Manna from below

This poem reminds me of our interdependence with All.  Our hunger, our thirst, our fear of scarcity and empty bellies, empty souls require faith to be filled.

A Woman Feeding Gulls

by David Wagoner

They cry out at the sight of her and come flying
Over the tidal flats from miles away,
Sideslipping and wheeling
In sloping gray-and-white interwoven spirals
Whose center is her
And the daily bread she casts downwind on the water
While rising to spread her arms
Like wings for the calling of still more gulls around her,
Their cries intermingling at the end of daylight
With the sudden abundance
Of this bread returning after the hungry night
And the famine of morning
And the endlessly hungry opening and closing
Of wings and arms and shore and the turning sky.

Loss

"Nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love, and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute; we must simply hold out and see it through. That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time, it is a great consolation, for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bonds between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap, but on the contrary he keeps it empty, and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other, even at the cost of pain."
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Letters and Papers from Prison

Kindness

How is it one cannot trust another's kindness?  As my sister shared with me, "every human being is a combination of kind, mean, accepting and judgmental. It's called being human. Mother Teresa said something to the effect that she did what she did to make up for the Hitler in her heart! That you choose to behave kindly and keep other behaviors in check is a good thing."  Seems to me that you could trust a kind person more for protecting you from the cruelty of others and the mean-spirited thoughts in her own bleeding heart.  Wouldn't one be a greater friend by protecting you from your own cruel defensiveness?  Why wouldn't one trust that as a good thing?  I have a smart sister.  It is NEVER my intention to hurt others.

God...Need I say more?

Lenten Journey

I spent the first week of Lent looking for "answers" from Jan Richardson's Prayer Paintbook. She has since taken a break from blogging to live life: buy a house, get married, be in love. And I have not stepped up to seek my own answers. Why? Because really, it's about the question, not the answer. An answer stops the seeking then we stagnate and die. Enjoy this amazing poem from Mary Oliver about the mystery. Also, if you want another more active source for Lenten exploration, I have found www.abbeyofthearts.com to be inspiring.

Mysteries, Yes

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

–Mary Oliver, Evidence

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

Compassion

I'm reading The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring by Parker Palmer.


He speaks to me in many ways, but most acutely, I am drawn to his comments on how to show compassion and care.

"there is no "fix" for the person who suffers, only the slow and painful process of walking through the suffering to whatever lies on the other side...we learn that being there is the best we can do, being there not as cure but as companion to the person who suffers...There is no arm's length "solution" for suffering, and people who offer such only add to the pain. But there is comfort and even healing in the presence of people who know how to be with others, how to be fully there...I have experienced deep depression. Both times various friends tried to resuce me with well-intended encouragement and advice: "Get outside and enjoy the sunshine," or "You have such a good life -why be depressed?" or "I know a book that might really help you." For all their good intentions, these friends made me even more depressed...Their advice served only to distance them from me, leaving me even more isolated. In fact, distancing ourselves from each other's pain is the hidden agenda behind most of our efforts to "fix" each other with advice. If you take my advice, and do it right, you will get well and I will be off the hook. But if you do not follow my advice...I am off the hook nonetheless: I have done the best I could, and your continued suffering is clearly your fault. By trying to fix you with advice, rather than simply suffering with you, I hold myself away from your pain."


Com-passion,

sit with me

hold my hand

and do not

wipe away my tears.

For Bev

Our friend Bev Melum passed away early Monday morning, October 19th.  A mutual friend said that felt she never really found her spiritual center, but what so many of us have learned is that our contemplative selves are expressed in motion, in action, in our living.  Some are called to sit and meditate, Bev was called to live vitally in her spirit, in the delicate motion of her hula hands, in the joyous click of her tap shoes, in her attentive listening that made everyone feel like s/he was her best friend.  To our friend, Bev:

Mystic in Motion
I am the dance
the light of devotion
and the life of joy.
With my body,
I set in motion
a revolution
that reshapes the world.

I am the simple rise
of Isodora’s hand
to greet a curtain of sky,
an indispensable pale blue
cyclorama of mystery.
For 69 years
I have endeavored to fly.

I am the dance
the soul of the soil,
stirred by indigenous feet.
Once callously earth bound
with acorns, sticks and all the unseen
that conceive precarious landings,
I am now unshod and free.

I am the dance
costumed in rainbow hues,
both contrast and harmony
to gray grief and parched-brown Lamentations.
I am a light-haired Phoenix rising.
I billow and swirl in hula skirts,
launched only by merest accident.

I am an apparition
of butterflies, orchids, flames,
or what on earth imagination fancies.
I am a fleeting illusion,
painting the world as I see it,
still,
here and now.
Follow me,
for to dance is human
and to die is to have lived
fully in the dance.
I am the dance
still
here and now.

