"In Heaven it is Always Autumn"

In Heaven It Is Always Autumn

by Elizabeth Spires

"In Heaven It Is Always Autumn"
John Donne

In heaven it is always autumn. The leaves are always near
to falling there but never fall, and pairs of souls out walking
heaven's paths no longer feel the weight of years upon them.
Safe in heaven's calm, they take each other's arm,
the light shining through them, all joy and terror gone.
But we are far from heaven here, in a garden ragged and unkept
as Eden would be with the walls knocked down,
the paths littered
with the unswept leaves of many years, bright keepsakes
for children of the Fall. The light is gold, the sun pulling
the long shadow soul out of each thing, disclosing an outcome.
The last roses of the year nod their frail heads,
like listeners listening to all that's said, to ask,
What brought us here? What seed? What rain? What light?
What forced us upward through dark earth? What made us bloom?
What wind shall take us soon, sweeping the garden bare?
Their voiceless voices hang there, as ours might,
if we were roses, too. Their beds are blanketed with leaves,
tended by an absent gardener whose life is elsewhere.
It is the last of many last days. Is it enough?
To rest in this moment? To turn our faces to the sun?
To watch the lineaments of a world passing?
To feel the metal of a black iron chair, cool and eternal,
press against our skin? To apprehend a chill as clouds
pass overhead, turning us to shivering shade and shadow?
And then to be restored, small miracle, the sun
shining brightly
as before? We go on, you leading the way, a figure
leaning on a cane that leaves its mark on the earth.
My friend, you have led me farther than I have ever been.
To a garden in autumn. To a heaven of impermanence
where the final falling off is slow, a slow and radiant happening.
The light is gold. And while we're here, I think it must
be heaven.

"In Heaven It Is Always Autumn" by Elizabeth Spires, from Now the Green Blade Rises. © W.W. Norton, 2002. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

 

From "The Writer's Almanac"

"we are alive/ with one another..."

A Prayer among Friends

by John Daniel

Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive
with one another, we walk here
in the light of this unlikely world
that isn't ours for long.
May we spend generously
the time we are given.
May we enact our responsibilities
as thoroughly as we enjoy
our pleasures. May we see with clarity,
may we seek a vision
that serves all beings, may we honor
the mystery surpassing our sight,
and may we hold in our hands
the gift of good work
and bear it forth whole, as we
were borne forth by a power we praise
to this one Earth, this homeland of all we love.

"A Prayer among Friends" by John Daniel, from Of Earth. © Lost Horse Press, 2012. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

 

From "The Writer's Almanac"

"Trees" -- A Poetic Complaint Filed with the Creator

Another in the series "Fifty Acres and Fool"

I think that I shall never see
A thing so evil as a tree
That reaches out of time and space
To smack me right across the face
No matter how low I lean and duck
I always find that I've been struck
By locust trees with wicked barbs
Or oaks and maples that mean me harm.
"Why?" is the question that I ask
When all I'm doing is mowing grass
Or thistles or pokeberry growing fast.
To the many trees I mean no ill
So why do they endeavor to spill
Me from the John Deere's seat
Or turn m'nose and cheek into raw meat?
Oh dear Creator reigning up above
Who embues his creation with all sorts of love
Couldst thou please speak to thy trees
And ask them to give me some ease
Quit battering me from head to toes
As I mow along the grassy rows
To give me some grace as I pass
Lest they feel my chainsaw's wrath!

-- with apologies to Joyce Kilmer, but not to the trees.

I am bloodied but not bowed and will sally forth to mow again this afternoon!

Or to post more pictures of the offenders.

"Back From the Fields"

Back from the Fields

by Peter Everwine

Until nightfall my son ran in the fields,
looking for God knows what.
Flowers, perhaps. Odd birds on the wing.
Something to fill an empty spot.
Maybe a luminous angel
or a country girl with a secret dark.
He came back empty-handed,
or so I thought.

Now I find them:
thistles, goatheads,
the barbed weeds
all those with hooks or horns
the snaggle-toothed, the grinning ones
those wearing lantern jaws,
old ones in beards, leapers
in silk leggings, the multiple
pocked moons and spiny satellites, all those
with juices and saps
like the fingers of thieves
nation after nation of grasses
that dig in, that burrow, that hug winds
and grab handholds
in whatever lean place.

It's been a good day.

"Back from the Fields" by Peter Everwine, from The Meadow: Selected and New Poems. © University of Pittsburg Press, 2004. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

 

From "The Writer's Almanac"

"...the Holy Ghost over the bent World..."

God's Grandeur

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

 The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared

with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell:

the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah!

bright wings.

"World, World, I cannot get thee close enough..."

God's World

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!
Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart. Lord, I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year.
My soul is all but out of me, let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

"There is joy ... in the towel..."

Welcome Morning

Anne Sexton

 

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young.

Source: Dancing With Joy edited by Roger Housden

Read more and add your thoughts at inward/outward

Autumn Poem...

