The Timeless Way

Mother daughter IM diablog

2005-10-14T15:20:00.000-04:00

A portrait of Miss Speechless as a young shutterbug.

Perhaps it's just the joy of sharing the love for words with someone else that makes IMing with my daughter so much fun. We can almost predict each other's patterns of speech, we've lived together so long. From the first, my kids both have loved words. Talking, hearing stories, telling stories, putting on plays...IMing is still a recent phenom for me, though at 13 little Miss Speechless is a veteran IMer. When I'm off at work and she's at home she sometimes IM's me. I love it but on a day like today, it can be a source of terror too. See, Little Miss Speechless is at home with a case of pink eye. She just sent me an Instant Message at work. As a mother, instant access to the roller coaster ride of s 13 year old life is very helpful, but sometimes a little nerve wracking.

Little miss speechless: mommy!!
Little miss speechless: i cannot believe wat i just did

SPEECHLESS: Little Miss Speechless is that you?
SPEECHLESS: What did you do dear?
Little miss speechless: i could kill my self
SPEECHLESS: Is every thing ok???
SPEECHLESS: Don't scare me...what's going on?
Little miss speechless: i wrote this amazingly well written email to my friends about the hole pink eye thing
SPEECHLESS: Please don't ever EVER start an email or IM with "I could kill myself" again. That is very disturbing!!!!
Little miss speechless: and i was changing type sizes and i wanted to go back o the one i had had b 4
Little miss speechless: so i hit ctrl z
SPEECHLESS: Look can you go to Edit window, and press UNDO?
Little miss speechless: and it erased the whole thing
Little miss speechless: no
Little miss speechless: it was an email
SPEECHLESS: Or else you can do COntrol V and it is probably on a clipboard.
Little miss speechless: it was funny
Little miss speechless: and well written
SPEECHLESS: Try control v
Little miss speechless: with ammusing lines
Little miss speechless: and great discriptions
Little miss speechless: kk
SPEECHLESS: I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm sure you can come up with another brilliant effort.
Little miss speechless: 0it worked1
SPEECHLESS: TRY UNDO under edit, I think you can get it back!
Little miss speechless: !!
Little miss speechless: the ctrl v
Little miss speechless: 1
SPEECHLESS: You see I am a genius.
SPEECHLESS: A computer wizard
Little miss speechless: but it also got a bunch of other things
Little miss speechless: yea
Little miss speechless: ur the best
SPEECHLESS: Now before you do anything else, I want to read a written confirmation from you that you Little Miss Speechless will never EVER start an email on a small subject with a terrifying line like "I could kill myself"
SPEECHLESS: I thought you'd set the house on fire or poured boiling water on your brother, or taken daddy's motor cycle out for a spin or poisoned yourself.. All sorts of ghastly horrible ideas went through my head in an instant.

Little miss speechless: lol
SPEECHLESS: Never ever is not enough. I want a full written contractual agreement!!!!!!

Rapacious: Definition of the White House gang

2005-10-14T08:15:00.000-04:00

Grasping: greedy and grasping, especially for money, and sometimes willing to use unscrupulous means to obtain what is desired. (Dick Cheney)

Destructive & Vicious: engaging in violent pillaging and likely to harm or destroy things. (George W. Bush)

Predatory: living by eating live prey. (Karl Rove)

Ask me why my heart bleeds?

2005-10-10T15:43:00.000-04:00

Katrina and the abandonment of our brothers and sisters from New Orleans is a new wound but all too familiar, fruit of a very old and bitter vineyard. The poor are abandoned, people feel afraid. How can this wrong be undone when it is clearly part of an old and painful story?

Too long we’ve drawn water from the polluted well of racial hatred, poured out on a vineyard that bears the fruit of pain, anger and indifference. Each new slur and epithet uttered on the public stage from James Dobson or William Bennett or whispered private, comes from poisoned fruit, and plants the seeds of violence and hate. I pray that God leads us to a new spring, the living water of love, that this vineyard might bear a better harvest. But the wounds we carry and deny are so deep and painful, and in this country we keep heaping new pain atop the old, slashing the body of our victims anew.

There can be no end to the prayers for healing for us all, and prayers for forgiveness for what has been wrought to benefit the priveleged few.

Just quickly, I can pull together a long long list of victims and survivors to pray for and seek atonement with:
Africans and African Americans everywhere treated as poor relations in the human family; mental hospital survivors; native american indians of North & South America; prisoner workers in China; German holocaust survivors--Jews, Gypsies, Gays,; Russian pogrom survivors; survivors of Hiroshima & Nagaskaki; the siege of Sarajevo; Somalia; Darfur & southern Sudan; the famines of Ethipoia; child survivors of "God's Army" in Uganda; child laborers chained to rug looms in Inida, Pakistand and who knows where else throughout the world; corrections inmates of the US injustice system; the disappeared of El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina & Chile; Catholics in the North of Ireland; Miners trying unionize and strike in South Africa, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Manchester;...such a random list of victims, just off the top of my head, not even including victims of the dreadful disasters of nature like the earth quakes, landslides, floods and sunami of recent memory, not even including the dreadful abuses of animals, but all victims of one thing: human greed.

It's very hard to confront the facts of human history and imagine that we could ever by our own will be in any way "good." Yet still God has no hands but ours, no voice but yours and mine. There's nothing that will be moved if we don't move it. We must work and speak out and make a difference. Starting now. The world needs to change.

Prayers of the Faithful

2005-10-07T13:03:00.000-04:00

Twenty Eighth Sunday, Ordinary Time

1. We are your body, your church, struggling under the knowledge of sinfulness. We long to turn away, to cast accusing fingers outward. Still You call us to your feast. Turn us to You and to each other. Lead us on the path of reconciliation.

2. The leaders of the government which claims us as their own are torturing and killing. We live with the knowledge of our collective guilt. How do we atone? Give us Your agenda for our lives. Lead us to prayer, penitence, truth-telling and reparative acts of mercy.

3. East Germantown is a testimonial to neglect. Make us fit to wash the feet of the neediest amongst us. Teach us to work and not work for our reward, to humbly beg for the blessing of the poor, that together in You we might be exalted.

4. Today we behold our Confirmandi, whom we cherish. As together they prepare to fully participate in the work of the Church, let them know our love for them, and our longing for their voices to be heard, and their wisdom to be known.

5. The beauty of the earth is a feast for the eye. As we come into the harvest time, help us remember and find food for all who are hungry.

6. We lift up our sick, our beloved dead and all who mourn, knowing that You love us to the end and beyond. We ask you to embrace our sufferings; comfort us with your presence.

The Feast of St. Vincent, friend to the poor

2005-09-22T14:14:00.000-04:00

Prayers of the Faithful
September 24-25, 2005
26th Sunday: Feast of St. Vincent De Paul

We beg redemption for our Church: Philadelphia’s grand jury report reveals a history of abuse in the Church that is indefensible. Let the response of Church Leaders be not defensive. Show us, show our leaders how to atone for abuse, lies, and denial. Let remorse, reconciliation and repentance lead us to Your righteousness.

We pray for the victims of storm: Not yet recovered from the blow of Katrina, Hurricane Rita now threatens the lives of thousands. Lift up, we beg, those who are bowed down. Hold all who are helpless in your care. Write their names on our hearts and speed our hands in response to their need.

We plead for World Leaders that they may guide us with wisdom and strength, informed by Your love, humbled by Your glory, in whatever name they know you by.

Our hearts ache for Peace and for reconciliation among those who suffer from the devastation of war. Hold close those who protest in Washington and round the world in the coming days, may their actions be steadfast in Your Love, leading the way to deep and lasting Peace.

We delight in this House of Vincent, a garden prepared by countless daily acts of faith. The seeds we sow are many, may the harvest be abundant. May our storehouses be perpetually emptied as we seek to give to a hungry world all of the gifts we receive here.

We remember the sick and suffering, the dying and dead. Let all who are sick in body and spirit be touched by human hands, knowing your compassion and healing love. Comfort the hearts of those who grieve. Hold our dear departed brothers and sisters in the fullness of your loving presence.

The last promise of summer

2005-09-21T10:49:00.000-04:00

We know too soon it will be farewell to all of this...

Indian Summer

These are the days when the birds come back,
A very few, a bird or two,
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies put on
The old, old sophistries of June—
A blue and gold mistake.

O, fraud that cannot cheat the bee
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief.

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,
And softly through the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf.

Oh, sacrament of summer days,
Oh, last communion in the haze,
Permit a child to join,

Thy sacred emblems to partake,
Thy consecrated bread to break,
Taste thine immortal wine!

Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886

Ownership Society

2005-09-20T09:12:00.000-04:00

Magean Gheal

Ownership of debt, that's what Americans own. Own a credit card? Own a student loan? A car loan? A home equity loan? A mortgage? Three mortgages? Chances are your worth is about equal to some of the folks who eat in our soup kitchen each week.

They don't own jack...but they don't own any debt either.

Wage slavery may be a choice or a condition. Liberation might come through renouncing material goods.

It worked fairly well in our great grand parents day. People had enough to get them through their working years. And when they got too old to work, they turned to their children. Life was short and some claim brutish, but I suspect there were moments of joy. Moments of inspiration when the clouds broke and the sun light poured forth with a radiance which transformed and illuminated the humdrum of everyday existence.

These days we claim peak experiences about once per week. Epiphanies are our constant friend. Holiday entertainment is ours every day. So how do we reach for new highs when the festival seasons role round?

