White Light of Morning

Snowing today and I am less than eager
to drive down Sandy Blvd. for a first day of work.
Cars park in the middle of the road here,
even with a mere two inches of powder.

I’d rather watch the fat flakes rain down
in what certainly looks like a school closure day,
and that bright light of Donna and Jackson
sledding on the sidewalk.

I should call Anne and Nancy in Colorado
and remind them of New Year’s Day that one year,
so much promise not to be realized until now,
after everyone moved away.

Last night I dreamed of poems on the page,
an allegoric past of ink-stained affairs
I erased and re-wrote, but couldn’t wipe her out
so I licked a stamp and mailed it all away.

The day looks so frail, but otherwise, it’s just
another northwest winter, sky a pewter gray
and the just unfurling children,
full of oatmeal and enthusiasm

with more than a hint of ecstasy
filling their Michelin-man snowsuits
while the parents gather on the corner
to brainstorm child care.

Nobody is going anywhere today,
except to ski in the cemetery,
wave hello to Judge Clifford
and etch cherubic angels in the grass-speckled snow.

Outside my window, between SUVs
and a few enduring maple,
three days past Epiphany,
tiny white Christmas lights still blink hope;

overflowing, feet-stomping, snow-shaking, door-slamming
Donna shouting ‘woohoo’ with the neighbor boys;
like a tribe of the uncensored,
leaving white footprints in their abandoned wake.

De-escalation

I remember the smell of peace, like freshly cut grass at 4:00 pm on a Sunday afternoon. That was the time my father finally smiled, plopped down in the lawn chair, satisfied with his life for a moment. Chores were done -- anger at children who whined about chores, de-escalated, released to the emerald gold light of approaching dusk. Tension settled into the giant rope hammock as I rocked gently between two grand maples and retreated into my book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. At that hour, I was free to be a child, to be the introverted, Pennsylvania country girl, not the intuitive, too wise for her age child who felt responsible for everyone else’s pain. At that hour, like my father, I felt peace and could finally rest.

I just taught a writing workshop titled Tikkun Olam: Writing to Repair the World. I first came in contact with the Judaic concept of Tikkun Olam after watching a movie (I don’t remember the title) about God and a spelling bee. I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of weaving old threads into something new, found art, shaping a curse into a blessing. Even as a child I had a sense of my responsibility to make beauty from the ugly, to care for the wounded, the hurt, and even the angry as a way to repair the brokenness in our world. I couldn’t define what I did or how, but I saw, after the fact, the impact of my actions on healing. Over the years, I began to see how I did what I did and had to learn to let go of any investment in the healing work (I’m still challenged by checking my ego at the door each day). When I heard about Tikkun Olam it felt like maybe there is an entire movement focused on this “work,” this ministry and maybe I don’t have to feel so alone or so tired. Later I heard about Tikkun Olam again and then again and then when I was applying for the school I wanted to attend, I read that they base their philosophy on the concept of Tikkun Olam. Well, there you have it.

I’ve been accepted into the Goddard program for Transformative Language Arts. I don’t know where it will take me, but I do know it is the right path toward healing myself, finding inner peace and therefore bringing some repair to this wounded world, one word at a time, one freshly cut blade of grass at a time. It is what I have to offer in resistance, moving away from the absurdity of this war.

Salvation, I'm not ready to sign up

Christ died for our sins? I don’t get that in my bones yet, which some would say means that I am not a Christian. I hear say that Jesus dying for our sins is the basic premise of Christianity, but I have some questions. "No one who is born of God will continue to sin." Yeah, right! Ain't gonna happen, even with my definition of sin being ‘moving away from our personal relationship with God and falling short of who we were born to be’. All I can do is have the intention to live in relationship with God.

For me, in I John, I hear Amway pyramid scheme: for a mere penance you too can be cleansed, repent now and you will ascend through the gold and pearly gates, the pinnacle of financial success (or righteousness, or spiritual freedom)...dear children, come to papa, the great Father in Heaven...the language continues to turn me off. It is too simplistic, too "do this and you will get that," too lacking in recognition of the work needed to live in the Way, the work required to be in relationship with God.

