Myth, Magic, and Mandarin Blue

John William Waterhouse Pandora

I had a grand week with my students this week...I got hardly any shelving done--or at least none that left a visible impact on the auto-replenishing return shelves...but what conversations!  This quarter, the global studies class I help with is in Egypt.  Recently. we'd spent a while speaking about the Nile river's northerly flow into the Mediterranean lending itself to migrating groups from further south and how the culture of a place is created by the people present in a given social/physical location.  If people traveled to Egypt from the south, then, it is reasonable to assume that they brought with them the portable aspects of the culture they lived and helped create in their former homeland--music, food traditions, etc...including Story.  Given that, we looked at stories from Sudan, the most immediately southern country relative to Egypt, and Greek myths from north of Egypt.  We spent a whole period on a three page Sudanese story about a wise mother who was teaching her son, the sultan, how to know when someone is a true friend.  Then came Pandora, Perseus, and Medusa...the coming into the world of despair, pain, misery...and golden-winged hope...and confronting fossilizing evil.

After we'd been through the wringer, and they calmed down a bit (the version I had begged for more than a little drama in the re-telling aloud), we teased out the themes of all these tales....Sharing, being True, the reality of evil and hurt and misery, and the presence of hope that will never leave...  and then I asked them to finish sentences they would recognize-- "Do not be afraid...."  "I am with you!"  "Do unto others..." "...as you would have them do unto you!"  Slowly the light began to dawn....the themes are universal, are essential, fundamental, and live in wisdom, experience, and where humanity/divinty converge! For the Greeks, in the Gods...for Christians, in Jesus...and in us, made in the image and likeness of God.

Noodler's Blue from Ink Nouveau

Truth, wrapped in Story...  Story that can be told in so many different ways--including pen, ink, and paper.  This week, I received in the mail a bottle of fountain pen ink.  I had paper towels on hand, but no matter how careful I was when filling the plunger, splurch, drip, smear...my fingers and thumbs have now been baptized by an ink that has serious and unanticipated staying power.  Consequently, when speaking on gmail to a friend, I noticed her eyes following my hands as I spoke.  "It's ink--sorry!"  "You have been working magic!" was her reply.  What an amazing response!  What an amazing friend...

California Mandarins

Which brings me to this morning. I had a sack of small citrus fruits that were too tart to eat by themselves.  Rather than keep trying as is for the sake of using them up, I decided to consume them as juice.  I peeled about twenty of them, plunked their tangy, tender, segments in the blender, and with several hits of "liquify" and a squirch of honey, voila, goodness in a glass.  And the goodness came with me, because my hands now bore the intense, incredible, zesty clean zip smell of the rind....my hands that are already stained with ink.

Standing over the sink, marveling at the pleasure that combination brought me, these beginning lines came without thinking--

Just before she said yes to the wind's invitation, she smiled deeply and thought with her head slightly tilted-- "Today is a good day for this... I am feeling rather mandarin blue..."

It begs to be continued...I wonder where it will want to go? 

Amazingly Alive, Generously Present

This is the Oscar winning Animated Short from this year...it came to me yesterday, at The Perfect Moment, as sometimes happens with things, via a tag from a friend on Facebook.  It was a reminder I needed to hear and see about the goodness of dreaming, wandering, freeing, sharing...about the creative power of words, flying, and how the music of the relationship between reader and text can make for some liberating dancing....

I needed to hear this anew for myself...I needed to hear it again to share it with my students in a new and different way.  Today, before my first group of students went to search for their books, we had an amazing conversation about how words simply rest upon the page.  In the reading, the taking in, of the story or word, we allow it to become.  And when it becomes a part of us, it becomes part of what we share with others, gets passed on, woven in, etc.  We might take a word in because of what it means, or we might take it in because we simply like the way it feels in our mouth or the way it bounces when we drop it against another set of syllables.  When we free it, share it...that is flying time and it takes sparrows, parrots, and hummingbirds alike to fill the sky...all sorts of words for all sorts of reasons...

To that end, as they made their choices and checked out, I asked them to think about what word they wanted to set free in the world.  We regathered on the steps at the end of the half hour and the kids shared their choices.  

It was awesome...we filled the library with words and joy and the fuzz and tickle of language.  Their choices included exploration, Chewbacca, hippopotomoustache, wasabi, hibachi, read, love, freedom, qi...  They were all trying out different words and putting them out into the world...creating something new, setting it free to fly or fumble or shrug the snuffle.

To watch their delight, their realizing that yes, they have within themselves the power to create and set free with language...Augh...I was extraordinarily happy for my kids and grateful to God for being so amazingly alive in them!

So amazingly alive in them, and for four adventurous decades, so generously present to me in writing and language and Word...

Writing Spring

In the effervescent moment

of syllables passing through--

when listening wide, inside,

head just tilted 

toward the wind--

there flitters a feathery deep

knowing in my soul:

Before all else, ah!

