Turkey, Greece and Go to the Limits of Your Longing, Back From the Fields, The Moment

I'm on a threshold,  right now,  as I mentally and physically pack my bags for our pilgrimage to Turkey and Greece on Friday. I've been hungry for this trip, for its preparation, for the people I've met through this wonderful little church who have streched my mind and challenged me to dig deep to find my gifts and goals, and I'm hungry to get going!

Maybe I feel just a little time pressed too...maybe, but I have a deep feeling that my years of agitation, of stewing in my own juices, of feeling that there is so very much more, but not having a clue what this "more" is or how to pursue it has reached a threshold. I love how Rilke puts this feeling of longing, "Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror...".  And so, I am perched upon this threshold, one hand on the handle, one foot here, and one foot just about to find the unknown ancient Roman road on the other side. I go holding a sense of possibility and wonder, and gently holding open the opportunity for deeper experience and growth. Who knows? Hopefully I will blog throughout, so I'll report back in words and pictures, but this feels like a beginning for me, and I'm eager for it.

What about a little poetry? I will include the whole Rilke poem thanks to Clover and two others that have come my way lately. I love the idea of walking through ancient, foreign lands and having some of that land come back with me--mentally and physically (Back from the Fields).  And I love the stillness in the third that I don't feel just now, but I am going to cultivate tomorrow!


Go To the Limits of Your Longing (R. Rilke)

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Back from the Fields (Peter Everwine)
Until nightfall my son ran in the fields,
looking for God knows what.
Flowers, perhaps. Odd birds on the wing.
Something to fill an empty spot.
Maybe a luminous angel
or a country girl with a secret dark.
He came back empty-handed,
or so I thought.
Now I find them:
thistles, goatheads,
the barbed weeds
all those with hooks or horns
the snaggle-toothed, the grinning ones
those wearing lantern jaws,
old ones in beards, leapers
in silk leggings, the multiple
pocked moons and spiny satellites, all those
with juices and saps
like the fingers of thieves
nation after nation of grasses
that dig in, that burrow, that hug winds
and grab handholds 
in whatever lean place.
It’s been a good day.

The Moment
by Marie Howe 

Oh, the coming-out-of-nowhere moment

when,   nothing 

happens 

no what-have-I-to-do-today-list 


maybe   half a moment 

the rush of traffic stops. 

The whir of I should be, I should be, I should be 

slows to silence, 

the white cotton curtains hanging still.

The Poet with His Face in His Hands (Mary Oliver) and The Winged Energy of Delight (Rainier Maria Rilke)

I parked my car and walked through last Friday's blizzard, across the street and between the buildings and into the medical school.  The place was quiet, as for the first time in my memory, the university and medical school were closed due to weather; therefore, all non-essential personnel were not required to be at work.  Friday, I was entirely non-essential, but I had a doctor's appointment and then my second round of chemo scheduled, so I continued to walk through the building and out the other side into the parking garage toward more essential personnel.  From here, I walked outside and across the street to the entrance to the hospital.  All in all, this is about a 10 minute walk. I walked in, got onto an elevator to the 6th floor cancer center, and hopped directly into the registration queue.  Here's the thing.  Whether you are at the front or the end of the line, you will wait until one of the unhappy employees looks up and invites you forward.  I have been doing this for years now, and I am  slowly losing my "good patient-ness".  I wonder why we still don't understand that the patient is the client here.  Really, how hard should it be to say, "I'll be right with you", I wonder?  Oh well, I really don't understand it, but there it is.  I move from there to the waiting room where I sit and wait for the MA to come out and yell, "McKinley!".  You know, it is hard enough to ride up to the 6th floor and just get out of the elevator, but this, this really burns me.  I am very proud of myself, however, because I actually told the MA that I found it really hard to be referred to this way and could she please consider using both the first name and the last, or saying "Ms McKinley", or PERHAPS ACTUALLY SAYING "LISSA" OR "DOCTOR MCKINLEY", since I have been a patient in this cancer center for 14 years. You know, if I feel this way, consider how the unempowered, system-naive new cancer patient must feel in this setting.

