The Beauty of Memory

The Old Spring House, watercolor ©A. Rutherford

"Pioneers looked for a spring and built their homes near it. It kept their thirst (and that of their animals) satisfied and their food from spoiling. It was the only refrigeration known for years. Usually a house or building was built over the spring out of rock and a tree was planted near the door. A stone trough was built in the spring house. Through it ran cold, slow flowing spring water. Earthenware crocks of milk were placed, neck deep, in the water. It was always cool in the spring house, even in the warmest of days. A gourd dipper hung in the spring house so men coming in from the hot field could stop for a draft of cold water. The dog quenched his thirst from the overflow at the back of the spring house and a flock of ducks noisily investigated the trickling stream for tidbits. Watercress grew in the shallows.   (Taken from The Good Old Days, The Spring House, R.J. McGinnis, F. & W. Publishing Company, Cincinnati, Ohio, page 76 

In painting this scene with an old spring house this weekend, I was set to reflecting on the old spring house on my grandparents’ farm.  What a comforting place it was for me, but also just a bit mysterious with its cool, shadowy corners and the spring that seemed to flow up out of nowhere.  As a very young child that spring seemed magical to me.

In our fast-paced society, what are the memories that will last?  Which of their experiences are shaping our children into men and women of character, sensitivity, and strength?  

Perhaps one way to ensure that our children will indeed have those life-shaping memories is to take the time to remember what kind of our own past experiences contributed to who we are today.   Or look back at your own parents and grandparents.   What were their lives like?    What were the events that contributed to all the characteristics you value in the people they were and the contributions they made to your own life or the communal life?    What kind of music did they listen to?    What books did they read?    What chores were they responsible for that gave them the work ethic that successful adults need?    How did they spend their leisure time?    What was the balance between leisure or productive activity for them?    What adversities did they face or mountains they had to climb that carved those lines of character that you see in their faces?    What did they love, and how did they love?  

What were the simple joys that nurtured them?    I know in my own family, there was not the incessant need to be entertained or amused.    My memories are of warm family times of story-telling or playing games, gathering around a dinner table filled with home-cooked food, helping out with whatever needed done in the house or outside.    There was time to play, but not to be idle.   Time to explore our environs, but not to waste before the TV.   Time to read or be read to, and the books were ones that inspired our imaginations or connected us to the past or nurtured our character.   And music that delighted and entertained us but that didn’t fill us with angst or wrong-thinking or over-sexualize us.

What are our children experiencing that will feed their souls and will not fade away, but remain a comfort and an inspiration throughout their lives?   What are the memories we are making with them that will stand them in good stead when the rough places in their own lives occur?    What will act for them as reminders that they must take their place in the flow of the river of time and serve with honor and courage?

How will the memories of fast food and ready-made meals linger lovingly in their minds?   What will endless hours spent on the internet or lounging in the malls contribute to their strength of character or their resourcefulness?   Or will all the structured sports activities or “enrichment” activities only contribute to their being driven adults with the incessant need to be “on the go”?

Below is a poem by Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet who received among many, many honors the Nobel Prize for Literature.  Although he was born on a farm to working class people, he became a professor at both Oxford and Harvard.

The material of his poetry was the material of his own life.  Speaking of his early life and education, he commented, "I learned that my local County Derry experience, which I had considered archaic and irrelevant to 'the modern world' was to be trusted. They taught me that trust and helped me to articulate it." 

When Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize, the Nobel committee described his poetry as "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."

