The Divine Poetic

Non coerceri a maximo, sed contineri a minimo divinum est.

Not to be limited by the greatest, yet to be contained in the tiniest-- this is the divine.

Ignatius of Loyola

 

Conversations about poetry continued in the classroom this week. We re-enacted a 125 year old ball game while reciting the stanzas of Casey at the Bat; we were awake and a'wander one mist-slippery night/down by the moors and the bay; and some students read Sing it Out with obvious delight, gusto, and amusing mishaps. All of this was leading up to them making a book out of a single sheet of paper and creating their own collection of words they enjoy and an original poem.

As a way to talk together about the actual process of writing poetry, we took up the theme of zucchini. (I thought it likely that they wouldn't choose that subject for their own verse). The kids counted syllables in lines, remembering that Casey was built of lines between the small window of 13-16 syllables. We spoke of coherence--Zucchini is better than the queen...hmm...Does it make sense to compare zucchini to people?How can you keep the imagery of the queen and change that? "Zucchini is eaten by the queen!!" We spoke about needing a coat hanger to give structure to the clothing of our ideas...and syllables, theme, line breaks...these are all part of the hanger...

I had no idea heading in whether it was going to fly or not, this idea...this idea of bit by bit bringing them inside a poem's structure...of bringing them inside the work that they are also creating at the same time...of introducing them to the idea of listening to language and structure and responding to what you hear...

But wondrously o wondrously, they seemed to get it!

And it was absolutely glorious... Kids were auto-correcting their own lines when they read them out loud and the syllables didn't work for the sound they wanted, they were offering each other words to use...they were reading to one another and to me...

They were hearing the music, the notes, contained in the tiniest syllable! They were hearing the sound of words coming together and using that to compose their own music!! They are learning how to use tools that are the same tools used to create much larger works that also ring with harmonies...speeches, essays, longer poems, love letters, eulogies, a letter of condolence, a book...

There is no greatest limit nor a minimum requirement...the music, the rhythm, the pulsing life and Ah! and delight and creativity and energy...it simply IS.

And it brings me deep, humble, joy to share that with my students... To have them discover with and within their own being, this aspect of the Divine.

 

 

 

Sing it out!

I gave my students a test last week...which meant that the first book we read as a literature class is now over...which means I need to know what comes next.

I didn't.

Until last night.

And now, egad, I am thrilled.

We're doing poetry...long poetry.  Story-telling poetry.  Salty-sweet-tang-for-the-tongue-deeply-musical-visual poetry.  Interestingly enough, the idea for this came while listening to Krista Tippet's On Being interview with Keith Devlin about mathematical thinking and sonnets, and the interpretation of patterns. Fascinating stuff... that led me to think about how this math, these patterns--which can be interpreted in color, forces (magnetic, kinetic, etc)  language, numbers, sound...are so essential to being-ness.  These harmonies are holding me together, grounding me and at the same time, allowing me to experience their mystical essence.

I am not able to explain exactly why I come close to weeping when I read the perfection of Shakespeare's sonnets or why this morning I found myself alone in my room proclaiming aloud, afoot, and with certain passion Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey .  I can't explain it...except to say that what I hear when the syllables come together to make word and image has me Become a bit more.  It has me ache and YES and AH...and even more than that, it inspires in me a desire to take up the tools and create something that sings of me...of my experience...to become a part of the conversation...conversation, relationship, that is at the humming warm center of covenant...

Purple Robe

Matisse is an artist that inspires this same feeling in me. When I see what he did with color and pattern, I can hardly contain myself...  His are paintings I hear just as some poems are music and some music is a frame for walking through into living art.

I am not sure how I am going to explain this to my students...who are eleven.  But, I will try.

Sing it out!

Lullaby, hullabaloo,

fandango, frisbee, and kazoo!

Rumplestilkskin, razzmatazz,

flibbertigibbet and all that jazz!

Spigot, junket, trinket, jalopy,

fastidious, meticulous, chaotic, sloppy.

Wishy-washy dragonfly,

gorgonzola, infinite pi!

Quotidian tango twosomes

spied through a transom tilting

after passing by the fern fronds

looking lax and wither-wilting.

Knolls, nooks, a shekere!

For my linguistic pleasure, I like an array

of crunchy, silvery, syllabic fun

to belt in the rain and proclaim in the sun!

So hear me sing of pulchritude!

Of oblong oolong tea leaves steeping,

of davenports and aptitude,

of words I read that are worth keeping.

c. MperiodPress

Sacred moment, sacred trust

Yesterday I had a third grader bless me...and I am still left with the sensation of awe, respect, and humility that I experienced in that moment and in the hours that followed.

After her class trip to the library, a student approached me, telling me that her grandmother had died and that the funeral is today, Saturday. She then asked me, "Would you write me a poem I could read at her funeral?"

My world went silent and noisy all at the same time...which sounds contradictory, but really, that's what it felt like. It was such a sudden and transparently divine moment... I said simply, "Of course." And she nodded her head and went off with her class.

