mosquito

the little-brained mosquito dances
'round the room on paper wings

there's wisdom in the way life sings
to give us fools a fighting chance

there's grace in every circumstance
of life if one keeps listening

for God's design upon the wings
and nature’s music in the dance

there's also pain sometimes disease
that pierces through the leather veil

and then eventually there's death
but first despite life's tragedies

there is the whisper of a breath
that grace and wisdom will prevail

the little-brained mosquito dances
round the room on paper wings

with God's design behind the dance
and nature's way to make life sing


from Stillwater Symposia

The Owl

Whoever remains forever behind a veil
Is like the owl who would avoid the sun,
Aware the sun would make its eyesight fail,
It hides, and still the sun keeps blazing on.

But if the owl is blinded by the dawn
It is because the owl’s eyes are weak
And not because the sun keeps blazing on
As though it were some terrible mistake.

You dream your dreams, you make use of your eyes
And yet beyond your eyes and dreams you’re blind
And even as the sun lights up the skies
You cannot see the surface and the line,

And what’s the point of having eyes that can-
not see the way the sun keeps blazing on?


from Walled Gardens

Moleskin 2.7

Lawrence and Julia Olsen were our nearest neighbors, just across the gravel road and down a long driveway to a tuckaway farmhouse. It was through Lawrence, a homebound invalid who needed a big hoist to move him from bed to wheelchair to living room chair, that I first got to really know my father. As a pastor, it was Dad’s duty to bring the communion bread and wine to Lawrence, and he would often let me tag along. But Dad would visit Lawrence a lot more that the once monthly communion Sundays, more than his job seemed to require or the social structures around us seemed to compel: he visited Lawrence often, as a neighbor and a friend, and he brought me along, to play in their yard, to play with their bulldog, to play with their grandkids’ toys, but also, I think, to be closer to our closest neighbors.

The Elephant

“I come from the land of Ghur.

You may have heard

the story I’m about to tell,

but I’ll tell you more

than you’ve heard before.

You may have heard

how soldiers came

and set up camp in the land of Ghur,

all in the name

of world peace, but did you hear

about their king

visiting his army troops,

so full of pomp

and circumstance, riding up

on his elephant

across our piece of the world

to claim it as his own?

We’ve seen our share of elephants

in the land of Ghur,

but this great beast,

like none we’ve ever seen before,

stood battle ready,

armored head to toe and armed

with long hollow weaponry,

all set to blow

our world apart,

and on its heavy limbs it rose

above us like

an ancient tower in the sky.

“I never saw this for myself

but I believe

what I’ve been told by several

first-hand witnesses

who travel through the land of Ghur

and testify

to all they’ve come to know. ‘That armor,’

says the first,

‘seemed like a carpet stretched across

the desert floor.’

‘That weapon,’ says the next,

‘loomed like a Howitzer,

its heavy barrel sweeping o’er

the poppy fields.’

‘That tower,’ says the third,

‘casts shadows on us all.’

“There may be truth in everything

that’s ever said,

and wisdom at the core of every

argument,

but in the end we’ll never see

the elephant

for what it is; we’re ignorant and blind,

and when

the war begins we fight against ourselves,

and when

it’s over we are all that’s left behind.”

from Walled Gardens

The Naming of Parts

Being told we are made in

the image of God, we imagine:

the foot that walks beside,

the hand that reaches out,

the fingers and the touch

and the change of place,

the grace of one descending,

the image of a man,

the form of one who sits upon a throne

with a face that shines upon us

and words to gather round,

with flesh and blood and

a body to embrace.

It is this God that we imagine,

this God we wear around our necks,

that leads to arguments and war,

but I will believe there is a better God than

this God of blind design, a greater God

than mortals can conceive.


from Walled Gardens

Bedtime Stories

Tell me a story said the child

No said pragmatic it’s time for bed

Sensing tactics the skeptic smiled

Just close your eyes denial said

And dream said ignorance sweet dreams

I’ll be in the next room said fear

I love you said despite what seems

Maybe tomorrow said next year

We’ll read two stories busy lied

If you’ll be good condition said

Now say your prayers the hypo- cried

And go to sleep said get to bed

Said once upon a time good night

And nothing read turned off the light

from Calendrums

When We Were Children

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land 
(TWL), lines 8-18 





          Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

                    Starnbergersee, a lake southwest of Munich, was where Bavarian 
                    King Ludwig II was found dead in June of 1886, having drowned in 
                    shallow waters in much the same way as Hamlet’s Ophelia (see 
                    TWL 172).  Ludwig, known as the Mad King or the Swan King, 
                    was a dedicated patron of Richard Wagner, whose Grail legend 
                    based operas will be referenced several times in this poem (see, 
                    e.g., TWL 266-295); he even decorated the walls of his palace 
                    with scenes from Tristan und Isolde (see TWL 31-34 and 42) and 
                    Parsifal (see TWL 201). 