From his lecture upon receiving the Prize: 

When I first encountered the name of the city of Stockholm, I little thought that I would ever visit it, never mind end up being welcomed to it as a guest of the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Foundation.  At the time I am thinking of, such an outcome was not just beyond expectation: it was simply beyond conception.  In the nineteen forties, when I was the eldest child of an ever-growing family in rural Co. Derry, we crowded together in the three rooms of a traditional thatched farmstead and lived a kind of den-life which was more or less emotionally and intellectually proofed against the outside world.  It was an intimate, physical, creaturely existence in which the night sounds of the horse in the stable beyond one bedroom wall mingled with the sounds of adult conversation from the kitchen beyond the other.  We took in everything that was going on, of course - rain in the trees, mice on the ceiling, a steam train rumbling along the railway line one field back from the house - but we took it in as if we were in the doze of hibernation.  Ahistorical, pre-sexual, in suspension between the archaic and the modern, we were as susceptible and impressionable as the drinking water that stood in a bucket in our scullery: every time a passing train made the earth shake, the surface of that water used to ripple delicately, concentrically, and in utter silence.

Click HERE to listen to his poem about exploring the wells of his childhood,  "Personal Helicon," Helicon being a river from Greek mythology.

No, how could he have dreamed as a child of the man he would become, but his early experiences molded his character and gave him the stuff of his later life’s work.

Continuity . . . staying connected to the past, carrying those valuable things of the past into the future . . . remembering what made us wise and strong and and loving and then passing it on.  That’s important!

Train up a child in the way he should go,
      And when he is old he will not depart from it.

                                          -Proverbs 22:6 (NKJV)

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A Note from the Garden

Lenten roses from my garden ©A.Rutherford

Yesterday I spent three hours in the garden in the cool sunshine clearing away the debris in the flower beds from a rather tough winter.  When I began my work, things looked rather bleak, but I worked away remembering how quickly the garden “climate” had turned for the better in Springs past.  And of course, I looked for one of my favorite early Spring signs of hope, the Lenten rose, Helleborus orientalis, which is not a rose at all but only resembles the wild rose.

Although this plant has been known since antiquity, it is not commonly grown in modern gardens.  The Roman historian Pliny wrote about its medicinal purposes, and also suggested that it had magical properties.  Medieval and Renaissance herbalists wrote about it as well, recommending it especially for veterinary purposes.   

But I enjoy it for its quiet Beauty in the winter garden.  The plants are hardy and evergreen.  The petals, or actually sepals, remain on the plant for sometimes many months.  

I think perhaps Lenten roses are not grown more popularly because we are more given to bright, colorful Spring gardens and flamboyant Summer borders.  Most of us don’t venture out into the Winter garden, and so the lovely Lenten roses would bloom unseen and unappreciated.   But with their dusky rose petals, their unique coloration, and their handsome spots, it lifts the heart to see them blooming in the snow.   They are rather shy, drooping their exquisite faces, but breathtaking when you lift a blossom to peer into its heart.

Of course, I think everyone should have a grouping tucked away in a corner of the garden  to provide a rare treat on a day that might otherwise be discouraging.  The Lenten roses are a sign of survival in sometimes brutal circumstances.  

“And why do you worry about adornment? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.   Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.”           - Matthew 6:28-29

And here’s a bit of poetry which features the Lenten rose from a book of poetry called The Chinese Poet Awakens.   The much honored Appalachian poet Jeff Daniel Marion, former poet-in-residence and professor at Carson Newman College, is not Chinese at all, but uses this persona of a Chinese poet to look at life in his native Tennessee and distill some wisdom from his daily life and locale.

The poem has an amusing title which sets up the scenario—the Chinese poet has not gotten the worldly honor he has expected.  Will he allow this to cause him to become despondent?  Will he consider that his ordinary life is without consequence and pleasure, now that his existence has not been validated by those with wealth and power?  Will he allow the culture to define him or blind him to what’s really significant in this life?

AFTER FAILING TO RECEIVE HIS APPOINTMENT FROM THE EMPEROR THE CHINESE POET RECONSIDERS THE WORLD

Beside my doorway this morning
the Lenten rose nods,
its bloom a blush of color
on yesterday's pale cheeks of snow.

Last night the faithful stars
appeared, steady travelers swinging their lanterns
through millions of dutiful rounds.
Who am I to them,
my day's but a flintspark?

Now the old dog nuzzles my palm.
To her I am no title, not even a name,
just a friendly hand to scratch her belly,
to deliver her daily lump
of meat in a blue granite bowl.
She sniffs my leg, loving the scent
of all the dusty trails I've wandered
to come home.

