanity, each of us contains three people—
the angel, the demon, and the one who decides which we will obey.
~Billy Coffey
It should not require an act of evil for us to recognize the human capacity for love, caring and compassion. It should not take fearsome suffering and death of innocents to remind us all life is precious and worthy of our protection, when others would discard it.
We are created to choose sides. Our Creator chose to suffer to guarantee we are eternally worthy of His protection.
How then shall we choose?
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten
Yesterday, we packed up the remnants of our sons’ childhood, boxing up their bedrooms to put away their school notebooks and artwork in garage storage next to the boxes containing their departed grandparents’ lives. The bedrooms are now pristine and less chaotic, ready for overnight visitors from faraway lands, but I lay awake troubled and tossing in the winds of my life’s changing.
What I know will be packed up in a box someday by my children, a simple portable box to be tucked away and reopened by some future generation who will puzzle over why this or that was saved. While time rushes forward, it is disorienting as everything else is unexplainable.
I can only stand and wait, breathless yet breathing, to know what is there beyond knowing.
It will come, I know. It is calling.
photo by Josh Scholten
Skin was earth; it was soil. I could see, even on my own skin, the joined trapezoids of dust specks God had wetted and stuck with his spit the morning he made Adam from dirt. Now, all these generations later, we people could still see on our skin the inherited prints of the dust specks of Eden.
~Annie Dillard from An American Childhood
A goodly portion of every clinic day is spent looking at my patients’ skin. Most of the time, it is a quick assessment of color, moisture and texture before I go on to concentrate on the chief complaint that brought the patient in. However, skin concerns frequently are the chief complaint — perhaps as straight forward as an abrasion or laceration, or a puzzling bump, an oozing sore, a total body itch, or an ominous pigmented lesion.
I feel like Sherlock Holmes when I focus on a patient’s outer covering in magnified detail. I assume the identity of detective, inspector and archeologist all at once, trying to discern what is taking place on or beneath a piece of dermatologic geography.
No matter what the diagnosis or the treatment plan, I’m continually awestruck by the topography of skin. This supple landscape is made up of trapezoidal specks connected one to another, just like the soil upon which I tread. Skin cells are in a state of constant renewal, the dead and discarded falling off to rejoin the dust from which it came.
This elaborate matrix of collagen and keratin is the foundation for our scaffolding and our shroud.
His spit provides the superglue: the rivets, the bolts and the nails that bind us together for a lifetime.
We are created to be far more than a mere pile of random dust specks.
1. A MILKWEED
photo by Josh Scholten
…every year
the dull and dead in us
meets our Easter challenge:
to be open to the unexpected,
to believe beyond our security,
to welcome God in every form,
and trust in our own greening.
~Joyce Rupp from Out of the Ordinary: Prayers, Poems, and Reflections for Every Season
The challenge is to go
back to an every day routine
as if nothing has happened
when everything has happened.
There is laundry to do
floors to mop
patients to comfort
barns to clean
taxes to pay.
Nothing seemingly has changed
yet everything is changed.
Now I know why,
though dead and pruned,
I now sprout green ~
I am alive only
because He is.
Jesus washing the feet of his disciples by Finnish artist Albert Gustaf Edelfelt
What e’er the soul has felt or suffered long,
Oh, heart! this one thing should not be forgot:
Christ washed the feet of Judas.
~George Marion McClellan
from “The Feet of Judas” in The Book of American Negro Poetry 1922
As an aide in a rest home caring for the crippled feet of the elderly,
as a medical student in an inner city hospital seeing the homeless whose socks had to be peeled off carefully to avoid pulling off gangrenous toes, as a doctor working with the down and out detox patients from the streets who had no access to soap and water for weeks,
I’ve washed feet as part of my job.
People always protest, just as Peter did when Jesus started to wash his feet.
We never believe our feet,
those homely gnarled bunioned claw-toed calloused parts of us,
deserve that attention.
We are ashamed to have someone care about them, care for them, when we don’t care enough on our own.
I have never washed the feet of someone about to betray me, leading me to my death.
