Round Bales

The round bales sit in frosted fields,

relics of summer, now dried and cylindrical

under a slate sky.

From the road, some think straw.

They miss the mystery at the center,

still green, still germinating,

a glorious nucleus,

a promise of pastures with hair thrown

heedlessly to the breeze.

So it is with all ordinary mysteries,

their burlap coats buttoned over tender miracles

which take refuge in the dark.

Until one with nimble fingers

unravels each layer,

picks a way through the chaff and chill.

Then the center exhales

its warm breath escaping across the earth,

its timbre taking shape in song:

What was buried is raised.

Love is lifted, death is robed.

The round bales sit as tombs.

Yet even now, their stones are being rolled away,

their life source redeemed.

Late October Blessing

Jet trails mark the heavens

with straight, white lines that intersect

in the late October sky.

Such cruel geometry that cuts

the blue, stamping out a triangle here

and a rhombus there.

For a sky resists such partitioning,

holds fast to expanse,

and lays claim to a presence

both shapeless and endless.

It is true that within minutes

these shapes will disappear,

absorbed into the organic nature of sky

and all things without borders

that refuse to be contained.

But for a moment, there will be pieces–

acute and obtuse–

and they will strain against their walls.

Bless them,

and bear witness to the sacred transformation

from finite to infinite.

At 63

The sunflowers are spent,

and the milkweed pods have burst.

There is a leeching and loosening

where all that held its hue and form

is settling into the twilight of autumn.

And I, too, fold my wings

into the hollows of this season.

My marrow slows.

My bones, now barren branches, cry

If I had but one green leaf,

one verdant banner to fly,

I might weather this undoing.

But we are slackening to brown,

these trees and I.

An inevitable sepia washes across our pages.

This is the way of it,

the browning of our lives.

We submit to it as we must,

and its reflective richness wraps itself

around our scarcity in surprising ways.

So we stand erect, leafless,

but warm in the assurance

of sable and umber and walnut.

When my daughter sent me this recent picture of Gracyn and Griffin, I spoke these words into the solitude of my home: This is heaven. These perfect ovals which hold the perfect faces of my love. These cornflower blue eyes fixed on the promise of autumnal splendor. This coupling of brother and sister in such a pure embrace. And these gold, green, and russet leaves that hang onto October for all their worth. This is a little bit of heaven in a a troubled world.

Suffice it to say that we all need a little bit of heaven. Right here, right now, a day or a moment, a glimpse or a good, hard look. We all need a respite from whatever ails us and sends us bedraggled into the shadows of life. In his novel, Let the Great World Spin, Irish writer Colum McCann writes: Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same. Even if the light is damaged and bruised, it is a little light all the same. And a little light ushers in a little heaven, a small gift into which a multitude of mysteries and glories are packed.

After five days of rain, this morning I looked out my kitchen window to see my white rabbit grazing on the hillside. She has found her little bit of heaven here, forsaking the freedom of the timber for the familiarity of our yard. And when I call her, kneeling with carrot in hand, and she runs to me with unabashed trust, I can’t help but think that heaven has found earth in this daily ritual. A little white, a little heaven to sustain me in gray world.

In The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis writes:

All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it — tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest — if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself — you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for”. We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.

How well C. S. Lewis understands the power of a little bit of heaven, how it offers tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear–all heralding the thing I was made for. This, indeed, is the thing we desired before and after the mind no longer knows wife [or husband] or friend or work. This is heaven, and each small hint of it, each little bit of it is the secret signature of each soul.

At the ripe age of 63, like Lewis, I am more convicted that if we lose our yearning for heaven–on earth and beyond–we lose all. The stuff of our daily lives is literally rubbish in the presence and promise of heaven. We may kid ourselves into believing that a kitchen remodel or a new SUV will fill the deepest longing of our souls, but even as we leave the home improvement store or car lot, we realize that the joke is on us. The sheen of a maple cabinet or the luster of a metallic paint job pales in the brilliance of a little bit of heaven. Still, too often, we cling to our stuff, choosing to believe that it will save us from ourselves and our lives. And tragically when it ages and rusts, we just get new stuff to take its place. In our predilection to purchase, we lose all.

Or we simply work harder and longer. We thrust ourselves into the thick of all things scheduled, planned, and yet-to-be-planned. We believe that we will find heaven amidst files or in the minutes of countless meetings. At some point, we may even believe that work will define us in a way that nothing and no one else can. In rapturous moments, we justify ourselves and our work as important and necessary. And in collegial corners, we congratulate ourselves on accomplishments that pass as quickly and insignificantly as the countless daily memos that we shred or recycle.

A little bit of heaven reminds us of our transience. Although a photograph of my grandchildren can capture much, it simply cannot capture the mystery of all that is Gracyn and Griffin. When I see these faces, I also hear their voices at age 2 and 4 and 9, voices that cry out, “Grandma!” I feel the weight that this single word carries when it rises from the mouths of those I love more than life itself. These earthly moments are transient, but they remind me that there are more glorious moments to come.

