how the pale disk of moon caves to its own defeat,
cold as yesterday’s fish left over in the pan,
or miserly as a sliver of dried soap in a dish.
Oh for a sparkling froth of cloud, a little heat
from the sun! I shiver at the window where I plant
one perfect moon-round breath, as I liked to do as a girl
against the filthy glass of the yellow school bus
laboring up the hill, not thinking what I meant
but passionate, as if I were kissing my own life. ~Mary Jo Salter “Moon-Breath” from The Surveyors
At times, I’m amazed at the heat of my own breath. Forming a cloudy mist on a cold day, a round fog on the mirror or window, a warming of ungloved fingers.
This breath that I was given at my beginning is a gift I rarely think about, a gift I take for granted.
Nightly, as the moon honors the sun, reflecting its glory like a faint echo, I treasure the heat and heart of that first gift of breath so long ago.
Soli deo Gloria.
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Now in the blessed days of more and less when the news about time is that each day there is less of it I know none of that as I walk out through the early garden only the day and I are here with no before or after and the dew looks up without a number or a present age ~W.S. Merwin “Dew Light” from The Moon Before Morning
A walk around our farm in October is more or less, before or after, now and then, a timelessness of shifting seasons and fading days.
A prayer becomes like dew from above, me looking up to the God who was, is and ever will be, who already knows what I am about to say. He knows I don’t tend to say anything new.
He blesses me with the light of His dew.
I write every day to explain myself to people I will never meet. Perhaps, every day, I am trying to explain myself to God.
God is, (if I stop to look and listen), yesterday, today, tomorrow – more or less, before or after, now and then, but most especially forever and ever.
Amen.
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In a hundred trillion years— an actual number though we can’t begin to grasp it—the last traces of our universe will be not even a memory with no memory to lament it.
The last dust of the last star will not drift in the great nothing out of which everything we love or imagine eventually comes.
Yet every day, every four hours around the clock, Debbie prepares her goat’s-milk mix for the orphaned filly who sucks down all three liters of it, gratefully, it seems, as if it matters more than anything in the universe— and it does—at this moment while the sun is still four hours from rising on the only day that matters.
Over eight years ago, our Haflinger mare Marlee passed on to her forever home, far sooner than we planned. She was only twenty two, born only two months after our daughter’s birth, much too young an age for a Haflinger to die.
But something dire was happening to her over the previous two weeks — not eating much, an expanding girth, then shortness of breath. It was confirmed she had untreatable lymphoma.
Her bright eyes were shining to the end so it was very hard to ask the vet to turn the light off. But the time had clearly come.
Marlee M&B came to us as a six month old “runty orphan” baby by the lovely stallion Sterling Silver, but she was suddenly weaned at three days when her mama Melissa died of sepsis. She never really weaned from her around the clock bottle/bucket feeding humans Stefan and Andrea Bundshuh at M&B Farm in Canada. From them she knew people’s behavior, learned their nonverbal language, and understood human subtleties that most horses never learn. This made her quite a challenge as a youngster as it also meant there was no natural reserve nor natural respect for people. She had no boundaries taught by a mother, so we tried to teach her the proper social cues.
When turned out with the herd as a youngster, she was completely clueless–she’d approach the dominant alpha mare incorrectly, without proper submission, get herself bitten and kicked and was the bottom of the social heap for years, a lonesome little filly with few friends and very few social skills. She had never learned submission with people either, and had to have many remedial lessons on her training path. Once she was a mature working mare, her relationship with people markedly improved as there was structure to her work and predictability for her, and after having her own foals, she picked up cues and signals that helped her keep her foal safe, though she was one of our most relaxed “do whatever you need to do” mothers when we handled her foals as she simply never learned that she needed to be concerned.
Over the years, as the herd changed, Marlee became the alpha mare, largely by default and seniority, so I don’t believe she really trusted her position as “real”. She tended to bully, and react too quickly out of her own insecurity about her inherited position. She was very skilled with her ears but she was also a master at the tail “whip” and the tensed upper lip–no teeth, just a slight wrinkling of the lip. The herd scattered when they saw her face change. The irony of it all is that when she was “on top” of the herd hierarchy, she was more lonely than when she was at the bottom. And I think a whole lot less happy as she had few grooming partners any more.
She accompanied us to the fair for a week of display of our Haflingers year after year after year — she could be always counted on to greet the public and enjoy days of braiding and petting and kids sitting on her back.
The day she started formal under saddle training was when the light bulb went off in her head–this was a job she could do! This was constant communication and interaction with a human being, which she craved! This was what she was meant for! And she thrived under saddle, advancing quickly in her skills, almost too fast, as she wanted so much to please her trainer.
For a time, she had an unequaled record among North American Haflingers. She was not only regional champion in her beginner novice division of eventing as a pregnant 5 year old, but also received USDF Horse of the Year awards in First and Second Level dressage that year as the highest scoring Haflinger.
