Tag: love

To Walk Alongside

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One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice – – –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations – – –
though their melancholy
was terrible. It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do – – – determined to save
the only life you could save.
~Mary Oliver “The Journey”

None of us can “mend” another person’s life, no matter how much the other may need it, no matter how much we may want to do it.

Mending is inner work that everyone must do for him or herself. When we fail to embrace that truth the result is heartbreak for all concerned.

What we can do is walk alongside the people we care about, offering simple companionship and compassion. And if we want to do that, we must save the only life we can save, our own.

Only when I’m in possession of my own heart can I be present for another in a healing, encouraging, empowering way. Then I have a gift to offer, the best gift I possess—the gift of a self that is whole, that stands in the world on its own two feet.
~Parker Palmer writing about Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey”

Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.
~Eugene O’Neill

We are born hollering, suddenly set apart,
already aware of our emptiness
from the first breath,
each tiny air sac bursting
with the air of a fallen world~

The rest of our days are spent
filling up our empty spaces
whether alveoli
or stomach
or synapses starving for understanding,
still hollering our loneliness
and heart break.

So we are mended
through our walk with others
who are also broken –
we patch up our gaps
by knitting the scraggly fragments
of lives lived together.
We become the crucial glue
boiled from gifted Grace,
all our holes
somehow made holy.

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Stalk the Gaps

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The gaps are the thing. 
The gaps are the spirit’s one home, 
the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean 
that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. 
The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; 
they are fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, 
the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. 
Go up into the gaps. 
If you can find them; 
they shift and vanish too. 
Stalk the gaps. 
Squeak into a gap in the soil, 
turn, and unlock…
a universe.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed … We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.
~Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water

There is a yawning separation threatening us all right now as we peer over the frightening edge of another tight election.

Once again there is a fissuring gap between us.

People who have eaten at our tables, who were good friends, who we have worshiped alongside – became estranged. This separation was buoyed by blowing of the chill wind of politics where once there had been warmth and nurture and caring. 

We disagreed then and continue to disagree. We no longer understand one another’s points of view.

How did we allow these gaps between us to develop?
How do we close these fissures so something new and vital can grow?
How can we stalk the gaps together?

Not one of us has the corner on the Truth; if we are honest with ourselves and each other, we cower together for safety in the cracks of this world, watching helplessly as the backside of God passes by, His face too holy for us to gaze upon.

He places us there together for our own good. I see you there alongside me.

We are weaker together when one side wins and the other loses. We are dependent together. We need to hold each other up as we look over the edge of the upcoming cliff.

Only His Word – nothing else –
can fill the open gaping hollow before us.
His Grace is great enough
to fill every hole
bridge every gap
bring hope to the hopeless
plant seeds for the future
and restore us wholly to each other.

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Beauty Lives Again

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On a rim-ledge of Bryce Canyon
Beauty lives again
Far from cries cacophonous
And the woes of men.

Color in a sweep of sound and 
Inarticulate,
Raises spired against mankind
A rocky parapet

~Norman MacLeod “Bryce Canyon: Utah”

Maybe, just like us, God was stupefied; 
He rarely knew how any day would end,

had to see things finished to call them good.
Here, He might even have done without
the bric-a-brac of the days that followed

except the fourth day’s (bodies of light)
essential for the colors of the stone,
the greater light especially adroit.

Just watch it nurse a puny flame at dawn
—purple with an edging of vermillion—
by sunrise to a full-fledged conflagration

then temper it to golden-rose by noon,
darker still as day begins to fail.
The oranges go bronze, the reds, maroon…

~Jacqueline Osherow from “Inspiration Point, Bryce Canyon, Utah”

Seeing this place for the first time today, I think God must thoroughly enjoy playing in this gigantic sandbox. He experiments with shapes and sizes, He changes color and texture, He stacks layers and piles up rubble.

It feels like I could be visiting another planet but this one is His masterpiece.

I am stupefied at the Creative Mind behind this.

At a time when the world’s cacophony is louder than ever, I needed this quiet assurance that God is still at work as sculptor and painter, shaping more than mere rock.

He is still at work shaping us, so that beauty lives above, below, all around and within us.

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Be Sunlight on a Stream

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Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again tho’ cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.
~Christina Rossetti “Echo”

The real world reverberates with echoes of our losses – so much in the news pulls us down every day. When filled with tears and sorrow, we try to retreat to the safety of our dreams rather than face fear and uncertainty.

But we can’t stay in our heads or give up hope.

There is too much the world needs from us.

Like sunlight on a stream, we become the promise of illumination of the dark depths. When doors remain closed to those who need help most, we are the key meant for the lock.

Love is that light and key. God equips us with the pulse and breath to make a difference to others. And we can make a difference: one word, one smile, one vote at a time.

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Such a Strange Sweet Sorrow

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The passing of the summer fills again
my heart with strange sweet sorrow, and I find
the very moments precious in my palm.
Each dawn I did not see, each night the stars
in spangled pattern shone, unknown to me,
are counted out against me by my God,
who charges me to see all lovely things…
~Jane Tyson Clement from “Autumn” in No One Can Stem the Tide

I have missed too much over my life time:
one-of-a-kind masterpieces hung briefly in the sky
at the beginning and the ending of each day.

For too long, I didn’t notice,
being asleep to beauty,
oblivious to a rare and loving Artist.

We’re already a month into autumn.
I’ve had a hard time letting go of summer.
Until the last week of heavy rain and wind,
our days have been filled with blue skies,
warm temps and no killing frosts.

In short, it felt like perfection:
sweater weather filled with vibrant leaf color, clear moonlit nights, northern lights and some outstanding sunrises.

I feel I must try to absorb it all, to witness and record and savor it. 
God convicted us to see, listen, taste and believe.

