Love is my Bond

Beginning and end,

I am the thread of the story

and poetry's unseen leap or sigh.

I am release and I am freedom;

I am wonder and I am Home;

Come to me and rest without worry

For Love is my bond.

c. MperiodPress

Spacious simplicity

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

~ Mary Oliver ~

I love these lines from Mary Oliver's poem, Sometimes. I love them for their poetic simplicity and for the extraordinary spaciousness that they suggest.

Within these letters and syllables walks Moses who stood there long enough to realize that even though the bush was on fire, it was not being consumed. I can see the Pieta in there too and the textures of Matisse. I hear YoYo-Ma's cello and the drums from the subway station at Union Square and children singing their hearts' delight at first communion. I can see the face of the child who imagined a person into flight and the ones who could explain how a prism works.

The diversity of how we tell about our astonishment...AUGH...it makes my heart ache with the fullness of a graceful sigh. Whether we sing it, sculpt it, dance it...speak it, write it, play it...plant it, build it, bake it...whisper it, fly it, or float it to sea in a blue green bottle...

We are called to tell the story...in our own voice and time and way... It is not our story to keep, not entirely...and really, I don't think I could. There is not room enough inside me for that much wonder and glory and grace and challenge, that many tears and that much laughter, that much love that calls me forth and calls me home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home

As I thought about this post...which I have been looking forward to for some weeks now...many trite phrases came to mind. Beginning with the most youthful, there's Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. The most foreboding, in my opinion, You can never go home again. One of the most stitched, Home, sweet home. And then the metaphorical...One's home is one's castle.

These phrases and sayings imply that home is a physical place or structure. Once upon a time, I thought so too, but now...now I am not so sure. Though, admittedly, this has all occurred to me while visiting a place where I feel very much at home. And I think precisely that is a key part of it...a place where I feel at home.

Is home a feeling, then? Yes, perhaps... In a way. Is that feeling or awareness affected by surroundings? Absolutely...it can be more immediate or less, depending. Home...a rightness of place, a dropping of shoulders and defenses, a delight and transparency, both a looseness of spirit and a coming into a fullness of self, a sense of love's honor, grace, and challenge, a freedom to pursue Life.

I spent last week, Holy Week, wandering the streets of New York City and attending the liturgies at Saint Francis Xavier church, among good people who have welcomed me as part of community for years. This return was no different. There were hugs, mutual expressions of joy, invitations to participate in different ways, good conversations, and an intimate atmosphere of prayer. Augh! The hours I spent steeping, absolutely steeping, in the textures of he City! Steeping, delighting, remembering, taking in anew...taking in the textures of language and personality, building and greenery, noise and quiet, reflection and speed, grit and awe. As I wrote in my notebook, How attracted I am to the contrasts, to the textures, of this city. How things overlap, rub against, and come together like a mosaic...on a sunny day, how they come together like Matisse in a glorious riot of of the senses and leave me with a fullness of free being.

In other pages, I reflected on how much I love the big building feel. To be a part of something so organic that is so much bigger than me. To find a great freedom in the scale and feel a glorious part of its movement even though, compared to it, I am small...one tile."

Upon my return, at the prompting of the Middle School Global Studies teacher, one of the fifth grade students at the school where I work asked me the question that had come up in their class that day: Why would anyone want to live in the midst of 8.1 million people?

The question was unexpected and my response, spontaneous. Because for me, all of those textures, how they come together, reflects the kingdom of God...to be in the middle of all of that diversity speaks to me of God's richness, fullness, wide acceptance, roominess, creativity, generosity, challenge, grace, love...it speaks to me of God's Heart...

And I feel free in God's heart...able to relax and drop defenses...a rightness of place, a generosity of spirit, a delight and a certain looseness that allows my own heart to hear again and again, Nothing can separate you from my love, and in turn bring that deeper joy to others.

There, more than anywhere, am I at home.

And there, I am not bound. I know that feeling of home and freedom in so many different settings...I know it gathered around a table at a wedding , in the understanding or the living room of a friend; in the eyes of a loved one thousands of miles away; in the snug security of a favorite view from a thinking spot; in the conversation with a child, the moment of teaching, the moment of learning or noticing or creating; on a plane or on a walk, headed toward a new adventure of one sort or another.

And when there are those times when I forget, or when I have a hard time recognizing what surrounds me, I can return again and again and again and always.

Because I can not leave...not really.

Thanks be to God.

 

 

 

 

Easter, 2013

Easter, 2013

 

Let the Easter I proclaim be

the simple extraordinary

time and again and ultimate

resurrection of hope.

