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So much beauty in the dying...

11/22/2016

These verses are excerpts from the poem
"Shores of Silence"
by Pope John Paul II, from his book of poetry,
The Place Within.

The distant shores of silence begin
at the door. You cannot fly there
like a bird. you must stop, look deeper,
still deeper, until nothing deflects the soul
from the deepmost deep ...
(Pope John Paul II)

In such silence I hide,
a leaf released from the wind,
no longer anxious for the days that fall.
They must all fall, I know.
(Pope John Paul II)

Yes, they must all fall, we know, but
oh, such beauty in the dying.

Perhpas this is what catches us off guard,
this year, every year:
so much beauty in the dying.
(-bz-)

HumminB

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Country life humor. Pig round-up.

11/16/2016

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This sign says: It's a warm afternoon!

(*Names have been changed to protect...ummm. me.)

The sun warmed my back as I hiked down the mountain, and I was glad for the “borrowed time” of another mild, late autumn day. I might have started the hike in a sweatshirt, but somewhere along the way, I had left it on a post or a branch to pick up on the way home.

As I passed *Martha’s house, she came out on the porch to chat a bit. Her husband died some time back-was it a year? Two years? I had lost track, but I knew she hadn’t. I suspected her life at the foot of the mountain was a little bit lonely. Recently, I had noticed that her smile didn’t seem to quite reach her eyes.

“Aren’t you cold?” she queried, shaking her head. She was bundled in her heaviest sweatshirt, hood up, and still shivering.

“Nope,” I grinned at her. “It’s really mild out here.” She shook her head again and proceeded to fill her bird feeders. We exchanged a few comments as she worked, then I continued on my way, past her house and…stopped abruptly as a pair of pigs, not fully grown but bigger than I could have carried, came hustling across the yard.Oh dear.

I called back to her, “*Samuel and *Rebecca’s pigs are out!!” and she joined me as we surveyed the scene. I tried to wave the wanderers back toward the general area where they belonged, whereupon they split up and ran east AND west; at that point we noticed the mama pig was also ranging around the neighborhood.

As I rushed up the steps to summon Rebecca, I could hear Martha grumbling, “They’re not home. I’m pretty sure they’re not home.” Neighbors keep an eye on each here, and Martha usually noticed when the family beside her headed down the lane in their carriage. She was right, no one answered my knock. And so, the fun began.

We soon discovered that the gate to the pasture was unlatched. “Probably that little *Sam left it open, Martha lamented. “He’s always in there.” By now a dozen or so chickens had joined the escapades. We ignored the chickens and focused our efforts on corralling the pigs…which if you have ever tried, you know is a daunting prospect because pigs are not a herd animal.

The little pigs dashed around the various and sundry outbuildings, often in opposite directions. I circled a number of those buildings more than once! The horse, watching our antics through the open half door of his shed, snorted and fussed. (Or maybe he was laughing.)

We developed a system in which I would get the pig headed in the direction of the pasture gate and Martha would open the gate and shoo it through with perhaps some help from the red plastic baseball bat she had picked up along the way. It took a while, but eventually we had contained the two young ones back in their proper territory.

By this time, I was puffing, and sweating and laughing pretty hard. Martha was just shaking her head. And then we looked around for their mama.

Waaay out there, somewhere...

Whatever else they are, pigs are not stupid, and she had obviously surveyed our efforts to round up her youngsters and decided this was her opportunity to make a run for it. Pigs are faster than you might think. Or at least this one was.

She was waaaay out beyond Martha’s garage in a huge open area, beyond the line fence between the properties, and she was not showing any interest in heading back our direction.

Wrong side of the fence. Again.

I was tempted to say, “Oh, well, not my farm, not my pigs,” sort of the country life version of “not my zoo, not my monkeys.”

But that’s not how we see it here, and I remembered (too) many times when kind neighbors or even strangers passing by had helped round-up errant sheep from Hickory Lane.

