Gratitude List:
1. Two hands: one to hold the terrible, and one to hold the wonderful. Breathing into the spaces between.
2. How the heart holds stories
3. Shades of red. Shades of green. The red buds of leaves popping out on the tree outside my classroom window, against the mossy green of the trunk.
4. Burrito for lunch
5. Transformation
May we walk in Beauty!
I took this back in the autumn, but as I look at it now, I think it looks like a World Tree.
Gratitude List:
1. The UNICEF Social for the Middle School last night. I was tired from a week of work, and really desiring some introvert time, so I wasn’t quite sure I was up for it, but it was incredibly worth it to see the high schoolers reaching out to the Middle School kids, giving them a great time, and getting a chance to get to know some of those bright and shining 6th-8th graders. One girl told me afterward, “This was so great! We don’t often get a chance to just hang out together.” I’m proud of the UNICEF team.
2. Game Night at church last night. So I didn’t get to go home and have my introvert time after the social because we had game night at church afterwards. What fun. I am so glad that we went. I felt sort of like that Middle School girl, really grateful for a chance to just hang out with these people. I agree with Erin–we ought to consider monthly game nights, or at least every other month. . .
3. Movers and Lovers. I love Mindy Nolt‘s music, and I woke up with “Movers and Lovers” in my head this morning. Just the soundtrack I need this morning, when I finally get a little introvert time.
4. Lancaster Food Company‘s multi-grain bread. It’s so tasty. And they exist with a social purpose. Check out their About page.
5. Heart. The heart is a forest that always has more spaces to explore. Always another grove or bosque, previously overlooked, just waiting to be known. I love being a human being.
May we always walk in Beauty!
Today you are God the Wolf,
howling down the forest pathways of my memory,
padding through purple shadows into moonlight,
elusive as the fogs which drift into the clearings
where I listen for you calling,
calling me from comfort into wildness.
Gratitude List:
1. Wildness
2. Philosophizing about time with teenagers.
3. This Pope. He called today a Day of Prayer of for the Environment, and he’s declaring a Jubilee Year of Mercy for next year. Perhaps the rest of us will learn something, too.
4. The Heart. Abstractly and physically. Too many people in my village are experiencing heart trouble right now for my comfort. May their hearts beat with strength and fortitude, and bring them life. And your heart, too–may it be strong and full of life.
5. The heat will break, and cooler days will come again. (Yes, that was a back-handed gratitude, if I ever wrote one.)
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!
<Prompt 16: Write a Half-Way Poem> Another half-started poem. I don’t know where to take it, and my brain has hit the wall. I think I tried to take on too big a myth for a quick poem, but here it is, based on the story of Vasilisa the Brave and Baba Yaga. But first, one of my favorite pictures of Baba Yaga, by Ivan Bilibin:
It looks like she’s caught you, Little One.
No don’t scream or try to run.
You can’t escape her now,
and you owe her those three impossible tasks,
or your heart on a plate while you try.
Dust! Cook! Sweep! And cook some more!
You won’t be halfway done before
the old hag comes swooping into the clearing.
And you’ve not even begun with the sorting,
grain by grain, good from the bad.
What is this task to teach you?
How quickly and how well
can you find the good wheat?
Does it require patience or will?
Stick to the plan and you’re certain to fail.
Who are your helpers?
What are the gifts that you carry
in the pockets of your apron?
The bright rider bolts across the clearing
and the day is halfway gone.
Listen, Little One,
to the voices in the wind.
Feel your mother’s heartbeat
in the rhythm of your own hands.
Gratitude List:
1. Light. Reflected, refracted, refreshing.
2. Carnelian and Tiger Iron
3. That orange orb of the sun setting behind me.
4. That pale pink orb of the moon rising ahead of me.
5. And in between, that pulsing orb of my own heart expanding ever outward.
May we walk in Beauty.
Here’s a poem I posted here back in January. It’s in the chapbook that I sent to Finishing Line Press for their Emerging Women’s Voices contest.
I spent some time today thinking about not knocking people over the head with hope, especially when they’re walking in the wasteland and the hope-talkers can even appear threatening. I have so much to learn about being a compassionate presence, about acknowledging pain without trying to shift it, to fix it.
Still, I don’t think that a poem about hope by a random blogger can go amiss.
