The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on, Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
The heart of a woman falls back with the night, And enters some alien cage in its plight, And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars. ~Georgia Douglas Johnson “The Heart of a Woman” fromThe Heart of a Woman and Other Poems
Some mornings I’m not sure what else to do with my worry, so I fling my tender heart out ahead of me, hoping I might eventually catch up with it to bring it back home before nightfall.
Sometimes it is a race to see if anyone else rescues it first or if someone even notices it out there fluttering its way through the day, trying to stay aloft.
Perhaps, in its lonely flight, it will try winging its way home and there I’ll find it patiently waiting for me on the doorstep as I return empty-handed.
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Dear Daughter, Your father and I wish to commend you on the wisdom of your choices and the flawless conduct of your life
Dear Poet! Where is the full-length manuscript you promised us? Your check is waiting The presses are ready and the bookstores are clamoring for delivery
Dear Patient: The results of your blood tests reveal that your problem stems from a diet dangerously low in pizza and chocolate
Dear Mom, You were right about everything and I was an idiot not to listen ~Rhina Espaillat from “Undelivered Mail”
I never thought we’d end up Living this far north, love. Cold blue heaven over our heads, Quarter moon like chalk on a slate.
This week it’s the art of subtraction And further erasure that we study. O the many blanks to ponder Before the night overtakes us once more On this lonely stretch of road Unplowed since this morning; Mittens raised against the sudden Blinding gust of wind and snow, But the mailbox empty. I had to stick My bare hand all the way in To make sure this is where we live.
The wonder of it! We retraced our steps Homeward lit by the same fuel As the snow glinting in the gloom Of the early nightfall. ~ Charles Simic “Rural Delivery” from Selected Poems: 1963-1983
In snowy winter weather, our mailbox ends up in the middle of a huge drift from the blowing northeast wind. The box sits at the peak of the highest hill on our rural road, so the mail carrier can have a clear view of who is coming and going when they stop to put our mail inside.
The blowing snow also stops right here on our hill; no mail can be delivered. So, either my husband digs out the access to the mailbox or we choose to wait for the melt and thaw, and allow our mailbox to languish unopened for as long as it takes.
An empty mailbox is a lonely thing.
Junk mail isn’t the answer any more than junk food nourishes the body. These days, personal letters in the mailbox are few and far between. And even rarer are those heart-felt letters which are hand-written, lovingly stamped to be gratefully read and treasured.
When you write such letters to me, I delight as they fill my heart and my lonely mailbox – especially so on a dark, chilly winter night…
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What we were taught was nothing— our history like a husk, the desiccated wasp nest my daughter found at the park but disguised. Where is the life? Where was the life in that?
History as it was taught is nothing like that wasp nest which has its particular grooves, its exits and passageways written in wasp spit and wood.
Looking at this nest I see how everything was used. Our history of a wasp is its stings, but in this nest, even dead, I see the ornate stingless habitat, envision nests with stingers subdued, their larvae fattening sleek bodies of use and grace.
History as it was taught has been emptied and emptied out, its intricate well-laid cells disguised. They always teemed with sickness, utility, and violence. And each person who happened only once.
…And I think They know my strength, Can gauge The danger of their work: One blow could crush them And their nest; and I am not their friend.
And yet they seem Too deeply and too fiercely occupied To bother to attend. Perhaps they sense I’ll never deal the blow, For, though I am not in nor of them, Still I think I know What it is like to live In an alien and gigantic universe, a stranger, Building the fragile citadels of love On the edge of danger. ~James Rosenberg from “The Wasps’ Nest”
Over the years, we have had basketball-sized paper bald-faced hornet nests appear in various places on the farm. They hang from eaves or branches undisturbed as their busy citizens visit our picnics, greedily buzz our compost pile, shoot bullet-like out of the garbage can when I lift the lid. In short, their threat of using their weaponry control our moves during the summer.
Two years ago, a nest was built to include some Golden Delicious apples in an apple tree. This year, a nest hung suspended from the top branch of our tall big leaf maple tree in our front yard. It dangled there through the summer, growing week by week, with maple keys and leaves incorporated into it. Over the last month, it has been hanging alone on the bare tree.
During a northeast wind blast yesterday, I was returning home from a shopping trip when out of the corner of my eye, I saw this huge thing flying across our yard. I thought it was a large raptor, but then realized that our paper basketball had finally been jarred loose and was airborne.
I followed it until it landed in our field and gathered up the broken pieces into a grocery bag. My wise husband wouldn’t allow me to bring it in the house (“who knows what’s ready to wake up inside??”}, so I inspected it outside.
It was a magnificent feat of community cooperation and construction.
The nest had been abandoned, its workers dead and gone and its queen safely tucked into a winter hiding spot inside a tree trunk. Each nest happens only once, a fragile fortress for only a season.