Ok, I say all this because when I actually get into a room and interact with the nurses, nurse practitioners, and doctors, I have the best team and absolutely world class care--every time, every year, always.   But the initial interface is often not easy for me.  Anyway, there I am in a room finding out how I'm doing and whether my dose of drug will be lowered a bit to avoid the 2 weeks of mouth sores, and the nurse comes in to tell me that my mother-in-law is in the next room because her blood counts were low after starting radiation therapy for a very difficult, new cancer diagnosis. I finish my visit and walk back out into the waiting room on my way to the treatment side of the cancer center.  Sitting in the waiting room is my mother-in-law looking little and a little lost.  I had been told that  she was ok, but that she would be getting a blood transfusion before going home to help her regain her energy and breath. So, what's the first thing I say to her when I see her in the waiting room?  I say, "Nancy, I'll see you on the other side."  Ok, perhaps the words were ill-chosen, but I just meant the other side of the cancer center!  She says she'll see me there, and  I walk to the treatment side and am put in a room to wait for an IV and a series of infusions.  You never know who will be your room-mate here, but this time, I am put in a room with a lovely woman getting chemo for a new diagnosis of breast cancer.  We're a dime a dozen up here, that's for sure.  We both talk, we both wait, I try not to scare her and I avoid telling her much of my history.  she tells me how much she likes my hair.  I tell her how much I like her scarf, and how exciting it sounds to be almost done with chemo and getting back to her life.  She is lovely, and very much looking forward to getting back to teaching disabled kids in inner-city Cleveland.

So as we wait some more, a lovely nurse I have known for years slips an IV into my vein and starts the first infusion. Then she gets me juice and a cup of soup and ice packs for my hands and feet to help stop the hand/foot symptoms.  She also suggests that I eat ice chips throughout the infusion to help prevent the mouth sores.  All this ice makes for a very chilly several hours!  After the first of the short infusions before the main infusion, I wander the treatment rooms trying to find my mother-in-law.  I find her asleep in a chair in a busy treatment room getting the first of two units of blood.  Again, she looks so little in the big chair.  she awakens and says she is doing ok, but she isn't quite clear about why she needs the blood.  While I'm not either, we talk a little about what the potential causes might be and we agree to meet again in another hour or so.  I wander back to get my final fruit punch-colored infusion and a new room-mate.  This time, two guys come in .  The patient is a man in his 30's with I don't know what cancer, but he's having a terrible side effect of pain in his eyes, and he is unable to look at the light or open one eye.  His brother has accompanied him and sits in the corner and begins to knit.  I recognize that the patient is in significant pain and I don't engage him after saying hello, but I talk some to the knitter.  He is a new knitter, and I am an old one, so we have a language to share anyway.  He is funny and kind, and over time, the patient begins to interject and joke a bit.  I loved watching the brothers kid each other and obviously care about each other.

And now here comes my lovely husband.  He is a physician in this hospital and knows everyone here (unlike me-- a physician in an affiliated hospital).  I try to imagine what he must be dealing with at the moment.  I can really only imagine his pain as he has his mother with a terminal cancer in one room  and his wife getting chemo in another.  How surreal is this situation anyway?  We agree that his mother really is the one who needs his company right now, and I agree to call him when i'm done. And I sit back and think about how completely weird our lives are, and yet how remarkably normal most of the time.  I think this is living at the edge; I certainly feel on the edge sometimes.  Actually, sometimes I think we are standing on one leg, wobbling over the abyss.  Seems to me we have a choice here, or maybe it isn't really a choice at all. We can either figure out how to embrace the situation and move forward,  or we can just fall over.  Not much of a choice, anyway.  I vote for the first option.  From this edgy vantage point, I thank my lucky stars for every single day, and that's not such a bad perspective.to have.  What about a poem or two after this long and rambling note.  I am being just a little lazy and picking two that have winged their way to me over the internet lately.  Enjoy!

The Poet with His Face in His Hands

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn't need anymore of that sound.