I thought of her being in third grade, about my not knowing her grandmother, about the sacred trust she had expressed, and then I wrote. I printed it on card stock, glued it to construction paper, and then took it to her classroom so she could read it and see if it worked for her.

When she saw it, she read it, she got a bit pink, nodded again, and then looked hard at me, saying nothing but "Thanks."

I can't help but recognize her simple request as one of the most sacred requests ever asked of me.

About this experience, I wrote the following this morning, while tucked into a corner of my Saturday thought-spot, Picasso's, a local coffee shop:

I was so very moved on so many different levels. One, Wow, what sacred stust, what a sacred honor to do this for her. Two, how beautiful that she, in third grade!, wanted to honor her grandmother via poetry and had the courage and creativity to make that be possible...Her parents had no idea and were incredibly grateful in their response to the emails that I sent. Three, whoa, it is humbling in such an amazing way to be seen as, recognized as, a writer/poet by an eight year old...to know that a child has paid that close of attention or thought that writing is a skill for which she has respect. AUGH, this is such a moment of gratefulness to God and a moment of awe...and I honestly had the sense of Jesus saying See? And beyond "See?" also "Feel?" Feel what that is like? Feel that invitation to recognize the internals and externals of that moment of transparency...where you come to know not figuratively but actually, the love of Jesus...as an exchange of respect, of love, of trust.

 

An Act of Creation a day...

"In the time that I have been sitting and looking at the screen or staring off into the seemingly greener grass distance, I could be making scones."

This is the salvific thought I had this afternoon.

Words are no more at the ready than they were before and my thoughts are no more ordered, but an act of creation has been accomplished and there is something to be said about that.

There is something to be said that something new has been brought into being at my hand and shared with others...something which will bring joy, something which offers interesting flavor for the spirit (cardamon-lime), and something which is even better when accompanied... In this case, by French roast.

Simply said, I feel better, more even, less wrinkly, having created something...having stuck my hands into the essential ingredients, having spooned and folded and zested, having been messy and having cleaned, having learned and having touched the process all the way through.

I am hoping words come again soon... But for now, yes, scones will do...and do nicely.

 

Mystical Immediate

Late afternoon this past Tuesday, I returned from a month of helping out with an RSCJ project in Cuba. Over the course of three weeks, we put on 11 different day-camps at different sites for over 360 children. It was a phenomenal experience and I offer below some reflections from my journal....

14 July, 2013.

I am hotter than Hades, I am certain that I stink, and I ache almost everywhere possible. I have seen a waterfall, watched red ants congregate, seen termites in trees, burros roaming, a spider with a cylindrical back side, and a peacock who looked almost embarrassed to be molting. And I walked through breezes of dozens and dozens of butterflies.

19 July, 2013

Amazing as it is to say it, I am looking at the Caribbean while surrounded by children for whom this view is common and yet who do not have enough to eat and barely enough to survive. I am seeing blues and greens as God created them and not simply as painters have interpreted them. It makes a difference. I just spent a good long while throwing a ball for a huge lot of kids in the water (Tira, profe! Tira! Yo, yo!). Never has one tennis ball made so many people so happy at the same time. And I include myself in that absolute joy.

23 July, 2013

Thank you for the sleep. My eyes closed last night before finishing my first impressions of Natividad. When we were about to make superhéroes, I asked the group, ¿y si tu fueras un superhéroe, que sería tu poder? (If you were a superhero, what would your power be?) y sin pensar por quince segundos, El niño Artúr dijo, "Salvar a la gente." Ni modo si para mucha gente estos niños son los olvidados, tú estás aquí. Tú estás tan presente aquí. Tú siempre vas a recordarles. (And without thinking for fifteen seconds, the child Artúr said Save the people. Whether or not these children are the forgotten ones for many, you are here. You are so very present here. You will always remember them.)

July, 24, 2013

Note to self: Looking down is sometimes vital. Looking up also has its merits. Completely cracked my head on a cast iron pump handle today in Camino de Santa Cruz and did so with such oomph that I had to sit rest while several of the women offered consolation, including taking turns holding a frozen water bottle on my head and fanning me with their hands. The men thought it was hilarious in the best good natured way...which it was, really. One of them stripped off his tee shirt and tied it onto the handle so I would see it. It was such honest care and laughter, both. A deep appreciation for the humor of a situation and an extraordinary attentiveness to caring...what a wonderful combination.

Then after returning to the house, I took a nap and for the third day in a row dreamed of the whole process of my death...

I am curious about the meaning of dreaming my death three days running. Part of me hopes that it has to do with dying to old ways and opening up to something new...and part of me hopes that it is not anticipatory, though I have to say that there was no fear in my dream and the experience nearly beautiful...nearly because as yet, I find it hard to imagine my own death as a beautiful thing.

