A Trinity of Years

I mentioned to someone that today was the anniversary of my final vows in the Society and they asked "How many years?" Without even thinking I said, "Three and a lifetime."

I have had occasion of late to look back over pictures from the course of my life... I look at the younger me and think--You had no way of knowing, but it really does turn out okay... I look at my youthful self and remember dreams I had...dreams that could not have imagined the challenge and grace my life would come to hold...and it had already held its fair portion. I look into my own eyes and remember who I was...and I look at my hand now and see the ring that I wear that for me is a sign of both my freedom and my intimate union.

My freedom and my intimate union...this pairing continues to entice me, draw me, challenge me, and invite me...in this is my yes, my understanding of Love, and my deep and abiding belief that "Nothing can separate you from my love."

Recently I read an article about Pope Francis that quoted him as saying "Avanti senza paura." Go forward without fear. This is my prayer for the years, the adventure, the Love, that is still to come.

 

There's a New Year Ahead

“We must always look at things/from the point of view of eternity…/from which, I imagine, we would all/appear to have speed lines trailing behind us/as we rush along the road of the world.”

--from Billy Collins’ poem ‘Velocity.’

School begins again tomorrow.  We have been on break for two and a half weeks, plus two unexpected days of extension brought on by winter’s inclemency.  School begins anew…and thus, the speed lines witnessed from eternity’s edges.

Time did slow over these last weeks…or perhaps a more apt descriptor is ‘expanded.’  In some ways, it was a rather lonely time for me and in others, ah…a time of such privilege.  For one, I had coffee with a friend nearly every morning.  By the coordination of time and technology and graced relationship, we were able to be with one another and speak of the grand and the quotidian, the quiet murmurings of heart and the soft soaring of spirits.  I spoke with another friend, miles away, many times and we laughed as we shared the daily whatnot of life, and the space in our kitchens as we prepared meals miles apart and together in heart.  Other loved ones and I also exchanged phone calls and messages as we celebrated Christmas and New Year’s and my birthday.

Time expanded to include new experiments in the kitchen…new flavor discoveries and delights and the renovation of the deep joy I find in preparing a meal for others.  Yes, time certainly expands when I am in the kitchen, wrist deep in cabbage and vegetables, nose wide to the roasting green beans in the oven, fingers itching to pluck a freshly baked clove of garlic from its crisply starched pillowslip and pop it directly into my mouth.  I learned about caramelizing onions and what happens when you marry polenta and feta.  I learned of thyme, the possibility within chiles to be subtle, and admired the exquisite beauty of turmeric.

This morning afforded me experiments in electricity as I made my bed with its baklava of blankets.  A spark entered my left pinky, spiraled around my body, and exited the sole of my slipper clad right foot.  I could feel the whole shooshing, yes, electrifying, event…and found myself marveling at the experience of what I already knew conceptually.  Freaky and fascinating at the same time.

Over break, I read an author’s love letter and was moved to tears at the intimacy she could express when simply speaking to another of nature’s beauty and the desire to dress for the solemn celestial occasion of planetary alignment.  I also began a book of fantastic imagination and storytelling that is the work of a fiercely private woman with an alcoholic father and who died “unloved and not loving,” according to relatives.  Yet the book is so richly detailed, so…hm, yes, expansive…one story leading to another and back…I could see where writing this book was her outlet…her place to go…  I began reading Mary Poppins after seeing the movie Saving Mr. Banks.  As I said on Facebook, it “changes forever the way I will see Mary Poppins...and makes me think much this evening about what and how and why we tell stories...and it makes me glad I'm a writer too...”

The elegance of Abigail Adams and the speech of 18th c. politics also makes me glad to be a writer.  I have been watching the HBO version of John Adams  and loving the turns of phrase, the passion with which ideals were expressed and the care with which it was done.  Words mattered tremendously, as did presence in speaking them.  For both of these qualities, I have great respect and admiration.  Listening to them, knowing what they were about...oh, it makes me want to spill ink and speak sense in this present world and country.   It makes me want to impress upon my students the role of simple elegance in speech and the idea that choosing well what one says makes for lasting substance in the being of the listener/reader.

Today is the birthday of another writer—Zora Neale Hurston.  As I head afresh into eternity with speed lines marking my certain though perhaps winding path, I can not help but recall one of her quotations and pose a question to myself, to God, to the universe…

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

Which will it be for 2014?

