The Chance to Love Everything

All summer I made friends

with the creatures nearby ---

they flowed through the fields

and under the tent walls,

or padded through the door,

grinning through their many teeth,

looking for seeds,

suet, sugar; muttering and humming,

opening the breadbox, happiest when

there was milk and music. But once

in the night I heard a sound

outside the door, the canvas

bulged slightly ---something

was pressing inward at eye level.

I watched, trembling, sure I had heard

the click of claws, the smack of lips

outside my gauzy house ---

I imagined the red eyes,

the broad tongue, the enormous lap.

Would it be friendly too?

Fear defeated me. And yet,

not in faith and not in madness

but with the courage I thought

my dream deserved,

I stepped outside. It was gone.

Then I whirled at the sound of some

shambling tonnage.

Did I see a black haunch slipping

back through the trees? Did I see

the moonlight shining on it?

Did I actually reach out my arms

toward it, toward paradise falling, like

the fading of the dearest, wildest hope ---

the dark heart of the story that is all

the reason for its telling?

Once, a thrice of decades ago, I was in a tent on a New Mexico plateau.  In the night there came a sniffing and prodding at the tent, much as Mary describes in her poem.  The animal(s) circled many times and I held my breath trying to not be noticed in the silence, and to also listen. Were those the feet of bear, coyote, wolf?  And depending on which, what was the best strategy?  To charge, to run, to cower? I had no weapon in the tent.  Fear defeated me and I had no courage to step outside to see who was stalking my body and my house for possible food.

Since that time whenever I go camping, I take something to bludgeon life with me in the tent - a bat, a golf club, my camping knives. I've heard too many bear stories to have my life story end with, "The bear ran with her off into the wilds and she was never seen again."

Yet, what better ending might there be?  To be taken into the wilds, to become one with teeth, earth, the spring's cubs, and droppings?   

In fact, is any other ending possible?

How would you have your life end?

In the Evening, in the Pinewoods - November 29, 2010

Who knows the sorrows of the heart?

God, of course, and the private self.

But who else?  Anyone or anything else?

Not the trees, in their windy independence.

Nor the roving clouds, nor, even, the dearest of friends.

Yet maybe the thrush, who sings,

By himself, at the edge of the green woods,

To each of us

Out of his mortal body, his own feathered limits,

Of every estrangement, exile, rejection - their

Death-dealing weight.

And then, so sweetly, of ever goodness also to be remembered.

Over this Thanksgiving weekend we think of gratitude.  In sermon, blog, and blessing I speak with others of how developing a practice of gratitude may breed social resilience and satisfaction in life and work, if not happiness.  How I long to practice what I preach.  I have found gratitude challenging in the face of my mother’s dementia and my loss of her.  Yet here on the long drive home on Interstate 95 surrounded by grey clouds and even greyer strip malls I am hearing not just the song of estrangement coming from the heart, but also the goodness that underwrites the score for all music.

For a gratitude practice then, today, may we list the goodness resounding within all death deals.  For whether we hear death and sorrow, or joy and happiness, the music is ever sweet.

My mother, in her painful, housebound, lonely days I hear the song of how she could not be where she is today without her drive for fun, ease, and autonomy.  She sings of  her desire for love ever still.  So how can I keep from singing?

Where do you hear the harmony of goodness and disconnection or despair?

Stars

Here in my head, language

keeps making its tiny noises.

How can I hope to be friends

with the hard white stars

whose flaring and hissing are not speech

but pure radiance?

How can I hope to be friends

with the yawning spaces between them

where nothing, ever is spoken?

Tonight, at the edge of the field,

I stood very still, and looked up,

and tried to be empty of words.

What joy was it, that almost found me?

What amiable peace?...

Once, deep in the woods,

I found the white skull of a bear

and it was utterly silent-

and once a river otter, in a steel trap,

and it too was utterly silent.

What can we do

but keep on breathing in and out,

modest and wiling, and in our places?

Listen, listen, I'm forever saying.

Listen to the river, to the hawk, to the hoof,

to the mockingbird, to the jack-in-the-pulpit-

then I come up with a few words, like a gift.

Even as now

Even as the darkness has remains the pure, deep darkness.

Even as the stars have twirled a little, while I stood here,

looking up,

one hot sentence after another.

Mary, the great translator. She takes the lives of animals and puts them into words. Even the dead bear and otter speak to us in that we are to listen to life while we live, and not to death. So now, in the Gulf of Mexico, the dying animals are fleeing from the outer waters to die in the marshes, alone. Or so says the morning paper. Why is it that we as a people are waking up to life by listening to death? What if we listened, really listened, and put into words the beauty of the non-oiled habitats and splashed them all over our media, and not just in isolated books of prayers and poetry? What if every word spoken or written was a prayer of hope that we might listen and love while we may, and be grateful for this gift.

What words come to you when you look up at the stars?