Of Limits and Trees

 

Social distance, mask,

stay home; we add these

limits to the limits

we have known for years;

life even more curtailed these days,

our normals all cut short by painful

facts that shorten possibilities, stretch

out the endless days.

***

I stroll among the trees around my yard,

I stroke their barks, one ragged rough,

her life etched deeply in her skin,

an ancient of days, a toughness,

a rugged weariness perhaps; 

another glassy smooth, almost velvet

to my touch, as though massaged by gossamer

wings in deepest dark of night.

***

So deeply rooted are these trees

cloistered around my  home;

not quite, but almost everlasting,

enduring long beyond my days;

they seem so unconcerned

with all the limitations of their lives;

they cannot move to another state,

they cannot even cross the street,

but in their quiet gush of summer green,

autumn gold and orange and sapphire red,

the beauty of their winter emptiness,

they live their limits, abundant, rich.

Benedictus.   Blessed be the trees.

A Puzzle!

          It’s a beautiful lighthouse picture.  At least it will be a beautiful picture someday when my husband and I put in the last piece.  But filling in the remaining pieces of this puzzle is going to be a challenge.  And I do mean a challenge.  Here you can see the reason:

          All the remaining pieces—and there are a lot of them—are a light gray/blue.  We struggle together over each piece, and I have to admit that every now and again we look at each other and say, “Shall we just pack it away?  Is it just too difficult?”  We shrug our shoulders.  Walk away for a bit.  Come back and suddenly our house resounds with the joyful sound, “I got another piece!”

          Searching for yet another piece this morning, I found myself thinking about the puzzle our country is dealing with and trying to piece together.  Where are those missing pieces that would resolve the covid-19 pandemic with all its loss of lives and livelihoods?  Those missing pieces that would fill in the gaps of injustice in our country?  Those missing pieces that would resolve the systemic racism that has haunted our country since the first slave was brought to our shores?

          Finding these pieces is not going to be easy.  There will not be a cure-all congressional bill that will fill in all the gaps.  There will not be an “I have a solution” speech from either presidential candidate that will pull all the missing pieces together.  There will not be a triumphant protest march that will carry all the right placards to all the right places.  At times it can all feel like a gray/blue muddle, and we’d like to just walk away and forget it all—just get on with our lives.

          But as a people of faith in a God who calls us to let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, we really cannot just walk away.  Nor can we walk away as citizens whose country is founded on the majestic picture painted in the words of our Declaration of Independence:  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

          This beautiful picture, of course, waits yet to be “completed.”  It certainly wasn’t complete when the Declaration of Independence was written, as some of its signers themselves, as owners of slaves, were saying with their lives that all are not created equal.  There were challenges then, and there are new challenges now.  But keep the faith we must.  Hold on to the hope of justice and equality for all.  Support the protests that call for justice for all who live in our country and for all who seek to find haven among us.  Support legislation to eliminate racial bias in our systems of law and education and business.  Support a leader this November who will reach out, not only to a select few, but to every piece, to every person who is a part of the great American puzzle.  Let the cries continue to ring out across our country, “I found another piece!”

The Cross Outside My Window Redux: a Message to Covid-19

April 22, 2020

(the original “The Cross Outside My Window: a Poem for These Troubled Times” was posted with this picture on March 15, 2020)

 

To Covid Monster-19:

Day by day your fetidness surrounds

the maskedness of our lives.

You wall us in.

You distance us from family and friends.

You erase the normals of our lives.

You wipe out all our certainties.

You smirk at our plans, our hopes, our dreams.

Greedily you swallow our beloveds.

***

Yes, Covid-19, you have brought us to our knees,

but we do not kneel to you.

We kneel instead before the cross outside my window,

before the cross of the wounded God

who is ever with us in this darkened time,

before the cross of the Easter God,

new life unfurling after winter death.

We kneel in sorrowful joy,

rich in faith that’s prayed and sung

within us and beyond.

We kneel in sudden wonder at the radiance

of a beloved’s smile, in person or on Zoom.

We kneel in gratitude for simple things—

a book, a bit of yarn, a billowing breeze.  

We kneel in new awareness of our need

for others, for their labor, for their love.

We kneel in awe of all who work

to rescue those within your vicious grasp.

We kneel in sorrow for brothers, sisters

who have crossed beyond our reach.

We kneel in reverence, trembling

as we stand in this thin space between

this life and life beyond, a space

of honesty and opened eyes, a space

of mystery and quest, a space

of trust that “we belong–

body and soul, in life and in death–

to our faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.”*

***

*from Question #1 of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563)