Can't. So the result is, we chafe against our existence as a wage slave. Long to renounce it all, to head off to places where life is simpler, and our power is needed.

The world needs you exactly where you are. If you want a refreshing change from your life as a wage slave, try renouncing your many pleasures. Then renounce a few more. Give up steak and sushi and that South American striped bass. Start eating stewed turnips, barley and beets day upon day upon day. Turn off the radio, lay aside your IPOD, turn off the internet. Listen to the sound of your dog sleeping on the floor. Listen to the cricket that is still chirping in the early morning. Look at the face of the person beside you in the bed, feel their breath warm and innocent as they sleep. Feel the softness of the early autumn breeze stirring the curtain.

Life is right here, open, exposed, vulnerable. You can touch it tenderly, caress it, tremble at its undefended availability. Don't race away. Don't run through your day. Just breathe. Just be. Give thanks each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out.

It can be that simple. Demanding nothing.

Massage Meditation

2005-09-01T00:00:00.000-04:00

Being away with my family for the week, I was utterly unaware of the magnitude Hurricane Katrina. The news from Biloxi, from the Delta, from New Orleans fills me with a deep sorrow and foreboding of this dreadful new America, deconstructed from what was once a strong and powerful nation.

Today on my vacation I went to do something I'd never done before-- a massage. I injured my shoulder a few weeks ago and it has gone from bad to worse, waking me at night, not even Ibuprofen seemed to ease the pain.

The massage therapist is a friend (is it just me or does everyone in America have at least 5 friends who are massage therapists???) She did a wonderful job and it seems possible that the pain in my neck and shoulder has eased slightly as a result of her efforts.

Going into the massage it had occurred to me that this was a time perfect for prayer. I was able to focus on a small circle of people I'm closely connected to, and then broaden my prayer to envision people in nearby towns, states, our nation, our continent, other continents and finally the world and the possibility of healing the pain that tears us all so hard apart. This all felt good and needed, and it felt like the best use of the time I had. But even so, as I was there so focused on the healing of my body, I was struck above all that the experience was tremendously self-indulgent and self-focused. That's not entirely bad, but it certainly puts a fine point on a tendency of life as a Middle American.

Perhaps its too great a generalization, but it strikes me that most of the people receiving massages in this country are those who are least in need of them, and the people who work so hard, using their physical strength everyday are seldom ever so indulged.

I envisioned the carpenters and plumbers and electricians, the landscapers and masons, the fire fighters and nurses and migrant farm workers all with their bodies stressed, stretched beyond what we are told is reasonable. I thought of the girls in Africa, waling miles, making several trips each day, carrying 10 gallon jugs of water on their heads, or working out in the fields in blazing sun. I thought of the crippled children crawling from train car to train car begging for a few rupees in India, of the mother with a starving child in Darfur or Niger...who will rub their feet or sooth their care worn shoulders? Of the grandmother mourning the loss of her son and grandson in Iraq...who will remove the tension from her neck? Unclench her fist?

I have no answer for any of this. I felt grateful to have had the time to think of these people, to see them in their beauty and their suffering, and to know the longing to wish to reach out to them, to help them heal from the wear and tear of everyday life. I am grateful for knowing that the reality of need and longing for wholeness extends far beyond the small privileged part of the world I inhabit.

And I think of the poor and exhausted people whose lives have been turned upside down by Hurricane Katrina. I pray that their suffering may be eased by the work of many hands, trating their pain, and that the work of those hands may be used for healing all our wounded lives.

Robertson, the luter

2005-08-23T08:39:00.000-04:00

Remember all that carry -on a few months ago about displaying the Ten Commandments on the walls of various government buildings? How can the Christian Conservatives claim to be down with those Ten Commandments and support people like Pat Robertson?

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (Aug. 22) - Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson called on Monday for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him a "terrific danger" to the United States.
Assasination? Dear God! Which part of "Thou shalt not kill?" does this supposedly pious man and do his followers not understand?

So much for loving your neighbor as yourself, eh Rev. Mister Family Values? The point is too obvious to belabor, but my outrage demands that I speak out.

And Hugo Chavez? Everything I've read of him. Everything I've heard him say tells me that he is a man closer to Jesus and the teachings of Jesus than this supposed man of God, Pat Robertson.

Perhaps Robertson thinks its ok to condone killing if he's not the one doing the dirty work. "Woe to you who lead these little ones into sin," said Jesus. Let me just close by saying that our government is sending children, young innocent children ages 17 and 18 off to a dirty war, leading them into conditions of grave and mortal sin. Many will be killed. Even if they live and come back home, many will be broken, their lives lost to them for years, perhaps a lifetime, lost in the horrors of the sins we've commissioned. Use of Napalm and similar materials against the people of Iraq (see Fallujah) will reek havoc on the lives and minds of the poor souls who are maimed and killed by the stuff, but also on the minds of those who inflicted the horror.

Meanwhile a ninny like Pat Robertson is speaking out for the death of another political leader. Who can call themselves Christian and listen to such stuff? The irony would be delicious if the evil underlying it weren't so appalling.

Balancing Act

2005-08-08T08:19:00.000-04:00

I have a good friend who just came back from visiting her family in Europe, She's taken a dive into the Eastern mind --taken up Yoga, is reading about the Tao of Music and has come upon a book on acupressure. She got it for her son who suffers with headaches and after a severe reaction to Motrin, can't take pain medicine. The acupressure seems to help his headaches.

The book has advice on anxiety and stress relief, and she discovered that one of the pressure points, stroking a certain spot along her sternum, was very effective for her. The trouble is, poor soul, between travelling, her son's illness, and other life complications, she's been so stressed lately that she's developed a carpet burn from over using the pressure point for stress relief.

"I'm just a Western woman, doing eastern things with a Western approach" she tells me. "I want results fast!"

Pondering accupressure, yoga, the tao of music, I assure her of my sense that wholeness is already present. That life is a balancing act.

I've been trying to rebalance my own life, getting more active again, especially swimming, up to almost a mile a day.

It's just about balance, I tell her, and there's a reminder of that balance as close as our next breath. Breathing in, breathing out

Trouble is lately the air quality around here is really bad. I breath in, it hurts. I cough. I breathe out, it tickles. It's hard to keep that Zen sense of wholeness when you feel like the air you're breathing in deeply may be doing you harm. And I wonder, is this what it will be like as I get older? Needing to take shallower and shallower breaths just to get the air in? Perhaps the balance happens over a life time more than in a moment. Perhaps the yin yang of health and misery is measured across the life span rather than across a day? It's all unknown and to be learned.

Still, if I let it worry me too much, well, it's enough to cause a carpet burn on my sternum!

Peace.

The biggest symptom of our Alienation from Life

2005-08-04T10:43:00.000-04:00

Tombstones of unknown A-bomb victims crowd a hillside at Mitaki Temple, northwest of Hiroshima.

Sixty years to mourn.
Sixty years to ponder
Sixty years to learn
And still the nuclear threat is grave.

"Thou shalt love the Lord your God, with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength."
.
What do we love that well?
That thing is our God.

Is it wealth? Is it security? Is it ego?

Mea culpa
Mea culpa
Mea maxima culpa.

There is no security in this world, except the grave. And hope that a loving creator who once long ago loved us into life, will continue to love us to new life and new being after our death.

The Atom Bomb is a symptom, perhaps the biggest symptom of our alientation from life. And when someone tells you they are pro-life, you should ask them, "so then, what have you done to bring an end to war?"

With apologies to friends who do not see Jesus as their teacher, I offer these thoughts from Fr. George Zabelka, the chaplain who blessed the crew which dropped "Fat Man" on Nagasaki. When he learned of the horrors that those bombs had wrought, the scales fell from his eyes and in deep remorse, he devoted the rest of his life to working for peace. You can read the entire speech he gave on the 40th anniverary of the bombings here.

The morality of the balance of terrorism is a morality that Christ never taught. The ethics of mass butchery cannot be found in the teachings of Jesus. In Just War ethics, Jesus Christ, who is supposed to be all in the Christian life, is irrelevant. He might as well never have existed. In Just War ethics, no appeal is made to him or his teaching, because no appeal can be made to him or his teaching, for neither he nor his teaching gives standards for Christians to follow in order to determine what level of slaughter is acceptable.

All religions have taught brotherhood. All people want peace. It is only the governments and war departments that promote war and slaughter. So today again I call upon people to make their voices heard. We can no longer just leave this to our leaders, both political and religious. They will move when we make them move. They represent us. Let us tell them that they must think and act for the safety and security of all the people in our world, not just for the safety and security of one country. All countries are inter-dependent. We all need one another. It is no longer possible for individual countries to think only of themselves. We can all live together as brothers and sisters or we are doomed to die together as fools in a world holocaust.

Each one of us becomes responsible for the crime of war by cooperating in its preparation and in its execution. This includes the military. This includes the making of weapons. And it includes paying for the weapons. There’s no question about that. We’ve got to realize we all become responsible. Silence, doing nothing, can be one of the greatest sins.

Ireland/England: La Difference est morte

2005-07-29T10:48:00.000-04:00

I haven't dealt much with matters political on this blog, so many people do a far better job of it, that I leave it to them. It's not that I don't have strong opinions, for I do. Suffice it to say they are forged from much raw experience and informed by the reading of recent and ancient history.

