In the Darkness

At night the stars throw down their postcards of light.

Who are they that love me so much?...

I am grateful and faithful to this other romance

Though we will not ever know each other’s names, we will not ever

Touch.

.

I am reading John Donahue’s book, “Beauty – The Invisible Embrace.”  In the beginning pages he writes that if we can see beauty, we will feel like we belong on this planet and will be welcomed home with open arms.  He writes in prose as Mary does in poetry.

We are touched by beauty. Perhaps not as lovers in the night, or as friends on a walk, or children at bed time, but our soul is in contact with the All at times when wonder, awe, and splendor enter our days.  We are caressed, we are embraced, we are held.

At such times our faith is affirmed and feelings of gratitude emerge. 

How now can we open our eyes to see beauty more consistently, so that justice and peace may grow from our faith and gratitude?

How Heron Comes

It is a negligence of the mind

not to notice how at dusk

heron comes to the pond and

stands there in his death robes, perfect

servant of the system, hungry, his eyes

full of attention, his wings

pure light.

I think how often I have been negligent in my mind.

I watch the juvenile young men gather on the sidewalk at sun set, suspecting their every thought and action as reproachable and full of danger. I cross the street to the other side to avoid any close association with them or to put myself in harm's way.

Oh you say, that is prudent, you know how young men are. There is too much testosterone pumping in their veins to trust them.

Well then what about the person in the car ahead of me who flings trash?  The hunter?  The drug dealer?  The addict?  The wily politician?  My slow moving self this morning who almost forgot to bow to the moon high in the lightening sky?

Are we not all perfect servants of the system?

Our hunger brings us life, our knowing of this brings us light.

May you have such illumination this morning, this day.

For what are you hungry?

The Living Together

The spirit says:

What gorgeous clouds.

The body says: Good,

The crops need rain.

The spirit says:

Look at the lambs frolicking.

The body says:

When’s the feast?...

The spirit says:  Body,

How can we live together?

The body says:  Bricks and mortar

And a back door.

In Maslov’s hierarchy of needs, we see that the fundamental needs of protection, security and nuturturance are below the higher needs of spiritual development. If the people are not fed and safe, it is hard for them to ponder the beauty of the clouds and the inherent worth and dignity of others.  Notice I say hard, not impossible. 

It is a difficult task though to embody spirit in our daily lives. Aren’t we always in some ways, or at least perceiving so, under threat or at risk of not having enough?  So we look to the lambs to slaughter them, our relationships, our communities, and our earth.

May we look to this day, and not sneak out the back door to meet our desires and our fears, but go boldly through the front door, and leave the door to our hearts open as we journey forward together.

Do you have tension between your body and spirit?  What is spirit?

On the Beach

On the beach, at dawn:

four small stones clearly

hugging each other.

How many kinds of love

might there be in the world,

and how many formations might they make

and who am I ever

 to imagine I could know

such a marvelous business?

When the sun broke

it poured willingly its light

over the stones

that did not move, not at all,

just as, to its always generous term,

it shed its light on me,

my own body that loves

equally to hug another body

As a biologist, and a veterinarian, I have seen amazing variety in how animals express their bonding, gender, and sexuality, and I am learning all the time how this is true too in the human animal.  Just last night I saw a program about transgendered people, and a few years back I married a transgender couple and gave a sermon on the topic at my congregation.  Bodies and minds are such fascinating, awesome conglomerations of physics, physiology, chemistry, and biology, and then the macro-output comes out as one body hungering for the touch and affection of another in apparent infinite possibility, much of it beauty beyond words. I say "much of it" because harm can be mixed in with the body's powerful emotions and desires. So much of our ever present subconscious wiring motivates us, and also evades our understanding resulting in actions that are regretable. I speak of deceit, physical harm, and sexual abuse.

There is risk to responding to the body's intent, however I for one am glad that we live in age where the light of understanding "human" has shed a light on how to nurture healthy relationships. We know that we are capable of great love and remarkable companionship, as well as tragic actions and mournful  decisions.

I pray that today I, and others, will choose love and beauty over tragedy.

What choices are before you this day?

Moon and Water

I wake and spend

the last hours

of darkness

with  no one

but the moon.

She listens

to my complaints

like the good

companion she is

and comforts me surely

with her light.

But she, like everyone,

has her own life.

So finally I understand

that she has turned away,

is no longer listening.

She wants me

to refold myself

into my own life.

And, bending close,

as we all dream of doing,

she rows with her white arms

through the dark water

which she adores.

I awoke this  morning several hours away from sunrise into the darkness. There is no moon in this predawn time for she hasn't risen yet. When she does, I still won't be able to see her through the horizon's cloud covers.  The sun might also not shine.  To whom shall I complain then?

Burrowing under my own covers I look out onto the woods and see faint shadows and hear a far off barred owl echoing my own lament

which is that I have ever wasted one moment

not being a good companion

not adoring the world

not grateful for this day, though it seems gray at its inception

not bending close to hear the smallest whisper

of my heart, of yours, of the earth's.