Autumn again

by Barbara Aglaia & Wendy Thompson


Beneath a tacit
moon, disquieting hours
amidst oblique rain -

last yellow leaves fade to brown
last of summer heat dies down.

The final labors
in gardens before school bells
crisply chime morning.

Hopes and dreams of endless fun
sound against work left undone.

Further north, lonely loons
cry against a Matisse blue
the unacknowledged -

traversing the great unknown
always and never alone.

This is the cycle
of love, spectrums of unknown,
twilight mystery.

Rhythms knock against old fear,
soul sighs, be still and listen.

Still as a snowflake
before landing on your tongue ~
a winter allegro.

Rise, soar to sunflower high,
summer glories full, replete.

Shadow self

I am reading A Hidden Wholeness by Parker Palmer. "I deny my inner darkness, giving it more power over me, or I project it onto other people, creating "enemies" where none exist." I'm really struggling with that right now...not projecting my darkness on to others. I dreamt that someone, a friend, and I were on a trip in France, having a great time until I said, "Oh, what time does my flight leave?" and the friend said, "You have to be at the airport in 15 min." I went into a panic trying to pack my bags in the tidy, organized fashion I was accustomed to while the "friend" sat off in the shadows laughing at my panic and compulsions and I got angrier and angrier that she wasn't helping me get my baggage in order.

Well, if everyone in our dreams is a representation of self...then I am must really be pissed at my shadow self for not helping me get my baggage together, to help me get home. It is not my friends' responsibility to help me clean up my act, carry my baggage, or even keep track of time for me. Need to find a way to stop that sabotaging shadow self keep seducing me away from self care.

Any suggestions anyone?

fall is coming and then winter

This poem is only about apples

and bucolic memories of autumn gold
during a Pennsylvania childhood,
where in early fall I would
climb craggy apple tree limbs to load
the skirt front of my tee shirt
with Braeburns and tangy Crispins for sweet desserts.
This poem is about a bushel basket between my knees
and mother teaching me how to pare Fujis
in a spiral toward my thumb leaving, in the end,
tiny rough pectin-brown cuts like on her thumbs.
I always wondered if my fingerprint would change,
if I could alter my identity by paring McIntosh,
leaving, in the end, a bowl of orange-red swirls
like the ringlets I tried to create every night
in my own thin hair with pink foam rollers.
I didn’t like myself then. I wanted to be beautiful.
I wasn't, but this poem is about apples.
I am tired of writing about a pending winter,
darkness, and love. I have had too much, bruised,
I roam through memories from the east,
where everything began.
I write about apples and fall and recall
the Amish apple-head dolls
with their shriveled faces set
above black aprons in miniature rocking chairs.
Would I ever live to be that old?
How many winters until then?
How many freezers full of applesauce, apple cider,
and apple pie with lattice top?
My mother taught me how to bake,
pick the fleshy pink, bruised or not,
they all have worth, but I don't bake much anymore,
not for one, living in the west, where everything ends.
Blossoms pass, Golden Delicious fades.
I have an apple tree waiting for me before winter’s sleep,
confident that I will step out of my darkness
soon enough to pluck the last fruit from its branch,
blushed on the sun side, I dip a slice in caramel sauce
and remember who I am, where I came from,
and I delight again in the inner sweetness of my life —
a great harvest —
the only life in front of me.

Full Moon

Reflections on sharing the one moon.

Under the Same Moon

midnight moon
the neighbor on his deck
I, on mine
he retreats to shadows
we share solitude


two moons tonight
one pocked with craters
one reflects
illusions off the lake
a slim, white trail to you


inconstant globe
mid this summer night
lust and shadow
the moon is in the man
impossibility rains


splinter moon
white and veiled like a bride
split at last
solitude at last
is yours. I sleep near by.

Only one day in time

A dancer understands that time is a product of space. Time is ungraspable. Carpe Diem

Will You Dance with Me?

In a chartreuse centrifuge of wholeness
we spin with silken integrity ~
a green chili greening into fullness.

Two alarm fire of boldness.
Will you, will you dance with me
in a chartreuse centrifuge of wholeness?

Tangos unveil a budding newness.
Away from center, we defy gravity ~
a green chili greening into fullness.

You know, that lush velvet twinning to oneness.
We swelter in salty humidity
a chartreuse centrifuge of wholeness.

Tend and trust the waltz of opposites
coupled in concrete fragility ~
a green chili greening into fullness

This biting salsa resists all dominance
through a supercilious depth of spontaneity
and a chartreuse centrifuge of wholeness
we dance a green chili greening into fullness.