Gratitude List:
1. Re-member-ing
2. Quest-ioning
3. Cred-ulity and in-cred-ulity
4. Couer-age and en-couer-agement
5. Breath
May we walk in Beauty!
Seek Beauty
Gratitude List:
1. Dahlias
2. Mariah’s healing oil/massage/energy treatment.
3. Reading L’Engle to my children.
4. Fannie Lou Hamer
5. Goals
Seek Beauty.
The Contemplative Muscle
Not much time to focus on poems these days. A small boy needs Mama time. A cat needs a snuggle that cannot handle a computer. I feel a need to keep working the contemplative muscles, so here is a little bit of free association for the morning.
In my head every poem begins
“This is the story. . .”
Inside my heart every story starts out
“She lived at the edge of a great, dark forest.”
What did you do when the song began?
Did you huddle beneath the leaves in the bears’ den
or step into the sunny clearing,
trusting the shining threads that fell upon your ears?
Gratitude List:
1. Sleeping in past 6:30
2. My current reading stack: Ruth Gendler’s Book of Qualities, Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water, and Mary Oliver’s Felicity.
3. Sweater weather
4. Embracing the transitions
5. Story
May we walk in Beauty!
Re-Gathered Community
“I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories . . . water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.” –Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Last night, I went to my thirtieth high school reunion. I think there were about 23 or 24 of us classmates there, along with many spouses.
We talk about the beauty of youth, and I know the fact of that because I spend my days with teenagers. I heard somewhere once that someone had somewhat scientifically determined that we reach the pinnacle of our physical beauty around age 30, and I can understand that, too. But for well-polished and gracefully-tempered beauty, sit in a room of people just about to enter their second half-century. I am trying to define the essence of it this morning: there’s grace in the faces, self-acceptance, a movement beyond the scrabbling and striving of earlier years. The intervening years since we graduated have brought terrible pain to some of us, great joys, power and powerlessness, anxiety and fulfillment, and the stories and conversation last night were carried on a stream of grace that echoed in people’s voices and showed in their eyes. People seemed to have moved into themselves. They are beautiful in ways that make our high school selves look raw and unpolished, our young adult selves look over-polished and grasping. These people were shining and grace-filled, and in a way that admitted of the harsh realities that we have experienced on our way here.
Gathered in that room, I know, were people of all political stripes. Many of us sit firmly on one side or the other in the debates that are threatening to shatter our church. But last night, we were one thing, one group, together sharing our stories. Some stories got deeper, but many of us told the basic details. Still, the regular tales of children and grandchildren born and growing up, of jobs and farms and hobbies–all took on deep significance. There was an acceptance and a sense of belonging in that room, where many of us have become near-strangers over the past 30 years.
A moment of laughter appeared in the room. Giggles and chuckles. Then, as understanding dawned, a second wave, and a third. And the laughter itself became a conversation. Meaning was there, and levels and layers of meaning that went beyond the initial words that sparked the laughter. Something holy happened in the laughter. Did it last for five minutes or for twenty?
I feel shy and awkward with small-talk conversations with people I don’t know well. Often I can push my way through and into small chat, but I never quite know how to navigate a room. How long do we talk? What about the awkward pauses? Is it my turn to start the next piece of conversation? It’s always easier for me when the conversation gets going on its own track, and I lose awareness of the way into the conversation, when mutual curiosity draws us together and lends energy to the forward movement of our talking. In mingle-settings where there are lots of people, I also get a sense of wanting to connect with everyone, so I struggle to get into deeper conversation because there are too many people to connect with. I get overwhelmed. So the thing that I look forward to in reunions and gatherings is the group sharing. Even though it isn’t intimate, and we each package our story into the short five-minute moment we are allotted, we all focus, for those moments, on the one person speaking. We hear story together, and for a moment, we are a re-gathered community.
Gratitude List:
1. Middle age
2. Reunions and conversation
3. The language of laughter
4. The gravity-loosening power of music
5. October
May we walk in Beauty!
Daughters
As I read the first line of Eavan Boland’s poem “The Lost Land,” I felt as though I knew exactly what the second line was going to be. I was almost shocked when I read her second line and saw that it was not what had happened in my own head. I think that means that I need to write my own “daughters” poem. I’m not sure where it will take me. I have been mulling different places to take it for a week or so now. If I can find a breath between the stacks of grading, I’ll try some exercises to shake it out. Here, for now, are the first two lines. The first is stolen from Eavan Boland, and the second is the compulsion line that forced itself out before I could read further in her poem.
I have two daughters.
Their names are Memory and Loss.
Gratitude List:
1. Autumn breezes. Thermal delight.
2. Breaking through.
3. Apples.
4. Walking through the doorways.
5. Water.
May the waters flow free for all. May all people find safety. May we walk in Beauty.
Practice and Discipline
I am coming to realize that there is a difference for me between a spiritual practice and a spiritual discipline. I have tended to use those words interchangeably, particularly when I talk about my gratitude lists. In the past month, my gratitude lists have been sporadic as I try to settle myself into the rhythm of school. As I take a moment now to breathe, and wonder whether it has made a difference, it hits me that the lists are my discipline, the form that anchors the spiritual practices of gratitude and attentiveness.
I have been asking my self whether I have been living in shallower layers because I have not been careful to write my lists. I think, however, that it is the commitment to being attentive which really keeps me working in the deeper layers. And while it is possible to do so without a particular discipline, having a regular discipline that anchors me into that work of attentiveness does keep me grounded in the deep layers.