I have found it especially informative to read the histories of the disenfranchised and oppressed, because from this one learns the priorities and tactics of the oppressor. As a minority friend of mine has pointed out to me many times, "We understand you far better than you understand us. We need to understand you in order to stay alive. You don't need to understand us, you can afford not to. We don't have the luxury of not knowing the ways of the oppressor."

And so it is, in these times that we all should school ourselves in the ways of those we see as our oppressors.

As a white American, I grew up enjoying the luxury of believing myself as neither oppressor nor oppressed. To be oppressed in this land of freedom and opportunity would be no one's fault but my own. That was the logic we were given, and is still the logic by which many of the dominant majority judge those minority groups still struggling to gain a firm foothold on the jagged slope of the economic playing field.

The most accessible and therefore instructive culture to learn from outside of the USA was Ireland. Partly because it's my ancestoral home and the native home of my husband, I have spent a lot of time thinking and learning about Ireland. Most Irish Americans have strong feelings for Eire. Many of us harbor a deep and unfathomable hatred of the English and the Anglo Irish who oppressed our a forebears, and ultimately were the key reason for them leaving our homeland.

That wound is something we carry around with us. I've come to think of it as each persons private Ireland, that little private wound and that is often shared, but rarely discussed. In Ireland itself, 400 years (or more depending on when you count from) of oppression translated into a way of life where playing it straight between the lines would make a patsie of you. The craic, as its known, is all about having your fun at the expense of the authority, the oppressor.

I believe elsewhere on this blog I posted thoughts on the end of "old" Ireland. Today though, my thoughts are on the cessation of military activities by the IRA. Perhaps this long lead in is the result of being uncomfortable with the idea of the IRA stand-down. And yet I'm appalled that I, a person who claims peace as the way, has a sentimental attachment to the long fight against the Unionists. The pointed questions from NPR reporters to Sinn Fein members about whether the IRA was giving up its weapons and if this was truly surrender made me extremely uncomfortable. The question is barbed. Then, listening to Tony Blair and his sanctimonious speechifying yesterday, I just wanted to slap him. His patronizing tone was in itself the very kernel of the reason so many of us, deep in our hearts, celebrated every IRA victory, and wept at their funerals.

And it is here that I arrive at the real reservations I have regarding this stand down. When I think of the enormous disinformation campaign, and justification of shoot to kill measures which let the English soldiers, and the RUC (the sectarian local militias in the North) attack and kill suspects and then, if they didn't kill them on sight, to hold them without trials. The war in the North was dirty, and while the English tried to keep an image of being above the fray, of clean hands and civilized behavior, anyone whose read the background, knows that they were savage.

I'm not trying to defend the IRA. The volunteers were guerilla fighters from the first. And the battles were extremely local, extremely vicious. ( Nothing could make me want to live in the North of Ireland with the level of bitterness and animosity that thrives there. Where there is such hatred, life becomes a bitter poison)

The London bombings were dreadful, but I believe that they will be used to justify levels of state sponsored violence far far worse than the bombings themselves. I believe that what we have witnessed taking place before our eyes this past month is the framing for the justification of a new broader dirty war against Islam. But more than that, its the wake up call for the old line conservative oppressors to redouble their efforts to disenfranchise and oppress their subjects. From Northern Ireland, we learned that the English authorities will fight dirty but talk clean. They are at it again now, in league with the Bushite Neo-Cons, and we are all of us being invited to be the willing co-conspirators in our own oppression and the domination of the world.

The role we are being given, and the role which I suppose the IRA leaders have at least accepted, is to be regular citizens in a civilized society. All of Ireland is now behaving in the manner of the dominant culture. They've drunk the kool-aide, just as we have over here. Our houses will be clean, are cars will be sleek, but the deeds we've allowed to happen in our name will surely need to be redeemed. Yes indeed, we're all of us English now.

The desert is all around us

2005-07-24T12:12:00.000-04:00

As R.M. Jeffers suggests, now is a good time, a quiet time with enough distance from September 11 to try to put together some of the pieces of what happened,to consider where we were and where we are. It can be painful to look back, painful to rememeber how scared we were, to realize that that sort of terror is now a present moment reality in Iraq, in London, in Palestine and Israel..and could easily be again at that level here in our midst.

It's not on a scale with 9/11 or obviously Iraq, but we've got terror in our cities too. It's getting worse it seems. The persistence of gun violence is growing even higher. The community organization I work with has a camp for neighborhood kids. This year, for the first time, we directly addressed the level of violence on our city streets as a reason to give scholarship money to the camp. We need to give these kids a safe place away from the shooting (11 people are shot on average in Philadelphia every day).

Just the other day, as our kids were coming up the block from the soccer field, there was a shooting with crossfire, directly across the street from where a group of our kids and their counselor were standing. That quickly, in the glimmer of an eye, a 17 yr old was shot 3 times, twice in the head. None of our campers were shot, but they witnessed it. --It's getting harder to give kids the experience of peace when the violence is right there present.

Some people would call our city a waste land. But I'd say that it's just a symptom of a far larger more hidden wasteland. The conditions which created the wasteland of the cities, the wasteland of Iraq, the wasteland of ground zero at the Twin Towers is within us. It comes from bungling our priorities, allowing ourselves to be manipulated by those who would profit through our love of possesions, love of wealth, love of power. When people started putting status symbols above concern for their community their family and the earth, that's when the wasteland began to grow. It may swallow us all.

Grim as this sounds though, it is made better if one can be open to the possiblity of transformation. The power of God's redeeming love, working through any of us can change the face of the earth. Like Robert M. Jeffers, I have faith that we are not alone, God is with us and working constantly through us and beyond us to restore the wasteland to a beautiful garden.

A shout out to Boredom

2005-07-21T11:07:00.000-04:00

Thanks as so often to things I'm reading on other people's blogs I thought I'd just share a few positive words on boredom: Some of my best memories as an adult and a child are of times when I started out bored.

I learned in Africa, and later in Ireland that having the time to be bored was really just a matter of having the time to notice what is already present in our midst.

I keep thinking of Africa. How happy I was there. How boring it was sometimes, especially on Sundays.

Sitting out on the grassy lawn in front of my best friends parent's house, nothing to do, no hope of post, no news. The weather was perpetually fine, no excitement there. I'd studied the flowers and the behavior of the insects closely for several hours. No getting around it, I was bored. My friend Judith was bored. I gazed at her and let out a sigh "I'm bored..." "Ah, you see!" her deep voice boomed "You are becoming a true African woman. On Sundays we are ever bored. That's why we have so many prayer services. In your country, oh I can just imagine, one is never bored. There is always something new to explore." We had been round and round on the ills and benefits of my country versus her country many times. Even the subject was itself becoming, well, boring.

The, as if on cue, there was the sound of distant music. Not recorded music, but live. You could hear them from far far away, a trombone, a big drum and a well used coronet. A small Salvation Army Band came marching up the dusty road followed by a parade of about 50 men and women, dressed in white, carrying Bibles, fingers up as in a Girl Scout salute, admonishing passersby to be good (or so it seemed to me at the time)

They were, the most interesting thing--actually the only thing-- to have captured our fancy all day. Spontaneously Judith and I jumped up and followed, doing the funny marching side step to the tune of a trumpet playing Onward Christian Soldiers.

Without even intending it, we not only "un-bored" ourselves, but gave an hour's amusement to the many friends and neighbors on the way to the next village, who were tickled to see two Quaker girls, one local and one Mzungu, joining in the rival Salvation Army festivities. We didn't know where the march was heading, ( I should say, Judith may have known, but if she did, she didn't tell me. ) But a few miles up the road, we discovered there was a prayer meeting taking place. We stayed for the ensuing prayers, then quietly during a song, slipped away, trying to be discrete.

A day like that, a moment like that, could only come, could only be noticed and savored in a life not over full. I believe that consumer culture operates on the horror of vacuity principle. There should be no moment unfilled. The result is a fear of boredom. True enough, there is excitement and potent meaning in every moment. But let's say a big huzzah to the idea of not living life to the fullest, not filling the cup to the brim, giving space and giving thanks for the space which exists between the flowers, between the moments of sunlight, between the showers of shooting stars.

The House of the Opium Eaters

2005-07-19T10:31:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the protracted silence (that is if you haven't all given up on me entirely and simply apparated to more fruitful reading grounds...)

We've gotten completely lost in the world of Dumbledore and Harry Potter. All the re-reading is finally finished-- I stayed up to an impossibly late hour last night, 4 am, not even realizing the time, just to get through that 5th book. It's been 2 yrs. since I read them, and really needed to be reminded of a lot of details. So today before breakfast I launched into HP & the Half Blood Prince. Still a naif, I'm on p. 12.
Meanwhile, the laundry is strewed about the house, the son's camp clothes are mouldering in his back pack in the back of the car, the bills have gone unpaid, dinner is a mere distraction, scrambled together at about 9:30 each night. It's hot, and we're off on a trip to Potter-dom. It's a great escape, but in those early waking hours, before I put the book up to your nose, I can see how far I've slipped from normal living.

Any of the rest of you reading at the red-lights?

Timeless Failure

2005-07-14T09:25:00.000-04:00

Over on the Adventus website just now, RMJ has some terrific lines from Carmina Gadelica, an ancient Celtic Christian text. The last section from the post he's titled The Voice of Thunder has a fairly quiet description of tha nature of Wholeness, of life reaching beyond our perceived boundaries, held in a larger unity.
Thou pourest Thy grace
On those in distress,
On those in straits,
Without stop or stint,
Without stop or stint.

