We Shake With Joy

We shake with joy, we shake with grief.

What a time they have, these two

Housed as they are in the same body.

Last night I had an enjoyable evening discussing how we might take care of ourselves so that we can take care of others.  I am in Puerto Rico teaching Nonviolent Communication and my inspiring dinner companion is Psychologist, Animal Therapy Facilitator, and President of the Puerto Rico Alliance for Companion Animals, Dr. Ursula Aragunde Kohl.  We spoke of how our learning comes through trial, pain, and grief.  Not all learning of course comes to us on this path, but in my life, the really important learnings of how to love and stay engaged with others with an open heart have come through much pain.  I wondered out loud to her if then what my days would look like if I were to be fully present to others and to life. I’d probably spend half the day sobbing, and the other dancing like a mad person in public.  

Such extremes in the same day!

What “extremes” do you mix in the same day, or the same body?

This Day, and Probably Tomorrow Also

Full of thought, regret, hope dashed or not dashed yet,

full of memory, pride, and more than enough

of spilled, personal grief,

I begin another page, another poem.

So many notions fill the day! I give them

gowns of words, sometimes I give them

little shoes that rhyme.

What an elite life!

While somewhere someone is kissing a face that is crying.

While somewhere women are walking out, at two in the morning –

many miles to find water.

While somewhere a bomb is getting ready to explode.

Newsweek’s cover story this week speaks about the “Dinner Divide.”  In this article they compare the nutritious, varied, and stimulating foods some can afford, and then how in the USA, 17% suffer from “food insecurity.”  They don’t know if they will have enough resources to secure food from month to month.   Also, the quality of their food is not of the nutritious kind, but of the fat/salt/carbohydrate kind.  I fall into the elite category, s I think of our choice of almond milk, high fiber cereal, mycoprotein “fake” turkey, and the recent purchase of 32 weeks of local, organic farm products. 

When out for a walk this morning visiting my spouse’s family in Carrollton, GA we passed a household where there was a recent addition to the home. The grandparents had added on to their home so their children and grandchildren could live with.  The parents though died in a car accident, so instead of 3 generations living in a home, there are two.

During our lunch Thanksgiving meal today, amidst our abundance, my spouse’s sister spoke of her difficulty in adopting a child from the Congo, Africa where there are 5 million orphans.

What are we to do with this privileged life in the midst of some many tragic stories happening to someone somewhere?

I believe that the grandparents and my sister-in-law have the response to which I wish to commit myself.  If I find myself with extra gifts – plenty of calories and nutrition and resources – may I find a way to give them in turn to someone somewhere.  This day, and probably, hopefully tomorrow.

What do you do with your elite life?

Ocean - October 25, 2010

I am in love with the Ocean

Lifting her thousands of white hats

In the chop of the storm,

Or lying smooth and blue, the

Loveliest bed in the world.

In the personal life, there is

Always grief more than enough,

A heart-load for each one of us

On the dusty road. I suppose

There is a reason for this, so I will be

Patient, acquiescent. But I will live

Nowhere except here, by Ocean, trusting

Equally in all the blast and welcome

Of her sorrowless, salt self

I have read studies that show certain personality types are more attune to one landscape or ecological system than others. Some people’s physiology and perhaps too their cultural and family systems, do better by the ocean. Others come alive in the mountains. Perhaps if you are neither of these kind of people, the deserts? The topics? Maybe, grief does come to us all and we come to accept this. In this, though there might also be a choice. Where might we find the trust that we belong to the beauty around us? Let’s go ahead, and if we can, make it in some ways as easy as we can and live where we are comforted and held. Maybe this is the rocking of the ocean, the lofty vision of the mountains, the clear crisp unclutteredness of the dessert, or the warm embrace of the tropics, whose very air seems to support the heaviest burden.

I also know that beauty is everywhere, and in every landscape. We don’t need to choose to go beauty, beauty is with us always. I once lived in Newhall, California. It was the dry desert of Los Angeles county rimmed with smog and ram shackle strip malls. I so despaired of living there. Once, a number of my work colleagues went to see a movie wherein the film a woman committed suicide by jumping out of a sky scraper window, dramatically shattering her life as she did the same to the car on which she landed. My fellow veterinarians quipped, “Someone just told her she had to move to Newhall.” My boyfriend at that time, native to LA Country, was deeply offended. Somewhere in the discussion and in the later months, perhaps to honor him and maybe all of life, I committed myself to loving where ever I was, to find beauty where I may. This has mostly worked even in the harshest climes: to love the beauty before me, and also to choose to go towards beauty. Let’s all be easy and hard on ourselves, shall we?

Where kind of terrain calls to you to live and love by?

On Thy Wondrous Works I Will Meditate (Psalm 145)

5.