Does Fall Go Back?

Luci Shaw

Does Fall go back as far as Eden? Did the
Lord God say, "Good" to a beech leaf
bleached back to its primary yellow? Did
Eve dance, entranced, when the first
leaves on the first oak turned red as wine
and loosed themselves? Did Adam rake
the ground clean and burn the leaves
after his other Garden work?

Source: Unknown

Add your thoughts at inward/outward

"I'm Just Sayin... Bless Their Hearts"

Bless Their Hearts

by Richard Newman

At Steak 'n Shake I learned that if you add
"Bless their hearts" after their names, you can say
whatever you want about them and it's OK.
My son, bless his heart, is an idiot,
she said. He rents storage space for his kids'
toys—they're only one and three years old!
I said, my father, bless his heart, has turned
into a sentimental old fool. He gets
weepy when he hears my daughter's greeting
on our voice mail. Before our Steakburgers came
someone else blessed her office mate's heart,
then, as an afterthought, the jealous hearts
of the entire anthropology department.
We bestowed blessings on many a heart
that day. I even blessed my ex-wife's heart.
Our waiter, bless his heart, would not be getting
much tip, for which, no doubt, he'd bless our hearts.
In a week it would be Thanksgiving,
and we would each sit with our respective
families, counting our blessings and blessing
the hearts of family members as only family
does best. Oh, bless us all, yes, bless us, please
bless us and bless our crummy little hearts.

"Bless Their Hearts" by Richard Newman, from Domestic Fugues. © Steel Toe Books, 2009. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

 

From "The Writer's Almanac"

In Honor of Columbus Day

Columbus sailed the ocean blue...

by Ramon Montaigne

Columbus sailed the ocean blue
Back in 1492.
He sailed across and spotted land,
A beach, and people on the sand.

He called them Indians because
He had no idea where he was,
India was just a guess.
When in doubt, declare success.

"Columbus sailed the ocean blue..." by Ramon Montaigne. Reprinted with permission of the author.

 

From "The Writer's Almanac"

 

Worship Group Research

As part of the work of the New Meetings Project, I am compiling a list of recently formed meetings and worship groups. Once the list is developed, I’ll be in contact with them so we can learn from their experience. It would be really helpful to this learning opportunity if you could send me the names of any meetings or worship groups that you know that have been founded in the past ten years. Contact information for the group would really be helpful, too. You can post it here or send it to me at brentb@fgcquaker.org

To Know and Be Known...

Why some of us write -- well, at least partly.

A Watcher

by Robyn Sarah

The mail doesn't come
and doesn't come.
The mail doesn't come.
It's three o'clock, I've been
downstairs to check, and up again,
and down and up — it
doesn't come.

Incognito in the little shops
is how I want to go.
And in and out
about the neighbourhood,
observing unobserved.

And yet I long, I long.
Long to be known, and know.

"A Watcher" by Robyn Sarah, from Questions About the Stars. © Brick Books, 1998. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

 

From The Writers Almanac

Be converted to love...

 

Be converted to love every day.
Change all your energies,
all your potential,
into selfless gifts for the other person.
Then you yourself will be changed from within
and through you
God's kingdom will break into the world.

Source: Rule for a New Brother

Add your thoughts at inward/outward

Cinema' ala Brent: T-Shirt History

Ah, well it was finally time to bid adieu to most of the logoed t-shirts, sweatshirts and golf shirts I've had or designed or both over the years.  Some had already departed to various friends (the Friendly writer Haven Kimmell (A Girl Named Zippy) for example got all my "Quaker Haven" t-shirts).  But I found more than fifty stashed in the back of my closet and in a drawer, so decided to say good-bye.

 

It was a bittersweet parting -- shirts from softball teams I'd played on and coached, T's from friends and Friends, sweatshirts and football jerseys I'd designed and worn during my youth group leader days, and one from the "Quaker Cousins Cultural Tour" (aka "Quakerpalooza" with Carrie Newcomer, Scott Russell Sanders, Phil Gulley and me) that said "Shhhh.  I'm with the band." And there's the infamous "First Quakerterian" softball team shirt from the combined First Friends and First Presbyterian churches' team in New Castle, Indiana circa 1990.  It features George Fox carrying a "Pendle Hill Slugger" bat and, instead of seeing a "great people to be gathered," he's looking toward left field where he intends to clear the homerun fence.  It's one of the designs I'm proudest of (with apologies to the artist who created the iconic picture of Fox atop Pendle Hill).  BTW, the team motto that year was "It Just Doesn't Matter" -- and we won the league.

 

At any rate, I decided to photo all these shirts so I could remember them in my dotage.  And then, for your viewing pleasure, I turned them into a little movie.

 

 

To Ninety

To Ninety

by Robyn Sarah

A city sparrow
touches down
on a bare branch

in the fork of a tree
through whose arms
the snow is sifting —

swipes his beak
against wood, this side
then that,

and flies away:
what sight
could be more common?

Yet I think
for such sights alone
I would live to ninety.

