Gratitude List:
1. Dragonflies
2. Imagination. How you can say, “Hey, look! That cloud looks like the Loch Ness Monster diving deep!” And someone from outside your own strange mind will say, “Wow! Yeah!” And totally get it. That’s kind of how poetry is, too, come to think of it.
3. Beans cooking on the stove
4. Revelatory dreams
5. The Music of Layne Redmond
May we walk in Beauty!
The Mysteries of Mary Magdalene, painted by Andrea Solario, Piero do Cosimo, Domenico Fetti
I have been pondering the first and last lines of my Magician poem all day, and thought I might try to make something patterned and structured and rhymed, but the day has gotten away from me, and free verse is easier for the riff. It means that I do not often try my hand at more challenging forms during April and November, because I am caught up in the dailiness of school and grading. I’ll have to give myself some formal poem assignments for the summer.
Listen to the wisdom of the sage.
“What is language, but a kind of magic?
Here am I, in my own organism, my tower of Self,
and you there in your own lonely keep,
and how shall we bridge the gap between us
but by language? These webs of sound
we string together, we cast them through sky,
drawing out threads of meaning,
as with a wand, fiery threads of sense.
“We build this bridge on air,
scratch symbols on a page with feathers,
and stories flow like water between us,
borne on gossamer strands
of word on word on word.
We manage and tend our loneliness
by weaving cloths of language.
How can we find each other in the shadow
but for the flow of speech we offer
and the magic of these words upon the page?
TOMORROW’S PROMPT (April 4):
Today the Fool met the Magician, a mentor who taught her something of the nature of illusion and magic, of her power to work with the elements of earth and air and water and fire. Tomorrow, she will meet another mentor: The High Priestess, who will invite her to learn of the Mysteries. Perhaps this is Mary Magdalene, contemplating the skull, or offering the grail, or reading her book. The priestess is the keeper of the doorway of the most sacred of the mysteries, and so she is a challenger as well as a mentor. The Fool must prove herself before she enters the realm of the priestess. Tomorrow’s poem will be about Mystery.
Gratitude List:
1. Refried Beans. Such a basic comfort food. Add salsa, hot sauce, and a little sour cream, and it’s a delightful bean porridge for a chilly night.
2. Feedback. Sometimes it just nice to know what other people think. Not to validate, but to get a sense of whether people perceive me as I perceive myself.
3. Thoughtful guidelines for living more deliberately and authentically with our technology. That was a good chapel this morning.
4. How language links us.
5. Seeking wonder and awe. Preserving the mystery.
May we walk in Beauty!
“I believe that appreciation is a holy thing–that when we look for what’s best in a person we happen to be with at the moment, we’re doing what God does all the time. So in loving and appreciating our neighbor, we’re participating in something sacred.” ~~ Fred Rogers
In this story, there are two boys. Their Mama’s cousin came for a visit one day, and while she was there, she listened to them and she watched them and she noticed them. Not in that overwhelming way that some of us do sometimes, that actually draws more attention to the adult and makes the child anxious, but quietly and thoughtfully. Just aware of who they are.
The next week, when she had gone home, two boxes arrived in the mail, addressed to the boys. The cousin was giving them her old Lego blocks. Gearhead Boy received a special bagful of gears in his box, and Racecar Boy received racecars in his (“Look! You can make them crash together, and they come apart! And then you just put them back together again!) They felt noticed and known.
Isn’t that really what our Work is about? We’re here to notice each other, to let each other know that we see who they are. Sometimes it’s just a raise of the eyebrows in the middle of a conversation, and you know that person gets you, sees you. Sometimes it happens when someone asks you just the right question at the right moment, totally heart-open to listen to your truth. Sometimes it occur when someone says, “You have been working so hard at that task. That must be really important to you.”
In some Christian practices, people seek the Christ in each other, look for the living Incarnation of the Divine in those around them. Wouldn’t healing seep into all our crevices if we watched for the beauty and truth of the Great Mystery in each person we met? How might our perspectives on each other shift? How might our world change?
Gratitude List:
1. The Village. Noticing. Loving. Healing.
2. Corn on the cob
3. Summer Storm
4. Green beans
5. Pie R Shared. It is all gone now, but it helped to create the circle as completely as any equation. Pie R Best Shared.
May we Walk in Beauty! So much love, People! So much love.
Mockingbird Chronicles 