The stone in my pocket

Why there is a stone in my pocket 

The weighty round reminder of gravity’s constancy, centering me down, placing me,

in time and geography

is rather oddly a tethering that frees me.

I am, it says.

And you are 

and so too are We.

So go. Do.

Make your discoveries

in this world.

I will bring you home

to tell your tales of awe and curiosity.

And the stars and stones will listen,

and the wind will bear them,

and tides receive them

in a wild and passionate grace

that befits this tumble of heart and mind and being.

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ

Night Music

7:11 PM. In the back of Saint Mary’s 

 cathedral, listening to an organ recital by Robert Summerby-Murray, the president of Saint Mary’s University. GLORY BE, is it H O T in here. The music is spectacular, though. Not quite the cosmos effect of listening to the University of King’s College Chapel choir at All Saints…somehow, there isn’t the same sense of internal space, the room to move among the parts and gaze at the wonders in motion within the beauty being created.  Maybe that is the difference?  This music is beautiful from the outside—like a machine can be beautiful in function and design—e.g, a motorcycle’s aesthetic perfection. Listening to the choir was a chance to be inside something beautifully alive, a system, an “organic” system…a galaxy, or an atom with its protons, neutrons, and electrons in elliptical circulation, giving form and substance to Being.  This music tonight is Energy, pure, raw, bold, and unabashedly itself, even the gentler pieces.

I find it so fascinating that all of these natural images keep coming to me when I bring the two experiences together.  Plants and metals; fiber and stone; atoms and universes, mass and energy… Natural images and contrasts of size… It sounds a bit messy and disparate when I read this, yet it intuitively makes sense to me. Because, though the images seem at extremes from each other, maybe it isn’t about placing them on a line—maybe those images are where the circle comes together and it’s about the diversity of what is held in common: Rhythm, movement, flow, inner/outer of one whole, breath, voice, communication, Life….all present in each, yet such different images are generated.

It all makes me think about the epitaph of Ignatius… Non coerceri maximo, continuo minimo, divinum est:  Not to be confined by the greatest, yet to be contained within the smallest, is divine.

What is at play among the harmonies and contrasts; the lift of a note that hangs at roof peak and the roll of weighty might that pours music into the pews and spreads until it finds its level…. It’s the same thing that sparks between syllables for me and wondrously binds mustard, oil and vinegar in a dressing, and what happens in a meaningful conversation with stranger or friend…  It’s Rhythm, proportion, science, language, math, music…beauty…passion…creativity, interest…generativity…For me, this is the Stuff of God… in so far as God is of Stuff: …essence…element…mystery…wonder…Source, origin.

And the diversity of ways that this is all revealed!  Through chorus, through organ, through tear, through silence, landscape, literature, poetry, relationship to self to other, to Source… The fullness of truth in each of those things does not limit or diminish the fullness in any of the others…

Somehow, believing that makes things all the more incredible, more free, more ‘and with Ah!  Bright Wings.’  (G.M. Hopkins)

  

A meal made of Enough

When I found your words, I devoured them. Your words were my joy, the happiness of my heart. 

If you come back and I take you back, in my presence you shall stand; If you utter what is precious and not what is worthless, you shall be my mouth.

-Jeremiah 15: 16, 19—from lectionary readings on 01 August, 2018

How do we get from ‘not enough for everyone’ to an abundance beyond our imagining?  What does it mean to go from scarcity and fear to generosity and care?

-A question that arose from the Religious Formation Conference and cited in the 30 July, 2018  posting on the blog All This Life and Heaven Too, a blog written by Silvana Dallanegra, a member of my religious order, the Religious of the Sacred Heart.

I have had a chance to be away these last two weeks.  In that time, I’ve seen people I love and don’t see often enough, I’ve done work, walked long a river, consumed a fair bit of coffee, made customs officials smile with a chance reunion in the Toronto airport, and read some good books. I’ve seen amazing maps hidden in quartzite and granite slabs while helping someone pick a countertop, helped a friend arrange and hang artwork, and seen the documentary about Mr. Rogers. 