Can there be a more merciful sentence for His children,
given the trouble we people have been to Him? 
Yet He loves us still, despite the strange sweet sorrow we cause.

See, listen, taste and believe.  I do and I will.

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Attempting to Stopper Time

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…the golden hour of the clock of the year.
Everything that can run to fruit has already done so:
round apples, oval plums, bottom-heavy pears,
black walnuts and hickory nuts annealed in their shells,
the woodchuck with his overcoat of fat.
Flowers that were once bright as a box of crayons
are now seed heads and thistle down.
All the feathery grasses shine in the slanted light.
It’s time to bring in the lawn chairs and wind chimes,
time to draw the drapes against the wind,
time to hunker down.
Summer’s fruits are preserved in syrup,
but nothing can stopper time.
No way to seal it in wax or amber;
it slides though our hands like a rope of silk.
At night, the moon’s restless searchlight sweeps across the sky.
~Barbara Crooker “And Now it’s October” from Small Rain.

I do try to stopper time.

I try every day on this page,
not to suspend time or render it frozen,
but like flowers and fruit that wither,
I want to preserve these moments –
a few harvested words and pictures
to sample some chilly day.

I offer it up to you now,
a bit of fragrance,
to sip of its sweetness
as it glows, luminous in the bottle.

Let’s share.
Leave it unstoppered.
The passage of time
is meant to be preserved this way.

photo by Josh Scholten
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Out of Sight

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A neighbourhood.
At dusk.

Things are getting ready
to happen
out of sight.

Stars and moths.
And rinds slanting around fruit.

But not yet.

One tree is black.
One window is yellow as butter.

A woman leans down to catch a child
who has run into her arms
this moment.

Stars rise.
Moths flutter.
Apples sweeten in the dark.

~Eavan Boland “This Moment” from In a Time of Violence

photo by Nate Gibson

This moment,
when I ordinarily pay no attention,
when I have so many things to worry about,
when I try to fuss the future into submission…

This moment,
is when I need to realize if not now, then when,

This moment
won’t return, so I must not waste it.

This moment,
is my chance to see and taste and feel and love
as if there is no next moment.

This moment,
suddenly so sweet,
suddenly is gone,
out of sight,
so I follow.

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There’s Never Enough

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Just as a painter needs light
in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, 
so I need an inner light, 
which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn.
~Leo Tolstoy from Reminiscences

I was drinking in the surroundings:
air so crisp you could snap it with your fingers
and greens in every lush shade imaginable
offset by autumnal flashes of red and yellow.
~Wendy Delsol

Let’s go I said,
to find some light, but not just any light I said.
Sure he said, let’s go.

He loves to drive winding roads to breathe chill alpine air.

We headed 90 minutes northeast to find what I needed.
The highway empty going up.
Gas tank nearing empty with no time to fill up.
Only a few photographers there, searching too.

What we see from our backyard forty miles away overwhelms
when standing awestruck in its own front yard.

Now my nearly empty tank slowly fills part-way.
This dose of inner light will last me until next autumn.
Overcome, overwhelmed, overpowered
as though it’ll never be enough.

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How Small a Thing

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Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.

Within the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
light, a few leaves fall
of their own weight.

                                       The sky
is gray. It begins in mist
almost at the ground
and rises forever. The trees
rise in silence almost
natural, but not quite,
almost eternal, but
not quite.

                      What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest, even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowly
falling, and is pleased.
~Wendell Berry “VII” from This Day

What more did I think I wanted?

What always has been and always will be:

Until I’m not able to hold on in the wind and rain,
may I be a slight spot of light
in this dark and bleak world.

As I let go, when the time to finish comes,
I know my Maker’s smile
means it was all worthwhile…

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Such a Full Tide

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We walked downhill
to the beach, her hand in mine,
small step after small step.
She said Hi to the doggie on the leash,
Hi Mommy to a woman passing
on the street, Hi Daddy to a bearded man.
On the sand, she stared transfixed
at the water, the slight waves,
the tide not yet pulling out.
She looked up toward a flap of wings.
Bird, I said, pointing at the seagull,
and she mimicked, Bird,
then turned her gaze back
to the waves’ slow slapping.
Later I sat, looking at trees below me,
a hint of haze burning off the far bay,
the world busy working and sailing,
waking, while I sat waiting as Evie napped
that quiet Maine morning,
the full tide of grandmotherhood
lapping my shore.
~Laura Foley, “Full Tide” from It’s This 

They each carried a balloon from a special event for kids and their families.

It had been a morning of our family being together, just because. Being a grandparent needs no other reason other than “just because.”

Big sister was saying how she planned to take her balloon to school on Monday to show her friends. She was enjoying the balloon’s bobbing and weaving in the air … until suddenly it popped, causing her to jump and then she had nothing left but tatters in her hand.

Her face crumpled and the tears began to flow.

Little brother gripped his balloon more tightly, looking at his sister’s tears and worrying the same thing might happen to his balloon. His face contorted, ready to cry right along with her. And then there was a moment of clarity and insight in his eyes.

He handed his balloon to her. He said, “here, you can have mine.” And though he was clearly sad at the thought of having no balloon himself, his eyes were shining with proud tears.

He had discovered what it meant to sacrifice, to comfort and care for someone he loved.

She was speechless. She held his balloon gently, struggling to know how to respond. If it was even possible, she loved him so much more in that moment.

So their parents said to her brother, “we think that gift deserves stopping for a hot chocolate on the way home.”

Big sister looked at her parents, looked again at her little brother, and handed the balloon back to him, saying “why don’t we share?”

Hot chocolate makes all things wonderful and cozy and better, when shared.


Especially for weeping, laughing, full-to-the-brim-with-love grandparents.

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