I'm reading Dorothee Soelle's The Silent Cry in which she speaks of the mystics’ passionate search for intimacy with God. She says, "God loves, protects, renews, and saves us. One rarely hears that this process can be truly experienced only when such love, like every genuine love, is mutual. That humans love, protect, renew, and save God sounds to most people like megalomania or even madness. But the madness of this love is exactly what mystics live on." And later she says, "I can see God's love only when I become part of it myself."

"I am filled with you.
Skin, blood, bone, brain, and soul.
There's no room for lack of trust, or trust.
Nothing in this existence but that existence"
~Rumi

This speaks to my New Year intention to love self in the journey to a loving relationship with God, in the journey of co-creation, in the recognition that I am the hands of God; we are the hands that co-labor toward the grand vision of the kin-dom. Like Grace Sbrissa prays in Winter’s Wisdom Advent readings, "The kin-dom of God is within me! May I live my life so that the world and I can recognize that! God within me, let me recognize you! Let my relationship with all others, all creation, be an exclamation, proclaiming, "Look, here is God!"" Now imagine if everyone we met was praying that prayer. What a world it would be, loving ourselves to honor God's creation and then the simple unfolding of love for other and trust that what is, is what Is and all that matters Is.

And more Rumi:
Christ is the population of the world,
and every object as well. There is no room
for hypocrisy. Why use bitter soup for healing
when sweet water is everywhere?

Lovers think they're looking for each other,
but there's only one search: wandering
this world is wandering that, both inside one
transparent sky. In here
there is no dogma and no heresy.

The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said or did
about the future. Forget the future.
I'd worship someone who could do that.

On the way you may want to look back, or not,
but if you can say, There's nothing ahead,
there will be nothing there.

Stretch your arms and take hold the cloth of your clothes
with both hands. The cure for pain is in the pain.
Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both,
you don't belong with us.

When one of us gets lost, is not here, he must be inside us.
There's no place like that anywhere in the world.

Is this our salvation, our freedom from sin? Is this the message of "born again," learning to love the creation that is I, that is You, that is Us, and that Is Love? Faith in action? We learn to love so that we may Be Love and therefore live free from sin and separation, free from contraction and disengagement. Okay, wouldn't that be grand? But then the question arises in me about polarity. Life Is about the joy and pain of living. "The cure for pain is in the pain." We must move through bad and good, so that in each moment of now we have the experience of both sin and salvation to comprise what we call living, what we call Is.

Okay, so I've twisted myself around in some philosophical, theological exploration of the mystery. That's what I get for getting up at 5:00 a.m. before the cats.

Everlasting Comfort and Love (Joy)?

The metronome tick, tick, tick of the clock tells me the morning is almost over. A seagull cries as she passes by my window and the Tibetan prayer flags occasionally whip into view (all this is of great intrigue to Buddy the cat who sits in the window sill). A winter wind chime blows over frozen grass and then it is gone, taking its song with it. I am left in silence as if I'd never known the song of winter.

Why should God be any different? How can we know the lasting everlasting presence, comfort, and love if nothing in our reality is forever? The Queen of Hearts suggests we try to believe six impossible things before breakfast. Well, I've already had breakfast, but here goes:
1) God is always with me
2) I am loved unconditionally and have always been
3) World peace, it could happen
4) I can make a difference in this world
5) Miracles happen
6) True love and joy will come again

If I were to stand on the moon tonight

what light would I see from Earth?
Would it be strings of colored Christmas lights?
Or streams of headlights racing to the mall
for some last minute, hectic consumerism.
Would it be the golden glow of childlike wonder?
Or sparks of anger from the drunken lady across the street,
who resents the doctor who cut off her cancerous breast.
Would it be the Festival of Lights at the Grotto,
or the Star of David at the synagogue,
a menorah, Kwanzaa lights, Advent candles,
or would it be the blue light of a television
that keeps the widow company
during her first Christmas without
the love of her life?
Would it be the green light of forgiveness?
Or the blazing red, white, and blue artillery
across an ocean of loathing.

Could the light from Earth
simply be three candles lit:
one for gratitude
one for longing
and one for clarity
in this mystery?

