Lindsay, I love that you had just finished reading Psalm 42 this morning. That’s beautiful. Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment. Writing this poem was healing for me, and the fact that it can bless anyone else is deeply encouraging. Thank you, Lindsay!
This is the season when I long to bathe my face in sunlight as often as I can. There's so precious little of it.
I love the contrast between the cold winter yard and the memory of cicadas and green. And the way the poem telescopes out to see the sun as the center of gravity holding everything in its place.
"Seeds silent in the frozen soil believe
in sunlight working still in winter chill,"
I like the personification of the seeds. And such beautiful alliteration and lovely play of sounds with the internal rhyme here.
And then such a riotous joyful sound explosion:
"burst buds, flame flowers, and powder pollen
as catkins dangle gold dust in the breeze
and leaves, new oiled, push out into the blue"
"acorns unclench fists on branches’ hand" is especially delightful.
"Buried alive,
my soil glorifies the Lord as frozen dirt.
He has been mindful of its humble state."
So much going on here, so tightly compact with meaning: paraphrase of the magnificat, soil as a concrete image of humility, literally. And also the image of the tomb in 'buried alive'.
The unthawed/God rhyme is brilliant.
And that final line bringing everything full circle back to the sun as center works so well.
"that burns in place to keep us safe in ours."
The Psalms are such a profound consolation in difficult times, aren't they? I love how there's a Psalm for every mood, situation and occasion. I used to have a little book, a guide to praying the Liturgy of the Hours that said one of the great gifts of praying the set psalms at set hours is that they don't always match your own mood. If you are angry or sad, still the psalm of the day may be one of rejoicing. Or you may be having a blissfully happy day, but the psalms are full of lamination or complaint. And these moments are invitations to experience and express solidarity with the members of the Body of Christ who are in those states, opportunities to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.
I really love how you live out that solidarity in the moment of imaginative empathy you express in your composition notes: "I let myself see what other people see when they want winter to be over"
Melanie, this close reading says so much about your insightful perspective, both as a sister in Christ and as a reader and writer. I am humbled and blessed to have a Substack friend like you. Grappling with these words, with my own pain and doubt, with God's presence in the midst of it, was deeply healing. I love hearing which lines stand out to you. You mention some of my favorite. The other night I was reading the Jesus Storybook Bible to our youngest at bedtime and noticed how much I borrowed from Sally Lloyd-Jones's creation account: "He made buds bud; shoots shoot; flowers flower." I was a bit worried about the perspective of this poem being too inconsistent as I veer from the seeds to the person observing the yard, from winter to remembering summer. It is reassuring to hear how it landed with you. This is one that looks VERY different from its first draft. There's something about writing a messy, repetitious, cliche-ridden first draft that is incredibly freeing for me. I can revise it with abandon, not feeling like I'm messing up something precise and controlled, but free to take risks and see what works. The draft right before this one was significantly worse, but when I tightened up the meter, it fell into place and took care of a couple spots that were objectively weak. It all feels like such a gift. What a blessing that we get to wrestle with these truths and sing a new song in our own words to the One who blessed us with words and made us in his image. And then he gave us his family to speak truth back to us! What riches. Thank you for your thoughtful readership, friend.
For as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by fungi and the transformations they provoke. A solid log becomes soil, a lump of dough rises into bread, a mushroom erupts overnight—but how? - Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life
Dear Abigail--isn't it perfect that your name means handmaiden, and you wrote this so perfect poem with the model handmaiden in the background? I am so amazed and blessed by this poem! I am copying it into my journal! Thank you so much! The snow is falling, and I feel homesick for my motherland, for spring, for my family, for ease and peace...the human plight...but your in-spired words have breathed new hope in my heart. Praise God for His mercies! He comes to minister to us in our friends!
Gemma, you are such a dear Substack friend. Thank you for this kind note. It made my day. So grateful we can share a love of poetry and beautiful words and keep pointing each other to our true hope. Bless you, friend!
Oh my goodness — I read this as I sat near my front picture window, overlooking my frozen garden under snow and in -30+ degree chill. This was so stunning, so relatable, so breathtaking… one of my favorite of yours. Thank you for writing it and sharing it with us all!
Meghan, you are such a generous reader. Thank you for this thoughtful comment! I have been thinking about all you hardy Minnesotans with this cold snap. I hope you are staying warm! I’m amazed that others can be blessed by something that blessed me so intensely to write. Praise Him.
The most beautiful and resonating thing I've read in a long time. Absolutely, stunningly God-breathed. I hope writing it blessed you as much as I was blessed reading it.