By the river the blue heron stands
and waits, poised in the long patience.
Here the world offers itself, wave after wave
of mountains washing across the miles.
Here the sparrow sings from the sycamore.
I lift my voice
and come down to earth
here.  

The poem makes us smile, but it makes us pause to ponder as well.   I think we can easily get the Chinese poet’s point, but having the courage to resist the siren call of the materialistic culture is more difficult.

I tried to give them a little "Medieval" context *smile*

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Divine Discontent and Longing

wild violets emerging from dead leaves with a drop of sunlight  ©A.Rutherford

Someone else has felt it too . . . .

THE MOLE had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.   First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs with a brush and a pail of whitewash; til he had dust in his throat and eyes and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and and aching back and weary arms.   Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.   It was small wonder, then, that he SUDDENLY flung down his brush on the floor, said "BOTHER!" and 'O Blow!" and also, 'HANG SPRING-CLEANING!" and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.   Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are near to the sun and air.   So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, 'Up we go!' till at last, POP! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow. 

~ Wind in the Willows ~ Kenneth Grahame

One of my very favorite books  *smile* . . . a lovely story... I adore the idea of "scraping and scrooging," and to find a meadow after all of that would be wonderful. To roll in the grass more wonderful still.

March is the month that flirts with us.  She’s temperamental, blowing hot and cold, enticing us with sunshine, then drenching us with cold rain or even snow.  But slowly, we see light and life emerging from the darkness of winter, and we feel renewed energy bubbling up in us as well, overcoming the inertia of winter. 

The prose of Winter is turning into the poetry of Spring. 

Prose or Poetry?

The world outside my window

Is wide and beckons me

To leave my perch so safe

And seek the poetry

Of vistas wild and free.

At my back the hearth-fire

Makes a counter claim,

"Stay within the prose tale

And risk not what you've gained, 

The tried, the known, the sane."  

Insistent comes the whisper,

As softly as a sigh;

The life beyond my window

Is awaiting my reply.

© A. Rutherford

“Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.”  -Song of Solomon

I will confess that this may be a bit of a “cheat” as I have purchased daffodils from the nursery to put in my sunroom, but placed up against the bank of windows, I can almost convince myself they are blooming outdoors.  Alas, only the foliage is up in the garden.

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The Peace of Wild Things

taken at Greenbottom Wildlife Management Area ©A.Rutherford

I was reading today in A Continuous Harmony, a collection of essays by Wendell Berry.  The subtitle of the book is "Essays Cultural & Agricultural." Wendell Berry is a distinguished man of letters, critically acclaimed as a poet, a novelist, and an essayist.  Berry is also a life-long Baptist,  a teacher, and a farmer in Port Royal, Kentucky.

Berry set me to pondering when in one of his essays he quotes Thoreau.   Although at first consideration, this might not seem to relate to the discussion about tension and angst in the arts and in the general culture that we’ve been having in this blog, but upon reflection I think it sheds some light on aspects of that theme.

Here is Thoreau, writing about Autumn, in his journal from Nov. 20, 1851:

Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man, and serves him directly. Here I have been for six days surveying in the woods, and yet when I get home at evening somewhat weary at last, and beginning to feel that I have nerves, I find myself more susceptible than usual to the finest influences, as music and poetry. The very air can intoxicate me, or the least sight or sound, as if my finer senses had acquired an appetite by their fast.

The modern conceit, or pretension, or whatever, is that only the "sophisticate" is culturally literate enough to either produce or enjoy poetry, or to be, as Thoreau expressed it, "susceptible . . . to the finest influences, as music and poetry."  The same is true for the pretensions of most contemporary artists and art critics.   The "sophisticate" of course is at home in the "civilized" world of the city.  The rustic life is not for him, and the rustic soul does not understand him and his needs, or so he thinks.  Of course, it can rightfully be argued that is a two-way street.   True, the rustic may not understand the angst which the Post-Modern poet or artist feels is the necessary ingredient for a valid expression of one's literary or artistic talents.  But neither do most "sophisticates" understand the beauty or the harmony the rustic can appreciate and express in his works.  Fortunately, having spent time in both worlds, I feel I have experienced enough of both to be able to judge for myself who most nearly approaches the Truth of what it means to be human, either in the created works of his mind or his hands,  or to appreciate the created order as the God-gift that it is to refresh and renew the human spirit.