Advent

Adventure

You enter my life
like a northwest snowfall,
fickle and inconsistent, one
moment an incessant
rain of winter turns
thick and whitens
rooftops then thins
again into rain, more walls
of rain, a vexatious mix
of opposites you are
here now you are gone.
Oh come oh come
oh glorious oh wisdom
oh love
oh one, stay,
please stay and lift me
from my darkness
ordain my shadows to flight
I beg in the cleft
of my being, waiting
for awe, for you
magnificent you
stay, stick to the still
green grass dotted
with golden birch leaves,
stay and light
on my tongue
like the first snowflake,
then melt into nothing
into me so I can believe
you are gone forever
and I can believe
you will come again.

Upon Return of a Painting Titled “Flight”

The picture wire at the end of the hook
snapped at the last moment, and
the frame dropped to the parking lot
shards of glass, shattered flight

snapped at the last moment, and
I could only think, “Ironic!”
shards of glass, shattered flight
you asked, “What did you do?”

I could only think, “Ironic!”
and get the painting out of the rain
you asked, “What did you do?”
I said, “Nothing, the guide wire just broke.”

and get the painting out of the rain
a downpour replaced any tears
I said nothing. The guide wire just broke.
And picked up the pieces, no more apologies.

a downpour replaced any tears
you tenderly laid the painting in your Pathfinder
And picked up the pieces, no more apologies.
We shook hands and went our discrete ways.

Last Day of November

November has always been a difficult month for me...Season of death I suppose~ entering Advent, but not there yet.

It's about Matisse blue paint
on slanted attic walls,
crisp white wainscoting
and a view from above:
frozen raindrops
on bare oak branches
and Christmas lights hanging
from the eaves.
It's about moving in
and moving out
getting away
from the stinging ocean spray
salty...
well, you know what's next
after salty (in a sad poem).
It's about tears
and torn hearts
and other Hallmark sentiments,
although Hallmark doesn't
make cards for unrequited love
and getting shit on;
love 'em and leave 'em,
used and discarded:
Especially for you
When you are feeling blue
You would have had better luck
If I hadn't been such a fuck.

But it's really not about that
anymore. It's about
fresh paint
and fresh starts
clean slates
and clear...
(hearts? is that what you expected to hear?)

Well, not today
Today, it's just about
crystal prisms that catch
even the smallest
amount of Oregon light
and it's about being
eye-level with the seagulls
as I initiate the morning
with a poem
and they with flight.

Frank McCourt

Last night I went to hear Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes, Tis, and Teacher Man, read with the Literary Arts Lecture Series. My last work site gave me free tickets. I was looking forward to hearing an Irish accent. I have a fondness for that accent every since my I met Annie Callan, a local writer and gentle teacher who used to call me "Wendy luv" and I not only felt like the most important person in the world, but she also made me feel like a pretty good writer. I digress. Did you know that Frank McCourt was also a teacher? He taught 33 years in the NY schools. He had stories to tell, like we all do. When asked why it took him until age 66 to publish his novel he said, "I was teaching, that's what took me so long...When you teach five high school classes a day, five days a week, you're not inclined to go home to clear your head and fashion deathless prose. After a day of five classes your head is filled with the clamor of the classroom."

When I read that in his bio I had an odd longing for days of 5-7 classes and 2-4 hours of paper grading every week night. I bitched and moaned at the time and flew into a rage every time someone said teacher's have it easy. As McCourt said, "You try it!" But last night, when McCourt called teachers heroic and an audience of 1500 applauded ~ when he would like to shoot the No Child Left Behind bill and the audience applauded ~ I had renewed pride for the my profession, for my greatest talent. Beyond writing, poetry, dancing, singing, healing, creating events, and coming up with good ideas, I am a teacher. AND I still have time to publish my book!

What are you listening to right now?

I'm listening to silence, but soon I'll hear Mozart's Serenata Notturna and Mahler's Song of the Earth with our own Taylor Schlichting on cello and the Diva singing. What is the sound of Earth? In this corner of the Nation it's been sloshy and ambiguous like the sound of bad acting in a soap opera. I think the Mahler is something about horse hoves and joy. I'd like to hear that pounding certainty again in my days. This week was full of culture (freebies no less); I heard West Side Story, Faust, and Frank Rich of the New York Times. Both WSS and Faust ended with the use of white lights and white set on center stage to represent walking into the unknown or the redemption scene in Faust. Rich didn't speak of white space, but from what he said about the media and our government (pre Tues. election) I'd venture we could use some white space, white sound at the White House. What is the sound of white space? Silent truth? Quiet wisdom?

