It's a grubby sort of morning. Puddles swirl with the dye of leaf juices, which stain the windshield of my car and paint the roads in orange and yellow oils. My wooden balcony is slick and dark as I step out onto it with my mug of coffee to survey the view of tattered branches panning mist. After a moment, I turn back inside to lamplight and comfort, radiating gratitude and feeling sure that just that--standing all alone in my little house overspilling with giddy thanks --is useful, is worthy. That sensation is the root of singing, clapping, kissing, embracing, all gestures of excitement and love. My heart was created to do that, to gather in all the gifts my senses can hold and to translate them into the thing I call praise, to add my little heartful to what the world has to offer.
"So", as Mary Oliver says, "every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God."
Monday, October 25, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Because I was missing Janie something fierce this morning, I browsed through my collection of Mary Oliver's Percy poems. This one in particular had me laughing, for I have had this very conversation with Janie on several occasions. My copies of Buechner's "A Sacred Journey," Shakespeare's Complete Works (Norton edition), and the Bible will all ruefully back Janie's dismissive claim. You have to give that brazen darling some credit: she has, all too literally, good literary taste.
Percy And Books (Eight)
Percy does not like it when I read a book.
He puts his face over the top of it and moans.
He rolls his eyes, sometimes he sneezes.
The sun is up, he says, and the wind is down.
The tide is out and the neighbors' dogs are playing.
But Percy, I say. Ideas! The elegance of language!
The insights, the funniness, the beautiful stories
that rise and fall and turn into strength, or courage.
Books? says Percy. I ate one once, and it was enough.
Let's go.
[Mary Oliver, Red Bird]
Sunday, October 17, 2010
"Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World"
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.
Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathng;
Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks
From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessed day,
And cries,
"Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven."
Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world's hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
"Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance."
[Richard Wilbur]
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.
Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathng;
Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks
From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessed day,
And cries,
"Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven."
Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world's hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
"Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance."
[Richard Wilbur]
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
I am unsettled by how easy it is for me to live an intransitive life: one that has lost sight of its direct object, with verbs flying everywhere, anchoring themselves to an assortment of indirect objects rather than devoting themselves to their true object. Or getting caught up in adjectives, the aesthetics of my living, or adverbs, the way I appear as I do things.
Of course I know that it is impossible to live life with incessant unwavering focus on the reason I believe I am here. Part of life's wonderousness is that it is teeming with adjectives and adverbs. When used properly, these add richness and texture to my story--to a large extent, they are its glory, and often they surprise me with glimpses into its meaning. To refuse to let them divert me would be to blind myself to that richness, those glimpses. But to get carried away with them, to devote myself to them, is tantamount to making my life a frivolity, and I do not want to do that.
A life well lived is like a story well written. A well written story is built by well written sentences: sentences that are focused on the greater plot. A life well lived is built by well-lived moments: moments that are focused on the greater purpose of it all.
Half the time I don't have the vision to see how many of my experiences will matter, ultimately. But I believe that if I live like they DO (because I believe that they do)...then one day I will look over my shoulder and see that they HAVE mattered. I will see how they have made a difference.
That is how I want to live my life: open to surprises, receptive to aesthetics, thoughtful about my own presence within it, but always all this in light of eternity and the meaning it casts on each passing moment.
Of course I know that it is impossible to live life with incessant unwavering focus on the reason I believe I am here. Part of life's wonderousness is that it is teeming with adjectives and adverbs. When used properly, these add richness and texture to my story--to a large extent, they are its glory, and often they surprise me with glimpses into its meaning. To refuse to let them divert me would be to blind myself to that richness, those glimpses. But to get carried away with them, to devote myself to them, is tantamount to making my life a frivolity, and I do not want to do that.
A life well lived is like a story well written. A well written story is built by well written sentences: sentences that are focused on the greater plot. A life well lived is built by well-lived moments: moments that are focused on the greater purpose of it all.
