February 7.10

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Deep in winter night

Under heavy covers, the cool room hushed

with our soft breathing, and the clock.

I finally consent, let my mind re-enter

the gentle rocking waves of sleep.

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The conflicts, hypotheses

and re-enactments—I tell them

put down their empty guns, and words

and walk away. (it is the only way to win

the elusive peace of dreams).

Oh, how vain, especially in bed at night—

to rebut, suppose and cajole

imaginary mannequins.

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But how good, how much like God

to simply let things go!

How sweet, to breathe each slow breath

a small, thick-furred mammal, curled

deep underground, dreaming far

windy yellow meadows

in the frozen February dark.

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And out of that same breathing darkness

bright and random images emerge:

years ago, high in the mountains

I was walking out of a long tunnel

into the Spring sunlight

singing.

And yesterday, a thousand miles away

my daughter called me,

her warm laughter felt so very close.

All afternoon, I had been walking

beneath the icy cliffs,

beside the grey, snow-swollen river.

Tiny siskins were flitting high above me

through the limbs of empty trees, the tall

bone-white sycamores.

I stood long moments there,

among large boulders

watching the snowy river flow away.

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February 4.10

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I stood at the window early, waking.  I was watching our little portion of the frozen earth emerging out of blue darkness. A cloudy rose of dawn was blushing the winter land. Like large torn blankets, patches of week-old snow still lay across the north-facing hillsides. Every tree branch, each dead weed stem held thick crystals of frost.  A low mist hung just over the treetops in the far pasture. There was no wind. Birds were still huddled deep in the thickets. None had flown to the feeders yet. Only the first week in February, more cold and snow have already raked the land than any winter for many years. The house was quiet and chilled.

After getting dressed I would go downstairs and throw some dried split oak into the stove, and a large chunk of coal, to warm the house. Fill the humidifier to get some steam bubbling: that comforting, all-is-well-and-warm chuckling little sound it makes. No matter how torn and crazed the world with war, our nation and our individual lives always in various states of disarray, how wonderful and strange, the solace in such small things: flames crackling the morning fire, tea water simmering on the stove. Primordial comforts, deep in our bones.

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Then I would put on my old barn-coat, let the small dog outside and throw some bird seed to the hard ground. I would come back inside and put on water for tea–a large mug steeped with two bags of black  Pekoe and a swirl of honey.  Two pieces of whole-grain toast with butter and jam from the late summer berries. Then I would go to the den with the dog, sit down, sip tea, eat toast, read and pray. No one else would be awake yet. How I look forward to these little solitary morning routines, sweet beginnings to the shadowy winter days.

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But all that would come later. I was still standing at the cold window, looking out.  The drab frozen landscape was tinged faintly rouge by the cloudy light. Summer seemed years ago, or years off in the future, perhaps never to return to this frigid planet. From boyhood I’ve relished the hearty mountain cold, its wild raw weather, its special routines, hardships and comforts, the layers of familiar garments with their stains, patches and well-earned holes, worn many winters.
I stood and let my mind move slowly out across the frosted scene pitching down the gardened hill below me, and off into the violet distances. I especially loved the black-green pinewoods bristled with frozen mist. How their dark borders shaped the shaggy fields of dead grass, the color of coyote fur. Still further out, great oaks reached bare limbs up into the low fog. The old trees seemed to display postures both of high praise and utter despair.

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My eyes gradually withdrew from the dark forests and distant ridges, to the frozen garden down the hill a short distance below the house.  My vision was scanning the sparse orchard trees when it stopped——a shadow-form not usually there, was standing very still, between the peach and the pear tree. The coyote blended into the background as if it had been sketched there with charcoal and pale, straw-colored chalks. It was not moving. For thirty seconds or more I focused on it, amazed at its very presence, a carved stone statue that had always been there. It was an ancient etching, scrawled on a smoky cave wall. For those brief moments, the coyote and I and time itself did not move. In the winter dawn light it appeared mystical, more apparition than animal.

Strangely, it seemed to have come out into the open this morning, just for me to see. I was thrilled, alive, most grateful.

Then the spell of wildness was broken, like smoke. The coyote turned and loped away lightly, vanished into the trees.

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Tuesday, February 2/2010

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Reality IS Redemption

From notes in my journal. A few reflections on Oswald Chambers’  excellent meditation on January 31, “Do you see your calling?”      –from My Utmost for His Highest–(my long-time favorite daily reading for spiritual food and direction).

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As Chambers does so well, and quite often, he gets your attention with a slightly shocking statement that sounds a bit over the top, almost hyperbole, like flirting with the skirts of blasphemy, even. But no. As you get used to reading Chambers, you realize he’s not overstating for effect.  You come to understand, and appreciate, that he’s quite serious, and more than that, he’s right on target, with some of his more disturbing pronouncements. Remind you of Someone else?  He wasn’t just trying to get our attention. He was trying to tell us the truth. But the truth is often so, so….true (compared to the mish-mash we are accustomed to hearing) that we think it’s a bit radical. Just a bit?

In an attempt to describe the sharp contrast between divine and carnal, we often contrast spiritual truth with worldly “truth”  by using the analogy of oil and water. They just don’t mix well at all. But the analogy serves:  oil IS so very different from water, just as Spirit is distinctly other from flesh, a different dimension entirely.  And it is certainly not the purpose of oil to change itself to be more accommodating to water. Likewise, you will not find Oswald Chambers apologizing for the “extreme” nature of some of  spiritual wisdom he imparts. He knew that many commonly accepted “religious” beliefs aren’t spiritual at all, and have no scriptural basis. He exposes them for what they are. When you read Chambers, you’re likely to get the pure oil.  You can count on it to burn, hot and bright.

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An example of Chambers’ tendency to wake us with a surprising statement can be found in today’s (Jan. 31) devotion.  The very first sentence:  “Our calling is not primarily to be holy men and women”.   (Really? We thought that was the whole point, so much is made of it by most preachers and teachers.) But read on. It gets better:

“The one, all-important thing is that the gospel of God should be recognized as the abiding reality.  Reality is not human goodness, or holiness…..it is redemption. The need to perceive this is the most vital need of the Christian today.  We have to get used to the revelation that redemption is the only reality. Personal holiness is an effect of redemption, not the cause of it”.

Wow.  Thank you, Mr. Chambers. The cart was certainly not designed to pull the horse.  But how we do try…. and try…… and try………to do what God has already done. It’s wearisome and even sad,  how so much of our spiritual energies are displaced, even wasted, trying to accomplish something we are not able to do. We can not make redemption happen, or realize it, or add to it by resolving this, or intending to do that, by trying harder to be good, or if not good, at least better. What a waste!  The focus in all that striving is on the wrong thing. We’re looking at ourselves.

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At this point, we must be sure that we have at least a basic understanding of what redemption actually is. From this, hopefully we will begin to grasp as well, what redemption is not.

Redemption is both miracle and mystery. But God chooses to unveil it to us as mercy, in the dire neediness of our smallest and darkest hours. Redemption is how the eternal and divine come to reveal themselves in the fragments of our often wasted days.  Simply stated, redemption is the deep healing power and restorative purpose of God. Divine ointment, poured out like a priceless balm on the open sores and hidden wounds of human beings.

At a certain point in Earth time,  God demonstrated redemption perfectly in the long-awaited Messiah, Jeshua.  Redemption is completed by God himself, in the life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus.  It is applied to us by his dynamic Holy Spirit. We can summarize an infinite mystery with a very few words:  Redemption is Christ.  We believe and receive this radiant mystery-truth, and willingly keep moving toward it, warmed and healed by its holy fires.
Or we do not.

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But what is our part?—
–Our “work” if you will, according to Jesus himself  “is to BELIEVE IN THE ONE WHOM GOD SENT.

That’s it?? Just believe?

Yes. The lamp of our slow walking with God through the darkness is kindled, and is kept burning, by the oil of faith. (For a whole mess of interesting reasons, we keep trying to get around or get past that basic fact:  “the righteous, i.e., those who are truly good, will live by believing the truth”). Oh, but we think we need to do so much more.

What Chambers wants us to see in today’s words are how  essentially different living by faith in Christ is from living to be good, or moral, or living to impress others, or living to feel better about myself by doing penance, or good deeds, etc.  The simple humbling truth is that God has already redeemed all of mankind, (even me!). In Christ, He built the bridge necessary to restore everyone to joyful friendship with Himself, once for all. I am asked to believe, and to abide in the unfolding liberating wonders of that reality. That reality is unconditional mercy, the perfect agape love of God—for you, for me, for everyone. That reality is redemption.  As we continue bathing in its luminescence, redemption grows us in wisdom, in the capacity to know God: to forgive all others, and to love them in intelligent and meaningful ways. (These are the ‘good works’ that flow out of real faith). This is redemption’s very purpose: to make us more like God himself. Anything less than this, no matter how impressive, is merely vain existence, literally killing time.

The price for the privilege of walking in this?  Far too high for the likes of us to pay, ever. (though we tend to keep trying to pay for it!)

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So Rejoice! It has been paid. The law has been fulfilled. Halleluliah, ten thousand Halleluliahs. Blow the Shofar til the highest mountains resound!  If that doesn’t begin to break your mask, and make you at least a little hopeful with a childlike joy, the chances are very good that you are still believing in your self to save you.

Question:  how can self save itself from itself?  Dare to think about that. Absurd, isn’t it? —one of those lies that needs to be acknowledged,  seen for the poison that it is, and released.

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Redemption is God’s primary agenda. Throughout the centuries of nations, cultures, and individuals it is just this: by the power of his Christ, His Word, and his Spirit, to fix what is broken, to heal what is diseased, to find what has been lost, to restore to value that which has been damaged, stained, devalued and cast aside. God’s pleasure is to ripen hardness and sourness into softness and sweetness. To mature what is immature, into a much greater usefulness,  beauty and fruitfulness. To abolish and replace stubbornness, pride, and its many vanities with humility and gracefulness, just as a river disintegrates and washes away great boulders. To replace so much babbling and chattering with true and caring listening. The Holy Spirit of God radically alters our inborn and ingrown focus on Self, outward and upward, so that we expand with the life and love energy of God. In Him, we grow to love and to forgive ourselves, and all others. We give up the need to get and have our way, to be right, to have the final say.
All this and so much more is enclosed and unwrapped by redemption.  It is the most beautiful and divine process.

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Chambers is right. Redemption is the reality among all the other smaller “realities”.  It is the highest purpose of this life. It is to be shared with others.  The importance of our getting this fundamental revelation is what today’s meditation–indeed, what Chambers’ life ministry–was all about.   “Do you see your calling?”

Rejoice!  Redemption is reality. “Look up. Your redemption draws near. The kingdom of heaven is within you”.

Thanks for reading. I hope this blessed you.

-Quilla

Fire Ghosts

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Fire Ghosts

Another storm approaches, silently
the long January night.
Snow clouds drift across the moon.
Like shrouds of summers gone
the smoke from our fire blows away.

Down in the dark hollow
a small owl lifts his quavering music
into the pale blue light.

Back indoors, I warm
beside the old iron stove.
Embers crackle and fall.
Petals of yellow light flicker
the floor, the silent walls.
The fluxions of radiance flutter
like flowers in a summer wind.
There is no other sound.

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Waiting….

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Waiting….

For my daughter—
her Friday morning chemistry lab.
I wait in the car, an empty park
beside the wide winter river.

On the other, shadowed snowy shore
a ridge of black trees
stands stark and bare.
Waiting in the frozen air, they ask
questions with their patient being,
things we like to ignore.

Suddenly comes a deep rumbling, not unlike
distant summer thunder, it trembles
the very ground, the cold hard air:
a long train of coal cars
grinds upriver, thousands of tons
balanced, screeching
thin steel rails.
So many lives unknowingly depend
on that black cargo
rolling toward the needy town.

The train rumbles into the past.
The swollen grey river keeps flowing down.
All the coal will turn to steam, and smoke.
On public radio,  a Bach concerto
resounds from Brandenburg, a score he wrote
two and a half centuries ago.
The notes thunder and chime: delicate harpsichords,
rivers of living water, breaking ice.
And great cathedral organ pipes
make timeless grand cadences
suspending glory,
not unlike a summer storm, music
something like a winter morning train.

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Sunday, January 24, 2010

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Community

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The loud plaintive electric music wails on, whining like the depths of an agonizing human soul. Out of the darkness in the dim, half-lit room the straggling line keeps moving toward us. All these men and women, with children and without, singles and couples, together, and alone. Some of the women look up briefly, to meet my wife’s smiling countenance as they receive the elements. A few individuals might even glance up at me.  I watch them closely, bless each of them silently as they clumsily pick up a piece of cracker and dip it into the juice.

I find myself wondering at the many separate threads of story woven into the loose cord of strangers pulling itself along in the shadows. A very strange and holy moment, this ancient rite of sacramental giving and receiving. It passes quickly. In the half light, I sense on the faces an ironic mixture of embarrassment, dire necessity, and wide variations on the theme of gratitude. For many, it appears to be merely robotic, perfunctory: let’s get this over with. But who can know? Out of whatever motive, soul hunger, spiritual need, or not, they all do come to this crucial place.  They each take, and walk back to their chairs somewhere in the large dim room.

The other six days of the week the room serves as a bar and “social club” here on Biltmore Avenue, in the center of the city. Fifty years ago on Wednesday nights–family night–I rollerskated in this very room with my friends in the fifth and sixth grades. Then, a large pink neon sign on the roof proclaimed the name SkateLand. I especially remember skating with Carolyn, pretty Carolyn, and tentatively holding her hand, both of us desperately trying not to fall to the hard floor of the rink. Girls wore dresses in those wonderful years. When she fell, how awkward it was for both of us, a skinny kid straining to help up his lovely girlfriend sprawled on the floor with wheels on her feet. She was already beginning to fill out with soft and mysterious curves I remember wanting very much to touch, but at the same time being desperately afraid to. Ah, the tortures of an early-adolescent boy!

But this morning, and every Sabbath morning the past five and half years the bar is used as a somewhat nonconventional inner-city church.  Diana is holding a flat plate of broken crackers, and next to her I grasp a pottery goblet of dark and fragrant concord. The people keep moving toward us–somewhat hurriedly, some of them furtively, as if barely escaping something. We stoop down a bit for the children so they can see, and reach. I love watching the wide eyes of the smaller ones, how their little fingers are a bit uncertain, a little afraid. It’s as if they sense they are approaching something both terrible and good, like the casket of a murdered God, receiving the gifts he gave away to everyone before he died. The power of story is still strong, in the large and open hearts of children. The wonder of it shows on their tender faces.

Along with the faces, I love watching all the precious human hands unfold to pick up the cracker and dip it in the juice. Different ages, sizes, and conditions of hands. Some of the fingers are clean, manicured and precise. Those are the fingertips that usually are very careful not to dip into the juice.  And other fingers are not so clean. I notice that those are the fingers that often bathe themselves in the juice, up to the  first knuckle. It almost seems they want to be certain they’ve gotten enough.

I guess those of us who believe that “cleanliness is next to Godliness” will just have to get over it , and realize those words, that idea, is definitely not in scripture.

For it is written: “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more”.

And didn’t our Lord himself say in a variety of ways: “I did not come for the righteous, for those who are well. I came for those who are sick, in need of a physician. Whoever will, may come”.

Two Meditations on Ashes

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All night, a deep south wind

…blows in from the Gulf,
lifting the heavy limbs of the pines,
filling these ancient black mountains
and their sleeping valleys–
songs of emptiness
and of fullness,the past
always irrevocably flowing
into the present moment,
warm wind melting, washing away
into the winter river
the last vestiges of old snow.

I stand a long while, the soft dark wind
in my shirtsleeves, breathing
the moist air deeply, receiving it
arms open, like a long awaited grace,
a friend arriving, some faraway place
a late night train.

We know somewhere deep within
the frozen ground, within our hearts
some miracle is curled,
a folded bloom lies sleeping.
Although more snows are certain
to fall, for now, this night
I let the long midwinter fire
fall to quiet ash.

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Nell

A dear friend called
late this winter morning.
She wanted my advice–
which woodburning stove to buy,
what sort of price?

For half an hour—our lives
we talked important details
and preferences: cast iron or steel,
firebox size, creosote, and who
can you find, and trust,
to sell good wood?

Perhaps my thoughts on staying warm
helped her a bit.
But seeing each other through
another winter’s hardness, warming
at the embers of friendship–
that is something more, much more
than smoke and ash.

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Sometime in the Night…(from the journal)

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It was the sound of strong night wind in the trees. Perhaps I woke easily because I’m alone in the house all this week. I had left a window open a bit, and it whistled in the gusts rushing out of the southwest. I got up and closed the window, and latched it. Another storm was blowing in.

Through the black window the landscape of old snow glowed softly under a cloudy moon. I stood at the window several minutes, looked out at the winter land in the pale light. Nestled away next to a hillside farm, our house sees no other house or streetlights. There were black patches of open ground where the snow had melted. The deep woods were still darker than the night. Just west of the house, large oaks roared in the long gusts like lonely old lions.

Perhaps a third of the hills and meadows still shone bluish white with snow across the darkness, those north-facing shadowy places the low December sun could not reach. The air remained heavy and cold. Many folks are already starting to complain about winter, but solstice was only last week. Our winters in recent years have been fairly mild. But we’re just getting started, with three months of lean but slowly lengthening light ahead of us.

I enjoy waking up deep in the winter night. After the dream images fade, somehow thoughts flow more lucidly, like a late-risen moon lifting over the stark silhouettes of trees, lighting the dark land. Daytime thought and action are often anxious and hurried, like gnats insistently buzzing around our eyes and ears, demanding immediate attention. This and that must be done, right now!  We stay busy with a thousand things, but take few deliberate and restful pauses. Thus our minds, our very thoughts, our breathing and our words become shallow, rushed and fragmented. We know little of the clarity and peace that comes from intentional reflection and meditation, simply being present. It seems as a culture we’re addicted to distraction, dissipation, hurrying. Give us anything but quiet, and stillness.

Thankfully, at night all that can be wonderfully different. At least there’s less demanded of us–by others, and ourselves. This particular night, storm gusts are moaning about the eaves, just above the upstairs windows. It is enough, to be warm, and indoors.

I’ll go downstairs and make a cup of chamomile tea, come back to the study, and put down a few thoughts. I do love listening to that elemental sound–strong wind rushing over and about the house, through the winter trees….our various tribes have been keening into that dark music for eons of nights, with fear and wonder, making our own songs in return.

I had an interesting little excursion into the countryside earlier this afternoon. The heavy sky was growing steadily more cloudy, long gray stratus slabs stretching slowly across the blue mountains, promising storm. I drove north along the old two-lane scenic road down and with the river’s flow. It was running full of silty green snowmelt and winter rain. White rapids crashed on large boulders and sunken shoals, creating standing waves of froth. Every half mile or so, I chanced to see a solitary blue heron perched upon the flooded rocks.

In contrast to the miles of turbulent waters, the winding narrow road was mostly empty, only a car or truck every several minutes. Most take the faster four-lane, a few miles to the east. The shoulders of the river road were still littered with storm debris from the foot of wet snow that fell Friday before last. In the already-saturated soil, shallow rooted pines came crashing down under the weight of fresh snow, taking power lines with them. Thousands of homes were stripped of electric power for several days and nights, ours among them.

I drove to the tiny riverside village of Marshall, the quiet streets still decorated with Christmas lights. Marshall has that rare quality of being so raw and real, it almost looks intentional, overdone, like a movie set constructed for a certain dreary effect of impoverishment. But it’s the real thing. Indeed, at least one major movie has had a few scenes filmed on its streets.

In the window of an old hardware store, a few woodburning stoves were standing on display, so I parked around the corner and went inside to check on them for a friend who had weathered the recent storm without heat. The stoves proved to be an unlikely choice, but I walked down a long aisle on creaking, oily floorboards to the back of the large gloomy store. There the owner was sitting alone next to a Fisher woodstove. It was putting out a great deal of heat that mostly lifted to the rafters of the 30 foot high ceiling.

“Heatin’ this old bildin’, why, hit’s a lot like heatin a damned old barn!” the man bellowed, offering me a cane-backed chair with a sunken seat. I decided to stand. We were the only two in the store. It even felt strangely like we were the last two humans left in that gray little town. I think he was glad I had come along, so he could talk to someone. Which he did for the next half hour or so, almost without stop, offering all matters of opinions on various topics from the  speed of gossip in Marshall, to the reasons we had no business in Afghanistan.

Each time I started to say something, he cut me off with another new story line, or his take on what he thought I was about to say. So I just went with this lop-sided conversation, appreciating the fact that I might learn something by listening. Or at least be entertained, if not educated. It turns out he thinks he’s solved a decades old notorious crime that E.Y. Ponder, the long-standing high sherriff of Madison county could not himself crack. I sensed he wanted very much for me to ask him who he thought committed the heinous deed, but I didn’t bite. I didn’t want that kind of information or name running scared and trying to hide in my brain, even if it was only speculative.

And I learned who still makes the best white likker in the area, although most of the old-time moonshiners have all died out. “Moonshinin’s an art. Yessir! Not just anybody can do it.” But he still knew right where to get “the good stuff”, for $12.50 a quart. He called it flu-medicine, saying he took a drink ever now’nen.

And how he thought the great blizzard of ‘93, terrible as it was, couldn’t hold a candle to this recent storm, which did a whole lot more damage, with a lot less snow, according to him. I wouldn’t argue the point, since there may be some truth to his contention about the devastating snowstorm of December 18, 2009.

I stayed in the store, listening to the storekeeper’s history and opinions until almost five o’clock, his closing time. The old store had grown gradually darker. I left him my card, and wished him a better year coming, and walked back down the street to the Trooper, parked in front of an abandoned storefront.

