Mid-July, West Virginia

In winter, we did dream
of this extravagant heat,
this golden gale of light
that whips each sun-bared limb,
and makes our wool-wrapped, boot-toed tramps
through frosty grass
a distant planetary dream.

There's the indulgent bee,
rolled deep in velvet pollen,
half drunk on sun thick nectar,
oblivious of memories,
buzzing above the silent furnace roar
of pavement baking patiently,
some yards away.

The mockingbird, alone,
careless of blazing noon,
runs, tail high, through the bleaching grass,
after a hapless bug,
then flaps white-flashing wings
to the unshaded top
of some well-favored tree, to sing.

He sings a memory
of the north-flown cardinal,
who habited our winter
with his spark of cheer -
"'What cheer! What cheer!' is here!"
The cardinal is gone.
The red slow-fading sun
has come to linger long.
Its warmth embraces stones,
and deep, damp roots of trees,
and radiates into the humming, dusky night.

- AFB, 7-16-2024 

 

A Prayer for Lent

 In 40 days,

    we'll stand beside the stone

    dropped in the dew-wet grass

    beside our dew-wet feet

    before our tear-wet eyes,

    while dawn and bird dawn-chorus

    echo back our joys.

 

Today, our eyes are dry

    and we forget, between

    the dishes and the wash machine

    majestic sweetness 

    in Your voice.

    We cannot see beyond the screen

    the darkness of Gethsemane,

    or feel beyond our creaking chair

    the heavy cross you had to bear.

Teach us again to taste and see,

    the goodness of Your body,

    drained of blood, but not of Love,

    which bids us follow

    till we reach again,

    the fallen stone,

    the folded linen clothes,

    the moment when

    we turn again,

    hearing Your voice.

Waiting for Redwings

Today I felt a stirring in the air outside, even from the house - a slight change in the bird songs, a bright haze in the air. Gazing out the window at the damp black tree branches and wisping clouds, I remembered the redwing blackbirds. They always came when you were sure it was a little too early to expect spring, sometimes descending flight-weary on the feeders to gobble seeds with snow-dusted wings. Then from the tree tops, would come that wild cheering call as they flared their red shoulders and laughed winter to scorn. 

I thought today I could cry for joy to hear one blackbird sing. Was it about now that they came? Then, I remembered the nature log on the hutch shelf - a notebook kept with sporadic devotion to a few details, mostly first sightings, new species. I went for it, and there, last year on February 6 was "First redwing blackbird call". Today is February 5. Another year noted the 9th. It might be soon now. 

What was the value of that dated scribble? A remembrance? A comparison? A reason to hope? Perhaps it was simply that the act of writing three words had so much potential return for the cost of effort. The returning seasons are one of God's guarantees. Noting them marks my place a little more firmly in that promised cycle. 



Will I cry for joy when the first redwing sings? I don't know. I might write a poem. But I'll probably write it in the notebook. 

In Another Bleak Midwinter

Is it truly mid-winter? I thought the 21st marked the beginning of winter, but it's lovely to think that we're almost halfway through the cold, dark tunnel. The holiday season is rarely one of natural joy for me, because the absence of warmth and sun usually bring fatigue and illness to our little family, and I struggle with the winter blues in real earnest. All the talk of hustle and bustle seem like a joke - I mean, we're just trying to stay alive here. I got my little coughing, fever patient to drink some water. I got the supper dishes washed, mostly, before crashing into bed and trying to nurse the baby to sleep. And somehow in the coming weeks we are supposed to visit all sorts of family with feasting and jollification.

I wonder if little Mary felt frustrated at the holiday travel required of her. I imagine her being a much more godly, submissive, patient person than I am, rather than putting up her feet and saying "Go to Bethlehem? On a donkey? Now? Um, no. I'm pregnant. I'm staying right here. Caesar is greedy and power hungry, but even he couldn't expect people like *me* to take part in the census." But she did the right thing and took her baby bump to the right place, and Jesus was born in the eternally destined location. God always knows what He's doing.