She had a career of mothering along with intermittent riding work, with 5 foals –Winterstraum, Marquisse, Myst, Wintermond, and Nordstrom—each from different stallions, and each very different from one another.
This mare had such a remarkable work ethic, was “fine-tuned” so perfectly with a sensitivity to cues–that our daughter said: “Mom, it’s going to make me such a better rider because I know she pays attention to everything I do with my body–whether my heels are down, whether I’m sitting up straight or not.” Marlee was, to put it simply, trained to train her riders.
I miss her high pitched whinny from the barn whenever she heard the back door to the house open. I miss her pushy head butt on the stall door when it was time to close it up for the night. I miss that beautiful unforgettable face and those large deep brown eyes where the light was always on. Keeping that orphan alive when she was so vulnerable in the first two months was all that mattered.
What a ride she had for twenty two years, that dear little orphan. What a ride she gave to many who trained her and who she trained over the years. Though I never climbed on her back, what joy she gave me all those years, as the surrogate mom who loved and fed her. May I meet her in my memories, whenever I feel lonesome for her, still unable to resist those bright eyes forever now closed in peace.
Marlee’s photo album:
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I’ve fallen many times: the usual stumbles over secret schoolgirl crushes, head-over-heels for teen heartthrobs. I loved them all.
I’ve fallen so many times: tripped down the aisle over husband, daughter, son. Madly and deeply, I love them all.
I’ve fallen again and again: new friends, a mentor, a muse, numerous books, a few authors, four dear pups and a stranger, or two. I loved them all.
I’ve fallen farther, fallen faster, now captivated, I tumble— enthralled with my grandchildren. I love them each, ever and all. ~Jane Attanucci, “Falling” from First Mud
Six grandchildren in less than seven years brings a bounty of baby hugs and snuggles.
With each one, I fall farther and faster than ever before.
In a lifetime of falling head over heels for those most precious to me, a loving husband, two sons and a daughter, dear friends and mentors, numerous pups and ponies…
still none could prepare me for this ~
the blessing of loving our children’s children, their smiles and giggles and arms wrapped around us
these have become most cherished each, ever and all.
A pot of red lentils simmers on the kitchen stove. All afternoon dense kernels surrender to the fertile juices, their tender bellies swelling with delight.
In the yard we plant rhubarb, cauliflower, and artichokes, cupping wet earth over tubers, our labor the germ of later sustenance and renewal.
Across the field the sound of a baby crying as we carry in the last carrots, whorls of butter lettuce, a basket of red potatoes.
I want to remember us this way— late September sun streaming through the window, bread loaves and golden bunches of grapes on the table, spoonfuls of hot soup rising to our lips, filling us with what endures. ~Peter Pereira “A Pot of Red Lentils” from Saying the World
I cherish the moments that are most basic, plain, and simple and have the best chance of happening again. I’m not talking about exotic travels, nor the extravagant meal out, nor the once in a lifetime experience. My most cherished moments are quite everyday, and I store them up to fill the decades full.
Most cherished of all is “that look” that says “I want to look into your eyes forever and get lost there.”
I am lucky enough to know what that feels like. I get that butterfly in the stomach feeling anytime it happens. My husband held my eyes with his from across a room early in our relationship, and nearly forty four years later, he still holds them when he looks at me, even over bowls of soup at the kitchen table.
And I look at him just that way as well. The eyes say what words cannot. The eyes don’t lie. The eyes never change even though the years bring gray hair and crow’s feet.
It is what endures. I want to look at you forever, just like this, just as you are, wherever you are because of who you are.
42 years ago today…
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We all arrive into this life helpless and needy, completely dependent on others to survive. If there wasn’t an intuitive tenderness in parents dedicated to caring for their young, there would be no tomorrow for any of us. Even God sent His only Son in a completely helpless state, knowing He would identify more closely with us.
Despite such care and protection, there are inevitable hurts and injuries as we are buffeted and bruised by life. The scars we bear remain proof of the gentle healing touch of our Creator. We are never so far beyond His reach that He can’t leave His mark on us.
We know this, even though we forget… We are not so far beyond reach. God Himself reminds us of His love by the scars He bears.
photo by Joel DeWaard
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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.
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When, in the science museum, I arrive at the overview of our galaxy, with its tiny arrow pointing to You are here (which really ought to be We are here), and see that the two to four hundred billion stars of our local cluster are drifting or chasing or dreaming after each other in circles within milky circles, I can’t help but think of those ancient paintings and rock engravings, discovered all over our celestial body, of that one line which begins at whatever point it can, then curls outward, or inward, toward nothing anyone can define—the oldest shape revered by Aborigine and Celt, by mathematician and engineer and Burning Man reveler alike, and even accorded a place of honor among the mess of thoughts on my desk, as a nifty paper clip of copper.
