children/Letters to Arden/love

Letters to Arden: First Born

Posted on by Lindsey Gallant / 1 Comment

Dear Arden,

Can we believe it’s been almost six years since you were re-making me into a mother? And now you are the big girl helping to make smooth the arrival of the third born.

When Jack came along, you were not yet two years old. You practiced with a baby doll, but did not understand the change your brother brought to our lives. He was so needy, and so were you, in many ways. There were times I pushed you away, out of exhaustion, out of frustration, out of a desperate need for you to not wake the baby. And you cried on the other side of the door, and I cried looking at you shut out and wondered how I could ever make it up to you. There were times you needed me, and I wasn’t there. Days and nights I had nothing left to give. And I prayed for grace to fill the gaps I could not stretch to bridge.

I wonder sometimes, did you hold it against me? Is there something in you, even now, that cries out against the voice I raised, the arms I stretched to shoo you away? I wish there had been two of me, or more of me, and I could have rocked you both to sleep.

But now, my darling, you are nearly six, and thrilled at the prospect of this new baby – though prospect and reality will soon clash, I’m sure. You sing to the little life, say “good morning baby” and “I love you baby,” and you are brimming with ideas for its care and keeping.

What’s more, you have been taking care of me. You see my growing tiredness, and are quick to come to my aid. You have prepared bed and couch for my rest, complete with all the little things you think I may need – books and pens and a glass of water and carefully turned down blanket. (You know me well.) Your generosity has left me humbled, delighted. Just where this kindness has come from, I do not know.

I have done my best to love and care for you, but I know I have fallen short. I know I am no shining example some days. I can only hope the light of Love, that I reflect imperfectly, is warming the places I cannot reach.

Arden – your name means eager, shining, ardent one. I have prayed your name over and over, as thanksgiving, as blessing, as petition. There have been times I have dampened your spirit and snuffed out your flame when I should have coaxed it into life. Nevertheless, six years on, you are shining bright. The flame is in your eyes and in your kindnesses and in the way you show what love is made of. And you will kindle fires wherever you go. You are already warming our family. You are already making us laugh in your light. You are already bringing something more than I alone have given. This is grace, and wonder, and joy, that love can expand beyond the kindling we offer.

You were the first to make me a mother, and in your forge I have been reshaped. You will keep shaping me even as I shape you. Oh, we will rub each other the wrong way, but let us keep close for all that. Let us keep learning love together. The sparks may fly upward, but a greater flame shall warm us.

Now, as our lives are about to shift once more, and we must make room for another, remember this – when my hands are full you are still and always welcome in my heart.

~lg

Lent/poetry/prayer

John Donne’s “Batter My Heart”

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Just popping in to share this poem from Malcolm Guite’s The Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter. I’ve been enjoying this anthology which includes a wide selection of poets (and Guite’s insightful commentary on their works), as well as some of Guite’s own poetry.

This poem by John Donne, written four hundred years ago, leapt off the page as a poem kindred to my own soul. It speaks the language of Jacob’s midnight wrestling, of Paul’s living sacrifice, the kernel of desire at the heart of Lent’s journey. It is a prayer of raw beauty and power.

Batter My Heart

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am bethroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

~lg

birds/joy/Kingdom Field Notes/Lent/longing/nature

Swan Joy

Posted on by Lindsey Gallant / 0 Comment

Joy is a longing,
a passageway with the white wingbeat of swans overhead,
and the silent current of a spring river beneath.
You cannot live in water or air, and yet they push and lift you into realms of beauty and desire,
so much the more powerful for their being out of reach.

Joy is this pulling of the soul right out of the body and onto the swan’s back,
a dreamscape more alive than your waking vision.
It is forever captured in your mind’s eye,
a trumpet call from a far country,
which even now sets your feet dancing on the rippled water,
dazzled by the bright sun toward which you run.

Joy is the elemental force you cannot contain,
yet which defines your every movement,
now from beneath, now from above,
the wave that buoys,
the wind that breathes,
the holy, humbling wild of spring unleashed.


This poetic reflection draws on C.S. Lewis’s understanding of joy as desire, and is formed by memories of canoeing down the Salt River with my father one spring. In an afternoon I will never forget, we set up a tarp sail and the wind carried us downstream toward hundreds of white tundra swans that had returned to the river. As we neared, they rose up by the dozens and dozens, and flew overhead to resettle behind us. We were surrounded. I look back on that day as a gift of beatific vision. 

