Life's Small Things

A few things brought this 3+ year old poem fresh to mind yesterday:
1) I finally found a beautiful recycled glass jug at Ten Thousand Villages to replace the one the cat broke all those years ago; and we christened it last night, filled with water to rehydrate the cells after some lovely ruby red Carmenere.
2) Brianna's kind invitation to guest blog on her 'winter survival plan' brain child, Reflections on Darkness, has encouraged the light-dark motif to begin playing around the edges of my winter-slumbering consciousness. As I wonder if words will come again, I recall that they have come before.
3) As life continues to meander through its many patches of shadow and brilliance, and as I fail and succeed, fall and pick myself up again as much as I ever have, this poem helps re-ground me by reminding me that today's struggle and this year's struggle are also yesterday's and last year's and next year's; that mine is yours and theirs and ours and God's ("In all our wanderings, in light and in dark, you are the journey and the journey's end."); and that the hope and longing - and the journey in and through and towards them - remain constant, and must be kept alive, and are really what counts.
"How we get there is where we arrive." (Richard Rohr)

SMALL THINGS

Today the cat broke my treasured water jug, a wedding gift from friends.

I cried as I swept up the shards of glass.

Today a friend spontaneously ploughed our oppressive mountains of snow.

We were left with miraculous open space, and the faintest hint of tender green.

Today something was irretrievably lost.

Today something was given, something gained.

Today I was ugly and angry with my daughter over nothing important.

We both cried, and I wondered how I am wounding her.

Today she asked for a kiss on her bumped head.

I marvelled that my loving touch still holds healing magic.

Today love was trampled and neglected.

Today love was simply asked for and freely given.

Today power was abused and vulnerability wounded.

Today there was connection, and tenderness, and healing.

I am a lover and a hater, a hurter and a healer, a bully and a friend.

I am control-freak one moment, carefree singing the next.

I am light and dark, good and evil, hidden and revealed.

Driven at times by an inner force of injury and rage,

Love rises at others to turn my small choices to good.

I am hopeful and despairing, as life’s small things bring loss or gain, fracture or growth,

As small things reveal the great circle of death and life before which I am powerless.

I am a small thing – powerless, yet powerfully held in the greater circle of love.

And so I watch the fall and the splinter, helpless to prevent or repair.

I know the wound and the wounding, and the barriers to love.

I hope, too, for the unsolicited miracle of healing,

For all that restricts to be pushed aside,

For the gift of a wide open space in which love can grow up

Like a tender shoot.

Rachael Barham – Thursday 26^th February 2009

An affirmation: on returning home after being away

Isn't it such a gift to go away and leave one's everyday life behind for just a little while? And then isn't it also a gift to return to it, hopefully refreshed and with perspective regained and energy renewed? 

This is how I am feeling after a flying (but very precious) visit to my dear parents in England. I love the fresh eyes this gives me for my home, my everyday tasks, and especially my beloved two. It reminds me again (again, again) of the preeminence of love, and the smallness and pettiness of the concerns I can get caught up in. And so I long to recommit myself to this life, these dear people, the tasks and days I have been given, with all that I am and have; and particularly to commit myself to love above all - to love in all its patience, kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, trust, and delight. The sort of love that my small self, caught up in it-self, cannot manage, but that my True Self - centred and sourced from deep within and far beyond - can receive and live as gift. 

So this morning I re-member a simple meditation and affirmation that I wrote last summer on returning from six weeks in Europe, and I offer it to you too, as a way to re-call and rededicate yourself to the life YOU have been given. Because "This is my life!" Try saying this out loud, with a shifting emphasis on each word in turn, and feel what this means for you and what it releases inside you.

          THIS is my life.
          Right here, right now.
          It is not elsewhere
          and it is no different than it is.

          This IS my life.
          I cannot imagine myself out of or beyond it.
          Neither can any shortcomings,
          disappointments or misgivings
          alter or remove what IS.

          This is MY life.
          No-one else can live it.
          And only I have the power to choose 
          what it is
          or what it can be.