But when I read the combination of those two italicized pieces this morning, I thought of something else.  I thought of the opportunities I had to sit with people.  On couches watching movies; on porches, in pajamas, conversing over coffee; at lunch tables in a gymnasium; in cafes and restaurants; over Scrabble and Settlers of Catan.

I thought of the words of deep, wide, love that were shared in different ways…according to relationship, to age, to context.  Words that sounded like laughter until weeping; that sounded like gentle teasing; words that were full of truth and challenge; words that sounded like an ache being shared; words that formed questions to get to know someone better; rhetorical questions posed in safety and meant simply to be heard; queries about whether someone wanted the last slice of pizza or mug of coffee or “Anybody else need a drink while I’m up?” And sometimes, words that were not spoken but equally present…in silence and sometimes given active dimension in deed.

These words, I devoured… Words of care, curiosity, Love, abiding presence, abiding welcome.  Words from people who have been my company and stood strong in the winds of time and circumstance; and words from new kites who invite me to risk, to fly still further.

Words from people in whose presence I wish to stand; in whose company I do stand and I do act. And sometimes that happens to be face to face and I understand all over again the closing line of Les Miserables, the musical:  To love another person is to see the face of God.

So long as I do something meaningful, valuable, precious, with that fullness of understanding…so long as each of us who has the good fortune of knowing something of that swirling company of Love that sings in so many unique lyrics, breezes, swells, and alleys of life does something to see it move on and touch another, then I can’t help but believe that we will bit by bit move from scarcity and fear to generosity and care.

God is infinite and wondrously beyond the scope of my imagining.  And so is the good that Love can do when made manifest in the gloriously wild diversity of humanity.  

To try and stop that would be heart less.  Would be worth less.

We have a banquet of words set before us to devour, to share.  Let the meal and the table we offer be a meal and a table of Love, not a meal and table of conditions and appendices of exceptional cases.  There is enough.  Enough room, enough love, Enough.

For me, I think the real question might be, Do I believe that?  What would happen if I chose to act as though I believed that I was loved beyond measure and reason? If I chose to act as though there was room for another…perspective, thought, way of understanding…need that is greater than my own…And that there was enough.  And that this truth of room, of welcome, of infinite love, was a truth for Us All?

What that is worthless has that as its foundation?  

Let us eat well of love’s rich and varied vocabulary and make of that meal something generative, something beautiful, something as expansive as has yet to be imagined. 

The Memory Garden

It’s a kohlrabi.  I’ll get to that part in a bit.  

I have been remembering gardens lately.  Gardens of my young childhood, because I don’t remember them appearing after fifth or sixth grade.  Garbanzo beans, green beans, wax beans, shelly beans, potatoes, zucchini, tomatoes, corn, carrots, butternut squash, cucumbers, sugar pumpkins, big and knobby jack-o-lantern pumpkins…

And always, interesting bugs, the summer-earth smell of green that got stirred up by my legs, the tickle of the leaves, the way you had to be careful squatting down to look at something interesting because the rows in between weren’t that wide and you didn’t want to tip and break delicate stems; the watering bucket, the bushel baskets, the canning jars, the garden hose.

There was the year of my father growing chili peppers to dry and use…and he told me, his ever-curious daughter, chubby handed and about six years old, Do NOT touch the peppers, especially if they are red…even THOUGH they are bright and red.  And he related the story of why…which involved his hands swelling and itching and a trip to the emergency room.  Somehow, the story just wasn’t enough…and yep, I touched the peppers…a little.  And spent the day itching the daylights out of my palms by rubbing them up and down my shorts.  Dad never said a word, though he surely noticed. He didn’t need to.  I’ve never touched one with a bare hand since.