This was beautiful, Abigail! I too enjoy winter, but as I've gotten older or been through more seasons of sadness, winter can seem too long. I think the greatest thing I've learned in winter is to give myself grace, to slow down, and to really imitate a bear and imagine myself in a bit of hibernation. Not to put my head in the ground and ignore everything around me, but to realize that winter is darker, colder, and offers more couch time, naps, a slower pace. Thank you for uncovering your own hard season in this piece. I hate that you are going through one, but this piece encourages us to ask God the hard questions. To seek His face beyond just looking for His hand and the gifts He gives. You amaze me with your writing and depth of imagery!
I so enjoyed reading a winter poem inspired by the Magnificat. And your notes! I'm sorry 2025 was such a hard year. I'm also so thankful to read the blessings that you found even in the unanswered prayers and difficulties God asked you to endure. The note about your friends quite impressed me. And this note about the sun, I'm sticking with me:
"Even when the winter sunshine seems ineffectual, it is doing its most important job: not just promising there will be a coming spring but also tethering us to our spot in the galaxy so another spring is even possible."
"Unseen, all lies in wait." reminds me of 1 John: "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared..."
Thank you for sharing this beauty with the rest of us!
Leah, I love hearing the lines that stand out to you. I hadn't even thought of the parallel in 1 John and will spend some time meditating on that chapter today. Thank you for reading, friend.
But also, I just want to add to that thought about the sun holding us in place. Because someone I recently met who is very intelligent explained that he converted through realizations that science gave him, especially as he studied quantum physics. He realized, as everything in its smallest form is actually floating particles and that things in that state only become something visible or tangible when there is a mind looking at it; that the only reason that WE are tangible and concrete forms, is because there is one great mind/conscience that looks at us and focuses on us and thus keeps us in being. In other words, God literally watches the universe and any of us into our form and holds us into being, and it's a very deliberate choice of his will that we exist in this particular life with every particular thing around us, because on the level of quantum physics, anything is possible. I don't know if that makes any sense to you, it's kind of hard to explain. But when I heard that, everything fell into place for me and it all made sense. It was just a confirmation of what I heard about God's gaze keeping us into being and about living in God's will. It's pretty crazy!
Just reading this (!?) and…wow. The reflections are just sacred. Thank you as always for your generous heart in sharing them.
Buried alive - and magnifying the Lord. The tensions here both spiritual and physical with the thought of the sun holding us in place, are real. Raw. Relatable. Again, thanks.
Thank you for reading so thoughtfully and taking the time to comment. Your reflection blesses me. Writing this was such a gift. I am grateful for you, friend💚💚💚
Yes! This is EXACTLY what I was aiming for and imagining. The sun tethering us in place, whether we are aware of it or not, is an image of God holding us all together at both the planetary and subatomic level. Madeleine L'Engle writes about this in her Wrinkle in Time books. One of the books later in the series, but I can't remember which one, conveyed a strong impression to me as a child that the same way God is holding our planets in place is exactly what he is doing with our molecules and cells. I love this comment so much! Thank you for reading and engaging so thoughtfully. Readers like you are such a huge blessing. May we rest in his gaze.
Yes, that's awesome, I really never thought about it like that before! That author sounds interesting, I'll look her up, I heard her name before but can't remember where ...
What a beautiful fruit of the Wind & Breath session! The poem is very beautiful but I read it again after I read your notes and its deeper meaning really hit me. Such a profound thought.
I love that you pointed out that line in particular because I was praying about it. I didn’t want to make it sound like I was saying doubts don’t matter, but rather that our safest place to doubt is in our Father’s arms. 2 Timothy 2:13 “He remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself” gave me the courage to write that line. Thank you for your thoughtful feedback, Alice!
I hear you on that! Sometimes I feel like I need to add footnotes unpacking the orthodoxy of whatever I've said - but remembering that the Bible's around 30% poetry helps me feel more comfortable with leaving it beautiful/less didactic
Abigail, I love the poem a lot—so condensed and vivid—but also! what a blessing to read your notes. Thank you for sharing what God is doing in your life, and what encouragements you have in him.
Thank you, Kilby. In many ways this feels like an accompanying poem to the one I wrote for you about the widow’s mite. I’ve been thinking so much about the sun since writing that. It’s funny how I feel guilty for writing poems that are too similar, and yet, since I’m working on putting a full-length collection of poetry together, I shouldn’t be surprised that I keep returning to the same themes.
Beautiful!
Naomi sent your poem to me this morning.
"Seeds silent in the frozen soil believe
in sunlight working still in winter chill,
but even if they doubt, they will again
burst buds, flame flowers, and powder pollen"
That resonated with me this morning. I read your poem just as I finished reading Psalm 42 this morning. "Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him."
Thank you for this beautiful poetry.
Lindsay, I love that you had just finished reading Psalm 42 this morning. That’s beautiful. Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment. Writing this poem was healing for me, and the fact that it can bless anyone else is deeply encouraging. Thank you, Lindsay!