All this is just a bit of what I've been thinking about the things we don't like about Christmas being the things that are most nourishing to our faith and our vision of the Savior. I remember one Christmas season a couple years ago when I had the flu and was lying on the couch feeling crushed in pain and I looked over at the Nativity display we had set up, and whispered "Why, why did you come here? This miserable, broken place of pain. You didn't have to come. Oh, how you must love us." And another time as I looked at our Christmas gathering schedule that I was jotting into a notebook, and thought, "All this to do, to be with people, and I am too tired for any of it." That itself is a vivid picture of the first Christmas. Travel, people, bustle, exhaustion, and God getting his work done through ordinary people.

I saw this beautiful old quote from Ambleside Schools on Instagram that said it so well:

"The grass withers, the flower falls away, but the Word of our God endures for ever." As if Peter had said, 'All that has grown out of this root shall drop off in order that it may be seen how deeply the root itself is fixed in the soil.' We do not keep Christmas in the bright, sunny time of the year, but now in the heart of winter, when everything is bare and dry. And our Lord himself is said to be "a root out of a dry ground," from which all the blossoms of hope and joy are to come, but which must first be owned in its own nakedness before they shall appear. If then, men have begun to fancy that their gladness has another root than this, it is meet that for a time they should be left to try whether they can keep it alive by any efforts and skill of theirs. If Christmas joy has been separated from Christ, it is no wonder and no dishonor to Christ that it should grow feeble and hollow. But Christmas is not dead, because the mirth of those who have forgotten its meaning is dead. It is not dead for you, it is not dead for people who lie upon beds tormented with fevers, and dropsies, and cancers. It is not dead for the children in factories, and for the men who are working in mines, and for prisoners who never see the light of the sun. To all these the news, "The Word who was in the beginning with God and was God, in whom is life, and whose life is the light of men, by whom all things were made, and without whom was not anything made that was made, became flesh and dwelt among us, entered into our poverty, and suffering, and death," is just as mighty and cheering news now as it was when St. Peter first declared it to his countrymen at Pentecost. You want this truth, you cannot live or die without it. You have a right to it. By your baptism God hath given you a portion in him who was made flesh; by your suffering he is inviting you to claim that portion, to understand that it is indeed for you Christ lived and died."
from "Christmas Day" sermon, Frederick Maurice, M.A.

Let us embrace an ideal of the perfect Christmas as the one that makes us fall more in love with the incarnate Christ, whether it is in jollification or in quiet pain or grief. He has come for us. By faith He is ours to possess forever. Here is joy unceasing, consolation without end.

Carl Blechen - Landschaft im Winter bei Mondschein (1836)

Waiting Summer - A Poem

I've been determinedly reading through the Oxford Book of American Verse - a long project, and one I've questioned as the poets seem to become increasingly disillusioned and corrupt as one advances chronologically through the pages, but it also portrays a mental history of our nation that is enlightening. There are gems in those pages, and also glimpses of hell. When I finished the section of Hart Crane's poems (highly non-recommended) this morning, I felt inspired to write a fresh poem to lift my spirits and remind me that the world is beautiful and good under God. This one is about the hope that summer reflects to me.

Waiting Summer

Green this heavy
I only dreamed,

When east wind rattled the crying twigs

pleading the chill white sky -

How long?

'Til the red life blood of spring

Will make us live,
and robe us with a

weight of glory?

I scarcely dreamed

when the first gold shone

on the waking boughs.

That now was the

beginning of

It won’t be long.

A Vision of Christmas from Elizabeth Goudge

I've been trying to speed read a most delicious book - speed read because I bought it for a Christmas gift and I want to finish reading it first myself. (Books are the gift that keeps on giving!). The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge, is, like all of Goudge's wonderful books that I've read, full of entrancing beauty and profound reflections on the human soul. This particular book deals with a unique aspect of humanity in the history and journals of Mary Lindsay, a woman who struggled with mental illness. I didn't expect this book to prepare me for Christmas (in anything except the hope of getting it read before Christmas comes) but I found this gem of a Christmas dream in the story's excerpt from Mary Lindsay's diary:

I heard the clock strike five and I thought, Soon it will be Christmas and I shan't be able to enjoy my first Christmas in my own home. I was very sorry for myself. I thought, I can't bear it. I was lying on stones and the walls were moving in...The walls moved in nearer and as they closed right around, trapping me, I screamed.