I remember too sitting on card table chairs in the garage with my grandmother.  We each had a brown paper grocery sack of shelly beans and a colander. I have no idea what the beans are actually called.  We only ever called them shelly beans.  And that’s what we’d sit there together and do…pop the pods, beans into the colander, pods back into the sack….until the beans were done. I loved the way the freshly shelled beans looked and felt…so cool, so smooth, so pretty—all salmon colored and flecked with brick red.  

There are single memories too…the sound of the rattle on the top of my other grandmother’s pressure cooker; the year my uncle stuck a cherry firecracker inside one of the ears of corn in the corn row and then lit it to explode while we were walking several stalks behind him; Kool-Aid ice-cubes in repurposed yogurt cups; unexpectedly finding the garter snake underneath the large leaves of a zucchini plant…and shrieking to high holy heaven.

Then there’s kohlrabi. 

We grew kohlrabi too. But they never made it into the house. My father, uncle, grandfather, and brother would pick them, hose them off, and stand bent over in the garden eating them like apples.  

I read about them again recently and enquired at the farmers market here on the harbor-front.  They were in last week and I bought one.

I cut it into little planks and roasted it with a dribble of olive oil and coarse salt.  Delicious.  It stayed crunchy, had a great texture and a clean green taste, and was actually refreshing—not an attribute I normally ascribe to a vegetable.

I thought of Hurley, Jerry, Roy, and my brother while I ate some of the sticks and shared them with the others who were home.  I thought of them, and sparklers, and homemade ice-cream and my mother laying claim to the paddle in the middle, licking it clean while standing in the middle of the yard.  

Good times.  I am glad for those memories.  And I’m glad to know of kohlrabi first hand, 40+ years later.  

I can't but think with a chuckle that they are probably wondering what took me so long.  

Constant to a Purpose

From 18 June, 2018

2:20 P.M.

There was one loon out for a low-tide bob in the rain—or so I thought. That one loon was actually waiting for the others to arrive before going on a swim ‘round and having a go at afternoon fishing.  It’s either two males and a female or two adults and a young one—but I think the sizes would indicate that they are all adults—too big for being young.  I love that one of them waited—and that they are now three. A Trinity.

3:30 P.M.

There is one out there again, a sentinel keeping watch over the break in the stone wall.  So peaceful, so constant…constant to a purpose beyond what I see or can understand from my perspective.  

5:50 P.M.

The fog has dissipated and the clouds have thinned to nearly translucent.  there is a kind of white shine upon the water.  As though she’s dressed in evening finery.

I re-read these observations this morning and was taken anew with the image of the loon being constant to a purpose beyond.  It got me thinking about “the vision of faith” I referenced in this post from last week. It got me thinking about trade wars, armed wars, opioid crises, the dehumanizing politics of migration...

One loon,

a sentinel,

keeping watch over the break in the stone wall;

peaceful and constant to a purpose 

beyond the limitation of my vison.

Teach me that same stamina 

for keeping vigil; 

that unwavering watchful faith

that the waters might change,

that the tide will rise;

that evening will come and morning will follow

and your creation will be baptized in light,

and we will be dressed and ready

in the finery of freshness

for what is yet to come.

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ

The Feast of Thomas, and those who think differently

Brothers and sisters:  You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets with Jesus himself as capstone.  Through him, the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord.  In him you are also being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

-Ephesians 2:19-22

The language of faith equips us for the struggle against the objective cynicism of our situation.  It does not merely repeat what was; it does not merely reflect what is; it opens and changes.  We learn to understand our lives as a struggle against the prevailing cynicism. We understand ourselves in unity with Christ as part of the Kingdom-of-God movement for righteousness.  We will be involved in conflicts.  It is no longer enough to be personally decent and inoffensive. It never was enough, incidentally.

-Dorothy Soelle-

Excerpted from the reflection from 03 July, 2018 in Give Us this Day.  

Originally appearing in her book Choosing Life.