                    WALLS THAT TALK will make several appearances in this poem, 
                    through its allusions if not directly: See the painted walls of 
                    Cymbeline’s daughter Imogen (alluded to at TWL 77-81); the walls 
                    in Cleopatra’s chambers, retelling the story of Philomela’s 
                    tapestries (see TWL 99 and 105); the ceiling panoramas of 
                    Cleopatra (TWL 93) and John Day’s Vainglorious (alluded to at 
                    TWL 197); and the painted sylvan scene of the Golden Bough (see 
                    TWL 98 and Eliot’s first endnote). 

                    See also Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass: Memories of President 
                    Lincoln (1892): 

                    O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?

          With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
          And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

                    Hofgarten is a Munich park with a central pavilion dedicated to the
                    wood goddess Diana, the subject of Vainglorious’s ceiling and 
                    Imogen’s walls and prominent in the myth of the golden bough.

          And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
          Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch

                   “I am not Russian, I come from Lithuania, I am really a German.”  
                    This statement, effectively an intertwining knot of dried up roots, 
                    appears to be an overheard fragment, contextually from someone 
                    other than the poet or his companion.  Compare Virgil’s introduction 
                    in Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno 1.66-69 (ca. 1321; 
                    translated by Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, 1867):

                   Not man; man once I was,                   
                   And both my parents were of Lombardy,
                   ...Sub Julio' was I born...

                   See also William Shakespeare, The Tempest 2.1.82-83 (1611):

                   ADRIAN

                   Widow Dido, said you? You make me study of that. 
                   She was of Carthage, not of Tunis.

                   For the recurrence of Dido and Carthage allusions, see the note at TWL 92.

          And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,

                   See Ecclesiastes 12:1,5:

                   Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil 
                   days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no 
                   pleasure in them; ...when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and 
                   fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the 
                   grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man 
                   goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets.

          My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
          And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

                   These lines derive from Marie Larisch, My Past (1913), and from 
                   private visits Eliot had with her in Bavaria; see T. S. Eliot: The Waste 
                   Land, a Facsimile & Transcript of the Original Drafts Including 
                   the Annotations of Ezra Pound, edited and with an Introduction 
                   by Valerie Eliot (1971).  In 1889, Austrian Countess Marie was socially 
                   cast out after her cousin Crown-Prince Rudolph (the archduke) and his 
                   mistress, for whom Marie had acted as a go-between, died in a 
                   suicide-murder scandal.  Rudolph was succeeded as crown-prince by 
                   Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose 1914 assassination triggered 
                   World War I, an event that seems to have contributed greatly to the 
                   mood of this poem.  Meanwhile, another Prince Ferdinand, from 
                   Shakespeare’s The Tempest, will be given repeated attention, 
                   beginning with the next passage (see TWL 26).

          Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
          In the mountains, there you feel free.

                   Marie’s mountains inspire freedom but also fear and withdrawal.  
                   MOUNTAINS reappear throughout the poem.  See the Lenten 
                   “thunder of spring over distant mountains” (TWL 327); the desperate 
                   sense of “no water, only rock” (TWL 331-359); the unnamed range 
                   surrounding Ernest Shackleton’s march (alluded to at TWL 361); 
                   the inverted mountains beneath a city of decaying earth (TWL 372), 
                   a mountain hole that hides an empty chapel (TWL 386), and finally 
                   the snowy Himavant, a holy mountain in the Himalayas (TWL 398).

          I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

                   Several key events may have converged to set the poem’s MOOD: 
                   see above and TWL 62 (the war), as well as allusions noted at 
                   TWL 42 (the loss of a friend), TWL 92 (the pain of a marriage) and 
                   TWL 300 (mental exhaustion), and generally, the loss of innocense.

                  
from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

Saffron

Was once a man could tell the difference,

could see into the souls of fools: once was

the kind of man who measured ignorance

with ridicule, who magnified the flaws

of every mote in his periphery

with arrogance: but let the evidence

speak for itself, just as it always does:

“Saffron, my friend, what have you heard of it?

I said Saffron, fool, what have you seen of it?

You know its name, you taste it every day,

but say just a word of it

and you give yourself away.”

Was once a man of quiet innocense

and simple faith in everything that was

in front of him, whose life experience

confirmed what he believed, who had no cause

to quarrel with the things he could not see,

no arguments with those whose arguments

defined what they denied, who simply was.