The approach of winter had dealt a devastating blow and the nest disabled, now gone with the wind. It was torn free from its tight hold on a branch, flying aloft in its lightness of being, then fallen, crushed and torn open. Its secret heart is revealed and all the danger emptied out.
As I am not in or of them, I did not cast the stone that brought it down. Instead, it let go of its own accord and followed the wind.
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All that summer the sun refused to open On the sky, and the river carried rain-spots Down and over the weir, and by the footbridge Swans’ eggs chilled in their nest. I saw them, rained on, Blue and dead as the moon the clouds were hiding Every night when I looked to find it. What could Live, neglected like that? The wind, cold and green With the smell of the hawthorn flowering, came Brooding over the fens, but what could it bring me, Who had chosen to view the world with sadness, Or had taken its sadness into myself, Gift and charism? One day, though, I saw them, Triple vee-wakes on dark tree-printed currents: One ahead of the others, big and whiter Than the cloud-pale sky. Two cygnets, gray, living, Broken free from the death I’d assumed for them.
Well, their ways are not my ways. The next summer, Walking that same towpath, heavy with a child Who had come to me after years of asking — Who was taking his time just then, head downward, Happy where he was — I saw them paddling Under the bridge, where it laid out its shadow, Current-rumpled. The same swans? Or three strangers Hummed down onto a river pricked with sunlight, Strange and new as the season? I can’t say now. I remember the baby’s head engaging, Heavy, ready, real, an impending pressure. I remember the wakes widening, the river Flowing down in the sun, and by the footbridge, Gray, empty, the mess of twigs, leaves, and feathers. ~Sally Thomas “Swans”
Decades ago, there were several years when I took sadness into myself, feeling empty and barren with no hope that could change.
Sorrow became the bridge I walked across, unaware what I would find on the other side, assuming only it would be more of the same.
If I had listened to my own tearful prayers, I might have understood –even the most comfortable nests are abandoned when it is time to break free from the sadness.
I gave up my timing and my plans to let things be according to His will.
And life happened. And sadness no longer found a place in me. The empty was filled, the sorrow overwhelmed with blessing. Babies born, grown, now flown away to a life and babies of their own.
All from the one nest, emptied, as ever it should be.
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I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief No everlasting hills I see; My life is in the fallen leaf: O Jesus, quicken me.
My life is like a frozen thing, No bud nor greenness can I see: Yet rise it shall–the sap of Spring; O Jesus, rise in me. ~Christina Rossetti from “A Better Resurrection”
It dawned on me that perhaps the first thing the risen Lord did after he defeated death, as his heart once again began to beat, was to fold his grave clothes.
This seemed to me to be good news for laundry doers everywhere—and especially to moms who probably still carry out the bulk of this mundane chore.
The risen Christ folded his laundry.
I suppose the angels could have done it but angels probably don’t have much experience with laundry. ~Doug Basler from “The Poetry of a Pastor” from Ekstasis Magazine
<Peter> saw the linen cloths lying there,and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. John 20: 6-7
I remember panicking as a child when my mother would help me take off a sweatshirt with a particularly tight neck opening, as my head would get “stuck” momentarily until she could free me. It caused an intense feeling of being unable to breathe or see – literally being shrouded. I was trapped and held captive by something as innocuous as a piece of cloth, but the panic was real. That same feeling still overwhelms me at times when I find myself stuck in my mistakes and sins, anxious and struggling to get free.
My impulse, once free of what smothers me, is to toss it as far away from me as possible. I want to be rid of it and never touch it again. I certainly don’t take time to fold it up for all to see.
Jesus took the time to carefully fold His facial death cloth and leave it where all who entered the tomb would recognize it as proof that His body wasn’t stolen. He had risen, leaving a clear message that all was in good order, as He said it would be.
So I now find folding laundry more meaningful, not as mundane – a reminder that a tidy and empty tomb is something to celebrate: new life quickens like spring sap rising from a fallen leaf.
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic, Time takes on the strain until it breaks; Then all the unattended stress falls in On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.
The light in the mind becomes dim. Things you could take in your stride before Now become laborsome events of will.
Weariness invades your spirit. Gravity begins falling inside you, Dragging down every bone.
The tide you never valued has gone out. And you are marooned on unsure ground. Something within you has closed down; And you cannot push yourself back to life.
You have been forced to enter empty time. The desire that drove you has relinquished. There is nothing else to do now but rest And patiently learn to receive the self You have forsaken in the race of days.
At first your thinking will darken And sadness take over like listless weather. The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.
You have traveled too fast over false ground; Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight, Taking time to open the well of color That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone Until its calmness can claim you. Be excessively gentle with yourself.
Stay clear of those vexed in spirit. Learn to linger around someone of ease Who feels they have all the time in the world.