I danced

in the heart of Word--

and Word did not forget

our shimmering delight.

c. MperiodPress

Two Poems on the Journey

c. ArtemKreo

Ash Wednesday

Let this cross be my call 

to learn from the sun

how to live

to give everything

and still let go

one more time

to bloom full,

to bow,

and offer the wind

my soft petaled spirit.

                                                                                    c. MperiodPress

Generosity

Oh, you amaze me—

what you show and teach me

and have me feel

leaves me humbled…

Humbled and nearly inside out

with a desire to

stand in the wind

where giving and receiving meet

and proclaim my love in return

with arms open wide-

reaching for the world.

c.MperiodPress

A Bag of Tricks and Good Company

After learning about light refraction by bouncing sunshine off of shiny plastic library book covers and chasing one another's  squares on the elevated ceilings, I told first graders that they could add that to their bag of tricks.  Several looked at me as though I'd gone a bit daft and one patiently said "We don't have a bag of tricks!"  "Ah, but you do!  We all do!!" was my reply.  This began a whole conversation about what each of us carries in our bag of tricks...and if it was an actual bag, what would the bag look like for each of them?  Soft and floppy?  Lots of zippers? What color?  What material?  Everybody's bag is different, and the tricks inside are different too.

This came back to me this morning as I was getting ready to head out into the day.  I had a speech tournament to attend but was leaving early enough to stop, have a latte, and write a bit first.  Into the bag went my standard two notebooks that are always with me.  Then the journal. Pencil/pen pouch.  Wallet.  Small pouch of whatnot...lip balm, bandaids, post-its, a couple twisties and paperclips, a rubber band or two, a small tin of mints.  Then, the book decision.  What book?  What book I may or may not read, but would be good company?  I was headed to a speech tournament!  Was I going to be reading while I judged?  No.  While I drove? No.  Yet, the decision was an important one.  I selected Pablo Neruda's Antología Fundamental and tucked it in carefully.  Not too big or too heavy, a diverse assortment of his writings, something for every mood, and good memories associated with the purchase of the book.

Often when I begin a day's entry, I will describe the setting where I am as I write.  Today's begins like this...On the third tier of P, a large, welcome latte in hand.  It is a misty gray morning today and I find myself welcoming it...no, that is not quite right.  I feel welcomed BY it.  It is inviting me to something.  It is a day for roaming.  For roaming and finding a small hole in the wall, tucking into a corner and opening the satchel, the ever present, satchel of essentials, and bringing something new into being.  Again, no...it isn't as though what I carry is exactly essential...it is more the opening of the bag of tricks and good company...

Yes, one of my "tricks" is writing...it is something I bring with me everywhere and can use for the good of many or offer in service in one way or another.  There is such creative power in Word and some of that lives in the notebooks of my satchel.  There is potential in a twistie--I've used them a surprising number of times to solve problems of one sort or another. And Pablo Neruda is Quite Good Company...engaging, relaxing, transporting, personal, conversational.

But, whatever creative inspiration that leads to Word being spoken through me and onto the page does not begin with me...nor does it live solely on the page. The inspiration begins with the Spirit, begins with God, begins in the Heart. And God is exceptionally good company.

When we add things to our bag of tricks, we add them to our beings-to who we are and what we can offer in the service of a greater good... And each bag is beautifully unique.

Mark Strand has a brief four line poem that touches me deeply-- "We all have reasons / for moving. / I move/ to keep things whole."

I think somewhere in there is why today brought together the idea of roaming and bringing what is in my bag of tricks and good company...which is a bag and is also the self.  In the roaming there is learning-seeing-doing-in the company of others and in the learning-seeing-doing in the company of others there is growing and in the growing there is more to share and the more that is shared, the more is received and the more received, the more whole we become...that we might give All.

One Year

I don't know if it is everything that has happened in the course of this last year or something else, but I have to say that it feels like much more time than a year has passed since thirteen of us made final vows in Rome...But, whatever it feels like, the calendar says Yes, today is the one year anniversary! 30 January, 2011-30 January, 2012.

I have reflected much today on what the "forever" of my ring means to me...and the wearing of my profession cross.  And I realize yet again and also anew how deeply their significance touches my heart...that they are profoundly important symbols to me...symbols of what I want my life to say and more than say, to proclaim.

I want my life to proclaim something of the fullness of Love and the complete welcome that God has for everyone.  I want my life to proclaim its roots in God...roots that are woven around me as a nest that moves with me as I walk this journey with Jesus.  I want my life to proclaim in my actions my own readiness to respond to the call of God... the call of God to fly--to go, to see, to touch, to smell, taste, hear, to create, to share, to walk in freedom-- the call of God to love as God loves, to listen, to live my humanity, to integrate, to teach, and to be taught by others, to go beyond; the call of God to walk, arms open wide, straight on, deeper and deeper into the Heart...with others...deeper and deeper into a more just world; deeper and deeper into a Love that challenges and draws me forth...deeper and deeper until discovery and revelation meet in the bend and become whole, one...