From the main street in Marshall I crossed over the swollen snowmelt river and climbed up into the plateau farm country along the winding Rector Corner Road. The low sun had already been swallowed for the night by approaching storm clouds. Still, it was good dramatic violet light for photographing a few winter landscapes. I pulled off the curvy country road onto muddy shoulders at a few different vantage points. The snowy pastures and woodlands rolled away into darkening purple ridges, the heavy sky, the coming night.

I was composing a scene through the lens when I heard loud rustling, something walking behind me. Just across the road, at the top of the steep bank an Appaloosa was grazing in the briars and short grass near the fence line. He unknowingly posed, a perfect silhouette against the twilight sky. I felt a quiet but deep gladness that it was winter.

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Recent Images, Jan. 010

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Wabi-Sabi

(for Farrah)

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How quickly they pass, these short winter days
you’re with us.
The pale sun has fallen again into the black trees.
Month-old snow remains like the unforgiving cold
in our hearts, the north bank across the river.
The first warm day in weeks, we get outside
no heavy coats and scarves.

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Late afternoon, the white sky washes apricot
like watercolor paper.
I bring you here–you and your camera–to this
wasteland, a shambles of a place:
a railroad siding, a dumping ground
beside the mountain river, flowing fast and dark
with melted snow.
A few Canada geese feed in the withered grass
before another starry night, hard with frost.

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Across the road a bare hillside, the empty prison
gapes, facing us, asking the questions
of a skeleton.
I watch decades of horror record themselves
on your heart, reflect in your face
and in your words–”this is a place of bad spirits,
many bad spirits”.
A Plover rises from dead weeds and flies away
shrieking like a desperate escaping soul.
The stench of sewage drifts upriver to us
from the city’s treatment plant.

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Walking the old train cars with me
you find and touch such beauty, the fading
NORFOLK-SOUTHERN numbers,
peeling red paint and rust.
The Japanese call this delicate evanescence
Wabi, and Sabi.
Ice-blue shadows are hiding underneath.
Two more days, and you’re gone from us again.
I can not face that fact. Instead, I listen:
the winter river breaks, and flows away.

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I think briefly of my father, the many ways he loved me.
Yet so little I knew of him,
his forty years of working with the trains.

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The Old Craggy Prison

Old Craggy Prison, north of Asheville NC
(study it closely; imagine yourself “living” here)

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(From my journal):

Another cold day. My wife and daughter gone to Tampa to visit Diana’s mother for the week.

Late afternoon, I’m ready to get out somewhere. I took Zoey for a drive upriver, to shoot some photos along  an abandoned rail siding near the old Craggy Prison, closed for some years now. What a terribly grim place behind the posted chainlink fences. The faded mustard paint is cracked and peeling. Standing in front of the silent structure, one can’t help but imagine what unspeakable human terror and suffering screamed out behind those walls? What demonic scars inflicted there, that still persist, decades after the prisoners have been released, the old dungeon finally emptied and shut down?

But once our minds pause long enough to feel the true ugliness of this punishing place, comes another question, not unrelated to the other: how many souls in anguish turned their broken lives back to God?  We needn’t pretend a false superiority here. But for a few shakes of circumstance, a wrong decision in a weak moment, and each of us is thrown behind those walls.

“I was in prison, and you visited me”.

I had a strange urge to go inside, take some pictures of the dark halls and the rooms in this horrible penitentiary. I recalled my cousin Danny having been here as a teen some 40 years ago. I am not sure what his original crime was. But I remember well the story of his running away from a road-gang of prisoners working near my mother and dad’s house. I had already left for college.

He made his break from the gang sometime in early afternoon that day, and made it to our door. Mother was shocked to see him, standing very frightened and breathing heavy, in a prison uniform on her back porch, desperate to come inside. Mother gave him some food, but told him he could not stay. He left out the back door and into the woods, where he and I had played Indians together so many times, our growing up years. Danny was wilder, darker, a more natural native than I. I will never forget how he taught me to stalk, to walk quietly through the woods. “Pick your feet up, Bobby! Don’t step on the sticks.” He and I shared a trickle of Cherokee, from a great grandmother on our two mothers’ bloodline, finding its source in an Oklahoma squaw our great grandfather found and brought back to raise a family on the headwaters of the Paint Fork of Ivy River, well over a century ago. But the forest and its ways still flowed strong, in both of us, in different expressions. (Though darker and more sullen than I, I doubt if Danny is writing about these kinds of things as a 60 some year old man.)

The last I heard, after prison he married and raised a family somewhere to the south of Asheville, but has cut himself off from all ties to the family. Perhaps it’s the ugly wounds of shame wrapped underneath an angry blanket of pride. I do hope he found some happiness, and was able to let the great Father touch and heal some of his wounds. From mother’s account, I remember most how much he absolutely hated Craggy Prison, and did not want to go back. Who knows what was done to his young body and soul in that place? Is it impossibly idealistic of me to want to find him, even now, and learn more of his story, perhaps even be an agent of healing? I am so sorry for the pain he had to feel, and I know how easily it could have been mine.

But he did go back. Within an hour of his running into the woods, bloodhounds came baying up the driveway, trailing him. The men asked mother if he’d been there, and she told them he had, because he was her nephew, but that he had gone. What irony, that they tracked him as a scared prisoner, running through the beautiful “Indian woods” of our childhood, and caught him and returned him to Craggy Prison, to finish out his time. I doubt that he got to go out on road gangs any more.

*    *    *

*

*

*

September 8.8

Two hundred year old Canadian Hemlock, spidersilks

*  *  *

Haiku:

Greetings! For quite a few years I’ve used the form of haiku (or has it used me?)  to record the fleeting but often potent impressions of my days. In keeping with traditional Japanese haiku, and since I am a naturalist, my haiku usually include an observation or a reaction to the natural world, the present season, etc. Although haiku as a 3-line poem began in Japan hundreds of years ago, with masters like Basho, Issa, Buson and Shiki, the art form is now practiced by millions of individuals, in many different countries and languages. Haiku are about pausing to notice, to see and appreciate more clearly the moments of particular meaning and beauty, in our quickly passing days and seasons of life with others. The essence of a wide variety of experience, both human and “natural,” can be captured in surprisingly few words. Like anything else, it flows more easily with practice.

In our complex daily lives, indeed any subject, or experience, can be reduced to its essentials with keen perception and an open ‘heart’, finding their expression in the flexible form of haiku—usually 2-3 lines, 12-17 syllables, originally intended to be read in one breath. Some poems may focus on poignant human moments, with no natural or seasonal connection.  Our lives happen right where they happen–deep in a forest, or a big city, in deep solitude or a traffic jam–but always here, always now. Insights can originate from our senses, and yet may vibrate with profound spiritual implications. Daily life is the fertile ground where haiku are most fruitful: rendering the essences of the big and (mostly) small moments and insights of our days. There is often much more meaning and beauty in our moments than we realize. Haiku can and do express the full gamut of human emotions, from childlike humor to the raw pathos of grief.

I hope you enjoy these little poems. But more, I hope they throw a spark of inspiration in your direction, kindling in you a desire to capture your life’s moments with the simple art form of haiku.

(One suggestion, that will enable you to “get” the most from each poem, as well as help you see and appreciate valuable moments in your own day. Just this, (and I fully realize how this advisement runs against the prevailing currents of our shallow and frenetic “culture”) please consider:   although haiku are brief, do not hurry the reading of them.  Breathe. More deeply. Pause. Savor. Process. The three * * * after each poem are to remind you to do this. So please, don’t rush, or skim. Take your time, reflect. Read them each, slowly, a few times. Let each one open up and resonate a bit, releasing free associations in your own experience and memory. In truth, what is written is only one-half of the haiku; the other half is what it does in you. Then it becomes ours!).

p.s.  I want to thank, and honor my oldest daughter (FLG)  for encouraging me to blog on wordpress. It was her blog example and loving nudging, that brought me to this, my first blog page. May the holy ruach breathe deeply in and through us…

* * *

Some recent haiku:

*

8.21.8

early sunlight, high

in the ancient hemlock,

glistening spidersilks

* * *

the bride-to-be stood there

alone, beautiful, at sunset:

the old church causeway

*  *  *

high meadows in bloom:

late-summer phlox, goldenrod,

tall grasses, whispering

*  *  *

8.23

that hard bare ground

along the fenceline, the horses

stand and gaze, across

*  *  *

drought year, the pastures

have gone brown. That great green oak

drinks from deeper springs

* * *

dark latesummer wind

tearing off leaves. Hummingbird

barely hanging on

*  *  *

this dry August wind

in the dying leaves, sounds

like water sounds

*  *  *

12.31.7

storm litter, cast up

to the dunes. Sea-oat wind

scrapes the winter shore

*  *  *

4.10.7

winter dawn, aspens

perfectly still. Each twig

heavy with new snow

*  *  *

8.25.8

what words, for such

‘yellowness’?–ten thousand

daylilies in the rain!

*  *  *

morning News, still folded

in the box. Sunlight opens,

heralds the meadows

*  *  *

12. 31.7

how small, how brief

our laughter, this vast

grey sky and sea

*  *  *

8.26

finally, after 2 years

I grieve for him, alone.

Cool latesummer rain

*  *  *

the first autumn storm

blown in from the sea. Taste

my first cup of hot tea

*  *  *

ancient haiku

and Kitaro. Windows open:

windy night rain

*  *  *

8.28.

expensive birdseed shop–

windchimes, whirligigs

no customers

*  *  *

at The Curves

so many skinny women

come to exercize!

*  *  *

the storm has moved on.

puddles, reflections,

acorns, dropping

*  *  *

9.3.8

night waves rushing in

forever, breaking white

ending with a sigh

*  *  *

how long, each one’s shadow

walking down the shore

at dawn

*  *  *

september dawn

the warm green sea, swells

and falls, around me

*  *  *

around the park:

reading, sleeping, frisbees, love,

delivering pizza

*  *  *

tall latesummer trees

cicadas’ song, and a small girl

taking voice lessons

*  *  *

9.7

during silent prayer

a slight breath of wind

rings the windbell, one time

*  *  *

thick fog at dawn

a large grey heron, flying

silently

*  *  *

after sunset

September fields, the sun

softly lets the moon….

September 10.8

The edge of Autumn, 08

*  *  *

A Voice I heard:

*

At 58 I am still learning how to talk to my Father, the true Father. The “Father of Lights”.

But much more importantly, I am learning how to be still, to breathe more deeply, gratefully. And in that stillness to wait, and to listen, for his Voice. There is much noise and hurry, and many other voices clamoring for attention. But most of them distract and/or divert from our true purpose: listening to the voice of the Father, learning to love and to obey His Voice above all others. In His words are hidden “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”. And love.

Here are some things His spirit spoke quite clearly to my listening spirit three days ago. ( For the purposes of sharing in human communication with others, and to edify my own spirit, I have re-scribed the potent, holy words I heard while waiting, in the spirit. It is a wonderful mystery, how the Holy Spirit, the Ruach of God, speaks the unspeakable to our listening hearts, and how we are able to translate those ineffable and complex truths into simple human languages. The following is true to the original message I heard from the Father):

“Son, regarding your burdens and your request, listen, and receive: I want you to let go. Let Go! LET GO!!   (and keep letting go!)”

“Yes. Give it up. Give it all up. I want you to be free. For that freedom you must let go: of your chronic need to find fault with, blame, criticize, get even with, control, manipulate, impress, crave approval from, or otherwise “fix” others. You are not their spiritual mechanic, or their doctor. I am. Get out of the way, and allow Me to be. You must let others go, as you never have. Give up, on having power over others, acting like they exist for you to direct, or criticize; wishing they were different; or, craving their accolades, their recognition and appreciation of you.  Then distancing yourself, or getting mad at them, when they fail to do as you wish.”

“Others exist for you to love. Give your attention and energy to that, and you will be much happier. If and when you perceive they do not love you in return, deliberately release them, immediately, give each one to me, each one who has troubled you, disappointed you, even hurt you, intentionally or otherwise, it does not matter. Just release them, to me.”

“My dear son, you need to understand this: each and all are broken in various ways, and do not see their own idolatries, strongholds, and wounds, with which they attempt to infect or afflict you . So let them all go, with love, forgiveness, and your blessing. Forgive everyone. Give them, and your pain, to me. I know how to care for them. “

“Paradoxically, it is others who are in fact, controlling you. By not letting them go, with love, and instead blaming them, or craving their approval, you automatically choose to give them power over you. And, as idols do, this one controls your heart, and keeps you from walking in the real freedom and love I desire for you. You have made both the kind and the evil words and actions of others more important to you than I want them to be. I want you to let them go. I created you for a truer freedom and a higher joy than can be found in depending on man, looking to others for your meaning, your security, your identity, your happiness. You have been looking in the wrong direction. I am here, very close to you. I am the giver of joy, and happiness. Right inside your heart is where I want to live, with great joy.”

“As you learn to let go of others, a number of beautiful things will happen in your heart, and in your spirit, as you expand into the fullness I created for you.  But be aware! -as promised in my written words, an emptiness will be created when a man cleans out his house. As illustrated in the holy writings, those same spirits can indeed soon return, bringing others, and make it worse than before. To prevent this from happening, you must keep your heart vigilant, i.e., “guard your heart above all else, for out of it flow the springs of life”.

“Specifically, here is what you must do with the vacancy created by throwing out the idols of controlling, blaming, fixing, criticizing, not forgiving, putting your self above others. Just this: FILL that void–the cleansed and freshly opened places in your heart–with praise, love and complete trust in Me.  Meditate on my words, as if they are the richest, most nourishing food, even as if your life depends on them. They are, and it does.”

“Please remember this vital truth: Only as you surrender, and renounce your critical and desperate need for others to be what you want them to be, will you be set truly FREE from their control. Only then are you able to love me, your heavenly Father, with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. This is what my son Jeshua clearly taught is the first and greatest commandment for all men. In focusing on what is wrong with others, you have not loved me.”

“And what about others? As you grow in your love for and trust in Me, I will enable you to walk in the second greatest commandment.  You will find to your surprise, that as you let go of your need to control others, and to banish their control of you, you will be freed up, empowered to truly love and forgive them, with my perfect love. I will make you free, indeed.”

“I love you son. Share this with others.”  —   -your Father

September 13.8

Early March snowsquall, near Asheville NC

*  *  *

Winter’s End

(From notes on 3.4.8)

*

There is something compelling, although

a bit sad, a melting joy perhaps

that draws our eyes again, again

out to those last lingering scraps

of old, latewinter

snows.

*

Spring is fast approaching, bright yellows

bursting luminescent greens, but these

pathetic vestiges

of February storms–their vast

severe and passionate beauty, fades

forgotten, like torn blue theater-tickets

in wool pockets;

scented lavender scarves stashed away,

dark closets, ’til next year.

Winter’s remnants are thrown

behind the briar thicket, north side of the barn.

And all along the brushy fences

winter’s edge departs, homeless, in patches,

harmless now, in ragged shades.

*

The hold of ice is shrinking by the hour:

thin fingers, their frozen nails letting go:

great reluctance, the thawing land,

our yearning hearts.

Winter’s last hiding place?

–that long blue shadow, cast

by the empty stone silo on the hill;

and in here, embers we keep poking

on the hearth, although we know

they’ve fallen, into ash.

*  *  *

“Ain’t no doubt……

*  *  *

“aint no doubt in no one’s mind

love’s the finest thing around,

whisper something soft, and kind.”

-James Taylor, Gone to Carolina, in my mind

*  *  *

Whatever Else Comes Your Way

Don’t miss the pungent smell, the music

latesummer morning rain makes:

how it dances, hammers lightly

the dry ground, rattles

those first gold birch leaves

drifted down;

*

four crows crying, flying low

toward us, out of the heavy grey hemlocks,

thick shrouds of mist;

*

a handful of white rose petals, dropped

to the black dirt, a long arm

of thorns shaken hard by storms

in the night;

*

dear ones, waking slowly,

coming to you, gentle sleepy arms

and hair, soft morning words

murmuring love, just for you

* * *

Katahdin

Mt. Katahdin, Maine

*  *  *

Packing for a Trip

Bright warm Saturday, early autumn

wind scatters the dry leaves.

I spread old camping gear out

in the mown lawn–a trip next week

far to the North

to climb old Katahdin, again.

*

Opened to the sun, the little tent

unfolds a wrinkled staleness of old smokes.

Fire-stain on the mess gear.

Moss-scrubbed scratches, sand-washed

falling creeks of years.

*

Where are they now? –once kindred ones

who shared the story of those fires

and snows, the heaving shadowed

candle love.

Would I know their faces, perhaps

their voices, long silent on the trails

of my mind. Would they know me?

*

I find a quicker desire, to tell

my daughters: where I’ve been and why

I’m going back twenty eight years later

(as if I know).

*

But the house is empty.

The older daughter is a barista

laying coffee down at a cool java shop,

her first job. And the other, younger one

has gone to the mall with friends.

*

I do not blame them for not being here.

Indeed, we pack, and carry

many precious and heavy things

alone.

*  *  *

Considering Ravens

High country meditation

*  *  *

Considering Ravens

(for Tom Linsley)

*

We rested by the mountain trail

top of a high south-facing cliff.

Latewinter sun, out of the wind

the smell of fir and warming stone.

*

The far horizon flattened out

its waves, pale evanescing blue

like time, like love, the sea.

*

Soaring below us, black wings shining

in wide wheels, dives and cartwheels

four ravens cavorted, chortling.

Just playing. Not nesting or hunting.

For a long time we sat and watched them.

*

Those few elder women

who learned to truly listen:

whose words grew richer, fewer, like the years

they had remaining; sweeter, too

like plums or apricots, ripened

in a warmer sun.

Or those old men who grew smaller,

kinder, wiser in their latter years

yet still flew kites with children–

*

–are they not like the ravens?

Beings who’ve been set free

from self.

The ones who knew at last

how to laugh, to love, let go

in empty air, so full of light

*  *  *

Please read Luke 12: 22-34, and consider

*  *  *

9.29.8

September moon, pines, bamboo

*  *  *

some recent haiku

*  *  *

the strong black tea, steams.

white pages of holy words

rustle, morning wind

*  *  *

a few silver drops,

the early morning leaves.

one white rose in bloom

*  *  *

autumn afternoon

longing Maine’s rough coast, I read

Sarah Jewett

*  *  *

September night forest

chaos of echoes, a thousand

cicadas, chattering

*  *  *

deep night woods

cicadas chant incessantly

like dark, ancient priests

*  *  *

long train, rolling

downriver slowly, into night.

how quick the cricket chirps!

*  *  *

October 1, 08

Autumn morning fog, goldenrod

*  *  *

A few recent moments:

*  *  *

September’s last light

across the deep green fields

brown horses, glistening

*  *  *

the land darkens, cool.

towering above the black mountains

bright cumulus thrones

*  *  *

the whole wide painted sky

fades to ashes, dusk.

one grey appaloosa

*  *  *

the old man, his thin rake

scratches the fallen leaves,

scratches the fallen leaves

*  *  *

night windows:

summer’s last crickets, and rain

softly, September leaves

*  *  *

October 3/8

“A strong nation, like a strong person can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, restrained. A strong nation can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness, and other signs of insecurity.”    –former president, Jimmy Carter

*  *  *

recent moments:

*******

first frost, tonight

fallen from the stars.

Cold black bristling grass

*  *  *

how she prayed for me!

quiet room, that old farmhouse

sunlight washed the floor

*  *  *

(Cardinals in Autumn)

nesting time, he

tenderly put seeds in her beak.

Now, he scares her off

*  *  *

“Redemption” 10.6.8 (revisited)

“Stairway into the dawn, Paris 1908″

*  *  *

I dedicate today’s writings to my son-in-law, Stephan, with deep affection and appreciation for him

* * *

Morning Reflections: “Redemption”

Traditionally, the use of the ponderous word, “redemption” has been reserved for purposes and conversations religious. And so, redemption (along with the monkish connotations that travel with it) tends to lead us away from ‘warm and fuzzy’, ‘user-friendly’, quickneasy, etc. –attributes our present culture likes to demand. (The evidence of this? Our well-acknowledged ‘dumbing down’, our “wide-spread” obesity, our rabid technology’s persistent theft of relationships, the prevailing ethic:I*want*it*now*!). Even church in America is feeling a strong pull toward a drive-thru, consumer-based momentum of instant gratification. Redemption appears to be too complicated, time consuming, perhaps even discomfiting, asking that we see things as they are, not as we wish they were.

At its source, redemption is a very practical term of valuation, having to do with ascribing or restoring worth. But when applied to our eternal spirits, a radically different currency is used than that of the monetary exchange to which we are accustomed: time, talent, labor, barter, banknotes. Disturbing indeed–to realize we are flat broke, and can not earn that currency. Paradoxically, a personal recognition of poverty preceeds the outflowing of redemption:

” Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of Heaven”   -Jesus

So if we are honest, we usually do not feel welcomed by the word, redemption. Too ‘heavy’. Truthfully, it sounds rather lofty for our common thought and talk, our daily round of grabbing at trifles, usually in a hurry, with consequent stress. We tend to place redemption in a category, a shadowy church-box we might enter for an hour or two (partly out of true guilt? partly from real hunger?) once a week or so. Our notions of redemption, for the most part, do not give us comfort. As a result, much of the time we do not walk in the real powers of redemptive truth.

But this is sad, very sad indeed. Because a fuller appreciation and actual experience of redemption reveal it to be the living source of true joy, realized life-purpose and actual freedom. These are among the very highest human realities we were made to experience. But we habitually seek in vain for them elsewhere: from government, career advancement, “religion”, various ’causes’, knowledge, money, stuff, illicit sex, hobbies, pleasure for its own sake, entertainment, chemicals that goof with our brains, etc. etc. etc. Like all societies more or less constantly in a state of grope and flux, collectively and individually we do have our pantheons. And we must have them. We are each created with a strong need and compelling desire for a “hiding place”. We think our gods will help us escape the inescapable facts of human life. Although every idol does have its payoff, not one can offer a crumb of redemption, our deepest hunger. It’s a deep-seated appetite for restoration, some confirmation of our true worth, an innate desire for some lasting significance. It seems we will grab at most anything to get this, or a likely substitute. Watching or listening closely to anyone, we soon learn what is his reason for living, what he is feeding to his soul. It may or may not be redemptive, providing true and lasting worth.