Sing You Gently Joy
Here in the house of exhaustion
Here in the place of retreat
We’ll sing you gently joy
and hold your heart in hope
Here when your way is weary
Here where your heart is uneasy
We’ll sing you gently joy
and hold your heart in hope
Here when the day closes over you
Here when your sighs bring tears
We’ll sing you gently joy
and hold your heart in hope
Here where the way seems hopeless
Here where the rage overflows
We’ll sing you gently joy
and hold your heart in hope
Here where the No overcomes you
Here where despair abounds
We’ll sing you gently joy
and hold your heart in hope
Here in the birthplace of fear
Here in the abode of loneliness
We’ll sing you gently joy
and hold your heart in hope
Each morning a new sun rises
and the stories are always renewed
As we sing you gently joy
and hold your heart in hope.
Todd and I were about the ages of my children today.
Gratitude List:
1. Peregrine flying over the farm today. What a gift. The Wanderer winging across the ridge.
2. The healing power of story. Unexpected story of intense pain and tender joy and hope. From the man who fixed the tractor. What a gift. What grace.
3. The tractor is fixed. A little less stress for the farmer I love. What a gift.
4. Wild chamomile. What a gift.
5. Learning what my work is. What grace.
May we walk tenderly, in Beauty.
I had intended to make this playful and fun, but a heaviness overtook me as I began to reflect. Perhaps I’ll try the silly side of this another day.
That lying line,
that lion,
that roars and rumbles rudely.
Color inside it or outside,
where shall we draw it?
When does the sweet secret
turn sourly to self-deception,
the slow slide of truth
across that watery line to lie?
This, says the heart, is mine,
this private line,
this inner realm I rule.
It is my right.
Indeed. And yet,
integrity bleeds outward
from secret worlds,
the safest closets
and deep-down caves.
When does my secret cease
to protect us in its quiet case?
When does it enter that twisted space,
the reflection that belies reality?
Oh, give the heart its privacy
within indigo shadows,
but don’t mistake reflection
for the truth.
Prompt
Tomorrow’s poem, courtesy of my friend Brad Lehman, is to write a poem of phone prompts. (I think he originally suggested that I translate them into or out of Spanish. Um. No.) Something about the experience (frustration?) of finding your way through phone recordings. Join me? Press one for the poem of the day. Beep.
Gratitude List:
1. Getting the white shower curtain white again
2. Cantaloupe smoothies
3. Folk tales
4. Hands to hold in the darkness
5. Beeswax crayons
May we walk in beauty.
Take heart.
Take mine, yours, any heart.
Take heart
and hold it tenderly
in the bowl of your hands,
in the warm breathing space
where your open palms
have held damp soil,
small creatures,
warm eggs fresh from the nest,
where you have cradled
the heads of tiny babies,
cupped water,
offered prayers.
Take heart.
Gratitude List:
1. Gentle reiki from Nicki
2. Charoite with yellow-green calcite inclusions
3. Learning to say No
4. (The other) Beth Weaver’s seductive chocolates
5. The Way Things Work book
Namaste
Poem-A-Day Prompt 30: Write about Milk. This is the last prompt of the month. I might take off a day or two before I get back into a poem-a-day groove, this time with my own prompts, perhaps.
Somewhere in the world, the milk is falling,
raining in great drops from benevolent heaven.
Cup your hands into a bowl.
Feel it splatter into your palms
and trickle through your fingers.
Wash your face in it.
Splash it over your eyes and you will see again.
Anoint your forehead and see further.
Pour it into the gaping wounds
where the frenzied creatures
of habit and risk, of anxiety and anger and hate
have gnawed at your insides.
Drink it in great gulps
and feel it soothe your weary voice.
Take it in, breathe it,
bathe in it.
Then lie back like a new babe,
and let it dribble from the corners of your mouth.
There will always be enough.
Poem-A-Day Day 25 Prompt: Write an Opposite Poem, a poem which is opposite to one which you have already written. Really tough challenge today.
I’ll sit with Uncle Walt in the hall of contradictions,
contain my multitudes or let them fly outwards.
Did I say that the heart was a circle,
a singularity, a unit, contained?
No, the heart is a line,
straight and unswerving,
connecting any two points.
The geometer says,
Begin with a single point.
Notice, over there, a second point
and mark it carefully with your pencil.
Holding your pencil on that point,
line up your ruler between them,
and draw your line tenderly.
And if you are like Billy Collins, or me,
and falling in love is something you do
constantly and willfully,
those lines will ray outward from your center
like a glorious web, encompassing the universe,
like a circle.
Mockingbird Chronicles 