This is the season when I long to bathe my face in sunlight as often as I can. There's so precious little of it.
I love the contrast between the cold winter yard and the memory of cicadas and green. And the way the poem telescopes out to see the sun as the center of gravity holding everything in its place.
"Seeds silent in the frozen soil believe
in sunlight working still in winter chill,"
I like the personification of the seeds. And such beautiful alliteration and lovely play of sounds with the internal rhyme here.
And then such a riotous joyful sound explosion:
"burst buds, flame flowers, and powder pollen
as catkins dangle gold dust in the breeze
and leaves, new oiled, push out into the blue"
"acorns unclench fists on branches’ hand" is especially delightful.
"Buried alive,
my soil glorifies the Lord as frozen dirt.
He has been mindful of its humble state."
So much going on here, so tightly compact with meaning: paraphrase of the magnificat, soil as a concrete image of humility, literally. And also the image of the tomb in 'buried alive'.
The unthawed/God rhyme is brilliant.
And that final line bringing everything full circle back to the sun as center works so well.
"that burns in place to keep us safe in ours."
The Psalms are such a profound consolation in difficult times, aren't they? I love how there's a Psalm for every mood, situation and occasion. I used to have a little book, a guide to praying the Liturgy of the Hours that said one of the great gifts of praying the set psalms at set hours is that they don't always match your own mood. If you are angry or sad, still the psalm of the day may be one of rejoicing. Or you may be having a blissfully happy day, but the psalms are full of lamination or complaint. And these moments are invitations to experience and express solidarity with the members of the Body of Christ who are in those states, opportunities to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.
I really love how you live out that solidarity in the moment of imaginative empathy you express in your composition notes: "I let myself see what other people see when they want winter to be over"
Melanie, this close reading says so much about your insightful perspective, both as a sister in Christ and as a reader and writer. I am humbled and blessed to have a Substack friend like you. Grappling with these words, with my own pain and doubt, with God's presence in the midst of it, was deeply healing. I love hearing which lines stand out to you. You mention some of my favorite. The other night I was reading the Jesus Storybook Bible to our youngest at bedtime and noticed how much I borrowed from Sally Lloyd-Jones's creation account: "He made buds bud; shoots shoot; flowers flower." I was a bit worried about the perspective of this poem being too inconsistent as I veer from the seeds to the person observing the yard, from winter to remembering summer. It is reassuring to hear how it landed with you. This is one that looks VERY different from its first draft. There's something about writing a messy, repetitious, cliche-ridden first draft that is incredibly freeing for me. I can revise it with abandon, not feeling like I'm messing up something precise and controlled, but free to take risks and see what works. The draft right before this one was significantly worse, but when I tightened up the meter, it fell into place and took care of a couple spots that were objectively weak. It all feels like such a gift. What a blessing that we get to wrestle with these truths and sing a new song in our own words to the One who blessed us with words and made us in his image. And then he gave us his family to speak truth back to us! What riches. Thank you for your thoughtful readership, friend.
For as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by fungi and the transformations they provoke. A solid log becomes soil, a lump of dough rises into bread, a mushroom erupts overnight—but how? - Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life
Dear Abigail--isn't it perfect that your name means handmaiden, and you wrote this so perfect poem with the model handmaiden in the background? I am so amazed and blessed by this poem! I am copying it into my journal! Thank you so much! The snow is falling, and I feel homesick for my motherland, for spring, for my family, for ease and peace...the human plight...but your in-spired words have breathed new hope in my heart. Praise God for His mercies! He comes to minister to us in our friends!
Gemma, you are such a dear Substack friend. Thank you for this kind note. It made my day. So grateful we can share a love of poetry and beautiful words and keep pointing each other to our true hope. Bless you, friend!
Oh my goodness — I read this as I sat near my front picture window, overlooking my frozen garden under snow and in -30+ degree chill. This was so stunning, so relatable, so breathtaking… one of my favorite of yours. Thank you for writing it and sharing it with us all!
Meghan, you are such a generous reader. Thank you for this thoughtful comment! I have been thinking about all you hardy Minnesotans with this cold snap. I hope you are staying warm! I’m amazed that others can be blessed by something that blessed me so intensely to write. Praise Him.
The most beautiful and resonating thing I've read in a long time. Absolutely, stunningly God-breathed. I hope writing it blessed you as much as I was blessed reading it.
Hannah, that means so much coming from you. Thank you, friend. Writing this ministered to me deeply.
This was beautiful, Abigail! I too enjoy winter, but as I've gotten older or been through more seasons of sadness, winter can seem too long. I think the greatest thing I've learned in winter is to give myself grace, to slow down, and to really imitate a bear and imagine myself in a bit of hibernation. Not to put my head in the ground and ignore everything around me, but to realize that winter is darker, colder, and offers more couch time, naps, a slower pace. Thank you for uncovering your own hard season in this piece. I hate that you are going through one, but this piece encourages us to ask God the hard questions. To seek His face beyond just looking for His hand and the gifts He gives. You amaze me with your writing and depth of imagery!
