Spring Spell
Bee.
Crocus.
Hocus-pocus!
Gratitude List:
1. Music: Yesterday’s Beyond Ourselves concert (Good job, LMH Campus Chorale!)
2. More swans
3. Grapefruit
4. The Story continues (Yesterday’s sermon: Telling stories. Remembering that there is always more to come.)
5. Bees!
May we walk in Beauty!
“If you take two steps toward God,” the Sufi mystic Satish Kumar tells Pi Patel in Life of Pi, “God runs to you!”
My friend, do you see
how everything runs to you
when you draw nearer?
Gratitude List:
1. The daffodils at school are preparing to burst open some morning soon.
2. That red-tailed hawk that wheeled low above the farm this afternoon.
3. Still room to ripen. How to say this one? I’ve been thinking lately about how middle age doesn’t not have to mean peak ripeness. I’m still allowed to grow, still allowed to mature. Whew.
4. Wiggle room. Some days, it’s okay to be simply sufficient. Striving counts.
5. Teamwork. I love my colleagues.
May we walk in Beauty!
I dreamed I had wings,
black feathers rising behind me like shadow.
When I opened my eyes,
the lonely earth spread out beneath me;
the old moon was at my back.
Gratitude List:
1. Crows crossing the moon in the morning
2. Mist rising from the Millstream in the afternoon
3. Options
4. Shadows
5. Three Good Things. I have been carrying some heaviness lately–by my own choice, and with gratitude and great love. So it was nice in the space of this day to have Three Good Things come my way: a student stopped by to tell me that her father, who had been injured fighting a fire a year ago, is back on the job; another student, adopted as a baby from Russia, stopped by to tell me that he finally received his official citizenship; this evening at the library, I ran into a friend I haven’t seen in a long time.
May we walk in Beauty!
Tonight, a new set of Shaman Words. A Magic Spell. A Prayer. An Incantation for Healing.
I will say that I breathe and mean that I am praying.
I will say the drums are throbbing in the night
and mean that your heart beats
to the rhythm of the earth’s heart,
strong and measured,
strong and measured,
strong and measured.
I will say sparks rise from fire
and mean my thoughts fly to you.
I will say the River flows to sea
and mean your blood flows
through its royal chambers
in the manner it is meant to.
I will say the hunting lionesses
gather on the plains
and mean that the women
are fierce in their prayers for you,
that the mothers
are wild in their magics
to see you whole again.
Gratitude List:
1. The good words of Conrad Moore. Sometimes the best words are the ones that unsettle, that cause a little discomfort, that admit to anger, that shake us from our complacency, to wake us up, and break our status quo. Jesus called the spirit the Comforter. Sometimes the people need a Discomforting Spirit to bring renewal.
2. Watching live theater with the boys. I am the House Manager for the plays–in charge of the ushering. I took the boys with me to different shows of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat this weekend and they helped usher and then watched the show. Nothing cuter than watching a five-year-old absorbed in a musical, eyes wide, clapping at the end of each song.
3. Thaw. Warmth.
4. It’s International Women’s Day–I am grateful for Jane Goodall and Wangari Maathai and Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth and Mary Oliver and Joy Harjo and Malala Yousufzai and Leymah Gbowee and the suffragettes and the herbalists and witches and midwives and mothers and sisters and daughters and word-weavers and artists and farmers and teachers who have gone before.
5. The heart.
May we walk in Beauty!
For Friends Who Are Experiencing Anxiety:
Here in the hollow
the sun sparks white flame
from the snow-boughed limbs
of walnut and sycamore.
And you, can you feel the rays
that sparkle to your valley
from my own heart-limbs?
From our many different dells
we trees make a forest
which hums with the light
we are sending your way.
Gratitude List:
1. Big words. Panopticon, in a student paper. Hippopotomonstrasesquipedaliophobia, from Ellis’s student dictionary. It’s the fear of big words. Change the ending from phobia to philia (love of) and you’ve got me.
2. During this last big snow, the color for contemplation (other than white, of course) was ginger/rufous/chestnut. Fred the ginger tomcat on my lap, set off by the rich colors of an olive and russet blanket. The chestnut flank of the titmouse who sat in the twiggy branches high up in the sycamore outside my bathroom window and seemed to watch me brush my teeth. The deep rufous/russet flanks of the towhee who visited the feeder during the storm and scratched, chicken-like, to get the seed below the snow, setting the table for the less industrious birds.