So if you're going to do it and can't
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can't
hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

~ Mary Oliver ~

The Winged Energy of Delight

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions ... For the god
wants to know himself in you.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

For a New Beginning.....again

All,


 I had all good intentions to write from my newest chemotherapy chair yesterday, but I didn't get a chair!  They put me in a single room in a bed--a sign that didn't feel very good, but I went with it.  Lying down or even sitting up, I couldn't really see down into the street to report on the state of the new cancer center as I have in the past.  Just know that the steam engine has done her work and has packed it in....too bad; she was fun to watch.  Anyway, I was given all sorts of pre-meds to help me not react to the new liposomal delivery system of this old drug (no longer reported to give you hair loss or nausea and vomiting--this is very good).  The only problem is that I slept through the whole 3 hour ordeal and came home to sleep most of the day and into the night.  I don't think I really need the IV benadryl next time, but sleep is not a bad thing....I just didn't get to use the quiet time up on the 6th floor to read and write while my wonderful nurse brings me chicken soup every few hours.  Oh dear, I sound as if I almost enjoy it, and that isn't quite right. I do appreciate the quiet and the care, however. 

I'm really skipping over what happened initially, and I need to tell it.  Perhaps a year and a half ago when I had come back to the infusion center in the cancer center to begin my last chemotherapy after not having chemotherapy since 1997, I glanced into the first room on my right.  I have since learned that this is an unhealthy behavior and I try not to look into other rooms too much.  But I did it then, and I recognized the tall man sitting by the bed of an Ill-appearing woman.   I had met this woman when our kids were in summer camp together as she had no hair at the time either (1997, I guess).  We shared very similar cancer stories and we stayed in touch a little over the years.  I had no idea she was ill again until I saw them there.  The husband came to greet me and told me she was dying.  I came in and said hello and held her hand as she told me what was going on.  I said something hopefully comforting and kissed her goodbye.  She never came back to the hospital as she died a few days later.  Ok, I was a bit overcome by that visit, especially with starting chemotherapy again and having just seen its potential ending point.  Guess what room they put me in yesterday? That one.  I walked in and burst into tears.  How silly but how real the emotion and fear felt.  Then I was handed a cup of soup, and the nurse took one look at me and remembered the incident (i guess it was memorable as I am always trying to be a good patient, not make waves etc.  As i ran down the hall weeping in despair, someone might have noticed.....)!  We didn't move rooms, but I felt much better after we talked a little.  Continuity of care is a wonderful thing.  And, I feel fine this morning.  How about a poem or four.  Most of these came my way over the internet.  I love John O'Donohue for his refreshing view of life, I love the tender care of a woman cutting a man's hair (like a chemo nurse handing a patient a cup of soup), and I love the joy of deep noticing of Picasso paintings.....see what you think

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

~ John O'Donohue ~

Picasso (Tim Nolan)

How can we believe he did it—
every day—for all those years?

We remember how the musicians
gathered for him—and the prostitutes

arranged themselves the way he wanted—
and even the helmeted monkeys

with their little toy car cerebella—
posed—and the fish on the plate—

remained after he ate the fish—
Bones—What do we do with this

life?—except announce: Joy.
Joy. Joy—from the lead—

to the oil—to the stretch of bright
canvas—stretched—to the end of it all.

For My Wife Cutting My Hair (Bruce Guernsey)

You move around me expertly like the good, round
Italian barber I went to in Florence,
years before we met, his scissors
a razor he sharpened on a belt.

But at first when you were learning, I feared
for my neck, saw my ears like sliced fruit
on the newspapered floor. Taking us back in time,
you cleverly clipped my head in a flat-top.

The years in between were styles no one had ever seen,
or should see again: when the wind rose
half my hair floated off in feathers,
the other half bristling, brief as a brush.

In the chair, almost asleep, I hear the bright
scissors dancing. Hear you hum, full-breasted as Aida,
carefully trimming the white from my temples,
so no one, not even I, will know.

Perhaps...

Perhaps these thoughts of ours
will never find an audience
Perhaps the mistaken road
will end in a mistake
Perhaps the lamps we light one at a time
will be blown out, one at a time
Perhaps the candles of our lives will gutter out
without lighting a fire to warm us.

