Tag: prayer

Returning on Foot

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They work with herbs
and penicillin.
They work with gentleness
and the scalpel.
They dig out the cancer,
close an incision
and say a prayer
to the poverty of the skin.

…they are only human
trying to fix up a human.
Many humans die.

But all along the doctors remember:
First do no harm.
They would kiss if it would heal.
It would not heal.

If the doctors cure
then the sun sees it.
If the doctors kill
then the earth hides it.
The doctors should fear arrogance
more than cardiac arrest.
If they are too proud,
and some are,
then they leave home on horseback
but God returns them on foot.
~Anne Sexton “Doctors” from The Awful Rowing Toward God.

 

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Let me not forget how humbling it is
to provide care for a hurting person
and not be certain that what I suggest
will actually work,

to be trusted to recommend the best option
among many~
including tincture of time,
wait and see,
try this or that.

Like other physicians who tumble off
at a full gallop, having lost balance
between confidence and humility,
I sometimes find myself unseated and unsettled,
returning on foot to try again to make a difference.

 

 

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Jeweller of the Spiderweb

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Echo of the clocktower, footstep
in the alleyway, sweep
of the wind sifting the leaves.

Jeweller of the spiderweb, connoisseur
of autumn’s opulence, blade of lightning
harvesting the sky.

Keeper of the small gate, choreographer
of entrances and exits, midnight
whisper traveling the wires.

Seducer, healer, deity or thief,
I will see you soon enough—
in the shadow of the rainfall,

in the brief violet darkening a sunset—
but until then I pray watch over him
as a mountain guards its covert ore

and the harsh falcon its flightless young. 
~Dana Gioia “Prayer”
(written in memory of his infant son who died of SIDS)

 

 

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When we think of those who wait for us on the other side,
including our baby lost before birth 35 years ago…

Who then will we long for when it comes our time to wait?

I know there is One who watches over all these reunions,
knowing the moment when my fractured heart
heals whole once again.

I will see you soon enough.

 

 

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A Long and Wondrous Journey

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Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way
on the earth!

Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
under a tree.

imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.
~Mary Oliver from “Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me”

 

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Our rainfall this week was met with joy and relief, refreshing what had waited all summer parched and dry and dying.

Too little too late.

Across the country and in other parts of the world, this week’s rainfall caused flooding and destruction, threatening homes and lives.

Too much too soon.

This life’s too little/too much journeys are frightening, wondrous and arduous.

And this journey, this life, is ours to travel.  Let us pray for a little more just right.

 

 

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The First Week of August

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The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer,
the top of the live-long year,
like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.

The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring,
and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn,
but the first week of August is motionless, and hot.

It is curiously silent, too,
with blank white dawns and glaring noons,
and sunsets smeared with too much color.
~Natalie Babbitt from Tuck Everlasting

 

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After a few days of milder summer respite, we’ve returned to temperatures in the nineties this week.  No one asked me if enduring such heat was a reasonable way to usher in the first week of August.

So here I sit silently rocking and sweating in the highest vantage point of this year’s ferris wheel ride, hanging breathlessly mid-air, appreciating the brief pause in the endless cycle of days.

Having just arrived at the top, I will venture to look down, knowing I am simply along for the ride, and Someone else is at the controls.  I might as well enjoy the view of all that is behind, alongside and in front of me, but especially what is below, holding me up in thin air.

All too quickly will come the descent into autumn, my stomach leaping into my chest with the lurch forward into the unknown.  As the climb to get here took so long, I am not quite ready for this inevitable drop back into the chill.

Hot or not, it’s best to celebrate this first week in August for all it’s splash and glare.  At least I’m swinging in what little breeze there is, endeavoring to capture the moment forever.

 

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Breathing In and Out

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What is there beyond knowing that keeps
calling to me?  I can’t
 
turn in any direction
but it’s there.  I don’t mean
 
the leaves’ grip and shine or even the thrush’s
silk song, but the far-off
 
fires, for example,
of the stars, heaven’s slowly turning
 
theater of light, or the wind
playful with its breath;
 
or time that’s always rushing forward,
or standing still
 
in the same — what shall I say —
moment.
What I know
I could put into a pack
 
as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it
on one shoulder,
 
important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained
 
and unexplainable.
 
….mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing in and out…
~Mary Oliver from “What is there beyond knowing”
I’m reminded daily about how little I know and understand.  I work with people who are suffering, whose symptoms may fit prescribed diagnostic criteria but yet defy explanation or reason.  They care about what relief I might offer rather than a label that names the illness.
Like so much in medicine, what I witness daily is unexplained and unexplainable.  What I do know I carry with me, small and honorable and shareable.   I offer it up to each patient, one after another:  here is what I think might help.  here is your next step to take.  here is the hope that goes with taking each breath, the next and the next.
Even when standing in the dark, as we all do at times in our life, we just keep breathing.  In and out.  In and out.  We are filled even when empty.