          This is my LIFE.
          It is not a game or a show
          or a dress rehearsal.
          It is LIFE itself, given to me,
          and more than the sum of its parts.

          THIS. IS. MY. LIFE.

          (Tuesday 28th June 2011)

What Love Does {More Reflections on the Most Excellent Way}

With foot on the garden fork, its prongs sunk into the roots of another vigorous weed, I lend my weight to the downward push and upward lift. Though it feels too late, I am finally making space for things to be planted and grow up in this thirsty ground. Roots separate from earth, extra soil and needed worms are shaken off, and the dandelion joins a growing pile beside me. Also beside me, a little girl makes circling turns of the vegetable plot, asking her questions and sharing her worries as she walks. 

I am so grateful Love came to me and called me today. I am so grateful that the To-Do list was left behind and that I remembered what love is and does. 

Love makes space for the other.

Here the space is created by no errands to run, no people to see. And here space is created by a task that allows togetherness without intensity: our eyes don’t often meet but our hearts and minds can, and there is the rhythm of the push and lift, and of the circling turns, to keep us both occupied and yet available.

And so, as I dig and she paces, I ask her questions; and there is no way she could know from my casual tone and downturned eyes how deeply I long to hear her answers, how infinitely precious this conversation is to me. I cherish the way a soul hides its secrets, and then how it unfurls these secrets, like a fern in the spring, when it senses that safety and acceptance are coming out to meet them. The unfurling happens slowly at first, then with growing boldness and freedom, as each new leaf or tendril meets the sun and moisture it craves. 

I hear this growing boldness and freedom in her voice – in the confusion she expresses, the emotion she begins to convey and the rising desire to hear my response.

And as we talk and the relief starts to flood her veins – simply that she is heard and understood and loved – she tells me why she had been so silent walking home after school. She was thinking, muddled, worried, and deciding she would talk to God about all this swirl later, when she went to bed. But, she tells me, it’s like God has already heard her and already answered and helped her through this conversation. Even before she really prayed. She was amazed and grateful to realise this. And I was grateful too: that Love came out to meet us both today, and that Love created a space for us to meet each other.

And isn’t this what love does? Isn’t it always running to meet us? Always longing to be gracious to us and rising to show us compassion?*

Isn’t love what makes space for us? And also what fills the spaces between everything and inside everything, by always going out of itself, out towards the other and down into the low and thirsty places? 

Doesn’t it always answer before we call and hear while we still speak?*

We go inside together, and while I’m washing the dirt from under my nails I tell her that if she ever wants to talk about these things again she only needs to ask. She’s silent for a moment, but the freedom is still there to be vulnerable, and she ventures: “I’m wondering what you’re thinking now. Are you thinking that you’re glad this conversation is over, that it went on too long?” 

I pull her to me and look into her eyes – because there are times when the eyes do need to meet – and tell her softly, truly, that I love to talk about these things with her, love to hear her, always love to hear her.

Because that’s what love does.

* Luke 15:17; Isaiah 30:1; Isaiah 65:24.

On the most excellent way: Rocks and remaining

Two small sections of my dreams remained with me when I woke up this morning, and I was somehow reminded of them by the slow and rhythmic swing of the hammock this afternoon. The one I will reflect on today was of a large rock that I was unable to move despite my best efforts. On waking, the familiar words “If I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” joined this dream picture; so later, on my sunny hammock, I turned to 1 Corinthians 13, that passage beloved of weddings and quote books, to be reminded...

Love: The most excellent way. Also the most challenging way: often so difficult to truly find, then fraught with pain and failure and disappointment, and oh-so-hard to remain on and walk well.

But, I reflected today, could this most excellent way be so hard largely because it is so simple and so unrewarding in the ways I desire to be rewarded? I have no great longing to move real mountains with my faith or my prayers, but there are plenty of metaphorical mountains I would like to see completely out of the picture. It is so easy to believe – somewhere deep inside, though often not consciously – that it is the removal of certain situations, challenges, imperfections, sadnesses or deficiencies that would finally complete my life, making me utterly happy and fulfilled. Another angle on this metaphor is that moving a mountain or a rock has a certain thrill and triumph about it; its removal (or moval?!)  is a concrete, measurable, noticeable achievement. And who doesn’t love those?  Thus it is also easy to believe that experiences of achievement and accomplishment are what I am lacking and need to pursue.