Half the time I don't have the vision to see how many of my experiences will matter, ultimately. But I believe that if I live like they DO (because I believe that they do)...then one day I will look over my shoulder and see that they HAVE mattered. I will see how they have made a difference.
That is how I want to live my life: open to surprises, receptive to aesthetics, thoughtful about my own presence within it, but always all this in light of eternity and the meaning it casts on each passing moment.
Saturday, October 09, 2010
I am sitting at my little wooden desk in my bedroom, listening to the birds sing, surrounded by graces: animal voices, sunlight, colors, scents; the refreshment of clean skin and teeth and hair, of comfortable garments and a tidy room. My appetite is taking a satisfied nap after a breakfast of yogurt and peaches, washed down with a mug of rich black coffee.
It is delicious, at moments like these, to inhabit a body: head, shoulders, knees, toes, eyes ears, mouth, and nose. My lungs inflate with healthy air: steamy, fragranced with ginseng from the shampoo and conditioner I lathered into my hair during my morning shower. My heart's steady beat fills my veins and arteries with coursing life, rich streams that water the fertile acreage of my brain. Nerves run their twinkling races. DNA strands fulfill their wyrd.
I know that my body will not always give me cause for such celebration. This lesson has been reinforced in the past months as I watched a friend's body confront the mortality that it had housed for over fifty years. It is a guest that dwells within everyone.
I wonder if the angels see it, that death that we carry, when they look upon us. If so, I wonder what they see when they look at me.
The idea that one day my breath will fail is as imponderable to me as it was propesterous to Macbeth that Birnam Wood could one day march on Dunsinane. But my Birnam Wood will march, nonetheless, as my friend's did, and the battle will take place, and my body will fall.
Sitting here at my desk, my happy heart keeping my spirit company, I am grateful for three things.
I am grateful that I know that I will meet my death one day.
I am grateful I do not know when that day will be, or what that death will look like. It is enough simply to know that we will meet.
Most of all, I am grateful that I must only meet him once. This knowledge gives me courage. It consoles me when I think about my friend, whose great ordeal is over, who has gone through the last riddle, and who will live the rest of her days in that species that stands beyond, beckoning and baffling, a species that is as invisible to me as music, but positive, as sound.
"I know that my Redeemer lives, that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him, with my own eyes--I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!" (Job 19:25-27)
It is delicious, at moments like these, to inhabit a body: head, shoulders, knees, toes, eyes ears, mouth, and nose. My lungs inflate with healthy air: steamy, fragranced with ginseng from the shampoo and conditioner I lathered into my hair during my morning shower. My heart's steady beat fills my veins and arteries with coursing life, rich streams that water the fertile acreage of my brain. Nerves run their twinkling races. DNA strands fulfill their wyrd.
I know that my body will not always give me cause for such celebration. This lesson has been reinforced in the past months as I watched a friend's body confront the mortality that it had housed for over fifty years. It is a guest that dwells within everyone.
I wonder if the angels see it, that death that we carry, when they look upon us. If so, I wonder what they see when they look at me.
The idea that one day my breath will fail is as imponderable to me as it was propesterous to Macbeth that Birnam Wood could one day march on Dunsinane. But my Birnam Wood will march, nonetheless, as my friend's did, and the battle will take place, and my body will fall.
Sitting here at my desk, my happy heart keeping my spirit company, I am grateful for three things.
I am grateful that I know that I will meet my death one day.
I am grateful I do not know when that day will be, or what that death will look like. It is enough simply to know that we will meet.
Most of all, I am grateful that I must only meet him once. This knowledge gives me courage. It consoles me when I think about my friend, whose great ordeal is over, who has gone through the last riddle, and who will live the rest of her days in that species that stands beyond, beckoning and baffling, a species that is as invisible to me as music, but positive, as sound.