Transcending our desperation is this potent fact: we are not random, nor are we im-personal. We are relational beings. Indeed, both our capacity and our need for redemption grow out of the fact that we were created to “love mercy, do justly, and walk humbly with our God”.  -Our most vital, and ironically, usually most neglected relationship. Also, our bruised and needy lives are intricately intertwined with bruised and needy others. We are engineered, designed: biochemically, anatomically and emotionally, to be deeply cared for and to care deeply, to believe, and to belong– to something, or someone. None of us is in any sense autonomous, truly independent, though how we try to be! In our natural state we are, each one, exceedingly vulnerable, and thus frequently damaged and disoriented by life itself, existentially lonely, wondering and quite insecure.  And so we grasp and clutch, pathetically chase and hang on to almost anything–for a sense of identity, communion and individual purpose.

We hear that initiates in some gangs are told to drink the gang-leaders’ collected urine to show faithfulness to the gang “family”. Talk about communion! In slightly less dramatic extremes, watch how we manufacture and cling: to slogans and cliches; how we run desperately with blind allegiance to this leader, that herd, party or denomination–for security, direction, and meaning–all of which tend to exclude others. Even true non-conformists, and there are very few real ones, for their very sanity and validation always predictably develop credos, codes, and standards, an elitist lingo–all of which promote their own peculiar agenda and community, and thus reject those who do not believe in and speak their particular language. Very interesting. Filial cohesion, of whatever stripe, does not amount to redemption. Although we can point others to its source, humans can not grant redemption.

So even if we choose the extreme of a-theism (so called) if we are honest, we’re back to square one: an unavoidable, and inexplicable need for validation, belonging, identity, security, the very qualities released for us only by a true, and costly redemption. But try as we may, we can not pay for it. We notice very few self-avowed atheists are able or willing to be that needy, and straightforward. Tragically insightful, how often prominent atheists are not able to bear the very real darkness they have created with their “bright” minds, and thus choose to end their own lives. Any child can see how the nihilists aggressively and foolishly disprove their own case. The truth is we all crave, deeply need something in which to believe, a sense of import, inclusion. In attempts to fill the hollow and hurting places crying out in us, we functionally worship at many altars.

It is precisely there, RIGHT THERE, where  the powerful realities of redemption approach each of us–at the finally unavoidable recognition of our limits, how we inevitably fail in many ways.  At that place we at last become able to face our critical need for some guarantee of our essential value, in an absolute sense. This, in spite of our many obvious deficiencies, which can overwhelm us. We have lived enough to discover that solace of this quality is not forthcoming from our toys and hobbies. Nor from rule-keeping, good deeds and mere “religion.”  It is a broad smile on the face of God and His strong forgiving embrace, for which we hunger. Not a gold star, an attaboy, a promotion, more money or stuff. We were created for ultimate and reciprocal intimacy–with God, and with others.

In our home, we enjoy watching movies. We enjoy most a film that will portray a poignant, worthwhile truth in a plausible, non-exploitative manner. Interestingly, in the last year or so, we’re hearing the words redemption and redemptive thrown around quite a lot, describing movie plots and themes, even certain characters. And I am glad to hear the term, see the concept being pursued and employed(sometimes quite accurately) on the big screen where millions can consider: what is actually meant by redemption? Thankfully, even Hollywood is beginning to de-frock redemption of its put-offish religious garb and scent, not too unlike napthalene, mothballs. (Sorry, moths).

An astounding, truly miraculous happening is possible for each of us. (But oddly, it is something we may not even notice, at first). Just this: once we humble ourselves to that point where we enter the liberating process of heart-metamorphosis and exchange, we see that redemption is among the friendliest and most exciting of words. Redemption becomes an unfolding experience in transportation, very much like waking in the morning to a greater light in a new city, or country. That light changes how we perceive, everything. We realize that we had been sleeping, in darkness, under the spell of confusing dreams.

Ironically, in its New Testament origins , the word redemption was chosen because of its practical usefulness as a common term in the marketplace: The scribes of God’s new Covenant used an economic term to portray a profoundly spiritual fact.  Look it up: redeem–to buy or get back, to recover; to pay off; to turn in (a coupon, note, or promise for a discount, free pass, or premium; to ransom; to deliver from; to fulfill(a promise); to make amends or atone for; to restore (to favor) –all very positive, robust actions, indeed!

Redemption is a word I have opened up and looked at much more closely, in recent years. I am very glad to say I am no longer put off by it. It is a “religious” word for me no longer. Now, it carries the hearty aroma of fresh bread, ground from a whole grain; the fragrance of a rare, blood-red vintage, crushed from fully-ripened carefully selected grapes. Redemption has the feeling of a strong warm arm, gentle around my shoulders, by one who knows me intimately, and still loves me, perfectly, tenderly holding me through it all, guiding me with unlimited kindness, wisdom and mercy.

Yet there is more, much more in redemption, than just the mending of our past. We also receive encouragement, renewal and power, as from no other source, for the unique healing path Christ offers, to individually walk with Him each day. His unqualified, illogical and unreasonable affection for each of us is in deed, our redemption, that is, our deliverance, our tangible experience of freedom and realized joy. Wonder of wonders, He transforms the gifts He gave us, and enables each of us to love, and to forgive, even as He loves and forgives us. As we expand into that amazing truth, very real chains drop away from our minds, our hearts. We become free, indeed.

For many years now I have enjoyed the writings of Oswald Chambers, a very gifted young man who lived on this earth from 1874-1917. His grasp of the truths of Yeshua, the Christ, was both unconventional and profound, as evidenced by the fact that his writings have remained in print and popular, for many decades. Reading him is both challenging and exceedingly rewarding. The topic for today, in his well-known book My Utmost for His Highest, began my inspiration for today’s blog. I am including here selected passages from today’s meditation: “The Nature of Regeneration”. As you can see, it sheds a bright and clear light on redemption. I hope you will give this some earnest “heart time”, and that you will allow the truth of Christ presented here to enter you, to redeem you, to reform and encourage you. May you experience His love for you.   -Quilla

The Nature of Regeneration”    -October 6, from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers

“If Jesus Christ is going to regenerate me, what is the problem He faces? Simply this–I have a heredity in which I had no say, or decision. I am not holy, nor am I likely to be; and if all Jesus can do is tell me that I must be holy, His teaching only causes me to despair.

“But if Jesus Christ is truly a regenerator, someone who can put His own heredity of holiness into me, then I can begin to see what He means when He says that I must be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into anyone the hereditary nature that was in Himself.   …My part is simply to agree with God’s verdict on sin, as He judged it on the cross of Christ. (With that agreement, the process of redemption can begin).

“The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a person is hit by his own sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the son of God…. “until Christ is formed in you”. The miracle of redemption is that God can put a new nature into me, through which I can live a totally new life. But I must get to that point. God can not put into me, responsible moral creature that I am, the nature that was in Jesus Christ unless I am aware of my need for it.”

“Redemption means that I can be delivered from the heredity of sin; that through Jesus Christ I can receive a pure and spotless heredity, namely, the Holy Spirit of God.”

October 7, 08

Aspens in winter

*  *  *

Recent moments:

*

in the drier, clothes

tumbling. Pleiades

rising over the trees

*  *  *

Her old parents, ailing.

My wife gone for a week.

Autumn moon, setting

*  *  *

I dig up summer’s spent

flowers, my mother’s garden

her eightieth autumn

*  *  *

(a memory):

*

midnight. the snow finally

stopped. Two feet deep. Silently

she walked away

*  *  *

hundred year old

wildwood church, boarded up.

the wind, the stream. . .

*  *  *

many years after:

whoosh of raven wings

over the black firs

*  *  *

October afternoon

birds all silent now, but

the neighbor’s rooster

*  *  *

October 8, 08

Sugar maple, Kimberly Avenue, Asheville NC  10.8.8

*  *  *

autumn rain drums

stop for a second,

we pass under the bridge

*  *  *

drops of morning rain

interlocking rings, suddenly

vanishing

*  *  *

You are anxious and troubled about many things. Only one thing is needful.  -Luke10: 41-42

“We think there are a thousand things we should be concerned with, but there is actually only one. If we take care of that one thing, all the others will find themselves done. And if we fail to take care of the one thing that is needful, all the others–no matter how successfully we may seem to do them–will fall into ruin. So why are we so torn between matters of the heart and our worldly cares?

“Father God, give me the grace to be faithful in my actions, but indifferent to success. The only thing I ought to be concerned with is to desire your will and to quietly meditate on you–even in the midst of busy times. It is up to you to crown my feeble actions with such fruit as is pleasing to you–and none at all, if that is what you find best for me.”    -Fenelon

*  *  *

“Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance”  -Jude, vs. 2

October 10.8

October rose

*

petals already fallen

around the vase.  but

these scratches on my hand….

*  *  *

imagined a wild sweet

bird flew in the opened window,

flew out again

*  *  *

*  *  *

Now the Dogwood Trees at Dusk

are almost naked, shake with windy rain.

Red leaves scatter the long dismal lawns,

the empty park.

*

Crows are barking at the approaching darkness

harshly, as if angry and lost, wanting

our hearts forever stained with shadow.

They fly off to roost in the tall black spruces.

*

But through the rain I also hear

more hope-filled notes:

a small girl finishing piano lessons.

A joyful pink raincoat carrying books and music

she sings down the worn stone steps to the car,

pays no attention to the dark trees

full of angry crows.

*

Her mother talks a moment

on the wide covered porch

to the kind teacher with white arms, folded

against the damp and cold.

She says good-bye, and walks back

into the lights of her old house.

*

Back in the car, in her wet purple raincoat

the mother fumbles a moment with her purse

and keys. They drive away, talking

laughing, mother and daughter

down the darkly shining windy street

of fallen leaves, into the rainy night.

*  *  *

-Observed on a quiet street at twilight

a mid-October evening, 2006,

the day after my oldest daughter left home.

October 16 (from 10/11-Revisited)

Home

*  *  *

When my gifted counselor first gave this picture to me a couple of weeks ago, to be very honest, I politely thanked her, but inwardly I reacted somewhat in this manner: “that’s very nice, cute and sweet and all, but what has that got to do with me? I’m not that lamb. I’m not innocent. Nor am I young and tender any more. I’m bruised and scarred, weathered with much wandering and willfully getting lost in brier thickets and steep cliffs, I’m weary and blood-stained from being chased by devouring wolves. But neither am I that weak and helpless. Yes, life is tough, but I’ve learned how to handle it fairly well, on my own, of course with God’s help in the truly hard places. I do stay in frequent touch with him. So what has that picture got to do with me?  That picture is for spiritual babies.

But I was challenged to look at it, more closely, to get beyond the superficial “cuteness” and raw innocence of it. I became aware that I needed to allow it to penetrate my heart, to let myself SEE what is really going on in this deceptively “simple” sketch, depicting the embrace of perfect love. I have put the picture on the wall above my desk, right in front of me, beside a lamp, where I look at it several times each day. Sometimes I even go beyond merely “looking” at it, opening myself to truly pondering it. It continues to exert and reveal its gentle redemptive power to me.

As is true with many things portraying emotional and spiritual truths, we discover layers. Many layers. Actually I think the layers exist more in our own hearts, and minds, than in the artwork itself. By the miracles of creativity, the art is just a medium, transferring something infinitely more brilliant. This curious, searching light, if we allow it, has the power to find us ‘where we live’, and peels back our accretions of tough protective tissue. Ironically, our layers desensitize us, letting us ’survive’, rather than truly live, by walking in the light of God’s healing love. It is His radiance that shines a very real kind of light into the depths of our secret and personal shadows. We are permitted to see things to which we had been blind. The power operative here transcends mere intelligence, or knowledge, in the same way a shining white stone tumbles down through fathoms of dark waters.

It is possible for these epiphanies to happen as we welcome that light, allowing it to reveal to us what it will. But more often, “life happens” to us, and we are made to look at things, others, and see ourselves as we really are. Having experienced both methods a number of times, I assure you, the former path–the one of chosen surrender–although somewhat humbling, is much more pleasant. Deliberately abandoning the narcissistic need to be my own god effectively means I choose to relinquish the seductive illusion of control. This significant spiritual act always results in an expanded capacity both to receive, and to express: affection and mercy. “God resists the proud, but comes close to those whose hearts are broken”. When a hard wind and rain blow away our “props”, as they can and do, we discover, among many other things, we aren’t who we thought we were.  We’d been in a fog, dreaming vanities. As we awake, this picture of the Shepherd tenderly holding a lamb becomes much more sharply etched, poignantly beautiful to us, revealing levels of needful comfort and belonging that go beyond words. Unfaithful sons return stumbling and starving from the many piglots of life, and from lifeless and shallow religions.  Amazingly, when all the dust clears from our crumbling idols, with eyes wide open we can see the Father eagerly waiting for us, arms outstretched with redeeming love.

In the past two weeks or so since I was first given this picture, I’ve come to see it much differently. Day by day I am admitting to the realization that this charcoal sketch has everything to do with me. It is the toughened, wounded cynical orphaned rebellious stubborn prideful “self-sufficient” SELF-righteous rebel who tries to rule my heart,  –he is the one that does not want to look at this picture. Yes. –that grotesque unloving caricature of the man I was created to be, indeed, the man who, in Christ’s love, I truly AM. He is a miserable facsimile of the real me, he is an impostor, a deluded conceited fool who is repelled by the transforming powers of divine love. He is the one who is afraid to face the truth. (I think you know what I am talking about; he manifests in each of us, in various forms). I am discovering that I must actively renounce him, and his insidious strongholds on me, daily. He wants very much, to sit on my throne, whispering half-truths and appealing lies. But as I learn to depose him, repeatedly, I become more open, receptive to the truth. I’m  given a keener, clearer vision, able to see the Shepherd and lamb picture as if it were drawn for me. It was.

Two hearts are beating in the picture. One heart beats with this vital truth: my part in the divine relationship is to consent, to let myself BE LOVED, and FORGIVEN, allowing myself to be tenderly held–by the very God I have resisted, denied and from whose love I have tried to escape. Each of us in his own way has willingly let the combined powers of pride, fear, and unbelief do this to us.  The inevitable result of this is that we have been lead far away from the intimate affection and protection portrayed by the simple strokes in this picture.

So let me pass this challenge along to you.  (Please, do not skim this. You do not really have anything more important to rush off to.)  Look at this picture long enough to get beyond your surface reactions to it. That’s important. And then, over the days and weeks, begin to ask yourself these questions: “Could this picture be possible, for me?  Could I, by some stretch, be a lamb of God? –totally forgiven, held with a tenderness beyond all imagining? Could it be true? That, my friend, is up to you.

Can you picture yourself in this personal cameo, held closely by this sacrificial shepherd—the very Lamb of God, Yeshua Himself. If not, I would challenge you to ask yourself, why not?

It’s a very important question, tantamount to another question asked by the same shepherd: “Who do you say that I am? ” You will never be asked a more critical or practical question. If you are brave enough, and take the time to answer it with full honesty, your answer may be quite revealing. If you are truly courageous, ACT on the obvious implications of your answer. Everything will be transformed for you. But YOU are the only one who can do that. May God’s Spirit help you with these things.

*  *  *

“I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”   -Romans 8: 38-39

*  *  *

“O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out, and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.

“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

“If I say ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

“For your created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you”.   from Psalm 139

October 13/8

…there walked one among us, who burned with the love of God for us, yes! how she burned with love for God’s Christ.  He is the pure Fountainhead, the true source of her deep and genuine affection, and her abiding joy….

*  *  *

walking to worship

surprised! -a few sparrows

burst from the cold vines

* *  *

she’d told no one til now,

with tears, a nickel she stole

75 years ago

*  *  *

newspaper, wind-bells,

gold leaves rustle me to dreams–

inside, a door shuts

*  *  *

its quick shadow

streaks across my page,

settles in the trees

*  *  *

autumn morning sounds:

*

Gregorian echoes.

Slow tires crushing acorns.

a faint ticking….

*  *  *

RL

*

deep lines in his face

smiling, smelling of coffee

he asks for old maps

*  *  *

October 15.8 (for October 16, scroll below)

October sunrise

* * *

Windless forest:

leaves falling, a sound like

footsteps, and whispers

*  *  *

all these colored leaves

flickering down. the skeletons

they leave behind

*  *  *

Beyond the old farm-shed

fields of goldenrod, ground fog

autumn morning moon

*  *  *

a thousand miles away

I listen, feel her pain.

Rain tears off the leaves

*  *  *

*  *  *

The smell of Tea

*

Hauge said “a good poem

should smell of tea”.

*

I don’t think he meant

just those words with fragrance

of steeped, black leaves

from China or India, the piquant taste

lingering on our tongues.

(Ah, that would be nice).

*

Maybe this: the way the wide grey lake

steams in wind, November mornings

a raft of geese is quickly leaving, the water

flinging off their wings.

*

My little daughter’s hair, autumn days

playing in the leaves.

When she was happy helping me

split and stack the fresh-cut cherry wood

and the mountains were still young.

*

A room once full.

Stale emptiness now,

the faint dry smells of February, snow

whispering against the windows.

Soft piano notes

remembering.

*

Raw cold dirt, finally thawed

and broken open, for seeds.

Noses and fingers

nearly frozen

planting the first snow peas.

*  *  *

Once, upon a time…..

Old store on Bald Creek Rd near Bee Log NC                 10.15.8

(Please click on the photo, to enlarge)

Mountain Farm, early morning

October morning under Firescald Mtn NC                     10.15.8

(Please click on the photo, to enlarge)

Old plank bridge

Plank bridge over Bald Creek near Roaring Fork NC       10.15.8

(Please click on the photo, to enlarge)

Ecclesiastes 3: 11

Dogwood, mid October, Lotties Creek NC

(Please click on the photo, to enlarge)

October morning fields, fog

Bottomland fog near Flat Creek NC                              10.16.8

(Please click on the photo, to enlarge)

Autumn morning meadow

Private mountain cove, Lotties Creek near Bee Log NC

(Please click on the photo, to enlarge)

October maples and barn

Mountain Farm on Bald Creek NC                                10.15.8

(Please click on the photo, to enlarge)

Near Firescald Mountain

Maples in October, McKinney Gap NC                    10.16.8

(Please click on the photo, to enlarge)

October 20.8

October fog, near Elk Wallow Gap, NC                          10.17.8

(Please click on the photo, to enlarge)

*  *  *

Some recent moments:

*

She looked up

from her cheerios–saw a fox

crossing the far meadow

*  * *

Dawn’s cold fire:

from blue shadows, yellows burst,

and the cardinal’s breast

*  *  *

Even at mid-day

shadows reaching longer

like cool fingers

*  *  *

Sabbath morning joy:

others still asleep, I walk out

into cold fog, bright leaves

*  *  *

Morning-glory vine

twines its purple blooms, around

the bleached horse skull

*  *  *

(Matthew five, twenty):

*

Cold white morning fog.

Pondering those holy words,

and October’s white roses

*  *  *

November approaching,

the hills beginning to look

like a Wyeth sketch

*  *  *

Two white moths, spiralling

upwards, as one,

the autumn sun

*  *  *

Why is it–we let

so many other things, steal

moments of stillness?

*  *  *

Sirens screaming past.

Two hundred year old oaks

slowly dropping leaves.

*  *  *

Through thick morning fog:

crows’ harsh laughter,

white-throat’s tiny flute

*  *  *

Here, such stillness.

But on that far hill

gold trees, shimmering

*  *  *

October 21.8

Birch sapling, below Rocky Knob                                 10.17.8

(please click on photo, to enlarge)

*  *  *

Earlier this morning I was listening to one of my long-time favorite teachers, Chuck Swindoll, a man with more wisdom and joy than most ten people you are likely to meet. As much as Chuck laughs and relishes life—in his mid seventies he still rides a big Harley—it’s quite obvious that he loves Christ and His words far more.  (Which probably explains his high quotient of wisdom, love and joy, since these are the real fruits of fully loving God). I would like to be more like him (both Jesus and Chuck). He is such a living encouragement that growing older does not have to be a deterioration into bitterness, blaming, regret, boasting and whining. (These ugly habits often start developing naturally at a very young age!)

Since I was driving while listening to Chuck’s words, I did not write them down. But like a good teacher, he repeated them, and referred back, so I think I got most of the two important principles he was teaching. So I am paraphrasing. And I have added some of my thoughts and responses to what he was saying. I hope you enjoy these few paragraphs, and meditate on them. I see the need to take certain steps to apply them in thought, and relationships. Chuck’s words contain far more gold than most of the stuff we hear:

“Over the years, I have found that these two truths apply to all of us. The first involves our human relationships:  Most of the time, we do not get what we deserve from others. So don’t expect it. It works both ways, with our successes and our failures. When we have done something well, often we do not receive the degree of praise and recognition that we think the “something” deserves. You can almost count on it. In fact, some of our really significant victories, achievements, etc. are not even noticed by others.”

“Until we accept, and make peace with this fundamentally human FACT, we will waste a lot of time and energy being hurt, or disappointed, sulking, or trying to ‘get even’ with others in various ways. We think someone slighted us, or did not love us well by not noticing us, not paying us more attention. We need to realize that usually, his or her “neglect” did not have much to do with us, personally. We just ‘happened to be there’, and our behavior or words catalyzed a reaction in them. Realizing this is most liberating! (Perhaps they even said something needful for us to hear.) Most of us are so self-focused, we don’t see or hear others very clearly. We do not appreciate the depths of her individual pain or insecurity; nor do we see that his actions and attitude may be the natural fallout that results from his serving some imbalanced or foolish agenda. Understanding this does not make unloving behavior right. It just empowers us to refuse to take it personally. Seeing others as they are also enables us to choose to forgive. The truth is, every one of us frequently forgets who we are, and why we’re here. Thus, it’s inevitable that we are loved but poorly, by humans, much of the time. And we often reciprocate in similar fashion”.