To be alive in this world is a wonder-filled thing.

Here is Wendell Berry expressing this sentiment in a poem of his own:

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair grows in me

and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry

What it is, I suppose that troubles me, is that too many people of Faith have listened to the siren song of the culture, and bought into the hard-sell of our materialistic society that Nature is there for our leisure pursuits and our recreation, rather than our re-Creation, an antidote against all that is causing the angst in our tension-ridden world.

Scripture tells us that Nature is to be studied as a way to tune our spirits to the Harmony inherent in Creation, as a place to gain wisdom, insight, and understanding, as an avenue to finding Truth, Beauty, and Goodness when we have lost sight of them in our fast-paced lives.  And out of this deep-seated harmony we are able to express our creativity in life-affirming ways.  

Isaiah 45:18 

  For the Lord is God,
      and he created the heavens and earth
      and put everything in place.
   He made the world to be lived in,
      not to be a place of empty chaos.
   “I am the Lord,” he says,
      “and there is no other.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart . . . “

Isaiah 40:26-31

Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
   Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
   and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
   not one of them is missing.

 Why do you complain, Jacob?
   Why do you say, Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD;
   my cause is disregarded by my God”? 

 Do you not know?
   Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
   the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
   and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
   and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
   and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the LORD
   will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
   they will run and not grow weary,
   they will walk and not be faint.

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The natural world is a magical place in the positive sense of that word, as having a quality that makes something seem removed from everyday life, especially in a way that gives delight.  Click HERE for a glimpse of that magic and enjoy! _________________________________________________________________

A Fire in my Head

How do those of us with a "fire in our head" and a hunger in our heart fit ourselves to the "regular world"? Or do we?

I think this question is asked and answered somewhat in Irish poet William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Song of Wandering Aengus.”  When I first read this poem years ago, I loved it for its music and its fanciful, romantic quality.  It had lovely images and a magical aspect which was appealing.  I loved the way it sounded on my tongue when I read it aloud.  But now that I am older and just a bit wiser, I believe that I understand the poem in its fulness . . . what Yeats is saying through the medium of the poem is far more meaningful than the surface details which are fairy-tale like.

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire aflame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lads and hilly lands.

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

-William Butler Yeats

What could the glimmering girl represent in this poem . . . Yeats (or the persona of the poem) has grown older, yet he is still entranced with beauty and simplicity and rapture, and is still able to relate to what the girl symbolizes, the things of the spirit. Just because he has grown older, he doesn't feel he must give up enchantment.

Others may grow old in their heads (or spirits), but he still has a fire in his . . . and why not? Let the others settle, he will still pursue his dreams. He will be vibrantly spiritually alive until he dies physically.

If this "fire" is part of our very nature, what do we give up when we deny it or don't seek to assuage it with what we are longing for?

Where is your "hazel wood," that place apart where you can be yourself or even rediscover yourself whenever you are lost?   For me, it is usually out in nature that I find the harmony that is often lost in the "civilized" world . . . an elemental world filled with simple yet fanciful things . . . a place where goodness is possible . . . where beauty can restore and re-tune the spirit . . . where I only need a hazel wand and a berry to catch a silver trout.

Food for thought as to how the modern culture has it all wrong:

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards;  they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier.    The way it actually works is the reverse.   You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do in order to have what you want.               

                                                                          ~Margaret Young


After you have taken care of things of the spirit, you will find that what you want will have changed.  And your chance of fulfillment and contentment will be far greater but with less cost.  


