Tag: ordinary

Just An Ordinary Life

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No doubt she’s disappointed.

Such a disgrace I turned out to be.

Not a policy-maker
Or tech-savvy entrepreneur.
Nothing of note.

I gave birth three times
and sent three
tall, kind people 
into the world

I offered words of consolation
I planted sunflowers
I listened

Elected official?
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist?
Cutting-edge thought-leader?
MD, PhD, CEO?
Oscar, Emmy, Tony? 
Nobel? 
Anything?

I closed my mother’s eyes
when she died
and again, my father’s

I made no fortune
no headlines
nothing went viral

I sang and danced
for no one

I remembered
I noticed
I breathed

Just an ordinary life
filled with extraordinary love.

How disappointing.
~Mary Poindexter McLaughlin “Alma Mater”

Parents can hold unreasonable expectations of success for their children; they tend to reflect their own deficiencies or failures.
After all, we want our kids to make the world a better place
than it was for us.

Yet no academic degree, no bank account, no notoriety or award
can match living an ordinary life filled with extraordinary love.

And yes, I am disappointed in myself – not because of the unmet expectations of my parents – I checked off all the boxes they hoped I would achieve in my younger years, but I couldn’t match the extraordinary love they showed me.

The older me tended to withhold myself emotionally from them as they grew frailer, fearing their weaknesses would someday become my own.

I could have been more compassionate in their final years, rather than taking on the more professional role of the doctor-daughter – physically present but too distracted and stretched with competing responsibilities.

That is something I cannot undo now except to pray for forgiveness for how my own inner struggles made those years harder than they needed to be.

My husband and I birthed three tall kind people who we love and have sent into the world. I pray for them what I wish I had understood when I was sent into the world by my parents: living their ordinary life of extraordinary love is more important than anything else they set out to do.

I rejoice as I see them foster such love for their spouses and their children and their communities: remembering, noticing and breathing life into each new day.

Seeing that as the years go by, I keep planting my sunflowers, slowly letting go of my own disappointment in myself.

Preserving the Sweetness

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photo by Joel DeWaard

How beautiful the things are that you did not notice before!
A few sweetclover plants
Along the road to Bellingham,
Culvert ends poking out of driveways,
Wooden corncribs, slowly falling,
What no one loves, no one rushes towards or shouts about,
What lives like the new moon,
And the wind
Blowing against the rumps of grazing cows.
~Robert Bly from “Like the New Moon I Will Live My Life”

culvert

“A devout but highly imaginative Jesuit,”
Untermeyer says in my yellowed
college omnibus of modern poets,
perhaps intending an oxymoron, but is it?
Shook foil, sharp rivers start to flow.
Landscape plotted and pieced, gray-blue, snow-pocked
begins to show its margins. Speeding back
down the interstate into my own hills
I see them fickle, freckled, mounded fully
and softened by millennia into pillows.
The priest’s sprung metronome tick-tocks,
repeating how old winter is. It asks
each mile, snow fog battening the valleys,
what is all this juice and all this joy?
~Maxine Kumin “Almost Spring, Driving Home, Reciting Hopkins”

The Robert Bly poem reminds me to see in a new way
as I travel the road to Bellingham, Washington
(not Bly’s Bellingham, Minnesota).

My eyes scan for the unnoticed and unremarkable,
along these rural byways I traveled decades to work,
now only to meetings or shopping –
when feeling the need to wander and wonder.

Forty years ago in my twice-daily
hour-long Seattle traffic commute to reach my clinic,
I could only pay attention to the cars around me,
blinkered to all else happening.

Since moving north to Whatcom County,
I try to notice what small things
I might keep handy in my memory for another day,
like a jar of canned peaches in our root cellar,
just so I won’t forget,
ready to pull them off the shelf someday
so I might share
their sweetness with someone else.

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photo by Joel DeWaard
photo by Joel DeWaard

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. 
…to get up in the morning
and look at the world in a way
that takes nothing for granted. 
Everything is phenomenal;
everything is incredible;
never treat life casually.
To be spiritual is to be amazed.
~Abraham Joshua Hershel

photo by Harry Rodenberger
photo by Harry Rodenberger
groundcover

Light Becomes What It Touches

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…The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases.  Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
~Lisel Mueller from “Monet Refuses the Operation” from Second Language

Monet’s corner of a lily pond (1918-1919)

“Heaven pulls earth into its arms…”

We all see things differently, don’t we?
What seems ordinary to one is extraordinarily memorable to another.

How might I help others to see the world as I do?
How might I learn to adjust my focus to see things as you do?

The world is in flux;
my delight and dismay flows
from moment to moment,
from object to absence,
from light to darkness,
from color to muted.

Perhaps the blur from Monet’s cataracts
also impedes my vision, creating a deeper understanding,
as I use my imagination to fill in what I can’t quite discern.