Thou Son of Mary of the Pasch,
Thou Son of Mary of the death,
Thou Son of Mary of the grace,
Who was and shalt be
With ebb and with flow;
Who wast and shalt be
With ebb and with flow!

I've tried on occasion to describe what I suppose could be termed a mystical understanding, sort of a hunch or unscratchable itch somewhere deep within. I have a poem I wrote a while back which tries (quite unsucessfully) to get at that point of wholeness and peace which embraces and yet mediates between the ebb and flow. I post it here, just curious to know if it communicates anything or nothing to others. It's never felt right to me probably because the strong rhyme pattern. Such dertermined rhymes feel too formed for something so amorphous as the ocean, but also make a surprising contrast.

The truth is, I love the elusive aspect of this attempt. It's the sensation itself which defies words, and is I believe the unnameable pointe vierge of all that is... And over and over I've tried to pin it down: that very light delicacy of the gull/kite/wave thing,but it defies me. I've come up with a remarkable number of variations, each one a suprise. But each one wrong in its own way. This just happens to be the version I have on hand in my compute. I'm sure I could scramble round and find three or for other versions and they'd all be equally wrong.

Each one gets close to the mark, but even so each pushes me farther from it also. An example I suppose,(to (mis-quote Winston Churchill) in my writing and so many other things, I venture forth with boundless enthusiasm from failure to failure...

As the wave rises up from the swell
Flings beachward and then turns to foam
You're held in a moment so still
Of taking and letting go,
Just as the gull that glides aloft,
Like a kite let out on a string,
Hangs on an upward draft
Without the strain of a wing.
So too this yearning to stretch
Past the fabric of life's narrow breadth
Is countered by quick gasp for air
A sigh radiates to a prayer,
The arc from gratitude to desire
The gleam of the spark as it leaps before fire.

Plamegate: Beyond Politics

2005-07-13T09:14:00.000-04:00

We need to stop thinking in terms of just politics. The simplistic category of Democrats and Republicans hardly apply anymore.

Perhaps the Bush people will end up claiming that Rove was just running old style dirty tricks, but it's plain to see that working within the government -- you remember the old style American government? for & by the people? --is a cadre of ghouls, the Oligarchs, who determine policy based on a different game- book than simply democrat or republican. Perhaps they delude themselves that their intersts are for the good of all, but clearly they are set on the destruction of everything and everyone that stands between them and their will to power.

Reading Larry Johnson's article at the TPM Cafe, it's clear that nany, many more people were hurt than just Valerie Plame or Joe Wilson; some have lost their lives. This was no private matter...it's about treason, pure and simple: we need to make this our mantra.

In response to Larry Johnson, Oklahoma Hippy has a wonderfully clear description of the background of Karl Rove's reasons for leaking Valerie Plame's name and how the President could maintain his wide eyed lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq for so long. Even the name "Plamegate" hardly captures the breadth of chicanery and deceit these creeps have gotten up to.

The Silent Majority Starves

2005-07-11T23:15:00.000-04:00

And you ask me what renders me Speechless?

With the eyes of the western world fixed on the horror in London, quietly another bomb has killed another 23 in Baghdad. Like the multitude of bombs before it since the US invasion of Iraq, this latest attack is reported but goes largely unnoticed. 49 dead in London, and 23 more in Baghdad

That was from Truthout's editors on news of the suicide bomber who detonated his explosives in a line near a military recruiting station today. And in America, where is the horror? Where is the outrage? Or do we sympathize best with people who look like, worship like us, consume the earths resources like us?

On the other side of the Truthout page we see a photo of a child in Nigeria, a living skeleton, his skin stretched so tightly over his bones you wince when you look at him. --Woe to Nigeria, a country of vast oil reserves where children starve. War may overtake Nigeria and only the oil baron robbers will notice or care.

Other African nations aren't so "lucky" to have oil, but of course they have debt. The G-8 summit, co-sponsored by some of our nation and the world's "super citizens" Ford Motors etc, has talked much and given crumbs to Africa.

Though all eight nations promised $50 billion a year in aid by 2010, the U.S had pledged no new money. And many activists said that the amount itself was inadequate - $25 billion was needed now with another $50 billion in 2010 if poverty targets are really going to be met. Groups also pointed out that no agreement had been reached on a deadline for eliminating agricultural export subsidies, which greatly hurt poor countries.

"It's a start and it's real progress" Tony Blair simpers. What a lie. We should be ashamed to live in these "G-8" nations. The blood of Africa is on our hands.

Meanwhile, in the USA we'll continue to clutch our purses, our back packs, the hands of our children. We'll ride the subways in fear or on the highways in oblivious peace, lapping up the airconditioning on the hot days, seldom concerned that war rages and children are turned to living skletons, just to feed our addiction.

Colliding images

2005-07-07T08:37:00.000-04:00

My heart goes out to all those in London and to people everywhere who suffer at the hands of terrorists

Regarding the bombings in London, Bush is on the radio now talking about this being the work of people with "eeevilll in their heart" "We will find them. We will bring them to justice." and ""We're winning because they're still fighting."

It's such a comfort to have a cowboy president who wears the white hat.

He blew the smoke from his gun, twirled it smartly and put it back in its holster before he swaggered off...never betraying the limp from falling off his bicycle again yesterday.

Some are reading... or summer reading

2005-07-06T04:54:00.000-04:00

Yes we are, reading that is. A big Harry Potter reading festival is taking place under our roof, instigated by the Speechless kids, boning up on the minutiae of all things Hogwarts before the book release next weekend. We're not the sort to stand in long lines for several hours to get our copies. Nor are we likely to dress up in costumes on the big day. We'll get hold of the book-- pre-ordered in a rare case of planning ahead, thanks to multiple reminders from the son-- and the daughter will disappear into her room for a day and a night, finally to emerge probably by Sunday afternoon with the thing consumed. She'll pass it on to the son who will go at it for another two day and two nights. So probably by this time in two weeks time, I'll be cracking it open to get my own scoop on the half blood prince and all the rest.

The reading order was determined by older sisterly guile, though the son solicited signatures and atop them wrote a little paragraph stating "This document absolves me, (young Master Speechless), from all blame no matter the syrcomstances at: home, school or afar by these following people (and signed by the family members.)" It hangs on our refrigerator, and foretells a plan to carryout some misdeed. Could it be stealing the 6th Harry Potter book before his sister finishes? That will be some battle if it comes. Let's hope July 16th and 17th aren't too hot, or things may get very uncomfortable round here. We'll need to wait and see.

Regarding Harry's future, my only prediction, for those who care, are that the half blood prince will prove to be Draco Malfoy. I believe Malfoy who has been mere charicature till now will emerge as being not the full blooded wizard he fancies himself to be. Instead we'll develop a greater understanding of the fears and agonies of those who set their world up by matters of lineage and other such uncontrollable mysteries of birth. When it comes out that Malfoy is part Muggle, he will go into overdrive trying to hide the fact. But of course that's just a tiny bit of what we all hope will be a far larger story.

It's been fun for the last two years specualting on the future course of the life of Harry, Hermione and Ron. Just getting to use a name with as many colliding syllables as Hermione in sentence upon sentence has its value. Now all our little hopes and dreams for the future of the threesome must be put away, and we will instead let ourselves be subject to the vision of J.K. Rowling, the real wizard of it all.

In other summer reading, I'm dipping into E.F. Benson's Lucia series. "Such fun!" as Lucia would say. Lucia, Gerorgie and the world of Riseholme (Tilling is still to come) is such a delicious retreat. It makes me appreciate better the comedy of my own little life. The pleasure of pouncing on anyone I haven't seen for half a day and asking "Any news?" appreciating the details, the crumbs and morsels which come our way.

By contrast, I'm back to Thomas Merton. I saw a movie a few weeks ago, made by some Buddhist monks titled Travellers and Magicians. It was a lovely film, quiet and amusing, set in Bhutan. Above all, the local people in the film were so dear. It made me long for a trip to Asia. Instead I took up Merton's journal of his trip to Asia. He was so steeped in Eastern religions that it's often hard to absorb. Still I press on.

We're swimming every night, my daughter and I have taken up lap swimming and we're doing between a quarter and a third of a mile per evening. It's such a good feeling to stagger home from the pool, all relaxed and ready for sleep.

On the weekend we were up to Vermont again, kayaking, swimming, hiking, cooking out and singing. What a great weekend. Summer at the moment feels so long and generous. The house is a complete disaster and there's a mountain of laundry waiting my attention, but until the undies run out, I suppose I don't care.

What's everyone else diverted with? Any news?

A new costume

2005-06-30T16:47:00.000-04:00

Hey, I like this new look! Brown and cream were nice for winter, but it's summer now so...gray. Hm, You'd think I'd come up with something a little more floral. Well the color speaks so much about my state of mind in these times. Unfortunately here we don't see shades of gray, only flat flat gray.

I have been getting my first for real gray hairs this year. My favorite jumper in second grade was gray with silver buttons. I wore it at least three times a week with a pink blouse all through second grade. It made me feel so secure, and...pure. That longing, to be a nun, to be a quaker, to be a quiet steady presence in an anonymous life, I guess it started early.

So folks, enjoy the gray. I guess I will too.

Queries

2005-06-29T00:35:00.000-04:00

Perhaps it's just a sense of obligation thanks to the goodwill and generosity of certain other bloggers -- Dharma Bums, Adventus, Wayne at Niches, and the dear Cervantes--who have kindly listed me on their blogrolls, that I feel an obligation to post something. (I tried to set up a my own blogroll a few months back, but the thing didn't take. You'd all be on there now if I could get it to work...apologies!)