The Unstilled World Still Whirled

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If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.
~T.S. Eliot from “Ash Wednesday”

 

In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls…
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope.
~T.S. Eliot from “East Coker”

 

 

On Maundy Thursday, I arrive back to the beginning,  six weeks later returning to Eliot:
“the unstilled world whirled/About the centre of the silent Word.”

This day:

a day of disquiet and silence,
of Christ taking towel and water to disciples’ dirty feet,
of bread broken and fruit crushed and consumed,
of anguished prayer and the kiss of betrayal,
of stilling the sword,
of watching those He loved run off in fear
and deny they ever knew Him.

In my beginning is my end.
And now the light falls and the darkness begins.
We wait, sorrow-filled, our unstilled souls stilled
by our betrayal, our denial, our hopelessness without Him.

 

Preparing Through Parable: Grant Me Justice

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“In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’

4 “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”

6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Luke 18:1-8

 

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To reassure us that persistent prayer makes a difference to both us and God, Jesus tells this story with a bit of irony.  If an unjust judge can grant justice, how much more so will the Lord provide justice for those He loves?

We cry out day and night at times, when the burden is heavy.  He hears us and will respond with exactly what we need, even if we don’t know what we need.

His wisdom is infinite, and His knowledge of us unsurpassed.  We shall pray His justice prevails.

 

May my eyes see, my ears hear, my heart understand. He prepares me with parable.

 

Shattered

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As through a long-abandoned half-standing house
only someone lost could find,

which, with its paneless windows and sagging crossbeams,
its hundred crevices in which a hundred creatures hoard and nest,

seems both ghost of the life that happened there
and living spirit of this wasted place,

wind seeks and sings every wound in the wood
that is open enough to receive it,

shatter me God into my thousand sounds.

~Christian Wiman “Small Prayer in a Hard Wind”

 

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same abandoned school house near Rapalje, Montana a few years later, photo by Joel DeWaard

 

 

May I,
though sagging and graying,
leaning perilously,
be porous enough
to allow life’s daily gusts
blow through me
without being pushed over
in a heap.

Then the wind,
filling my every crack
and defect,
may cause me to sing.

Someday when I shatter,
collapsing into pieces,
it will be amidst
a mosaic of praises.

 

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photo by Joel DeWaard

 

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photo by Joel DeWaard

In the Dark, Reconciled

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I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death’s note wants to climb over—
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
And the song goes on, beautiful.
~Rainer Maria Rilke from “My Life is Not This Steeply Sloping Hour”

 

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On Sunday evenings I often feel I’m the spot in the middle between discordant notes. There is on one side of me the pressure of catch-up from what was left undone through a too-brief weekend and on the other side is the anticipated demand of the coming week. As I prepare to sleep at the end of a Sabbath day, I feel uneasily in dead center, immobilized by the unknown ahead and the known behind.

This moment of rest in the present, between the trembling past and uncertain future, is my moment of reconciliation: my Sabbath extended.

This evening, I will allow myself a steeply sloping hour of silence and reflection before I surge ahead into the week, knowing that on my journey I’ll inevitably hit wrong notes, yet beautiful nevertheless.

Even the least harmonious notes resolve within the next chord. I will move from the rest of my Sabbath back into the rhythm of my life.

Trembling, still trembling, always trembling at what is to come.

 

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photo by Josh Scholten

 

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photo by Lea Gibson

 

 

 

 

Ensanguining the Skies

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How can I feel so warm   
Here in the dead center of January? I can   
Scarcely believe it, and yet I have to, this is   
The only life I have. 
~James Wright from “A Winter Daybreak Above Vence”
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to the northwest

 

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to the north
To-day I shall be strong,
No more shall yield to wrong,
  Shall squander life no more;
Days lost, I know not how,
I shall retrieve them now;
Now I shall keep the vow
  I never kept before.Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
  Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
  Falls the remorseful day.
~A.E. Houseman from “How Clear, How Lovely Bright”
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to the northeast
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to the east
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to the southeast
It was like a church to me.
I entered it on soft foot,
Breath held like a cap in the hand.
It was quiet.
What God there was made himself felt,
Not listened to, in clean colours
That brought a moistening of the eye,
In a movement of the wind over grass.
There were no prayers said. But stillness
Of the heart’s passions — that was praise
Enough; and the mind’s cession
Of its kingdom. I walked on,
Simple and poor, while the air crumbled
And broke on me generously as bread.
~ R.S. Thomas “The Moor”
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to the south

 

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to the southwest

 

Last night, as you can see,  was a surrounding sunset experience – 360 degrees of evolving color and patterns, streaks and swirls, gradation and gradual decline.

It was all in silence.  No bird song, no wind, no spoken prayer.
Yet communion took place with the air breaking and feeding me like manna from heaven.

May I squander life no more and treasure each day.
May I keep my vows to God, church, family, friends, and patients.
May I be warmed on a chill winter day by the witness of such bleeding of last light of day.

 

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to the west

 

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to the west

 

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to the west