But it’s already there in the florets of the sunflower crisscrossing with the precision of a logarithm, and in the pin-wheel shape of the Nautilus shell, and in the coiling neurons of the cochlea that let us tell Art Tatum from a three year old’s improvisation.
Call it what you will—“God’s fingerprint,” “the soul unfolding through time,” “the passageway into the Self”— I can’t help but admire, even fear, something as mundane as a flush of the toilet, when its swirling is a variation on our sidereal drift, our existential pain.
And then there’s that famous falcon, “turning and turning in a widening gyre,” a portentous symbol of our own circling into some dread, some pernicious chaos we thought we had just escaped, one town burning a decade behind us, a millennium before that, and into next week, next year, next whenever.
And when the two of us took that winding road an infinity of others had wound down before us and would wind down again, our spirits hushed by the crosses and bouquets at each dead man’s curve and just burning in the dry heat to touch each other, wasn’t that a wondrous and terrible turning? ~Thomas Centolella “Why I’m in Awe of the Spiral”
photo by Kate Steensma
Photo by Kate Steensma
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? ~William Butler Yeats “The Second Coming”
I look for the way things will turn out spiralling from a center, the shape things will take to come forth in
so that the birch tree white touched black at branches will stand out wind-glittering totally its apparent self:
I look for the forms things want to come as
from what black wells of possibility, how a thing will unfold:
not the shape on paper, though that, too, but the uninterfering means on paper:
not so much looking for the shape as being available to any shape that may be summoning itself through me from the self not mine but ours. ~A. R. Ammons, “Poetics” from A Coast of Trees
Our very origin as a unique organism is a process of unfolding and spiraling: from our very first doubling after conception expanding to a complexity of trillions of cells powering our every thought and movement.
Now I look everywhere in my backyard world for beginnings and endings, wanting to understand where I fit and where I am in the unfolding process of this spiraling life. As I grow older, I find myself more peripheral than central, just as I am meant to be – I have more perspective now having spun out from the vortex.
I can see where I came from, and have a sense of where I am headed.
We unfurl slowly, surely, gently, in the Hands of our Creator God. He knows how each of us began as He was there from the beginning, forming the very center of us. He remains at the core of our being, as our unfolding lasts forever.
My uncle in East Germany points to the unicorn in the painting and explains it is now extinct. We correct him, say such a creature never existed. He does not argue, but we know he does not believe us. He is certain power and gentleness must have gone hand in hand once. A prisoner of war even after the war was over, my uncle needs to believe in something that could not be captured except by love, whose single luminous horn redeemed the murderous forest and, dipped into foul water, would turn it pure. This world, this terrible world we live in, is not the only possible one, his eighty-year-old eyes insist, dry wells that fill so easily now. ~Lisel Mueller “The Exhibit”
This is the animal that never was. Not knowing that, they loved it anyway; its bearing, its stride, its high, clear whinny, right down to the still light of its gaze.
It never was. And yet such was their love the beast arose, where they had cleared the space; and in the stable of its nothingness it shook its white mane out and stamped its hoof.
And so they fed it, not with hay or corn but with the chance that it might come to pass. All this gave the creature such a power
its brow put out a horn; one single horn. It grew inside a young girl’s looking glass, then one day walked out and passed into her. ~Rainer Maria Rilke “Unicorn”
I sometimes feel the need for magical thinking to help restore goodness in the sad ways of this world. We have fouled our own nest, destroying each other and the extravagant garden we were given.
Hope for restoration feels almost mythical and the stuff of legends.
Power and gentleness do come together in the story of our redemption. We are delivered into a new world by the sacrifice of the most pure and generous Spirit.
Our dry well is filled by a love that quenches all our thirst, promising that our belief in goodness is not myth or legend, but real and true.
Let us go forward quietly, forever making for the light, and lifting up our hearts in the knowledge that we are as others are and that others are as we are, and that it is right to love one another in the best possible way – believing all things, hoping for all things, and enduring all things… ~Vincent Van Gogh in Letterto Theo Van Gogh – 3 April 1878
Yet another racially motivated killing appeared in the headlines today. So much collective societal energy is spent emphasizing, elaborating, indeed celebrating our diverse differences. If anything, this separates us rather than unites us, whether it be issues of race, culture, religion, political leanings or sexuality.
Yet we are alike far more than we are different. Despite the variety inherent in all living creatures, we share remarkable similarities deep in our cellular functions – mirror images of each other, intentionally created in the image of God.
“…we are as others are and that others are as we are, and that it is right to love one another in the best possible way –“
Each of us are born from the womb of our mother and each of us will die to dust someday. Those bookends to our lives bind the pages of our lives together, rather than tear us apart.
For some, similarities are not welcome – many hesitate to admit it is true, desiring to maintain distance and disagreement.
Can we make for the Light, enduring this painful journey together? Can we be bound by striving for unity? Can we agree to agree rather than disagree – it is right and true and worthy to love one another just as we are loved by our Creator?
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