Paul Rains
Winter Forest
Missouri Ozarks
My daughter-in-law wrote a lyric essay regarding this photo:
He hides in winter clouds, in long winter nights. He hides in dark earth and silent trees, close to the moon, close to the wild heart of the world.
We have not heard His voice or seen His face all these years and the wind has the sting of judgment.
We get in our cars and drive through cities and towns, toward neon lights, streetlights, traffic lights, glowing, shining lights of screens—bright aisles of grocery stores—dim aisles of bookstores—where we feel the angel with the flaming sword, guarding the entrance to Paradise.
The fathers have thistles and thorns that prick them in their waking hours. The mothers have pain in childbearing – muffled, smothered pain in the night.
But most of us are wandering children, full of blasphemy and gaping wounds.
The human race has a nine to five job, stacking days end to end like logs, frittering away years like sawdust, locking away lifetimes in filing cabinets.
We open and close our doors softly, like therapists. We sit on padded couches and talk razor blades.
We slide into church and sit in wooden pews, while the preacher prays with half-closed eyes and the congregants hibernate like bears.
We think we are looking for God. But we are hiding from Him.
We hide from Him in floating axioms, in inspirational paperbacks, in calendar-driven lives, in plastic nativity scenes.
We hide from Him in libraries, in government bureaus.
We hide in our CVS and our McDonald's drive thrus with their pharmacies and broken milkshake machines--
And we hide in houses or apartments, large and small, as we straighten them up and fill them with trash, over and over again.
He doesn't follow us there, into our distant lands. He lets us go. He stands afar off. He stands on his porch and watches.
And when I saw this I cried, tiny grains of faith with my sorrow.
We perceive Him as a trace—in the grief of nature—in the movement of conscience and consciousness—in fragile souls that sway like reeds.
We perceive Him in a trace—a faint line of serendipity-- a shadow on the page of history where He hides between in its lines—the First Cause of everything—the Grand Silent Mover.
We perceive Him in children when they are born into the world—when we wish to preserve for them something of Original Goodness.
And when I see the star in my rearview mirror, all he pop stars on the radio sing “Gloria.”
And every book on every shelf sings “Hosanna,” every government bureau bends the knee, and the plastic magi bring gifts, and all the harlots and rioters and politicians sing “hallelujah” and “He shall reign forever and ever.”
And the bare, empty branches of winter trees are full of latent life.
--Jessamyn Rains
Winter Forest
Missouri Ozarks
My daughter-in-law wrote a lyric essay regarding this photo:
He hides in winter clouds, in long winter nights. He hides in dark earth and silent trees, close to the moon, close to the wild heart of the world.
We have not heard His voice or seen His face all these years and the wind has the sting of judgment.
We get in our cars and drive through cities and towns, toward neon lights, streetlights, traffic lights, glowing, shining lights of screens—bright aisles of grocery stores—dim aisles of bookstores—where we feel the angel with the flaming sword, guarding the entrance to Paradise.
The fathers have thistles and thorns that prick them in their waking hours. The mothers have pain in childbearing – muffled, smothered pain in the night.
But most of us are wandering children, full of blasphemy and gaping wounds.
The human race has a nine to five job, stacking days end to end like logs, frittering away years like sawdust, locking away lifetimes in filing cabinets.
We open and close our doors softly, like therapists. We sit on padded couches and talk razor blades.
We slide into church and sit in wooden pews, while the preacher prays with half-closed eyes and the congregants hibernate like bears.
We think we are looking for God. But we are hiding from Him.
We hide from Him in floating axioms, in inspirational paperbacks, in calendar-driven lives, in plastic nativity scenes.
We hide from Him in libraries, in government bureaus.
We hide in our CVS and our McDonald's drive thrus with their pharmacies and broken milkshake machines--
And we hide in houses or apartments, large and small, as we straighten them up and fill them with trash, over and over again.
He doesn't follow us there, into our distant lands. He lets us go. He stands afar off. He stands on his porch and watches.
And when I saw this I cried, tiny grains of faith with my sorrow.
We perceive Him as a trace—in the grief of nature—in the movement of conscience and consciousness—in fragile souls that sway like reeds.
We perceive Him in a trace—a faint line of serendipity-- a shadow on the page of history where He hides between in its lines—the First Cause of everything—the Grand Silent Mover.
We perceive Him in children when they are born into the world—when we wish to preserve for them something of Original Goodness.
And when I see the star in my rearview mirror, all he pop stars on the radio sing “Gloria.”
And every book on every shelf sings “Hosanna,” every government bureau bends the knee, and the plastic magi bring gifts, and all the harlots and rioters and politicians sing “hallelujah” and “He shall reign forever and ever.”
And the bare, empty branches of winter trees are full of latent life.
--Jessamyn Rains