Jump
We are not committed to this or that. We are committed to the nothing in between whether we know it or not. ~ excerpt from Silence by John Cage

Jump
Jump
Contemplation not required, not recommended, not desired.
Hatch out, tumble out with unbridled ferocity

Fall
Fall
I dream of dreaming a dream of falling
Fluid, suspended falling
swallowed by cushions of air
I float on the wake of the sky
vapors thick like honey slow my descent

I dream of dreaming a dream of falling
Lingering in the time between
the between spaces where thoughts turn inside out
where behind my eyes is emptiness - clean and pure
where all my endings become an entrance
into another beginning - a deeper recess
leagues beyond knowing

The faster I fall
the faster I fly
Am I ready?
Are we ready
for space to narrow into a thin line of nothingness and time
to turn yellow with age and uselessness
Are we ready for free fall and grace?

I dream of dreaming a dream of falling
Falling into the soil
into the space between the web, between the lace
I enter the white space
a new place
a new face
Jump
Jump

Today I listened to the cheers at Bridgeport UCC regarding the election results (even though our friend Rob lost by a few hundred votes). Lately, I hear fewer cat fights between Buddy and Tucker (maybe I don't have to get them anti-anxietmedicinene after all. Maybe they are content now with Democrats in the house). I hear more empty silence as Donna leaves again (after only being home 3 days) to work in Japan and Hong Kong. I think I hear, off in the distance, a smile returning to Denice's face. I still hear doubts in my own head about my decision to move and now I have an empty house unsold while strangers north of me are flooded out of their homes. I thought I heard God's call, but I've got some doubts about that right now too. Rabbi Rami Shapiro (who writes for Spirituality and Health) says doubt should be befriended because it melts the fire of certainty that is the antithesis of faith. If we are certain of everything we have no need for faith. "Doubt...awakens you to a compassionate curiosity rooted in a humble not-knowing that is the hallmark of mature faith." Wow, I must be REALLY mature! I hear that.

What Color Are You Today

A friend asked me that title question. Yesterday I was sleepy siesta yellow (she asked around 4:00, nap time). The warm autumn sun through my bedroom window seduced me into a rare afternoon nap before gearing up to start the second coat of mud on my drywall project.

Today is a crunchy orange day like the crisp on the side of the baked mac and cheese casserole. Crisp cold, crisp bright, crisp leaves under foot, I'm anxious to get outside and take a walk around my new neighborhood. I choose a different route each day, sometimes with a destination like Safeway, or to Pam's house to teach her daughter how to use the sewing machine I gave her. Sometimes I just explore; the other day I discovered a stone mosaic "door mat" in front of a house on Siskiyou. I have to remember to show Donna, she'd want to make one with all the stones and pebbles and rocks she collects. But not until the drywall/paint job is done in the study, I say. Turning the corner on 46th, I was amazed by the professional front yard garden with a manicured lawn winding between well cared for triangular flower beds. Usually those urban front yard attempt-at-an-English garden look really trashy this time of year, but this one was well planned for a fall showing with asters and mums and stalks of burgundy somethings.

I'm relieved to be in a neighborhood again where I can walk to the store, help out a neighbor with her construction project, or be pleasantly side-tracked from daily chores by a visit from Jackson (see Donna's blog) and his mom looking for the Toys R Us catalog in Donna's Sunday paper. I'm relieved to be an active part of every day living: laundry, cleaning up after territorial cats, taping drywall, mudding, baking cookies, reading, going for a walk, studying, not just numbing out on television and wine, waiting for my house to sell so my life can begin.

Since Sunday I begin again to access the sacred within the every day profane, the every day mundane. The dictionary defines profane as irreverent, vulgar, course and secular in contrast to what is sacred. Mundane is also defined as secular, common place, ordinary, typical of this world. In the last 3 years or so I've been exploring the sacred in Christian religion, practicing lectio divina, daily centering prayer, breath meditations, reading the Bible, reading other theologians trying to develop a more intimate relationship with God. For some reason, throughout this process I started doing less gardening, had fewer walks in the woods, hardly ever baked or rubbed fresh basil between my thumb and index finger before simmering it in a pot of pasta sauce. For some reason, I took less pleasure in the scent of freshly washed sheets and the tidy, satisfactory folds of laundry day. I stopped noticing the chatter of squirrels, the phases of the moon, or even the passing seasons. I stopped noticing God as I have always known God.