What are your complaints today?

Where Are You?

Where Are You?

Do you know that the heart has a dungeon?

Bring light! Bring light!

In the Broadway musical, Simba sings in despair one long and dark night.

Where has the starlight gone?

Dark is the day

How can I find my way home?

Home is an empty dream

Lost to the night

Father, I feel so alone

You promised you'd be there

Whenever I needed you

Whenever I call your name

You're not anywhere

I'm trying to hold on

Just waiting to hear your voice

One word, just a word will do

To end this nightmare

When will the dawning break

Oh endless night

Sleepless I dream of the day

I know that the night must end

And that the sun will rise

And that the sun will rise

It is true.  Our hearts are a dungeon.

It is true.  Light will come.  

Come, let us dream of the light in each of us rising together.

How do you live both imprisoned and full of light?

Love Sorrow

Okay, I promise. This is the last blog for a while about my mother. I left her this morning, coming to her bedside to kiss her goodbye.  I touched her forehead, as this poem suggests, and smiled all that I could so that she would feel less alone.  But I wonder about my own loneliness, now 600 miles from her?  In the dance of daughters and mothers, who abandoned whom first, and ever again and again?

My mother in her dementa is strange, mute, difficult and sometimes unmanageble, but in this sleepless night I see her as a beautiful child of this world.  I recall her good years before she began to slip away how we went for walks, upon walks.  I would help her put on her coat, wishing her to feel the warmth in my heart.  In those days I never, ever considered that I would lose her in this way.

I suppose she isn't lost really, for she is my own dear love sorrow.  Ever with me, achingly so. 

I think I'll go for a walk with her as soon as the morning light lessens this current darkness.  Who knows then what amazing things may happen - a growth in love sorrow for tomorrow and for all beings.

Who or what is your love sorrow?

Meadowlark Sings and I Greet Him In Return

Meadowlark, when you sing it’s as if

You lay your yellow breast upon mine and say

Hello, hello, and are we not

Of one family, in our delight of life?

You sing, I listen.

Both are necessary

If the world is to continue going around

Night-heavy then light –laden, though not

Everyone knows this or at least

Not yet,

Or, perhaps, has forgotten it

In the torn fields,

In the terrible debris of progress

I am at my mother’s where because of her cognition level and inability to walk has care takers who come into the home 15 hours a day.  The caretaker is late so I take the “baby monitor” into my room so I can detect if my mother awakes and needs help.  I hear her breathe through the monitor as I do my daily meditation.  It is hard to concentrate on my breathe as her breathe is so close to my ear, as are her occasional snores.  After a while we breathe together, one family in our respiratory cycle if barely in waking hours.  Her slipping away into a world of silence I suppose I must admit is part and parcel of the cycle of life. I am not enlightened enough to be at peace with this. It seems terrible debris of the circumstances of living that brings her to this.  My heart is torn, yet in that opening I find that the bird held close to my breast and the unheard song is every more dear.

What do you struggle to accept as part of the way of life, of reality?

Six Recognitions of the Lord

1.

I know a lot of fancy words.

I tear them from my heart and my tongue.

Then I pray…..

3
I lounge on the grass, that's all. So
simple. Then I lie back until I am
inside the cloud that is just above me
but very high, and shaped like a fish.
Or, perhaps not. Then I enter the place
of not-thinking, not-remembering, not-
wanting. When the blue jay cries out his
riddle, in his carping voice, I return.
But I go back, the threshold is always
near. Over and back, over and back. Then
I rise. Maybe I rub my face as though I
have been asleep. But I have not been
asleep. I have been, as I say, inside
the cloud, or, perhaps, the lily floating
on the water. Then I go back to town
to my own house, my own life, which has
now become brighter and simpler, some-where I have never been before….

4.

Of course I have always known you

Are present in the clouds, and the

Black oak I especially adore, and the

Wings of birds. But you are present

Too in the body, listening to the body,

Teaching it to live, instead of all

That touching, with disembodied joy.

We do not do this easily….

6.

Every summer the lilies rise
and open their white hands until they almost
cover the black waters of the pond. And I give
thanks but it does not seem like adequate thanks,
it doesn't seem
festive enough or constant enough, nor does the
name of the Lord or the words of thanksgiving come
into it often enough Everywhere I go I am
treated like royalty, which I am not. I thirst and
am given water. My eyes thirst and I am given
the white lilies on the black water. My heart
sings but the apparatus of singing doesn't convey
half what it feels and means. In spring there's hope,
in fall the exquisite, necessary diminishing, in
winter I am as sleepy as any beast in its
leafy cave, but in summer there is
everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts,
the hospitality of the Lord and my
inadequate answers as I row my beautiful, temporary body
through this water-lily world.