A person who isn't spiritual doesn't accept the things of God's Spirit, for they are nonsense to him.  He can't understand them because they are spiritually evaluated.
-I Cor. 2:14 (ISV)


Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.   -Proverbs 4:23

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Joy as a Discipline

What is the source of your Joy?

If you can begin to think of Joy as a discipline, something you can practice until you get more skilled at it, then you don’t have to wait until perchance something happens that causes you to feel joyous.  If you consciously direct your attention to all that is true and beautiful and good, and if you open yourself to various opportunities to act in love, you will come to understand that you can become an active participant in your experience of Joy.  It is not a random or capricious emotion that we are able only to feel at times if we are fortunate enough to be standing in its path.

We readily accept that we can live our way into gloom or sadness or depression.  Why cannot the reverse be true?  As we expand our awareness of the minor avenues of Joy, increasingly we can develop our capacity to live our way into greater Joys.  

“I am thinking of what I have learned to call minor ecstasies, bits of star dust which are for all of us, however monotonous our days and cramped our lives, however limited our opportunities.

Everyone has these moments, more or less often, according as they are recognized and cherished.  Something seen, something heard, something felt, flashes upon one with a bright freshness, and the heart, tired or sick or sad or merely indifferent, stirs and lifts in answer.  Different things do it for different people, but the result is the same:  that fleeting instant when we lose ourselves in joy and wonder.  It is minor because it is slight and so soon gone;  it is an ecstasy because there is an impersonal quality in the vivid thrust of happiness we feel, and because the stir lingers in the memory.  Fragments of beauty and truth lie in every path; they need only the seeing eye and the receptive spirit to become the stuff of authentic minor ecstasies.  - Elizabeth Gray Vining

 Yes, the proverb is true:  If you keep a green bow in your heart, a singing bird will come!

The following is my attempt to put into poetry this idea of being open to all the ways that Joy and Love can come to you, and also the necessity of being willing to actively engage in those “minor ecstasies” or loving acts.  

Move beyond your narrow limitations of who deserves your love, just as the Hindu woman did the story told by Mother Teresa.  

Pay attention, look around you, appreciate what you find!  Practice Joy.

Think about it—  Something can be breath-taking only if you stop long enough to take a breath.                                                                                                      Breathe deeply.

                                                          photography and poem © A. Rutherford

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A Lover of the Meadows and the Woods

Tiny green shoots of daffodils are beginning to emerge in my garden!  And I saw some crocuses!  

It triggered memories of swathes of daffodils in early Spring in England and my thoughts turned to William Wordsworth, whose poetry I love.

 Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,

Through all the years of this our life, to lead

From joy to joy: for she can so inform

The mind that is within us, so impress

With quietness and beauty, and so feed

With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,

Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,

Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all

The dreary intercourse of daily life,

Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb

Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold

Is full of blessings.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

[Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,

On Revisiting The Banks Of The Wye River

During A Tour. July 13, 1798.]

William Hazlitt, English writer, essayist, and philosopher, said of Wordsworth: 

"His style is vernacular: he delivers household truths.” Hazlitt explained that Wordsworth had faith in “the healing power of plants and herbs and 'sky influences'  . . . his poetry is founded on setting up an opposition .  . . between the natural and the artificial . . ."  and we know that such tensions between opposites should cause us to pay attention and reflect on deeper meanings.

Also, he felt that reading Wordsworth’s poetry would "teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel . . ."  To be sure, I well remember what reading Wordsworth’s poetry in my teens did for me, and I sigh that great poetry is not widely read by young people today.

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Ancient Stones

the deserted village of Slievemore on Achill Island, Ireland  ©A.Rutherford

In many, many places all across Ireland, out of all the dreaming, planning and building, living and loving in a place, only the stones remain.

Slievemore is one such village on Achill Island, off the northwest coast of Ireland.  Achill is one of the best places to just go and be in Ireland.  The remains of the village are perched high upon the south slope of  Slievemore (Sliabh Mór) mountain, and consists of the remains of about 100 stone cottages set along what must have been a pathway or road that extends for about a mile.  These cottages at one time would have been thatched, and would have housed a thriving community.  For generations these people lived out their lives amongst the spectacular scenery of this place, until something happened.  No one is quite sure, but the consensus is that the Great Famine of 1845-49, created by the potato blight, caused the villagers to slowly die off from hunger or disease.