Sunday, a small clan of us were invited to visit my friend Gerry's farm in Oregon City. Five year old Maude had a saddle and no horse to ride. Gerry is an equestrian, professional carriage driver. Gerry has horses she calls ponies. The threatening clouds from the morning broke open just as we pulled into the driveway. What was a gray day became an easy baby blue, soft as the colt's nose on our dispositions. Gerry, the consummate hostess, had prepared rare roast beast, oven baked mac and cheese, apple cobbler, and a raspberry martini "hooha" for the adults (it was Sunday after all and we could drink before 5:00). After a leisurely meal, a climb up the hay bails in the barn, and a few fly-bys of breathless, red cheeked children chasing the Guinea Hen around the house, Gerry saddled up Comet for Maude and Ellory to ride around the yard. Despite the carrot treats, Comet was less than cooperative while the kids tried to ride, tugging at the lead line until he could crunch a mouthful of grass. Gerry scolded him, "Come on Comet, be somebody." We all took to that expression rather quickly and I decided I would use it to scold myself when I would be tempted to zone out in front of the television. Come on Wendy, be somebody!

Finally, Ellory decided he'd much rather sit in the lawn and let the cat's tail tickle his chin while he sang the Little Pony song. We brought Comet back to the barn and Gerry offered the kids a ride on her tractor, with wheels at least five feet tall it was a sight to see. I thought I was in some Disney movie, "Day at the Farm," it was so ideal. Driving back, Maude's mom, Buff, commented on what an amazing woman Gerry is and what a full life she leads. I agreed and thought about my life and how I keep trying so hard to make it fuller without recognizing how full it can be just as it is: the fullness of witnessing Ellory trumpeting with Gerry's fox hunt horns through autumn storm clouds, urging the tentative sun to stay one more hour in our day. And towheaded Maude perched on Gerry's lap, steering the tractor with all the confidence five year old girls should have. My heart was full while I noticed Genevieve with the opportunity to see fearlessness in others and also the unconditional right to hold on just one more day to her own cautions. Just by being, we could be somebody. This is the stuff of a full life...that a horse can eat an entire carrot in one feeding, that we can scrape the side of the mac and cheese bowl for the coveted toasted brown crunchies. That strangers can meet on a farm and become friends, that is a full life, a full day.

Sunday, I saw how I spend too much time wishing for something more, waiting for the house to sell, the perfect time and conditions to begin to write, the right person to enter my life to help me feel complete. I've spent too much time seeking the sacred in something outside me, outside my mundane life, and not appreciating the miraculous in every moment, the God of each ordinary, common place day. Today is crunchy orange, and in order to be somebody within the day, I will not wish for the day to be anything other than what it is. I will step in, bite down, crunch, crunch, crunch as lively as I can until I intimately know about a simple, common, crunchy, orange day.

What it Means to Love

I'm reading Kathleen Dean Moore's book titled The Pine Island Paradox. She made a list of what is means to love a person and place. This list struck I cord with me and I wanted to quote her for all of you:

"What does it mean to love a person? What does it mean to love a place? Before long, I discovered I had made two copies of the same list. To love -- a person and a place -- means at least this: One. To want to be near it, physically. Number two. To want to know everything about it -- its story, its moods, what is looks like by moonlight. Number three. To rejoice in the fact of it. Number four. To fear its loss, and grieve for is injuries. Five. To protect it -- fiercely, mindlessly, futilely, and maybe tragically, but to be helpless to do otherwise. Six. To be transformed in its presence -- lifted, lighter on your feet, transparent, open to everything beautiful and new. Number seven. To want to be joined with it, taken in by it, lost in it. Number eight. To want the best for it. Number nine. Deperately.