It is how we live our lives, here in rural Pennsylvania, Amish and “English,” (the term Amish people use to describe non-Amish.) We help each other.

Fortunately for us, this lesson is learned early in life, for at this very moment as we stood pondering the unlikelihood of our abilities to capture the last prodigal pig, another neighbor “happened” to be running up the road. When I flagged down *Vince, the cheerful ten-year old immediately swung into action, dashing out across the deep green of Martha’s lawn and herding home that disgruntled pig without so much as breaking a sweat. We thanked him, which was all the pay he expected, and he was on his way, with a great little story to tell his family at dinner. The ramblers had all returned. Well...not quite all.

Sure, now you're tired!

Martha and I surveyed the yard. The chickens were scattered everywhere. “I’m not chasing those chickens,” she puffed. “They can find them when they get home.” We knew the nervous little birds wouldn’t travel far, because it was early evening, and chickens always come home to roost. Yes, yes they do.

I looked at my friend. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes were bright, and her sweatshirt was hanging open. “Hey Martha,” I couldn’t resist. “Are you still cold?" Chuckling, she shook her head one more time.

We went our separate ways, warm, and warmed. And laughing. Country problems.

This path. Beautiful in every season. TIme to head home.

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His love is high...

11/8/2016

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The woods seemed unnaturally silent for most of my walk and I wondered why. A few incessantly irritable little chipmunks kept announcing my presence; fuss-fuss-fuss, their ticking, clicking warning preceded my every step. But perhaps I was not the danger against which they warned.

Caw, caw, caw, a crow flew overhead low and close, so close I heard the precise whoosh of his wings cutting through the air; it was not a gentle, meandering flight – the wing beats were firm and businesslike; he was a bird on a mission.

At some point, I heard a hawk scream through the canopy, and I pondered the terror that primal scream would etch across the brain of a woodland creature – chickadee, chipmunk, vole, vireo. It wasn’t a sound I would ever long to hear. Unlike the bluebird’s signature greeting or the whistle of a tufted titmouse, this shriek contained a predatory edge of bloodthirst.

So, maybe that was why the chipmunks were edgy. They could be forgiven their touchiness, given the panic inducing reality of hawk fear.

Oh, yes. Hawk fear again.

Recently I have had a fascination with the view I find when I point my camera “up,”
as in, straight up toward…
whatever is up there.
(Mostly trees so far, because that is mostly what I can see.)

Something moves me when I see the way the lens curvature pulls the treetops inward
as if they would both hold the earth and frame the sky.

For some reason, this view brings these words into my mind:

Your love is deep.
Your love is high.
Your love is long.
Your love is wide.

Your love is deeper than my view of grace,
Higher than this worldly place,
Longer than this road I travel,
Wider than the gap You fill.

Who shall separate us
Who shall separate us from your love
Nothing can separate us
Nothing can separate us from your love.

This worship song used to be a favorite in my church, in me. I'm not sure why we don't sing it anymore...it's still one of my vacuuming songs. (Singing my way through less favorite tasks is a long habit of mine…as is singing when I am really delighted, so you can’t always tell the difference…which might be the point.)

These words hold deep meaning for me, and I sing them that way, with gusto (over the sound of my vacuum, should you happen to stop by.)
So.much. truth. packed into these simple lyrics. So many dimensions to God's love:

His love is deep:
Some days it’s a big relief to realize God’s love is deep, because life offers up some serious potholes, and I end up in them all too often. When I’m “in deep,” I have found this quote by Corrie ten Boom to be true:

There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still.

I cling to the reality of a love that is “deeper still,” more than enough for whatever hole I have dug or into which I have fallen.

His love is wide:
I feel like I might have always known that God’s love is wide…bridging the chasm that yawned open between Creator and created ones the first time the snake whispered and we listened. I think the sin nature becomes obvious to anyone who has ever raised a two-year-old, parented through the teen years, or looked into the mirror and caught a glimpse of the dark side.