Yet, in my dream, the rock I was trying and failing to move remained, and the challenge was issued – is constantly and wordlessly issued – despite and in place of this failure: to make love my goal and my priority. In other words, this dream task I was focussed on and failing at was not really the needful, important task at all. The task I’ve been called to, and that all of us have surely been called to in different ways and contexts, is simply (and challengingly) to love. Though maybe the way of love has the potential to be less challenging if I really make it the focus of my desires, energies and priorities; if I turn my back for a moment on the rock that calls me so urgently and ask instead what it would mean to love, just to love – here and now.

And so, today, I faced a whole day with nothing in my diary; no appointments, no great tasks, no worthy achievements awaited me. But what I did have was a family I love and who I am lucky enough to be loved by in return (as if this love began with me!); and a home to tend and create for them, a task that often seems so small and yet so never-ending and thankless. Such an apparently thankless and endless task begs the pointed question: what, in fact, makes me ‘something’? And what makes me ‘nothing’? 

To (try to) move mountains without love, I continue to learn, is what makes me nothing. But to turn my focus away from the mountains – either the great challenges and imperfections, or achievements and glories – and bend down to love, even after I have failed at this task twenty times already today? This is the most excellent way.

 

This is how I learn to remain in his love, and I have discovered too long and slow that apart from this love I can do nothing.

So, today, the rock I turned my eyes from was my ‘To Do’ list, and the tyranny of the computer, and the ego demands of ‘productivity’ with associated recriminations of ‘uselessness’; and the bending down and reaching up to love took the form of tidying my kitchen, preparing a simple summer lunch to share over conversation with my husband in the garden, hanging laundry in the sun, walking to pick up my daughter from school, and giving her space of time and heart to talk out her eight-year-old worries. And here’s the unsurprising surprise: it was precious, and priceless, and simple, and satisfying. No doubt there will be days to turn love towards the moving of mountains (can the two not come together?), but not today.

Grieve, my soul.

Grieve, my soul.
Grieve what is and was and could have been.
Grieve the desires so deeply hidden
they have never seen the light.
And grieve the longings once covered,
Now freshly opened like a raw wound
Gently weeping;
Now freshly opened like a door
onto an imagined future never to be,
A life never to be born.

Grieve, o my soul,
the love you yearn for and have never tasted,
the life you dream of and have never lived.
Grieve, too, the love and life that have passed
so fleetingly through your hungry hands.
Grieve the person you are and the person you want to be.

Do not fear to grieve, beloved soul.
But grieve that for lack of grief
Hope has grown dim, love grown cold,
And hopelessness taken root.
Grieve to soften your hardened heart
And be roused from your slumber.
Grieve
and be raised to life again.

Grieve till all your tears are shed
For they will leave your eyes
Clean and clear,
Wide open onto the world
You have been blind to.
And each will fall
As rain onto thirsty ground
And as sorrow's seed sown for joy's harvest.

What I learnt from Peggy

Yesterday I went to the funeral of a housebound elderly lady that I visited, who last week lost her battle with cancer after many years of other illness and of being attached to an oxygen line. Before this opening sentence fills your mind with clichés of a quiet, sweet old woman visited compassionately day and night by a saintly, selfless younger woman, let me burst your bubble and tell you that the reality was a lot more dappled and paints neither of us in a totally flattering light. But as reality is all we have and are, then maybe this picture is nonetheless worth painting – honestly, gratefully, and graciously – with an eye on all that I have gained and learned through this relationship. So, if such things can be boiled down (and they have to be somewhat for a blog!), here are four things I learned from Peggy:

1) I am not in the running for sainthood...

