A Winter Faith (Reprise)

Proposed Antiphon: Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God


Cruel wintry winds
Howl, hiss and blow
Across the ice
Over the snow

Bare trees poke up
No life is seen
The ice gives all
A glassy sheen

Nothing moves
Lest blown about
High up above
Cold stars are out

Your face is numb
Your fingers chill
Breath a brief cloud
And all is still

Below the snow
Below the ice
In buried peace
Lie seeds and mice

Fish dream fish dreams
Deep in the ponds
While cruel winds whip
The cattail fronds

Chipmunks sleep tight
And dream of sun
Of nuts and grain
Of chipmunk fun

Down in the mud
The frogs all sleep
Turtles mark time
In burrows deep

Warmth will return
The ice will go
And life will rise
And water flow

Snow drops will leap
Out of their grave
Then crocuses;
These plants are brave

The buds will swell
And burst and bloom
The earth will shed
This wintry gloom

But bravest, first
Sign of the mild
The Christmas birth;
The holy Child

Reminding us
This wintry strife
Lies briefly over
Our vibrant life

From out of dark
Comes life and light
Showing us God's
Power and might.


Original Post

Raise Your Light!

The sun rises, the sun sets
The moon waxes and wanes

The green life rises and leafs out

Fauns and children are born and grow

Old people hold hands, walking into the sunset

Rain waters the earth
Blue skies catch our breath

Birds sing
Fish splash
Squirrels leap
Chipmunks search the undergrowth for seeds

Woodpeckers knock, while skunks hunt for grubs below
Tiny sparks of life burrow in the earth and dance in the air

People help each other
People they know
And people they do not know

They set up funds, institutions, and ways of life to see to the care and shelter of others
For people they will never meet, for those who will come long after they have gone

Others have labored, and we have entered into their labors

Good is not the exception
We live in a very blessed world

We do not light a single lamp in the darkness
But add our light to the constellations lighting the sky

We do not sing alone in a vile place
But join the celestial chorus

There are those who do not hear
Who turn away
Who see the dark first, who struggle to pick out any good
Who cannot see how very blessed we are
Who cannot imagine the world of sharing that we really live in
And we must sing to them
And raise our light, our hearts

There is enough grace,

enough good,

… enough God for all of us

Raise your light!

A Winter Faith

Cruel wintry winds
Howl, hiss and blow
Across the ice
Over the snow

Bare trees poke up
No life is seen
The ice gives all
A glassy sheen

Nothing moves
Lest blown about
High up above
Cold stars are out

Your face is numb
Your fingers chill
Breath a brief cloud
And all is still

Below the snow
Below the ice
In buried peace
Lie seeds and mice

Fish dream fish dreams
Deep in the ponds
While cruel winds whip
The cattail fronds

Chipmunks sleep tight
And dream of sun
Of nuts and grain
Of chipmunk fun

Down in the mud
The frogs all sleep
Turtles mark time
In burrows deep

Warmth will return
The ice will go
And life will rise
And water flow

Snow drops will leap
Out of their grave
Then crocuses;
These plants are brave

The buds will swell
And burst and bloom
The earth will shed
This wintry gloom

But bravest, first
Sign of the mild
The Christmas birth;
The holy Child

Reminding us
This wintry strife
Lies briefly over
Our vibrant life

From out of dark
Comes life and light
Showing us God's
Power and might.


Perhaps on a similar note: The Winter of Contentment

Seeing Truth in the Wasteland

In the waste-land near the train-station the wild grapes are gone past. Now the wild grasses display their fruit, and rose-hips shine bright red between the leaves of the sweetbriar.

Nearby there is a circuit box that handles power for the station and its night-time illumination. Looking at it, I see an electric eye, aimed at the heavens, rigged to tell the circuit box if it is day or night, if the lights at the station need to be turned on, or not.

The electric eye is covered with shiny glass, and beneath the glass its electronics are a reddish blue. -Which has attracted a beetle with bright red and black markings, who is doing its best to cover the eye with its body. So far, the electric eye is not fooled.

While I contemplate this, an adventursome chipmunk scampers over my foot and stops underneath me to give me a sniff. As I don't seem to be food, it scoots away, quick as thought, in search of larder for the winter. 'Try the grass seed', I think.

We on the earth are good at sensing the hours and seasons of the planet, and figuring out what is good food, and what is not.

But with the food of the spirit, we are often not so good. We lay up poison in our wine-cellars, we store away pebbles instead of wheat. We look at the sky, and we see the bug that is in the way, and remember little of the actuality in front of us, good or bad.

Test the spirit of the times. Taste what is in front of you, and if it is poison, spit it out. Test what you see, and clear your vision of that which blocks the truth. Test what you hear, and clear your ears of falsehood. Judge with right judgment, and keep your wits about you.