“Saffron, you ask, what have I heard of it

beyond its name, what do I know of it?

I have it by me, of this I can be sure,

and it is good. I’ve tasted it

a hundred times and more.”

Was once a man who found the resonance

of saffron in his day to day: once was

a willing member of the audience

who loved life with an unreserved applause

but otherwise had nothing more to say,

no arguments for those whose arguments

speak for the sake of speaking for their cause.

No more spite, deceit, envy, slander, hypocrisy,

I long for the pure, spiritual milk, to taste and see...

“Saffron, my friend, what have you heard of it?”

“Saffron, you ask, what have I heard of it?”

“I said Saffron, fool, what do you know of it?”

“Beyond its name, what do I know of it?”

“You know its name,...”

“I have it by me,...”

“...you taste it every day,...”

“...of this I can be sure,...”

“...but say just a word of it...”

“...and it is good. I’ve tasted it...”

“...and you give yourself away.”

“...a hundred times and more.”


from Walled Gardens

Baptism of Joshua Paul

(Sermon by Joseph Vold, October 12, 1969)

TEXT: John 9: 24-41

If we had a person here in our midst who had been blind from the day he was born, and now on this day, he hears the word of a physician —and follows it and of a sudden —he is no longer blind but can see —SAY WE WITNESSED THIS we would be overwhelmed by the event.  He was blind, but now he can see —oh,! we would be amazed by the fact!  We would be mightily impressed, and would never forget it.

BUT THAT HAPPENED HERE TODAY IN OUR VERY MIDST.  Through baptism.  It has happened to this child, Joshua Paul.

In the catacombs of Rome where early Christians gathered to hide from hostile authorities to keep from being killed and to live and to worship, they left on the walls frescoes, pictures of what they treasured.  The story of the man born blind appears seven times in catacomb art, most frequently as an illustration of Christian baptism.  This story was taken by the early church as an interpretation of what happens in baptism.

When the early Christians were about to baptize a person who had been prepared and was brought forward to be a member of the Body of Christ, i.e. the church, they read Chapter 9 of John —the story of the man born blind and healed through washing —they read this chapter together.

The early Church Fathers referred to baptism as the washing away of blindness.  Tertullian opened his book (or tract) on baptism with the words ‘Happy is the sacrament of our water, in that, by washing away the sins of our early blindness, we are set free unto eternal life.’

Augustine comments on our text:  “This blindman stands for the human race ....if the blindness is lack of faith, then the seeing (illumination) is faith ....  He washes his eyes in that pool which is
interpreted ‘one who has been sent’; he was baptized in Christ.”

I would like to draw from the entire ninth chapter of John for our sermon today to show what God does in baptism.

FOR THE MAN BORN BLIND WHO IS MET BY CHRIST AND HIS LOVING ACTION: Instead of darkness or blindness, there is light and ability to see.  There is much stress on the fact that the man in our text was born blind.  It is mentioned —this fact of being blind at birth —no less than seven times.

Now when we consider a little child —that cuddly little bundle who is so winning —mostly because he is so small and helpless and dependent —we overlook this fact of his being blind.   Unless he is enlightened, unless he receives the vision of God he will remain in darkness —He will not know who he is and what he came into the world for.  But Christ comes and brings enlightenment starting with the washing of baptism.  The one who has the Christ and his light through faith has the vision of God.

But how can such a little child be enlightened?  He does not know, surely he does not know what is going on.  He cannot have faith or comprehension.  So some will argue.

The only way this little one is going to know of Christ (have the vision of God) is if the church loves him —and, loving him, teach him of the good news we have.  The first and second —and third lesson —and all the way through the last lesson we teach should be this: God loves you so much that he has adopted you to be his own, and we, the church, love and care for you as a brother.  You start teaching that lesson from the very first day.  We know that an infant child may not understand much but he surely feeds on love —and he is nourished by the love that people can give to him.  The parents can love him just because Christ has loved us and gave His life for us.  The parents can be patient and forgive because Christ forgives us and is patient with us and keeps bringing us back.

The child is going to know of Christ as the church shows care for him.  The child will know of Christ as people in the church live the life of Christ, live the way of the cross in the community.  He will not know the fullness of the faith as a baby or as a little boy —or as a young man.  BUT LOVE CANNOT FAIL.  He will know someday.  He will know the greatness of what has happened to him in the claim of God in baptism —the miracle of new life —someday I believe that.  I am filled with high hope for him because of the Word of God.

Now in the ninth chapter of John we see a gradual dawning —an increase in knowledge for this man who received his sight from Jesus.