Emily, your comments are always such a blessing. Thank you for your thoughtful interaction, friend.
You’re very welcome <3
I so enjoyed reading a winter poem inspired by the Magnificat. And your notes! I'm sorry 2025 was such a hard year. I'm also so thankful to read the blessings that you found even in the unanswered prayers and difficulties God asked you to endure. The note about your friends quite impressed me. And this note about the sun, I'm sticking with me:
"Even when the winter sunshine seems ineffectual, it is doing its most important job: not just promising there will be a coming spring but also tethering us to our spot in the galaxy so another spring is even possible."
"Unseen, all lies in wait." reminds me of 1 John: "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared..."
Thank you for sharing this beauty with the rest of us!
Leah, I love hearing the lines that stand out to you. I hadn't even thought of the parallel in 1 John and will spend some time meditating on that chapter today. Thank you for reading, friend.
But also, I just want to add to that thought about the sun holding us in place. Because someone I recently met who is very intelligent explained that he converted through realizations that science gave him, especially as he studied quantum physics. He realized, as everything in its smallest form is actually floating particles and that things in that state only become something visible or tangible when there is a mind looking at it; that the only reason that WE are tangible and concrete forms, is because there is one great mind/conscience that looks at us and focuses on us and thus keeps us in being. In other words, God literally watches the universe and any of us into our form and holds us into being, and it's a very deliberate choice of his will that we exist in this particular life with every particular thing around us, because on the level of quantum physics, anything is possible. I don't know if that makes any sense to you, it's kind of hard to explain. But when I heard that, everything fell into place for me and it all made sense. It was just a confirmation of what I heard about God's gaze keeping us into being and about living in God's will. It's pretty crazy!
Just reading this (!?) and…wow. The reflections are just sacred. Thank you as always for your generous heart in sharing them.
Buried alive - and magnifying the Lord. The tensions here both spiritual and physical with the thought of the sun holding us in place, are real. Raw. Relatable. Again, thanks.
Thank you for reading so thoughtfully and taking the time to comment. Your reflection blesses me. Writing this was such a gift. I am grateful for you, friend💚💚💚
Yes! This is EXACTLY what I was aiming for and imagining. The sun tethering us in place, whether we are aware of it or not, is an image of God holding us all together at both the planetary and subatomic level. Madeleine L'Engle writes about this in her Wrinkle in Time books. One of the books later in the series, but I can't remember which one, conveyed a strong impression to me as a child that the same way God is holding our planets in place is exactly what he is doing with our molecules and cells. I love this comment so much! Thank you for reading and engaging so thoughtfully. Readers like you are such a huge blessing. May we rest in his gaze.
Yes, that's awesome, I really never thought about it like that before! That author sounds interesting, I'll look her up, I heard her name before but can't remember where ...
What a beautiful fruit of the Wind & Breath session! The poem is very beautiful but I read it again after I read your notes and its deeper meaning really hit me. Such a profound thought.
Thank you for reading and restacking!
So much of this resonated with me, but particularly this phrase: "but even if they doubt..." A succinct reminder of the grace of God to us!
I love that you pointed out that line in particular because I was praying about it. I didn’t want to make it sound like I was saying doubts don’t matter, but rather that our safest place to doubt is in our Father’s arms. 2 Timothy 2:13 “He remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself” gave me the courage to write that line. Thank you for your thoughtful feedback, Alice!
I hear you on that! Sometimes I feel like I need to add footnotes unpacking the orthodoxy of whatever I've said - but remembering that the Bible's around 30% poetry helps me feel more comfortable with leaving it beautiful/less didactic
Yes! That’s brilliant, Alice. I love this perspective so much.
I love "My soul glorifies the Lord"!
Thank you, Clara!
*soil, oops, haha
I love it! Yes! Soul/soil was so much fun to write.
This is stunning! Thank you Abigail!
Thank you, Katie. Your kind comment is a blessing. I am overwhelmed with the kindness of my readers. God is so good to us.
Abigail, I love the poem a lot—so condensed and vivid—but also! what a blessing to read your notes. Thank you for sharing what God is doing in your life, and what encouragements you have in him.
Thank you, Kilby. In many ways this feels like an accompanying poem to the one I wrote for you about the widow’s mite. I’ve been thinking so much about the sun since writing that. It’s funny how I feel guilty for writing poems that are too similar, and yet, since I’m working on putting a full-length collection of poetry together, I shouldn’t be surprised that I keep returning to the same themes.
Literal chills. No pun intended. ❤️🔥