The ideas I've had for posts have all required more time than I've had available lately, and, too, I'm not sure that the things which interest me would really interest my few but faithful readers. So I've delayed and delayed posting anything, and during the same period I've fallen away from commenting at other blogs.

Lately I've found many reasons to take my own opinions with a large shake of salt. And while a healthy mistrust for one's own conceits may be steps on the path to wisdom, it certainly slows the impulse to sling out your opinions all over the internets.

There are however questions, questions I'm in love with, and about which I would love to hear your thoughts.

Here's a question to start with: What are your questions now, in these times?

Perhaps I'll offer you a few of mine as well...

On American Goodness:
Do people in this country still identify themselves as "the good guys" in the world?

How does the concept of being "the good guys" square with the horrors of illegal war and abuse of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Graib and dozens of secret interrogation sites round the world?

If the American people have an addiction to oil, possessions and credit cards who is the pusher for this addiction? How can the addiction be overcome?

How can an individual break free of the pusher who pushes the addiction everywhere?

-- Last week I was away, off to the shore with the kids and my parents, staying in a condo loaned by a friend. The experience was All-American. There was airconditioning, wall to wall carpet, deep chairs that you sank into and watched the 99 channel t.v. A mile away to the south was Route 1 and the Strip. Everything a person might long to purchase could be found on the Strip. The road was packed with traffic, day and night.

A mile in the other direction was the beach, sand dunes, a quiet surf, seagulls and osprey overhead and the strand with its beautiful pebbles. The entire week, the weather was good, but the beach was mostly empty, and the ocean had even fewer swimmers.

Each night, in the condo, my father would watch the evening news (something I've not seen regularly for the last 26 years.) It was plain as day that the stories were created to fit the idea of what the news should be...the reality was being created, censored, named, known, and distributed in small memorable packages. The news, the air conditioning, the certain knowledge that up and down the Strip, people were purchasing their dreams, off the rack in shops named Liz Claiborne and LL Bean...

The ocean is timeless, unfathomably deep and mysterious. No one can package or name it for all that is and all it contains. Like so many of the great and timeless mysteries in the world, all it asks is that we behold it. And yet, it seems my fellow Americans would rather go shopping for their truths. Why is that?

Gon Swimmin'

2005-06-13T22:31:00.000-04:00

2 Hot
2 Blog
2 Day

"So far, so good...."

2005-06-10T10:37:00.000-04:00

Today's my anniversary. Sixteen years of wedded bliss. Sixteen years of working it out, and not working it out. Sometimes talking out the areas of disagreement. Often just going on together without talking it out.

When I met him first, well after the first heady weeks of easy love, he told me he had no intention of "working" at the relationship. That was a shock. But I decided to give it a try. On hearing that, another friend declared when she got married that "she had no intention of working at her marriage, but intended instead to just enjoy every minute of it." Truth be told, being married to the sort of Irish man who can sit for several hours looking into the heart of the fire, offering little more than a sigh...it's hard to enjoy every minute. But I enjoy as much as I can, and just hold the darker times with a certain compassion.

It's a good enough approximation to keep us ticking down the road. And I have hope that someday we'll look back on where we've been with a happy smile.

Now since it's time for the regular Friday Free Verse, I'll offer this, the first non-teen poem I wrote, about ten years ago now. Regarding the poem, one might say it's clearly derivative, I see Shakespeare, Marlowe, Eliot, Frost and even Tennyson all with a hand in here. Still, it gets at a real experience, and I'm happy enough with that.

By the way, there's hardly that sense of being besieged these days. Yet, you never know when you turn the next corner what will be waiting for you. And it's good to remember and to see, we come through the hard times and are still 'at it.'

No Troy
Ten years too late
He came to call
To tell of love for my soul and body.
Wishing to kindle the spark seen so often in my eye
And set ablaze a life of quiet commitment
To burn the topless towers
And set off such strife that who knew
Where or how right order
Might ever be secured again.

But I am no Helen nor ever wished to be,
And marriage never felt before
a fortress besieged.
My man does not guard the ramparts
A fretful liege,
Keeping watchful eye over all his eye might see.

Oh no. Rather more a happy meeting of two vagabonds
At a small desert oasis
Sleeping now in a common tent,
Billowed aloft by a twilight breeze.

But now this onslaught.
Not like the Assyrians down the hill on the fold,
Sabres blazing...
But more it's Paris's hushed whisper
Haunting the dark
"Come and try the fruit from my night blooming garden,"
Perfume hanging heavy in the air,
I hear the echo his honeyed exhortation
And ache with an old desire,
Knowing I might be his captive in a single kiss.

But then in that familiar sleep walk dance
We long time lovers do,
My darling rolls over in the bed,
Tossing an arm cross my breast
The straitly down round the ribs,
Holds me close to all my promised
Reminds me in his unwitting gesture
That I am his,
And this canopy which enfolds me
Is bound by a thousand gossamer strands of love.
And indeed I most truly wish to be naught
Save faithful and journey on with him.
Two drowsy vagabonds, traipsing cross the desert,
Sometimes drunk with love.

The gift

2005-06-08T23:03:00.000-04:00

Before he died he promised the family he'd never come back and haunt us, and perhaps that is why I've had so little sense of who he was, my grandfather.

From the time I was very young I remember the perplexed tone some family members had when they would discuss him. Others simply spoke in a hushed way, as perhaps you might of the dead when you sensed they might hear you.

All who knew him spoke of him as both a very ordinary and an exceptional man. His mother died on Christmas day, as she gave birth to him in Philadelphia, somewhere at the end of the 19th century. He was raised by his elderly grandparents, his father's father and mother. His father had not been well and died when he was six, so that was the age he went out to work. By the time he was 10 he was holding down a job in a foundry.

Some of his earliest memories were of the little woman who would come and watch him when he played, or worked or went about his chores. She didn't seem unkind, only interested, but she never said a word. When he got older he asked the parish priest about this little woman. "That might be your mother,” he told him. "She probably just wants to see you and know how you are. She will probably leave you once you become and adult and marry." And indeed he did continue to see her until he married. (And in fact a little woman has come to several of us in my family, including myself, in a time of fear or significant need, though whether she is the same little woman I couldn't say.)

Perhaps because he was gifted with the vision of his own mother, or because, as is common in Irish lore, he was born with a cawl over his face, my grandfather was certainly gifted with second sight. He could see spirits where others felt only moving air. He was sensitive to the energies that vibrate and was able to know without telephone or telegraph when someone close to him or his wife had died. Strangers and priests reported out of the blue that they saw Jesus walking beside him, or later, after her canonization, saw Saint Theresa walking with him.

Another aspect of his personality was a gift of healing. When my grandmother was pronounced dead by the family doctor, during the epidemic of the Spanish flu, which hit Philadelphia so terribly hard, it was my grandfather who saved her life. The priest had administered last rites, the doctor closed her eyes and told the family that she was gone, but my grandfather asked if he could pray for her. He prayed over her, held his hand over her heart, and then lifted a glass of brandy to her lips. He called on her in the name of God to live. Her eyelids fluttered and she began again to breathe. From there her recovery was very slow, but she did live. (It is perhaps notable too that my grandfather was one of the brave ones willing to risk his life, burying the dead during that terrible epidemic).

15 year later when my father was in his teens, he suffered with his nerves, often being afflicted by episodes of nervous tremors that would make his whole body shake. His father came up to him one evening with a glass of water. He said a quiet prayer, then said "son I want you to drink this. It should take away your trouble, and indeed it did.

Earlier, when he first married he had built a foundry, but the very successful business was lost in a devastating fire. He turned to sales, and was a very successful salesman for several years, but in his one clear “vision” --the only one he ever claimed to have had-- he heard himself directed to give up the successful life directed toward making money, and to turn his life to service of the poor. He gave up his position in sales, and came home to Philadelphia to sell subscriptions to magazines for Catholic charities, and to making images of saints, and sets of Rosary Beads which he made using the techniques of the foundry, and sold door to door.

It was this work door to door, selling religious trinkets and subscriptions to Catholic magazines which brought him into direct contact with the city’s poor. It also made and kept him poor the rest of his life.

Perhaps the most unexpected and inexplicable aspect of his life began after his brother in law returned from a service for the canonization of St. Theresa, the little flower of Jesus. My great uncle received several petals from the flowers which were on the altar during the canonization. One of these seemed to have the face of Jesus on it. The petal remained fresh and supple for years to come. While it was in my grandfather’s possession, he would pray and hear a voice he believed to be Saint Theresa, directing him to various people round the city, people in need, people who were often in very dire situations. He would find food, clothing and shelter for families, women with children whose husband had abandoned them, elderly folks…There was apparently a small contingent of people who my grandfather had met, and helped. And oddly, often they spoke of seeing a beautiful woman, a Catholic sister with him. They would ask to be introduced, though he could see no one there.

As a child I was often frightened to hear of what my grandfather knew and how the spirits of those who had died had entered so often into his life. I was afraid that would happen to me. My only real prayers were to be allowed to see nothing. Now I’m older and more open to such things as considering how those who went before my have wisdom they can bring into our lives. I don’t pretend to understand how any of this work. I do know though that it’s the sort of thing that is probably more common that we acknowledge And it suggests really that more power may be available to us than we let ourselves imagine.