I need a love wide enough to span that gap, and God offers it.

His love is long:
I have at times caught a hint of how long God’s love is, preceding my first breath of life by millennia, as evidenced in the words of David:

“For great is Your steadfast love for me.” (Psalm 86:13 ESV)

You too, David?
When you read those words,
when you wrote those words,

did your heart swell with warmth like mine does every single time I read this extravagant phrase?
My face cannot hold back a smile as I finger this line of pearl words and hold them close to my heart.

.
Oh, God, this love of yours,
it is truly a long love,
it is longer than the road I travel, longer than my years,
however long that may be.

I have come to trust that I cannot outlive that love.

His love is high: What exactly does that mean? I have memorized verses that declared the truth that God’s love is high:

Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds. Psalm 36:5

For your steadfast love is higher than the heavens,
and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
Psalm 108:4

However, the understanding of God's high love at a heart level is newer.

I think that's why the lens view of “up” has captured my attention. Those trees, hovering, those branches framing my view, somehow connect me to the sense that I too am held, that my world is framed with a Love whose dimensions I am only beginning to glimpse.

A love that is higher than “this worldly place,” this space of earth,
a love that takes in the sweep of my little life in this little place fraught with pits and chasms and hawk fear…

That would be one hawk-fear-banishing, extraordinary love.

Your love is high...

May you have the power to understand…how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Epesians 3:18, 19 NLT

HumminB

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Morning thoughts on clouds and trust.

11/1/2016

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The porch is still warm enough for morning sitting.

Almost warm enough.

One of these morning will be my last early sit.

Maybe this one. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, I’ll take this gift,

one more day to pause

in the peaceful white noise of a country morning.

“Da! Da?” calls a small voice in the barnyard. I know it is Youngest Neighbor because I hear the rattle of the shovel which he drags or carries or brandishes, all.day.long. Sometimes this cherub with curls and a dirty face rides the plastic handle like the pony he wishes he had; other times that shovel is just “along,” like an extension of his sturdy arm. I wonder if it has grown fast, his fingers melded with the handle so that when “Mam” scrubs his chubby hands at bedtime she must also wash the dirt and worse from the wide digging end of the green shovel.

I hear robin racket in the maples; although these birds have been mostly gone for weeks, it seems a small flock from somewhere north has stopped in for a few last grubs and worms.

It’s easy for them to grab a quick meal in my garden which is mostly brown space and leaf mosaic now.

My perky nuthatch dashes about in his usual frantic style.

It’s hard not to smile at a bird who travels headfirst down every tree trunk, striking a pose like a small gymnast.

He’s always giving his unassuming little call, “knack, knack” as if to clear his tiny throat just to be sure I see him.

Not all the sounds are ambient this morning. House sparrows fuss and squabble constantly in the forsythia hedge, like fractious children at the playground; much as I desperately long to ignore them, it isn’t quite possible.

Pigeons murmur along the roof of the corncrib and I wonder what it is they always talk about. The extravagance of their pink pink feet amazes me. Did some small angel pitch a heavenly hissy fit begging for this outlandish addition? Or does God just have a creative, quirky sense of humor?

The sun came up in a blaze of beauty some time back,

but now the clouds have moved in, and the wind has an edge that it didn’t have at first light.
A few blue patches are still visible and I wonder if the sun or clouds will “win” today.

I want to remember that the sun is still “up there,” even when clouds dominate my view.

And I want to remember this as well…
it is the clouds that add grandeur to my valley view,
and wonder to the sunset.

Dear God,

Help me to remember that You are present, and Presence,
even when I cannot see You.

Help me to trust You in deep cloud cover.

Help me to watch for cloud glorious sunsets.

Amen.
(May it be so.)

HumminB

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So much beauty in the dying...

Country life humor. Pig round-up.

His love is high...

Morning thoughts on clouds and trust.

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