I don't suppose I really screamed. What had happened was that I had fallen asleep at last and drifted into nightmare. I was imprisoned in stone. I knew then what men suffered who are walled up alive. But I was able to think, and I thought, Shall I scream and beat against the wall or shall I keep my mouth shut and be still? I wanted to scream because it would have been the easier thing. But I didn't. And when I had been still for a little while I found myself slowly edging forward. There was a crack in the stone. The hardness pressed against me upon each side in a horrible way, as though trying to crush me, but I could edge forward through the crack. I went on scraping through and at last there was a glimmer of light. It came to my feet like a sword and I knew it had made the crack, a sword of fire, splitting the stone. And then the walls drew back slightly on either side of me, as though the light pushed them. I had a sense of conflict, as though the darkness reeled and staggered, resisting the light in an anguish of evil strength. It had a fearful power. But the light, that seemed such a small beam in comparison with that infinity of blackness, kept the channel open and I fled down it. There was room now to run. I ran and ran and came out into the light.

A Mountain Adventure

This morning, our 4 yr. old son insisted that we are going to the mountains and began packing the car with essentials such as golden books, rubber balls, a cooler with freshly picked oregano and a picnic blanket . He has previously insisted that we were going to run a hotdog stand or go to the beach, which I had to convince him was not happening - but since we live in West Virginia, I thought this wish wouldn't be too hard to gratify. A little Google-mapping found us North Mountain - 20 minutes away, but we had never gone there before, so we hopped in the car and headed for I-81 North. On the way up, I returned a call from my neighbor who wanted to give me some hosta bulbs she was dividing and told her where we were going. "I was born on that mountain" she said. Knowing her childhood history of mountain pentecostalism and its accompanying strangeness added a touch of eeriness to the adventure.

We drove west through the quaint little overgrown town in the valley, then through farms with grassy fields running into the deep leafy green forest of the mountain side - then up, up to the junction at the top and then with several back tracks to the junction, took all the different routes in turn.

Looking Forward

This past winter has been hard in all the ways that winters with little ones (and my own struggle with Lyme disease) are hard. My relief that it is over is so great that I want to hug every tulip and daffodil, drink the air from open windows like wine, and already sigh that the leaves are out because the end of the beginning marks a few days closer to the next winter. I shudder at the memory of the dull skies, illnesses and seeping cold and never want to see it again. The whole earth seems so right. The deadness of winter so wrong - must it ever come again? 

But in the midst of the long, dark winter, God sent us that which that makes the end of this summer a thing to anticipate with hope At first we were overwhelmed in the midst of our weariness, but the hope is growing, and, oh, God-willing, the end of October will bring us new, warm life - a baby. I'm growing hungrier for small fuzzy cheeks and velvet head and a new face with a new name - hungrier than I was for warm skies and violet-studded grass. This is a gift. We never know if a growing baby in the womb will live to see the light of day - all life is in God's hands. But my heart wanted something to anticipate and God granted me a growing belly and sleepless wee hours filled with crazy baby-name conjuring, and midnight snacks and outdoor time with children that leaves me weary to the bone, and the overwhelming reality that a life is in our charge to love and give ourselves to keep. 

In all of this, the Word of God has been near to sustain and teach me. I am learning that when I cannot see the good of life's hard things (and even pregnancy has been a hard thing), their hardness itself is the gift of Him who said "You have need of endurance" to one of his children who would have all things made light and easy. If I could have all things easy here, how would I be kept from the dangerous love of this world? To be weary in the way is to long for the end - final redemption in Jesus' consummated kingdom. Ease does not push me there. "The testing of your faith develops endurance". Whatever motherhood brings, life will not be easy if my God loves me well. He wants me to be as hungry for His kingdom as I have been for spring, as eager to see His face as I am to meet our baby (no, much, much more). He wants me to raise our children to hope in the triumph of King Jesus, and look for redemption outside themselves just as I must daily do. And He is helping me to do want He wants of me.