...Now this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone reading this, and it surely is no surprise to me! And yet, when I got the chance to deliver a Christmas meal package and gift to Peggy for the first time a few years ago, I was picturing the sort of pleasant and unchallenging interchange that Amélie and I had with our nonagenarian neighbour in England – a sweet old lady who was easy to converse with and grateful for everything, never demanded more than I offered, and was always appropriate and delighted with Amélie. So when, on our first visit, Peggy responded with less than full enthusiasm about the gift I’d chosen her, I was perplexed and a little offended; she wasn’t rude, but she was ‘too honest’ and didn’t give back to me what I secretly thought she owed in gratitude. When, soon after my second visit, she began to call too regularly and ask for help, and to turn a little nasty if I said no, I was horrified, angered and terrified by turns. How could I extricate myself from this misguided commitment that was evidently heading towards disaster?! But it didn’t, and I didn’t try, and instead both of us gradually, painfully negotiated over time the ups and downs of the relationship: the humanity of conversation, laughter and surplus food exchanges; the occasional nasty name or slam of the phone being hung up on me; the gratifying moments of deepening friendship and needed help offered; the struggle to recognise manipulation, sift my own motives, prioritize, and know when to say yes or no; the little messages and gifts of candy sent to Amélie (or Crunchy, as Peggy called her, after the loud crunching of proffered Ganong mints that made Peggy laugh); and the window onto my own selfishness, smugness and hard-heartedness. Because Peggy was no saint, it was obvious that I wasn’t one either, and in the end this was a gift, and an invitation to be myself – as I am, and working towards being the best me possible.

2) All humans are a mixture of brokenness and tenderness

Much of Peggy’s life had been troubled, and the rejection and betrayal she had experienced clearly showed their heads from time to time; yet she was also affectionate and honest, curious and gruffly grateful, generous and shrewdly funny. She liked to call just to find out what I was up to and tell me how she was doing. She enjoyed teasing and recounting funny incidents. She loved the crooning of Elvis and Daniel O’Donnell, her wrestling shows and daytime soap operas, treats of microwave popcorn or frozen yoghurt, novels and crossword puzzles, people-watching and dog poo patrol out of the window, cuddly animals and any moving or talking toy. Most of all, Peggy loved each friend in her life in a very simple, childlike way, offering so much affection. And when she got mean she would usually call back again, after hours or days, and apologize – you can’t ask more than that. Once, when her call and request came on a busy day that saw me already feeling overstretched and a touch self-important, she responded to my “No” by calling me an ‘uppity b**ch’. I said a polite goodbye and put the phone down on her this time. Then I fumed and bristled and waited for her repentant call, until I felt convicted that my own manner and tone had actually been worthy of such a name this time, and so swallowed my pride and called to say sorry myself. And so my own tenderness showed through my brokenness, and we were simply humans together, each of us such a beautifully mixed bag.

3) God’s presence is a gift available to everyone

One of the things about Peggy that not many had the privilege of seeing was the way in which, when she occasionally asked to be prayed for, her sometimes tough exterior would soften, she would tear up and, afterwards, would place her hand on her heart and shyly say “Feels good, donnit?” It was special to see how sensitive she was to God’s presence, even though faith or religion were not things she gave much thought or time to. In this, too, she taught me: that however much I, or any of us, try to earn or hide from or strive after or quantify or rationalize God’s Presence, it is Pure Gift and available to all of us if we can present ourselves simply like the children we are, not pretending or trying to be anything but those mixed bags of brokenness and tenderness. I was able to say goodbye to Peggy the afternoon before she died; she was asleep and no longer aware of what was going on around her, but another friend and I got to hold her hands and pray for her one last time. The previous day, though, I called her in hospital to see how she was, and she sounded terrible, as if she could hardly breathe; she told me the nurses were with her, and that she was getting ready to go – “You know where, right?!” While some might call this naivety or wishful thinking on her part, I call it the Reality of God’s Love that she had struggled with much of her life and yet longed for, experienced, and somehow come to trust.