~lg

birds/Lent/nature

The return of the birds

Posted on by Lindsey Gallant / 3 Comments

The blue jays arrived first. They still startle me with their plumage. I didn’t grow up with blue jays, and they’ve always seemed rather foreign to me, like creatures out of a jungle picture book. They are colourful and noisy and somewhat obnoxious, rather like children. They crowded around the feeders, calling to each other with their piercing cries, alerting the bird world to their discovery.

The chickadees came next. They are the bravest of the little birds, willing to dart in between the bossy jays for their share of sunflower seeds. With their black caps on, they seem game for anything. These are the birds which landed on my head last winter when I stood out in the cold for half an hour with seeds on my toque, pretending to be a statue. It was one of those childhood dreams fulfilled. I had tried many times as a kid to stand still enough, for long enough, in our backyard in Fort Smith for the chickadees to land, but they never did. Perhaps I’ve gained some patience as a “grown-up.” Or perhaps this variety is a little less wild. Either way, they braved my humanity long enough to settle and snatch what they were after, and left me grinning like a fool.

Later in the morning I came back to the window and the snowy ground was spread with juncos. I cannot say why these in particular should captivate me. Perhaps it is the distinction between their smoky grey backs and white breasts, or the way their eyes gleam like shiny coals through the smoke. It might sound silly, but I think it’s the way they look at me. They prefer to forage on the ground, picking out what has scattered from more careless birds above. And that’s why we make sure to scatter a few handfuls of seed just for them.

And up among the chickadees, a downy woodpecker, alternating between feeder and branches, gripping bark with its four-toed feet, always head up. How is the grub finding in February,  I wonder? It is smaller than its hairy cousin, though just as persistent. It must pick and drill for its food, if easier pickings are not to be found. “If any would not work, neither shall he eat.” I admire its determination, and the way its thrusts its whole upper body beak-first into the search.  On Ash Wednesday morning, I woke to the sound of one of these, knocking on doors in the sky.

“Ask and it shall be given unto you. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.” This was the message I heard on the day we consider and mark our frailty.

Such little creatures all, with only a feather’s breadth between them and starvation. Fragility like this cannot afford complacency. And so I am happy to spread this small banquet in a sparser season. Sometimes you just need a table prepared. 

When you are tired of drilling and foraging through a crust of ice, there is this grace that arrives like manna. In  the deep winter, a hand stretches out, offering seed for the sower and bread for the eater.

Be brave, little bird, and come closer!

The search never ends, but neither does the provision. There is always food enough for the journey.

~lg

a life of prayer/birds/hunger/joy/kindness/Lent/nature/prayer

Lent Is For the Birds

Posted on by Lindsey Gallant / 0 Comment

Winter is truly here with a respectable -22 C morning. The snow is crunchy and crystalline, and the river shivers under its growing skin. Life stirs house by house, as first one plume of smoke and then another rises out of the neighbours’ chimneys. All seems still, silenced by the cold, except for the birds of winter.

I’ve neglected the birdfeeder lately. The odd chickadee hops over to investigate their previous source of food, then flies off to search for other, more generous backyards. I miss them. I miss the chatter and flutter and closeness of small life.

I miss the messages they carry from another kingdom. Over the years, they have been to me heaven’s carrier pigeons. (For God’s voice is woven and wafted throughout all creation.) A year ago, a bird was somehow tied up with the beginning of this journey of a life of prayer.

Lent is a time for fasting. But it’s also a time for feeding the soul.

This Lent, I’ve decided to feed the birds. 

Junco – Carrier of secrets, she knows where to find the hidden seed. She knows the song of the wind.

(Give me ears to hear!)

Chickadee – Cheerful herald through winter’s cold, constant companion of woods and windowsill, bright bringer of joy.

(Give me a heart of joy!)

Sparrow – Common beauty building her nest, crafting a refuge of kindness out of bits and pieces, gathering nature’s scraps into a soft bed for her young.

(Give me wings of kindness!) 


We will go out into the cold and fill up the feeder, scatter the seeds, and send our invitation. We will watch and wait for the birds to come back. We will listen, and learn, and lean close. We will feed the hunger of winter.

We will wait for the return of the birds . . .

~lg