“This truth also works with our “dark side”–our many failures, oversights and omissions, our more deliberate sins. Regarding these, if they are even seen or known by others, (which they often are not) we usually do not receive the degree of chastisement or questioning that our actions truly deserve, if they were made public.  For better or worse, there are few if any, who know or love us well enough to clearly perceive our heights OR our depths. Therefore be very grateful for someone who loves you well enough to see you more fully than most do, and is willing to comment on both the true goodness to which you’ve risen, and the darkness to which you’ve fallen;  and, who is able to steady you with appreciative, restoring affection and mercy. That is true, unselfish love and friendship.”

“The other truth, quite in contrast to human realities, is this: your heavenly Father always gives you what is best. You can count on that, and so you should. This best usually will not be on your terms, or timetable, or served to you just the way you want it. But if you are looking, you can see His loving hand reaching toward you, faithfully loving you, attempting to restore you, through it all.  It is His plan for each of us, to believe and walk in this foundational FACT of God’s love. Indeed, accepting the Father’s personal love actualizes our capacity to receive and express love–toward God, and others. But this all begins in a very private relationship with our loving Father-God. This is very key, and central to all of life, and loving. Because the quality of that friendship openly demonstrates, to everyone, the extent to which we actually do love His words, and trust Him with our lives.  Everything else flows out of this. You will find no exceptions. We each need to expect less of others, much less. And to believe more in our perfect Father, much more. Here, we become truly secure, allowing His love to flow through us out to others, without the need to judge or reject them for their failings. This is the way Christ Himself loves each of us. That truth will set you free, from much unnecessary pain. It will also enable you to make a creative and positive difference in the lives of others, because they are no longer “on trial” before you. That is why loving God is the first, and greatest commandment, for all of us.”

-paraphrased and amplifed from Chuck Swindoll’s message, 10.21.8

October 22.8

October Rose

*  *  *

“I have noticed that wherever there has been a faithful following of the Lord in a consecrated soul, several things have inevitably followed, sooner or later. Meekness and quietness of spirit become in time the characteristics of the daily life. A submissive acceptance of the will of God as it comes in the hourly events of each day; pliability in the hands of God to do or to suffer all the good pleasure of his will; sweetness under provocation; calmness in the midst of turmoil and bustle; yieldingness to the wishes of others, and an insensibility to slights and affronts; absence of worry or anxiety; deliverance from care and fear—all these, and many similar graces, are invariably found to be the natural outward development of that inward life which is hidden with Christ, in God.”     -H.W.S.  Oct.21, Daily Strength for Daily Needs

“Seek first His kingdom, and His righteousness”    –Jesus

Early snow/ “It is always NOW”

Dave Moore, North face of Big Snowball Mtn.              10.29.8

*  *  *

A bit about Haiku, living in the present, walking in the Spirit:

(a remix, from earlier)

Please see haiku, below article

*

This morning I saw a phrase that caught my attention: “It is always now”. Actually, it was the title given to a beautiful, reflective piece of flute and guitar music, either the particular song that was playing, or the album project itself. Unfortunately I did not catch the artist’s name. I appreciate the gentle yet pensive arrangement of notes, calling me to to pause and rest, breathe more deeply, let my mind slow down and quieten a bit, in the healing beauty of that moment.

Those words caught my eye, because that realization—It is always NOW—lives at the heart of haiku writing, a diminutive art form that for many years I have found useful for capturing the essence of insights, and daily moments, big and small. (See recent haiku below this article, and on the posts of other days).

Indeed, this truth also beats at the very heart of the Christ-life: the vital importance of Now, and its linkage to eternity. He teaches me to slow down, give myself more completely to the present moment in which I am living. At this level of heightened awareness, I am able to rest in the moment, listen more closely, talk less. I begin to actually see those individual persons with whom I am involved, enabled to “BE HERE NOW” for them.

This inner, spiritual expansion is a gradual process, reaching outward. By practice, I can learn to enter into the sanctuary of everyday happenings and persons, enlightened by God’s words, and His presence. In that beautiful place, He shows me something truly amazing in its simplicity, and directness: It is the Father’s pleasure for me to love others, as and where they are, right NOW, just as He loves me. This wonderfully challenging and creative task of living in the Now, begins by just being present for those immediately before me. For this, I must put my own agenda aside, opening my attentiveness to the needs of others. You can call this process an ongoing, and willful surrender. It is a calling––first, to slow down, listen, and see. Then, to give.

This emphasis on presence contrasts sharply with two common self-oriented preoccupations: shuffling through the mental albums of the past, or its opposite—projecting onto my mind-screen those hypothetical pictures of what I think, or hope, or fear is going to happen. For the most part, our notions of past and future are highly subjective, and thus distorted, illusory. But so much of our mental time and emotional energy is given to either, or both: cherishing the past or regretting it, eagerly anticipating what (we think) lies ahead, or dreading it.  Either of these concentrations effectively prevents me from being totally present, always giving myself to the most important moment: this one.

As a culture pathologically shallow and in a hurry, our life-energy and attention are often dissipated, fragmented by multi-tasking, and dazzling gadgetry. Someone insightfully commented: “it’s as if our whole society has ADD!” Communication and transfer of information must be instant, brief, often truncated with interruptions. It seems that a few bytes at a time is all many of us can absorb.

(I realize this is not light stuff. So at this point it’s okay if you take a break, go check your messages, or something more pressing).

Just one unfortunate result of all our rushing is this: we barely know, much less believe or practice this simple but powerful truth: BE, HERE, NOW. . . And WAIT . . . on the Lord. Let him catch up with you! HE has some things he wants very much to say to you, and through you. Could that be one of the primary reasons we do not slow down, and listen?

It is joyfully possible for us to grow in our capacity to be more fully present, to learn how to “be still, and know”, to savor and to ponder, to love more sincerely, and tenderly, perhaps even to understand. “In quietness and confidence is your strength”. Yes, I can actually learn to embrace the present circumstance, giving myself more singly to that person or task right in front of me, as I open myself to its possibilities. Of course this does mean slowing down, saying no, or please wait, to many things. It is a deliberately learned discipline, empowered by the stillness gathered in frequent meditations, allowing God to breathe his words, slowly and deeply into me.  Many of our leaders today talk very rapidly, as if desperately trying to keep up with the frenetic culture, and in their haste, somehow be more “relevant”. And so we have not been taught how to do this basic human/divine act: be still, meditate, seek God’s wisdom, patiently allow the hurts in our hearts to surface to the light, where they can be healed. (As a result, we also grow in our empathy for the wounds and yearnings of others).

In contrast to this inner path of restoration, much of the emphasis is placed on doing. And not doing. Perennially, and quite paradoxically, good remains the greatest enemy of the best. Martha was a good woman, “busy with many things”. But her sister “chose the better part” -Jesus

When will any of us “get” this fundamental truth?

Perhaps because stillness resembles death in some ways, we are afraid of it. But meditation on God’s words kindles holy desires in my heart: to burn with a cleaner flame and less smoke; to be whole, de-fragged; to have my various elements cleansed and integrated, and thus more closely resemble my Lord. Wonder of wonders! Scriptures do not record him hurrying, ever. He always took the time, and gave it back, fully—to whomever or whatever was before him.

As I study Christ more closely, I see clearly that he was always completely present for each person or group he encountered, one hundred percent focused.  Jesus lived eternally in each moment, a pure fire of holy love that would not be extinguished. By his Spirit, he has passed that flame to us. It is his spoken desire for each of us to burn with that same purity, the quiet intensity of sacrificial love. Those types of beauty radiate uniquely from each of us, as we choose to allow the mystery of his Spirit to live in us, his holy Ruach to breathe his life through us; indeed, as we decide to “abide in his love”.

It is a dynamic mystery, but one thing Christ was trying to teach us is that eternity itself, the kingdom of Heaven (which we often mistakenly think is off in the future somewhere)—is closely linked to and enriched by the love we first receive , and then give back to the billions of present moments that make up our lives. This increased awareness calls for, even demands, a far greater degree of openness, submission, vulnerability, TRUST, and OBEDIENCE—an immediacy of servitude, than we are accustomed to giving.

To experience this level of love and mercy, we must first let go of the myth that happiness, or success, is found in having, getting, and doing. This trinity of idols continually entices, briefly satisfies, and then leaves us, disappointed, over and over, always craving more. “The eye of man is never satisfied”. Although nothing is intrinsically wrong with any of those three, when we make them our reason for living, they each disintegrate, like dust, “right before our very eyes”, as promised.

It is in Being that we discover our essential identity, and purpose. Out of that central core of life–the kingdom of God, within you––having and doing find their proper expressions. Seek first His kingdom, His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Where, what, and on Whom we fix our gaze, makes all the difference! We do tend to get exactly what we seek.

To move in acts of mercy, forgiveness and love, we also abandon our compulsions to fix, blame, judge, control and impress others. But this important ‘horizontal’ movement must follow an even more critical and decisive ‘vertical’ action:  we willfully and continually relinquish the sovereign throne of our hearts, to the one who rightfully desires to rule there, in the ongoing present of our lives. His sovereignty actively reveals itself in our relationships and circumstances (or it does not):  in the many choices we make each day, in the eternal NOW of passing moments.

(For a few more thoughts on writing Haiku, etc., please scroll down to the introduction, September eighth.)

*  *  *

Some recent moments:

*

The jogger runs past,

his shadow following

on the fallen leaves

*  *  *

Cemetery flagpole

the rope rings, and rings. . .

night wind

*  *  *

Windy autumn rain

whirling all the bright leaves down,

the old trunks don’t move

*  *  *

Cold morning, barbershop:

92 year old, loudly

cursing the president

*  *  *

cold wind blew

the smoke away, as we talked,

but his few words…

*  *  *

Waking late at night:

the Hunter has risen,

the floors are cold

*  *  *

Waking, 3 a.m.

a truck out on the 4-lane.

winter stars

*  *  *

Haiku aren’t ‘out there’

but ‘in here’.   And yet

a fox barks in the night

*  *  *

Words rise from the heart.

Orion rises

out of the dark trees

*  *  *

Billy Collins’ poems:

a dry crust of rye, served

with fresh marmalade

*  *  *

together:

*

visiting granddaughter

walks the little dog. Grandmother

walks her wooden cane

*  *  *

She tries so very hard

to be the Queen.  But knows

she’s just another pawn

*  *  *

James 1:22-25:

*

I know what you’ll do

with this: feel quite strongly

then walk away, forget

*  *  *

eyeing each other:

*

She walks two red chows,

he a mousy Shi-Tzu.

It’ll never work

*  *  *

The autumn park:

children’s laughter, a cool wind

tearing down the leaves

*  *  *

First snow, Big Snowball Mtn.10.29.8

(Please click on photos, to enlarge)

Into the high country, with a friend

10.29.8 hike from Beetree Gap to Hawkbill Rock

(Please click on photos, to enlarge)

“What are you’re asking me?”

NE, From Hawkbill Rock, NC                                                              10.29.8

(Please click photo, to enlarge)

*  *  *

“God takes a thousand more times more pains with us, than the artist with his picture, by many touches of sorrow, and by many colours of circumstance, to bring us into the form which is the highest and noblest in his sight, if only we receive His gifts and His myrrh in the right spirit….

“No heart can conceive in what surpassing love God gives us the sufferings we endure; yet this which we ought to receive to our soul’s good, we let pass by us in sleepy indifference (or resentment) and so we often miss the point of much of the difficulties before us. Then we come to complain: ‘Alas, Lord! I am so dry, and it is so dark within me!’

“I tell you, dear child, open your heart to the pain, and it will do you more good than if you were full of feelings of devotion”   -J. Tauler

“What are you asking me?”  -theme from the movie, The Village.

Beyond the Immediate

Toward Mt. Mitchell (highest peak in eastern U.S.)        10.29.8

(Please click photo, to enlarge)

*  *  *

“You sometimes complain: of your birth, your training, your employments, your hardships; but I encourage you, never fancy that you could be something if only you had a different lot and sphere assigned you. God understands His own plan for you, and He knows what you want a great deal better than you do. The very things that you most deprecate, as fatal limitations or obstructions, are probably what you need most. What you call hindrances, obstacles, discouragements, are probably God’s opportunities.

“Bring down your soul. Or rather, bring it up, to receive God’s will and do His work—in your lot, in your sphere, under your cloud of obscurity, against your temptations. Then you shall find that your condition is not opposed to your good, but really consistent with it.”   -H. Bushnell(1802-1876)

“For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. . . When you pray, I will listen. If you look for me whole-heartedly, you will find me.”      Jeremiah 29: 11

“a complex Music, the colours of autumn” -dave moore

West face of Big Snowball Mtn                                    10.29.8

(please click photo, to enlarge)

*  *  *

“Through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, carefully guard the precious truth that has been entrusted to you.”   -2 Timothy 1: 14

*

“I cannot tell you how much I love you. But of all things I have most at heart, with regard to you, is the real progress of your soul in the divine life. Heaven seems to be awakened in you. But it is a tender plant. It requires stillness, meekness, and the unity of the heart, totally given up to the unknown workings of the Spirit of God, which will do all its work in the calm soul, that has no hunger or desire but to escape out of the mire of its earthly life, into its lost union and life in God.

“I mention this out of a fear of your giving in to an eagerness about many things, which, though seemingly innocent, yet divide and weaken the workings of the divine life within you.”    –William Law(1686-1761)

Emergent

Sunrise, Beaver Lake                                                  10.31.8

*  *  *

Emergent

(A poem written in Spring, for those already gone, those yet unborn)

*

We like our lakes to be full.

But the eighty-year-old impoundment

in our town has been drained, nearly empty

a few weeks now.

(They’re fixing a rusted valve near the bottom

of the tall drain tower).

So it’s almost down to its deepest channel—

the small wild beaver-creek, tamed

and buried underwater long ago, dammed

by men, to form the pretty lake.

Now, the ancient skeleton of finger ridges

and caved-in hollows stares up at us

like bones, a face in a dug up grave.

This place of sour mud is ugly, stinks

like death, those things we’ve trashed,

forgotten, sunk from sight.

*

I walked the littered banks, the ledges

and shelves of exposed rock, an old beachcomber

finding what he could find, poking about

the fallen water’s edge.

Here one reads the legacy of rusted scraps

and shards of glass, scrawled by culture’s hurried hand.

Time’s long tides passed, the dried-out crusts

of broken silt yield more beer bottles

than anything else. And a ‘75 Toronado.

Someone even found a can of human ash.

Hundreds of bleached mussel shells, cracked open

by herons and raccoons, who left their penciled tracks.

I brought home a sand-logged camera

and a fishing lure—its hook was stuck

in a stump—and an old blue medicine bottle

long submerged, a smooth-washed driftwood root.

*

We like daylight more than dark.

Give us bright surfaces, not the murky depths

(we’d rather float on top, and toss our trash).

We’re desperately afraid of stillness, emptiness;

of pain, and illness, the hard true words they speak.

*

But this morning very early, even before

the slow dim forms of hills emerged

from the deep and empty lake of night

I walked outside. And watched. Listened,

long minutes. I heard, but could not see

the whistling wings of doves, descending

to the ground, to feed.

The lantern glow of fading stars

was taken by the rising opalescent light: a copse

of wild plum trees just in bloom.

Blossoms beginning to gleam, incandescent

with morning, and with Spring—little candelabras

lifted, their white goblets of petals, raised and full

of fragrance, to the rebirth of the land.

*

And I am reminded once again

of the invisible ones—the guardians,

the gatekeepers, those who see us;

the vibrant Springs, and loves already gone.

It is their wineglasses lifting

this pure, hope-filled scent of unborn fruit

for us—to the lovely face of God, the merciful

healing shores of dawn.

*  *  *

November 4.8

Elk Mountain farm, near Asheville NC             Late October/08

*  *  *

” Injuries can hurt more in the remembrance, than in the receiving of them. A small hurt shall go as it comes; a great injury perhaps may dine, or sup with me; but I shall let none of them lodge with me. I let them all go.

“Why should I vex myself because another hath vexed me? Grief for things past that cannot be remedied, and care for things to come that can not be prevented—both of these may easily hurt me, and can never benefit me. I will therefore commit myself to God in both (past and future) and rather choose to enjoy the present day.”     -Joseph Hall (1574-1656)

*  *  *

“Renew your image, Lord, in me.

Lowly, gentle may I be.

No charms but these to you are dear.

No anger may you ever find,

no pride in my unruffled mind,

but faith, and heaven-born peace be there.”   – -Paul Gerhardt (1606-1676)

*  *  *

“if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins”.   —Jesus

Recent haiku moments:

*

Five older ones

do Tai-Chi together, slowly

the long tree shadows

*  *  *

the old master

to the eager student:

don’t talk. just do

*  *  *

pale earth dust

shining, dark side of the moon

what beauty, in shadows!

*  *  *

The sound our steps make

walking on the wooden bridge. Water

rushing underneath

*  *  *

Hard frost this morning.

This afternoon, that fragrance

in the wilted rose

*  *  *

November 5.8

Signpost shadow on asters, Asheville NC              11.4.8

*  *  *

The Clock, and the Great Ballroom

*

The house is dark, and quiet.

The wall clock clicks its little marks–

minute plastic wheels enmeshed

with interlocking tocks and ticks

and chimes: a programmed march

of manufactured arcs and circles, fixed

on tiny axles, a mechanism, designed

to roll along a long invisible road

like a galaxy, a curving

unseen line out to infinity,

pulling us with it

turning two thin arms called hands,

well-trained to point at numbers

on a face, telling us

our place, in time.

It is now, 3:29.

*

It’s precise, yes/no rhythm steps

like little feet, the feet of death

up and down the listening night.

It walks our dreams, and drops

its bits of sound, like coin

into the wishful fountain stream

of sleep. We travel there, like children

or angels, freely, without clocks.

*

But out in the dark

howling oaks, November winds

come roaring again

like Banshees unlocked,

their ancient living limbs entwined

and groaning, how the Spirit groans

to God at night, with words

too deep for words.

Sparkling silhouettes dance like mimes

across our window panes.

‘It’s only wind, with shadows tossed’

that tears away the year’s last leaves.

Nonetheless, they help us grieve,

and let go all we’ve lost.

*

I put on coat and shoes

and walk outside. The stars

do not sleep, but keep a slow grace

of pirouettes with such precision

down our centuries, these

far-flung elegant geometries.

Black oceans of sky flow through

the naked trees. Unnumbered whorls

of galaxies drift so far from us, they hide

beyond our sight.

They tumble to us just a few

their cast-up nautilus shells

of light.  Translucent snails, they scrawl

shimmering silver trails of dust

a hundred thousand light-years wide.

*

The windy late autumn night

blows open for me, this celestial door

to a great ballroom. (Far past midnight

the guests have all gone home.

I’m left here watching, quite alone).

The cosmic ceiling spins dark sapphires, bright

with shadow dance:  A silent waltz

of fire, and ice

sprawls beyond the reach of clocks

across my turning skies.

*  *  *

November 6.8

Sycamore, maples, late autumn, Asheville NC

*  *  *

“This pearl of eternity is the temple of God within you, the consecrated place of divine worship, where alone you can worship God in spirit, and in truth. When once you have become well-grounded in this inward worship, you will have learned to live unto God above time, and place.

“For every day will be Sabbath to you, and, wherever you go, you will have a priest, a temple, and an altar along with you. For when God has all that he should have of your heart, when you are wholly given up to the obedience of the light and the spirit of God within you, so that you will only in His will, you love only in His love, you are wise only in His wisdom, then, it is that everything you do is a song of praise, and the common business of your life is being shaped into God’s will for you, on earth, as angels do in heaven.”

-William Law  (1686-1761)

*  *  *

“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple, and that God’s spirit lives in you?”

-1 Corinthians 3:16

*

“The Kingdom of God is within you”.    -Jesus

*  *  *

November 10.8

Approaching storm                                                    12.28.7

*  *  *

Recent moments:

*

Grey gold morning:

low clouds, slow strokes of sun

softly strummed guitar

*  *  *

crows are calling

across cold morning fields.

Night hounds baying, the far hills

*  *  *

morning scriptures

I keep moving my chair

into the sun’s light

*  *  *

The last few leaves

rustle on their twigs. Nuthatches

scratch the bare branches

* *  *

November 11. 8

*  *  *  *  *  *

*  *  *  *  *  *

The year’s weight of leaves

thousands, flickering down

windlessly

*  *  *

November 13.8

Old woods road, late autumn dusk, near Bearpen Gap

*  *  *

Falling:   leaves,    rain,    night.

Down the dark hall someone said

“tomorrow’s Thursday”

*  *  *

Some recent observations (late November 08)

Changing, even as we watch…

*  *  *

The Topic is Change…..Part 1 (a reprise):

!Change! In the last year we’ve heard a great deal in our country about the need for it. We didn’t hear anyone bragging about the status quo. Indeed, the results of the recent election expressed a loud national outcry for major adjustments in the way we live and govern ourselves in the United States. And it appears Mr.Obama will be capable of delivering at least some change, on some levels.

Having voted a straight conservative ticket the last three decades, I now join in that newer cry, and I celebrate the awareness of our need for thoroughgoing reformation, in many arenas. And yes, I realize that some vital concerns were (cleverly) not even addressed in the campaign. But I am not surprised.

I have believed the “republican” myths, and I have voted, watched, and waited. I have seen the inflated posturings for what they are: for the most part, windy political enticements to the “religious right”, to gain our votes. Along with Dr. James Dobson and many other prominent Christian leaders, I am tired of being pandered to, lied to. Obviously, for me and a host of others, it did not work this time. Especially with the old-guard McCain, and his much ridiculed choice of the exceedingly charming but poorly educated beauty queen, Palin. Many of us who paused to think about it objectively, found ourselves asking, is this the best the party can put forward? Then (we) deserve the serious rebuff we got. Maybe we got the message, maybe not. Again, I would not be surprised. I do not even want to believe what I saw this morning: a bumper sticker:  “Palin in 2012″. We need help. Serious help. It is no wonder Mr. Obama won by a (very predictable) landslide.