4)Love is an action not just an emotion

As someone who had voluntarily become estranged from all family members in the last years of her life, Peggy obviously felt even more keenly her connection with and need for others who cared for her and called on her. And a good few people stepped into those shoes in various ways, including a lady who took Peggy into her home for the last year, giving her a real home, companionship, care, and an amazing view from the sun room where she sat and watched the world, read or snoozed in her new reclining chair. Others, like me, just visited now and then, and helped in small ways like taking out the garbage, washing her hair, changing the time on her watch (Jeremy’s job every spring and fall!) or running other small errands. I swung between feeling, on my overstretched days, that I was being asked too much of, and feeling at other times that I wasn’t offering enough. What difference was I honestly making to her life? Could such simple actions really be called love or service? Peggy would often say “Love ya!” to me at the end of a phone call and I would either dodge replying in kind, or choose to say it back, feeling a little guilty that I didn’t FEEL more affectionate towards her. As time went on, though, I grew to understand that the amount of affection I felt towards her was really beside the point; as one human reaching out to another, and keeping on doing so through thick and thin, I WAS giving love. And Peggy herself received the simple fact of me ‘showing up’ as love - turns out even 'mixed bags' can do that! This is a sentiment that the minister echoed at the funeral: to be able to look back on Peggy’s life and see that she found a group of friends who cared for her and made her happy, who loved her even when it was hard, and who she loved, is really all that matters in the end. As I ended my last call with Peggy, I volunteered the “Love you!” for the first time myself, so that Peggy’s gravelly “Love ya!” in reply turned out to be the last words I heard her say.

Preparing a table

How many different tables did you sit around today? Who did you share a meal with? What did that mealtime mean to you, and to those with you?

Shared time around a table is one of the simple and often taken-for-granted blessings of life, bringing us not just nourishment and enjoyment of taste and texture, but also connection, communication, and celebration. For me today, each ‘table’ – both actual and metaphorical– that has been prepared for me, or that I have prepared, has revealed a unique aspect of what the gift of a mealtime can be...

A table of togetherness and communication: The breakfast table with Amélie was a time for me to love her by laying on delicious, nourishing food for her to enjoy – a whole-wheat maple cinnamon waffle with sea-salted butter, organic apple slices, fruit juice, and fair trade hot chocolate made with local raw milk. And while she ate and I pottered, we talked about both of our dreams that night, and she shared her excitement about the day, and her thoughts on life and chance and death and heaven. As we got ready to walk to church in the sun, she said what a nice time of talking it had been, and I agreed – we had communicated and reconnected.

A table of friendship and familiarity: The early morning ‘Celtic liturgy’ service that we participate in begins with freshly brewed fair trade coffee and something home-baked – usually by gifted and open-handed Carol, today some yummy cinnamon raisin scones – laid out on the café counter for anyone to grab before they sit down at one of the tables. It is a casual, relaxed meeting with friends over a bite to eat, before we enjoy the familiarity of a home-grown liturgy that is meaningful to us as individuals and as a community, with time to read aloud the lectionary readings for the day and share our thoughts, and later our prayers. In words from the liturgy, the blessing of this time is in both its ‘mystery and predictability’.

A table of forgiveness and mercy: And then, each week as part of this gathering, we are invited by the liturgy to: “Come to this table, you who have much faith, and you who would like to have more; you who have been here often, and you who have not been for a long time; you who have tried to follow Jesus, and you who have failed. Come; it is Christ who invited us to meet him here.” We then pass the bread and wine to each other, and I was struck this morning by the fact that I was passed the elements by someone who I know has needed to extend forgiveness to me recently, and that I in turn passed it on to Jeremy, whose love for me must constantly be expressed in forgiveness and mercy, and to whom I too extend these gifts of love. A little later, we read part of St. Patrick’s prayer, the Deer’s Cry or Breastplate, and I was moved again by the affirmation that Christ is on my left and my right – embodied in these two with whom I exchange forgiveness – and by the prayer that Christ “be in the heart of each to whom I speak, in the mouth of each who speaks unto me.” Though I often wish the prayer affirmed Christ’s presence in MY heart and mouth, I see the profound truth hidden in the fact that Christ is always found in the ‘other’, if I have eyes to see.