"To Ninety" by Robyn Sarah, from Questions About the Stars. © Brick Books, 1998. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

 

From "The Writer's Almanac"

image by Kohl Threlkeld -- http://kthrelkeld.blogspot.com/2008/07/young-bird-old-hands.html

Autumn

A touch of cold in the Autumn night
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded;
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.

 

Autumn by T. E. Hulme

Becoming Myself

Now I Become Myself

May Sarton

 

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before-- "
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!

Source: Collected Poems, 1930-1973

Add your thoughts at inward/outward

You Are God's Promise

A Promise to the Universe

Brennan Manning

In our faithful listening to God's Word, we often neglect his first word to us--the gift of ourselves to ourselves: our existence, our temperament, our personal history, our uniqueness, our flaws and foibles, our identity. Our very existence is one of the never-to-be-repeated ways God has chosen to express himself in space and time. Because we are made in God's image and likeness, you and I are yet another promise that he has made to the universe that he will continue to love it and care for it.

Source: Ruthless Trust

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Supporting Each Other in Sickness and in Health

Supporting Each Other in Sickness and in Health

Following the Living Christ --Or a Committe?: A Response to IYM Proposal

I've resisted, of late, addressing any of what's going on in Indiana Yearly Meeting and its apparently impending separation. But after reading Chuck Fager and Stephen Angell's pieces in Quaker Theology and Doug Bennett's "Update on the Schism in Indiana," I feel led to add my voice to this issue. I commend their pieces and links there-in to all who wish a deeper understanding (or any understanding!) of what's going on there. 

First, let me say that I first came to Indiana (and Indiana Yearly Meeting) in late 1978.  I have served as the released minister of two congregations in IYM and was recorded as a Friends minister there in 1980.  I have a deep love for IYM and the people there -- many of whom have been instrumental in my spiritual growth over the years.  And that's people on both sides of the current issue.  My current membership in Western Yearly Meeting has not changed how much I care for IYM and the good people there.  It has, however, given me a different perspective allowed by both geographical and emotional distance.

Second, my concern is not with the good, kind, thoughtful, faithful people of IYM.  I know a good number of people serving on the task force.  I believe they have served well and faithfully.  They have labored long in an attempt to find a way forward that will speak to the conditions present among Friends in Indiana Yearly Meeting and its member congregations.  I am grateful to them for this work.

My concern is with is the task force's continued attempts at pushing for a solution.  This has nothing to do with my disagreement over the solution they propose.  The solution seem rational and well considered.  It makes sense in an intellectual way and offers a way to resolve many issues.  I trust that these good people offer it as coming from their best collective wisdom and after much prayer and worship.

Still, it seems, from the documents I've read (Angell and others) that there is no clear sense of unity among the ENTIRE membership of IYM about the way forward.  In the face of that, it seems (I humbly submit) that IYM task force should decline of offer a solution.

We Friends say we believe that Christ is our present teacher and the God's will can be known and obeyed -- in community.  Where is the trust that God will lead God's people Himself?   Why the persistence in asking one group of wise, seasoned Friends to come up with a solution?

Perhaps the task force should take another tack.  Maybe it's time for them to say, "We have labored faithfully at the task with which we were charged. You other good people across this Yearly Meeting all hear the tension and concern expressed by our members  on all sides of this matter. We, therefore, as servants of the living Christ, will not offer any more solutions/ideas. We have discharged our duties. We return the matter to the Yearly Meeting and its members. Let us endeavor to listen to the voice and will of God and labor until we have unity."

What would it be like, then, for the Yearly Meeting to commit every time it gathers over the next year (including Yearly Meeting) to sit as a people and labor together.  Everybody!  Let committees do their Christian education, evangelism and outreach, and more.  But let the times when people come together be set aside solely for worship and prayer together, listening for and to the voice of the Jesus we profess to love and follow.  That includes Representative Council and Yearly Meeting.  Clear the agenda.  Have no reports.  Gather in worship. Sing together.  Pray together.  Listen in love to each other. Trust Christ!

What greater spiritual exercise, and model of Christian discernment and faithfulness, could there be?

"'Have you anything to declare?' is a vital challenge to which every one of us is personally called to respond and is also a challenge that every meeting should consider of primary importance. it should lead us to define, with such clarity as we can reach, precisely what it is the Friends of this generation have to say that is not, as we believe, being said effectively by others. What, indeed, have we to declare to this generation that is of sufficient importance to justify our separate existence as part of the Christian fellowship?" -- Edgar Dunstan

Well, in this Friends humble (and I say that with all sincerity) opinion, the Quaker assertion that we are the Friends of Jesus is something we cannot truly declare if we are not willing to put all our trust as a community of faith in Christ's ability to lead us.  What have we to declare to a world that needs the peculiar proclamation of the Quaker message of immediate, personal encounter with the God who is present with us and leads us into truth and righteousness if we don't practice that ourselves?

With sadness and hope in my soul,
-Brent