Harold Bloom in American Religious Poems says that there is a particular powerful theme in American poetry, especially the poetry that relates to nature. In these poems there appears over and over again the idea of humans as the risen Christ. We each are divinity, and this is reflected back to us from trees, birds, mountains, lakes, and flowers around us. Harold Bloom only briefly mentions Mary Oliver, but he wrote his volume before Thirst came out. If he had seen this poem I believe that he would have said, “I told you so.” In these astonishing lands through which I have travelled aplenty, we dissolve the self and yet build up the self at the same time. We humans are glorious only because we are everything else (and perhaps more depending on your theology), including the offspring of God, or God herself. I don’t know if this is a shift for Mary in her older years and after loss of loved ones, or if pain, confusion, love, and beauty has peeled back a layer that was always there behind her previous poems. As I turn the page to go on to the next poem, it is as if I am helping Mary peel back the layers in these leaves of poems, praying that I might do the same until there is nothing left but everything.

Where do you recognize divinity?

Coming to God: First Days

Lord, what shall I do that I

Can’t quiet myself?

Here is the bread, and

Here is the cup, and

I can’t quiet myself.

To enter the language of transformation!

To learn the importance of stillness,

With one’s hands folded!

When will my eyes of rejoicing turn peaceful?

When will my joyful feel grow still?

When will my heart stop its prancing

As over the summer grass?

Lord, I would run for you, loving the miles for your sake.

I would climb the highest tree

To be that much closer.

Lord, I will learn also to kneel down

Into the world of the invisible,

The inscrutable and the everlasting.

Then I will move no more than the leaves of a tree

On a day of no wind,

Bathed in light,

Like the wanderer who has come home at lat

And kneels in peace, done with all unnecessary thing;.

Every motion; even words.

Beyond loving then, there is stillness, emptiness, death. So much of Mary's work points us towards joy, and running towards union with love. At some point though even that is a superficial desire, a strategy to heal ourselves and be whole. How much must we let go? I suppose when a close one dies, we shock our system into contemplating that there is nothing but letting go to be done. It consumes us. Mary loses her poetry and bows down, no longer Mary of words. I lose my birds and bow down, no longer LoraKim of parrots. Ah. Nothing left but bowing and light. So I begin my day, turning to the east, turning over, in a deep bow to the sun.

What do you have left to lose?

Mozart for Example - September 14, 2010

All the quick notes

Mozart didn't have time to use

before he entered the cloud-boat

are falling now from the beaks

of the finches

that have gathered from the joyous summer

into the hard winter

and, like Mozart, they speak of nothing

but light and delight,

though it is true, the heavy blades of the world

are still pounding underneath.

And this is what you can do too, maybe,

if you live simply and with a lyrical heart

in the cumbered neighborhoods or even,

as Mozart sometimes managed to, in a palace,

offering tune after tune after tune,

making some hard-hearted prince

prudent and kind, just by being happy.

Time and time again I hear how music bridges hard hearts and might be considered the universal religion. Yet without cultural constraints, might the transcendent moment of listening to Mozart be the background music after a genocidal tragedy, or even bird watching a distraction for a cruel dictator? So I doubt that it is enough to offer music so others may be happy. Yet I know in my moments of unexpected joy I rush out to hold the world and give all that I can. Mary, in the midst of her poem, then offers the cultural construct for guiding our happiness over bird and Bach - live simply and with a lyrical heart - a heart that hears music in all beings.

Where do you hear music?

When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

I wonder if trees are the true heroes of the world. Mostly they are in the background of sagas, fables, and myths. Now and then they rise to prominence, such as in the movies Lord of the Rings and Prince Caspian. The trees move, fight, and are on the good guy team. I don’t think though that we’ll ever see them as McDonald Happy Meal toys or action figures under the Christmas Tree. Ah, see that, there is a celebrated tree whose reverence dates back thousands of years when we prayed to trees and they responded.

When I was a small child I went to the woods. I would sing to the birds and to trees and would be at rest for a while. These were prayers of gratitude and a heart’s call to be one with them. In the rush of my days, I believe I forget this except when I am purposively on a nature walk, meditating in nature, or have been part of a conservation team studying parrots in some towering tropical tree. Deep down though I believe that here has not been a forgetting, for my subconscious knows that trees, at least for one such as me born in the southeast of the U.S.A, hold up my world with hope and beauty. Let me leave these words and go hug a tree in the morning light.

What do you think/feel when you hug a tree?

Introduction to Thirst and Messenger

Abba Lot went to Abba Joseph and said to him, "Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do? Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, "If you will, you can become all flame."

Messenger

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Did Mary mean to segue between books ending one with igniting and the other beginning with flame? How did she know that my blog from the day before would speak of being astonished into stillness? Mary, she's in my head and heart. She predicts my life. I have found a faithful companion that speaks of my life's true work - to love, and to speak love. Of course, if it is that basic, how could she not be with me always, as well as the clam and the wren? One quiet, one chattering, both me. All beloved.

What is your life's work?