Both Stone and Star

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth.

leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs–

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.
~Rainer Maria Rilke  “Sunset” (Trans. by Robert Bly) from The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are born with one hand still grasping tight to the star-studded heaven from which we came, still dusty from creation.  The other hand grabs hold of whatever it finds here on earth and won’t let go, whether the riches of relationship or the coldness of stone.

It can take decades, but our firm hold on heaven loosens so that we forget the dusty origins of our miraculous being.  We forget Who made us and why.

We can’t decide, tangled up in the threads of life:  dust of earth, stone heart?  Or dust of stars, child of Heaven?

We are daily reminded by the Light which clothes us in new colors – early in the morning as it crests the eastern hills and late as it descends in the west.  Heaven still reaches down once again to grasp our hand, making sure we know the way home.

 

 

 

 

Just Passing Through

 

 

 

 

All through August and September
            thousands, maybe
tens of thousands, of feathered
            creatures pass through
this place and I almost never see
            a single one. The fall
wood warbler migration goes by here
            every year, all of them,
myriad species, all looking sort of like
            each other, yellow, brown, gray,
all muted versions of their summer selves,
            almost indistinguishable
from each other, at least to me, although
            definitely not to each other, 
all flying by, mostly at night, calling to each
            other as they go to keep
the flock together, saying: chip, zeet,
            buzz, smack, zip, squeak—
            those
sounds reassuring that we are
            all here together and
heading south, all of us just passing
            through, just passing
through, just passing through, just
            passing through.
~David Budbill “Invisible Visitors”

 

 

 

 

Some feathered travelers slip past us unseen and unheard.  They may stop for a drink in the pond or a bite to eat in the field and woods, but we never know they are there – simply passing through.

Others are compelled to announce their journey with great fanfare, usually heard before seen.  The drama of migration becomes bantering conversation from bird to bird, bird to earth, bird to sun, moon and stars, with unseen magnetic forces pointing the way.

When not using voices, their wings sing the air with rhythmic beat and whoosh.

We’re all together here — altogether — even when our voices are raised sharply, our silences brooding, our hurts magnified, our sorrows deep, so our route of travel becomes a matter of debate.

Our destination is not in dispute however.  We’re all heading to the same place no matter how we get there.

We’re all just passing through, just passing through, just passing through.

 

 

 

 

Ah, What Then?

 

 

 

What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in your hand
Ah, what then?
~Samuel Coleridge  “What if you slept”

 

 

 

 

 

This mountain, this strange and beautiful Shuksan flower that appears suddenly as we round a corner on the hour drive up the Mt. Baker Highway:  this mountain has one foot on earth and one foot in heaven – a thin place if there ever was one.

The only way to approach is in awed silence, as if entering the door of a grand cathedral.  Those who are there speak in hushed tones if they speak at all.

Today Mt Shuksan wears autumn lightly about its shoulders as a multi-faceted cloak, barely anticipating the heavy snow coat to descend in the next two weeks.

I hold this mountain tight in my fist, wanting to turn it this way and that, breathe in its fragrance, bring it home with me and never let go.

Ah, what then?

Home is not nearly big enough for heaven to dwell.  I must content myself with this visit to the thin edge, peering through the open door, and waiting until invited to come inside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The World Too Beautiful

 

 

 

 

 

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with color! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,– Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,– let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay “God’s World”

 

 

 

Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. 
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute? 
I’m ready to go back. I should have listened to you. That’s all human beings are!
Just blind people.
~Thornton Wilder, from Emily’s monologue in Our Town

 

 

Let me not wear blinders through my days.
Let me see and hear and feel it all even when it seems too much to bear.

Lord,  prepare me to be so whelmed at your world, that
Heaven itself will be familiar, and not that far,
Just round the corner.

 

 

 

A Cloudy Greeting

 

 

 

To make myself understood and to diminish the distance between us, I called out:
“I am an evening cloud too.”
They stopped still, evidently taking a good look at me.
Then they stretched towards me their fine, transparent, rosy wings.
That is how evening clouds greet each other.
They had recognized me.
~Rainer Maria Rilke from Stories of God

 

 

 

 

From this hill, we can see for miles.  At certain times of morning and evening, it can feel as if we are aloft, closer up to the clouds, seeing the terrain from their vantage point.  There are the snow-covered peaks to the east, the craggy Canadian coastal range to the north, the stretch of river valley to the north west, the Salish Sea to the west and the forest to the south.

Surrounding us is the farmland and the good people who feed this community: the expanse of dairy land and its vast pastures, the corn fields, berry rows and potato mounds, acres of orchard espaliers and local farm-to-market and CSA growers.

The ever-moving, ever-changing immensity of the clouds covers us all.  As those clouds touch, embrace, release, mold and transform, they show us how connection with others is done.  As we county folk pass on the roads during an evening walk, as we are running late to town jobs, as we meet in the store or at church or community events, we too should touch and greet one another, nod and encourage, acknowledge the shared light that comes from beyond us that restores and transforms us.

Most of all, like the clouds, we are too often full to brimming, a shedding of shared tears at how easily this land can be taken away — whether remembering the sad history of people group domination and removal from their ancestral homes, or the ravages of hurricane or flood or volcano, the effects of drought and wildfire, of blight or sickness, or the over-regulation of government ensuring no farmer can afford to continue to do what they know best to preserve the land, the habitat, their animals and their crops.

We weep in recognition, like these clouds, to make ourselves understood and to diminish the distance between us.

 

 

 

 

 

Lest We Forget

Let me remember you, voices of little insects, 

Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters, 

Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us, 

Snow-hushed and heavy. 

Over my soul murmur your mute benediction, 

While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest, 

As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to, 

Lest they forget them.
~Sara Teasdale from “September Midnight”

If I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again:

Men have forgotten God.
~Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn from his 1983 acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize

Lest I forget…

I look long in the eyes I lean to

whether loved one, or mountains,  or garden, or flower

or the face of God Himself.

I cannot risk forgetting what must be remembered — encased in my heart
like a treasured photograph, like a precious gem, like a benediction that soothes me quiet when anxious.

It is His ultimate promise: He won’t forget me either –
looking long in my eyes that lean in to Him.

A Need to Kneel

 

 

I know this happiness
is provisional:

the looming presences –
great suffering, great fear –

withdraw only
into peripheral vision:

but ineluctable this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:

this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky:

this need to dance,
this need to kneel:

this mystery:
~Denise Levertov “Of Being” from The Stream and the Sapphire

 

 

 

 

Last night the sky was dancing;
waves and sweeps and swoops of clouds feathering the horizon.

I am mere audience, not dancer,
too weak in the knees to do anything but kneel in witness,
knowing that fear and suffering lies beyond this hill
and how much I don’t understand of what has been
and what is to come.

Even so
even so
I was happy the sky was dancing amid
the mystery.