The Jews —it is the way of the world with, or against, the baptized —would not accept that Jesus had accomplished the restoring of sight to this blind man.  They hounded the man who had been born blind.  “How were your eyes opened?”  The man Jesus did it.  “Where is he?”  I don’t know.

Later on they wanted to press him further on this matter so they asked, “What do you say about Jesus?”  The former blind man said:  He is a prophet.

Now in the part of the chapter that is the text for today the Pharisees (or Jews) are pressing him again and are trying to teach that Christ is not good or able to heal blindness.  The man says plainly to them: I don’t know whether Jesus is a sinner or not, but once I was blind, now I can see.  The man has great power. 

Growing recognition of the fact and the power of Jesus as the one who gives light and goodness in life —This is the thing that happens to the child who is brought up in the baptismal covenant.  He doesn’t know all the answers about Jesus, but he learns of his life and his power —because of what Christ —and the Body of Christ —can do and has done for him.

When the man who had been born blind answers the Pharisees that someone who does such great things —so good —has got to be from God —he gets clobbered by the Jews.  The baptized, who live by their baptism, may share the same reaction from the world —but they hold fast to Christ who gives light and life. 

Finally this man is confronted again by the Christ who tells him who he is and asks, “Do you believe?”  He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.

The child who is baptized may not know the fullness of the truth of Christ, but as he experiences the power of God through the Church —through loving people as well as the Word and Sacraments —he will one day also fall down and worship Jesus as the Lord.

He will someday know how much he needed this act of baptism, this washing away of blindness of the natural man.  He will someday know how necessary it was for God to come to him and to give forgiveness and light.  He will know that he passed from blindness to the vision of God through Christ (Once I was blind —now I can see).  He will know it because of the church, the caring, faithful, loving, teaching, acting church.  And he will be glad for the judgment of God.  The judgment of God upon this little one baptized here today is YES, you are my child.

That’s what I want to teach him to know the rest of the years I have to be his earthly father and his brother in the church.  Will you help me to teach him that?

AMEN: YES, YES and it shall be so.

Moleskin 2.6

Joshua Paul was born on the Minnesota side of the Red River Valley during the post-Woodstock years, son of a young pastor and organist team who proudly served a two-point parish. It was during the first four years of Joshua’s life, about which he surely remembers little, that my own memories began to form in full color: now we lived alongside the Buffalo River, whose floodstages our mother would monitor as a side job; as a family, we immersed ourselves in the farming culture, appreciating the black gold soil around us and the sugar beets and soy fields that practically blended into our yard; and, as my brothers toddled at home, I started going to Glyndon Elementary by way of a big yellow school bus. And we got to know our neighbors: the Ericksons and Andersons, the Johnsons and the Kassenborgs.

Invocations (translating Sanai)

How can one give a name to God?

Whose every name is a lasting testimony
Of constant grace and steadfast pity, Exceeding heaven and earth and every angel, Whose every verb addresses our endless needs, Whose every truth gives proof of the one who provides,

You, most merciful and compassionate,
You, forming the thoughts in our heads, Shaping the beauty of our bodies and Covering our foolishness with wisdom, Showering our mortality with mercy, you, Creator and sustainer of earth and time, Guardian and defender of spirit and space, The single source of space and soul, The sole commander of time and place, Of fire and wind and water and ground,
You are in control, you have the Power over all, you are ineffable...


How can one give a name to the One

Who stands alone where there can be no other?
And yet there are those who do not know,
Souls outside who haven’t heard And hearts who cannot see without a name: Have grace and pity on each heart and soul Who only wants to know.

Faithful and faithless alike will walk
This path together and they will see The one and only, maker and enabler, All powerful, almighty and immortal, All knowing, living and eternal, Giver, taker, conquerer and forgiver, The push of every movement, And the place of every rest. God stands alone and has no equal: Let nothing come before, let no one stand beside, And those asserting otherwise, beware!


How can one give a name to God?

Our weakness proves God’s perfection; God’s power appoints our list of names.

