Category: contentment

It’s Like a Sanctuary

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A gang of crows was chasing off
a hawk. The little stream was laughing
and shushing itself. The hawk’s reflection
briefly blurred a pool of water
and then the pool went back to waiting
for nothing or the next reflection.
The maple trees were yellow and red,
but redder farther up the stream.
I wanted especially to share
the cloud of redder leaves upstream
with the little girl I had with me,
but she was sleeping. Walking home,
I thought the willow trees around
the pond were standing up like brooms
to sweep the sky. That was the voice
in my head describing the willow trees
as brooms, a thought to stop the world
for a moment’s moment. She might have thought
the willows looked like lashes winking
around a deep-green eye,
but as I say, she was asleep
for this excursion in the world.
And she hasn’t told me yet about
the voice inside her head. For the moment
that voice is learning how to listen
to its own mysterious silence. I expect
it’s like a sanctuary in there
with a candle glowing at the back of the room
and violets dotting the grass outside.
~Maurice Manning “Violets in the Fall” from Snakedoctor

My internal voice remains a mystery.

Although I know the silent words I perceive are my own thoughts, there are times when I wonder it that voice is coming from a place deeper than my own brain’s meanderings. Mostly it feels like running commentary about what is happening around me.

I can be surprised though.

A word I seldom use will pop up in my thoughts, with wonder or puzzlement – where did that come from and why now? Perhaps my voice is not just mine alone…

I do aim for an expectant inner stillness. without being asleep to the world. Quieting a busy brain isn’t easy. We need to retreat often to an internal sanctuary of calm, with gentleness and self-kindness, and just enough illumination to light the way to a bit of insight and a wisp of wisdom.

I’ll keep the candle glowing in the back.

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Just Checking…

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Heavy dreams—my hand
on your back to feel you breathe.
Night a blood orange.
~Emily Patterson “haiku at 4:11 AM“

At times I need to check if you are still with me –
breathing so quietly in your dreaming.

I have to lay a hand on your back to be sure.

Then I can fall to sleep, easing back
into the suspended dream I left, now sighing
lulled and lambent…

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Daisy Morning Music

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See, the grass is full of stars,
Fallen in their brightness;
Hearts they have of shining gold,
Rays of shining whiteness.

Buttercups have honeyed hearts,
Bees they love the clover,
But I love the daisies’ dance
All the meadow over.

Blow, O blow, you happy winds,
Singing summer’s praises,
Up the field and down the field
A-dancing with the daisies.
~Marjorie Pickthall “Daisy Time”

I still can’t say what life is for, but it can’t be to pretend
     that every part of it is knowable, or that what appears to be
to the naked eye or in the middle ground or documented on paper
     approximates a person any better than a daisy does our sun.

When at a loss for what I am, I know I must be feeling it
     deep in the layers, where a turbulence gives rise to clouds
so massive they collapse in a bliss of gravity, condensing into this
      music I can daisy into morning as it daisies me into morning.
~Timothy Donnelly from “Habitable Nebula”

It is possible, I suppose that sometime
we will learn everything
there is to learn: what the world is, for example,
and what it means. I think this as I am crossing
from one field to another…

At my feet the white-petalled daisies display
the small suns of their center piece, their – if you don’t
mind my saying so – their hearts. Of course
I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and
narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know?

But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;
for example – I think this
as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch –
the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the
daisies for the field.
~Mary Oliver from “Daisies”

I realize I can’t understand what all this world means.

No, I will remain in the dark until I cross from this daisy-strewn field to the next. I have to wait for heaven itself to see why we are illuminated by the Sun.

It is all cloud-covered mystery in the meantime, and sometimes a mean and joyless mystery – with pain and heartbreak and suffering, but just enough loving sacrifice to make it worthwhile.

How are we different from that stone, or that tree or that daisy?

We are breathed on.

God’s breath surges within us, as we laugh out loud, weep mightily and sing out His Words – struggling to be suitable for this field of stars, so often trampled and broken, but with plans to flourish under the illuminating stars created by the Son of heaven.

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Standing in Stillness

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Broad August burns in milky skies,
The world is blanched with hazy heat;
The vast green pasture, even, lies
Too hot and bright for eyes and feet.

Amid the grassy levels rears
The sycamore against the sun
The dark boughs of a hundred years,
The emerald foliage of one.

Lulled in a dream of shade and sheen,
Within the clement twilight thrown
By that great cloud of floating green,
A horse is standing, still as stone.

He stirs nor head nor hoof, although
The grass is fresh beneath the branch;
His tail alone swings to and fro
In graceful curves from haunch to haunch.

He stands quite lost, indifferent
To rack or pasture, trace or rein;
He feels the vaguely sweet content
Of perfect sloth in limb and brain.
~William Canton “Standing Still”

Sweet contentment is a horse dozing in the summer field, completely sated by grass and clover, tail switching and skin rippling automatically to discourage flies.