Despite its tragic history when you go there today, there is an overwhelming sense of peace.  The village is far from any neighboring towns, yet it is not a lonely place.  It is a place I return to because it is a blessing to me.  For me, Slievemore is one of those “thin places” the old ones in Ireland used to speak of . . . those places in the landscape which are sort of thresholds where two worlds meet . . . the temporal and the eternal . . . the inner and the outer . . . the spiritual and the physical . . . the past and the present.  

The aspect of patience conveyed by the stones and the sky strikes a chord with me.   It's like the earth is saying, "I've got all the time in the world. Be here with me now."   And to connect to that timelessness is either healing and invigorating, whichever one is in need of at the time.

The Deserted Village 

I have come here to this place to be alone,

And for my restless spirit seek some calm.

I lay my hand to rest on ancient stone

And feel the captured sun upon my palm.

My fingers trace the crevices and moss,

The tangled vines speak like some ancient braille.

The softly moist breezes play and toss

Time’s curtain to the side like a veil.

I see mystic forms flit along the lanes

That mark the intersections of their lives.

I hear empty echoes of their joys and pains,

These stones their only vestige that survives.

Ruined houses sit in order row by row,

As if some meaning once was there,

But now between the cobbles grasses grow

And leave the world no trace of their despair.

Each morning mists rise from atop the mountain

Which sheltered life and love along these lanes.

Each evening mist rolls down again,

To rest like a blessing on what remains.

With benediction too I leave this place,

And carry with me memories as a grace.

                                                               ©.A.Rutherford

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats took an old stone ruin near Galway, a square, four storied Norman castle keep, and restored it to a place where he could settle and write, but still be in touch with the continuity of Irish history.  I guess you could say he built his own “ivory tower.”

He created this inscription which was placed on the front wall:

I, the poet William Yeats,

With old millboards and sea-green slates,

And smithy work from the Gort forge,

Restored this tower for my wife George,

And may these characters remain

When all is ruin once again.

That's becoming part of the flow of history, to be sure . . .

Of course, for people of Faith there is a more sure foundation . . .

Psalm 118:22-24 

 22 The stone that the builders rejected
      has now become the Cornerstone.
 23 This is the Lord’s doing,
      and it is wonderful to see.
 24 This is the day the Lord has made.
      We will rejoice and be glad in it.

Isaiah 26:4 
 4 Trust in the Lord always,
      for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.

And yeah, I gather stones from various places I visit as mementos . . . I guess no one looking at them sitting on my shelves would know where they "belong" or what memories they “contain,” but that doesn't matter to me.  *smile*

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In Search of Stones

on the beach at Cleggan, Connemara, Ireland ©A. Rutherford

All my life I have had an inexplicable affinity for stones, some sort of visceral response to rocky places, whether mountain side or shore line. Craggy cliffs both enchant me and provoke me to deep thought. As I am a very tactile person, I enjoy their texture and temperature under my hands, and am often prompted to touch them or move my hands across their surfaces.

I think there is something of Eternity in stones.

Beach Boulders at Cleggan

Do they protect the land or hedge the sea,

These ancient rocks that lie along the shore?

Tumbled there through Time, what might be

The mystery they invite me to explore.

Rapport with rocks, such an absurdity,

But something strikes me at my very core,

Some message here for which they hold the key,

So I walk alone amongst them there once more.

Though lying mute through the ages, they speak as silently

As pages filled with words that answer what I quest for.

No, I have no explanation for the stones' connection with me,

But I know there’s something missing they restore.

As Time eddies in and ‘round them, they rest secure,

And bear witness to my heart, it too shall endure.

