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.