Rahner and Remainders

"When the totals of your plans and of your life’s experiences do not balance out evenly, I am the unsolved remainder. And I know that this remainder, which makes you so frantic, is in reality my love, that you do not yet understand. " (from a Christmas meditation by Karl Rahner)

I have been thinking about this snippet of Rahner's ever since reading it anew this year at a prayer during a Christmas Day gathering. I am the unsolved remainder...how complete enticing to me...the idea that there is always more...there is between God and God's people an "again," there is hope, there is mystery...there is the difficult honor of love... and oddly, I find that lack of precise clarity somewhat reassuring...rather freeing...accommodating. It accommodates me and my curves and my quirks...my questions and dreams and wonderings...my faults, my glory, my greatness, and my weakness. It accommodates humanity...embraces humanity...inhabits humanity.

So often it is that my life experiences have outstripped my own plans by miles, pages, continents...coffee spoons (thank you, T.S. Eliot, for that useful unit of measure...)...and it is a gift to know that unsolved, unexpected, extra, as love...whether it comes as a challenge or as ease of heart. It makes all the difference...and I fear little would otherwise make sense.

I was also thinking about Rahner this afternoon while in the kitchen...these last days of feasting have meant leftovers...remainders...in the kitchen. A fit of hungry creativity led to satisfied delight as I mused my way through shelves and containers.

2 slices of leftover bacon...fine dice in a bowl

Some leftover potatoes, cut into 1/2 inch pieces...in the bowl.

1/2 an onion...thin thin slices...in the bowl

a bundle of skinny green beans...in the bowl...

A dribble of olive oil over all

A little hit of chili flakes

Stir...dump on a jelly roll pan...400 degrees until the beans start to get brown

Delicious...

 

The Glory of what Remains

If I was writing

with an oil inked spatula,

gathering into verse

the syllables mingling in the bowl,

slick with the whispering spice

of adventures past,

 

I'd like to think that those stanzas would sound--

after 400 fresh degrees of small talk--

like my kitchen now smells--

 

Of bacon and garlic,

beans, and potatoes,

who leave in their steamy wake

an unspoken shimmy

of well comported joy,

a feast about to be read.

 

Kimberly M. King rscj

 

Advent IV, 2013

Advent IV, 2013

Your nearness crackles,

Love, and I sing for want

of a way to contain

certain joy

swishing her cape

at the awe of it all.

 

Kimberly M. King, rscj

 

 

Decorations of a different sort

I am sitting at a heavy wooden table as I write this...

Two cookbooks are open; a recently emptied coffee canister with a label I found pleasing is sitting by the cookbooks and it is also open...just in case there is any more scent it would care to offer up. I am sipping on a mug of lightly honeyed peppermint tea that I made with water that had been poured over an orange rind and left steeping. Directly in front of me are two spice jars...one of chili flakes--some few of which will be sprinkled over roasted green beans and garlic with a light squirt of lime and sprinkle of salt for a Christmas dinner pot-luck...and the other is of turmeric. I don't know yet what I will do with it, but it was too beautiful to pass by in its clear glass jar. It is $1.67 worth of pleasing and possibility at the moment and I look forward to learning how it best likes to dance.

Christmas music plays in the background, I have a stocking hung at my door, and I just heard Canada geese fly by...

This open, aching, fullness of my senses makes me think about the poetics of decoration...how important it is to me to take the time now and then to create this sort of environment...to find beauty in acts of creativity and preparation...to give myself the time to savor and steep...And in so doing, to Encounter.

To savor and steep myself in the place where all converges...all senses, all Word, all Story, all flavors, all experience, all glory and humanity...

To savor and steep myself in Love, rising and wailing, kneading and needy...Chaotic, like the pleasing mess around me, bright as the bowl of a spoon.

 

Advent III, 2013

(Image is courtesy of ESA and NASA. Acknowledgment: E. Olszewski, U. Arizona)

Advent III, 2013

 

Birth and life...

neither is a muted affair.

 

The effort to quiet

or contain them

would snatch at starlight

and whisper away the edge

of awe's flame,

leaving mystery to sputter.

 

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ

 

 

Advent II, 2013

Advent II, 2013

 

It is within me to seek you,

alive and encompassing.

 

It is in my soul to ache with beauty,

to sigh while believing

that nothing can come

between the flame and the wick.

 

It is within me to be radiant

with you.

 

It is in my soul to yes

to you, to love.

 

Kimberly M. King, rscj