Tag: commitment

When the Rain Began

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The room darkened, darkened until
our nakedness became a form of gray;
then the rain came bursting,
and we were sheltered, blessed,
upheld in a world of elements
that held us justified.
In all the love I had felt for you before,
in all that love,
there was no love
like that I felt when the rain began…
~John Updike from “The Blessing” from Collected Poems.

As the rains return,
we shelter together,
blessed by years and miles,
our unknown become known,
our understanding breathed in silence.
Though we be gray as the clouds above,
our hearts beat in synchrony
each pulsing moment
more sacred than the last.

Seeing One Another

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emmachan1
photo by Hilary Gibson

Go north a dozen years
on a road overgrown with vines
to find the days after you were born.
Flowers remembered their colors and trees
were frothy and the hospital was

behind us now, its brick indifference
forgotten by our car mirrors. You were
revealed to me: tiny, delicate,
your head smelling of some other world.
Turn right after the circular room

where I kept my books and right again
past the crib where you did not sleep
and you will find the window where
I held you that June morning
when you opened your eyes. They were

blue, tentative, not the deep chocolate
they would later become. You were gazing
into the world: at our walls,
my red cup, my sleepless hair and though
I’m told you could not focus, and you

no longer remember, we were seeing
one another after seasons of darkness. 
~Faith Shearin “Sight”

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ben111588

The helpless state of a newborn adjusting to an unfamiliar world –
when all depends on
deep murmurs, shadowy faces and comforting arms,
full nipples and cleansing rags.
When all that can be said
are mewing cries and satisfied grunts.

Those long exhausting sleepless nights finally transition
to heart-warming smiles at dawn,
when we lock onto each other for survival,
peering into the mutual light and love in our eyes,
needing each other like no other;
it is always, and will be always, about those eyes.



This Momentous Giving

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To be amazed by love is not to be blinded but
to let the flare of wonder fill you
like air filling a sail.

Isn’t this the voice of God at work?

Even his silence breathes life into you, a golden sigh as fresh
as Eden. To love someone is not to lose anything,
but to gain it in giving it all away.
~Luci Shaw from “Amazed by Love” in Water Lines

Lovers must not live for themselves alone. 
They must finally turn their gaze at one another
back toward the community. 
If they had only themselves to consider,
lovers would not need to marry,
but they must think of others and of other things. 
They say their vows to the community as much as to one another,
and the community gathers around them
to hear and to wish them well, on their behalf and on its own. 

It gathers around them because it understands how necessary,
how joyful, and how fearful this joining is. 
These lovers, pledging themselves to one another “until death,”
are giving themselves away… 
Lovers, then, “die” into their union with one another
as a soul “dies” into its union with God. 

And so, here, at the very heart of community life,
we find … this momentous giving. 
If the community cannot protect this giving,
it can protect nothing—and our time is proving that this is so.
~Wendell Berry from Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community

Before God and this gathering, I vow from my heart and spirit that I will be your wife/husband for as long as we both shall live.

I will love you with faithfulness, knowing its importance in sustaining us through good times and bad.

I will love you with respect, serving your greatest good and supporting your continued growth.

I will love you with compassion, knowing the strength and power of forgiveness.

I will love you with hope, remembering our shared belief in the grace of God and His guidance of our marriage.

“And at home, by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be–and whenever I look up, there will be you.”

(our wedding vows for our September 19, 1981 wedding at First Seattle Christian Reformed Church — the last line adapted from Thomas Hardy’s  “Far From the Madding Crowd”)

Something Finished

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Gold of a ripe oat straw, gold of a southwest moon,
What is there for you in the birds, the birds, the birds, crying
down on the north wind in September, acres of birds spotting
the air going south?

Is there something finished? And some new beginning on the
way?

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.
~Carl Sandburg from “Fall Time” and “Autumn Movement”

My summer of “no doctoring” finishes today. I return to part-time clinical work tomorrow; a new beginning is on the way.

I am readying myself.

I consider how it will feel to put the stethoscope back on and return to spending most of my daylight hours in window-less rooms. Several months of freedom to wander and wonder will be tough to give up.

However, when I meet my first patient of the day, I’m “all in.” Someone is needing my help more than I need time off. The wind has shifted, it is time to migrate back to the work I was called to do over forty years ago.