Gradually, you will return to yourself, Having learned a new respect for your heart And the joy that dwells far within slow time. ~John O’Donahue “For One Who Is Exhausted, a Blessing”
I know from experience that when I allow busy little doings to fill the precious time of early morning, when contemplation might flourish, I open the doors to the demon of acedia. Noon becomes a blur – no time, no time – the wolfing down of a sandwich as I listen to the morning’s phone messages and plan the afternoon’s errands.
When evening comes, I am so exhausted that vespers has become impossible. It is as if I have taken the world’s weight on my shoulders and am too greedy, and too foolish, to surrender it to God. ~Kathleen Norris from The Quotidian Mysteries
These are days with no breathing room, no time to stop and appreciate that each moment is a swelling bud about to burst into bloom.
And it is my fault that I’m not breathing deeply enough~ simply skimming the surface in my race to the end of the day.
Time’s petals, so open, so brilliant, so eternal, are closing up, unseen and unknown, just emptied, without my even noticing.
Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Isaiah 40:28-29
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
Sing, Be, Live, See. This dark stormy hour, The wind, it stirs. The scorched earth cries out in vain: O war and power, You blind and blur, The torn heart cries out in pain. But music and singing Have been my refuge, And music and singing Shall be my light. A light of song, Shining Strong: Alleluia! Through darkness, pain, and strife, I’ll Sing, Be, Live, See… Peace.
Oh, good shepherd, would you teach me how to rest I’m rushing on, will you make me to lie down Will you build a fold by the waters that refresh Will you call my name and lead me safely out
From my anxious drive to labor on and on From the restless grind that has put my mind to sleep Will you call me back and gently slow me down Will you show me now what to lose and what to keep
Oh, good shepherd, oh, good friend Slow me down, slow me down Oh, good shepherd, oh, good friend Slow me down, slow me down
When my table’s bent with only greed and gold And my grasping hands are afraid you won’t provide Will you pour the wine that loosens up my hold Set your table here with what truly satisfies
Oh, good shepherd, oh, good friend Slow me down, slow me down Oh, good shepherd, oh, good friend Slow me down, slow me down
On the busy streets trying to make myself a name If the work is yours, there is nothing I can claim Will you lead me home to the pastures of your peace And the house is yours, I’m sitting at your feet
Oh, good shepherd, oh, good friend Slow me down, slow me down Oh, good shepherd, oh, good friend Slow me down, slow me down
Slow me down, slow me down
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November sun, rare this year, knocking at the edges of the earth, sending up flares — pink, yellow, that soft peach tone peculiar to pre-winter,
and my dawn-clear eyes drew to the window and beyond and then I wasn’t really there in the kitchen, not quite,
like some long bony hand reached in and through glass, pulled me through and I slipped from carpet to deck without shattering,
or maybe I did stumble to the door and unlock, and step down, and feel the leaf-lined decking against my calloused soles.
No matter how, I got there, was there, right there with a grace that is the invitation to stop.
And stare.
And occupy a moment, allow my edges to soften and begin to expand and take up space so there is only moment, not me or sunrise or window or cold,
and that was my detangling, my daily decision to keep tender hold to this life as if it were orphan and I, some great full breast, was made to receive this tiny bawling thing
delivered new each break of morning,
and shape it with my hands, and be all things nourishing, and love it well, as it was made, before releasing it to its own destined wind. ~Melinda Coppola“It was the morning sky”
Each morning I wake before sunrise, urged forth from my warm bed as if called to soothe a hungry crying child.
Instead, it is I who is empty, humbled to insignificance to witness sky spilling abundant colors.
In response, I pour out everything I have, to feed and fill each new emerging dawn, through wondering words of grateful praise.
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We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. ~T.S. Eliot from “The Hollow Men”
Here is the scarecrow, see him stand Upon the newly planted land; A figure rugged and forlorn, A silent watcher of the corn.
His dangling legs, his arms spread wide, A lone man of the countryside; Uncouth, the butt of pen and tongue, Unheralded, unsought, unsung.
To you, old scarecrow, then this lay To cheer you on your lonely way; Would that all men, their whole lives through, Served some good purpose same as you. ~Annie Stone “The Scarecrow” (written on her 103rd birthday)
Once I said to a scarecrow, “You must be tired of standing in this lonely field.”
And he said, “The joy of scaring is a deep and lasting one, and I never tire of it.”
Said I, after a minute of thought, “It is true; for I too have known that joy.”
Said he, “Only those who are stuffed with straw can know it.”
Then I left him, not knowing whether he had complimented or belittled me.
A year passed, during which the scarecrow turned philosopher.
And when I passed by him again I saw two crows building a nest under his hat. ~Kahlil Gibran “The Scarecrow”
“I’ve seen myself, Mother Rigby! I’ve seen myself for the wretched, ragged, empty thing I am. I’ll exist no longer.”