Love is an anchor line, a rope on a pulley, a taut fly line, a spruce root, a route on a map, a father teaching his daughter to tie a bowline knot, eelgrass bent to the tide, and all of these -- complicated, changing web of relationships, taken together. It's not a choice, or a dream, or a romantic novel. It's a fact: an empirical fact about our biological existence. We are born into relationships with people and with places. We are born with the ability to create new relationships and tend to them. And we are born with a powerful longing for these relations. That complex connectedness nourishes and shapes us and gives us joy and purpose.

I knew there was something important missing from my list, but I was struggling to put it into words. Loving isn't just a state of being, it's a way of acting in the world. Love isn't a sort of bliss, it's a kind of work, sometimes hard, spirit-testing work. To love a person is to accept the responsibility to act lovingly toward him, to make his needs my own needs. To love a place is to care for it, to keep it healthy, to attend to its needs as if they were my own, because they are my own. Responsibility grows from love. It is the natural shape of caring.

Number ten, I wrote in my notebook. To love a person or a place is accept moral responsibility for its well-being."

Community

Come Unity
for Vi

We sing
wind beneath wings
and rub sandalwood oil
into her too tired old feet
tucked beneath hospice blankets
blue
while not far beyond
thousands of russet and gold leaves
turn and turn and turn until
silently they all fall
to the cold ground
released.

________________

morning
comes unity
intimate as crystal
dew on her lately woven web
vast, too
the view
Crater Lake blue
deep and high and nearby
generations beyond knowing
hold truth

___________________


Relish community
like a spoonful of homemade applesauce,
cinnamon rich,
made of apples gathered
from last year’s barren tree

Stories

Last night a group of us told (in ten minutes or less) our spiritual, religious, faith, journeys of truth. Stories revealed shadows of humanity, doubt, misgivings and missed directions. This morning, as I read and wrote, the neighbor man, a confirmed schizophrenic, was shouting his story to nobody in particular. Some how parts of what he said, what I could hear, what I understood, pieces of his "rantings" made sense to me:

"We're gonna keep going down a dead-end street. We have power to do it all over again, make it right. What are you doing? I know a fucking hoax when I hear it. Well it's about time. No, I'm staying. What are you doing? Too good for Words (Works?) You're gonna have to find some better lingo when you start giving out the um, the uh explanation of feelings. And the fucking story goes on and on and on. I wanna kick your shadow."

Confessions

Don't kick my shadow
such a shady story
in the bright light of day
elongated like an El Greco painting
pained in purple gray
or stumped into secrecy
my shadow
is as much a part of me
as the detail you see
in the face
facing you
in all honesty

Irony

Just as I remove the final framed artwork from the wall, I receive news that the buyer's financing fell through and the house is going back on the market. I had intended to sell that final art piece at a church art auction this week. Nobody bid on it, so I brought it back to the empty house to resume it's place above the mantle. The piece, titled "Flight," just doesn't seem to want to fly. I refuse to believe that means I can't fly. Maybe that artwork stays with the house. Maybe it needs to be returned, with grace, to the artist. My head swims with 'how comes' and what's up with this, and what, damn it, is the lesson I'm supposed to learn in order to move on!!

Grace is in the Return

This weekend I removed the last framed artwork that hung over my mantle in my Vancouver house. Painted by a lover of nine years ago, the work is a simple 3' by 4' line drawing of an open poppy (or some such full-petaled blossom) with one red streak across the bottom of the otherwise white canvas, a crimson river of femininity. In the center of the flower is a sweet but somewhat phallic stamen and a real live dead bug caught between the canvas and glass on its journey to pollination. My lover and I laughed about that bug's aborted effort to consummate even as we wept about our own inability to fully realize our relationship. We were an affair that would never reach fruition. I started writing poetry as a result of her artwork. I wrote several pieces about this painting, but can only find this one:

Rapid thin streams,
thin crimson streams rush through ~
Petals thrown back, hotly back
on throated stems.

Does she
remember the flower?
The orchid?

The flower grows in its growing from hour to hour
while the Master flame
Destroys the dry mountain pine.
The dry
mountain pine.

At the appointed time,
a cry from the morning crow will come
Will come.
Does she know when? Do I?

Only then, can she
remember the flower.
The flower trembling
from root, to pistil, to petal.
And
Oh, the fragrance!