Thank you, God, for the gift of my vocation, for the life you have given me to discover and reveal your Love, borne in the heart of Jesus.

Off the top of my head

As I sat and sipped with Pablo Neruda the other day, letting my mind and heart go wander the fields they fancy while dancing with his verse, a surprising visitor came knocking upon my spirit...an unbidden yet interesting interlocutor that I never would have thought to bring into the conversation.... Emily Dickinson.

Unable to completely return to Neruda, I listened to her remind me of her own passionate response to good poetry...If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it.  Is there any other way?

I sipped, and tilted a bit, my head resting comfortably in its favored position for considering. Perhaps it was the freedom in the breeze from the ocean as I walked La Isla Negra or in between the lines of the Carta en Camino...but here in the middle of Missouri, in a coffeeshop and very much alive, I didn't think twice about responding to the question posed by a New England poet born in 1830 while reading words of a Chilean poet who died in 1973.  In fact, it was as though Emily Dickinson was asking me to respond.   

Is there any other way?


For me, oh yes...yes, there are other ways to know.  I know when I feel a full body ache to expand, because what I feel needs more room...I know when I want to pick up a pen to talk and can only write AUGH!!! in the margin...I know when everything inside me cries to be set free...I know when I feel as though if I could let go just enough, I might well rise.  I know when I knock on the syllables and ask to come inside...I know when I feel them come up behind me and startle me not unpleasantly by their nearness.


I can understand your images and appreciate the passionate intensity they describe.  But, my body knows a different language of response.  Far from poetry taking off the top of my head, dear Emily...Poetry helps make me whole.  It draws me toward justice, toward love, toward God, toward being more human, toward freedom.  That is why I read you, and Pablo, and Walt; Mary and Wislawa and Mario; Leon, Octavio, and William; Naomi, Thomas, and Teresa; Nikki, Alice, and Langston; Gabriela, Hafiz, Rumi, and e.e. ...

That is why I write it too.


Ultimately, though, I don't think we are saying different things....just using different language to express the Word that is poetry. 

And my other companion, Neruda...he waited patiently until I came back to him and then began again to make my spirit shimmy with his humid, ink-rich verse.

Possibilities

The writing hand

Perhaps a bit of this comes from recently celebrating the New Year by standing under the heavens with a scope in hand, marveling at the spectacle of celestial expansiveness.  Some might come from recently celebrating a birthday and spending time reflecting on how it is (and thanks to whom) that I have arrived to where I am currently and the unknown but intriguing and inviting "greater things than these" that lie ahead.  A bit might also come from a recent conversation with a student who asked me why I always carried a notebook and pen.  "Because 1. You just never know... and 2. With a couple of lines, mere strokes of a pen, whole new ideas can be created and shared, stories told, love proclaimed, worlds explored... and Because they can go anywhere, including where a computer can not. These are tools of creation, imagination, emancipation..."  I got a little wound up.

These recent events sparked the first stages of this post...the unconscious ordering of things in mind and heart that eventually becomes an outline of sorts.  That interior writing revealed itself in my windows this morning.

I awoke at my usual weekend time and rumpled my way over to the blinds just in time to witness the most extraordinary blue...deep, full...a blue to inspire and free, a blue to refresh even the murkiest thought or uncertain cloudiness of heart.  Standing there, stretching to my fullness in front of the windows to both offer more of myself to God and receive with openness and exposure whatever this newest day might bring, it suddenly occurred to me that the only reason I was able to do this--the reason I am able to wonder, wander, discover, and reveal, was thanks to the generosity of someone I will never know. 

I had surgery in 2001.  Because of excessive bleeding in the operation, I needed to receive several pints of blood.  Blood that an unknown someone thought to donate.  In both tangible and mystical ways, I was not alone in that moment of early morning vitrine grace. 

Another thing that can be done with paper and a pen... a record of thanksgiving.  So I wrote my thanks while sitting on the third tier of a newly adopted "thought spot" that also happens to serve a good latte.

Then I went to the public library.  And instead of just turning two score and two, you'd have thought I was twelve again.  One of the reasons I became a librarian was because of my experience in libraries as a child.  There was NO place more freeing to me.  Anything I could imagine reading about was there for my consumption, my touching, tasting in speech, feasting on with eyes and mind, contemplating in heart... So it was this morning.  I wandered everywhere and removed tomes with glee, building the mountain I would take home to climb! A transcribed interview with Frida Kahlo as well as a  book of photographs of her diaries, paintings, letters, home?  YES!  Julia Child's letters with Avis Devoto?  OF COURSE!  Two new cookbooks?  WHEE!  Portrait photography from Annie Leibowitz?  SURE!  A murder mystery?  THAT TOO!  A copy of one of my all time favorite books that I may or may not actually re-read, but it feels right to spend time with it again one way or another?  ADD IT!

I will likely read most of these while sitting in front of the windows in my room on a two cushion couch which has resting on it my journal, a notebook, and several pens in a small pouch.  And I will again give thanks for such adventure as my life holds.