3. Creativity. Music, art, drama, craft, word, play.
4. I have to say it: March snowstorms. This reminds me of a March blizzard years ago that kept a party of giddy friends snowbound for two days longer than a weekend.
5. Healing. Hope for healing. The body’s ability to work wonders to fix itself.
May we walk in Beauty!
In this book of Native American poems and rituals, “Language Event II” is labelled Navajo, and goes like this:
Hold a conversation in which everything refers to water.
If somebody comes in the room, say: “Someone’s floating in.”
If someone sits down, say: “It looks like someone just stopped floating.”
(Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Native American Indians, edited by Jerome Rothenberg)
That’s all there is to it. It reads like a drama exercise or a poetry writing prompt.
I keep trying to write a poem, but none are swimming my way at the moment. Perhaps this is one I’ll try as a verbal exercise throughout the day and see if my children notice.
Gratitude List:
1. A snow day.
2. The way those indigo afternoon shadows flowed across the snowy landscape.
3. The way snow brings every branch and twig into high relief.
4. Persephone never fails to return. She will rise.
5. Fresh start. Tabula rasa. Blank pages. Snowy fields.
May we walk in Beauty!
To celebrate the dawning of March, here is a photo from last March. I don’t think the aconite are up just yet, but I will check this morning on the way out to the car.
Two nights ago, I dreamed that Lady Gaga and her beau were touring the school one afternoon and stopped by my room. The Lady was enthralled by the look of the room, and told me that it must mean I was an excellent teacher. Look at me, fishing for compliments even in my dreams. I know where this one came from, of course. I had been pondering, as I fell asleep, how fascinating it is that all these sober and earnest Lancaster County Mennonites (I include myself in those descriptors) are suddenly three degrees of separation away from Lady Gaga: We know people who taught Taylor Kinney, who is soon to be Mr. Gaga. Does that make him Lord Gaga, perhaps?
This morning, I woke up in the middle of an etymological dream about the root jour, which my sleeping brain reminded me means day. I know that journal means the record of the day, so journey, I woke up thinking, must mean the day’s travel. Sojourn–how does that differ from journey? I looked it up a moment ago. The first part of sojourn comes from sub-, which means “less than,” so sojourn originally intended to indicate a short stay, whereas journey was about the travel from place to place. I am so glad that my dreaming mind had me clear up all that information. Perhaps I need to plan a journey, a sojourn.
This morning’s writing exercise is the Language Event I wrote about yesterday. I am going to try to do it as a free-write–as fast as I can–and see whether any treasures fall out of my foggy brain.
Say journey and mean day
Say blue and mean that you were out in the morning
Say wildness and mean longing
Say twilight and mean the way your soul whispers
Say birdsong and mean message
Say warning and mean that you need to move on
Say season and mean that you have become someone new
Say winter and mean that an old thing is passing
Say springtime and mean that the morning is dawning
Say morning sun and mean that you open your eyes
Say green and mean that you are nourished and fed
Say golden and mean that butterflies are returning
This has some possibility. I feel like I might want to keep a notebook and write ten of them a day, and then compile a Shaman’s Lexicon Poem, perhaps. If you want to do it, too, feel free. Perhaps our poems will meet some day in the ethers of the internet. I think I will add it to my list of poetry-writing exercises for the ninth-grade poetry unit.
Gratitude List:
1. Grandma Weaver’s afghan and old plum-colored recliner. Nothing says comfort to me quite like sitting here like this. Come to think of it, the white and blue quilt that is folded over the back of the chair right now was made by Grandma Slabaugh. (Say grandmother’s blanket and mean enwrapped by love.)
2. A clean house. (Say clean house and mean quiet mind.)
3. This sea-foam-colored scarf. (Say aquamarine and mean contemplation.)
4. Playing violin with Ellis on the cello yesterday afternoon with the winter sun sparkling through the windows. (Say music and mean my heart is dancing.)
5. The shenanigans of a silly five-year-old. (Say shenanigans and mean shenanigans.)
May we walk in Beauty!