Sure there are other stories and legacies about my grandfather. He was said to have had a beautiful Irish Tenor voice, and sang on the radio in the early years. Although I don't believe I've ever heard tell of him boasting, I understand he was a person of supreme confidence. The sort who could play any instrument by ea, fix machines, invent new ones. But perhaps as his youngest grandchild, I have always wished I knew more about him, or understood if his type was one that is common or rare.

Lonesome Valley Shared

2005-06-07T10:22:00.000-04:00

From time to time I ponder the matter of healing. I find I'm deeply moved by the image of wreckage, the wreck of our days, the wreck of a body crumpled in a heap, a once upright frame now crumpled and passive, the wreck of one's heart, having perhaps loved too well what proved unworthy of that gift-- like so much flotsam flung up on the sea strand.

I suppose I see myself reflected in that wreckage, and am moved by the suffering which we each find ourselves alone with.

I knew a man who had the power to heal lives, not in his hands so much as in his prescence. You looked in his eyes and you knew that he knew you, knew and understood your sadness and suffering. He could feel how hard it had been to live with a certain pain or loss. He could take that pain and hold it, offering it, it seemed, up to God for healing. You could almost see him lifting up the suffering of the people who came to him, holding their sorrows up over his head to be taken away. People were drawn to him from across the city, from across the five county area.

But of course, it got to be too much. He could cure anything it seemed, but his own deep pain. The source of that pain I never knew. Perhaps when we are born, as we move from the safe warm womb into this colder, lonely outer-world some pain is caused which marks us as human. Frailty is knit into our physical being, but the deeper wound, the loss of wholeness seems to come to us at birth. This man was wounded as any of us. It was the wound which gave him the power he had to heal. But in the end, it was his own pain and broken life which caused him to withdraw himself.

He is still alive in the world, and surely working miracles where ever he goes. But this is the anniversary of his departure from here. He is missed, deeply missed and much loved, just for having been himself, but also for the gift he gave to our community.

On his decision to leave us, many felt betrayed by the promise and the loss. Others decided he was surely a fraud, a charismatic person who had an electric effect on the crowd. But some of us who matched our energy to his, have come to recognize the profound gift he shared with us. And to see that when we bear each other's burdens, and trust each other's gifts, healing of life wounds is possible and available to us all.

And so, I can see now, three years out, that even in leaving us, the man still gave a gift. And that my friends, is what I would call a grace.

Summer leaves, summer gardens.

2005-06-06T11:57:00.000-04:00

Field behind the stream.

We took a walk, a good friend and I, talking as we went about how we make sense of life now that we've moved past the ingenue years. We see our daughters growing now into that role and love to watch the quiet strength, the occasional bursts of drama, their genuine naivete paired with sparks of sophistication.

And as for ourselves, you can't help but feel that the first fresh green is off the tree. We've each moved on to embody the reliable strength of hardy summer leaves, trying to make good on the promise of offering refreshing shade to those who are uncomfortable in the heat. No fragility here.

Of course, our society doesn't seem to offer likely models for how to stand for yourself during the middle years. It's a process of letting go hope and gaining strength at the same time, but no one seems able to explain to you how. The transformation I suppose is one more lived than discussed.

One of us has a sister who seems determined to live in a perpetual state of Spring. Perhaps it suits her, or perhaps she has not been clued into the heady freedom of self-actualization. She still awaits some seal of approval from others. It's hard sometimes not to feel a twinge of green jealousy that she is older, but seems so much more young in every way.

So my friend and I walk and talk of this, of letting our lives be poured out slowly in care of those we love, tending our own little gardens, wondering if its enough and if the eventual harvest can possibly meet the hopeful promise which our lives once seemed to offer in the Spring.

A few months ago I had an image of myself as a pooled spring, or perhaps more dammed up stream. Myself, my life, creating a lush watery garden spot along a forest glade. It was a happy image of life engendering life. An image that opened out to a larger vision of grassy fields beyond those woods, of sunlight playing with the leaves on trees that fringed the field, of birds flying high, and clouds skittering by.

It's hard to know if any of this will ever be enough. But we give it what we have. And in my heart I sense that God is glad to see us each, in our way, renewing the face of the the earth, making fresh and blooming gardens that grow and mature to the reliable shady places of summer.

Friday Free Verse

2005-06-03T13:45:00.000-04:00

Perhaps its the damp dark weather we have at the moment. I can't say I'm fully "back" yet, at least not in my head. I keep feeling like it would be good to be somewhere else, but where that somewhere else is, is the real question. All the good places there are don't take away from all that bad things that are going on in the world, which are being done to make the "good places" stay good.

Raw thoughts on a raw damp day. And to go with it all, I offer you this, a truly raw new recent poem. Thanks to the Dharma Bums, I know that today is the birthday of our man Alan Ginsburg. Unlike Alan, I don't feel equipped to take on the matter of America. But, maybe to get close to it, here's a poem about facing the hypocrisy of being an American today.

American Portrait

It pains me to admit my only penance yet
Is certain knowledge that Mother Suffering has not
Found me fit to hold her cloak or glove.

My sole burden the shame of being mistaken
For someone else, someone actually able to make good
On the hope I seem to offer.

Yes, I've traveled to underdeveloped lands
Prepared at last to live in solidarity with misery
Deprivation.
Only to find myself pampered and served,
Thanked for the effort to adopt a posture
Of one who came to serve.

I wait and wait to step up to the plate.
Ready to do my part, bow under the weight
Of that cross I should receive as mine.

But I can't yet claim to be one of those whose metals' tested.
Or more, is sure that if my five senses be deprived,
Could I hold aloft for sure
An inner fire to illuminate these prison walls
Shining out beyond the high barbed wire?

Back from Vermont with Poems

2005-05-31T09:43:00.000-04:00

So I'm back from my time in Vermont. It was a week of rain and heavy mist, which was great for keeping me inside and hard at the writing. The process of the creative writing experience always surprises me. Like journeying in a land you've never been to, but where you find the roads all surprisingly familiar. The foreign space is quite intimate and homey.

I have been holding off on writing a certain difficult section of this novel for about 6 months now, dancing around it, avoiding it, doing all sorts of extra writing of earlier parts, not quite ready to take on the emtional challenge of the section I had to face. Finally this week, I just did it. It was rather like trudging up a high mountain, thinkng of nothing but how glad you'll be to be at the top and finished. It sounds quite obvious now that I've reached that particular summit, but it was a remarkable sensation to finally get past that major block, and there, at the top of the mountain, what did I discover? Of course! From up there, suddenly I could see new vista, new aspects of the road ahead, new parts of the story that had to be told before I finished. What a surprise to realize how quickly I was able to see these future developments once I finally got past the thing which felt like the only mountain, the most impossible mountain to climb.

So, alas, I've returned, finding myself still in the middle rather than at the end of this writing effort. Now I need to ponder how I will move from middle to end.

In the meanwhile, I thought I'd put out there a few small treasures from the week. This was a series of poems which came to me one after the next on the third rainy morning of my time there. The middle three are gifts from and two the two little boys who live in the house where I stayed. It's such a pleasure to see children growing up with such a connection to the woods and stream that surrounds them. So these are poems from an innocent place. They speak to me both of where I found myself, and the writing process. Six poems sound like a lot to digest, but they work well together I believe.

West Townshend Morning News

This woodland bower green and lush
Drips with morning dew.
Soon the rain soon
Mourns the dove, the song of the birds
Will hush.
Only the brook continues
~Always the brook,
Constant its rush.

* * *

Honey in the Rain
~ for Evan
The rain’s a gift to the flowers.
Each flower’s
a gift to the bee.
The bee gives
a gift of honey,
A gift to the bears and me.

* * *

Jonah’s World
Of course you’d want to come and write here,
This place is full of stories.
When it rains on up the road fills with salamanders,
yellow gold.
And under the rocks by the brook
There’s crawfish in the sand.
And here’s a rock I
brought you,
A white one—
Quartz—
To welcome you home.

* * *

Buccaneer Naturalist

The days are longer at six.
And every rock beside the brook
May harbor treasure below-
I’m a plundering pirate, digging for gold
Salamanders & worms in the dirt
Red Efts, fish eggs & tadpoles in the pools.

I grab em, careful not to squish em
Run in to get a jar.

And inside there’s all the grownups
Sitting around, just talking
With cups of coffee and tea.
Yak yakking all that grown up talk --
Somebody being sick and somebody’s house for sale,
And saying they never see each other
And they don’t spend enough time talking--
Which is a lie.

While what’s under the rocks outside
In the wet and oozing sand
Is all lost treasure for them
But not for me.

* * *

Poems Again
Well those were fun and unexpected.
Nice to know that, given conditions of peace
And less pressure- Weightless
Poems might come winging by.

Let me listen for the huush of those wings
Let me be prepared as the leprodologist
To leap up and net the beauties,
Notice their matte finish or iridescent wings,
Wonder at the length of their antennae and proboscis
Quivering responsive to sweet scents in the air,
To flowers and the feeling of the light—
And then, again, to let each go
free to stay –so I might record in detail
Or if to wing away,
Leave me free to add my own embellishment.

* * *

Too Many the Busy Day Poems Undone

We walk round with these ways of knowing our world,
Poetic understanding, tied like a tail of cans clanking behind.
Never can you rest quite easy in the day,
But always there’s that way
A little sad, a little detached.
Seeing the meaning in the moment
But its hard to catch it on a line.
You’d want to be a fisherman above a dark still pool
Where does the line go down in those deeps?
Are there even any fish still swimming in that pool?

