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.

Lenten Grace — He Got Up

photo by Emily Gibson

So what do I believe actually happened that morning on the third day after he died?
…I speak very plainly here…

He got up.  He said, “Don’t be afraid.”

Love is the victor.  Death is not the end.  The end is life.  His life and our lives through him, in him. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream.  Christ our Lord has risen.
~Frederick Buechner

Since this moment (the resurrection), the universe is no longer what it was;  nature has received another meaning; history is transformed and you and I are no more, and should not be anymore, what we were before.
~Paul Tillich

photo by Emily Gibson

Red Glimmer and Flash

photo by Nate Gibson

The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.

Through clouds like ashes
The red sun flashes
On village windows
That glimmer red.
-  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Afternoon in February”

photo by Nate Gibson

 

The Sun Went Hence

Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here today.
~John Donne

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.

A Brimming Basket

photo by Josh Scholten

As light departs to let the earth be one with night
Silence deepens in the mind and thoughts grow slow;
The basket of twilight brims over with colours
Gathered from within the secret meadows of the day
And offered like blessings to the gathering Tenebrae.
~ John Donohue, from “Vespers”

photo by Nate Gibson

BriarCroft at Year’s End

photo by Nate Gibson

photo by Nate Gibson

There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.
— J.R.R. Tolkien

photo by Nate Gibson

“O cruel cloudless space,
And pale bare ground where the poor infant lies!
Why do we feel restored
As in a sacramental place?
Here Mystery is artifice
And here a vision of such peace is stored,
Healing flows from it through our eyes.”
~May Sarton from Nativity

photo by Nate Gibson

“I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.

‘We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,’
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.”
-   Oliver Herford, I Heard a Bird Sing

photo by Nate Gibson

“Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a Love-thought, thro’me, Death
And take a Life that wearies me.”
-   Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, Fragment 3

“That’s no December sky!
Surely ’tis June
Holds now her state on high
Queen of the noon.

Only the tree-tops bare
Crowning the hill,
Clear-cut in perfect air,
Warn us that still

Winter, the aged chief,
Mighty in power,
Exiles the tender leaf,
Exiles the flower.”
-   Robert Fuller Murray (1863-1894), A December Day

photo by Nate Gibson

photo by Nate Gibson

“This is what I have heard
at last the wind in December
lashing the old trees with rain
unseen rain racing along the tiles
under the moon
wind rising and falling
wind with many clouds
trees in the night wind.”
-  W. S. Merwin

photo by Nate Gibson

“The grim frost is at hand, when apples will fall thick, almost thunderous, on the hardened earth.”
-  D. H. Lawrence

photo by Nate Gibson

photo by Nate Gibson

“Give me the end of the year an’ its fun
When most of the plannin’ an’ toilin’ is done;
Bring all the wanderers home to the nest,
Let me sit down with the ones I love best,
Hear the old voices still ringin’ with song,
See the old faces unblemished by wrong,
See the old table with all of its chairs
An’ I’ll put soul in my thanksgivin’ prayers.”
-   Edgar A. Guest

“Through bare trees
I can see all the rickety lean-tos
and sheds, and the outhouse
with the half-moon on the door,
once modestly covered in
summer’s greenery.

Through bare trees
I can watch the hawk
perched on a distant branch,
black silhouetted wings
shaking feathers and snow,
and so can its prey.

Through bare trees
I can be winter’s innocence,
unashamed needfulness,
the thin and reaching limbs
of a beggar, longing to touch
but the hem of the sun.”
-  Lisa Lindsey, Bare Trees

“There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you …..  In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.”
-  Ruth Stout

photo by Nate Gibson

photo by Nate Gibson

BriarCroft in Autumn photos

BriarCroft in Winter photos

BriarCroft in Spring photos

BriarCroft in Summer photos

Wafting Him Out of It

photo of dappled-with-damson west courtesy R.V. Schoder Loyola University Archives

I kiss my hand
To the stars, lovely-asunder
Starlight, wafting him out of it; and
Glow, glory in thunder;
Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west;
Since, though he is under the world’s splendor and wonder,
His mystery must be instressed, stressed;
For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins

I greet Him when I meet Him
as the color of the evening sky
spills as tipped paint
far fleeting across the horizon,
cleaned up and gone before grasped,
I kiss my hand
to the drama played out before sun set.

I greet Him when I meet Him
as starlight speckles
the overhead ceiling,
each touching infinity
where it begins
and never ends.

I greet Him when I meet Him
in glowing cloud mountains
sparking lightning
and clapping thunder,
applause for His
resplendent magnificence.

I greet Him when
He is hidden
mysterious
unknown
and unknowable,
waiting for the blessing
of understanding
wafting from Him
in color, in speckle,
in glow, in spark,
in appreciative applause
for His splendor
wrapped in wonder.

photo by Josh Scholten of the damson-without-dappled west

thunderheads in South Dakota

photo by Josh Scholten

Reaching for the Rainbow

Mt. Baker at sunrise

The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening.  It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
~Henry David Thoreau

Painting the indescribable with words necessitates subtlety, sound and rhythm on a page.  The best word color portraits I know are by Gerard Manley Hopkins who created  through startling combinations:  “crimson-cresseted”, “couple-colour”, “rose-moles”, “fresh-firecoal”, “adazzle, dim”, “dapple-dawn-drawn”, “blue-bleak embers”, “gash gold-vermillion”.

I understand, as Thoreau does,  how difficult it is to harvest a day using ordinary words.   Like grasping ephemeral star trails or the transient rainbow that moves away as I approach, what I hold on the page is intangible yet very real.

I will keep reaching for the rainbow, searching for the best words to preserve my days and nights forever, for my someday greatgrandchildren, or whoever might have the patience to read.

After all, in the beginning was the Word, and there is no better place to start.

Mt. Baker at sunset

photo by Josh Scholten

Startling Joy

 

photo by Nate Gibson

Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.
~Madeleine L’Engle

It was another day of a virus with fever that kept me down and atypically quiet on a summer day.  There are peas to harvest in the garden, a barn to clean, a new puppy to train, flower gardens to water–not to mention the usual needs at work.  I could do none of it, not even the requisite two hours at the Dept of Motor Vehicles to get my drivers’ license renewed before my birthday next week.  It all must wait for another healthier day.

Amid my own chills and aches, and with just a little dose of self-pity, tonight I witnessed an expanding fever rise across the horizon in the western sky, exploding in intense red-orange light, coloring and covering everything. Then, having reached its peak,  it backed off. as a fever will do, gradually fading to gray, all once again returned to normal.

And so my fever will relent at some point and fade in my memory.

Tonight, the fever in the sky,  like faith that touches and colors everything in the rough times, was the sudden startling joy that has made everything bearable.

photo by Nate Gibson