I read both of these readings this morning, the morning of one of my favorite feast days—the feast of Saint Thomas the “I think differently.”  I will forever contend that he gets a bad rap when referred to as The Doubter.  In my book, he simply needed the information delivered in a different way.  

I reflected on Thomas, as it is his feast day…And, I also read this in light of a news story I saw on CBC last night.  Toronto has opened the first Hospice for those who are homeless.  The doctor who began it spoke with beautiful heart.  “We may live differently, but we all die the same death.”  He spoke of wanting the Hospice to offer respite, beauty, and a sense of place, of home, so that homeless people might be surrounded with this experience as they die.

They interviewed the first resident, Pandora, 27 years old, as she met with the doctor before moving in. You saw photos of the toll that a life of hard living takes on a person.  You heard a story of choices made, abuse suffered, addictions that overwhelmed, and a final illness that counted her days in wispy breaths.  She moved into the Hospice.  Pandora died two days later, in a place of security, a room, the doctor said, that she claimed as her home.

I knew someone not unlike Pandora.  He too struggled (and mostly lost) 

against prevailing cynicism and needed information delivered in ways that would make sense for him.  Forget common sense or taking it on faith.  Faith required a vision he did not have.  A vision past, a vision beyond, that can imagine that the structure will hold together and have room enough for him.  

The doctor on CBC didn’t use Dorothy Soelle’s ‘language of faith,’ but Jesus did.  And when Jesus did use the language and the actions of faith, of compassion, Thomas received what he needed and joined the household of God.  “My Lord and my God!”

It didn’t surprise me that Pandora died two days after coming to hospice.  She could let go in safety, she could relax in that dwelling place of God’s spirit.  In the language of faith, the cynicism of life on the street gave way to a deeper vision of freedom.

The man that I knew also died two days after being put on hospice-care.  His hard-living was done.  He gained the freedom he spent a long time trying to find while coming at the world more differently than anyone I’ve known.  

May we all receive such people as Jesus did and take the time to learn how to offer our own hands, actions, listening, compassion, so that all might enter in and find shelter against the prevailing cynicism of our time.

Just Write the Double Espresso

I have been thinking about this post for days.  When I posted the poem from Martins River, I happened to notice—Oh geez, the next post is #500!  The 500^thpost…eleven years after starting this blog.  (And I had been worried about whether or not I had enough to say to sustain it…Ha.)

Part of me thought—Oh, this should be about something big. Something monumental, something befitting the imaginary neon banner that runs across the top and flashes 

***F I V E H U N D R E D***

And then I thought about my loyalty card for a local coffee shop.  When drink number ten rolls around, it’s on the house. They don’t put a limit on the drink—It could be any sized splashed out bit of goodness they offer.  But I never really think about that…heck, half the time I don’t even know what number I’m on.  I order the drink I want (usually a double espresso) and every now and then, I get the good news that it’s free. 

In other words, there is no neon banner flashing….and no fussing with inventing a monumental topic simply because I’ve reached a milestone that does in fact surprise me.  I’m just going to write the double espresso.

I was reading Robert MacFarlane’s The Wild Places this morning and he spoke of balloons on strings describing circles in the air.  I love that use of the word describe.  You give shape to something else…you create parameters for something so that it might be imagined… The balloons were moving in such a way that the shape within the path was a circle.  Balloons also describe a quantity of air.  

For 500 posts, this blog and its whole variety of themes and contents, has helped me describe the wonder and mystery that is God in my life. For eleven years, this blog has helped answer the dream of a kid who used to look hard at things and think it might just be possible to see inside if she could let go enough; a word-loving kid who wanted a way to tell other people about what she noticed or thought about because somehow she knew that every now and then there was something important there…there was a connection to something beyond her that was a source of consolation and wonder and wow.  Decades on, she calls that God.

Thanks to those of you who stop by and read the posts here, who share the posts and comment upon them… Thanks for sitting across from me and sharing in the conversation and the quiet; the curiosity; the poetry, the prose, the photographs.  

Cheers. ‘Tink.