my company

today was 8 kids in grades 4-6...that's it. We ventured out to PSU quad during our writing class, eavesdropping and "stalking" passersby to contribute to our character sketches. The sun shone on our number 2 pencils and none of us wanted to stop this voyeuristic game: the man with the faded jeans, drinking from a quart of chocolate milk while listening to This American Life on his iPod; the tennis player bouncing by in her short, short tennis whites thinking, "oh my gall, those kids are like so cute the way they admire me. I'm like so cute." The rocker dude in his too tight black jeans, a ring of keys clanking against his hips. Run man, run...they're gonna ticket your bike. Oh, and who can forget the Tongan wrestler flip flopping his way to his English class, Bermuda shorts hanging just low enough to "appear" cool.

We, my young writer friends, had a great day today. I didn't talk to anyone else and I don't care. There is ease in eavesdropping and ease in a life lived rightly.

Love and Let Go

Lent, when I was growing up, was a time of giving up, an abstinence from what we desire most. Now, I read that Lent is a time to open up, to let in what has been absent in our lives. Are these two different ways of being in this season? I believe not; in letting go we open the space for letting in. This is a dialectical journey. I have found it most difficult to let go of ones I love, but am always aware that my letting go, not clutching or claiming, possessing one as MY one and only, is truth in love, unconditional, free, and the love God offers us every day.

“The wise do without claiming” Tao Te Ching

Moment upon moment
love and let go

Each thought
good or bad
love and let go

Each wish
possible or not
love and let go

Each word
spoken/unspoken
love and let go

No judgment with judgment
No demands with demands
No control with control
No attachment to detachment
No “yes” without “no”

All relations
every vision
each moment
empty and full
love and let go

this is the organic flow
the ecstatic Love
of the Divine.

Lent: A time for silence and stillness

I love the little lone silence of each day,
but I am in love
with the vast silence of pure presence ~
an ocean of silence
from which rises all thoughts,
all mind, all heart,
all stories intertwined:
all life born New

In the Space Between

death comes.
Old age body
disintegrates,
teeth crumble and I spit
pieces out into a moist gray pile
in the palm of my hand.
Mouth empty,
I gum my way to the end.
A long song silent,
I rest

death comes

when I dis-
integrate
my place
my purpose
my body,
when I die
(or try to die)
in the dark corners
of living
when I give myself away,
or resist change,
clutching to old
and familiar ways.

When did you die
mother, sister
brotherhood standing by
when
did you die
crumbling
tumbling
into moist gray piles
of ash
in the palm
of their
hands?

Enter the space between,
liminal unknowing,
to discover the end
which is your beginning.
Journey the thin places,
the horizon
of fire and water
where ash meets ash
and you are alive again,
a new self.

Desert Discernment

In This Desert Night

I walk the line
between flesh and spirit,
human and divine.

I yearn to fall
either way:
into unguarded blush --
union
into unknown indigo --
union

but

Free fall
is solo.
Let it be so.

My guide, she is near
with long arms
and wide hands --
not to catch,
but to sift and slow
through fingers
like glistening sand.

My guide, she enters
ushered in,
scorching through,
a penetrating blue --
she clears the way
for light

then leaves.

My ache to enter her
-- suspended --
in the old
as if she knows
when I enter her
I am lost.

See the new self, only.
Be the new self, only.
The warm breeze
of her leaving
chills me
in this desert night
and she hands me a quilt.

I wait for my own warmth,
still --
until the heat of the morning sun
wraps me lightly
and brings me form, again

Endings are entrances into new beginnings

“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.”
(T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding)

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

Lenten Letting Go

I've been reading Meister Eckhart and thinking about his most famous sermon: "The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye and one sight and one knowledge and one love." Quite Buddhist, yes? Beneath those lines (or between) is also the Buddhist concept of detachment. While I may believe I am one with God, that God is in me as I am in God, I cannot cling to that idea.

This is the first Lenten season in a long time that I walk the pathless path without a church, seek the emptiness of God without seeking:

I dreamt
that in my mother’s kitchen,
you handed me
the last piece of clay
and said,
“We’re quitting God.”
“We’re leaving this island.”
“We’re leaving you
to discover
atheism,
to discover doubt.”

and and
“We can no longer believe “We can no longer
no longer swim with you speak to you
in clear water.” with musty, gilded
words.”

Enter the loneliness of God

and
Do I
continue?
Do I
question?
Do I
resist?
Do I
wonder?
Do I
explore?
Do I
seek?
Do I
surrender?

and
where is my communion
if I sit at a table
alone?

and
do I continue
to shape this clay
in the palm of my hand?

Ash Wednesday

I experienced my first Ash Wednesday about 8 years ago and this was my response:


I am not afraid to drive in the rain
to church
with the radio and me blasting
Melissa Etheridge
I am your passion, your promise, your end.
I am not afraid to drive to church in the rain
out of ashes and darkness
into New life
and wilderness
I am not afraid to step in
to a moment of clay
shell empty
not afraid to create thick red lilies
out of playdoh
with round pure white centers
that rest against a receptive bowl

Can I not do with you
just as this potter has done?

I hold in my praying hands
the clay
and fear not.

I am not afraid to dip my fingers
in the swirling warm waters of salvation
while hips sway
and sweet vanilla oil of forgiveness
drips from my heart
I am not afraid to remember
communion
union

I burn fear and spread the ashes
a cross
my forehead
oh blue flame of eternal love
enter my heart in the place of forever
refined

I am not afraid to step out
exit prayer
enter poetry
on secular sidewalks
I wear a bold testament to faith
a scarlet “A”
unAshamed
I step out
into darkness
fearless in my knowing
that I alone
am marked
I long for a hand of friendship
as stranger’s eyes avert
as if I am disabled
handicapped by my declaration of faith

I sit through the stories of women I don’t know
women I have yet to love
and I quiver with the first gasp of fear
I am no longer home
here
I ask how am I to move with Grace
between poetry and prayer?
Only if my poetry is my prayer

Take me back to sanctuary
certain of You
and not afraid
I press my wrists to my inscribed forehead
not out of shame
but as a way to quiet my faith
and humble my love
humble as dust and ashes
I am not afraid to leave the familiar
and enter the unknown

I am not afraid to drive home in the rain
alone
and, and, and