Cover picture painted by Cathryn Stephens

Surprise

I had hoped to have a lover near me
When I walked the path of pain,

But I discover that few are willing

To take that walk with me…

Sunny has gone behind a cloud

Of his own painful memories

About a lost wife who faced surgery

And debilitation and death.

The brown mouse has become frightened

And withdrawn behind his peephole,

And the otter seeks peace 
     upon another shore,

Where he is mourning another loss,

As I face a danger

I have thought of

Only in my wildest dreams.

I seem to be all alone as I face an enemy

That stalks mankind

Especially those too busy

To be vigilant

And protect from its invasion

Of their peace.

They have fears.

I always discover that the men

I know and love have fears.

But I discover to my surprise

That I have fears as well:

Lack of trust

Fear of weakness

Anxiety about flooded consciousness

Concern about the unknown

Distractions and pressures.

These are just a few

Of the most persistent ones.

But I discover again, as I always do,

That true love never fears

And I have company 
     on every path to progress

Or to pass through pain.

I do not walk alone on this journey:

The sun rises each morning –

Sometimes teasing with passing clouds

On the heavenly playground –

Often bright in ecstasy.

The green of the growing things,

And the color of the change,

The sound of the stream at melting snowfall,

The scurry of the unseen small ones.

All these are with me daily.

Someone always hears and comforts.

My soul is at peace.

— Mary Carol Lewis

“Deep calls unto deep

     at the noise of thy waterspouts:

All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the day time, and in the night his song shall be with me,

    and my prayer unto the God of my life.”

Psalm 42:7-8

“Then comes the father of the tempest forth,

Wrapped in black glooms. First, joyless rains obscure

Drive through the mingling skies with vapor foul,

Dash on the mountain’s brow, and shake the woods

That grumbling wave below. The unsightly plain

Lies a brown deluge; as the low-bent clouds

Pour flood on flood, yet unexhausted still

Combine, and deepening into night, shut up

The day’s fair face.”

            from “The Seasons” by James Thomson

“While Spring shall pour his showers, as of the wont,

And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve!

While Summer loves to sport

Beneath thy lingering light;

While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves;

Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air,

Affrights thy shrinking train,

And rudely rends thy robes;

So long, … shall Fancy,

Friendship, Science, rose-lipped Health

Thy gentlest influence own,

And hymn thy favorite name!”

            from “Ode to Evening” by William Collins

“Yes, I remember when the changeful earth had stamped

The faces of the moving year, even then

I held unconscious intercourse with beauty

Old as creation, drinking in a pure

Organic pleasure from the silver wreaths

Of curling mist, or from the level plain

Of waters colored by impending clouds.”

            — William Wordsworth

“Nature gives to every time and season

some beauties of its own;

And from morning to night,

As from the cradle to the grave,

Is but a succession of changes

So gentle and easy

That we can scarcely mark their progress.”

            — Charles Dickens

“The man who can really, in living union of the mind and heart, converse with God through nature, finds in the material forms around him, a source of power and happiness inexhaustible, and like the life of angels…. And when this grandeur of sensibility to him, and this power of communion with him is carried, as the habit of the soul, into the forms of nature, then the walls of our world are as the gates of heaven.”