Tag: contentment

There is Meaning

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Of course, in life there are moments of darkness.
There are periods of discouragement.
There are times when we lose sight of the beauty of the sky for all the clouds.
You may have to bear severe sickness,
or deal with tremendous pain,
or you may be disappointed in this or that.
But remember, whatever difficulty you have to face,
it will not last.
It is only a cloud.
For God has made each of us with a purpose.

We are made for joy.
But this joy can never be fully experienced here on earth.
God’s joy is ultimately realized in eternity.
To be a Christian is to understand that the cross,
and the suffering of the cross, has meaning,
and that suffering is part of our state on this earth.
Don’t expect paradise on earth.
Don’t.
But there is meaning,
and this meaning is the love of God
and gratitude for life on this earth.
Whatever your state,
whatever your situation,
whatever your purpose,
always remember that you are made for joy.
~Alice Von Hildebrand

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It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo.
The ones that really mattered.
Full of darkness and danger they were.
And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end…
because how could the end be happy?
How could the world go back to the way it was
when so much bad had happened?
But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow.
Even darkness must pass.”
~J.R.Tolkien

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When we feel overwhelmed and discouraged,
when it seems all is in shadow,
we know we are part of a great story and the plot progression is a mystery.

We are promised light and joy at the end, no question about it.
We pass through the shadows, the clouds clear
and the darkness will pass through us.

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Recovered What Is Lost

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noblessesunset

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The songs of small birds fade away
into the bushes after sundown,
the air dry, sweet with goldenrod.
Beside the path, suddenly, bright asters
flare in the dusk. The aged voices
of a few crickets thread the silence.
It is a quiet I love, though my life
too often drives me through it deaf.
Busy with costs and losses, I waste
the time I have to be here—a time
blessed beyond my deserts, as I know,
if only I would keep aware. The leaves
rest in the air, perfectly still.
I would like them to rest in my mind
as still, as simply spaced. As I approach,
the sorrel filly looks up from her grazing,
poised there, light on the slope
as a young apple tree. A week ago
I took her away to sell, and failed
to get my price, and brought her home
again. Now in the quiet I stand
and look at her a long time, glad
to have recovered what is lost
in the exchange of something for money.
~Wendell Berry “The Sorrel Filly”

tonypony

On the final day of summer, it seems much is lost. I struggle to stay awake to each passing moment, wanting to hang on tight to what has just disappeared into the ether of time.

These lost moments are not for sale; there is no price high enough. They can be recovered, treasured up, stored away.

Never to be forgotten.

homertony

Hardly a Waste

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northcounty2

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur
of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.”
– John Lubbock

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As a child I liked to go out far into our hay field and find the tallest patch of grass.  There, like a dog turning circles before a nap,  I’d trample down the tall waving stems that stretched up almost to my eyes, and create a grass nest, just cozy enough for me.  I’d sit or lie down in this green fortress, gazing up at the blue sky, and watch the clouds drift lazily by.  I’d suck on a hollow stem or two, to savor the bitter grass juice.  Scattered around my grassy cage, looking out of place attached to the broad grass stems, would be innumerable clumps of white foam.  I’d tease out the hidden green spit bugs with their little black eyes from their white frothy bubble encasement.   I hoped to watch them spit, to actually see them in action, but they would leap away.

The grassy nest was a time of retreat from the world by being buried within the world.  I felt protected, surrounded, encompassed and free –at least until I heard my mother calling for me from the house, or a rain shower started, driving me to run for cover, or my dog found me by following my green path.

It has been years since I hid in a grass fort or tried to defoam spit bugs.   I am overdue, I’m sure. It is hardly a waste to rest encased in the bubble wrap of the world.

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Just Too Tired

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window2

Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.
Now I remember only the flavor –
not like food, sweet or sharp.
More like a fine powder, like dust.
And I wasn’t elated or frightened,
but simply rapt, aware.
That’s how it is sometimes –
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you’re just too tired to open it.
~Dorianne Laux “Dust”

crow

…I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again,
The long wait for the angel.
For that rare, random descent.
~Sylvia Plath from “Black Rook in Rainy Weather”

 

…it is no trick of radiance
nor is it random.
This descent to us,
planned and very real:
He seizes us and does not let go
even when we are too tired
to open to Him.
He makes it impossible to be neutral.
We wait,
this long wait of moving rocks;
tired of waiting,
seeking contentment while waiting
rapt,
aware,
weary,
awake.

The Health of Self-Forgetfulness

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begoniared

The nail of each big toe was the horn of a goat.  Thick as a thumb and curved, it projected down over the tip of the toe to the underside.  With each step, the nail would scrape painfully against the ground and be pressed into his flesh.  There was dried blood on each big toe. 

It took an hour to do each big toe.  The nails were too thick even for my nail cutters.  They had to be chewed away little by little, then flattened out with the rasp, washed each toe, dried him off, and put his shoes and socks back on.  He stood up and took a few steps, like someone who is testing the fit of a new pair of shoes. 
“How is it?”
“It don’t hurt,” he said, and gave me a smile that I shall keep in my safety deposit box at the bank until the day I die.
I never go to the library on Wednesday afternoon without my nail clippers in my briefcase.
You just never know.
~Richard Seltzer from “Toenails” from Letters to a Young Doctor

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I know for a while again
the health of self-forgetfulness,
looking out at the sky through
a notch in the valleyside,
the black woods wintry on
the hills, small clouds at sunset
passing across. And I know
that this is one of the thresholds
between Earth and Heaven,
from which even I may step
forth and be free.
– Wendell Berry from “Sabbath Poems”

 

brightnight

Whenever I lose perspective about what I’m trained to do
and who I am meant to serve,
when I wallow in the mud of self-importance
rather than in the health of self-forgetfulness~

I wash out a plug of wax from a deaf ear
and restore hearing
or clip someone’s crippling toenails
so they can step forth in freedom.

