It’s been a long, hard winter. There’s no other way to say it, except for the cliche. Slowly, as the days warm and the sun returns, I am finding my way out of the Winter Blues layer of the brain fog that has been swirling around me. As I try to grab the bright threads that will lead me out of these mists, I am jumping once reaching the golden thread of National Poetry Month to use the discipline of daily writing to reenergize me.
This year, I’ve made a slideshow (with Slidesgo template) with pages for prompts and daily poems. Several of my students have made their own slideshows, and we’re sharing them with each other so we can read each other’s work throughout the month. Click the link above, if you want to read mine. Here’s today’s:
Gratitude List:
1. Daily contemplation of the changes in the trees.
2. Beginning to walk out of the fog a little.
3. My students and my colleagues. This school is a wonderful place.
4. Yogurt and grapes and granola–a healthy, reliable lunch
5. You, Beloveds, how you’re there, so steady, doing your Work, and I can feel the strength of that even when I am wandering about in the fogs of my brain.
May we walk in Beauty!
Words for the Day of the Holy Fool:
“The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.” —Julian of Norwich
“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” —Carl Jung
“Poems are maps to the place where you already are.”
—Jane Hirshfield
“Be still, and the world is bound to turn herself inside out to entertain you. Everywhere you look, joyful noise is clanging to drown out quiet desperation. The choice is to draw the blinds and shut it all out, or believe.” —Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson
“When you do not know you need mercy and forgiveness yourself, you invariably become stingy in sharing it with others. So make sure you are always waiting with hands widely cupped under the waterfall of mercy.” —Richard Rohr
“All four gospels insist that when all the other disciples are fleeing, Mary Magdalene does not run. She stands firm. She does not betray or lie about her commitment to Jesus—she witnesses. Hers is clearly a demonstration of either the deepest human love or the highest spiritual understanding of what Jesus was teaching—perhaps both. But why—one wonders–do Holy Week liturgies tell and re-tell the story of Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus, while the steady and unwavering witness of Magdalene is passed over—not even noticed? How would our understanding of the paschal story change if instead of reflecting upon Jesus dying alone and rejected if we were to reinforce the fact that one person stood by him and did not leave? For this story of Mary Magdalene is as firmly stated in scripture as the denial story. How would this change the emotional timbre of the day? How would it affect our feeling of ourselves? How would it reflect upon how we have viewed, and still view, women in the church? About the nature of redemptive love?” —Cynthia Bourgeault, Episcopal Priest
“When I feel this fog rolling in on me, I light fires of affection in the hearts of others. I tell them in tangible ways how the life they live makes me live mine differently, how precious and important they are to the rest of us. That fire then becomes like a beacon which burns through the grey and which I can sail towards.” –Toko-pa Turner
It’s good to leave each day behind,
like flowing water, free of sadness.
Yesterday is gone and its tale told.
Today new seeds are growing.
—Rumi
Mockingbird Chronicles 