"I know that my Redeemer lives, that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him, with my own eyes--I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!" (Job 19:25-27)
Thursday, October 07, 2010
sweet reminder
The best things in life are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light
in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of
right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's
plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily
bread are the sweetest things in life.
Robert Louis Stevenson
in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of
right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's
plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily
bread are the sweetest things in life.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
"a sky, air, light: / a being..."
My housemate and I have determined that I suffer from the direct opposite of seasonal depression. It makes me happy when skies are gray. Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul--I am alight. The North Wind doth blow, and we will have snow, and the very thought if it makes my heart sing.
Needless to say, then, I am relishing these wind-beaten mornings, the kitchen spell they make possible: a spell of warmth and wellbeing spun out of gentle indoor lights and the throaty conversation of the coffee maker, underscored by the framed square of bruised autumn day visible above the sink.
I was browsing through my Levertov collection as I sipped my coffee this particular morning, and this poem captured perfectly the way I feel about today. Or rather, after I read this poem, I looked out the window and the day did indeed wring me with the feelings the poem describes. I can't tell you now, in hindsight, if the day made the poem resonate so powerfully, or if the poem made the day resonate so powerfully.
All I know is that they partnered together, and my heart is still, even now, dancing their choreography.
A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me--a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow
rang out, metallic--or was it I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.
Denise Levertov: "Variation on a Theme by Rilke" (The Book of Hours, Book 1, Poem 1, Stanza 1)
Needless to say, then, I am relishing these wind-beaten mornings, the kitchen spell they make possible: a spell of warmth and wellbeing spun out of gentle indoor lights and the throaty conversation of the coffee maker, underscored by the framed square of bruised autumn day visible above the sink.
I was browsing through my Levertov collection as I sipped my coffee this particular morning, and this poem captured perfectly the way I feel about today. Or rather, after I read this poem, I looked out the window and the day did indeed wring me with the feelings the poem describes. I can't tell you now, in hindsight, if the day made the poem resonate so powerfully, or if the poem made the day resonate so powerfully.
All I know is that they partnered together, and my heart is still, even now, dancing their choreography.
A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me--a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow
rang out, metallic--or was it I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.
Denise Levertov: "Variation on a Theme by Rilke" (The Book of Hours, Book 1, Poem 1, Stanza 1)
Sunday, October 03, 2010
(the fruits of a little wordplay on a quiet afternoon)
The cranberry red minivan had acquired a shimmy in recent years--a fact that its driver, Abraham, regarded in much the same way he regarded his own receding hairline: with outer good nature and private interior squirms.
It was barely four in the morning. Abraham's vision was limited to the penumbra of cloudy light cast by his headlights into the inky void. They hadn't passed another automobile since the semi truck twenty minutes back, and after a day of work followed by six sleepless hours behind the wheel, Abraham grew increasingly disoriented. The radio, with its unvaried assortment of jingly Christmas carols, had long ceased to entertain him. He had turned it off as soon as his children were asleep.
He gripped the wheel, squared his shoulders, and reached to the dash to turn off the heat. Perhaps the frigid November air would keep him alert.
His wife stirred in the passenger seat, jogged awake by the sudden drop in white noise. Elisabeth was a light sleeper under normal conditions; much more so in the jouncing minivan. She squirmed to an upright posture, inhaling deeply as she always did upon waking.
"You still doing okay, Abe?" she whispered after finding her bearings.
Abraham nodded, relieved at the clarifying effect of her voice, so familiar to him that it felt a part of his mind's most rational workings.
"Want me to take a turn?"
He shook his head. "Maybe in an hour or so. I'll be okay for now."
She relaxed back into her seat and turned her head to squint out the misted window. The atmosphere of the van settled again into quiet. The absence of the heater's harsh blare and the sharpened edge in the cooling air give this new silence a palpable weight. Abraham indulged the childish fancy that this prosaic minivan was a rocket ship, bearing them through space and time to another planet. He smiled to himself at the aptness of the analogy as he thought of their destination: Elisabeth's childhood home in Iowa, its dust mote laden air, its elongated sense of time and space.