If you walk about with your eyes blocked, will you not stumble and hurt yourself? And if what you believe is lies, or your thinking is based on anger, will not your decisions lead to disaster and ruin?

If the bug, and the chipmunk are signs, perhaps they are hopeful ones. Perhaps they show that we can and will see the truth, and choose the true food, and see true light.

May it be so for us all.

LE

Evensong

Above the trees
A hawk wheels screaming
Against the azure sky
Where cloud-dragons twist and coil

About my feet
The chipmunks skitter

The sky darkens with evening
The hawk finds its nest
The cloud-dragons are gone
The chipmunks settle in their burrows

The dog barks
And appears with his owner for a walk.

Bunnies appear
Cautious and quiet
Ears atwist

Evening birds sing
A bat swoops by

I poke the fire and sparks fly up
Fireflies blink
Stars peek

Peace soaks in

May peace and joy surround you

Wasteland Pictures

Not so long ago, I published a post entitled Wasteland. I thought it might be neat if you got to see what I saw, and so here are some pictures from the very wasteland I was writing about:

Some grapes growing next to a cable supporting an electrical line...

Some immature raspberries... Today I see that some of them are ripe and that they are plump and lovely BLACK raspberries, and that many have been eaten by the little critters who live here.

And a funny bug on milkweed blossoms:

May your day be equally full of beauty in unexpected places.


P.S. I have replaced the picture on this blog of 'St Kevin's Chapel' with a picture of a grasshopper, as perhaps more appropriate. The insect in question was only briefly held and released back where it was captured. No grasshoppers were eaten or harmed in any way in the production of this blog.

Wasteland

...
Railroads are by their nature surrounded by wasteland.

Their roadbeds are not usually considered pretty, their switching areas, rusting signals and overhead electric lines are eyesores, and the trains that travel them are loud, discoraging the close encroachment of the neat lawns and dwellings of residential suburbia.

And the odd angles that the rail-beds make with roads, property lines, and each other create wedges of land that are virtually impossible to put to any use, even if someone wanted to do so.

And so they are left fallow, ...and life finds them and springs up.

The odd-shaped wedge behind the train station where I wait in the morning teams with life and is laden with ripening wild fruit;

raspberries and blackberries and grapes and choke-cherries, rose-hips and milkweed, and wild herbs and seeds - eaten by silly baltimore orioles (singing 'oh-boyeee!') and robins and sparrows and mocking-birds and chipmunks. ...and these are likely just the bold ones, who dare show themselves while I am there.

The amount of life per square foot is amazing. And to create this beauty, we just had to give it space. We abandoned it. We ignored it. We left it alone.

This was a waste-land, useless.

Sometimes we feel that way about ourselves, about parts of our lives, about people and places. But perhaps they need just a little space, some light, and a bit of water. Just a wee opportunity for growth and creation; time and space for God to enter in, and fill the wasteland with life.

May God enter all the abandoned places in our lives, all our waste-lands, and make them bloom and be fruitful.

And may we be wise enough to allow space for life, to leave spaces for the wild magic of God to take place.

Love,
Locust Eater

Related:
Wasteland Pictures
Seeing Truth in the Wasteland
God’s Sheep are Confused

Living Fruitful Lives

The red-winged blackbirds perch on the cattails
Last year's cattails that are going to seed
Their brown firmness gone
They are transformed into down
Leaving stalks with strange, bleached tufts and wisps of fluff on them.

Some of the cattail fluff
Is carried off to pad nests
And comfort the little lives
That hatch and fledge there
Or becomes bedding for fieldmice,
Muskrats, and chipmunks.

Some is eaten by bugs
Or it rots on the stalk
Or in the mud of the marsh
Enriching the soil

And some of the tiny seeds that it carried
Burst open and grow anew.

May God grant us richly fruitful lives, and may many benefit thereof.

And may we also appreciate how very humble a fruitful life can be.

Signs of Life

I came across a perfectly circular 1.5" hole in the still-partly-frozen ground the other day. It looked like small cookie-cutter had made it, but I knew the author of this particular void, and it wasn't a child running around wreaking lawn-havoc with a bit of baking equipment. No, the author of this strangely symmetrical divot is small, brown, and has spent much of the last month in hibernation, tail curled over it's nose.

A chipmunk.

There is something to be said for being able to lie low, and sleep through the tough seasons. Unfortunately, we humans cannot. We must tough, or fight it out. And when the seasonal warfare wanes and the sun returns it's warmth to us, we are glad to greet again these, our fair-weather friends.

Life is good, and we must all approach it as best we can.