A table of blessing and family: The children were leading the later, ‘family’ service today, and Amélie and I had been asked to give out the bread and wine along with other parent-child teams (two communion tables in one morning!). I felt richly blessed and privileged to be alongside my daughter as she solemnly offered the plate of bread to each person with the carefully memorized words “The body of Christ broken for you”, and as I then offered the ‘wine’. Many who came to the table we ‘prepared’ were families, children, and I was thankful for the mysterious and inexplicable yet also very concrete and simple nature of this sacrament – it is a table at which we are all welcome.

A table of celebration and laughter: It felt like the first day of spring today – finally, a warm weekend! – and we decided to enjoy an impromptu picnic with friends in the sun in St Andrews, a local seaside town where we could lay out all our offerings of French bread and chicken, hummus and olives, grapes and chips (aka crisps!) on a picnic blanket overlooking the glistening ocean, share stories and jokes, laugh, and celebrate together the blessings of friendship, humanity, good food and sunshine.

A table of generosity and beauty: The next table that was prepared for me was something of a surprise – a little side table (that Amélie laboured over setting up for me in the garden as I snoozed in the hot car!) bedecked with pretty cloth and flower vase, in order to beautify my first hammock experience of the year. It was a heartfelt, thoughtful act of generosity, much like the card and flowers she spent ALL her money on for me yesterday, and so as I swung in the hammock I was basking in this spontaneous and undeserved love, as much as in the sun. With her, more than with anyone else in this world, I am constantly aware of my shortcomings and failures, and so her tenderness and generosity towards me undoes me. It is mercy and grace poured into my cup and overflowing. I have shared so many table-times with my family – some happy, and some miserable, angry or stressful – but still we gather to meet and eat together every day, demonstrating our ongoing love and mercy towards each other as we are. I remember an idea from Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy, that the Bible’s talk of compassion or mercy (both from God to us and from us to each other, especially those closest to us) would best be translated by the word pity, the point being that it is something we don’t like to admit our need of, a word we might even be insulted by, but is in fact something we DESPERATELY need. We are all so wounded (and wounding) that only pity makes life and love possible for us. So, today, I feel pitied, and I drink it in like a cup of cold water in a desertland.

A table of sharing and connection: My last table of the day was a weekly potluck meal with friends, made possible by the sacrificial and joyful hospitality of Grace and Mat. The food is always wonderful and varied, the atmosphere is comfortable and happy, good conversations take place, connections are renewed or created, and there is usually at least one song – and sometimes lots! – playing on the radio Classic Countdown (from 1975 today!) that prompts over half the room to stand up in the kitchen and boogie! The sharing of the food at such a gathering – each offering unique and often complementary to the other parts – mirrors the best of what a mealtime can be, as each person shares the truth and gift of who they are, and receives in turn the gift of the other.

“Christ beside me, on my left and my right.”

So, dear friends and readers and fellow journeyers on the path of ‘Learning to Savour’ all that life offers, I would love to hear (if you are in fact there, and have read this far!) about a recent meal of yours and what it meant to you – either in the simple enjoyment of some great food, or in the gift of those you shared it with. This will have to take the place, for now, of sharing a REAL meal together! Please share...

'Baptism: The Good Fathers' by Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I was reminded of this incredible poem, that never fails to move me, by a friend's wonderful post, entitled 'Be your own man'

BAPTISM: THE GOOD FATHERS

by Dr. C.P. Estés

Our bodies painted red by the dawn sky,
our hair stuck up in cockscombs from sleeping,
we two snuck down to the rowboats.

We wobbled across the lake toward the lily ponds
to gather blooms for our mothers. What a big boy!
What a big girl! they would exclaim upon our return.

We tugged up the white blush flowers with roots so long,
till the bottom of our boat was filled to the bow.
And as we turned toward home the rain began.
Then fog threw back its hood and roared; and we rowed.
The waves turned black, and we rowed.

We lost first one oar and then the other; and we cried out.
Our thin night clothes stamped with cowboys and stars
went transparent like tattoos
all over our pale blue bodies,
and we cried out, Mother! Father! God! Help us!

Death put its hands over our eyes, and suddenly the fog
was pierced. Leaping and bucking came
a battered wooden boat filled with four phantoms,
rowing and rowing like madmen,
their faces distorted by rain and rage, eight oars
slugging the roiling waters over and over,
and they were calling out our names, bellowing
over the storm, Hold on! Hold on! We are coming for
you!