Abraham's thoughts turned to his children as naturally and unremarkably as a washing machine changes cycles. Lizzie, Robbie, Esther, and Henry: he ticked them off mentally, oldest to youngest: a habit of his. Twelve, nine, six, and four.
Glancing into the rearview mirror, he glimpsed their dark shapes heaped like dirty laundry across the benches. The brothers were in the rear. Henry's pale elfish face nuzzled against Robbie's shoulder in a breach of their brotherly code that Robbie would never have permitted were he awake. Robbie's posture was an enlarged iteration, his forehead bumping against the window and his mouth hanging ajar. In the front bench were the girls. Esther's fuzzy curls clung to the pillow she had propped against the armrest. Her wee feet peeked from beneath the hem of her princess nightgown and poked against Lizzie's leg.
Lizzie.
As he looked at her, a semi truck barreled past, its lights illuminating her face for a brief and shocking span. She was awake and staring out the window, unaware of his attention. Something in her expression at that moment pinioned Abraham's heart in his chest. He felt it flapping, frantic, against that keen lance of emotion innocently inflicted by his daughter's transfiguration.
She sat in her usual place in the minivan, unmasked. In her expression dwelt emotions that looked so at home there he marveled that he hadn't seen them before: yearning and faith, a sense of breath bated. These inhabited her countenance with the candor that is the soul of privacy, all considerations of civility and shyness clearly forgotten.
Abraham was startled to find that until now he hadn't believed she had a private self detached from his own--one that glowed beneath the good manners of her upbringing and the instinctive theatricality of her public interactions. With his realization arrived a sick pang of apprehension: the knowledge that his daughter's precious form housed a treasury of vulnerabilities that he was powerless to defend.
His eyes double checked the road and then returned to her face, and this time they encountered her direct gaze: mild again, masked. She smiled sweetly.
"Much longer, Dad?" she whispered.
He cleared his throat. "About three hours left, darling."
"I guess I'll try to sleep some more then," she sighed. He heard her shift position, causing Esther to grunt in her sleep and Elisabeth to awaken with her usual sharp inhalation, look around, and sink back into rest.
Abraham took several deep stabilizing breaths and reached across the armrest to hold his wife's hand. Again he counted off his children. Lizzie, Robbie, Esther, Henry. Burning with love, he chanted their names in his heart again and again, like the rosary, like a prayer.
It was barely four in the morning. Abraham's vision was limited to the penumbra of cloudy light cast by his headlights into the inky void. They hadn't passed another automobile since the semi truck twenty minutes back, and after a day of work followed by six sleepless hours behind the wheel, Abraham grew increasingly disoriented. The radio, with its unvaried assortment of jingly Christmas carols, had long ceased to entertain him. He had turned it off as soon as his children were asleep.
He gripped the wheel, squared his shoulders, and reached to the dash to turn off the heat. Perhaps the frigid November air would keep him alert.
His wife stirred in the passenger seat, jogged awake by the sudden drop in white noise. Elisabeth was a light sleeper under normal conditions; much more so in the jouncing minivan. She squirmed to an upright posture, inhaling deeply as she always did upon waking.
"You still doing okay, Abe?" she whispered after finding her bearings.
Abraham nodded, relieved at the clarifying effect of her voice, so familiar to him that it felt a part of his mind's most rational workings.
"Want me to take a turn?"
He shook his head. "Maybe in an hour or so. I'll be okay for now."
She relaxed back into her seat and turned her head to squint out the misted window. The atmosphere of the van settled again into quiet. The absence of the heater's harsh blare and the sharpened edge in the cooling air give this new silence a palpable weight. Abraham indulged the childish fancy that this prosaic minivan was a rocket ship, bearing them through space and time to another planet. He smiled to himself at the aptness of the analogy as he thought of their destination: Elisabeth's childhood home in Iowa, its dust mote laden air, its elongated sense of time and space.