A spiritual discipline can become an empty shell of a form it if is not practiced with intention and care. A spiritual practice can float away and dissipate if it is not anchored by deliberate spiritual practices.
Gratitude List:
1. The recent sunrises from the crest of Mt. Pisgah: magenta, tangerine, aquamarine, violet. Mist caught in the folds of the foothills. Wraiths of fog skuthering over golden fields.
2. Safe places. Creating places of safety, in the outer world, in the inner world. We make plans to build houses and shelters for people. I think about what sort of blueprint there might be for us to intentionally build our inner selves into safe and sheltering spaces for those who are frightened or injured or outcast.
3. The whimsical childish conjecture from my scientist has begun to feel distinctly like real-life physics lessons, and I realize that the wild speculations have been preparation for continued curious pondering about the nature of the world. Yesterday, it was that the undertow of a previous wave helps the next one to break. He is figuring out these things on his own through observation even before he learns them in the classroom. I can only sit back and marvel. This is a reminder to me as a teacher to always build on my students’ natural awareness as much as possible, and to keep sparking their curiosity. Even grammar has logical and reasonable patterns.
4. The chuckles and humming of contented children.
5. Flocks of a thousand swallows racing back and forth along the island, filling up on insects before they hop out over ocean for their journey south. We did not see monarchs or dragonflies this year, but the winds were really strong, and I think they may have been waiting in thickets and woods until the coast is clear (so to speak).
May we walk in Beauty!
Eagle and Butterfly
. . .and spider and little brown bat, whom we call Otis. The bat’s full name, in Latin, is Myotis lucifugus, and when there are two of them roosting up in the barn, we call the other Lucy. Screech Owl’s Latin name is Otus asio.
Gratitude List:
1. The bald eagle rising above the trees by the River on my drive home, pumping its wings as it rose toward a cloud that was rimed by a golden halo of sun. I am sorry we have made them such a symbol of military force. Writing about this eagle, I feel as though I must wade through layers and layers of shallow and odious symbology to get to the way it carried my spirit as it rose with powerful pulls of its wings, swimming upward through air, and how the sun lit the cloud from behind.
2. Monarchs buffeted by every little breeze and puff of air, making their laborious way southward. So many of them. Each sighting brings me a stab of joy. One fast truck can send them spinning and looping out of their way, but they persist.
3. Student music at school. I am blown away by the talent of these young people.
4. Restorative Justice. Discipline that thoughtfully encourages young people to look at the breach in relationships and how the breach can be mended. Empathetic and compassionate accountability. The principals at my school are wise and empathetic in their work with this, and this week we learned that the principal of our sons’ public school is also working with implementing restorative principles in the local school.
5. Cool air I can breathe in.
May we walk in Beauty!
Created to Create
Gratitude List:
1. Talent show. Belly laughs and tears in one evening. “It is Well.”
2. Those boys laughing into the face of the Wolf. I don’t mean any wolf–that laughter would be rude. This is the Wolf, and that laughter is about survival, and friendship. I don’t know how else to say this, but I was grateful to witness it.
3. How all these children are becoming who they are, growing into themselves.
4. Conversations about writing and inner landscapes.
5. Collage–all afternoon: images and scissors and cutting and pasting, children and adults, humming and singing, laughing and talking, making.
May we walk in Beauty!
Owl and Dawn
Gratitude List:
1. This pre-dawn moment: Me. Crickets. Owl.
2. Creativity. Making. The Will to Create.
3. Cold front. Thermal comfort.
4. The reverent wisdom and irreverent humor of teenagers.
5. Did I mention that owl? Messages.
May we walk in Beauty!
Feathers
Feathers
I have written before about the feathers. Two years ago, it began in mid-July: I realized one day that I had been finding a feather every single day for about two weeks. I kept watch, then, and realized that, until early September, I found a feather almost every single day.
Last year, it was longer: early July through the end of September. I needed feathers then. I was jumping off a cliff into a new and unknown wind, and I needed the reminder that my wings would carry me. They did. I used the idea to talk to my students about how we make the meaning in our lives, how the Science me said, “Yes, there are owls hard at work in the holler, and the little birds are feeding the next generation of owlets.” But the Poet me said, “Yes, I needed an affirmation from outside myself that I had wings that would catch the wind, and the message was feathers.” I get to choose the meaning for my own story. And both meanings carry a certain truth, enriching each other. We all choose our meanings, even when we’re not aware of consciously doing so.
This year, back in early August, I had a run of about a week of feather-finding. I thought I was back in business, but then I didn’t find any for a couple weeks. Now again, for the past ten days or so, I have found a feather every day, sometimes at home, and sometimes at school.
******
Palimpsest
Another shifting meaning story that came my way again today is that of the Palimpsest, the old vellum manuscripts which were scraped when one text was no longer necessary, and new words written on the pages. Highly valued by modern researchers, the re-appearance of the “under-text” gives historians not one but two texts to work with.
When reading a palimpsest, you must look beyond the surface text to read the deeper meaning. A colleague of mine today showed me his journal, an altered book, in which he is using gesso to white out old text and writing his own text on top. We got to talking about how people are palimpsests, too–how important it is to read beneath the surface to the deeper “text” that shines through the surface layers.
Gratitude List:
1. Challenging conversations. I am learning to balance the speaking and the listening, I think. Still, there is so much to learn, so much to practice.
2. The miracle of the heart, of the heartbeat.
3. Collaboration.
4. Feathers and flight.
5. Palimpsest.
May we walk in Beauty!
Mockingbird Chronicles 