photo by Rebekah Choat
These times we know much evil, little good
To steady us in faith
And comfort when our losses press
Hard on us…
For we are fallen like the trees, our peace
Broken, and so we must
Love where we cannot trust,
Trust where we cannot know,
And must await the wayward-coming grace
That joins living and dead,
Taking us where we would not go —
Into the boundless dark.
~ Wendell Berry
photo by Rebekah Choat
Silent holder-out
of hope, small, fragile, yet you
lift me to the skies.
~ Rebekah Choat
photo by Rebekah Choat
photo by Rebekah Choat
I’m just returned from a week on South Padre Island, my favorite place in all the world. I had thought I would spend a lot of time writing, or at least reading; but as it turned out, I spent a lot of time just watching the sea and the sky, and collecting shells, and wading, and breathing.
Chris Gonzales and Joel Brotzman
It was a week of introductions and reunions and bittersweet memories of those from whom we are parted; a week of new beginnings and relinquishment of old expectations and words from time past whispering into time yet to come.
Camille Rich, Jonathan Brotzman, Rebekah Brotzman Choat
a found poem from Frederick Buechner’s Brendan
a druid way of saying God –
the rustling of oak leaves,
the sound of shallow waves against the rocks,
the feel of mist drifting knee deep
over the blue folds and hollows of the hills.
~ Rebekah Choat
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.
~ Wendell Berry
a found haiku from John O’Donohue’s Anam Cara
The depth of friendship:
the shelter of the silence
between two people.
~ Rebekah Choat
The world turns softly
not to spill its lakes and rivers.
The water is held in its arms
and the sky is held in the water.
What is water,
that pours silver,
and can hold the sky?
~ Hilda Conkling
There are times when my young daughter is unspeakably angry with me because I have done something inconceivably unfair in her mind. She screams and kicks and rages against me – all the while clinging to me desperately for comfort.
That’s a lot like how I feel today. When death and destruction are dealt out by means of bombs or guns, at least we can say, “This is the work of some evil, deranged man.” But what are we to think, what are we to say, when the wrath of nature, surely and solely under God’s control, devastates towns and kills defenseless people? How can we reconcile a loving creator who knows when a single sparrow falls with one who unleashes winds that fling horses into the sky and drop brick walls on babies? But where are we to look for help and healing but to the one who has borne all our sorrows?
I have to believe that just as my daughter, in her inexperience and ignorance and limited perspective, cannot always understand my actions, I, in the limitations of being human, cannot always comprehend the workings of God. Just as she instinctively hurls her raging self into the safety of my embrace, I can do nothing but throw my raging self into his arms.
It occurs to me that I haven’t mentioned here that I write another blog over at Books by Becka, my business website. I post book reviews there, and musings about stories, language, and so on. Here’s the link to a poem I shared there this morning: http://www.booksbybecka.com/blog.html.
image by Rebekah Choat
You make the music
speak and the words dance with the
breath of Your Spirit.
~ Rebekah Choat
Becka's Blog 