*  *  *

*  *  *

But all that aside as temporary, and behind us now, we face the eternal “Given”: The internal machinery of our federal government is so gigantically complex, its momentum so fixed, it is questionable how much one man, or group of men, can alter the course of that sluggish (mostly benevolent) monster, hopelessly entangled in itself. “Good luck, and God-speed” Mr. Obama. You’re trying for the ionosphere, and we want you to, but you’ll have to move deep magma at the very core, if you want fundamental change. I am praying for you daily, and for your beautiful family, as holy scripture encourages me to do. I do not have to agree with everything you do, or say, to honor and respect you.

Over the decades, after all the posters and slogans are thrown into the trash, with a sad honesty we recognize a pattern: that various “changings of the guard” do not deliver as much difference as was promised, as we were, once again, given the right to hope. But the very fact that something deep in us continues persistently to hope, against all likelihood, for life to get better than this, –this yearning itself, to resiliently hope, tells us something interesting and beautiful about ourselves, the way we are made, the hearts we are given, to innately expect purity, justice and integrity.

*  *  *

*  *  *

Perhaps we keep placing our hope and our fervor in the wrong direction? Do we keep on campaigning for the wrong sort of king? What is it we’re told, repeatedly, about ‘the princes of men’? If we are fully honest and un-biased, with eyes wide open (as very few of us seem willing to be), we easily acknowledge that both political parties suffer abundant corruption and willful deceit. Each has its predictable mythology of worn-out cliches, along with its obvious reality. Just one vital example/fact: republicans like to talk “less government”, blaming democrats for excessive spending. Pure myth. In the last 27 years, beginning with the Reagan watch, by far the greatest increases in our national debt (now approaching TEN TRILLION$$!!!) happened under republican presidents. The congressional brand does not seem to matter much. The truth is: our government is just like you and me–it LOVES to spend! Ironically, a great deal of our spending is borrowed, from China.

As for the hot-button social issues conservatives love to hate democrats for—abortions and the homosexual movement have both thrived under all presidents, who tend not to touch either of those two items. So why tell me “to watch my wallet if Mr. O gets elected, or “we won’t recognize America when he’s finished with it”. Please, give me a break from that kind of shallow non-thinking. Besides, couldn’t America use a serious face-lift? (Not to mention critical heart surgery?). Many agree that our nation needs a real revival, a return to basic spiritual rootedness. But we tend to think it’s for someone else, not us.

*  *  *

As I watch and listen, I find this fact quite interesting: Nominally, we claim Christ as our King, THE King of all Kings, the Lord of love. But as I observe the consistent disconnect between those words, and our others words (and deeds), I must wonder: Have we not confused our natural patriotism and tribal spirit with our identity as eternal citizens in the Kingdom of God? That kingdom of compassion and mercy is operative and observable, right here, right now, in each one who has been purchased outright, with that King’s blood. Or it is supposed to be, in all areas of our lives. But politics and a mature faith in the the Messiah are difficult to mix, like water and oil. Jesus himself knew that well, and gave us stringent cautions against it. Our passionate allegiance is necessarily reserved for one king.

*  *  *

*  *  *

The need for a shift in leadership was obviously due at this time, perhaps overdue. If that disturbs you, you must get over it. I encourage you: relax. Rest in God’s power, and long-term plan. Look at history. He often uses powers and persons we would not, to accomplish His greater purposes we did not (or would not?) see, to effect Godly changes we could not (or would not?) make. If that shoe fits (and it does, even though it has a few pieces of loose gravel in it), let’s walk in it awhile, perhaps with a limp. It’s clear we need very much to relearn some basic essentials: to expand our world-view, to re-consider some vital scriptural concerns, to which we’ve obviously not given much thought. I’ve discovered that walking with a limp is far healthier, and ironically much more secure than walking with arrogance, and the blindness that automatically results from self-righteous pride.

Even a slightly altered (but very fundamental) viewpoint lets us know that God’s plans and his ways are much higher than ours. He does not have to conform to the wishes of our little party. Or even our entire nation, especially if we habitually wage war more readily than we pursue peace. Along with millions of others, I have gotten rather weary with the tones of our (conservative) mean-spirited public rhetoric, and our individual conversations that communicate quite clearly that ‘God is on our side’. As if He has to be a republican, a conservative.  We need to pull out the old Dylan song which speaks directly to that myopic condition, and give it a very close and thorough re-listen.

And we need to acknowledge the considerable body of evidence openly displayed in the words and life of our Savior, which clearly demonstrate that He was the most liberal of liberals, by our definition of the term. At the same time, He was the most holy man, ever. He did not compromise or confuse truth with love. Nor did He make the opposite mistake.

*  *  *

*  *  *

Change? You bet! Yes, we desperately need some of that, on many more fronts than we’re comfortably willing to consider. But with Gods’ ways, it may not be the change we thought was needed most. We’re often too busy pointing the finger of blame at someone else, and name-calling –clearly not the marks of a Christ follower, (supposedly) empowered and guided by mercy, wisdom, patience, kindness, gentleness, humility and forgiving love. I routinely hear (supposedly) mature Christians calling others “morons”.  What was it Jesus said about calling someone “fool”?

So. Let’ see what happens. I ask all you down-trodden defeated ‘conservatives’: Reconsider. “Return to the ancient paths”. Do “all things work together for the good, for those who love God…” or do they not?  Who are we to challenge that word? Does “blessed are the Peace-makers” apply to us, or not? What about the poor in spirit, the meek, and those full of mercy? Are we, first and foremost, living vehicles of restoration and redemption? Are these the qualities we are most displaying? It’s mirror-time.

*  *  *

*  *  *

At a recent Palin rally, she attacked Mr. Obama for “pallin’ around with terrorists”. Her ‘charm’ and Joe-Sixpack right-wing zeal-appeal stirred the crowd of conservatives to chants of “KILL HIM! KILL HIM! KILL HIM!. Sound vaguely familiar? It should. Tragically ironic, isn’t it? Is that murderous mob passion from God?

“A thousand people in the street, singing songs, and carrying signs, that mostly say “Hurray for our signs!”  —For what it’s worth -Buffalo Springfield, ‘67

Thank you for reading this far. I want to continue pursuing the topic of CHANGE from a different angle, in a later post. Still remaining is what I started out to say, when I got curiously detained by the need to comment on the recent political events in our nation. Please check back for a more personal meditation on the topic of change.

May God open the eyes of your heart, to see as He sees. He will certainly give you his wisdom and his love, if you ask him, with an open and humble heart.  For a wonderful beginning place, please read, and meditate on Psalm 119. Also, Ephesians chapter 1, verses 15-23. God will bless you, as you open your mind, and your heart,—indeed, your very life—-to His eternal living words. They are words rich with wisdom, and holy love.

-Quilla

*  *  *

Monday, November 24.8

Day’s end, southwest Virginia, 11.23.8

*  *  *

Recent three-line word sketches, from a thousand-mile journey to my father-in-law’s funeral:

*  *  *

Cold sunset, slow

trumpet notes. The soldier

gives her a folded flag

*  *  *
*  *  *

This long winter road

so many miles, so far to go.

You peel a tangerine

*  *  *

*  *  *

Cold slate slabs of sky.

Grey woods filling with snow.

Crows eating a road kill

*  *  *
*  *  *

for Steve, and “Inky”:

*

86 year old

talks endearingly, about his

20 year old cat

*  *  *

*  *  *

Listening to him

life seems all about

how smart. Or not

*  *  *

*  *  *

Cliff-face in winter:

water-stained rock, veins of ice,

thin tree shadows

*  *  *

*  *  *

Once a warm life,

now a flat frozen thumpthump

under fast tires

*  *  *

*  *  *

They said these same things

25 years ago.

Still, it’s mostly talk

*  *  *

*  *  *

Even when it’s still

that windy winter tree

keeps the shape of wind

*  *  *

*  *  *

Mechanic

asks me what equipment

I work on? I don’t tell him

I make poems

*  *  *

*  *  *

Sparkling cold sun

vanishing swaths of blue snow.

Last summer shows through

*  *  *
*  *  *

Family huddled around

a flag-draped coffin,

freezing sunset wind

*  *  *

*  *  *

All the unknown names

carved into cold stones:

we laugh, knowing……

*  *  *
*  *  *

Motel room, alone.

Upstairs, a toilet flushes.

How cold, the long night

*  *  *

*  *  *

Day’s last light

a large flight of wild geese

goes quiet, settles on the pond

*  *  *

*  *  *

Frozen grey morning

long black skeins of honking geese

scribbling sky-haiku

*  *  *

*  *  *

Across the aisles and stacks

of countless books, briefly

eyes meet. And look

*  *  *
*  *  *

We talk all about

herbs and health, over

large plates of roast beef

*  *  *
*  *  *

Death came by, tonight.

How bright, the risen moon.

How black, the jagged trees

*  *  *
*  *  *

The father is buried.

Now his loved ones go to their rooms

and sleep

*  *  *

*  *  *

*  *  *

An Invitation:

*

Notice your moments.

Sketch them: words, paint, photo, music, stone.

And share them.

They are a gift to you. Each second

is rich—-with beauty, and meaning.

Every one of your minutes

from birth, til death, holds truth.

(The trick is seeing it, catching it).

It is all passing, so very quickly.

We need to see what you see,

feel what you feel.

It is uniquely you.

Please. Let us.

-Quilla

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

*  *  *

Christ-mas parade?

Mt. Katahdin, the north face, from Pamola

Two-century Whiteoak, early November

The texture of time

Monterey Cypress

Memory

Stronghold

Narragansett Bridge

Maple, Beaver Lake, Asheville NC

Sycamore

*  *  *

Night rain blowing in

the last few leaves flutter down

I put on Chopin

*  *  *

Seascape

Stillness

Cold, wind-driven rain…..

Windy rain, birches, reflection

*  *  *

Cold, wind-driven rain

whispers a few leaves

against the window pane

*  *  *

Rooted

autumn morning

Victory

December 2.8

OH, I miss YOU too, so much!!!!

Here’s looking at you, Kid!

Out of Africa/Looking for the King

Crescent moon, December dusk

*  *  *

Word-sketches of recent moments:

*

Remains of the Day:

*

Darkening  mountains

Venus gleams. One high gold

jet-trail, streaming west

*  *  *

A single grey thread

our chimney smoke vanishes—-

vast winter stars

*  *  *

Thick frost bristles

the black moonless grass,

thin blue starlight

*  *  *

December morning:

*

A few snowflakes.

High in the windy birch limbs

the lisps of waxwings

*  *  *

Like wild cats, red-eyed

banshees screaming the dark streets—-

ambulances

*  *  *

“Let every heart, prepare Him room….”         -Joy to the World

“Skytsengelen/Guardian Angel”

*  *  *

Skytsengelen/Guardian Angel

-by Rolf Jacobsen

*

I am that bird that knocks at your window in the morning

and your companion, whom you cannot know,

the blossoms that light up for the blind.

*

I am the glacier’s crest above the forests, the dazzling one

and the brass voices from cathedral towers.

The thought that suddenly comes over you at midday

and fills you with incredible happiness.
*

I am one you have loved long ago.

I walk alongside you by day and look intently at you

and put my mouth on your heart

but you don’t know it.

*

I am your third arm and your second

shadow, the white one,

whom you don’t have the heart for

and who cannot ever forget you.

*  *  *

by Rolf Jacobsen, Norwegian poet

1907-1994

(translated by Roger Greenwald)

*  *  *

‘they will know you, by your love”….  Jesus, Yeshua, Messiah

Over the dark cold river….

*  *  *

Over the dark cold river

stark winter trees  show us

how to grieve, and praise

*  *  *

River stone

*  *  *

“Be not over-mastered by your pain,

but cling to God, you shall not fall.

The floods sweep over you in vain,

you yet shall rise above them all.

For when your trial seems too hard to bear,

Look!  –your God, your King

has granted all your prayer.

Be content, therefore, His perfect love

and wisdom is for you.”

–Paul Gerhardt (1606-1676)

*  *  *

Dark forms of stone

how very slowly, wash away:

timeless river’s song

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My hands—a dry net

of scars, wrinkles,  bones

—the cold winter sun

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Heavy morning cloud

shadows the frozen land.  Wood-smoke

drifts through bare trees

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How the bright river

leaves its long story, its song:

the face of river stones

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Morning stillness (december 9.8)

*  *  *

Soft piano notes

flames flutter in the stove

outside, the storm howls

*  *  *

“Yes, blessed are those holy hours in which the soul retires from the world to be alone with God. God’s voice, as Himself, is everywhere. Within and without, He speaks to our souls, if we would hear. Only the din of the world, or the tumult of our own hearts, deafens our inward ear to it.

“Learn to commune with Christ in stillness, daily. And He, whom you have sought in stillness, will be with you when you go abroad.”

-E.B. Pusey      (1800-1882)

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“The great step and direct path to the awful reverence of God, is to meditate, and with a sedate and silent hush, to turn the eyes of the mind inwards—there to seek, and with a submissive spirit wait at the gates of Wisdom’s temple; and then the divine voice and distinguishing power will arise in the light and centre of a man’s self”

-Thomas Tryon ( early 1700’s)

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sycamore leaf, late november

*  *  *

One brown leaf, fallen

to the brown earth: its shadow

fell with it

*  *  *

“Be not afraid of these trials which God may see fit to send upon you. It is with the wind and storm of tribulation that God separates the true wheat from the chaff. Always remember, therefore, that God comes to you in your sorrows, as really as in your joys. He lays low, and He builds up. You will find yourself far from perfection, if you do not find God in everything.”

-Miguel Molinos (1627-1696)

Water and wind, iron and stone

Water and wind

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Iron and Stone

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Christmas window (12.11.8)

Self-portrait in a Christmas window, Charlotte St., Asheville NC

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“There are many doors to Narnia”

Old fenceline, Willis Gap, Madison Co., NC

“Winter River”

Rock wall beside the road

“Freedom within boundaries”

“Walking into the winter trees, at sunset”

“Old Messages”

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Differing expressions of the same faith

Or, whose birthday is it, anyway?

So let the bells ring!

*  *  *

“She and her mother visit the Priest at sunrise”

Winter rain, winter leaves

Winter abstract, in concrete

Mountain pasture corner

December road

“Our Soul’s Deep Thirst” –(photo/poem)

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Our Soul’s Deep Thirst

(A modern psalm)

*

Father God, eternal breath

of Yah-Weh, yearning your first desire

for us in that perfect garden, long ago.

Later, you led us out of bondage,

spoke fierce words of holy love, to us

in a burning desert tree.

*

At last, perhaps: are we starting to grasp

and see your invisible shapeless form?

We’ve so often had you wrong

this long trail of centuries.

Forgive us, O God!

We got deceived. We let ourselves believe

you were nothing more than rules, carved

by heaven’s hard steel hand

in earth’s grey mountain stone.

We saw you an angry face of flint, forever

unpleased with us, aloof, alone.

So we rebelled. We ran from you.

*

But came a dawning star, a fallen rose,

a broken Lamb: the passion of your lovely Christ

has shattered stone!

His lifeblood spilled, He filled

the deep and holy cup of your desire.

He opened the very sky, and our sightless eyes

to see—the Father’s heart is not cold

nor set in stone.

More like an ark of hopeful light, approaching us,

a living flame, flickering through

our oceanic dark, and storms.

Oh how could we have missed you?

*

Drawing near you now, in truth

we see your essence—-hungering

holy fire, an untamed love, craving

others to come near you, and to burn

with that very same consuming desire!

And nearer still, until we perfectly know

and love: your perfect heart, and will.

*

Following you, we grow up, drop our toys

and other cravings, one….by….one.

Broken, they litter this broken desert road.

You are the one clear spring.

All our thirsts are quenched, in You.

*  *  *

Merry Christmas!!!

Winter images

Greetings! Welcome to my journal of photographs, and writings.
Rest here a few minutes from our crazy, fragmented world gone mad with gadgets, grabbing and rushing. Please, for your own sake, do not rush through. Take a few deep, unhurried breaths of praise, and give yourself the time to enjoy these meditations in light, and in words. 

Shalom!  And the peace of Christ to your soul.   

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“Between us and Yourself, O God, remove
whatever hindrances may be;
so that our inmost heart may prove
a holy temple, fit for Thee”.  

—Latin mass of the 15th century

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“Yes, all by You is ordered, chosen, planned–
each drop that fills my daily cup; Your hand
prescribes for ills no one else can understand.
All, O God, is known, to You”.

–Adelaide Leaper Newton  (1824-1854)

* * * * Fourth night of Hannukah * * * *

 

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My Mother’s Voice

(Revised; to be read aloud)

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A hard winter night, listening

to her talking to me on the phone.

She’d just come home, three days

in hospital. Her life’s strong voice

was withering, scattering

like dry December leaves.

She even said she’d asked the Lifegiver

to take hers back, and let her leave.

Its greenness gone, she felt alone

spent and done with it, she said.

*

After we hung up, I put on

my dead father’s warmest coat,

and walked out into the howling dark.

Rags of thick cloud dragged

like a sad wraith, across the frozen moon.

Strong winds were bending

even the older, deeper-rooted trees.

Large black branches twisted, moaned.

*

Like thistledown, light snow

was spinning round the sickle moon.

Fine sharp snowflakes prickled my face.

Across the icy stones some withered leaves

went scraping. That sound was like

an old woman’s voice,

as if all her summer times

were past.

*

Down through the dancing black silhouettes

of windy trees lining the night street

I saw a bright and frosted window

filled with evergreen.

It was lit with twinkling lights

in the darkness and cold, sparkling there

like our eternal childhood, waiting

for everyone to see.

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Please read thoughtfully: Romans chapter 8, verses 18-25

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Festival of Lights

“Look!  A light shines in the darkness. 
And the darkness has not overcome it!”     —-John

That same light shines into the darkness of your soul, and mine, if
we but let it…..

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We give you glorious praise, O God, the Father of Lights!!!!

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 “I create the light, and I make the darkness”  –Isaiah 45:7

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“Do you know the way to the home of light?”     –Job

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February images

Snowmelt

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Seeing

An avid photographer for many years, I am often amazed at the remarkable differences between merely looking, (or visual scanning) and truly seeing something.  When I am at a location, actively shooting photos and trying to capture, or interpret the scene, my visual antenna are operating with a relatively high degree of sensitivity.  I’m searching, paying close attention, much like the heightened senses of a hunter. My eyes have been trained to frame objects and spaces in a rectangle with a 2:3 ratio. This is how we “bag” wild game in this craft of  stalking with a light-box.

Here’s an odd analogy that might help illustrate these two very different functions, i.e., scanning and seeing. It’s the contrast between gulping food, swallowing it half-chewed (or less), and  taking the time to chew and savor the complex of flavors in each bite. One is done hurriedly, and (sort of) gets the job done, while the other  eating method takes more time, but yields a richer eating experience. Nutritionists tell us that deliberately slowing down and chewing our food more thoroughly, makes the food more digestible, actually making the nutrients available and nourishing  to us. Interesting. The crude analogy works, illustrating an important truth.

I have learned that what separates the two activities—quickly scanning and actually seeing something, --is the motive behind the action. As with most activities, the reason for the action largely determines the quality of the outcome. Hence the adage: “you get out of something exactly what you put into it”. How true.   “A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest” –Paul Simon.

One can quickly scan for a variety of reasons, e.g., just to get a general idea or scope of the material presented; hurrying due to a perceived lack of time; rushing simply because one is used to rushing everything (the common inertia driving this culture); or skimming the surfaces of things mindlessly, just to pass the time in “cruise mode”.  In this easier approach, we only utilize a fraction of the mind’s power to explore something,  and discover what is really there. And of course there is laziness, (unfortunately) the default mode for most of us:  a reluctance to engage. Involvement takes time, energy, creativity. “I don’t have time for that right now” usually is not the truth.  We kid ourselves, a lot. (Watch closely, what you actually do with the time you did not have!) “I don’t want to give what that requires of me”, is much more accurate.

To illustrate the amazing differences between visual scanning, and truly seeing,  I suggest the following experiment, using the pictures below. Instead of breezing quickly through the pictures, first, make a deliberate decision to slow down, before you start viewing them. It helps to take a few deep breaths, and get rid of other preoccupations.

It’s noteworthy that  just making the decision to slow down and focus, demonstrates how powerful is the momentum to hurry, and rush through things. Notice that something quite persistent in us does not want to go more slowly! Pausing, becoming more receptive and still, is a learned skill, an outward expression of an inward grace. We must call on our whole being to cooperate and integrate our various faculties.  Body, mind, heart and spirit, all are involved in the complex act of living more completely in the present moment, being still, truly listening,  seeing.  When I intentionally open up more fully to receive what is before me, I begin to see what I had not before, and to actually experience things in a different manner.  My degree of receptivity–to a photograph or a person–makes all the difference!

Next, after deciding to proceed at a slower than normal pace, spend at least 15 seconds looking at each photograph in this manner:  let your eyes take in the overall image, so that you see the ‘big picture’ presented by the photograph. It’s as if you’re leaving your world, and entering  into the image itself.

After you start beginning to see the image,  that is, letting yourself enter the picture (and it enter you), then, for another 20 seconds or more, let your eyes and your mind investigate the details of the photo, paying particular attention to the relationships between the various objects, colors , textures and spaces in the picture. (The spaces are often as important as the subjects themselves).

The next step, and the most important, is to consciously notice your reactions to the photograph, and the associations it gives you from your own wealth of experience and emotions. This is a vital act of transfer, which can happen (or not) between the art and the viewer. In that decisive and life-giving act, the picture no longer belongs to the photographer; it enters and becomes part of your living experience.