Still I will look for beautiful things where I can find them, knowing that even though they don’t last, they will always be well worth the weeping.

Not to Stop Trying…

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Sometimes I think all the best poems
have been written already,
and no one has time to read them,
so why try to write more?

At other times though,
I remember how one flower
in a meadow already full of flowers
somehow adds to the general fireworks effect

as you get to the top of a hill
in Colorado, say, in high summer
and just look down at all that brimming color.
I also try to convince myself

that the smallest note of the smallest
instrument in the band,
the triangle for instance,
is important to the conductor

who stands there, pointing his finger
in the direction of the percussions,
demanding that one silvery ping.
And I decide not to stop trying,

at least not for a while, though in truth
I’d rather just sit here reading
how someone else has been acquainted
with the night already, and perfectly.
~Linda Pastan “Rereading Frost” from Queen of a Rainy Country. 

This morning

poem hopes 

that even though
its lines are broken 

its reader 

will be drawn forward to the part where blueberries
firm against fingers 

say roundness sweetness unspeakable softness
     in the morning
light.
~L.L. Barkat, “This Morning” from The Golden Dress

I want to write with quiet hands. I
want to write while crossing the fields that are
fresh with daisies and everlasting and the
ordinary grass. I want to make poems while thinking of
the bread of heaven and the
cup of astonishment; let them be

songs in which nothing is neglected,
not a hope, not a promise. I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable. I want them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the world;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.
~Mary Oliver “Everything”

I’m asked frequently by people who read this blog why I use poems by other authors when I could be writing more original work myself.

My answer, like poet Linda Pastan above is:

Sometimes I think all the best poems
have been written already,
and no one has time to read them,
so why try to write more?

Yet, like Linda, I’ve decided not to stop trying, since I’ve committed myself to being here every day with something that may help me and someone else breathe in the fragrance of words and the world. There are several hundred of you who do take time to read every day – such a privilege to share what I can with you!

Even when my lines are broken, or I say again what another has already said much better yet bears repeating — I too try to write with quiet hands, in reverence and awe for what unseeable gifts God has granted us all.

Let us celebrate by illuminating words and pictures which lift the veil.

Where Morning Lies

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Will there really be a “Morning”?
Is there such a thing as “Day”?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?

Has it feet like Water lilies?
Has it feathers like a Bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?

Oh some Scholar! Oh some Sailor!
Oh some Wise Man from the skies!
Please to tell a little Pilgrim
Where the place called “Morning” lies!
~Emily Dickinson

You are the future, the immense morning sky
turning red over the prairies of eternity…

You are the meaning deepest inside things
that never reveals the secret of its owner.
And how you look depends on where we are:
from a boat, you are shore, from the shore a boat.
~Rainer Maria Rilke,  from Love Poems to God from the Book of Hours

I know now what weariness is when the mind stops
and night is a dark blanket of peace and forgetting
and the morning breaks to the same ritual and the same
demands and the silence.
~Jane Clement from No One Can Stem the Tide

I head to clinic this morning
knowing from now on
my work will feel different after today,
no longer the same ritual,
no longer the same demands.

Mornings will be more resonant, depending on where I am:
from the boat I no longer must be shore,
from the shore I no longer need to row the boat.

I can simply be what the patient needs in the moment
and the patient is all I need.

Amen and amen.


Unhurried

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God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work. Only to know this, is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves.
Those who are in Christ share with Him all the riches of limitless time and endless years. For those out of Christ, time is a devouring beast; before the sons of the new creation time crouches and purrs and licks their hands.
~A. W. Tozer from The Knowledge of the Holy

When worries overwhelm and fretting becomes fearsome,
I need quieting.
When the noise of news headlines screams for attention,
I call out for quieting.
When there is sadness, conflict, tragedy, illness, estrangement,
I long for quieting.
When too many balls are juggled at once, and I drop one,
I desire quieting.
When the ache lasts too long, the tiredness lingers, the heart skips a beat, and one too many symptoms causes anxiety,
I am desperate for quieting.
When tempted and ready for surrender, forgetting confidence, conviction, commitment and faith,
I pine for quieting.
In order to stay still reflecting restoration and rest,
I am called to quieting.


Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage
~Thomas Merton

photo by Tomomi Gibson