She can
remember the flower.
The orchid.
Again,
this hour, this instant
She can.


It was appropriate for this painting to be the last piece of art to come off the walls. I designed my entire living room around this painting...White fireplace, white carpet, white furniture, pale yellow walls, splashes of red accent throughout the room. Her artwork was a focal point of my living space. In fact, I bought the house eight years ago with the vague hope that she would eventually move in with me and we would have a life of co-creation. I painted my garage a high gloss red with the thought that it could be an art studio...Something she didn't really have in her house. My bedroom was a convent white in readiness for a new life with her. Over the years it became apparent that she wasn't going to leave her marriage and even the fact that she called me "the other side of her face" wasn't enough to liberate her from what I saw as a possessive (yet socially acceptable and secure) marriage to build a life with me. I'm acutely aware that selling this house is the final letting go of that relationship. Not that I've been mourning, moaning, and mooning away here in this house for the last eight plus years (I've had other lovers since and maintain a realistic sense of what is (and isn't). But we never really said goodbye and I've always wondered what I'd say if she showed up at my doorstep. Would I close the door in hurt and resentment and bitterness or would I welcome her return with grace?

In my spiritual direction class we practiced a breathing meditation for about 30 minutes. I found myself, as usual, drifting out of focus and coming close to nodding off to sleep in that state of relaxation. I asked the teacher how this practice could lead me to higher consciousness if I kept drifting into unconsciousness. She said that the discipline is in the return. It is not about getting to a place of meditative transcendence, it is not about judging our perceived failure and giving up, it is about recognizing that we have drifted (as we all inevitably do, often) and exercising the discipline of returning to the breath. Grace is in the return.

This week I've been reflecting on the parable of the prodigal son. I used to be annoyed by the father's reaction and would take sides with the resentful (but faithful) son who never left. I was the one who did everything right, or at least gave the impression that I was good and responsible and faithful. Then I swayed, I had an affair. I became lost to myself, my community, my family. Through this reading of the parable I was reminded of our inclination to seek what is lost. We don't focus on the $20 in our wallet, but the $10 we knew we had and can't find. Jesus searched for the one lost sheep, not the ones in constant view. I don't write as much poetry about the love that is steadfast and present in my life, but I do write volumes about lost love. In the parable, the focus and attention isn't on the one that is lost, isn't on the going away, the celebration is about the return. The return home, the return to God, the return to one another, to self.

I never noticed the title of my lover's artwork until I lifted it off the wall last week. It is called "Flight." As I leave my cocoon of a home, spread my wings and take flight in a return to my own artistry, I have hope that by removing her work of art from my wall, no longer claiming or possessing it as mine, giving it up to the church art auction for someone else to be nurtured beneath its simple strength, that she will fly home to her artistry, she will return to Grace. As I write this blog entry, revealing my secret affair, seeking release, forgiveness, homecoming, and renewal, I open myself to a return to grace. And I know now that if she finds me again, stands on the threshold, facing me in humility, I will welcome her return to my life with all the celebration and open heart of any lost love come home.

To Be or Not to Be Claimed

Can I allow myself to be claimed without being possessed? I bristle at our human need to possess property, things, people, to claim as ours a house, a parcel of land, a spouse, a room of one's own. As a friend Donna says, it's all on loan, all of it. When we were designing the art school we had a tin can that was used to collect quarters every time someone said "my or mine"; my students, my classroom, my department, my whiteboard marker. We struggled for years trying to maintain the collective and cooperative ours over the possessive and competitive mine. We finally had to concede on some things like whiteboard markers for sanity sake, but really, the concept of fasting from "my" is a good one. The more I give away, sell, separate myself from detachment in a fasting sort of way, the less I can relate to those who continue to cling. Something as small as a board member from a former workplace not being willing to let go of a button maker long enough for me to borrow it for a festival, it BUGS me to no end.

On the contrary, another friend taught me that being claimed can be a grounding experience. Claimed as a best friend, as a life partner, as a valued employee, as a child of God can root us and help us self-identify without clipping our wings and censoring our flow. Yes? Maybe? I believe, though, we must be willing to relinquish all, fast from all our attachments, before we can experience the liberation of this type of claiming.

