It's Advent again

I was telling my Advent reading partner that every year at this time I feel re-integrated with myself, more whole, even though I am standing on the edge of darkness. So much has happened since I last posted here. I have been releasing myself from the chains of addiction, both alcohol and relationships and just this weekend I re-entered my poet self, the artist in me, the singer, the seeker, the healer, the leader. I stood in front of 100 women at the Aurora Chorus retreat and shared my poetry, sang to them, thanked them, and I was not afraid to be myself among all those powerful women. I felt the belonging again that I have so struggled over my years to feel. I believe it is this sacred time of quickening that leads me here every year. Although I have probably posted my Advent poems before, maybe it is time to send them out again. Here is one from four Thanksgivings ago when my traditional plans for hiking were abated, so I took a retreat up to the coast, the site where Lewis & Clark thought they had reached the ocean, but weren't quite there. For all the years I thought I was there, but not quite, for all sorrow and disappointment that I now understand is merely a dissatisfaction with the way things are, a sign of the need for change:

Sunday Morning at Cape Disappointment

inspired by Wallace Stevens and Kilian McDonnell’s Sunday Morning

Toward the edge of the west

at the confluence of the Columbia River and Pacific Ocean,

away from complacent prayers,

I am weary of forgiveness.

Can’t I just buy my mercy with a sand dollar

or shimmering coins of the sea?

One ship on the horizon; one woman on shore

dreaming among a graveyard of driftwood,

bleached white piles of bone.

I can’t keep saying I’m sorry.

I don’t want to keep listening to apologies for humanity,

not among the superficial noises in church,

the chaste chantings of songs mesmerized too long ago.

I can’t keep saying I’m sorry for who I am.

That is not my way. My way is among slapping waves

where everything else can wait except the morning poem,

the morning praise.

I wander along a cloistered walk of ancient knowing

to the sheltered circle of cedar.

I manage my tribute so much better here, at the Cape,

away from that cheery fluorescents of denial,

toward a Chinook blessing:

We call upon the earth, our planet home, with its beautiful depths and soaring heights, its vitality and abundance of life, and together we ask that it

Teach us, and show us the Way…

We call upon the waters that rim the earth, horizon to horizon, that flow in our rivers and streams, that fall upon our gardens and fields and we ask that they

Teach us, and show us the Way…

We call upon the forests, the great trees reaching strongly to the sky with the earth in their roots and the heavens in their branches, the fir and the pine and the cedar, and we ask them to

Teach us, and show us the Way…

through a chilly November light, after a night of sorrow,

teach us that we are not so different here. Show me the way

to the raw wonder of my being. Why can’t we just admit

that sea-life stinks when washed to the shore, as do we.

And so did the sweaty prophet, born in a fetid stable, so real.

We all reek of fallibility. Why can’t we just admit it.

Why can’t we just sink our differences, eat our bread,

drink our wine on the shores of unknowing, smile sheepishly

and go back to work on Monday,

plowing through our week with all our disheveled divinity

displayed for everyone to see.