My heart and mind expands exponentially
to claim this world and all that beauty has to offer,
while heaven – all this while – pulls me into its arms.

In heaven, my focus will be clear.
All will be extraordinarily ordinary.

Where the Ordinary Comes Alive

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your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers, 
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
~e.e.cummings from “[somewhere I have never traveled,gladly beyond]

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is a way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples, and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.
~William Martin from The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity.
~John Ruskin

It is at the edge of a petal that love waits.
~William Carlos Williams from Spring and All 

Here is the fringy edge where elements meet and realms mingle, where time and eternity spatter each other with foam.
~Annie Dillard from Holy the Firm

We tend to look for love only inside the heart of things,
watching it pulse as both showpiece and show off,
reverberating from deep within,
yet loud enough for all the world to bear witness.

But as I advance on this life’s road,
I find love lies waiting at the periphery of my heart,
fragile and easily torn as a petal edge – 
clinging to the fringe of my days,
holding on through storms and trials.

This love is ever-present,
protects and cherishes,
fed by fine little veins which branch
from the center to the tender margins of infinity.

It is on that delicate edge of forever I dwell,
waiting to be fed, trembling with anticipation.

Ordinary as Unmown Grass

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I will seek a letter at the mailbox’s red flag, how many more times?
Walk this puddled gravel drive with the dog and cat, how many more times?

Dislike the sight, row of brown molehills risen like my own petty complaints?
Be here to hear the just-before-spring birds tune up, how many more times?

My life, ordinary as unmown grass, tattered and dormant in fencerows….
Sons asleep upstairs under quilts pieced of castoff jeans, how many more times?

Witness sunrise over the barn, frost on the grass, deer by the pines? Think of “Jesus asking that man, Do you want to be made well? How many more times?

Think of Him asking me. Of walking back to the mailbox in late afternoon,
of pulling it open, reaching in again, how many more times?
~Daye Phillippo “Ordinary Ghazal” from Thunderhead

…it’s easy to forget that the ordinary is just the extraordinary that’s happened over and over again. Sometimes the beauty of your life is apparent. Sometimes you have to go looking for it. And just because you have to look for it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
God, grant me the grace of a normal day.
~Billy Coffey

I tend to get complacent in my daily routines, confident in the knowledge that tomorrow will be very much like yesterday.

I look out on plenty of unmown grass.

The reality is there is nothing ordinary about the events of this day or any other – it might have been otherwise and some day it will be otherwise.

I am reminded to stop rushing, take a look around and actually revel in the quiet moments of daily work, chats, walks, meals, and sleep, and yes, lawn mowing. As both of us suffered, one after the other, through a spring cold which interrupted our plans and schedules, we still knew how remarkable it is to just be here living life together.

We are granted peace even, maybe especially, when not feeling well.

Christ came to earth to remind us to dwell richly in the experience of these moments, to live, wanting to be well, despite our limitations.

God knows, such is a foretaste of the heaven which is to come.

On an Ordinary Morning Like This

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In the morning, when I slide open
the heavy old barn door on its track
and step inside, pull the cord
to let the chickens out, then turn
again toward that open door,
tall rectangle of light
and ragged grass, trees and sky,
the face of the other old barn
at the right, its hand-hewn rafters
where barn swallows nest,
fly in and out
through gaps made
by neglect and the passage
of time, the way the body
falls into disrepair,
I wonder if stepping
from this life
into the next will be like
stepping through
an aperture like this
and I hope it’s true, ordinary
morning like this.
~Daye Phillippo “Aperture” from Blue Between Owls: Blue Chore Coat and Other Collected Poems 

Each ordinary morning, I’m aware how much our barn buildings have aged as I slide open sticky doors, walk past peeling paint, mossy roofs, and gaps in the siding.

Deterioration of the body is inevitable over the decades.

I know this about my own state of disrepair as I move about more carefully during my chores, staying aware of uneven footing, struggling to lift what used to seem lighter, finding the work, as gratifying as it has always been, more challenging.

Our over 100 year old red hay barn underwent a major renovation 5 years ago because it was threatening to fall down in one of our winter windstorms. Thanks to that investment, it is strong and hearty again with new foundation posts, siding, and roof.

Still, it won’t last forever.

I had a pretty major repair myself last year allowing me to continue to do this physical work that is so important to me. Yet, I won’t last forever.

I like to think when those heavy rolling doors open to heaven someday, it will feel just like this: leaving behind what is temporary and always needing repairs, to enter into the redeeming glory of the eternal and everlasting.

And there is absolutely nothing ordinary about that.

photo by Harry Rodenberger
video by Harry Rodenberger

sample of lyrics:
Can’t touch my heart it’s not my time.
Bust my bones and throw my body on the line
Cause I’ve got love to fill me in
I’ve family to help me re-begin

Old barns don’t tear down
let ’em stand proud until they fall to the ground.