So it is not hard to understand

Where God’s body is, it is

Everywhere and everything; shore and the vast

Fields of water, the accidental and the intended

Over here, over there. And I bow down

Participate and attentive

It is so dense and apparent. And all the same I am still

Unsatisfied. Standing

Here, now, I am thinking

Not of His thick writs and His blue

Shoulders but, still, of Him. Where, do you suppose is His

Pale and wonderful mind?

6.

I would be good-oh, I would be upright and good.

To what purpose? To be shingling not

Sinful, not wringing out of the hours

Petulance, heaviness, ashes. To what purpose?

Hope of heaven? Not that. But to enter

The other kingdom: grace, and imagination,

And the multiple sympathies: to be as a leaf, a rose,

A dolphin, a wave rising

Slowly then briskly out of the darkness to touch

The limpid air, to be God’s mind’s

Servant, loving with the body’s sweet mouth-its kisses, its

Words-

Everything.

7.

I know a man of such

Mildness and kindness sit is trying to

Change my lie. He does not

Preach, teach, but simply is. It is

Astonishing, for he is Christ’s ambassador

Truly, by rule and act. But, more,

He is kind with the sort of kindness that shines

Out, but is resolute, not fooled. He has

Eaten the dark hours and could also, I think,

Solider for God, riding out

Under the storm clouds, against the world’s pride and unkindness

With both unassailable sweetness, and consoling word.

8.

Every morning I want to kneel down on the golden
cloth of the sand and say
some kind of musical thanks for
the world that is happening again—another day—
from the shawl of wind coming out of the
west to the firm green

flesh of the melon lately sliced open and
eaten, its chill and ample body
flavored with mercy. I want
to be worthy of—what? Glory? Yes, unimaginable glory.
O Lord of melons, of mercy, though I am
not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing toward you.

I went to Vanderbilt Divinity School because of a professor there, Sally McFague. I read her book, The Body of God where she speaks of God being immanent in the world, and being the world. Sally would describe this as panentheistic – God is in everything and also timelessly extends beyond everything. In her world of Christianity, or so as I understood her, one could not be pantheistic and be a Christian, for a pantheist says God is the world, and nothing more. I wondered why she and others feared taking the final step? Is it because they felt somewhere in them such puzzlement in their minds, or perhaps a call to goodness and kindness that could not be explained by the mere world around them? Or was it that they feared the loss of self that knows no distinction between self and slug?

Also while attending Vanderbilt Divinity School I would tire of statements that contained this phrase, “Humans are the only ones that_________.” Every instance where I heard that I would think, no, that’s not true, this or that kind of nonhuman animal also does this. In the secular world I hear the same thing. When ever I hear such sentiments, I offer a kind thought to the author, for they will be found out eventually. Either someone will show them current scientific understanding, or it will only be a matter of time before we discover, no that’s not true. Nonhuman animals also do what humans do. For instance, a news article this week argued that that nonhuman animals have spiritual experiences.

Similarly I also heard in Divinity school that evolution leads to humans so the universe would have a mind to comprehend itself and could know itself. Again, I shudder at the audacity of our kind to think that we are the purpose of the Universe, as evidenced by the fact that no other animals are like us.

Enter Mary and her poem. She wonders where God’s mind is and aspires to be that mind – to be goodness and kindness and to love the body earth and all her beings. She does not say that humans are the only ones who can be God’s mind, only that she devotes her life to glory. This glory is to be God’s servant with intentionality to love all bodies, which are also hers and herself.

Reading Mary and thinking back on school and countless theological discussions and sermons written, I think she has captured almost all of my imagination. We are here not to be separate from others, or God. In fact, we cannot be. We are God’s body. Where I differ from Mary, perhaps, as I haven’t asked her, is that the mind is body. So if we are God’s body, so is our monkey mind – imperfect yet perfect, and fumbling and bumbling yet graceful. We have no climbing towards an external perfection to do. As my favorite poet said, we only have to love what the soft animal of our bodies love.

Today, what do you struggle to love? Wherever or however you struggle, I invite you to think of this as you take with me today one breathe. As you breathe in, ponder the peace of interconnection, and as you breathe out, breathe out love.

The Users of Sorrow (in my sleep I dreamed this poem) - and - Heavy

Someone I loved once gave me

A box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

That this , too, was a gift.

I am just over the time line in Auburn, Alabama. The sun rises earlier and there is less time of dark, or so it seems. The sky is already light and it’s not yet 6:30 a.m. One student who attends here told me that on campus sometimes his phone picks up Eastern Time, and other times, Central. This is a liminal place where dark and light meet and when the time before merges with the time to come.

Gifts too are indeterminate. Sometimes when a gift is offered to us, we pick it up and it seems heavy, and at other times it appears light. I do not know how to trust that everything that comes our way is a gift. Or how we might know when we should put the gift down and say that we have gotten all we can out of it. When is there too much clutter in our life, does our attention turn to the stuff and not to that which comes our way, or even to the Ultimate Givers themselves?

