To the Letter

 

23 October, 2014

I have spent some time this morning with the letters of women who intrigue me...Janet Erskine Stuart, Georgia O'Keefe, Willa Cather...And as I read I find myself talking to them as I might if I had the chance to sit across from them in a book-ish ambiance, or upon a hillside blanket, washed over with a new day's becoming and the generous pauses of contentment and keen observation that are markers of the rare experiences at the tail end of the earth that are here--you can't help getting them. (G. O'Keefe)

As I read, I keep thanking them with a slight blush...A window they (for the most part) never intended to be hewn into the side of the lives they fashioned has been un-shuttered and opened to the elements by the publication of their letters...and I have stood in the wind and peeked through, reading the correspondence that was intended for another.

I thank them for the fluidity of their pens and the intimacy they are able to convey in the coming together of ink and paper... Intimacy of thought and feeling, intimacy of relationship to the world, to others, to God, to Nature and Art...

I thank them for their lives, fully lived, fully engaged, fully given...to Beauty, to others, to God, to creating, to interpreting what they experienced in a way that can speak seriously to others over time and invite the pursuit of such expression by others.

I thank them for the way they have me reflect on the letters I have written in my lifetime and the letters I have received. As to the former, some I have written are meanderings of thought, some describe a particular moment, some are purposeful and to the point, some are quietly expressive of a truth that begs to bloom. Some of the latter have cut me to the quick, others have made me consider situations or actions in a different light, others are of the sort to keep apart and read again and again, gently and thoroughly...letting the heart rest in the warmth and rise on the nearness of the one who writes....who shares their word and their hand, their thoughts, feelings, and wishes...in a one to one conversation with a reader...

...who might be someone else one day... ???

And I find myself asking... What will the landscape reveal through the hewn window of the words I write?

 

 

Job and the Angels

It is the feast of the Guardian Angels today... And I was thinking about that while I sat in the Public Gardens this morning. I have a hard time with conventional representations of angels...wings, saccharine, pink and cherubic.... But, LIGHT...yes. Warmth. Depth. Presence. Balm, Strength, Steadiness, Accompaniament. Even Guardian, protector...

And as I closed my eyes and opened my arms alone on the bench and steeped my being in this Glory, I thought of Job... Job who proclaimed that in spite of what surrounded him, in spite of his doubts and questions and insecurities...I know that my Redeemer lives , and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust; Whom I myself shall see: my own eyes, not another's, shall behold him, and from my flesh, I shall see God; my inmost being is consumed with longing.

And I thought... Oh, Job...I get that. Those moments when I have had to dig down and stand up and say I Will Walk Through This. Bring it on...because why? Because I know my Redeemer lives and my own eyes will see...Because Light walks with me to remind me and I am not alone.

2 October, 2014

On the same bench in the Gardens. This could well be a part of my vision of heaven. The light alone--the way it moves through the trees, soaking and saturating them like morning dew and the way it slip-tugs around each branch like a ribbon wending its way. The light that knows both tag and peek-a-boo as well as her asanas of grace, blessing, and harmony. The way this light makes each color its own fullness. It is ALL within the gold of the black-eyed susan stand and every ray finds home in the deep fuchsia that softens the lamp post's angularity. The way it smooths the surface of the water and the sky so that the geese and the sparrows, the woodpeckers and gulls, all have a clear path before them. Even the clouds look shaken out and snapped awake by the strength and depth of this radiance after a night shot through with the half-light threads of dreams.