And in the meantime? Fred Rogers proposes that the connections we make in the course of a life–maybe that’s what heaven is. Certainly, most of us could testify to the truth in these words, for our own connections lay claim to the presence of heaven throughout our lives. Our connections have ears to listen, mouths and arms to console. They are the living, breathing material of heaven in the here and now.

Theologian and author, N. T. Wright endorses the prospect of heaven on earth when he writes: Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about. [Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church] Colonizing earth with the life of heaven? I’m all for this. We sing about this, pray about this, write and speak about this, but to get down to the business of actual colonization, we will need to get serious about the little bits of heaven we can all acknowledge and create each day.

Lately, I’ve begun to hear my own proverbial clock ticking. If I’m going to get serious about bringing a little bit of heaven to earth, if I’m going to proclaim, Here at last is the thing I was made for, I need to begin. And what better place to begin than visiting the pumpkin patch with my grandchildren? A clear October sky, mounds of hay bales, pumpkins of all colors, sizes, and shapes, and two eager smiles. This is little bit of heaven that I can wrap my arms around.

Photo: Zarah Sagheer by Collyn Ware

Life is a transition from one form to another. The life of this world is the material for a new form.  Leo Tolstoy

Southern Iowa is beginning its transition from late summer to autumn. Eighty-some-degree days give way to 50-some-degree days and to nights cool enough to warrant firing up the furnace. Ditches of tangerine day lilies and periwinkle chicory give way to stands of crimson sumac and burnished heads of goldenrod. Life as we know it is transitioning from one form to another.

Lovely though the autumn sumac may be, its crimson beauty pales in the presence of a young woman who wears it even more elegantly, a young woman who will soon transition from the smaller world of home and high school to the larger world of university and new possibilities. These moments of transition, writes novelist Jhumpi Lahiri, constitute the backbone of all of us. Whether they are a salvation or a loss, they are moments that we tend to remember.

We do remember these backbone moments, indeed. The moments when sons and daughters reach out to take diplomas in hand and walk confidently forward with eyes fixed on the future. The moments when fathers place their daughters’ hands into their soon-to-be husbands’ and when mothers see beyond lace veils into the shining faces of little girls-turned-brides. The moments when children leave for new homes, the remaining remnants of their childhoods packed neatly into boxes and stored in basements. The moments when minds are renewed, souls are revived, and lives are refined.

Director, screenwriter, and producer Steven Sonderbergh claims that the key to making good movies is to pay attention to the transition between the scenes. Truthfully, I think it’s safe to say that we tend to focus on what comes before and after such transitions. We fixate on the scenes. This is the good stuff, we think. But the transitions between scenes? Not so much. Yet, such possibility and such tension lives in these transitions. And though we take them for granted or tend to ignore them altogether, they are the key to making good movies and, more importantly, the key to making good lives.

Transition may lead to transformation, which is often more about unlearning than learning, writes Father Richard Rohr, spiritual adviser and writer. I admit that any transformation I’ve experienced has involved a fair amount of unlearning. For any significant and lasting change to occur, I’ve often had to unlearn some safer but potentially stifling processes: sticking with what has worked, seeing with old eyes, embracing the same perspectives, and listening solely to voices of agreement. Paradoxically, unlearning can open the door to genuine learning, and this learning is the crown jewel of transformation.

And the best thing about transition and transformation? These are not singular experiences. Instead, they offer plural promises that span lifetimes. French-American writer Anais Nin writes: I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me. As I think of my niece, Zarah, I can’t help but smile at the many women she will undoubtedly have in her throughout her lifetime. This is the magnificent power of transition: it is the means to new women and men who live as unsprouted seeds, waiting in the fertile soil of former selves.

And let it be said that transitions are often not sudden, but rather, as writer C. S. Lewis explains, like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight. When you first notice them they have already been going on for some time. Zarah’s transition into womanhood and the larger world of the university experience has been going on for some time. Ask those who know who best, and they will tell you how resourceful, how financially responsible, how goal-oriented, and how generally wonderful she is. They will tell you that she will transition gracefully into the next phase of her life. And, most certainly, they will be right.

My daughter, Zarah’s photographer, is a master at capturing the light in any scene and using it to bring the essence of her subjects into every photograph. Journalist and writer Teresa Tsalaky writes that light precedes every transition. Whether at the end of a tunnel, through a crack in the door or the flash of an idea, it is always there, heralding a new beginning. In this photo, Zarah stands at the threshold of this light that precedes every transition. And if we have eyes to see, this light is always there, heralding a new beginning.

For Zarah and for all of us who stand at this precipice and who will stand at many more: we can take heart in the promise of so many fellow transitioners who will encourage and sustain us through all of our changes.