This mindful approach to seeing something takes some effort, at first, but the rewards are there. One of the results of truly seeing something is this: your mind will have a near-total recall of the image in considerable detail, depending on how much you opened your mind to investigate and experience the content. You will have gotten something you did not have before. As an added benefit, your imagination will (hopefully) have been engaged and stimulated a bit. The photograph might even leave some imprint upon you–perhaps an emotional, or spiritual reaction. It’s important to recognize that impact, whether subtle or profound. Sometimes a definitive call to action might be in the works for you, as a life-response.

Of course, this little entry into the vastly complex world of seeing is not just about photography. The ability to truly see  (or, to care-fully listen to someone)  is a rare gift, by which we share our world with others, and receive them into ours.  Enjoy the gift of seeing! Then give it away, share what you’ve seen. Participate in, and enjoy the visions of others. Practice being  more fully here, now.

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“If I really am always and equally ready to do whatsoever my King appoints, all the trials and vexations arising from any change in His directions, great or small, simply do not exist.
If He appoints me to work there, shall I lament that I am not to work here? If he leads me to wait indoors today, am I to be annoyed because I am not to work out-of-doors?
If I meant to write His messages this morning, shall I grumble because He sends interrupting visitors, rich or poor, to whom I am to speak, to show kindness, for His sake, or at least to obey His command: ‘Be courteous’ to them?
If all my members are really at His disposal, why should I be put out if this day’s appointment is some simple work for my hands, or errands for my feet, instead of some seemingly more important doing of head, or tongue?”   (am I still my own, or do I belong to my Lord?)

–F.R. Havergal   (1836-1879)

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My life, O Lord, is in your hands.
And I know your hands toward me, are good.
Have mercy on me, and save me.
And use me, if it pleases you.
My hands, my words, my very thoughts–
may they be filled with goodness
as you live your life, this day, in me.

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The Gift

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A Winter Love Poem

(From a young wife to her husband,
often away at night)

Softly, large flakes of midnight snow

come whirling down around me, feathers

circling round the tall street light.

They fall like dying moths, ghost wings

lost and spinning back to earth,

pale remnants of our summer dreams.

But you’re not here to see them with me, love.

Not here to chase and catch the falling flakes

with open mouths, hot tongues stretched out

laughing clouds of steam like dizzy children,

delighted to kiss these flying crystal things

thrown like magic dust upon us,

flown straight from heaven, wild and white.

No. You’re out there in the winter night.

And the night—unspeakably immense

dark eye, its gaze glares out above, beyond

the snowy twinkling land.

These pathetic rows of street lights

with their sparkling haloes—Ha!

they scarcely penetrate the swirling dark.

I fear your being out there in the storm, love

driving home, the streets all glazed

a treacherous maze and web of safety, spun

with danger, sudden loss.

Waiting for you, not knowing—enough, almost

to make my soft heart crumble inward

like a warm snow-cave,

burying everything huddled inside it

like a small candle.

Oh how I wait and long, the warmth of you!

But here is One whose strong love shelters, 

holds me close, his mystery words and ways

tender and constant, than even you, dearest one.

And so it should be. We do believe

He chose to weave my life-thread into yours,

and yours in mine.

 

He tells me again, again, again

across all time, I’m not alone.

Never to let my little candle-lit heart

cave in—the heavy snows of fear.

For He is near. He shows me often,

at night, alone like this: His lamp

of hallowed love, of holy words

illuminates the winter night—

cold shadows cast by fear.

In Him, I find a home that’s true.

Indeed, this inner hearth, and fire—His love

for me—it keeps this tallow lit and burning

faithful love, for you.

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For Farrah and Stephen,  January 09

Surrender (see item below photos)

Surrendered

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River trail

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Winter wedding

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Leaves, by Leo Monahan

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Surrender to Divine Love

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We frequently hear the word “conversion” used in religious and spiritual conversations and writings. But I’ve noticed that different traditions tend to give this important concept various meanings. Yesterday I saw one of the best definitions of the term I have encountered. It is, all at the same time, comprehensive yet very specific, simple and  practical, yet profound.

I read this in the brief weekly installment that comes to me from graced@gracedagain.com, compiled by Tom Wood. I have enjoyed Tom’s concise selections for several years now, chosen from a wide range of Christian thinkers over the centuries. I do hope you get something from this concentrated treatment of conversion.  These paragraphs are adapted from  Surrender to Love, by David Benner.

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“Conversion is the lifelong transformational process of being remade: into the image of God.
It is so much more (than what we normally think it is, namely) simply trying to avoid sin.
The focus of repentance and conversion must be Jesus, not my sin nor my self. My attachment to sinful ways of thinking, being and doing is much too strong to ever be undone by mere willpower. There is no substitute for surrender to divine love as the fuel to propel such change.

Divine love, i.e., accepting the gospel of Christ, transforms both my heart and my will. Divine love enables me to choose God’s will over mine. Without this, repentance will be nothing more than a self-help scheme based on effort, and resolve (and the mistaken notion that I can fix myself). “

–David Benner,  Surrender to Love

Controlling your thoughts……

“We take captive every thought, to make it obedient to Christ.” –2 Corinthians 10: 5

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“There is another kind of silence to be cultivated, besides that of the tongue, as regards others.

I mean (the inner) silence as regards one’s self—restraining the imagination, not permitting it to dwell overmuch on what we have heard or said, not indulging in the phantasmagoria of picture thoughts, whether the past or the future.
Be sure that you have made no small progress in the Christ-life when you can control your imagination, so as to fix it on the duty and occupation actually existing, to the exclusion of the crowd of thoughts which are perpetually sweeping across the mind. No doubt, you cannot prevent those thoughts from arising. But you can choose to prevent yourself from dwelling on them; you can put them aside; you can check the self-complacency, or irritation, or earthly longings which feed them.

By the practice of such control of your thoughts you will attain that spirit of inward silence (and true peace) which draws the soul into a closer intercourse with God.”    –Jean Nicolas Grou,  1731-1803 

A daily prayer-verse:

“Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.”   —Psalm 19: verse 14

February 6/ Just who is in charge?

Life force

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I am coming, quite slowly, to the fundamental understanding that the circumstances of my life are not random, nor happenstance, not even the smallest detail of any moment, of any day. Every single thread is part of a far greater weaving, which I am able to glimpse only in small portions, and for brief moments of insight. Most of the time I am abysmally nearsighted. But I am now absolutely convinced that Someone  is behind all this. That Someone possesses unimaginable intelligence, creativity, passion, playfulness, humor and love.  As is also true of us, “by His works, we know Him”.

But in the darkness cast by much scientific theory, especially over the last century or two, in those shadows it becomes somewhat easier to try to believe in randomness. At first glance, entropy even has a strange sort of attraction of its own, at least to the natural man. For if randomness is true, then there is no authority,  no right or wrong, no ultimate accountability or responsibility for anything. Simply stated, nothing and no one has purpose, reason or meaning. No one is in charge. Therefore all moral codes and efforts toward the redeeming spiritual values of love, kindness, patience, forgiveness, humility, etc., are a worthless waste of energy and time, nothing less than a farce.

Under the dominion of randomness, this whole thing is nothing more than a fierce chaos, unfolding. The picture of a handful of marbles being thrown into a busy street comes to mind.  (But if we think about it just a bit, we realize someone or thing had to throw the marbles, create their roundness, and the laws of physics, by which they bounce and roll, etc., etc.). Quite interesting, that randomness is either oddly quiet about such questions (as it should be), or it babbles the  verbage of an idiot. –if you can stomach it, read some of the profane stupidity being written by several best-selling (so-called “bright”) a-theists nowdays. In all honesty, one must ask: would the world as they would have it be worth living in? Does anyone really want to be like these arrogant fallen ones? For indeed, we do become like those we emulate–whatever god we choose to worship. We are made that way.

But if one is intellectually honest and brave enough to face the logical consequences  of a real universe functioning on the “rules” of happenstance, the attraction of it quickly fades.  The ridiculous and absolute impossibility of such a reality quickly emerges, intuitively,  even to such small minds as those of children, and to some of the very brightest among us.  Sadly, many others do not see the truth of these things, because they do not want to see it.  Facing it would mean that they are not in charge of life, or God, or the way things are.

To keep it simple, there is far too much order, cause and effect, and yes, beauty, joy, truth and consequences, for randomness to even begin to explain. So one inevitably comes to the conclusion that the true advocates of randomness are, as holy scripture defines them in many places:    wilfully blind fools.  ”Always learning, but never coming to a knowledge of the truth”.  “Thinking themselves wise, they become fools”. Unfortunately the case, regardless of what types and degrees of “intelligence” those advocates of randomness might possess.  They’ve wasted their gift.

Furthermore,  even the investigation of randomness, and the strong desire (on the part of some) to prove randomness to be “the order of things”–these very actions must obviously come into question as well:  ”We’re setting out, in orderly fashion, to prove that dis-order  is the highest truth”. —yes, when you say it out loud, it does sound as preposterous as it is!

How ironic, that these ugly and unavoidable facts are themselves revealed as strong evidence for the very position they are attempting to disprove.   Yes, “a mind is a terrible thing to waste!”

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“I will cry out to God most high; unto God, who fulfills his purpose for me” –Psalm 57: 2

“Whoever puts his trust in the Lord shall be safe” –Proverbs 29:25

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Who’s in charge? (part 2):

“God has brought us into this time; it is He, and not ourselves, or some dark demon(or mere chance). If we are not fit to cope with that which He has prepared for us,  we should have been utterly unfit for any condition that we imagine for ourselves. It is in this time we are to live and to wrestle, and no other.

Let us then humbly, tremblingly, manfully look at it, and we shall not wish that the sun could go back ten degrees, or that we could go back with it. If easier times are departed, it is that the difficult times may make us more in earnest—that they may teach us not to depend upon ourselves. If easy belief is not possible, it is that we may learn what belief truly is, and in whom it is to be placed.”

–John Frederick Maurice,  1805-1872

Do not be discouraged

 Broken

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“Do not be discouraged at your faults; bear with yourself in correcting them, as you would with your neighbor. Lay aside this anxiety, which exhausts your body, and leads you to commit errors. 

Accustom yourself gradually to carry prayer into all your daily occupations. Speak, move, work, in peace, as if you were in earnest prayer, as indeed you can be. Do everything without agitation, by the spirit of grace. As soon as you perceive your natural impetuosity taking control, retire quietly within, where is the kingdom of God.

Listen to the leadings of grace, then say and do nothing but what the Holy Spirit shall put in your heart. You will find that you will become more tranquil, that your words will be fewer and yet more effectual, and that, with less effort, you will accomplish more good.”   –Fenelon

It’s in the “little” things. . .

 

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Please read this, consider it carefully, and meditate on its simple but potent truth throughout your day:

” Little things come daily, hourly, within our reach, and they are not less calculated to set forward our growth in holiness, than are the greater occasions which occur but rarely.

Moreover, faithfulness in trifles, and an earnest seeking to please God in little matters, is a test of real devotion, and love. Let your aim be to please our dear Lord perfectly in small things, and to attain a spirit of childlike simplicity and dependence.

In proportion as self-love and self-confidence are weakened, and our will bowed to that of God himself, so will hindrances disappear, and the internal troubles and contests harassing our soul will vanish, and it will be filled with peace and tranquillity. “     -Jean Nicolas Grou  1731-1803

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……Serve Him with wholehearted devotion, and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart, and He understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek Him, you will find Him….” 
- 1 Chronicles 28:  vs. 9

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May God richly bless your day, especially in the ’small’ things.   -Quilla

Cane River images…..(my 100th post!)

 

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Self-portrait

By the river, we are but shadows….and yet, we are eternal

Be truly glad in your trials? -Yes!

“So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested—as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold”.     –1 Peter 1: 6-7   (NLT)

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Dunamis!

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“Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance (patience) has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, lacking nothing”.   –James 1: 2-4

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“It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn your ways, O Lord!”   –Psalm 119: 71

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“And yet these days of dreariness are sent us from above;
they do not come in anger, but in faithfulness and love.
They come to teach us lessons which bright days could not yield;
And to leave us blest and thankful when their purpose if fulfilled.”  -anon.

* 

“Pay no heed to distressing thoughts when they rise ever so strongly in you; no, though they have entered you, fear them not, but be still awhile, not believing in the power which you feel these (dark thoughts) have over you, and they will fall away from you, suddenly.
It is good for your spirit, and greatly to your advantage, to be much and variously exercised by the Lord. You do not know what He has already done (in your heart), or, what He is yet doing for you and through you”.
–Isaac Penington   1617-1679

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“Why should I be upset at the plough of my Lord, that makes such deep furrows in my soul?  I know that He is no idle husbandman, and that He purposes  to harvest a crop”.    –Samuel Rutherford   1600-1661

–all, from the Kadosh Ruach

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Meditate on these foundational truths of  the real life, and you will be blessed.   Believe, and receive…….

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Ascensions

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Latewinter

“Send our your light, and your truth. Let them guide me.  Let them lead me
to the place where you live. There I will go to the altar of God, to God—-the source
of all my joy.
Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God! I will praise Him again, my Saviour and my God!” 
–Psalm 43: vs. 3,5

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Hope

Flying toward the Sun 

 

“And every man that has this hope in Him, purifies himself, even as He is pure.” 
—1 John  3: 3

“Now believe me, God hides some ideal in every human soul. At times we feel a trembling, fearful longing to do some good thing. Life finds its noblest spring of excellence in this hidden impulse to do our best.  At these times we are no longer content to be merely common. The woman longs to glorify her womanhood as sister, wife, mother, or friend….
And be assured that God himself is in these divine impulses. Here is God—-yes, God, standing silently at the door all day long—-God whispering to your soul, that to be pure and true is to succeed in life. And whatever else we get short of that will burn up like stubble, though the whole world would try to save it. “     —Robert Collyer    1823

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Celebrate!

                      ”Celebrate the presence of the Lord your God, in all you do”     -Deuteronomy 12: 18

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“If any one would tell you the shortest, surest way to all happiness and perfection, he must tell you to make it  a rule to yourself to thank and to praise God for everything that happens to you. For it is certain that whatever seeming calamity happens to you, if you thank and praise God for it, you turn it into a blessing. Could you, therefore, work mircles, you could not do more for yourself than by this thankful spirit; for it heals with a word speaking, and turns all that it touches into happiness.”

—William Law, 1686-1761

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It is for you

Dusk River,   by Jonas Girard

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It is for You

Open and enter, softly, cautiously
the deep night vaults, like childhood forests
haunted with voices,  wolves, shadow:

If you stand and wait, the clouds
will part.  You’ll see:  long shafts of light
thrown from a tall white moon
across your path.
Let the safe words in those lights
speak, and enter your heart.
They are for you.

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Miles of desert, rocks, thorns,
sharp dry wind and sand, screaming. 
A small stream bends, widens
into a slower movement,
pours itself into a pool.
Stop.
Sit down there.
Take off your shoes,
wash your feet.
Allow yourself: to feel the coolness,
to rejoice or weep, to feel
thankfulness.
It is for you.

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This holy war: fierce battles, much blood
lost.  A large stone goblet is poured red
and full,  some warm bread is waiting
on an old wooden table.
Drink it.  Eat it, all of it.
Savor.
It is for you.
Yes. It is for you.

rt

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My daughter enjoying a Jonas Gerard painting.  He painted it,  for you.

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March Images

“You don’t really love me, you  just keep me hanging on…….”

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(“No, I really do love you, warts and all”)

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Plum blossoms

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River in late winter

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Plum and Cypress

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Jason and Zeke

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Tulip leaves, morning dew 

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Morning mist 

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My Buddy

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Old abandoned house, Panther Creek 

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Fountain 

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River, late winter 

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Resting

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The layers of years 

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Cedar Waxwings in Red Maple

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Black Pine, heavy snow 

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Old chimney beside the river 

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Plum blossoms

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The Poor in Spirit

“God blesses those who are poor, and realize their need of Him, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven”
–Jesus,  Matthew chapter 5, verse 3

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But officer, you don’t understand…….

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Winter Landscape by Jonas Girard

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Fig tree, Chapel garden wall

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Lighthouse railing, St. Augustine

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Once, upon a time, four young men……..

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Window, old marketplace, St. Augustine

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Greek Orthodox chapel, St.Augustine

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Tracks

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Winter shore

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Old cottage by the river

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Party’s over

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Solitary

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“Winter sun

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Metal sculpture, St. Augustine giftshop

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“Woman”      by Jonas Girard

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“God blesses those who are poor, and realize their need of Him; the kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”
–Jesus,   from Matthew, chapter 5, verse 3    New Living Translation

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“The circumstances of her life she could not alter, but she took them to the Lord, and handed them over into His management; and then she believed that He took them, and she left all the responsibility and the worry, the anxiety with Him.
As often as the anxieties returned she took them back to God. And the result was that, although the circumstances remained largely unchanged, strangely her soul was kept in perfect peace in the very midst of them. She marvelled at the difference God had made, in simply giving to Him the details of her life.
And the secret she found so effectual in her outward affairs, she found to be still more effective in her inward ones, which were in truth even more utterly unmanageable. Indeed, she abandoned her whole self to the Lord, with all that she was and all that she had. 
And, believing that He took that which she had committed to Him, as He had promised, she ceased to fret and worry, and her life became all sunshine in the glorious gladness of being His true daughter, of simply belonging to Him.” At last she understood her divine purpose, and who she was.

—Mrs. H.W. Smith,  pub. 1875

A brief look at Black

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meditations on Black

Stark winter trees
splinter  the sharp morning light.
Crows and shadows scatter, like broken glass.
Silhouettes of living black
make fleeting blue mosaics on the frost

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The child in us is thrilled, and yet
afraid to see: the wide black lake
transformed, overnight—
long white blades of ice
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Out of the low night land
mountain rims are risen  snowy
and resplendent, exalted like the old cathedrals
wanted to be.
Out of the darkness of our human streets 
their summits lift, and  steeples rise
high into the crimson dawn.
Their pointed brilliance inspires, yet
frightens us

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We keep our visage safe, and low.
Rummage the market place, laughing
and muttering phrases, purchasing things.
In vain we look:  to see our true faces
reflected in darkened shop windows

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In the wide searchlights of morning
we might lift our eyes to the shining slopes.
High up,  in the drifted snows we see
a lofty vale of darkness, a small pale shadow
left there from the night.
A little valley curled, protected
from the hard light, a crippled hand
folded in a white cloak.
It seems to hold a hidden wound
perhaps some fear, like a small deer, fallen,
licked in the night by healing tongues.

As young men, Renoir and Monet
walked out together to the sunlit meadows.
–Among the first to paint plein air
right there in the field, without drawing first.
Quick pastel impressions
leaped onto their thirsty boards—
water-lilies, parasols.
Their spontaneity caught on fast
and after a century of calendars
the shimmering still dazzles.

But much later:  to capture the sorrow
he’d felt and seen;
to uncover the hard bright masks
hiding our broken human beauty, our suffering
and our highest Joy,
with talons of pain gripping his old fingers,
Renoir returned to the dark.
Unlike the Impressionists
he chose to use black paint again.

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I am the Lord, and there is no other. I create light, and I make the darkness.  

-Isaiah 45, verse 7

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The Word gave life to everything that was created, and His life brought light to everyone.
The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.     

–John chapter 1, verses 4 and 5

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My soul thirsts for you….

Eagle tree, vertical cliff, upper Colorado River gorge

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O God, you are my God;
I earnestly search for you.
My soul thirsts for you;
my whole body longs for you
in this parched and weary land
where there is no water.

I have seen you in your sanctuary
and gazed upon your power and glory.
Your unfailing love is better than life itself;
how I praise you!
I will praise you as long as I live,
lifting up my hands to you in prayer.
You satisfy me, more than the richest feast.
I will praise you with songs of joy.

—from Psalm 63

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Sols Creek falls, upper Tuckaseigee River gorge, NC

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As the deer longs for streams of water,
so I long for you, O God.
I thirst for God, the living God.
When can I go and stand before him?
Day and night I have only tears for food,
while my enemies continually taunt me,
saying, ‘where is this God of yours?’

Why am I discouraged?
Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
I will praise him again—
my Saviour and my God!

—from Psalm 42

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Our Soul’s Craving
(a modern psalm)

Father God, eternal breath
of Yah-Weh, yearning your first desire
for us in that perfect garden, long ago.
Later, your voice burned hard words of holy love
in an ancient desert tree.

At last, perhaps, are we starting to grasp
and see–your invisible, shapeless form?
We’ve so often had you wrong,
this long trail of centuries.
Forgive us, Oh God!
We got deceived, we let ourselves believe
you were nothing more than rules, carved
with Heaven’s hard steel hand
in earth’s grey mountain stone.
We saw you an angry face of flint,
forever unpleased with us, aloof, alone.

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But came a dawning star, a fallen rose:
the passion of your lovely Christ
has shattered stone!
His lifeblood spilled, He filled
the deep and holy cup of your desire.
He opened the very sky, and our eyes
to see—the Father’s heart is not cold,
nor set in stone.
More like an ark of hopeful light, approaching us;
a living flame, flickering through
our oceanic dark, and storms.

Oh, how could we have missed you?

Drawing near you now, in  truth
we see your essence—hungering
holy fire, an untamed love, craving
others to come near you, and to burn
with that very same consuming desire!
And nearer still, until we perfectly know
your perfect heart, and will.

Following you, we drop our toys
and other cravings, one….by…..one.
Littered and broken, they litter
this broken desert road.
You are the one clear spring.
All our thirsts are quenched, in You.

-Quilla

Old Mountain farm, early April

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Where do poems come from? (April 22, earth day)

 

Wild plum blossoms, April Snow

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April snow, White Pines, sunshine

 

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Where do poems come from?