A friend of mine gave me a book of poetry a few months ago. Titled Shaking the Pumpkin, it is a rich and careful compendium of traditional poems from Native North Americans, edited by Jerome Rothenberg.
Several of the poems are simply rituals recorded verbatim and translated into English. They appear almost more as linguistic research than actual poems, and magically, it is in this almost lab-like recording of the words that they begin to take on some of their poetic power for me. Here, for instance, are selected lines from my favorite poem in the book:
Language Event 1 Eskimo Use the language of shamans. Say the leash & mean the father “ a road “ the wind “ soup “ a seal “ Big Louse “ a caribou “ what makes me dive in headfirst “ a dream “ what cracks your ears “ a gun “ a jumping thing “ a trout “ what keeps me standing “ your clothes “ the person with a belly “ the weather “ the person with a belly getting up “ the morning “ the person with a belly goes to bed “ it's nightfall “ the little walker “ a fox “ walker with his head down “ a dog “ a person smoke surrounds ” a live one “ a floating one “ an island “ a flat one “ a wolf “ a shadow “ a white man “ another kind of shadow “ a person “ the shadow-maker “ the shaman “ he turned my mind around “ he told me something
I had planned to write my own this morning before the children woke up, but it’s too late for that now, because I took so much time trying to figure out how to format the poem. Meanwhile, I learned a tiny little thing or two about HTML formatting, so there’s that, and I’ll work on my Language Event poem another day.
Gratitude List:
1. I just found out that the monarchs are on the move in Mexico. Spring is on its way, and the cycles of life continue for this year again at least. We’ll set the table with all the local milkweed we can manage.
2. Labyrinths
3. Messengers, guides, crows
4. Markers, maps, cairns
5. Lent, the contemplative season
May we walk in Sunshine.
all this running
between one moment
and the next
from the room of this minute
into the room of the one to come
we scuttle and race
trailing the detritus
of our days like the stuff
falling from a half-open suitcase
appointments and obligations
litter the ground behind us
and we are gasping
grasping for the next
take a breath
sit down
on the floor of the room
of this moment in time
watch how the minutes flow over you
when you release your grasp
on the one ahead
watch how the space of this room
takes shape around you
watch how your breath
blooms into the air
Gratitude List:
1. Well-written popular history: Bill Bryson’s At Home, for example, which I am listening to in the car these days–a history of the house. It has everything: agriculture, architecture, social classes, semantics and etymology.
2. Yesterday was Taking Care of Me Day. I didn’t get a lot of work done, but I got my eyes checked and my hair done.
3. Sleep is appearing frequently on my list these days, and I am putting it down again. I have had at least three or four 8+-hour nights lately (with minor interruptions from the cat). It doesn’t always work, but I have found that when I can have a creative art project on the back burner of my mind during the day, I can pull it out and plan it during those moments of panic when I wake up and am suddenly panicky that I won’t get back to sleep. Something about imagining artistic processes lulls my brain.
4. I have a love-hate relationship with this pedometer, but it’s really getting me moving. Whoever devised this step-counting contest at school was a genius. I have been the lowest number on my team for the first two weeks, and I am determined not to let them all down, so I stand and step in place during evening activities these days. We play Uno a lot during these winter evenings, and I step my way through the games. This morning my legs actually ache from all that stepping yesterday. I hope it makes me healthier in the long run. It is at least keeping me from being quite so sedentary.
5. Dawn. Black tree silhouettes against newborn light.
May we walk in Beauty!
In last night’s dream
we were racing down the road
in a jaunty little car.
(Aren’t all dream-cars sort of jaunty?)
“Holy —-!”
I’m afraid I screamed
what you think I did
as we skimmed the edge
of the giant sinkhole.
“Did you see that sinkhole?
It almost swallowed us up!”
My oblivious car-mates
(Me, Me, and Me,
according to Joseph Campbell)
were not paying attention,
and Oblivious Driver Me
sped up to crest a hill
which was covered with debris.
We didn’t make it over the pile of junk
and had to back up,
had to go another way.
“Oh, well,” said Driver Me to Disapproving Me,
“at least we tried.”
In my head as I woke up,
a familiar voice was singing,
“What will you risk?”
Mockingbird Chronicles 