My name, Wendy, means wanderer. Whenever I feel trapped, inhibited, tethered, reined in, I become seriously irritated, refusing to see that these reins may be just the thing to keep me from going off the deep end as I wander the edges of life. MY best friend keeps an ankle bracelet on me (metaphorically) because she knows I can drift off into nothingness when I'm needed right here in the now. I know I can take this bracelet off any time, so rather than feeling possessed by her, I feel cared for, rooted in a relationship and never abandoned. She helps me find the French translation of A bandon, "to put in one's power, to liberate."

Disorientation

I walk the edge between begin and end
beyond the tether of created self.
I am not afraid to move.
I am afraid of standing still,
utterly still in this gray silence -- this 2:00 a.m. space
where the crow has long since cawed away
the busyness of a day,
where my purpose of being
is not yet linked to memory or knowing --
utter stillness, before the morning dove has begun her lament.

I am awake
spinning in the space between --
vertigo of the soul.

The East opens beyond the sun
The West, an ocean abyss
I am direction-less.
North and South (heaven and earth)
a fading filament.
Storylines, brittle with age.

In this center threshold, this 2:00 a.m. space I am,
at the same time, both leaving and left behind.
Self and other --

We desert and are deserted
forsake and surrender
to be in our being
define in our defining.
We are both form and motion
noun and verb
abandon and abandoned.

A bandon,
to put in one's power.

To be in one's power
we must yield completely.
We must relinquish our claim,
our right --
to what?
Certainly, to our hold on other
and apparently,
to our hold on self.

We must spin without reference
without spotting
disoriented
sick with dizziness
we must continue to spin and spin and spin
until we collide and fall
until we have spun ourselves into laughter
until we have spun the new.

A bandon,
liberation.

Geography of Love

Ephesians 3:14 encourages us to explore the expansiveness of God's love, the breadth, the height, the length, and the depth, both overflowing and rooted, ours for the receiving. Because I try not to personify God, I do not imagine a being expressing his or her love in a tangible, sensory way that I can see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. I can, however, notice the manifestation of that love in the landscape of my every day living:

Breadth of autumnal sunshine
and the five year old
neighbor boy's call
to come out
and play ball.

Towering circle of cedar ~
there is no ceiling
to Your love.

Moonlight and shadow ~
oh the length of You
arched long along
my living room floor,
arms open in a transept
of receptivity.

Even in the darkest depths
a porch light shines
somewhere
here or there
guiding me home.

Just Questions Today

Does sin abate when surrender abounds?

I cannot bow down to any lord, as solicitous scriptures suggest. I do not see how reverence to the lord God is any different then reverence to lord Caesar or lord Bush. The paradigm, the holding to hierarchy (patriarchal or matriarchal) is what needs to be dismantled for us all to live in unity. This is what I have believed, and yet, sin (defined as separation from true self, in my Book) continues to plague me. I wonder if surrender to the Lord God, release of my knees into soft soil, the buckling of pride and independence would not just bring me the freedom i seek. And yet, (yes, yet again) Ephesians states we are the adopted children of God. While an adopted child can (and did in Biblical times) have the same rights as a blood child, anyone adopted can tell you, it's not the same. If I am not of God's womb, how can a surrender to God lead me to my true self? We, God and me, never had the symbiotic relationship, the umbilical connection (according to what I read), so how can I return to wholeness through God if I was never whole in God in the first place?

And another thing. We are all One in God's love through the sacrifice of Christ. What about Buddha? What about Ghandi? What about MLK Jr.? What about the rest of the world? The Euro-centrism disturbs me. I want the Bible to make room in my head for a more global embrace of humanity. Seems to me that's what Paul was suggesting with his chain letter to all communities in Asia Minor. Still so much to learn. I must remember to read loosely.

Grace, Oh I Get it

"It is not falling in the water that drowns us, but staying there."

By grace I unveil
shame like steam from crimson
burnt branches
once smoldering then doused
by tears of compassion

By grace I rise
from stark wrongdoing
to circling caress,
her smoky whisper, "I still
love you. Don't ever forget."

I had a realization that to have Christ live in me is not about clothing myself in the costume of Christianity and pretending, but rather it is surrender...Disclose and de-clothe to raw vulnerability, ask forgiveness and begin again, naked and new, every day.