Thanksgiving and Camas Lillies

All, I've been blogging (though intermittently) long enough to feel increasing tension if I don't sit down and write.  Sitting here now,  I feel embraced by a loving page; how nice.  I have had quite a week last week.  In fact, I think it might just be one of the best weeks I've ever had.  I have had the good fortune to be part of a leadership group at my new fab church, and we meet every Sunday night for several hours.  After spending a weekend with this group, I feel a strong bond growing with this wonderful group as we tread over territories of faith and doubt and the like.  Also, I had two birthday parties last week.  Even though my birthday is at the end of September, I found myself upside down in an aerial yoga class with the gals and then at dinner with others; turning 50 has been remarkably full of fun so far.  Ok, have you ever been upside down in a large red sling trying to speak to your inner ears so you keep down the nausea and look....mmm...not idiotic?  We raised a glass afterwards and a friend had brought a larger-than-life cut-out of my father, the headmaster, and we put him in a sling too...with a glass of wine!  A few days later, we had a small dinner, and I felt loved and cared for and free enough to dance with abandon at the end of the evening.....hmm.  For all these things and many more, I feel incredible gratitude.  There was my husband of many years struggling through a remarkable poem his sister wrote.....for me!  There was my college room-mate and soul sister reciting Katherine Hepburn in Much Ado about Nothing, for me (hey nonny, nonny), etc, etc, etc.  wow.  Gratitude and thanksgiving.  Unfortunately,  there is also much suffering among dear friends these days, too--suffering  and remarkable strength.  I'm learning that these are often  intertwined--hope and loss, suffering and strength, light and dark. Perhaps we need some dark to truly see the light.   hmmm.  Well, on to some poetry I really like

Thanksgiving (Lynn Ungar)

I have been trying to read

the script cut in these hills—

a language carved in the shimmer of stubble

and the solid lines of soil, spoken

in the thud of apples falling

and the rasp of corn stalks finally bare.

The pheasants shout it with a rusty creak

as they gather in the fallen grain,

the blackbirds sing it over their shoulders in parting,

and gold leaf illuminates the manuscript

where it is written in the trees.

Transcribed onto my human tongue

I believe it might sound like a lullaby,

or the simplest grace at table.

across the gathering stillness

simply this: “For all that we have received,

dear God, make us truly grateful.”. 

Camas Lilies (Lynn Ungar)

Consider the lilies of the field,
the blue banks of camas opening
into acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the natives ground bulbs
for flour, how the settler’s hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?
And you—what of your rushed and
useful life? Imagine setting it all down—
papers, plans, appointments, everything,
leaving only a note: “Gone to the fields
to be lovely. Be back when I’m through
with blooming.”
Even now, unneeded and uneaten,
the camas lilies gaze out above the grass
from their tender blue eyes.
Even in sleep your life will shine.
Make no mistake.
Of course, your work will always matter.
Yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.