Tag: love

The Velvet of Sleep

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The children have gone to bed.
We are so tired we could fold ourselves neatly
behind our eyes and sleep mid-word, sleep standing
warm among the creatures in the barn, lean together
and sleep, forgetting each other completely in the velvet,
the forgiveness of that sleep.

Then the one small cry:
one strike of the match-head of sound:
one child’s voice:
and the hundred names of love are lit
as we rise and walk down the hall.

One hundred nights we wake like this,
wake out of our nowhere
to kneel by small beds in darkness.
One hundred flowers open in our hands,
a name for love written in each one.
~Annie Lighthart “The Hundred Names of Love”

In the lull of evening, your son nested in your arms
becomes heavier and with a sigh his body
sloughs off its weight like an anchor into deep sleep,
until his small breath is the only thing that exists.

And as you move the slow dance through the dim hall
to his bedroom and bow down to deliver his sleeping form,
arms parting, each muscle defining its arc and release—
you remember the feeling of childhood,

traveling beneath a full moon,
your mother’s unmistakable laugh, a field of wild grass,
windows open and the night rushing in
as headlights trace wands of light across your face—

there was a narrative you were braiding,
meanings you wanted to pluck from the air,
but the touch of a hand eased it from your brow
and with each stroke you waded further

into the certainty of knowing your sleeping form
would be ushered by good and true arms
into the calm ocean that is your bed.
 — Alexandra Lytton Regalado, “The T’ai Chi of Putting a Sleeping Child to Bed” author of Matria

Each of those countless nights of a child wakening,
each of the hundreds of hours of lulling them in the moonlit dark,
leading them back to the soft forgiveness of sleep.

I remember the moves of that hypnotic dance,
a head nestled snug into my neck,
their chest pressed into mine,
our hearts beating in synchrony
as if they were still inside.

Even when our sleep was spare and true rest was sparse,
those night times rocking in unison
were worth every waking moment, trusting
we’re in this together, no matter what,
no matter how long it takes.

We’re in this together.

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Feast of Fire, Air, and Water

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Today we feel the wind beneath our wings
Today  the hidden fountain flows and plays
Today the church draws breath at last and sings
As every flame becomes a Tongue of praise.
This is the feast of fire, air, and water
Poured out and breathed and kindled into earth.
The earth herself awakens to her maker
And is translated out of death to birth.
The right words come today in their right order
And every word spells freedom and release
Today the gospel crosses every border
All tongues are loosened by the Prince of Peace
Today the lost are found in His translation.
Whose mother tongue is Love in every nation.
~Malcolm Guite “Pentecost” from Sounding the Seasons

 I will show wonders in the heavens above
    and signs on the earth below,
    blood and fire and billows of smoke.
The sun will be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood
    before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
And everyone who calls
    on the name of the Lord will be saved.
~Acts 2:19-21 The Holy Spirit Comes At Pentecost

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment

Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
~T.S. Eliot from “East Coker”

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”

Today, when we feel we are without hope,
when faith feels frail,
when love seems distant…

We wait, stilled,
for the moment we are lit afire~
the Living God chose us
to be seen, heard, named, loved, known.

God forever burning in our hearts
in this moment
and for a lifetime.

It is the dearest freshest deep down thing…

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A Meadow of Delight

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On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.
~John O’Donohue from “Beannacht“

We all stumble, bearing the bruises and scars of our fall.
We all waken to gray days when there seems no point in going on.
We all can be sucked into the darkest thoughts,
tunneling ever more deeply.

In those moments, those days, those months,
may we be wrapped tightly in love’s cloak of invisibility:
and darkness swallow us no longer~
we follow a brightening path of light and color,
with contentment and encouragement,
our failing feet steadied,
the gray kaleidoscoped,
the way to go illuminated with hope.

May our brokenness be forever covered in such blessings.

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You Think You Know…

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Wind and the sound of wind—
across the bay a chainsaw revs
and stalls. I’ve come here to write,

but instead I’ve been thinking
about my father, who, in his last year,
after his surgery, told my mother

he wasn’t sorry—that he’d cried
when the other woman left him,
that his time with her

had made him happier than anything
he’d ever done. And my mother,
who cooked and cleaned for him

all those years, cared for him
after his heart attack, could not
understand why he liked the other

woman more than her,
but he did. And she told me
that after he died she never went

to visit his grave—not once.
You think you know them,
these creatures robed

in your parents’ skins. Well,
you don’t. Any more than you know
what the pines want from the wind,

if the lake’s content with this pale
smear of sunset, if the loon calls
for its mate, or for another.
~Jon Loomis “At the Lake House” from The Mansion of Happiness

I thought I knew my parents as well as I knew myself,
certain that their love for each other
was the foundation of our family.

When it fell apart, I came apart too.