                                                                               ©A. Rutherford

Of course, at the risk of a very bad pun, Ireland is a "field day" for people who are enamoured of stones . . . stone cottages, stone walls, stone ruins of abbeys and castles, stony cliffs. So many "rocky places" to explore and experience, from the mystery of the earliest Celtic burial dolmens to the vast vista of the Burren to the cozy cottages nestled under their thatched roofs.

Others have responded to Ireland's stony story as well.   John Betjemen, an English poet laureate, describes the stark landscape so well in the second half of his poem "Ireland with Emily."

Stony seaboard, far and foreign,

Stony hills poured over space,

Stony outcrop of the Burren,

Stones in every fertile place,

Little fields with boulders dotted,

Grey-stone shoulders saffron-spotted,

Stone-walled cabins thatched with reeds,

. . .

Click photo to enlarge

And they bicycle on together until . . .

Till there rose, abrupt and lonely,

A ruined abbey, chancel only,

Lichen-crusted, time-befriended,

Soared the arches, splayed and splendid,

Romanesque against the sky.

 . . .

Sings its own seablown Te Deum,*

In and out the slipping slates

Todd Davis is a well-received Mennonite poet who teaches creative writing and environmental studies at Penn State Altoona. His poetry emphasizes the importance of place. 

Here are some of his thoughts on making poetry out of stones:

“One of my earliest memories takes place in Connecticut at my maternal grandparents' home. I'm playing on an old stone wall that borders their backyard. A row of cedar trees grows across the way. The green seems almost unbearable when I remember it today: both of my grandparents dead, my own parents growing older. I spy a rose-colored piece of granite three stones from the top of the wall. At this age, I don't understand the way rock latches to rock, holding back the weight of the sky. I slowly wrestle this hard rose from the gray thorns that surround it. Several large stones crash down when I finally pull my prize free, and my index finger is crushed, leaving an indelible impression about the price of beauty. 

Wrestling with words is an equally dangerous act as removing a stone from a wall. Each word precariously balances upon the other, and like a stone wall, the words take on another life when placed together, standing for something that they could not stand for alone.”

But he goes on to say:   

“As most writers will confess, however, I am more than willing to risk the pain in building poems because of my desire to touch others with what I have seen.” 

He speaks of the light that he received from other poets he read and studied:

"whose work spilled out before me like light shining through the canopy of leaves in a maple. With the help of this light, I began to select stones from my own life, carefully brushing away the mud so I might see all of the blemishes and imperfections that make such stones unique and worthy of telling. Soon poems began to appear, their structures unfolding out of the natural world where they were born.  

    Of course, there are still many days when I cannot find the light. I am part of the earth, and the rhythms of sky offer days of cloud, as well as days when sun and moon hang together into late morning. On gray mornings, I try to remind myself of the blessing found in all days - the kind of light that sifts slowly down through cloud and fog - and then begin my work with words. Some mornings this means waiting in silence, but more often I find in the silence some memory breaking in like a fallen branch snapped underfoot, white bottom of a doe flashing back into the undergrowth."

To read the essay from which these excerpts are quoted, go to

Looking for the Light: Making Poems from the Improbable

Nota Bene:  One reviewer said of Todd Davis:  

“I love the integrity, sincerity, and wisdom of Todd Davis’s poems. He is unafraid to write out of a deep faith—both religious faith and faith in the natural world. In a poetic landscape that often seems biased toward the cynical and clever, Davis’s poems unapologetically strive for the mountaintop. They make clear that the natural world still has a few things to teach us, or remind us of things we once knew but have forgotten. They sing with imagistic intensity, and their hard-hitting rhythms accentuate the world’s natural pulse. The restraint and humility of these poems belies their underlying passion and commitment. They are pure and sharp, so sharp they cut.

                              -Jim Daniels, author of Show and Tell, 

Winner of the Brittingham Prize

*Te Deum -The Te Deum is an early Christian hymn of praise.   The title is taken its opening Latin words, rendered literally as "Thee, O God, we praise."  The text has been set to music by many composers, among them Haydn, Mozart, Verdi, Dvorak, Britten, and John Rutter.

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