I too wish at times for that stillness of mind and body, allowing myself to simply “be” without concern about yesterday’s travails, or what duties await me tomorrow.

I flunked sloth long ago.  Perhaps I was born driven.  My older sister, never a morning person, was thoroughly annoyed to share a bedroom with a toddler who awoke chirpy and cheerful, singing “Twinkle Twinkle” for all to hear and ready to conquer the day.

Since retiring, I admit I am becoming accustomed now to sloth-dom, though I am still too chipper in the early morning. It is a distinct character flaw.

Even so, I’m not immune to the attractions of a hot hazy day of doing absolutely nothing but standing still switching at flies. I envy our retired ponies in the pasture who spend the day grazing, moseying, and lazing. I worked hard many years to make that life possible for them.

I want to use my days well.
I want to be worthy.
I want to know there is a reason to be here beyond just warning the flies away.

It is absolutely enough to enjoy the glory of it all.

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Singing the Morning In

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I’ll know the names of all of the birds
and flowers, and not only that, I’ll
tell you the name of the piano player
I’m hearing right now on the kitchen
radio, but I won’t be in the kitchen,

I’ll be walking a street in
New York or London, about
to enter a coffee shop where people
are reading or working on their
laptops. They’ll look up and smile.

Next time I won’t waste my heart
on anger; I won’t care about
being right. I’ll be willing to be
wrong about everything and to
concentrate on giving myself away.

Next time, I’ll rush up to people I love,
look into their eyes, and kiss them, quick.
I’ll give everyone a poem I didn’t write,
one specially chosen for that person.
They’ll hold it up and see a new
world. We’ll sing the morning in,

and I will keep in touch with friends,
writing long letters when I wake from
a dream where they appear on the
Orient Express. “Meet me in Istanbul,”
I’ll say, and they will.
~Joyce Sutphen “Next Time” from After Words

Oh sure – there are many things I would do differently if I could go back for a do-over. A lifetime is inevitably shot through with mistakes, poor choices and unfortunate opinions; mine is no different.

Yet there isn’t a “next time” or a “do-over.” It’s up to me with the time I have left to correct where I’ve been wrong and avoid repeating history.

Most important, I want to bask in the abundant blessings of the here and now.

I still have time to smile and laugh more, hug more, give myself away more, forgive more, sing more, be more grateful.

With this approach to the world I now occupy, I can share what delights me as it might delight others.

That’s still plenty to ponder and try to get right in this life.
I best get to it.
Sing the morning in with me, whoever and wherever you are.

courtesy of WWU Communications
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Just a Couple of Aging Fools

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All day he’s shoveled green pine sawdust
out of the trailer truck into the chute.
From time to time he’s clambered down to even
the pile. Now his hair is frosted with sawdust.
Little rivers of sawdust pour out of his boots.

I hope in the afterlife there’s none of this stuff
he says, while I broom off his jeans, his sweater flocked
with granules, his immersed-in-sawdust socks.
I hope there’s no bedding, no stalls, no barn

no more repairs to the paddock gate the horses
burst through when snow avalanches off the roof.
Although the old broodmare, our first foal, is his,
horses, he’s fond of saying, make divorces.

…he says
let’s walk up to the field and catch the sunset
and off we go, a couple of aging fools.

I hope, he says, on the other side there’s a lot
less work, but just in case I’m bringing tools.
~Maxine Kumin from “Chores”

photo by Emily Vander Haak

They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.
~Wendell Berry “They Sit Together on the Porch”

If just for a moment,
when this world is tilting so far
we just might fall off,
we pause to look at where we’ve been
and get our feet back under us.

The porch is a good place to start:
a bridge to what is beyond
without leaving the familiar.

Outside, looking square at the unknown,
yet still hearing and smelling and tasting
the love that dwells just inside these walls.

What could we want more
than to be missed when we step away?

Our voice, our words, our heart, our touch
never to be replaced,
its absence a hole impossible to fill?

When we are called back inside
where Love made us who we are,
may the “in between” of
time spent on the porch,
be even more treasured,
because two aging fools sat together there a spell.

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Putting It Off

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In summer, nothing happens.

What is the change in summer
of which one expects nothing?
Nature is not reborn,
nor does she perish except
in the streaks of a rare elm
that has outlived itself.
The weather conceals nothing:
the months are temperate,
even in the hardest rains
one may walk without a coat.
The gardens flourish, and bear
without a gardener’s help.