Perhaps when all the tears have been shed
the earth will be more fertile
Perhaps when we sing praises to the sun
the sun will praise us in return
Perhaps these heavy burdens
will strengthen our philosophy
Perhaps when we weep for those in misery
we must be silent about miseries of our own

Perhaps
Because of our irresistible sense of mission
We have no choice

~ Shu Ting ~

Lovely Evening, Annunciation (Denise Levertov) and the Voyage (Tony Hoagland)

Here I am in my cozy kitchen with 9 Lessons and Carols from King's College playing next to me and everyone either asleep or out and about, and it is still.  Ah, what a lovely, lucky, profound morning here.  Last night we took our kids and their significant others to dinner, a show (A Christmas Carol) and then back to our house to hang out by the tree and the fire.  Watching our two young adults with their arms around the wonderful people they love was surprising and remarkable and delightful.  I didn't know what this would feel like, but I felt a bit like the Grinch with my heart expanding a few sizes as I watched them all.  Then we played dice, and their real personalities surfaced!  A fun, happy, loving evening for all of us....how lucky we are!  I wish it were so for everyone across the globe.  Let us all work and pray for such an outcome!  How about a poem or two.  The first is a remarkable poem by Denise Levertov who converted to Catholicism late in her life.  She was inspired by an ancient line about Mary, "Hail space for the uncontained God." Ok, it is a great line!   The second is one that came winging its way across the internet into my email, and Tony Hoagland is a master, i think.
Cheers to all

Annunciation

by Denise Levertov

‘Hail, space for the uncontained God’
From the Agathistos Hymn, Greece, VIc

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.                   Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.
But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.                  The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.                                            God waited.
She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.

          ____________________________

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?                   Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.             More often
those moments     when roads of light and storm     open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.                                 God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.
         ______________________________
She had been a child who played, ate, slept
like any other child – but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.
Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,                          only asked
a simple, 'How can this be?'
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
perceiving instantly
the astounding ministry she was offered:
to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power –
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.                   Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love –

but who was God.

Voyage (Tony Hoagland)


I feel as if we opened a book about great ocean voyages
and found ourselves on a great ocean voyage:
sailing through December, around the horn of Christmas
and into the January Sea, and sailing on and on

in a novel without a moral but one in which
all the characters who died in the middle chapters
make the sunsets near the book's end more beautiful.

—And someone is spreading a map upon a table,
and someone is hanging a lantern from the stern,
and someone else says, "I'm only sorry
that I forgot my blue parka; It's turning cold."

Sunset like a burning wagon train
Sunrise like a dish of cantaloupe
Clouds like two armies clashing in the sky;
Icebergs and tropical storms,
That's the kind of thing that happens on our ocean voyage—

And in one of the chapters I was blinded by love
And in another, anger made us sick like swallowed glass
& I lay in my bunk and slept for so long,

I forgot about the ocean,
Which all the time was going by, right there, outside my cabin window.

And the sides of the ship were green as money,
             and the water made a sound like memory when we sailed.

Then it was summer. Under the constellation of the swan,
under the constellation of the horse.

At night we consoled ourselves
By discussing the meaning of homesickness.
But there was no home to go home to.
There was no getting around the ocean.
We had to go on finding out the story
                                                        by pushing into it—

The sea was no longer a metaphor.
The book was no longer a book.
That was the plot.
That was our marvelous punishment.

Elizabeth Edwards and Optimism (Jane Hirshfield) and Signs (Hazel Collister Hutchison)