I for one know that in the dark, heavy sorrow I find the unexpected gift of love and wonder. Yet when it is offered me I would rather say, no thanks, not today. What a world of beauty and belonging I would have missed if I had a choice of life experiences. But perhaps we do have a choice, to keep opening gifts to look for the laughter and joy within and hear love echo back to us from the deep, opening box of possibility.

Heavy

That time

I thought I could not

Go any closer to grief

Without dying

I went closer,

And I did not die.

Surely God

Had his hand in this,

As well as friends.

Still, I was bent,

And my laughter,

As the poet said,

Was nowhere to be found.

Then say my friend Daniel

(brave even among lions),

“It’s not the weight you carry

But how you carry it-

Books, bricks, grief-

It’s all in the way

You embrace it, balance it, carry it

When you cannot, and would not,

Put it down.”

So I went practicing.

Have you noticed?

Have you heard

The laughter

That comes, now and again,

Out of my startled mouth?

How I linger

To admire, admire, admire

The things of this world

That are kind and maybe

Also troubled-

Roses in the wind,

The sea geese on the steep waves,

A love

To which there is no reply?

Three Poems for James Wright - February 5, 2010

1. Hearing of Your Illness

I went out

from the news of your illness

like a broken bone...

...Then I lay down in a rank and spring-sweet field...

...small creatures rustling about, living their lives

as they do, moment by moment.

I felt better, telling them about you.

They know what pain is, and they knew you,...

..They...

merely loved you and waited

to take you back...

...meanwhile not missing one shred of their own

assignments of song

and muscle-

what I learned there, so I

got up finally, with a grief

worthy of you, and went home.

2. Early Morning in Ohio

...I remember

what you said.

And think how somewhere in Tuscany

a small spider might eve now

be stepping forth, testing

the silks of her web, the morning air,

the possibilities; maybe even, who knows,

singing a tiny song.

3. The Rose

...the news came

that nothing

could come to you

in time

anymore

ever.

I put down the phone

and I thought I saw, on the floor of the room, suddenly,

a large box,...

...but what it was-the voice

of a small bird singing inside, Lord,

how it sang, and kept singing!

how it keeps singing!

in its deep

and miraculous

composure

There is a song behind death and grief, which seems we can only hear if we know the sorrow of our hearts as they beat with the rhythm of the world. All things singing, all things shining. I am hear to listen, to sing, and to be the mirror that reflects back all things shining. So clear is this note of life's passionate melody for me after reading this poem. Thank you Mary.

Do you hear a song behind your pain and grief?

Hattie Bloom - January 13, 2010

...That love, which made my gentle uncle wild,

Might also change a painted girl to gold.

The dream that smiled and trailed it's silken wing

Was what my uncle grieved for; and I thought

The truth of love was that in truth, for him,

Lost Hattie Bloom became that perfect thing.

I am also reading a Rumi (Sufi poet) poem a day, and I smile in seeing that Mary and Rumi merge in union today, nearly undifferentiated except by about 700 years. The poetry of Mary I suspect might be recited one day as millions memorize Rumi, though Mary's messages of love alchemy for the soul are not as direct as Rumi, Hafiz, and other poets of this tradition. Rumi used images of camels, wine, emeralds, and mirrors while Mary uses bird and tree. Both though speak of grief, loneliness, and the gift that life is. If we could but only accept loss and death we might see our perfection in both silken and broken wing.

Has love ever grown stronger for you after you lost the stimulus for that great desire?

A Dream of Trees - January 5, 2010

...and then it came to me, that so was death,

A little way away from everywhere.

There is a thing in me still dreams of trees,

But lit it go, Homesick for moderation,

Half the world's artists shrink or fall away.

If any find solution, let him tell it.

Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation.

Where, as the times implore our true involvement.

The blades of every crisis point the way.

I would it were not so, but so it is.

Who ever made music of a mild day?

I wonder what sadness Mary knew so young. Was it one experience? Many? Was she born with the gift of sight to know that beauty comes from pain? Dreaming of the original forests of this world, and the trees I have known felled in Guatemala, I lament, and bask in the sun's rising this day upon trees that are with me today, though they are but a remnant of the original splendor that once spread across the Eastern Coast of North America. Yes indeed, when a tree falls a far land away, it is heard in the crashing of our hearts.

No Voyage - January 1, 2010

....On a cot by an open window, I lie and remember
While the birds in the trees sing, of the circle of time.
Let the dying go on, and let me, if I can,
Inherit from disaster before I move.

O, I go to see the great ships ride from harbor,
And my wounds leap with impatience, yet I turn back
To sort the weeping ruins of my house:
Here or nowhere I will make peace with the fact.


To be a citizen of this lovely earth, to set up a household where all beings are welcome to dine according to their evolved tastes, Mary is asking me hold the grief and struggle to make peace that in this life there is suffering.