29 July, 2013

The other night at evening prayer I had said that people would ask me what I had done in Cuba during this past month and that I had been thinking about what I would say. My first instinct, and what I shared that night, is that I have seen the Cuban face of God and received God's gaze in return. This morning while washing a passel of breakfast dishes (pan y café y tanta vajilla...nunca voy a entender-- bread and coffee and yet so many dishes...I will never understand) another considerable learning came to me--> I have experienced here that many things are far more precious and far more precarious than I knew them to be before. That is to say, what I have known about this internally--whether in heart or head or both--has been grounded in a mystical immediacy...In a lived reality where every moment is lived fully in its time, where I feel like I am touching the ground and touching humanity within myself and in others, and where (from Wisdom...) the pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty is witnessed in acts of extraordinary welcome and generosity by those who have few material goods, in relationship, in laughter, in witnessing to the possibility of hope, in sitting together and listening to one another...in the solidarity of the Heart.

 

 

An Adventure

It isn't as though I don't know that an adventure is coming. I have been making piles for a while now and going over lists. I have purchased what new is needed and found what has been tucked away since the last time. I have washed, folded, selected, bagged, and packed. I have copied documents, checked on a map, read articles, and called or messaged with people who are important to me.

Yet, it is when I removed my keys from my bag and placed them carefully in the center of my dresser this evening that I felt it most deeply in my heart. The thrill of freedom and the wonder of whether the next branch will hold me when I fold my wings for the night. The genuine curiosity to go and see and learn and offer what help I can and the awareness that the keys to some of what I find comforting are not with me in the same way. The feeling of being loose around the edges without the the concrete grounding of keys to a known home and yet believing that there is nothing, nothing. that can separate me from the love of God so shoulder up the satchel of necessaries and head on into discovery and revelation.

Oddly, I am glad for this combination of feelings because it speaks to me of God and of love. I'm not sure I'd be so keen on it if leaving were too easy or if I believed that it didn't matter that I returned...

I am a firm believer in the reality that I am not indispensable... But I also find grace filled consolation in believing that it matters that I return as much as it matters that I leave. Love has taught me that. It is the blending of Remain in me and I will remain in you and go out to all the world and tell the good news.

And so I go this Friday...away for a month...without much if any access to the Internet...to help an rscj project in another country...and I will be back in August...holding the keys again, but I suspect, entering my home in a different way. And that is part of the adventure.

Kindred Company

Of late I have been reading Paul Elie's book, The Life You Save may be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage. Hmm...reading it...no, that is not entirely accurate. Savoring it. Sipping it slowly. Feeling it bloom within me, warming me, teasing my senses with hints of something familiar and yet a distinct combination of flavors all its own...

It brings together Flannery O'Connor, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, and Thomas Merton and weaves their stories of faith and the role of writing, conversion and seeking, desire and determination to listen to God within their own experience and beyond.

I was telling my friend last night about this book and how much I was enjoying it...how good it is for my heart to read of them. She added, and to touch a world you understand.

Yes! Yes, exactly. In certain respects, they are each people with whom I can identify...people who could not leave the company of God...people who made conscious choices about God, about their lives of faith, people who moved through life as seekers, not settlers, people for whom the pen is a sacramental and the written word a testament and invitation, a call, a way to help them mediate the fullness of life surrounding.

Two excerpts from my notebook about what I have read so far...

Dorothy Day's motivating desire behind her writing--"to give reason for the faith that is in us..." I LOVE that...and will find a way to use that...blog, wall quotation, something. To what end the witness of our lives? To give reason for the faith that is in us, Therefore, live with a fullness and be not afraid. Express, share, own the truth as it is experienced. Discover, reveal, make manifest, the stunning constancy of God in sadness and challenge as well as in joy and easier times. To give reason is not to defend, but to reveal...to seek to live and to write with such openness, aperture, divine permeability, that it is God's love and the humanity of Jesus in the daily lived reality that is seen, heard, read...

And on Merton and his keeping of a journal...

"The balcony was his outpost, his observation deck, his open-air hermitage. There, his journal, a series of exercises in observing and recalling, thinking and writing, became a religious devotion." AUGH, I love that and I GET that. To so intimately link God and the daily whatnot of living that can be seen for a balcony...and not even that...it ISN'T making the link, it is revealing it...noticing it, allowing it to pierce, pass through, to be, to bloom, to challenge, to change the self... YES!!

In so many ways and for so many reasons, is good to be together with these four for a while... to listen to them and learn from them and know them as kindred souls... The sort of souls for whom Jessica Powers wrote the following, I think...

The Second Giving

The second giving of God is the great giving

out of the portions of the seraphim,

abundances with which the soul is laden

once it has given up all things for Him.

The second growth of God is the rich growing,

with fruits no constant gathering can remove,

the flourishing of those who by God’s mercy

have cut themselves down to the roots of love.

God seeks a heart with bold and boundless hungers

that sees itself and earth as paltry stuff;

God loves a soul that cast down all He gave it

and stands and cries that it was not enough.

Jessica Powers