If none of this makes sense, blame it on my pregnancy brain, but praise the Lord with me, because He does all things well.

The Airing Day

This deliciously spring-like February day with its fresh breezes and happy children watching the laundry waving on the line put all kinds of poetry in my head. A happy wind blew it right into me and here it is. 

[Confession: I did not put out to air all of the items listed in this poem!]

The Airing Day

Sweet wind from the southwest the rain mist is sweeping.

Bold blackbirds awaken the sky from its sleeping.

The chillied new year a fresh spring cloak is wearing –

It’s time for the house to turn out for an airing!

Bring out your doilies and tea towels and cosies,

Hang out your pillow shams, blankets and duvets,

Pull out the rugs from the bugs and the dust,

And beat them in league with the wind if you must!

Bring out your mattress, your couch and your foot puff,

Drag out your latch-hooked rugs, all of the floor stuff.

Clear out the nooks and the crannies and closets,

Eradicate all the dust bunny deposits!

Pin pillows to clotheslines, hang bath mats on porch rails,

While breezes turn all of the bedsheets to boat sails.

Old quilts from the closet come out like brave banners,

Exhibiting brisk, unconventional manners.

All of the linens, grown dusty from living

With winter, are waving a giddy thanksgiving!

Fresh air, flood the windows, thrown open to greet you

Spring day, the whole house is delighted to meet you.

- Alyssa Bohon, February 2018

Why?

Our son is in the "Why?" stage of life, between 3 and 4 years old. The questioning seems almost merciless at times, pushing the bounds of infinite regression, as he pries for just one more tidbit to feed his young appetite for knowledge. "Why did you drop that cup? Why does that happen sometimes? Why do you need to use the bathroom? Why don't you want me to put my hands in my mouth? Why is that not good? Why did you do that?...." The answers I have to give him for some of these wearisome wonderings seem quite valueless to me. But sometimes the "Why's" do turn up valuable bits of information. When I begin to talk to him about Scripture truths and he asks questions like, "Why did Jesus die? Why did they kill him? Why did He let them kill him? Why does he love us?" Oh, that one is a why indeed.

Today after reading about the garden of Eden, he asked, "Why did God make a tree like that?" and "Why did the snake lie to them?" As I pondered and articulated answers, I began to realize how, unlike many of the tedious details of my daily life, the story of God offers riches of knowledge ready to supply an infinite hunger to know and be fed in heart and mind.

If I would only offer Scripture the ravenous curiosity that my child offers me each day, how much might I discover? There is a point of stopping where "The secret things belong to the Lord our God" (Deut. 29:29), but I think that just as often as we are tempted to pry where we have no business, we are tempted to neglect stores of good things in which we ought to be having a great deal of business.

When I wake with a morning text in my head, maybe a question would bring more good to me from it than the customary thoughts. His mercies are new every morning. Why are His mercies new every morning? Because His faithfulness is great. Why is His faithfulness great? Because He does not change. Why does He not change? Because that is who He is.  At this point there are no more questions, but a great deal of solid assurance.

I think that at the back, or the bottom, or the peak of all our questioning, the ultimate answer will always be the person and nature of God. Because He is who He is, this is. Let's be taking our children's questions there too. For our children it will be a refuge.

Gathering Storm Near Ry by Vilhelm Kyhn

Blessings

After a Lord's day morning at home sick with the children and an afternoon spent with much singing, this portion from the Valley of Vision spoke perfectly to my thoughts:

Thou hast shown me

  that the sensible effusions of divine love

    in the soul are superior to and distinct from

    bodily health,

  and that oft-times spiritual comforts are

    at their highest when physical well-being is

    at its lowest.

