Driving north on Highway 21 to a doctor’s appointment
God’s coming is always unforeseen.
– from Frederick Buechner’s The Sacred Journey
A blindingly bright January morning.
In the distance ahead, to the east,
a wink,
a glint of metallic shimmer.
I glance over.
A cluster of grey barns,
their south-facing walls sheathed in molten gold,
smooth planes of lustrous light,
effulgence edged by corners and gables.
A blur of trees.
Another glimpse.
Just old barns, drab,
huddled together, hunkered down,
hunched against the rushing wind
igniting the western horizon.
Most days I fail to see miracles.
Today, for a split second,
the scales fell off
before a thin place
in a farmer’s field.
Take my hand, dear Jesus.
Baptize my sight.
Cast all my dim days in your refining fire.
Touch my eyes again and again
until, sent home,
they open
to the bush burning incandescent
in my garden,
to the flaming hosts and gilded chariots
ringing my house,
to the golden city of God
descending in glory,
pouring its thick radiance over all my muddied world.
The art is by Madeleine Jubilee Saito, an artist from rural Illinois living in Seattle. Her first book, You Are a Sacred Place: Visual Poems for Living in Climate Crisis, was published March 2025. Find more of her work at @madeleine_jubilee_saito on Instagram or her website, madeleinejubileesaito.net.