The fisherman remains and has time to wait
While we here in this 21st century,
Get what we want from everyone else,
Which is commerce.
And every enterprising person knows
Commercial enterprise will not wait
For a theoretical fishy to nibble on a line.

So these days the salmon is purchased prepackaged,
Served with silver wrapped cream cheese for our breakfast.
While poems like these, served with a lemon twist,
Swim about in the pool, to wait for quieter days.

An Airy Aerie

2005-05-20T14:05:00.000-04:00

When the dread pirate requests, "tell us about the tree house," in that special tone which suggests he might just run you through with his scimitar if you don't... well, there really isn't much of an argument you can make.

So he wants to hear about the tree house? Perhaps DPR knew, I had to have written a poem about the place. But I'm afraid it doesn't give the specs or anything which might interest a fabricator and innovator like DPR , so I'll just say, it's a pretty straight-forward gable roofed framed out little building, with more windows than walls on two sides, and lots of air. You get up to it by climbing halfway up a small mountain, and then up a little ladder, about 10 feet off the ground, but about 100 feet over the edge of the mountain. In the treehouse,there's a futon, a table with a chess board and several sketchpads and boxes of color pencils. I always bring up my lunch and seem to be able to hang out up there from about 10 am to 2 pm and be prodcutive.

It was originally built by my friend Leish's mother for her granddaughter Treasa. But Treasa is reported to have a dread of spiders, so she's not too fond of it there days. She will probably feel differently in a few years time.

This poem doesn't mention the spiders, or the black flies, or even the bear cubs that I've seen when I've been lodged up there. Still, perhaps its gives something of the feeling of being there.

In Treasa's Tree House

Now's my turn to be
In this twittering sun-plashed world,
Looking out on silver birch,
Hearing the song of the Hermit Thrush
Spiraling above the trees.

I recall that the upper reaches of the forest
Are called the Canopy.
Delight in the thought of the green
Billowing on the breeze
And below, the quiet forest floor~
Pine needles and leaf mould dampen the step~
You can't get more here,
Low-down, with it, connected
To the give and take of life,
Than on the forest floor.

But midway between earth and air,
Up the stairs, I open the door
To Treasa's tree house
A Never Land, built for a pixie child.

Friday Free Verse

2005-05-20T10:20:00.000-04:00

Energies

"The secret of being a poet, Irish or otherwise,
lies in the summoning of the energies of words."
Seamus Heaney

I think how a little wheel can power
A large wheel in slow resolute motion.
There’s a kind of comfort in the even keel of that steady pace
That belies the little one’s over anxious energy.
Still, both give as they can.
Not a bother on the big fella,
He scarce stirs himself or scruples giving notice
As he swings effortless from inaction into action.
Yet his motion leads to universal revolution.

Meanwhile the small fella, a tiny dynamo, exhausts himself
Striving to move heaven and earth by sheer intent.

And what of when two contrary forces meet at 90O?
Who gets them in pulling together,
And what makes the change from their contrarities?
That’s the preposterous work of the differential,
Converting, converging the twain.
It sits as passive mediator
Giving itself to the situation
Its only yearning is to see opponents meet and leverage their opposition
Setting their modes at counterpoint.

Yet still there’s the matter of what this spinning might be for.
What is its product? It’s worth?
Energy converts to speed
Or light
Or power.
Where the tires touch the road,
The road produces speed, simply on account of its impassivity.
Yet if the road is not resistant, but more generous, accommodating,
The wheels’ resulting motion is produced at a greater expense of energy.

Of course motion is not the intention or desire of the machine
But simply the result of energy unleashed.

Its operator must consider the consequences of at least quadratic motion,
Travelling through dimensions of time and space.
A hard headwind may result in a tailspin.
Or an overly giving road may yield an impossible climb.

I still feel the clutch of terror recalling moments when my bike
Seemed to move with a will of its own.
The tire was taken with the oblique angle of railroad tracks
On a road level crossing. The tracks grabbed the wheel
from under me.
My body writhed in pain against the hard rocks
While the bike lay, now lifeless, at my side.

Yet I see us two now moving more in tandem to our great surprise.
Sometimes taking turns resting tired legs
Maybe I'm back-pedaling overlong
But other times making great bounds
Down a road, resistant smooth.
Racing along with such ease
We don't feel miles or years slip by,
Fall away under this incredible improbable machine.

And in my mind's eye I see ahead a time
We may leave the contraption in a heap,
Gears and chains and wheels for scrap
Crashed on the edge of the ditch,
Only to take up the trail
At last on foot,
Able to enjoy and wonder at the twists to come
Along this stony path,
Freed at last from all elaborate mechanism and device.
Freed to go on and on and on.

Ciao, Bella!

2005-05-20T09:47:00.000-04:00

I'm going to be away for about 2 weeks, going off to the tree house in Vermont to try to do some serious writing. Well, actually the writing is pretty humorous, but the effort is intended to be serious.

I've come to understand that I write from a different place in the brain for different applications. But for some reason, probably in the genes, writing has always come easily to me. It's like I'm listening to music and humming along, following the tune which my right brain is playing. This can sometimes make for rather sloppy work, and I'd be better off if I would struggle with things more. But through the years I've gotten better at editing and rewriting (thanks largely to the computer making rewriting so easy).

The funny thing about working on a novel is that it's an altogether different sort of thing than the writing I do everyday. And different again from poetry. Grant writing and essays seem to require thinking. Poetry seems to involve listening and looking. While writing a novel requires self hypnosis to just get into the imaginative space where the action is happening and then watch and record it as it goes. Where it's going is a fascinating question to me, though would probably not be a concern to anyone else.

I suppose the strange thing with something like a novel is that it takes place as a sort of dream process for the author, but arrives as a fait acomplis for the reader. I'm not sure if when I arrive at the end of this long process it will have the force and effect for the reader that it's had for me as the writer, which makes the whole business really strange. Sometimes it feels like it's a set of wind up dolls I have dancing on a little stage which only I can see. But the intention, the desire is not to simply delight one's self. The desire is to connect and communicate with others.

One of the authors who seems to me best achieved this effort to bring you along with the vision of the story, just for the story's own sake, was Henry James. When I read his work I feel almost like I'm writing it. The breadth of his vision, and his willingness to describe what he saw as it unfolded before him was (to use one of his favorite words) prodigious. Oh for such gifts.

In the face of Henry James or Dickens or Jane Austen, it's hard to claim the title of author. And as I look at the family I'm leaving in the lurch to cope for a week or more with my absence, I'm sure this is one of the most selfish thing I could be doing. Still, the process feeds me, and I will come back home I hope refreshed, ready to again feed them. So that's the plan anyway.

But the process of writing is so individual. I'd love to hear from others about how you write, and what it feels like while you're at it. Do you plan or run on inspiration? Do you choose your words carefully or just throw them like Jackson Pollock on the page, only to erase them later? Any insight would be appreciated.

Fresh pressed memory

2005-05-15T22:51:00.000-04:00

It was the perfect afternoon for Spring revelling. The sun was warm but the breezes were soft and cool. The fragrance of a lilacs, wisteria, and a hundred other blooming things filled the air. Bird song was constant, and constantly changing. We made May Wine from the dried Sweet Woodruff of last Spring. We filled a bowl with Golden Rhine Wine, then added the infusion of woodruff and brandy. Floated Johnny Jump Ups, Forget Me Nots, Violets and Penny Royal blossoms in the bowl and drank with many toasts to the beauty and generosity of nature in the Spring.

The talk was very pleasant, of poetry and places we all half knew. We made a quiche with sorrel from the garden, shallots, fresh mushroom, good cheese and eggs from local hens. The salad was full of crunchy and juicey bits of green. Fruits, vegetables and herbs all mixed with a light little dressing.

Most of all the air was fresh and clear, as afternoon passed to twilight the lawn was golden and then faded to a lavendar hue. It helped too, the guests were much beloved. Indeed it seemed a Saturday evening edged in gold.

Like the spring flowers we pick and put between the leaves of a heavy book, imagining that perhaps the freshness and color might be preserved, this was an evening to press in the memory book and savor for long time to come. I just wish it might stay ever so fresh in my mind, and too that you might have also been there.

Friday Free Verse

2005-05-13T14:38:00.000-04:00

Calliope House

Could only we
Always be
Lilting along like this.

Laughing as the rolling rhythm
Of the tune
Sets my spirit spinning.

My eyes dart up to yours,
Sparking like the sapphire heavens
Agleam with flashing stars.

Almost like we're making love,
Reeling cross the bedroom floor,
Or out along the ocean's edge,
Little waves fringe our feet,
Play at pulling us in.
But with ecstatic confidence
We're dancing on the water,
Dancing with the stars.

Unity of Now and Then.

2005-05-12T13:37:00.000-04:00

Perhaps it's just been too many beautiful days spent indoors working on getting a few proposals finished. Perhaps it's too little sleep or too much caffeine. Perhaps it's just the way sound carries on a more humid day. I find myself longing for a quieter place, a more tranquil time.

It's the visceral memory of such times and places which feeds me during the long hard slogs. But those memories also make one long to be there, in such a quiet tranquil place again.

Which, for some reason brings me round to the question of past lives, no not past parts of this life, but past lives. Don't fall off your chair. There's a part I hold in reserve, an allowance I make for the possibility of reincarnation. Why not? says I. It seems perfectly possible.