Vessel crashed into vessel, and big wet hands flailed
till two huge wraiths of the lake rolled into our boat.
They hooked oars into iron stocks, tethered the boats,
and we crouched beneath the phantom rowers’ arms
as they rowed and rowed, cursing words we did not know,
as they rowed through the heavy drapes of rain and noise,
and with every hit of swash, lilies spewed overboard,
floating and drowning in the spume behind us.

And when at last our vessels ran into the soft slough,
and the rain went sideways,
the gray-faced phantoms grabbed us up, snagging
long ropey roots and green-heart leaves
and dangling white lilies as well.

With us in arms they strove up the howling hill,
holding us hard against their bony breasts,
shielding our faces with their hands.

And then finally, in the sudden heat from the open cabin door,
they bowed their heads like horses, offering us
held out like armfuls of heavy wild bouquets,
– two trembling children covered with broken flowers –
delivered into the arms of the weeping women.

When I dream of that time so long ago,
though in years intervening,
there would be at least one long year
of silence, one of forgetfulness, and
one of forgiveness, even so — in that one despond
of fog and rain and waves, these flares remain lit:

the men
who rowed the boat;
the men
who climbed the hill;
the men
who carried us toward home …
the uncles, the brothers, the fathers…
who despite their imperfections,
did not forsake The Heart of God –
that is, a child stranded in the storm –
these souls, all of them, now anointed forever
with the waters from all the tempests
they have braved,
now anointed forever
by the fragrance of the wild lilies
they have, with great effort,
carried up from out of the dark …

———————

“Baptism: The Good Fathers”, © 1990, 2010, All rights reserved. Dr. C.P. Estés, poem from La Pasionaria: Collected Poems of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés: A Manifesto on The Creative Fire. This particular work may be used non-commercially as long as it is kept entirely intact, not added to nor taken from, and this complete notice including usage, author’s name and copyright notice are clearly printed upon it. Other permissions ngandelman@aol.com

Called back by Love

There was a little line in my last post that just struck me as I sat down to write this one: “Sometimes those things call out to me so loudly that I can hardly hear anything else, but the voice that calls me back is, I hope, love.” I was talking specifically about the challenges of parenting, and the fact that the desire for pleasure and ease can draw me away from what it’s really all about – love. Today, though, I’ve had one of those precious moments that happen now and then, and for which I am truly grateful, where I feel called back to the centre by and to Love itself.

These moments often occur for me on the edges of sleep, and this time it was as I woke up from a nap this afternoon (after last night’s predicted lack of sleep, due to sleeping in a tent in the garden!), with a realization of feeling slightly lost, floundering, uncentred, and with the need to spend time with God and return to what really matters. Such moments of being called back are pure grace, because without them I am constantly wandering off onto the peripheries or trying to be the centre of my own world. The experience of ‘uncentering’ definitely creeps up on me more quickly and easily in the summer season, when lack of healthy structure and routine, especially in prayer, can throw me slightly off-course, and when the many gifts of life take up so much of my time and attention that the Giver can get pushed oh-so-subtly to the side. The truth is that there are so many voices calling for my attention – and sometimes they seem louder by far than the One Voice that gives me Life and that I long to turn my ears and heart towards. Try as I might, I am simply not able to get away from the need to make regular time and space to listen for that quieter, stronger voice in prayer. But, thankfully, when I don’t, it catches up with me at some moment when I stop long enough to hear it whisper. And if I will rush to kneel and listen, throwing all I am and have back towards the centre I’ve lost sight of, and admitting again how desperately I need help, I am straight away caught back up into true Life and Love. I love the way one simple psalm can become a tool for this task and grace of returning and recentering. And how, from the rediscovered Centre, I can gratefully dance back out again to all the tasks and people that make up my life, now held and fed and loved.

So, now that Love has called me back to the centre again today, I’m remembering the words of C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, and taking them as an invitation to me in this summer season:

The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back, in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.