Boy, I am wrestling with my feelings after just hearing that Elizabeth Edwards died today.  I considered her a kindred spirit, a cancer buddy, a hopeful and resilient woman.... hopefully just as I am.  I was standing in the kitchen making brisket (ok, I've never made brisket before, but Katie made me do it), and out of the blue came the announcement on the radio.  I panicked.  I ran to the radio and turned it up; I lost it just a little.  I cried.  Katie looked at me and asked what was wrong, and I had to tell her that a brave woman, someone who made everyone feel as if they knew her, had disease just like mine and had died.  I hadn't even known she was sick.  I felt so vulnerable and sad and scared; the immediacy of my reaction surprised me a little.  I hadn't really realized how much I identified with her.  I rolled over in bed and cracked a rib a year before she did, and I am not the one who's dead.  Hmmmmm.  In fact she and I actually chatted just a little about our situations at a conference several years ago; she did indeed have a wonderful way of making everyone feel as if they knew her well.   Funny, I have been feeling pretty together, full of hair and hope, and most of the time able to exercise and feel normal.  I don't feel so normal right now.  But I don't feel alone, either.  There are so many of us out there dealing with something hard--illness, divorce, unrest, poverty, war, loss of  employment, aging parents, many things combined, whatever.   You know, I think it is most of us. Maybe it is the season, but there is both sadness and hope in the air.  Elizabeth Edwards, you were a role model and an inspiration to me, and I mourn your death and hope you meet your young son again who died years ago.  For all of us still here struggling with our own burdens, may we find a way to take time out to relax,  to focus on what we can be grateful for, and to feel the hope and wonder of this divine season.   How about a few poems.  The first is something I believe I have shared before, but it is wonderful, and it is in tribute to Mrs. Edward's resilience and spirit. The second is by a wonderful poet from Cleveland who's book has Marc Chagall illustrations-- called "Toward Daybreak".

Optimism (Jane Hirshfield)

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the  light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs--all this resinous, unretractable earth.

Signs (Hazel Collister Hutchison)

If it is a new star

Not still and very far,

It is the one,

If a glory makes the ground

Articulate,

Yearning up to light and sound,

Do not wait.

It may be a dark king

Bids you go

Or angels shining in a ring,

You will know.

And be sure to keep away

From walls of a house.

Look for mystery in hay,

Wonder in cows.

Cheers to all

Happy Thanksgiving and Perhaps the World Ends Here (Joy Harjo) and Family Reunion (Maxine Kumin)

Good morning and happy Thanksgiving to all.  I am sitting in the study on a cold, rainy morning, and everything is quiet except the wind.  All the beds in the house are filled for the first time in months; even the dog went back to sleep after I slipped out of bed.  And here I am, feeling the pull of the page.  Last night, both kids went off to a hip hop concert downtown, and as usual, I worried when I hadn't heard them come in by midnight.  Something woke me, and I got up to use the bathroom at about 1am, and there they were.  Both of my beautiful teens sitting on Will's bed laughing at something on the computer while curled up on top of each other.  Did I say that the dog was curled up there too?  Nice scene, that's for sure.  And I know how much the boy watches out for his lovely, skimpily-clad sister at concerts like this.  I realize how much I miss him when he's at college at times like this, but here's the other thing.  Watching him mature in between our glimpses of him is a glorious thing.  He told me that he has to read a great deal more in college than in high school, and that he is beginning to enjoy it.  "Mom, I'm really learning things!"  Ok, that was a little late in coming, but I'll take it.  Anyway, just looking at them and seeing how much they love each other is so wonderful.  After all the crap they've been through with their teetering parents, they have come through the fire with grace and wisdom.  Haleluia.  Today is a great day for rejoicing and feeling grateful.  Happy Thanksgiving!  Here are a few pieces to savor:

Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

 

Family Reunion

by Maxine W. Kumin 

The week in August you come home,

adult, professional, aloof,

we roast and carve the fatted calf

—in our case home-grown pig, the chine

garlicked and crisped, the applesauce

hand-pressed. Hand-pressed the greengage wine.

Nothing is cost-effective here.

The peas, the beets, the lettuces

hand sown, are raised to stand apart.

The electric fence ticks like the slow heart

of something we fed and bedded for a year,

then killed with kindness’s one bullet

and paid Jake Mott to do the butchering.

In winter we lure the birds with suet,

thaw lungs and kidneys for the cat.

Darlings, it’s all a circle from the ring

of wire that keeps the raccoons from the corn

to the gouged pine table that we lounge around,

distressed before any of you was born.

Benign and dozy from our gluttonies,

the candles down to stubs, defenses down,

love leaking out unguarded the way

juice dribbles from the fence when grounded

by grass stalks or a forgotten hoe,

how eloquent, how beautiful you seem!

Wearing our gestures, how wise you grow,

ballooning to overfill our space,

the almost-parents of your parents now.

So briefly having you back to measure us

is harder than having let you go.

Cheers!

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.