Sitting in windows at night
black cats and their masters
look out on summer; the moon
feeds their yellow visions,
the opened windows cool them…
One wants nothing to happen
forever, and thinks of those
who perhaps are ready to die,
except that it is summer
and they are putting it off.
~Robley Wilson from “In Summer, Nothing Happens”

photo of supermoon by Harry Rodenberger
photo by Harry Rodenberger

We’ve attended three memorial services so far this summer, and at least one more is on the calendar. Given a choice, all of these friends would have preferred to keep living at least through the summer, but God had other plans.

An eternal summer is in store for them, even if they wanted to put it off for a little while longer.

Each day becomes an unwarranted gift of time, summertime or not.
I would like to sit and watch while nothing whatsoever happens.

Now I’m aware: nothing happening is actually something very special.

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A Human Being, Not a Human Doing

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There comes the strangest moment in your life,
when everything you thought before breaks free—
what you relied upon, as ground-rule and as rite
looks upside down from how it used to be.

Your heart’s in retrograde. You simply have no choice.
Things people told you turn out to be true.
You have to hold that body, hear that voice.
You’d have sworn no one knew you more than you.

How many people thought you’d never change?
But here you have. It’s beautiful. It’s strange.
~Kate Light from “There Comes the Strangest Moment” in Open Slowly

This disease of being “busy” (and let’s call it what it is, the dis-ease of being busy, when we are never at ease) is spiritually destructive to our health and wellbeing.

It saps our ability to be fully present with those we love the most in our families, and keeps us from forming the kind of community that we all so desperately crave.

Tell me you remember you are still a human being,
not just a human doing.
Tell me you’re more than just a machine,
checking off items from your to-do list.
Have that conversation, that glance, that touch.
Be a healing conversation,
one filled with grace and presence.

Put your hand on my arm, look me in the eye,
and connect with me for one second.
Tell me something about your heart, and awaken my heart.
Help me remember that I too am a full and complete human being…
~Omid Safi from The Disease of Being Busy

It has been nearly three years since I hung up my stethoscope. I’m no longer paid to be very busy. It isn’t feeling strange to wake up with no “job” to go to.

I still am vigorously treading water but with no destination in mind other than to stay afloat. It’s enough to just move and breathe in this new and strangely unfamiliar territory.

It was scary at first, backing off from all-consuming clinic responsibilities, yet knowing I was becoming less effective due to my diminishing passion and energy for the work. I’d been working in some capacity for over fifty years, starting in high school.

I could barely remember who I was before I became a physician.

So here I am — changed and changing — volunteering here and there, budding and blooming in new colors and shapes, exercising a different part of my brain, and simply praying I make good use of the time left to me, being something as worthwhile as what I had been doing.

So, once again, my days have become… strangely beautiful… in ways I could never have imagined.

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I Love Color

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I love color.
I love flaming reds,
And vivid greens,
And royal flaunting purples.
I love the startled rose of the sun at dawning,
And the blazing orange of it at twilight.

I love color.
I love the drowsy blue of the fringed gentian,
And the yellow of the goldenrod,
And the rich russet of the leaves
That turn at autumn-time….
I love rainbows,
And prisms,
And the tinsel glitter
Of every shop-window.

I love color.
And yet today,
I saw a brown little bird
Perched on the dull-gray fence
Of a weed-filled city yard.
And as I watched him
The little bird
Threw back his head
Defiantly, almost,
And sang a song
That was full of gay ripples,
And poignant sweetness,
And half-hidden melody.

I love color….
I love crimson, and azure,
And the glowing purity of white.
And yet today,
I saw a living bit of brown,
A vague oasis on a streak of gray,
That brought heaven
Very near to me.
~Margaret E. Sangster “Colors”

photo by Harry Rodenberger

My eye always seeks out color
because there is so much gray as background and foreground.

My ear listens for the singing of sweet melodies
in the midst of mourning and sorrow.

My heart longs for hints of heaven in the daily ordinary
because this sad world wants to believe in the promises.

photo by Harry Rodenberger
Andrew Wyeth – Wind from the Sea, 1947
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A Fallen World

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On the second day of fog, she goes to meet it

sits on the broad root of a broken down
apple tree, remembers being a child
in such fog, searching for fairy houses.
She hears movement in the grass,
keeps very still while the veil of haze
rises to treetops bronzed
by the burn of the sun. Slowly
horses and deer appear all around her,
they graze close together,
nosing fallen apples, until she forgets
this is still a fallen world.
~Lonnie Hull DuPont, “On the Second Day of Fog” from She Calls the Moon by Its Name 

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
~Wendell Berry “The Peace of Wild Things“

When our grandchildren come to visit,
I watch as yet another generation rediscovers the mystery of
what we know about the joys and sorrows
of this fallen but redeemed world.

I am reminded there is light beyond the fearsome darkness,
there is peace amid the chaos,
there is a smile behind the tears,
there is stillness within the noisiness
there is rest despite the restlessness,
there is grace – ah, there is grace
as inevitably the old gives way to the new.

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