Thou hast given me the ordinance of song

    as a means of grace;

Fit me to bear my part in that music ever new,

  which elect angels and saints made perfect

  now sing before thy throne and before the Lamb.

Even seeming dreary days can be practice for that glad unending day of praise. Thanks be to our God and Savior for common means of grace and His faithful presence with us through all our days.

The Sonata by Childe Hassam

From The Valley of Vision, "Blessings"

The Wonder of Christmas Love

Nearly every Advent season, I find, with almost incredulous surprise, that there is another layer of wonder, another beam of glory to see in the familiar story of the incarnation. Sometimes there are several lessons of love and beauty to learn in one season. Isn't that why we take more than a day to celebrate?

There was the glimpse I had of Christ's mighty condescension when I lay on the couch, shaking with fever and chills from one of those friendly seasonal flus, feeling as miserable as all get out, and I looked over at the nativity scene on the shelf, nestled under the big, glad banner of "Joy to the world, the Lord has come!" All I could think in my illness was "Why did you come, Jesus?...It is just so bad down here. But you came..." Dirt. Disease. Discomfort. Death. Why did you do it, Jesus? How could you ever bring yourself to come? The answer was a glimpse of love far larger than I have ever felt in my own heart. So in the midst of the misery I saw the depth of his love and adored.

Adoration of the Magi
 Rembrandt

Then there is the story of the three wise men from the east. The line on a Christmas card - "We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him" has been turning over and over in my mind. Why did they do it? Was there a command, an injunction? Mary and Joseph would never have gone to Bethlehem if Caesar had not issued a decree. They were obligated, so they went, and through it prophecy was fulfilled. But these wise men - they are becoming a wonder to me. They heard news, an almost magical announcement of the birth of a King, and for them, the only reasonable option was to pack their bags and go, onward and onward until they could find and worship Him. It was as if to worship the King sent from Heaven was the consummation of all their life's work and all their heart's desire. We take for granted the story that they went. But they went. Not the twenty minute drive to church, but the twenty month march over the desert. They knew, like we forget, that to worship the Divinity is the highest joy and privilege of human existence.

This season, the lessons I have been learning perhaps reflect my weariness as a mother of little ones, longing for peace and quiet, and for those moments when I needn't be bothered. These are riches to me these days, and so I was able to see in the Christmas story, the sacrifice of these things as beautiful. Love is a willingness to be bothered, perhaps infinitely bothered. Jesus loved us, and so He bothered to come and lay down all comfortable things for us. The wise men loved Jesus, and so they bothered to leave home to behold Him and adore. This love makes Christmas beautiful. This love thrills my heart and calls me to run onward in the path of love with Jesus, who has come to us, to never, ever leave.

Let Thy love, my soul’s chief treasure,

Love’s pure flame within me raise;

And, since words can never measure,

Let my life show forth Thy praise.

~ Francis Scott Key

Little Laughing Flowers

Only two weeks remain for my husband to finish his college studies before graduation. He's been a soldier-student for all the time I've known him, and now a soldier-student-husband-father. The journey to finishing college has been long and arduous for this man of whom I am proud and for whom I pray.

Lately those prayers have been much of this one: "Lord, provide for him, provide a job, provide for us." Every time I walk outside and see the world with its trees and homes spread out beneath the sky, I remember our lives beneath God's face and I am stirred up to ask Him again for blessings. (How we need often to stand beneath the sky and remember our Creator!) But in the moment of prayer, my sense of need sometimes rises up against my sense of God and tries to rule my heart. What will we do without this thing for which I pray? How hard will it be to wait for this thing for which I pray? The worry rises  and the prayers rise back, perhaps more weakly. A fresh breezes come to my face and pass by, the grasses wave in it, humble golden dandelions blooming in squat glory near the pavement lift bold faces to the sun, new leaves bob proudly on dark twigs of trees above my head, and other trees revel in brief attire of glorious perfumey blossoms. 

All of it seems suddenly to be laughing at me. Do you not see, silly child of Eve, how well He has provided for us? Does not the spring always come for us to deck ourselves with joy and feed the air with beauty? And are not you the daughter of our Maker? Hohoho! Fret not! The breezes blow to me a dozen reassuring smiles from grass and flower, cloud and leaf. 