Faithless and faithful alike

Will return from the mansion

With the happiness of their host

And nothing more, but knowing God

Transcends all dreams; awareness of God

Shakes all reasoning and perception;

And standing before God’s throne

Surpasses every posture and position:

And for the knowing soul, God’s throne itself

Will be the carpet under his feet,

And for the seeing soul, all praise is folly

Unless it is given to God.

from Walled Gardens

Stand

I stand still in the woods, taking my time To gather up the evidence of life Around me, being witness to the day That holds me, letting every tree and bird Reprove me, move me closer to a way To reconcile my foot of space on earth, To know there is no richer place on earth Than where I stand at any given time, Nor given time is there a better way To understand the earthiness of life Than standing by a tree, seeing a bird Defying gravity, stretching its day Heavenward, then with each passing day Returning humbly to its rooted earth For food, for rest, for giving birth; this bird, With every beast and bloom of anytime, Takes part in a community of life, Sharing one space and orbiting one way Around a single sun: so on this way Of revolutions, in this timeless day Among this great epitome of life, I take my quiet stand upon the earth That I may share this place as long as time Will be defied, as long as tree and bird Commune with me, and I can hear the bird Communicating heaven in a way No other creature can, replaying time Repeatedly, reflecting every day From its perspective perched above the earth By singing out its evidence of life; I feel that song, though I must live the life Of one who cannot be the flying bird; I hold my ground, though I am of the earth Without the slightest chance to spin away; I stand still in one place to see the day Unrushed, though I am running out of time, But still I stand, with time to look at life, To live through every day, to watch a bird Show me the way it lets go of the earth.


from Thirty Birds

Observations

Love is charity, and charity

is giving with nothing to gain.

Love is serenity, courage, wisdom,

the considerations of change.

Love is peace beyond understanding,

a song in the silence, a calm in the storm.

Love walks through the noisy street

and delights in being a part of it.

Love stands in an open field

and listens to the song.




While Reason digs for the secret, thou hast reached thy goal on the plain of Love. 
        – Sanai, ca. 1150 AD, tr. Major J. Stephenson, Hadiqa, 1911

While reason is still tracking down the secret, you end your quest on the open field of love. 
        – Sanai, tr. David Pendlebury, The Garden of Reality, 1976


from Walled Gardens

For Those That Follow

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land 
(TWL), lines 1-7 

          April is the cruellest month, breeding

                    Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, General Prologue: 1-4,12 
                    (ca. 1372):

                    Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote,
                    The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
                    And bathed every veyne in swich licour
                    Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
                    ...Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

                    Where Chaucer, the Father of English Literature, commenced with gentle, 
                    sweet rains and the first flowers of spring, Eliot, modern poetry’s progenitor,
                    felt the cruel end of a mindless winter and feared the season ahead.

                    APRIL, a time for pilgrimages and the month of spring and lilacs, is also when 
                    Lincoln was shot, when Lent is observed and when Eliot lost a friend to war...

          Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

                    Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass: Memories of President Lincoln 1 
                    (1892): 

                    When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
                    And the great star early droop’d in the Western sky in the night,
            I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

          Memory and desire, stirring
          Dull roots with spring rain.

                    William Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.5.32-34 (1605):

           GHOST:

            ...And duller shouldst thou be than in the fat weed
           That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf
            Wouldst thou not stir in this.

                    The Lethe is a river in Hades embanked by plants that cause forgetfulness 
                    (see Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.616 (AD 8)).

          Winter kept us warm, covering
          Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
          A little life with dried tubers.

                    Shakespeare, The Tempest 4.1.156-158 (1611): 

           We are such stuff
            As dreams are made on, and our little life
           Is rounded with a sleep.

                    See also James B.V. Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night (1874):

           This little life is all we must endure,
           The grave's most holy peace is ever sure,
           We fall asleep and never wake again;
           Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh,
           Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh
           In earth, air, water, plants, and other men.


from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

Standing in an Open Field

The sun of truth rises unbidden,
and with it sets the moon of learning.
In this halt of just a week,
to be is not to be, and to come is to go. 
- Sanai, tr. David Pendlebury


For all that I know,
  that which I’ve learned,
I am a moon that mirrors
a distant fire:
I watch the sun rise,
and my reflected brilliance
fades with the light of day.

For all that I know,
that which I’ve found,
I am a rooster that crows
in the early dawn:
I watch the sun rise,
and my hallelujahs
fade with the light of day.

For all that I know,
that which I suppose,
I am a wildflower in
a garden of shadows:
I watch the sun rise,
but my morning glory
fades with the light of day.

As long as I am living
the sun will shine,
and the sun will shine
when I am gone,
and the moon will rise
and the rooster will crow
and the shadows will stir
and the gardens will grow.

For all that I know,
that which I believe,
life is a blessing
beyond understanding:
I will watch the sun rise
for as long as I can
until I fade with the light of day.

As long as I am living
the sun will shine,
and the moon will rise
and the rooster will crow
and the sun will shine
when I am gone,
and the shadows will stir
and the gardens will grow.

As long as I am living
  and when I’m gone,
the shadows will stir
  in this garden of mine
and the sun will shine
  and the rooster will crow.
Hallelujah for all I know!


from Thirty Birds and Walled Gardens