 

Hope in you, who gave everything;

Hope in you, who calls me to do likewise;

Hope in you, love beyond reason and measure.

 

Let me live with this

singing within and steadying me,

saving and challenging me

to praise you always and everywhere:

 

Risen, rising, and yet to come.

C. MperiodPress

 

Who's in your bag?

From William Joyce's The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

There are large photo pools on various sites that follow the theme What's in your bag? Owners dump and arrange the contents of their daily bag, photograph it, tag it, and post it to the curious enjoyment of thousands.

What I find myself wondering far more often that what is who? What are the books we carry? Who are the authors whose company we enjoy enough to take them traveling on our daily trod paths? And how does one decide who to bring?

For me, the selection is about far more than what I might be currently reading. I've been known to put a book in my bag just to have its company even though I never get to take it out during the course of my day. I might want to walk with a memory I associate with a book or author, or perhaps I feel like traveling to wherever I was when I first encountered a particular piece of literature. I might be needing inspiration from someone or simply enjoying the company of a friend.

Pablo Neruda and Walt Whitman are both regulars in the recesses of my bag...at the moment, Eudora Welty is tagging along while writing letters to William Maxwell (What there is to Say, We have Said). Janet Erskine Stuart is a conversant companion and Julia Child is good for a laugh. Wislawa Szymborska makes me think and a secondhand guide to world architecture is great for dreams.

I have to say too, it does make a difference to me that it is a thumbable, physical, actual, honest and papery, book. I am entirely for technology and advances in communication and information dissemination and access, but when it comes to what I keep in my bag... I do like the warm rustle of the printed word.

It is the object itself as well as the author and content that is important to me. I've given away the book in my bag and used it to kill a bug. I've written to a friend in the margins and used a tea bag envelope that smells like my childhood as a bookmark. It has been wrapped in a fleece and used as a pillow, it's been read aloud to strangers, and it has taught me something new.

When people ask me if the printed word will remain a viable format for literature, I must say yes...not only for the practical aspects...I believe it will continue to be logistically and pragmatically easier to get a greater number of people books than ereaders or computers for a good while into the future...but also for personal reasons.

Quite simply, I would miss its warm steady company in my day.

 

Eating an Orange at Day's End

Every aspect of the orange I just tenderly consumed was an ideal, a citric aspiration to greatness. Tissue thin membranes separating the sections; a sweetness rivaled by the heady lilacs growing in the Arboretum at UW-Madison where I would ride my bike simply for the joy of inhaling; tight skin hugging the jeweled interior; and such an anointing of my hands with its essence that this sacramental moment will not soon be forgotten.

It was a blessing to appreciate something for the fullness of its being...Presented in humble simplicity, yet, terrifically intricate as well. Each tiny pod of juice nestled against the other, fitting perfectly, contained in larger shapes that also fit together, and wrapped protectively in an outer layer that can't help but give a hint of the glory it has within.

It was a blessing for my body to eat such a thing of beauty... And it is as though my entire body knows it. The contentment I feel is far deeper and more widespread than taste buds and stomach. My eyes are blessed by the saturated colors, my ears by the gentle squeak of segments pulling apart, my tongue by the fresh syrupy juice...
My soul knows it has been nourished, and at the end of this day, that leaves me quite thankful.

Poetic Meals

Still life, Checked Tablecloth, Henri Matisse

My day began with a scant but roomy three line poem for breakfast...

Eating a Morning Poem

French bread toast

with a smear of lemon curd, a mandarin,

and a cup of tea.

 

It was simple, clean, fresh, pleasing, bright...all I could ideally ask of a breakfast... I composed my meal with intention and I delighted in every bit of it...the slight puckering sound of the curd jar opening for the first time; the careful slicing open of a French bread roll and the gentle flattening of it with my hands like molding a favorite pillow; the crevice filling, tart, textured spread of curd across the crunchy terrain of toast; the jeweled burst of each segment of mandarin and the residual glory of citrus that remained on my hands; the steadying fortification of hot strong tea to bring it all together.

A Vase with Two Handles, Henri Matisse

My day ended with the comforting rhythms and harmonies of a sonnet...rounded iambic edges, filling, chewy and yet precise. There was a bit of rice left in the bottom of a sack in the pantry and a short handful of lentils in their bag...into the pot of olive oiled and salted boiling water. A pinch of cumin into the bottom of my waiting bowl...a couple of spoonfuls of the cooking water...the lentils and rice...cracked pepper, fresh grated Parmesan, and a squeeze of lemon. A bowl of heartfelt praise, honoring joy, flavor, balance, and care.