A strange feeling waking up to meet my Savior
this whole bizarre ballet that I lived through
but I’m not living all alone
these wounds of mine will set me free

Something of a Mess

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Don’t worry, spider,
I keep house casually.
~Kobayashi Issa (translation by Robert Hass)

There’s a web like a spider’s web,
Made of silk and light and shadows,
Spun by the moon in my room at night.
It’s a web made to catch a dream,
Hold it tight ’til I awaken,
As if to tell me, my dream is all right.
~Lyrics of Spider’s Web Folk Song (see below)

You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing.
I wove my webs for you because I liked you.
After all, what’s a life, anyway?
We’re born, we live a little while, we die.
A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess,
with all this trapping and eating flies.
By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle.
Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.
~E. B. White, from Charlotte’s Web

In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.

Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider’s web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.
~E.B. White from “Natural History”

Silk-thin silver strings woven cleverly into a lair,
An intricate entwining of divinest thread…
Like strands of magic worked upon the air,
The spider spins his enchanted web –
His home so eerily, spiraling spreads.

His gossamer so rigid, yet lighter than mist,
And like an eight-legged sorcerer – a wizard blest,
His lace, like a spell, he conjures and knits;
I witnessed such wild ingenuity wrought and finessed,
Watching the spider weave a dream from his web.
~Jonathan Platt “A Spider’s Web”

…humanity is like an enormous spider web, so that if you touch it anywhere, you set the whole thing trembling…

As we move around this world and as we act with kindness, perhaps, or with indifference, or with hostility, toward the people we meet, we too are setting the great spider web a-tremble. The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt.

Our lives are linked together. No man is an island.
~Frederick Buechner from The Hungering Dark

I’ve had a new friend for several months now, beginning in late fall and into winter. She lives in our bathroom, in a terraced silken network between the cabinet and the back of the toilet.

This is someone with only one request: we leave her home undisturbed during our brief visits.

And so I have. Normally I would be brushing visible cobwebs down in my quick cleans, but when I noticed this co-habiter back in November as the weather got chilly, I couldn’t help but think “Charlotte” and the ordinary miracles of creatures like her.

So there she stays as I await a profound web message from her.

Instead of messages, she is extending her network in the hope of catching what little insect life there is in a winter house. Her web does get some misting when we shower or bathe, so she has the moisture she needs to thrive. She goes on reconnaissance missions of her little tiled kingdom — there are small webs laced into most of the corners, above the tub and behind the door.

I really can’t see that she eats often; my research says she doesn’t need much. So we will co-exist as long as she wants to stay, although when spring comes, I know a front porch bench that will be a far better source of regular meals. And then I can do a little deeper clean of the crevices in the bathroom.

I hope she might agree to move on at that point. That is, unless she writes me a web message asking to stay “linked in.”

The Whole Shadowed Earth Reaching Up

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  the season quicker now
the darkening—

no longer the leaves
fluttering down

but the whole shadowed earth
reaching up, taking hold
~David Baker “Quicker”

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?
~Robert Browning from Andrea del Sarto

My branches are bared during this season of letting go.

As starkly revealed as I am, perhaps darkening days are a blessing: less spotlight on my complexity in silhouette – all knobby joints, awkward angles and curves.

One thing I know: in this season when I prefer the shadowland, I still reach up, trying to hold on to the promise beyond me. In fact, so many of us keep grasping at what we know is there but cannot see.

God has come down to grab on to each one of us — and is still hanging on.

We are not too plain or complex or awkward to be lifted, welcomed, cherished as we are, into heaven’s arms.

Time to Say Grace

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You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
~G.K. Chesterton

Norman Rockwell’s 1951 painting Saying Grace

Chesterton has it right.  No matter what I embark on, I should say grace first.  Even my breathing, my waking, and my sleeping. Even the brilliance right outside my back door.

Continual and constant thanks and praise to the Creator for all things bright and beautiful, and helping us through the dark times. 

Instead I am plagued with inconstancy and inconsistency, with a stubborn tendency to take it all for granted.

As I “dip pen in ink” this morning, join me in saying grace:

He is worthy. Amen and Amen.

Even more so.  Ever more now.

Heavens’ Embroidered Cloths

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dandy42615

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand,
and Eternity in an Hour.

When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light 
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day
~William Blake from “Auguries of Innocence”

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Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
~William Butler Yeats “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”

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If I look closely enough underfoot,
I might find the extraordinary
in the commonplace things of life.

So I keep my eyes alert;
my heart open to infinite possibilities
and try to tread softly.

Sometimes what I see is so beautiful,
it is uncovering heaven come to earth,
when the cosmos is contained
within the commonplace.

The God of Light and Living Water
is no further away
than my back yard.