Abraham's thoughts turned to his children as naturally and unremarkably as a washing machine changes cycles. Lizzie, Robbie, Esther, and Henry: he ticked them off mentally, oldest to youngest: a habit of his. Twelve, nine, six, and four.
Glancing into the rearview mirror, he glimpsed their dark shapes heaped like dirty laundry across the benches. The brothers were in the rear. Henry's pale elfish face nuzzled against Robbie's shoulder in a breach of their brotherly code that Robbie would never have permitted were he awake. Robbie's posture was an enlarged iteration, his forehead bumping against the window and his mouth hanging ajar. In the front bench were the girls. Esther's fuzzy curls clung to the pillow she had propped against the armrest. Her wee feet peeked from beneath the hem of her princess nightgown and poked against Lizzie's leg.
Lizzie.
As he looked at her, a semi truck barreled past, its lights illuminating her face for a brief and shocking span. She was awake and staring out the window, unaware of his attention. Something in her expression at that moment pinioned Abraham's heart in his chest. He felt it flapping, frantic, against that keen lance of emotion innocently inflicted by his daughter's transfiguration.
She sat in her usual place in the minivan, unmasked. In her expression dwelt emotions that looked so at home there he marveled that he hadn't seen them before: yearning and faith, a sense of breath bated. These inhabited her countenance with the candor that is the soul of privacy, all considerations of civility and shyness clearly forgotten.
Abraham was startled to find that until now he hadn't believed she had a private self detached from his own--one that glowed beneath the good manners of her upbringing and the instinctive theatricality of her public interactions. With his realization arrived a sick pang of apprehension: the knowledge that his daughter's precious form housed a treasury of vulnerabilities that he was powerless to defend.
His eyes double checked the road and then returned to her face, and this time they encountered her direct gaze: mild again, masked. She smiled sweetly.
"Much longer, Dad?" she whispered.
He cleared his throat. "About three hours left, darling."
"I guess I'll try to sleep some more then," she sighed. He heard her shift position, causing Esther to grunt in her sleep and Elisabeth to awaken with her usual sharp inhalation, look around, and sink back into rest.
Abraham took several deep stabilizing breaths and reached across the armrest to hold his wife's hand. Again he counted off his children. Lizzie, Robbie, Esther, Henry. Burning with love, he chanted their names in his heart again and again, like the rosary, like a prayer.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Today's state of mind...
Barbara Crooker, "October":
Chill in the air, the leaves go up
in flame, then all fall down
in litter and mulch. The blue
chrome dome of the sky
clamps tight over our heads.
Trees write in their spiral
notebooks: good year,
lots of rain, let's put
a ring on it.
There's only one note
on the wind chimes:
gold gold gold
---
From the Book of Common Prayer:
"Prayer For Those We Love"
Almighty God, we entrust all who are dear to us to thy never-failing care and love, for this life and the life to come, knowing that thou art doing for them better things than we can desire or pray for; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
---
From Isaiah 45:3:
"I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name."
---
Dorothy Sayers:
"Where Christ is, cheerfulness will keep breaking in..."
Barbara Crooker, "October":
Chill in the air, the leaves go up
in flame, then all fall down
in litter and mulch. The blue
chrome dome of the sky
clamps tight over our heads.
Trees write in their spiral
notebooks: good year,
lots of rain, let's put
a ring on it.
There's only one note
on the wind chimes:
gold gold gold
---
From the Book of Common Prayer:
"Prayer For Those We Love"
Almighty God, we entrust all who are dear to us to thy never-failing care and love, for this life and the life to come, knowing that thou art doing for them better things than we can desire or pray for; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
---
From Isaiah 45:3:
"I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name."
---
Dorothy Sayers:
"Where Christ is, cheerfulness will keep breaking in..."
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