"How much more valuable are you than they?" So said Jesus. He wants me to look at all of it, the flowers, the sky and the birds, and to remember why they are there just so, and that I can trust their Maker to make something beautiful out of my life.

Near, by the footfall,
Springeth a joy,
Like a new-blown little flower
Growing for thee, to make thee glad.
Let thy countenance be no more sad,
But wake the voice of joy and health within thy dwelling,
And let thy tongue be ever telling,
Not of fear that lieth grey,
But of little laughing flowers beside the way.
For the Lord is always kind 
Be not blind, be not blind  
To the shining of His face,  
To the comforts of His grace.  
He hath never failed thee yet.  
Never will His love forget.  
O fret not thyself, nor let
Thy heart be troubled,
Neither let it be afraid.

- Amy Carmichael

For My Husband On the Evening of 6 Months of Marriage

My dear husband, this evening the sunset came like a surprising smile across a gloomy countenance. The clouds that had been gray before dinner were suddenly strewn with the most ravishing glory. 

I pronounced to my parents who were cleaning up the kitchen that there should be a law against washing dishes during sunsets and ran outside - with my camera because you could not be here to see it with me.

The canopy of deepest blue spread with ruffled gold was breathtaking. I must have smiled exceedingly because I came home with a pain in my jaw - quite worth is. Isn't it lovely, dearest?

The puddles from this afternoon's rain storm calmly drinking in the sky. Oh what a night to be a puddle!

I was so eager to be clear of the houses that I ran the last quarter of the block until I reached the clearing (blessed clearing - what sadness it would be to live without a space for sky to look through) and saw this.

and this...

and this...

...the heavens telling the glory of God. Oh how beautifully they told it tonight!

I miss you, my dearest companion. 

I would be desolate on evenings like this if I did not know that He who casts the rosy light across the clouds casts more dearly a smile upon my heart, and upon yours, wrapping us in the beauty of His beloved Son.

We are not alone.

The passage you read with me today came to mind:

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

and the flame shall not consume you.

For I am the LORD your God,

the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

I give Egypt as your ransom,

Cush and Seba in exchange for you.

Because you are precious in my eyes,

and honored, and I love you,

I give men in return for you,

peoples in exchange for your life.

Fear not, for I am with you;

I will bring your offspring from the east,

and from the west I will gather you.

I will say to the north, Give up,

and to the south, Do not withhold;

bring my sons from afar

and my daughters from the end of the earth,

everyone who is called by my name,

whom I created for my glory,

whom I formed and made.”

(Isaiah 43:1-7 ESV)

We are safe in His love.

and I love you

"...looking up for glory, my fear all fly away."

A poem written about two years ago, which I rediscovered this evening and found most timely! Dark winters never cease to come, and we still have no other hope but Christ.

In bleak and chilling winter
When earth’s frail comforts fly
Where can I hide but in your side,
Whose life keeps mine on high?

Health proves a reed to lean on.
Stark illness stalks the best.
What can I do, but cling to You,
Whose love is my sweet rest?

I feel the pangs of sin’s blight
As every earthling should
What can I do but trust in You
Who works all for my good?

Earth’s days fly fast to evening
And cold black nights descend
What can I do but hope in you?
For you will come again!

A day will come as flooding
Of summer’s seaside wave
A day will come as rising
Of sun that dawns to save

Our King will leap the bound’ry
Of earth’s cold, cloud-grayed sky,
With potent regal glory,
To bring salvation nigh

And judgment to the evil
That scorns His precious grace,
Reversal of the evil
That plagues his chosen race.

His piercing eyes of judgment
Bring terror realized
To sinners bound for torment
From Him they long despised.

But, oh His face’s shining
Will be the sweetest sight
To those whose hearts were yearning
For Him through earth’s long night.

This star of hope shines for me
Though dark my present day
And looking up for glory
My fears all fly away.

- AFC, 2009