I’ve been given these tools for a reason
so need to use them.
You just never know.
.

royalannejune

 

 

To Catch the Sunset

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cupolawatson

sunset92horses

…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”

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When I pull open the barn doors
every morning
and close them again each evening,
as our grandparents did
one hundred years ago,
six rumbling voices
rise in greeting.
We exchange scents,
nuzzle each others’ ears,
rumble grumble back a response.

We do our chores faithfully
as our grandparents once did–
draw fresh water
into buckets,
wheel away
the pungent mess underfoot,
release an armful of summer
from the bale,
reach under heavy manes
to stroke silken necks.

We don’t depend
on our horses’ strength
and willingness to
don harness
to carry us to town
or move the logs
or till the soil
as our grandparents did.

Instead,
these soft eyed souls,
born on this farm
two long decades ago,
are simply grateful
for our constancy
morning and night
to serve their needs
until the day comes
they need no more.

And we depend on them
to depend on us
to be there
to open and close the doors;
their low whispering welcome
gives voice
to the blessings of
living on a farm
ripe with rhythms and seasons,
sunrises and sunsets,
as if yesterday, today and tomorrow are
just like one hundred years ago.

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Each Day a Haiku

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There are some people who write haiku poetry to make a living.
You know what I think?
We should make our living become haiku poetry.
You might toil in a clattering factory
or on a tossing fishing boat
or be battling to make a living in a dingy shop.
There are people who have written inspiring haiku poems in such unpoetic situations.
And we, if we really want to,
can make any occupation,
and twenty-four hours of each day,
into a poem.
Of course, first we have to create a heart
that is both serious and light!
We have to gaze below the surface of things,
search out the hidden beauty that is everywhere
and discover the glorious things all around us.
Then each day becomes a haiku poem.
~Dr. Takashi Nagai, survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bomb

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closed my eyelids to
finality of sunlight’s
reach, and glowed within

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Whispering Rain

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All day I have been closed up
inside rooms, speaking of trivial
matters. Now at last I have come out
into the night, myself a center

of darkness.
Beneath the clouds the low sky glows
with scattered lights. I can hardly think
this is happening. Here in this bright absence

of day, I feel myself opening out
with contentment.
All around me the soft rain is whispering
of thousands of feet of air

invisible above us.
~Wayne Dodd “Of Rain and Air”

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thistledowndrizzle

…he sought the privacy of rain,
the one time no one was likely to be
out and he was left to the intimacy
of drops touching every leaf and tree in
the woods and the easy muttering of
drip and runoff…

He could not resist the long
ritual, the companionship and freedom
of falling weather, or even the cold
drenching, the heavy soak and chill of clothes
and sobbing of fingers and sacrifice
of shoes that earned a baking by the fire
and washed fatigue after the wandering
and loneliness in the country of rain.
~Robert Morgan from “Working in the Rain”

There will be plenty of whispering and muttering this coming holiday weekend if the weather prediction holds out to be accurate for three days of rain.

Rain is what makes this part of the world special, but like Camelot, most people would prefer it would never fall till after sundown.  It is not a more congenial spot than Camelot.

I may be an oddity, somewhat typical of northwest-born natives.  I celebrate rain whenever it comes, whether downpour or whispering drizzle, before sundown or after sunrise. I grew up working outside in the intimacy of a drenching shower, yet am always happy to have an excuse to stay indoors to be putterer more than mutterer.

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Make the Best of What Remains

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sunsetwitness

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Every moment is a fresh beginning.
~T.S. Eliot

 

What is pertinent is the calmness of beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it…
For a great many people, the evening is the most enjoyable part of the day. Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day. After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?
~Kazuo Ishiguro from The Remains of the Day

 

I am ashamed to admit I squander time looking back,
yearning for a day that has long since passed,
tossing off these present precious hours
as somehow not measuring up to what came before.

There have been over thirty years
of such days in this farm country,
one flowing gently after another,
and every single one have been exactly what I’m looking for.

I shall toss my heart ahead and set out after it,
making the best of what remains of my day.

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Contentment Beyond Telling

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irisdepth

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“Last Light” photo of Twin Sisters at dusk by Joel DeWaard

How wonderful it was to love something
without the compromise of language.
~Jim Harrison

To plunge headlong into
the heart of a blossom, its amber eyes
inscrutably focusing on your own,
magnified by a lens of dew.
Whose scent, invisible,
drowns you in opulence, and for which
you can find nothing adequate to say.

Words stumble, cheapen, like when you try
and fail to describe to someone what
yesterday’s shadows looked like, racing
over the five layers of far hills, or how
the mountain stream muttered its way
between valley stones.

You sense that you are loved wholly,
yet are quite unable to understand why.
But then, you lift your face,
creased with the ordinary, to a heaven
that is breaking into blue,
and find your contentment utterly beyond
telling, unspeakable, uncontained.~Luci Shaw “Speechless” from her new collection Sea Glass

irispetal

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fuschia1

Although it doesn’t always take words to know
how deeply we love,
and are loved,
the Word is love
personified,
embodied,
bloodied,
unforgettable.

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