I thought I overheard him say
almost as if unto himself—
“I’ll put on my old blue barn-coat
and brown winter hat,
get a cup of strong black tea
and go sit on the back porch awhile
with pen and pad, perhaps a poem
will come to me”.

Is that how it happens?  I intruded—

—a pungent wisp of woodsmoke
drifting past? The honeyed scent
of wild plum blooms
come gleaming like a ghost,
the way the thrush’s silver tunes
brighten the gloom of cold grey woods?

—Is that how poems come to life?

“Sort of, but not quite. More like
waiting for a furtive deer
to step on stealthy certain hooves
as she appears out of the underbrush,
her large eyes bright, fully aware.

“Or maybe just sitting down
and breathing deep, shedding anxious thoughts,
waiting the inner noise and strife
to hush, and fall away—it’s only then
we start to hear, to see:  elusive forms
of truth, emerge.
We come aware that they were there
secretly watching us, all along, like those
already gone, or wanting to become,
patiently waiting us to make them friends,
to give them words.
And in our reaching, with syllable and song
we give them life.

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Black, Green, and White……..April 23

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Black, Green, and White

I think I’ve never seen
a black more absolutely black—
that fat black angus cow, bulging
heavy with her springtime calf.
Inside, there must be such complete
and warm motherly night,
as at the beginning of all things,
before darkness birthed the stars.

She stands over there just now
underneath the brow of a greening
hayfield hill, the last rays of the April sun
giving green fire to the tall young grass.
I think I’ve never seen a green more alive
than that green—waves of nourishing light—
nurturing, mothering a mother cow.

Sunset, and tops of large trees glow
bright green, hosts of new buds
hungering the warm  light, like milk.
On the dark ground far beneath them,
fallen on last year’s rich brown death
of leaves—dogwood petals scattered, white
as drops of Heaven’s milk. White
as perfect love, proven and poured out
broken, stained with blood.

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Wood Thrushes have Returned

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Wood Thrushes have Returned.  .  .

.  .  .third week in April, as ever.
But how do they know?
I mean, do you ever wonder
—just how do birds, trees, stars, know
(much better than we)   precisely
what time it is?
Never worried early, late.
It’s time to leave, they go.

The wood-thrushes are back.
Silent six months, waiting
in lowland brakes, winter swamps—
to herald another mountain Spring
with song, as have their kindred,
long centuries.
Returned again, to spin their secret nests—
dead sticks and leaves, hollows soft
with scraps of cloth, dried moss, horse hair
caught in fence-wire barbs.
They lay their little speckled eggs
to live, become again 
what will sing beyond themselves.
 

Thrush music brings to us
the purest watersongs, pouring
from crystal vases.
The opened throat
of a small rusty brown bird
we enter Narnia, the true kingdom.
He fills our broken clay cup
with offerings
some far oasis.

Dusk deepening. Shadowy wings
fly further back into the quiet rooms
of trees, keeping the tall night.
One final tune penetrates the quiet
gloom, how truth and beauty linger
to the last breath of light.

The flute is folded into a dark cloth.
The musician walks home, silent streets.
A silver music sleeps in the forest.
We dream, knowing it will wake
the April dawn.

–Quilla

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April in Asheville

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Do you sometimes feel like Jonah?

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This morning just as I arrived for my appointment at an old house on Montford, I was standing on the wide porch after I’d rung the bell, waiting in the long silence after the chimes, looking at the two large empty rocking chairs sitting very still on the porch.  An old azalea, deep magenta, was in full glorious bloom in the backyard of the old rundown house next door.

Tony came to the door with disappointment speaking paragraphs on his face  before he said a word, telling me how his computer’s power unit had just then crashed, ‘with a loud pop and a bad smell’. “I’m very sorry, but we’ll have to reschedule. And I’ve got another appointment this afternoon. I’ll have to call them too.”

“It’s okay”, I said, strangely almost relieved. “Stuff happens”. We shook hands and I walked back out to my car and went on my way.

Do you sometimes feel like a Jonah in someone else’s ocean? —the cause of storms, loud flashes of light and bad smells they did not deserve?

Everyone tells us these days: don’t ever, for any reason, “beat up on yourself!” There is always someone, or some thing you can conveniently, legitimately blame. As if I am never responsible for anything bad that happens. 

(As they also are fond of saying:  “Yeah, right!) 

But sometimes the “coincidences” are a bit much.  So if I want to move toward a more complete honesty, I must ask the orchestrator of the storms:

Is there something Lord? If there is, please show me.

And if I mean it, He does. Often, His spirit prays through me, what I need to hear:

Keep me from the immaturity of self-pity, and blaming others, when it’s really me who is so stubborn and childish, with so much yet to learn. I know I am quick to take offense, finding fault with others.
And Lord, also keep me from the easy temptation of talking way too much, venting my judgments and opinions, as if they were more valuable than what others have to say.  There are so many talkers, so few listeners. Let my words be fewer. Make me a listener. Thank you, for teaching me to be more like you, and giving me the will and the power to change, in my heart first.

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For Max, for Farrah

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We Write Our Words

By early sun
or smoky midnight lamp, a quill
desperately scratches the parchment.
Feather with a sharp claw, and a will
its own, it draws the blood of our script to dry
across an ancient page.

Fountain or ball-point, gel pen, felt tip—
cuneiform or Arial Black–
they scrawl our living river of words
from springhead to the sea,
down from morning, til the final hours.

There! the high hawk soars and screams
in the sun: her sharp eye fixed—
some small and hidden life below,
she falls faster than a stone.
It comes to this: her talons uncurl and seize,
a little thing transforms,
becomes a larger life.

And so with us: a brightness of mind, perhaps
a darkness of heart, high-soaring
in the sun or falling in the middle of night—
decides to dive, unfurl for all to see
the banners of it sorrow, and its joy.
Down the arm into the hand, truth falls
fierce through the blood like a falcon, 
or drops an uncast stone.
The mind, the hand, the pen recalls
the stench and dungeon screams;
even the fleeting Elysian scent
of Heaven’s wide white fields.

Quill or keyboard—we keep picking
the locks of dark cells radiant with light,
setting prisoners free, we watch them run!
We write our words, scratch our moments
on the page, to dry at last,
forever in the sun.

* But why all this? you ask—
—it might have been to cleanse,
to laugh, or kill, or fly, perhaps to share.
Or just a need to testify that once, upon a time
Yes! we were here.
And more than flesh, and bone.
We wanted to know.
We wanted to be known.

 

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The Richmond Hill Inn

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The Richmond Hill Inn

The historic mansion burned
a month ago.
Now, a rainy Sunday afternoon
I went to see what was left,
take a few pictures, feel what I could
a century of life—family and guests,
births and holidays, weddings and deaths—
gone up in smoke one afternoon.

But I could only get so close.
A chain link fence, warning signs
surrounded the charred rubble.
It was quiet, except for the birds.
No one else was there.
The rain had stopped.

The damp air was still rich with the stench
of burnt timbers and flooring, smoked wallpaper
and mattresses, soaked with a month of April rain.
The black skeleton just stood there,
its fingers empty.
It showed me the scars, and let me smell
the rotten fruit
of all human loss, and the wreckage of wars.

As if totally oblivious, all around
the burnt-out site, flowers were blooming
dripping with rain.
Two nesting doves flew in and out
where an upstairs window once had been.

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Happy 16th, Natallie!

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For My Daughter, on her 16th Birthday

A green-golden morning, late April.
From the painted rows of spaces
in the large mall parking lot, I chose
the spot beneath a tall Pin Oak.
Its black winter limbs are just beginning
to burn and smoke with new life:
the green fire of ten thousand
leaf-buds and catkins.
Or, to mix the metaphor,
countless curls of girlish tree-hair
unfurl above me
in the streams of warm Spring light.

I’m waiting for my flaxen-haired daughter
to emerge from her salon, Mes Ami.
(They’re doing her hair
for tonight’s high school prom).
And $45—a good rate, she tells me
for whirling her straight blonde tresses
into springy gold curls.

While I wait in the half-shade
of half-dressed branches,
ten or twenty Waxwings are gathered—
sleek princes and prissy princesses
whispering feathery secrets, passing kisses
in the golden green haze of new leaves.
On a whimsical breeze, dappled shadows
dance happily across my page.

The birds go mincing along the limbs, sideways
together, the way Waxwings do.
They act like a troupe of miniature parrots
escaped from a travelling zoo.
With their mischievous black masks, wings
and tails dipped in wax,
it’s clearly God’s beauty, and fun.
Yes! He lives in this late April morning,
in the light of the yellow-green sun.

*

Oh, there she is now, do you see her?
–my sixteen-year-old walking toward me
smiling, in her $45 dollar gold curls.

*  *  *

Happy 16th, Natallie!
Love always, your Dad

Thirst

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Thirst

Early grey morning, early May.
Wandering a wooded mountain ridge
with the small soot-colored dog—
how bravely she stops a yellow and black
box turtle, its slow path was crossing ours.
 
Another rain blows in with thunder,
moist wind fills the whole forest
of fresh new leaves.
Old woods, recently thinned–
understory trees and brush removed,
just the larger trees remain.

One small fresh-cut stump
no thicker than my thigh
I stop, and stoop,  put on my glasses,
read the concentric annual rings:
each year arcs a dark line between growth
and growth’s end.
I count 60 summers’ gain
and winters’ loss—give a few acorn years,
thick rind of outer bark, a shag of moss.

–that’s about my age, if the calendars are true.
Odd, the kinship one wants to find
with an old stump on a dry ridge.
We stood the same gold suns
and blue snow-moons.
We both licked under the rock ledge shadows,
found the deeper springs
we knew were flowing there.
Seasons the rings grew thin,
we both were longing water,
or a better reason.

If nothing else, we learned,
that dry ridge oak and I:

to let our net of roots sink further down—
earth’s dark nourishing ocean
of unknowns, and drink;

to sometimes only wait, and stand
in long dry wind, sucking the hope of water
from the taste of dry stones;

to lift the heavy sinews of our limbs
–palms opened wide, like leaves
into the empty sky, and speak, or weep—
soft words of praise, these thirsty psalms.

 *  *  *

Cacaphony

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Cacaphony

The wide spring fields are shimmering
yellow again: wind from the sun,
flashes of field-lark song,
swaths of buttercup, wild mustard bloom.
Plum blossoms have already blown
with the last wet flowers of snow
and they are gone.

Today a grey wind moans in the trees,
clattering naked limbs, blowing
cold gusts of spray.
Weathered wooden wind-chimes chatter
and play, chanting an ancient mantra
with worn-out teeth, the way
old zen priests tell us
neither do they know, or say
the mysteries of wind, and time.
 
*

A flock of grackles gathers, screeching
in the branches of the gnarled black Ash.
The dissonant bird-music recalls:
–a creekside grain-mill turning, squealing
on its axle, spilling water, coughing it
into a mossy wooden trough
that never fills, but flows back into the creek.
–or a childhood Ferris wheel
and its calliope, gone these many years.
But the sounds remain, turning
on the axis of a vanishing galaxy,
spinning away
the warm salt wind of years.

*

A  zig-zag sand dune fence
winds among the rustling sea-oat stems.
Its rusting gate is always swinging open
banging shut.
Tall grasses whisper mysteries
to the listening winter shore.

*

Suddenly frightened, the grackles
fly off into the gusty rain.
They will be back.
Always, everywhere it seems
things are singing, turning
as on rusting waterwheels;
leaving fast, like frightened flocks
of blackbirds, or childhood.
But they return, circling back to us
on long wings—forgotten thoughts 
and faces, like a sea-gone albatross.
All the harsh and soft remembered words
like nesting birds, returning
to their home.

*  *  *

Primordial

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Primordial

Cool spring morning on the trail
the small dog runs ahead and stops,
barking, warning me, some danger:
she halts a box-turtle, dappled yellow
and black, crossing ‘our’ path.

Sort of cute, I think
how she thinks she’s protecting me
as dogs are fond of doing with their fear.
So I let the ancient defender in her
come out, and stalk around the turtle again
and again, as if she were closing in
on a Mastodon,
my walking stick–a Neolithic spear.

I get down on my belly in the damp trail
among violets and dwarf iris,
to see our predator up close,
to look it in the eye.

And oh, that eye, a cold red fire-ring
encircling a black coal, expressionless.
Such cool blood can wait forever.
The scaly yellow arms curve down
to fingers of slow pink claws
clinging bits of mud.
Ready to let the swift win any race.
Much more ancient(and alive) than Mastodon!

And there, gripped in her hard yellow beak
of a snout—writhing pale and soft
the glistening body of a land slug,
Gastropod, snail without a shell.
Two tiny stalks of antennae, inexpressibly
sensitive, reaching out, reading the air
trying to know: what quick, engulfing shadow
crossed the sky, ending its trail?
It is a different world. 

*  *  *

Ginkgo Leaves

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Ginkgo Leaves

As we were leaving church
late that Sunday morning
I saw a tall young Ginkgo tree
growing by the warm brick wall,
the old building.
It was just unfolding pale new leaves–
scalloped and fluttering,
dainty Chinese fans.
Like aspen leaves, rustling
the mountain winds of Sangre de Cristo,
the mystic groves near Shao Lin.

Such tender, joyful energy
they danced with children’s hands
the playful breeze, they
whispered words of living praise.
 

I broke a sprig of these new leaves
and placed them on my tongue
like a wafer, gently crushing them
between my teeth, tasting
their pungent essence: sweet and bitter
at once. The taste was Spring itself–
more ancient than stone,
younger than rain, and light.
I like to think that such a tree
was standing by the opened tomb
that first morning, quaking 
silver-green, with joy.

Ginkgo leaves eaten, are said to be good
for the memory. It must be true.
I remember that Sabbath morning
so well: the warm brick wall,
soft  leaves speaking luminescent
words, recalling distant mountain trees.
I won’t forget the piquant taste
mixing with the song of praise
still dancing on my tongue.
I will remember this.

If I grow old
I’ll still be reading the ancient Words,
tasting them again, like Spring leaves.
One morning, I’ll be wakened
as by a warm breeze
from far, shining mountains.
Walking slowly, joyfully into their light
perhaps I’ll even dance, like Ginkgo leaves
in a playful Spring wind.
My spirit will be young.

*  *  *

Images of May

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Tornado warning

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Images of June

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High Country Reflections, June 09

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High Country Impressions

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Be still…Open yourself…..Yield yourself….Let it all go…. Let God.

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“Consider the lilies, how they grow”    -Matthew 6: 28

*  *  *

 

“Still yourself, your cares, even your thoughts for Him, and He will speak to your heart. Let Him. Ask for Himself, and He will give you himself. Truly, a secret hidden thing is the love of God—known only to those who seek it…”    -adapted from E.B. Pusey

“Yield yourself up utterly to His sweet control. Put yourself completely into His hands…. Allow Him to manage you as He wills. Surrender your will. Trust God absolutely, and in all your ways. Accept each moment as it comes to you from His dear hands, as being the needed sunshine or rain for that very moment’s growth.

Stop fighting, arguing, complaining, criticizing, finding fault with your life, and with others! Instead, I would have you say a continual ‘yes!’ to your Father’s will.” -adapted from H.W.S

“Your own stubborn self-will and anxiety about things, all your hurrying and labor–indeed, these very things disturb your peace, and they actually prevent me from working in you.”

“I would have you look at the little flowers on these serene summer days; they quietly open their petals, and the sun shines into them with gentle warmth. So will I do for you, IF you will only yield yourself to me. Very, very  few learn this simple lesson.”  -adapted from G. Tersteegen

Summer night….(revisted)

 

by Jonas Girard

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The First Sultry Night…

… of early summer, sleep comes
and softly leaves, like a thief.
Or an ancient weaver, weaving dreams—
her spun silky nets, tremble
the muttering silences,
the dark sullen air
between thunderstorms.

Pale violet lightnings
flicker the black walls of our room,
the open door, the empty hall.
Faint thunder remembers
shades of purple ridgelines
deep in the mountains, echoing
the younger bones of the mind.

I stand at the window a long while,
watching silent flashes
glisten the wet trees.
Listening: the low mumbling distances.
A child returns, stands with me
inexpressibly old.

Across the valley
steep hillsides of darkness
twinkle yellow green, fireflies
phosphorescent with memories,
mystery.

The mind is hushed
with the dark whispering leaves.
Cool wind drifts in the open windows.
Eyelids flutter, and close
like windy curtains.
Soft lights of far storms gathering
glimmer the black walls
like a slideshow of dreams.
Like cool moth wings
wanting to enter,
trying to escape.

*  *  *

Kindness

 

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Kindness

My daughter called me today, midafternoon
an ordinary midsummer day,  to tell me about
“something good that just happened”.
She said I was the only one “who’d get it”.
Those words alone made sure I would.

“It’s really no big deal”, she said
“but today, in a big hot crowded parking lot
I stopped to help a woman
pick up the broken pieces of a jar
of pasta sauce she dropped. No one else
stopped to help.”

My daughter stayed with her until
the smallest pieces of glass were picked up.
So others wouldn’t get flat tires.
The woman, Janiqua, was so thankful.

Truthfully, “no big deal” at all.
But in the greater Economy, I don’t agree.
She called it karma. I told her it was
human kindness (much more personal).
 And how proud I am of her, stopping to help. 

And what a different planet it would be If:
if everyone stopped to help others
pick up their messes, and broken pieces.  

*  *  *

 

“and what was the secret of her power?  What had she done? Absolutely nothing; but radiant smiles, beaming good humor, the tact of discerning what every one felt and every one wanted–all this and more told that she had gotten out of her self, and learned to think of others, first.
So at one time this quality showed itself in forestalling a quarrel, by sweet words; at another, by smoothing an invalid’s pillow; another, by soothing a sobbing child; at still another by humoring and softening a father who had returned weary and ill-tempered from the irritating cares of business.
None but she saw those sorts of things. None but a loving heart could see them. And that was the secret of her heavenly power:  the one who will be found in trial capable of great acts of love is the very one who is always doing considerate small ones”.   -F.W. Robertson  (1816-1853).

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“Be kind to one another”   –Ephesians 4:32

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Images of July/Deep Shade

 

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Port City Java Wall

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Deep Shade

The hot yellow light of noon,
quiet as a great bronze temple bell.
Bright orange squash blooms
open full in the green shade
of their sprawling leaves.
They scarcely stir the heavy air.

Somewhere deep in the cool woods
one Wood Thrush
makes a few last morning tunes
before the long and silent afternoon.
Even the birch leaves barely move,
as if not wishing to break the spell.
The windchime is asleep.

The fountain keeps lifting the old water.
It keeps dropping back
into the black pond.
White bubbles scatter out, dissolve
like inspiration lost.
Brightly colored fish
sleep in darkest water,
the deep shade
under hot and shining
maple boughs.

*  *  *

Autumn Images and Musings

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From New Direction Farm’s autumn festival:

 

October sunset

gives its fire: breaking clouds,

dying leaves, every face

 

*  *  *

 

Seeing an old friend

we talk and laugh, until

the mountains darken

 

 

*  *  *

 

Old woman

stands beside the crumbling fire,

cool October dusk

 

*  *  *

*  *  *

 

 

Deep in the night

rain patters the roof.

The ticking clock. . .

 

*  *  *

 

From the flood of September 09:

 

River in flood:

sycamores turning gold,

 the darkening sky

 

*  *  *

(I see myself):

The river rages

red with mud. One old heron

hunched upon a rock

 

*  *  *

 

That heron–

there just for me?  I write

his poem, he leaves

 

*  *  *

 

In the tall weeds

behind a large flat rock–

poke-a-dot panties

 

*  *  *

 

Storm-washed tree roots

dance loose in the rapids. 

Boulders standing  still. 

*  *  *

 

A grey heron waits.

And waits, on a grey rock.

River red with flood

 

*  *  *

 

*  *  *

*  *  *

 

From September:

 

Autumn crows.

The sound of a hammer.

Morning distances

 

*  *  *

 

“If you died tonight. . . . .”

Oh, stop it! 

We are dying

 

*  *  *

 

How do we forget?

 

That old white scar

on my  brown wrinkled hand:

how did it happen?

 

*  *  *

 

Rain lashes the windows.

The sound her spoon makes

stirring the dark tea

 

*  *  *

 

Autumn sunset:

 

Brown horses, flashing

along the hillside fencerow–

such long shadows!

 

*  *  *

 

Morning birches:

wind and yellow warblers

passing through

 

*  *  *

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first touch of Winter, Craggy Gardens

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Edge of Winter, Mitchell County,NC

 

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Emergent (for Farrah)

Emergent

(For Farrah)

We like our lakes to be full.
But the eighty-year-old impoundment
in our town has been drained,
nearly empty, a few weeks now.
(They’re replacing a rusted valve near the bottom
of the tall drain tower).

So the water is down, almost to its deepest channel–
the small wild beaver-creek that was trapped
and drowned eight decades ago, dammed
to form the lake.
The ancient skelton of bare finger-ridges
and hollows stares up at us, like bones
in a dug up grave.
The empty basin smells like death,
those things we’ve trashed, forgotten,
allowed to sink from sight.

Yesterday I walked the littered banks, the ledges
of exposed rock, an old beachcomber
poking in and out, the fallen water’s edge.
One can read the rusted shards, like pages lost
or torn, from our culture’s book.
Time’s tide, and the broken crusts
of dried mud yield more beer bottles
than anything else. And a ‘75 Toronado.
Someone found a can of human ash.
Hundreds of bleached mussel shells, cracked open
by herons and raccoons–they left their scrawl
of tracks in sun-baked clay.
I brought home a sand-logged camera
and a fishing lure–its hook was stuck 
tight in a stump–an old blue medicine bottle
full of silt, and a smooth-washed driftwood root.

*  *  *

We like daylight more than night.
Give us bright surfaces, not shadows
or murky depths.
We’re desperately afraid of stillness, of pain
and illness, the dark words they can speak.