I have never had my feet washed by someone who understood my heart needed cleansing even more than my feet, who loved me that much.
Until now.
This one thing should not be forgot:
Kneeling, He wears the humility and towels of a servant as His only raiments. He gently cups our heels in His palms, washes and dries our soles and arches and toes, but our hearts are held, still beating, in His loving hands.
sculpture by Mark Greine
(Emily’s note: I’ve been asked how my blog came to be named “Barnstorming” — most assume it is a doctor-farmer’s twist on “brainstorming” which didn’t occur to me until someone mentioned it to me. Instead, the name has nothing to do with brains, baseball teams, politics or daredevil piloting of small airplanes. It has everything to do with a storm taking place in our barn at the beginning of Holy Week a few years ago. This is a repost.)
An unexpected southerly wind hit suddenly late Sunday night, gusting up to 40 miles an hour and slamming the house with drenching rain as we prepared to go to bed. Chores in the barn had been done hours before, but as we had not been expecting a storm, the north/south center aisle doors were still open, and I could hear banging and rattling as they were buffeted in the wind. I quickly dressed to go latch the doors for the night, but the tempest had done its damage. Hay, empty buckets, horse blankets, tack and cat food had blown all over, while the Haflingers stood wide-eyed and fretful in their stalls. A storm was blowing inside the barn as well as outside it.
It took some time to tidy up the mess after the doors were secured but all was soon made right. The wind continued to bash at the doors, but it no longer could touch anything inside them. The horses relaxed and got back to their evening meal though the noise coming from outside was deafening. I headed back up to the house and slept fitfully listening to the wind blow all night, wondering if the metal barn roof might pull off in a gust, exposing everything within.
Yet in the new daylight this Monday morning, all is calm. The barn is still there, the roof still on, the horses are where they belong and all seems to be as it was before the barnstorming wind. Or so it might appear.
This wind heralds another storm coming this week that hits with such force that I’m knocked off my feet, swept away, and left bruised and breathless. No latches, locks, or barricades are strong enough to protect me from what will come over the next few days.
Yesterday he rode in on a donkey softly, humbly, and wept at what he knew.
Today, he overturns the tables in his fury.
Tomorrow he echoes the destruction that is to happen.
Wednesday, he teaches the people to prepare them, then rests in anticipation.
On Thursday, he kneels, pours water over dusty feet, presides over a simple meal, and then, abandoned, sweats blood in agonized prayer.
By Friday, all culminates in the perfect storm, transforming everything in its path, leaving nothing untouched.
The silence on Saturday is deafening.
Next Sunday, the Son rises and returns, all is calm, all is well, all set to right. He calls my name, my heart burns within me at his words and I can never be the same again.
Barnstormed to the depths of my soul. Doors flung open wide, the roof pulled off, everything blown away and now replaced, renewed and reconciled.
May it be done as he has said, again and yet again.
photo by Josh Scholten
All creatures are doing their best
to help God in His birth
of Himself.
Enough talk for the night.
He is laboring in me;
I need to be silent
for a while,
worlds are forming
in my heart.
~Meister Eckhart from “Expands His Being”
The first day of spring is a traditional celebration of the rebirth of nature’s seasonal rhythms, and God’s inner renewal of our hearts.
Instead today is pitch black with blustering winds and rain, looking and feeling like the bleakest of October mornings about to plunge into the death spiral of deep autumn and winter all over again.
No self-respecting God would birth Himself into something like this: a dawn as dark as night.
But this God would.
He labors in our darkest of hearts for good reason. We are unformed and unready to meet Him in the light, clinging as we do to our dark ways and thoughts. Though we are called to celebrate the renewal of springtime, it is just so much talk until we accept the change of being transformed ourselves.
We are silenced as He prepares us, as He prepares Himself for birth within us. The labor pains are His, not ours; we become awed witnesses to His first and last breath when He makes all things, including us, new again.
The world is reborn — even where dark reigned before, even where it is bleakest, especially inside our broken hearts now healing.
photo by Josh Scholten
