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.

Choosing Sides

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

The Subject is Cheese

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G.K.Chesterton

Until now, that is…

It may be gouda for us to know
that cheddar is better

It would take a swiss kick to the asiago
to dubliner our efforts to string the praises of gorgonzola

It could be a muenster of a havarti
to provolone the colby truth

Edam, what a mozzarella we’ve made for ourselves
ever since we got caught leyden and didn’t know jack

But it is all up to quark-y feta;  ask for parmesan
and it may gruyere on me

Ricotta go now~a  farmer is waiting for me

 

 

Lenten Grace — One Far Fierce Hour

photo of Edgar Rice Burro by Anna Blake, Infinity Farm

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings…

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.
G. K. Chesterton from “The Donkey”

Palm Sunday is a day of dissonance and dichotomy in the church year, very much like the donkey who figured as a central character that day.  Sadly, a donkey gets no respect, then or now– for his plain and awkward looks, for his loud and inharmonious voice, for his apparent lack of strength — yet he was the chosen mode of transportation for a King riding to His death.

There was a motley parade to Jerusalem: cloaks and palms laid at the feet of the donkey bearing the Son of God,  the disorderly shouts of adoration and blessings, the rebuke of the Pharisees to quiet the people, His response that “even the stones will cry out” knowing what is to come.

But the welcoming crowd waving palm branches, shouting sweet hosannas and laying down their cloaks did not understand the fierce transformation to come, did not know within days they would be a mob shouting words of derision and rejection and condemnation.

The donkey knew because he had been derided, rejected and condemned himself, yet still kept serving.  Just as he was given voice and understanding centuries before to protect Balaam from going the wrong way, he could have opened his mouth to tell them, suffering beatings for his effort.  Instead, just as he bore the unborn Jesus to Bethlehem and stood over Him sleeping in the manger,  just as he bore a mother and child all the way to Egypt to hide from Herod,  the donkey would keep his secret well.   Who, after all,  would ever listen to a mere donkey?

We would do well to pay attention to this braying wisdom.  The donkey knows.   He bears the burden we have shirked.  He treads with heavy heart over the palms and cloaks we lay down as our meaningless symbols of honor.   He is servant to the Servant.

A day of dichotomy — of honor and glory laid underfoot only to be stepped on.   Of blessings and praise turning to curses.  Of the beginning of the end becoming a new beginning for us all.

And so He wept, knowing all this.  I suspect the donkey bearing Him wept as well, in his own simple, plain and honest way, and I’m quite sure he kept it as his special secret.

Seeds of the Heart

photo by Josh Scholten

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

We are mere seeds lying dormant, plain and simple, with nothing to distinguish us one from the other until the murmurs of spring begin, so soft, so subtle.  The soil shakes loose frosty crust as the thawing warmth begins.   Sunlight makes life stir and swell, no longer frozen but animate and intimate.

We will soon wake from our quiescence to sprout, bloom and fruit.  We will reach as far as our tethered roots will allow, beyond earthly bounds to touch the light and be touched.
There is renewed hope seeded in the heart of man, ready and waiting to unfurl, with a precious fragrance that lingers, long after the petal has dried, loosened, and fallen to freedom.

photo by Josh Scholten

The Bleeding Heart of Sunset

photo by Nate Gibson

Very still and mild it was, wrapped in a great, white, brooding silence — a silence which was yet threaded through with many little silvery sounds which you could hear if you hearkened as much with your soul as your ears. The girls wandered down a long pineland aisle that seemed to lead right out into the heart of a deep-red, overflowing winter sunset.”
~ L.M. Montgomery from Anne of the Island

If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.
~G. K. Chesterton

I wonder at a northwest sunset

evolving from gray haze to warm into golds,

then pinks and oranges to bleeding red. 

So too my heart overflows,
pulsing out the love
poured into me
from God’s endless grace.

I too,
once graying at the end of the day,
will be covered with roses.

The Edge of the World

photo by Nate Gibson

I came here to study hard things – rock mountain and salt sea – and to temper my spirit on their edges.  “Teach me thy ways, O Lord” is, like all prayers, a rash one, and one I cannot but recommend.  These mountains — Mount Baker and the Sisters and Shuksan, the Canadian Coastal Range and the Olympics on the peninsula — are surely the edge of the known and comprehended world….  That they bear their own unimaginable masses and weathers aloft, holding them up in the sky for anyone to see plain, makes them, as Chesterton said of the Eucharist, only the more mysterious by their very visibility and absence of secrecy.
~Annie Dillard from Holy the Firm

photo by Nate Gibson

The Object of a New Year

photo by Nate Gibson

The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.
– G.K. Chesterton

We hoped for some timely snow for a white Christmas but had to be content with a brief flurry that didn’t stick.  Then there was more hope yesterday on New Year’s Eve with more flurries and a few little skiffs left behind here and there, but nothing much.  Instead of snow that stuck, we were stuck with the same old muddy bare ground and dead grass and weary frost-bitten plants.

It is natural to desire an easy transformation of the old and dirty to something new and beautiful:  an all clean pristine white cottony sheet covering thrown over everything, making it look completely different than before.  Similarly, at the tick of the clock past midnight on New Years’ Eve, we hope for just such an inner transformation as well, a fresh start, a leaving behind of the not-so-good from the past and moving ahead to the surely-it’ll-be-better in the future.

But it doesn’t stick, even if there is a flurry of good intentions and a skiff of newness plopped down here and there.  Even if we find ourselves in the midst of blizzard conditions, unable to see six inches ahead and immobilized by the furious storms of life,  that accumulation eventually will melt, leaving behind even more mud and raw mess.

It isn’t how flawless, how clean, or how new this year will be, but rather how to ensure our soul transformation sticks tight, unmelting from within, even when the heat is turned up and the sweat drips.  This is not about a covering thrown over the old and dirty but a full blown overhaul in order to never to be the same again.

I lift my eyes to the hills where the snow stays year round: sometimes more,  with a few hundred new inches over several weeks, or sometimes less,  on the hottest days of summer.  Our new souls this new year must be built of that same resiliency, withstanding what each day may bring, cold or hot.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…within my soul.

If There Were No God

photo by Josh Scholten

“If there were no God, there would be no atheists.”
—G.K. Chesterton

I heard the same message
from several patients:
they would
commit suicide,
but not believing
in God
would mean
jumping from
the pain of living
into

…nothing at all…

 

I thought
feeling nothing
was the
point
of ceasing
to be

 

Perhaps they can’t imagine
a God
who created
doubters
sore afraid
of His caring

enough to die
so no one
becomes
nothing.

The Want of Wonder

photo by Josh Scholten

“The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.”
— G. K. Chesterton

Perhaps it is the nature of what I do, but I never lack for wonder.  Every day, whether it is on the farm, within my family or in my doctoring, I witness wonders that bring me to my knees.  I am awed by how extraordinary is the ordinary, whether it is a full harvest moon, a well-timed hug, or a patient’s worry over a nagging headache.

Maybe I’m easily engrossed in what’s around me, but I know that’s not so because I can be as oblivious as the next person.   Maybe I’m just plain simple, but those who know me don’t think so.

Maybe it’s because I try to wake each day feeling immense gratitude for whatever the day will bring so must stay alert to what is laid before me.

Maybe I just don’t want to miss a moment, wondrous or not.

…it’s all wondrous.

It’s up to me to notice.

photo by Josh Scholten