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.

 

 

 

The Lenten Journey

Atacama desert, Chile

I don't often think "Road Trip" when I think of Lent, but this year as these 40 days get underway, I am tingling with an urge to simply GO. Not that I have a destination or even a particularly conscious reason, but there is a part of me just ready to shoulder the bag and be gone, roaming. Roaming, writing, praying, doing, sharing, with God, with and for others...




Some conversations I have had during these last weeks also leave me perched with a readiness...conversations about the possibility of putting together a book...others about what I will do in the summer...about my work as a translator...about notions of home and discernment and freedom and yes and being open and the will of God.

Of late, I have dreamed of parachuting, of flying, of travelling.  I have dreamed of walking and photographing and leaping.

Yet, I am here, called to be librarian, community member, friend... but, inside...I am called also to be a little bit in the looseness of there.

And also called to the desert... Hm, perhaps that is where the two places meet... in the thinness of the veil that gently falls in the openness, uncluttered by what is not essential within or without.

As this wonder is ignited by the warmth of the Spirit alive and dancing, lines from verse by Mexican poet Enrique González Martínez bloom with light.

Sólo tres cosas tenía

para su viaje, el romero:

los ojos abiertos a la lejanía,

atento el oído y el paso ligero.

The one who roams/ had but three things for the journey: / eyes open to the distance/ an attentive ear/ and a light step.

Mark me, o God

Ash Wednesday, 2013

 

Mark me as one

inclined toward life,

toward love and its deeper knowing.

 

Mark me as one

inclined toward love,

toward the company of compassion.

 

Mark me as one

inclined toward compassion,

toward the yes that flames boldly.

 

Mark me as one

inclined toward yes,

toward the difficult honor of your invitation.

 

Mark me as one

inclined toward mistakes,

toward the forgiveness that eases

the pinch in my own heart,

tired of holding too close the ache.

 

Mark me, O God, as I was in the beginning,

am now, and ever shall be:

 

Mark me, O God, as your own.

 

c. MperiodPress

 

 

What DO you write in there?

Four times last week alone I had people ask me--What do you write in that notebook?

The question should not surprise me...many have asked me that over the years (decades) that I have carried at least one notebook and a number of pens in whatever bag I have slung across my body or in the pockets of whatever I have on.  It should not surprise me and yet, for whatever reason, I am usually startled that people even notice I am doing it. 

Upon occasion, someone has thought that I am writing observations about them.  Upon occasion, someone has thought that knowing what I write would lead to an insight into my personality that would help them “figure me out.”

But last week, it was students and a friend asking—both with an accepting and genuine curiosity that wove underneath my accumulated guard of wanting to know why someone wants to know before inviting them in.  That protective instinct has softened considerably over time but not gone away completely.  And, I do admit that Harriet the Spy has always been a kindred spirit on some levels.

With the students in the cafeteria, I pulled it out and riffled the pages—“a recipe for chocolate cake; the list of who is praying at lunch next week; driving directions; a doodle from a meeting; the beginnings of several poems and a paragraph for my blog; a description of a sunrise; a packing list; daily to-do lists; grocery lists; reminders to talk to certain teachers; and the kinds of coffee I've tried at a local coffee shop. Those who asked thought that “was cool” and resumed their ziplocked feasting with a side of curiosity satisfied.

With the friend who asked, I pulled it out and showed her my pages of following the first grade assembly invitation to write the word “Joy” any way we wanted to and list three things that bring us joy.  She has also read many other bits and pieces that I've written and been one to invite me to craft them for different needs, events, or circumstances.

I look at the pages and see something of my mind’s conversation…but it is more than seeing…the pages are also about writing to hear and listen, writing to touch or feel, writing to remember, writing to create, to think, to bring dimension to ideas.

And, the pages are about more than my mind as well. They are about my heart, spirit, and being and what fills them and wanting them to come together…to integrate… and the page is my open field.

My open field, waiting to receive the notes I offer, the poems I hear, the doodles meandering onto the page; waiting to receive my Word in my fullness of quirks and curves, faults and glories. 

...That is the longer version...

The nutshell version of what and why the notebook has already been said better by Rilke than I would ever deign to attempt—

If when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but writing, then you're a writer. (Letters to a Young Poet)