It was as if I no longer knew myself,
since I came from them.

It took a decade of tears
for them to find their way back
to become family again.

Even so, the scar remained,
although glued and smoothed,
a love that once seemed so solid, so forever.

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Hiding in a Snail’s Eye

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May the poems be
the little snail’s trail.

Everywhere I go,
every inch: quiet record

of the foot’s silver prayer.
              I lived once.
              Thank you.
              It was here.
~Aracelis Girmay “Ars Poetica”  

Little snail,
Dreaming you go.
Weather and rose
Is all you know.
Weather and rose
Is all you see,
Drinking
The dewdrop’s
Mystery.
~Langston Hughes “Snail”

James was a very small snail…
and gave the huffle of a snail in danger.
And nobody heard him at all.
~A.A.Milne from The Four Friends from  “When We Were Very Young”

…who has a controlled sense of wonder
before the universal mystery,
whether it hides in a snail’s eye
or within the light that impinges on that delicate organ?
~Loren Eiseley from The Star Thrower

The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth’s dark. He
moves in a wood of desire,

pale antlers barely stirring
as he hunts. I cannot tell
what power is at work, drenched there
with purpose, knowing nothing.
What is a snail’s fury? All
I think is that if later

I parted the blades above
the tunnel and saw the thin
trail of broken white across
litter, I would never have
imagined the slow passion
to that deliberate progress.
~Thom Gunn “Considering the Snail”

What do we leave behind as we pass through this life, following the light?

It might be as slick and silvery and random as a snail trail —
hardly and barely there, easily erased, only a transient residual.

We might leave behind the solid hollow of an empty shell, its spirals leading to infinity, curling to nothing and everything.

As for my trail:
I pray for a legacy of words and images reflecting the Light I seek,
to notice and share the wonder I journey through.

Yes, I was once here.
And so were you.

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Through the years, the sorrow
The joy that we borrow
The tears that we share with the rain
Oh today, tomorrow
Forever I’ll follow your trail
Just call my name
~Sean Rowe

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Feeling Them Resting There

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The sunlight now lay over the valley perfectly still.
I went over to the graveyard beside the church
and found them under the old cedars…
I am finding it a little hard to say that I felt them resting there,
but I did…

I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated
with presences and absences,
presences of absences,
the living and the dead.
The world as it is
would always be a reminder
of the world that was,
and of the world that is to come.
~Wendell Berry in Jayber Crow

In great deeds, something abides. 
On great fields, something stays. 
Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; 
but spirits linger, 
to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. 

And reverent men and women from afar, 
and generations that know us not and that we know not of, 
heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, 
to ponder and dream; and lo!
the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, 
and the power of the vision pass into their souls. 

This is the great reward of service. 
To live, far out and on, in the life of others;
this is the mystery of the Christ,
–to give life’s best for such high sake
that it shall be found again unto life eternal.
~Major-General Joshua Chamberlain, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1889

A box of over 700 letters, exchanged between my parents from late 1941 to mid-1945, sat unopened for six decades.

I started reading. I felt them resting in those inked words.

My parents barely knew each other before marrying quickly on Christmas Eve 1942 – the haste due to the uncertain future for a newly trained Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. They only had a few weeks together before she returned home to her rural teaching position and he readied himself to be shipped out for the island battles to come.

They had no idea they would not see each other for another 30+ months or even see each other again at all. They had no idea their marriage would fall apart 35 years later and they would reunite a decade after the divorce for five more years together before Dad died of cancer at age 73.

A presence of absence: the letters do contain the long-gone but still-familiar voices of my parents, but they are the words and worries of youngsters of 20 and 21, barely prepared for the horrors to come from war and interminable waiting. When he was fighting battles on Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian, no letters or news would be received for a month or more, otherwise they tried to write each other daily, though with minimal news to share due to military censorship. They speak mostly of their desire for a normal life together rather than a routine centered on mailbox, pen and paper and waiting – lots and lots of waiting.

I’m not sure what I hoped to find in these letters. Perhaps I hoped for flowery romantic whisperings and the poetry of longing and loneliness. Instead I am reading plain spoken words from two people who somehow made it through those awful years to make my sister and brother and myself possible.

Our inheritance is contained in this musty box of words bereft of poetry. But decades later my heart is moved by these letters – I carefully refold them back into their envelopes and replace them gently back in order. A six cent airmail stamp – in fact hundreds and hundreds of them – was a worthwhile investment in the future, not only for themselves and their family to come, but for generations of U.S. citizens who tend to take their freedom for granted.

Thank you, Dad and Mom, for the early years together you gave up to make today possible for us and the generations to follow.