But this morning, very early,
before the dim shapes of hills emerged
from the deep lake of night
I walked outside.
And watched, listened, very still
long minutes.
The whistling wings of doves
descended in the dawn.
The lantern glow of fading stars
vanished, the growing opalescent light.
A copse of wild black plum trees
was breaking out of winter, out of night
and into bloom.
The blossoms gleamed, incandescent
with morning, and with Spring.

And I am reminded of the invisible ones–
the guardians, the gatekeepers, the Springtimes
and our loves already gone.
And of everything that each of us
in graceful light may yet become.
It is that Light, lifting before me
the radiance of flowers,
the scent of unborn fruit.
And I lift my hands, my face
to the lovely face of God,
on the shores of April dawn.

*  *  *

rt

A few October Haiku

 

 

*  *  *  *  *  *

 

Doctor’s office

I pick up the large sea-shell

and listen

 

*  *  *

 

The Grandfather

sits alone, an autumn day

with the dying cat

 

*  *  *

 

Trimming the herb garden:

cut sage, broken rosemary

cool October mist

 

*  *  *

 

Low, heavy clouds

cold wind tears the gold leaves down,

the iron gate clangs shut

 

*  *  *

 

First frost

the sparkling silence:  leaves

whispering down

 

*  *  *

 

Brown horses, flashing

along the fencerow

goldenrod shadows

 

*  *  *

 

 

 

Doubletree Farm, Madison County

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October morning

I take Mother far back

her childhood mountains

*  *  *

Wild grey ridges

lost in mist.     Plump chickens

clucking in their coop

*  *  *

Fields are bare now.

On the table, in cold wind

jars of dark sorghum

*  *  *

The shy farm-child

peeks out from behind

his father’s back

*  *  *

Somber autumn sky

white on the Appaloosas

grazing into night

*  *  *

Gold Aldebaran

rising through bare trees.

Feeble cricket song

*  *  *  *  *  *

October 26.9

*  *  *

Chopin nocturne,

Night wind clicks the bare limbs

rain ticks the windows

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Bagpipes whine and drone

a chill sunset wind

fills the autumn trees

*  *  *

Robins winging south

in sunset light, high above

the golden, darkening. . .

*  *  *

Layers of mountaintop

shadows and mist.  One sun shaft

lights one yellow ridge

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Arcturus, yellow star

of Spring, setting now

red October dusk

*  *  *

October 27.9

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Gifted young artist

expelled from art school.

His face, the falling leaves

*  *  *

Wealthy young woman

shows the small dark ghetto girl

how to bake cookies

*  *  *

Her eyes, seeing

like the hawk. Her words

gentle, like the lamb

*  *  *

Sunday afternoons

in autumn, how I miss

reading comics with her

*  *  *

How can it be—

That he can speak so well of love

yet love so poorly?

*  *  *

All the other sounds

are gone. Just a long night-train

rolling upriver

*  *  *

November Light

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Traffic Dust

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Traffic Dust

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Driving past him
in windblown traffic dust
I briefly catch the ancient
Mayan features: oval brown
olive sandstone face.
Expressible peace and sadness there,
deep mystery too, black eyes
squinting at me, at you
through time
and traffic dust.

The fine Aztecan hands, grip
and turn the tall sign pole, all day long
ten thousand cars, or more
obeying him, asking us to STOP.
Or, SLOW through the destruction,
the windblown traffic dust.

His heritage, crumbled
like jungle ruins, long vanished—
very far behind him now.
In such a small pathetic way
he (and thousands like him)
in this strange and foreign land
do their savage part:

the unthinkably cruel and primitive
sacrifice–tear another mountain down,
remove the forests full of secrets,
delicate living webs.
Build yet another road
for we have always called this
“growth”, and think we must
because it pays.

But we do not, can not
see it clearly, squinting
in a hurry through our days
of time, and turning signs
and windblown traffic dust.

*  *  *

After the Autumn Storm

*  *  *

After the Autumn Storm

Deep in the mid-November night
hours before dawn, I woke.
The howling storm had broken,
blown its fury out, was gone.
Just a few rags of cloud held on,
patching the vast curtain of stars
hanging above the Elk Mountains.
Winter constellations had risen high
and blue in the east.
The trees were dripping and still.

At this hour, the distant four-lane was silent.
Far city lights glowed the southern sky,
silhouetted the near ridgeline, jagged
with black pine trees, like teeth.

A half-mile away, below
the bowing rows of hills
the night river was rushing full:
like one unending wave, it pulled
and crashed upon the strand of darkness
toward the ocean, and the sunken moon.

The voice of winter’s Great Owl
boomed in the black woods.
The long, graceful arms of Perseus
reached down to the western rim.
The diamond bracelet of Pleiades
glittered beyond time,
dancing slowly through the skeletons
of the empty trees.

*  *  *

The Day after Thanksgiving

*  *  *

The Day after Thanksgiving

A mild November with no frost.
At last, sharp cold has arrived.
The small boy who’s still alive, but lost
somewhere in this forest
of forgotten thought and aging bones
–he’s feeling that old thrill:
the sudden fragrant chill
of winter’s fast approach.
I don the worn grey wide-brimmed felt,
and the old blue barn-coat that smells
like earth and leaves, and smoke.
He and I, we walk outside and breathe
as one:  the day’s last skim of light.

We watch and help each other.
(I sense my father might be there too).
I show the boy once again–in case
he forgot–how to safely split
the sticks of wood—let the keen blade slice
the straight grain from the knot.

For his part, he keeps reminding me, this work
is beautiful and good, needful
and yes, still has its joy.
Together he and I, we take the dry sticks
of split white oak from the shed
and build a small pyre, to cook
the killed meat before dark.

*

Low sun, from the edge of the world
shines through bare birch trees
as if they were not there at all,
so empty without leaves.
Their windy shadows sweep
the red brick wall.
Blue smoke whirls and rises,
its shadows drift away.

Out of the brittle wind, hiding
in crevices between the sunlit bricks
two or three house-flies are cringing,
clinging to the year’s last bit of warmth.
How tiny and pitiful, their precise
threads of legs, ragged glistening wings.
I killed their kind all summer.
These, now, I let be.

I’ll go back indoors now, and read
while the fire is burning down
to coals. Perhaps I’ll write something.
A mug of hot cider, or tea
will feel good, cupped in wrinkled hands
that don’t work as well
in the cold anymore.

Already, a frozen moon, pure white
is tossing high, in windy limbs.
The blue smoke rises, lost
in coming night.

*  *  *

Regret

*  *  *

Regret

Regret has fallen into disfavor,
disuse in recent decades.
We keep hearing the phrase:
Don’t beat up on yourself. God loves you
so love yourself!
As if shame is the worst possible enemy.
To make all the students happy
we have expelled one of the finest teachers.

Yes, his grandfather often took it way too far.

Now everyone is a victim, of something.
So many new diseases we have!
And blaming has become natural as breathing.
The ink has run and gotten blurred
in the long boundary line, dividing
what is Right
from what is Wrong.
(If indeed the line still exists at all).
It took many years of intentional neglect
to do this.

The stone tablets (and their carved words)
each of us and all together
have hammered into dust, with ridicule.
And with that holy dust
(and some glitter, some cheap word-glue )
we make cheap jewelry, cheap talk, saying
over and over to ourselves:
awesome!  awesome!
Everything’s cool, just let it be,
do whatever you wanna do.
As if we knew how to rule.

Clear morning light, swallowed
so gradually, afternoon shadows.
Come the hard night rains.

At this point, looking back
I’m able to see, and say, some things
I do regret. Yes, I’m deeply sorry
the mess I’ve often made of things.
Meaning: could I go back, and do one thing
or many things again, much differently,
I would. Listening to truer voices…

And I refuse the easy temptation
to blame my poor choices
on karma, fate, God’s will, the Church,
bad parenting, or someone else.

*  *  *

So having heard my confession
the question now turns back to you–
Father. Brother. Sister. Child: Can you, will you
forgive me?
Indeed, can I forgive myself?

The Door
that swings opens, or closes,
that lets in light, or not
hinges  on this one thing:
“Blessed are the Merciful.
They shall receive mercy.”

*  *  *

Late Autumn Haiku (09)

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Please do not rush these poems. Take your time. You deserve it. So do they.  Breathe………………………………..

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On a country road

how long the shadows

winter afternoon

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After loving,

toast and tea, now this

autumn morning stillness

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All shapes and sizes

each with its shadow, walking

toward the morning bells

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Dry bread, broken

dipped in the dark wine–

remembrance, and hope

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Those large black hands

hard red light and shadows

such delicate notes

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Days are short now.

The buildings are dark.

Streetlights walk the steps.

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Forty autumns after

college, still scribbling haiku

November rain

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Drinking hot tea

I fall asleep

rain on fallen leaves

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Waiting room

all of us in pain

wise guy won’t shut up

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Ancient Indian path

hidden beneath fallen leaves

the sound of my steps

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Shining through

hundreds of black trees:

bone-white sycamore

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Frosted window

stark black branches

sparkling winter stars

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Winter night sky

the Hunter, and his dogs

a far hound, barking

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‘62 Chevy

pickup truck, rusting

in briars and snow

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December’s first light

glistens the hemlock frost–

whitethroat sparrow’s song

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Early heavy snow

Suddenly, sun breaks out!

the roof drips and steams

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Sequoiah’s river

Wolfe’s river. Autumn morning

now  it’s my river

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So weary with it–

Christmas music, noise and junk.

I long for the Savior

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December graveyard

cold wind rattles the plastic

poinsettias

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Strong tea, dark chocolate,

a book of poems.

Cold sun on my face

*  *  *

A Vanished Dream

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A Vanished Dream

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I lay still in the November night

long moments

trying to recapture the evanescence

that just left.

*

But being very shy

as most dreams are, it vanished—

a field of butterflies

before an eager child

—the moment my eyes opened, letting in

the autumn night,

the inescapable present,

its close dark walls.

*

So I lay there, bereft

not unlike a small child who’d lost

some cherished toy, something

inexpressibly beautiful to him,

purely perfectly wild.

It would not reappear

in the empty shining meadow.

*

So I gave up on it. Let it go.

And let myself wander back

into the valley of echoes, soft wings

faces and reflections, always fleeting

along a bright stream, into

the shimmering trees.

*

Returning to that luminescent land

of shadows, I heard, falling away

behind me: the clock ticking in the dark,

the plodding walk of my autumn heart,

my wife softly breathing, so close

so far away in her own dreams,

the slow night-train, rumbling

upriver, miles away

*  *  *

December Images

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Impressions of December

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A billion flakes

tumbling down. My eyes pick one

and watch it fall

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Heavy falling snow

a neighbor’s rooster

sounds so far away

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Cathedrals echoing

lofty carols.  He buys warm socks

for a friend

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We scarcely notice

the cold sun, slipping

into the black trees

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Hospital windows–

every one of them reflects

setting winter sun

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Heavy snow called for—

long blue shadows, stretch across

the morning frost

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How much we miss her!

Her package arrives in the post–

full of bright presents

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If You Want to Write Words…..

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If You Want to Write Words……
A message to myself. (and anyone else who wants to listen)

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….bearing the beauty, inexorable pain
and holiness of night in them,
first you must hear those words.
To hear them you must know
they are spoken, given to you.
But no one can tell you how to know.
You must choose it for yourself.

*

Rise from warm sleep, your restless dream
and walk out hungry, lonely, thirsting
into the eternal pool of stars.
Beyond them always lives the shimmering
oasis of wisdom, the Father’s home of Light
where it is written.

*

Step across the black crystals of the frozen grass.
Stand very small and yet, alive!            Inside
the infinite sparkling universe.
Be present.
Open your eyes, your very heart.
Reach your fingertips–tiny bones
out to the thin and trembling radiance,
the distant beginnings.
Look deep into the invisible face
the Father of lights.
Like shepherds, leave your smoky sheep-turd fire
discussing politics, the mayor of Beth-la-hem
(“the House of Bread”). As if that mattered.
Instead, listen: angels are singing.

*

You must quiet the noisy hallways
of your thought, your talk.  Let go
what everyone is telling you to think
and do.   Listen closely:  scriptures of light
being spoken to you, dark and holy
moments. Write them down–
broken pieces
as if they were dust, fallen
from the feet of God.
They are.
Words have speed.  The strength
of light, and truth.
Offer them up, like bread, your daily work
your words an act of worship, as if
they were to be eaten by God.
They are.
This is your service, fervent praise.
Your solemn,  joyful prayer, the way
you serve tea, clean the dish , the heart
you use to sweep the filthy floor.

*

You say you want words
the risen glory of dawn in them.
Then rise from your warm dream, walk
among the cool and fallen,
the sleeping lilies of men and women
who are gone from you.
Enter the pale tombs of night
just as the black gates are closing
and the gatekeeper wants you to leave.

Shhhhh. . . . .  breathe, and listen:   new words
you had not dreamed, old words
you had forgotten, suddenly
finally come running to you
like children, blossoming
flowers of light.
Catch them, press their petals
between the pages, some scribbled ink.

*

But let them go, offer them up
this work, this art, these words—
they are not yours.
Not in the way your ego wants to think.
You are allowed to give them birth, and shape:
a grieving, a benediction.
You must give them away, like smoke
drifts from an autumn fire.

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Winter Haiku, photos

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Her name is Annie, a Brittany spaniel.    She slipped, and went over….

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modern day scarecrow, put away for the winter

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The mill-wheel stopped turning

many years ago. Its gear teeth rust.

The stream rushes on….

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Heavy snow, all day.

Silent blue darkness

large trees, breaking

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Gazing into snow:

is it falling, or

am I rising?

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Electricity

off.      We sit in silence

candles, flickering

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Changing mother’s sheets

brown spots on the mattress pad–

my dead father’s blood

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Sirius, Orion

glittering icicles

along the dark eave

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Abandoned barn

the smooth shiny wood

of the empty stalls

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Dark, freezing bedroom

under heavy blankets:

Burrrrrrrrr-ito!!!

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First snow:

high in a windy gap

a red fence-gate, opens….

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That old uncle

who loved the woods—why

didn’t I visit?

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Late December/Our Soul Craving

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Our Soul Craving
(a modern psalm; a prayer of thirst)

Oh God, eternal breath,
Yah-weh, yearning your fatherly desire
for your first children
in that perfect garden, long ago.
But we would not have it.

*

Much later, you led us out of bondage–
You spoke such fierce and holy words of love
to us: our deliverance burned in a desert tree.

*

At last, perhaps, are we starting to grasp
and see, your invisible shapeless form?
So often we’ve had You wrong, this long trail
of centuries.  Forgive us, Oh God!
We got deceived. We let ourselves believe
You were nothing more than rules, Commandments
carved by heaven’s hard steel hand
in tablets of fiery mountain stone.
We saw you an angry face of flint, forever
unpleased with us, aloof, alone.
We thought You hid yourself
behind a tall, seamless curtain.
So we rebelled. We ran from You.

*

But finally came a certain dawning star, a fallen rose,
a broken lamb–Immanuel.  The passion
of your lovely Christ tore the curtain open
and shattered stone!
His lifeblood spilled, He filled the deep and holy cup
of your desire. He opened the very sky
and our sightless eyes, to see:
—the Father’s heart is not cold,
nor set in stone. More like an ark
of hopeful light, approaching us.
A living flame, flickering through
the oceanic dark, and all our senseless wars.

*

Oh, how could we have missed You?

*

Drawing near you now, the truth
we see your essence–hungering holy fire
an untamed love, craving others to come near You
and to burn with that very same consuming desire.
And nearer still, until we perfectly know
and love, your perfect heart, and will.

*

Following You, O LORD, we do grow up.
We drop our toys and other cravings
one……by…..one.
Broken, they litter this broken desert road.
You are the only oasis, the one clear spring.
All our thirsts are quenched in You.
* *  *

rt   12/08

to be read at Highland Christian Church, Asheville NC, 12.27.9

Winter afternoon light

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Madison County–December eve

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First Night of the New Year

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First Night of the New Year

Christmas is gone again.
Scraps of old snow are left
from the storm, two weeks ago.
With what we’ve done
to Christ’s holy birthday Mass,
it seems little more
than a glittery, crumpled
paper dream.

And the year’s first day is gone
like winter smoke.
Past midnight, January second
I lie alone beside the lamp.
My wife and daughter are gone all week
to visit her mother, in Tampa.
She called, and said it’s cold, even  there.

I put the book down, listen
to the strong north wind beyond the walls.
Its roar is steady, like the river
in a flood year, or a long coal train
rumbling through the mountain night.
I get dressed, go out to the shed,
get more wood to feed the stove.

Outside, the cold is fierce, like teeth.
The winter moon rides high and white.
Orion and his dogs are running fast
through the leafless windy trees.
Wisps of silver smoke
escape the chimney,
fly back into the stars.

In frozen moonlight
the smoke shadows run
like something thin and frightened
across the crusts of withered snow.

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Sunday, January 3, 2010

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Sunday, January 3, 2010

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(from the journal)

Still just 18 degrees at 3:41, a brittle sabbath afternoon. I chose to stay home this morning, had a quiet breakfast with black tea, read scriptures, sang and prayed in the Spirit to the listening silence.  As often happens, willfully pursuing an encounter with the Spirit of the living God, I was emptied, somewhat, of me. And the human vacuum was wonderfully filled with something better, unexpected.

Later. Tired of being enclosed, I bundled up  and came outside with the journal, a pen and the small dog Zoey, to sit in the bright low January sunlight.  The sky is never more intensely perfectly blue, than this. I’m warm with whole grain bread, hard cheese my sister gave me for Christmas, a hearty vegetable soup I made earlier. Zoey is perched contentedly on the cushioned stool in front of me, sheltered between my stretched out legs.

Here on the south side of the house, I’m out of the sharp wind.  It blows all the way from the high arctic across Canada, scours the Great Plains and rushes over the Appalachian rim, then across the roof of our little house, and on, even to Florida. My wife called and said it’s cold in Tampa, where she and Natallie spend the week with her mother. They did not take enough clothes.

The north wind keeps a loud humming in the shining green pines above me. Loose bark on the golden river birches rattles in the stiff breezes. It sounds like Nuthatches, scratching the crevices for insect eggs.

At the end of the house, the wind-chime we bought ten summers ago in Charleston (the one that sounds like a harbour sea-buoy) jangles as the gusts rise and fall. Someone is desperately sawing firewood in the distance.  A few crows are cawing sharply across the fields in the thin light. Their calls cut across the frigid air like razor shards of obsidian.

The thermometer will read below 10 degrees again by tomorrow dawn. Today’s paper tells us this is the longest deep cold spell since January ‘77.  I remember that arctic month well–cars and trucks drove across the surface of Beaver Lake, just because they could. One sub-zero night Bruce and I camped beside the South Toe River, its clear headwaters frozen hard into bluish green plates of ice. We stayed warm with goosedown, good talk, a candle in a Northface mountain tent.
Before building the breakfast fire next morning, I remember we clomped about in sweat-frozen boots. Standing by the solid river, we watched a mink swim up out of a rapids and drop a large trout flopping onto the ice. A few timeless moments: certain human/wild watching. He grabbed the trout and slid back into the fast black water. Thirty three Januaries ago.

Back to today. Over by the woodshed, the living green stems of bamboo have finally straightened themselves, weighted down more than a week with heavy snow. Now they are whispering again quietly, as if it had always been Spring time. I’d given up on them, did not believe they could spring back from such long bending nearly to the ground. How good it is: to be wrong about such things. Ironically, knocking the snow off them when they’re frozen hard and bent low can break them beyond repair.  There’s perhaps some lesson, a natural and a spiritual wisdom to be gleaned from this pain-filled resiliency: the bamboo’s way of simply bearing, bending, waiting.  Maybe it has something to do with knowing how to grieve. How to bear a load, how and when to let it go.

So cold today, yesterday morning’s skift of powder snow still speckles the dead grass. The shadowy grey shoulder of the pasture hill is dappled like the back of an Appaloosa. Looking at the view I feel an emotion recalling Andrew Wyeth’s wonderfully austere sketches. He tried, and succeeded, to communicate something to us about the harsher facets of beauty. It is on these, that the softer sides–of art, nature, and life itself–very much depend.

Many birds. Titmice, chickadees, goldfinches, whitethroat sparrows, cardinals, blue jays, mourning doves–flit quickly from bare branches to the feeders as the sun descends into the leafless trees. What does a small bird feel, a  long deathly night of deep cold like knives approaching? Are they afraid at all of dying? Or merely hungry, feeling the sharp cold?  Forty winters now, I’m happy to feed and watch them feeding: seeds rich with oils converted to heat, to keep their little heart-furnaces throbbing as they roost on limbs of frigid darkness.

The fish pond is nearly frozen.  Only the small bubbling space at the base of the fountain remains open. Through the hardening blue ice, huddled in black water, dim swatches of bright fish colors wait in deep torpor, a few degrees above freezing, but still alive. What is it in them that knows, hangs on, and waits……….?

Something happens this time of year, especially in a harder winter with deeper snow, longer cold and power outages. Something very human in us emerges–mixtures of frustration, anger, depression and despair. It has been called by both artists and clinicians “the sadness of winter”.  Unfortunately this accurate diagnosis doesn’t tell us much we don’t already know. But what are we to do with it?

To our surprise we suddenly discover how essentially weak we are, how dependent on very fragile systems. (Only the truly wise realize this, and make fundamental course adjustments.) Without electricity, and all the things that it makes work, our nerves and patience are undone in a cold night or two.  As Americans, we usually take these systems as a birthright. Much of the world knows this is an immature and arrogant myth. Our true hearts catch a glimpse of this riding through the impoverished streets of Kingston on a tourist bus.

When our layers of comfort are taken away, we are tempted to strike out as a petulant child, hurting those we love the most.  The (apparently) easier route is  to blame someone, anyone, for our inconvenience and discomfort. But right in the very midst of our suffering, there waits an epiphany, a wider awakening.  It reveals itself to us in the deeper sources of hope. Someone is waiting to help us see it, just beneath the frozen surface.

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