Snatching the pipe from his mouth, he flung it with all his might against the chimney, and at the same instant sank upon the floor, a medley of straw and tattered garments, with some sticks protruding from the heap and a shriveled pumpkin in the midst. The eyeholes were now lustreless but the rudely carved gap that just before had been a mouth still seemed to twist itself into a despairing grin, and was so far human.
“Poor fellow!” quoth Mother Rigby, with a rueful glance at the relics of her ill-fated contrivance. “My poor, dear, pretty Feathertop! There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world made up of just such a jumble of worn-out, forgotten and good-for-nothing trash as he was, yet they live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what they are. And why should my poor puppet be the only one to know himself and perish for it?”
“I could easily give him another chance, and send him forth again tomorrow. But no! His feelings are too tender–his sensibilities too deep. He seems to have too much heart to bustle for his own advantage in such an empty and heartless world. Well, well! I’ll make a scarecrow of him, after all. ‘Tis an innocent and useful vocation, and will suit my darling well; and if each of his human brethren had as fit a one, ‘twould be the better for mankind.” ~Nathaniel Hawthorne from “Feathertop”(the story of a scarecrow brought to life)
We don’t see many real working scarecrows around anymore. Corn and grain fields are so vast and abundant, the loss of a few kernels to raccoons or crows is not devastating to the farmer, so why frighten them away?
Instead, scarecrows have become the stuff of cheerful autumn decorations, standing alongside cornstalks and hay bales on porches, scaring no one. Or they are portrayed as horribly sinister and menacing in Halloween movies and haunted houses – a poor scarecrow’s original purpose twisted to frighten away far more than hungry critters.
Perhaps scarier, as our election season progresses, we’re seeing “hollow” politicians portraying themselves as something far more than they really are. We watch them “lean together, headpiece filled with straw.” It doesn’t take long to be exposed as“wretched, ragged, and empty.”
The worthy politician with good goals and purpose “seems to have too much heart to bustle for his own advantage in such an empty and heartless world.” Sometimes they decide to simply retire into obscurity and the garden.
…or they should…
The honest and genuine scarecrow returns to his post in the cornfield – such an innocent and useful vocation. If only we each had as fit a job, it would be all the better for mankind.
(A personal note: back in 1972, I combined Eliot’s “Hollow Men” and Hawthorne’s “Feathertop” in a scarecrow-themed interpretive reading that garnered Washington State’s top high school prize, sending me to nationals at Wake Forest in North Carolina. There I, a true country bumpkin, was soundly and deservedly trounced by far more talented high schoolers from all over the country.
At least I was able to say “I went to nationals…,” a very “hollow men” thing to claim.)
And what if I never get it right, this loving, this giving of the self to the other? And what if I die
before learning how to offer my everything? What if, though I say I want this generous,
indefatigable love, what if I forever find a way to hold some corner back? I don’t want
to find out the answer to that. I want to be the sun that gives and gives until it burns out,
the sea that kisses the shore and only moves away so that it might rush up to kiss it again. ~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “And Again” from Hush
What is it about us that holds something back when loving others, keeping in reserve some little piece of ourselves that we can’t quite let go?
Even so, we ourselves want to be loved wholly, fully, completely, unconditionally yet something in us doesn’t trust it could be true – we know how undeserving we are.
When we are offered such generous indefatigable love, we hold back part of ourselves because we are afraid we’ll be left desolate and empty, never to be filled again – a sun burned out and darkened, a shore left high and dry.
Once we experience our Creator’s love as wholly generous, rushing up to kiss us again and again, so tireless and persistent, unconditionally grace-filled.
We can stop fearing our emptiness.
He pours more than enough love into us without holding back, filling us so full that we might spill over to others, again and again and again, with our light and heart and spirit unbounded.
More than once I’ve seen a dog waiting for its owner outside a café practically implode with worry. “Oh, God, what if she doesn’t come back this time? What will I do? Who will take care of me? I loved her so much and now she’s gone and I’m tied to a post surrounded by people who don’t look or smell or sound like her at all.” And when she does come, what a flurry of commotion, what a chorus of yelping and cooing and leaps straight up into the air! It’s almost unbearable, this sudden fullness after such total loss, to see the world made whole again by a hand on the shoulder and a voice like no other. ~John Brehm from “If Feeling Isn’t In It”
photo by Brandon Dieleman
We all need to know love like this: so binding, so complete, so profoundly filling: its loss empties our world of all meaning as our flowing tears run dry.
So abandoned, we woeful wait, longing for the return of the gentle voice, the familiar smile, the tender touch and encompassing embrace.
With unexpected restoration when we’ve done nothing whatsoever to deserve it- we leap and shout with unsurpassed joy, this world without form and void is made whole again.
photo by Nate Gibson
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