I hear the mountain birds
The sound of rivers singing
A song I’ve often heard
It flows through me now
So clear and so loud
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home

It’s carried in the air
The breeze of early morning
I see the land so fair
My heart opens wide
There’s sadness inside
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home

This is no foreign sky
I see no foreign light
But far away am I
From some peaceful land
I’m longing to stand
A hand in my hand
…forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home
~Lori Barth and Philippe Rombi “I’m Dreaming of Home”

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More Precious than Roses

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I am not resigned to the shutting away
of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look,
the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses.
Elegant and curled
Is the blossom.
Fragrant is the blossom. I know.
But I do not approve. 
More precious was the light in your eyes
than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay “Dirge Without Music”

Each Memorial Day weekend without fail,
we gather with family, have lunch, reminisce,
and trek to a cemetery high above Puget Sound
to catch up with our relatives who lie there, still.

Some for over 110 years, some for barely more than a decade,
some we knew and loved and miss every day,
others not so much as they are unknown to us
except on genealogy charts,
names and dates and stones and stories:

the red-haired great-grandmother who died too young,
the aunt who was eight when lymphoma took her,
the grandmother who dreamed of world travel too late,
the great-grandfather Yukon river boat captain,
the grandfather logger and stump farmer,
the great aunt unmarried school teacher who hid an oil well,
the two in-laws who forever lie next to each other
but could not co-exist in the same room while they lived and breathed.

Yet we know each of these
(as we know ourselves and others)

could be tender and kind, though flawed and broken,
had been beautiful and strong, though wrinkled and frail,
was hopeful and faithful, though too soon in the ground.

We know this about them
as we know it about ourselves:
someday we too will feed roses,
the light in our eyes transformed into elegant swirls
emitting the fragrant scent of heaven.

No one asks if we approve.
Nor am I resigned to this
though I know:
So it is, so it has been, so it will be for me
someday.

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Ridiculously Courageous

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So I can’t save the world— 
can’t save even myself, 
can’t wrap my arms around 
every frightened child, can’t 
foster peace among nations, 
can’t bring love to all who 
feel unlovable. 

So I practice opening my heart 
right here in this room and being gentle 
with my insufficiency. I practice 
walking down the street heart first. 
And if it is insufficient to share love, 
I will practice loving anyway. 
I want to converse about truth, 
about trust. I want to invite compassion 
into every interaction. 
One willing heart can’t stop a war. 
One willing heart can’t feed all the hungry. 
And sometimes, daunted by a task too big, 
I ask myself, What’s the use of trying? 
But today, the invitation is clear: 
to be ridiculously courageous in love. 
To open the heart like a lilac in May, 
knowing freeze is possible 
and opening anyway. 
To take love seriously. 
To give love wildly. 
To race up to the world 
as if I were a puppy, 
adoring and unjaded, 
stumbling on my own exuberance. 
To feel the shock of indifference, 
of anger, of cruelty, of fear, 
and stay open. To love as if it matters, 
as if the world depends on it. 
~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “Because” From The Unfolding

I can’t stop all the pain and suffering in the world or bring peace between angry nations.

But I can make a difference to those around me. It won’t stop a war or cure all diseases, but I can be ridiculously courageous in my compassion for others.

As we’ve been traveling for the past week, I’ve had many opportunities to treat others like I hope to be treated. I’ve tried to listen carefully, to express gratitude for the efforts others make. I try to smile more when I’m among strangers and meet their gaze, which takes the greatest courage of all for an introvert like me.

So I’ll take lessons from puppies I’ve known: to wag and wiggle and treat everyone as a best friend – with great joy and exuberance. It matters. Peace in the world depends on it.

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Whatever Remains of the Day

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sundayevening

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 how much time I spend 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 nearly forty years of such days on this farm, one flowing gently after another, and most were exactly what I hoped for.

Even when I believe things will never change, they will, and I will.  What is left of the remains of the day may be the best yet.

I toss my heart ahead and set out after it.

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Trying Not to Cry

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People have said, “Don’t cry” to other people for years and years, and all it has ever meant is, “I’m too uncomfortable when you show your feelings.  Don’t cry.”  I’d rather have them say, “Go ahead and cry.  I’m here to be with you.”

~Mister Fred Rogers

I cry easily, always have. Certain songs and hymns will trigger tears, and of course, any rituals surrounding baptisms, funerals, weddings, and graduations.

Tears don’t bother me, whether they are my own or someone else’s. My medical office and exam rooms were always well- stocked with boxes of tissues as a safe place to cry it out.

One of my routine mental health history questions was “what will bring tears to your eyes – dicing onions doesn’t count?”  

Some patients would look at me blankly, not sure they ever remember crying, and others will weep at the mere suggestion.

No matter what the reason for someone’s tears, it is a powerful outward expression of human feeling, like a laugh or a grimace of pain. I watch for those cues and sometimes feel their emotion as surely as if it were my own.

Even tears can bring peace – like a river.

I am with you.  And always intend to be.

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