Look over on Wayne's Niches Blog
and you'll see that there's a whole process that seeds need to go through to reach a point of rebirth through germination. Perhaps we're the same? Perhaps some of us cycle through rather quickly from one life to the next. Perhaps others of us go through the stomach of a bird or whatever the soul's equivalent to that might be.

I don't spend much time worrying about the question, but I like having it as a provision to life's present circumstance. With the possibility of reincarnation comes the possibility of wisdom from past lives. Perhaps a particularly thorny personal issue ties to a past life experience. Perhaps there's something to be learned by going through what I'm going through now. Maybe I chose this life as a way to learn about a certain facet of life which I hadn't experienced yet.

As for what my past lives might have been, I can't say I have much idea. There have been however times, places and people that have stirred deep and hidden memories, visceral memories and soul memories, the things known in the bone, but not part of the present life experience. Connections to Ireland, Coal Mines, North Woodland Indians, and abbeys in France all see to stir these feelings in me. A sense of recognition, familiarity that can't be explained by the ordinary senses.

And what of you my few good and gentle readers. Do you have any inklings about past lives? Are there places where things have stirred something unexpected in you?

A peak behind the scenes of the dreaded science fair

2005-05-09T10:05:00.000-04:00

The young lad came home with a purple sheet bearing news. The Science Fair was upon us. This spelled weeks of ambivalence, elaborate impossible plans, like so many bubbles which the parents would be obliged to break, or not.

The chosen topic was a slap in the face to his peace loving mother. “I’m going to do the B 2 Bomber” he declared with studied nonchalance. Cut to mother’s knee-jerk reaction. Just weeks before they’d proudly pasted the bumper sticker “DROP BUSH, NOT BOMBS” on the back of the Subaru. Now here he was, wandering into the heart of the industrial military complex, another generation dazzled by the technology of killing quicker, by means of stealth.

“Why? Why a bomber? Isn’t that more history than science?” mother asks lightly, trying to keep her claws in.

“History? No! It’s the stealth plane, they’ve just started flying them in Iraq.”

“Oh Lord” mother suddenly explodes, realizing that although B2 sounds like B 17 and the glory days of the early airforce, this B 2 is current and part of the horrors of the present era conflict. Mother completely looses it. “No” she yells in a voice equivalent to that used by the Witch of the West when Dorothy pours water on her. “NO! I’M not going to be a party to that thing. Besides, it still isn’t science.”

Her motherly wisdom tells her that she needs to be supportive, let him follow his interest, the truth of the evils of Boeing, Northrop Grummond and the various other masters of war would emerge in his understanding as he matured. Nevertheless, her gut was screaming that her son was becoming possessed by the forces of darkness and evil.

Enter the father, a man of relative peace and wisdom. “I loved this stuff when I was his age. I could have watched the caterpillar wheels on a tank for hours. Even today, there’s something about it that amazes me.”

Over the course of the next month, questions are established to frame the research. Research is conducted on the internet. Avoidance is conducted by the son at every proposal to write up the results of his research. Further avoidance is conducted by the father, to keep from becoming too involved in what looks like a consuming project, building a copy of the B 2 Bomber. Reconnaissance is conducted by the mother and sister to discern the state of preparedness for D-Day (a.k.a. Dreaded Science Fair Day). Back channel negotiations are conducted between mother and father, mother and son, to keep the project on track, and actually begin to write up research and make the much discussed model.

Finally the weekend before D-Day, the mother sits down at the keyboard ready to take dictation. “ What are your questions?” Of course the original questions were lost. With prompting, a new set of questions are framed, mother types #1 “What makes the B 2 Bomber so attractive to the 10 year old scientist?” Through a clever series of word prompts like “I got interested in this when…” and “ The thing which makes it really cool is …” mother guides son through his first dictation. Over the course of the next 6 hours, 4 more questions are identified and explained.

Then comes the fun part. Cutting a flat plan of the bomber in cardboard. Father explains and demonstrates the use of compass, square, protractor, construction lines vs. cutting lines etc. The whole family gathers at the picnic table to watch and participate cutting the cardboard with an exacto blade, covering then with insulating foam. Later after the foam hardens, they shape it and cover it with spray on rubber. In the end it looks like a slightly over done Baked Alaska but done in the shape of the flying wing.

On Sunday, Mother’s Day, the headlines are applied to the requisite tri-fold cardboard. The pictures are drawn and copied from the internet. By 10:30 pm, the son who got up at 6 am to make his mother Breakfast in Bed (a little on the early side, but who complains about breakfast in bed?) is fast asleep on the living room floor while his mother cuts and glues the last of the essays onto the board. Fortunately her handiwork is at about the level of a 10 year, so no one should detect this bit of cheating.

Her mind filled with a deeper understanding of air as a fluid, and the relationship between drag, lift, thrust and weight, the nature of radar to reflect like a mirror, and the uncanny spell technology casts over her husband and son, she falls peacefully asleep dreaming of the Arcadian Woods and a time and place where war is unknown.

Stating the Obvious

2005-05-08T00:25:00.000-04:00

I was driving up to my parents' house last night, about 20 miles from the city. Growing up, it had been all farm land. In the last 20 years, the farms were taxed for potential real estate value, so the farmers all sold and moved out elsewhere, clutching their million dollar prizes from the sale of their 80-200 acre farms.

In came the developers, built houses so that for every 1 farm family, we now see about 50 suburban families. The houses sell for 400,000-1.5 mil easy. So if a piece of farmland sold for 1.5 million, and 120 "estate houses" can be built on it at 750,000 each, that's about $54 million the developer makes. All that money given to the bankers, the developers, the very rich. It's a tight little circle of who gets a piece of that money, and very little of it will ever head in to the city again, at least not to the poor neighborhoods.

Down in the city, there are families squatting in row houses without heat, without running water. They can't get out of the minimum wage job racket-- if they can even get into it. They need to scramble for food, scramble for transportation, and often scramble for drugs to scramble their brains so they can keep from thinking too clearly about the trap they are in. They don't need prison, their already imprisoned by a level of poverty that will not let up, and is no longer a concern to their fellow citizens.

I usually am mostly aware of what a blessing it is to be a person welcomed into the community of people who have nothing. Where there is little owned, there is generosity and an open-heartedness which is hard to find in affluent areas.

But at the moment, I am keenly aware of the remarkable injustice of such intractable poverty. It is like a gall on a beautiful tree which should be coming to fruit. Some of our best fruit withers on the vine, because of this canker-- and those who tend the garden seem to have forgotten that these trees ever bore a rich and beautiful harvest.

We may have the idea we care deeply about the least fortunate among us, but the system we give our lives to, working as we do, is designed to essentially insure that at home, and through out the world their will be a constant supply of cheap labor. You may not be the developer who takes good farm land and turns it into a quick buck for himself, but nevertheless, if you have a money in a mutual fund, or you have a landscape service do your lawn, or buy the latest fashions at a nearby department story, chances are you benefit by the entrenched poverty of these folks and millions like them across the world. They own nothing, and George Bush's so called vision of an "ownership society," certainly was not intended to apply to the folks who eat in the soup kitchens or work in your local McDonalds.

People who are hungry look much like all of us.

Friday Free Verse

2005-05-06T12:08:00.000-04:00

That I too might sing

The fiercest courage I have seen
Was in the hills of Maragoli, where
With little more than certainty
That the sun will rise at dawn
Three sisters recently orphaned
In a wreck on the Tigori road,
Trooped single file on the tangled path
Side-stepping rocks and roots
Never needing glance down
Or reach up to steady the ten-gallon
Water tanks on their heads.
Singing Oh God is Good, and
Si ya hambe kukinineekwinkos…
Bringing home to their three brothers and two sisters
Water --to boil the tea, cook the Maize
Wash the clothes and scrub out the shamba,
Before going to the fields with their jembe
In the heat of the day
to weed the plantain, yams and corn;
Knowing the net beneath their
Tight rope balancing act is ripped and frayed
They march on the path
Carry water and
Give thanks.
They sing
+ + + +
While here in this Northern land
Where we’re less certain of the sun
I’m out on the second-story roof
Against the western gable end
The ladder I hold clenched
Against what accident I can’t foresee,
Sobbing prayers to all the angels and saints
And blessed Mary
Not to leave my children fatherless
And me bereft of compass, sail and rigging,
--While you reach for a loose slate
Inches above the ladder’s last rung.
I pray for your progress
And pray too that, if I must,
I too might sing.

2005-05-05T19:23:00.000-04:00

Field day.

2005-05-05T19:22:00.001-04:00

Lunch.

2005-05-05T19:22:00.000-04:00

Time in the garden.

2005-05-05T19:21:00.000-04:00

A hike in the woods

Summer Haven (with photos above)

2005-05-05T16:07:00.000-04:00

School had just gotten out on Wednesday when the bullets flew about 3:10 p.m.
A gunman fired several shots at a light-blue Ford minivan at the corner of 12th Street and Oak Lane, near the library. The shots hit Jarren, a second-grader at Ellwood Elementary school who was walking toward the van, where Foster was waiting to pick him up from school.
Ashley Ramos, a fifth-grader at Ellwood, witnessed the shooting from across the street. She said, "I heard, 'Bam! Bam! Bam!' And we started running."
Jarren was struck in the head and the side. Foster got out of the van and walked over to look at Jarren, witnesses reported. Then he got back into the van and drove away.
Ashley said Jarren "was bleeding from above his right eye." She said she had offered him a T-shirt to stem the blood, but someone else had done the same.
So far this year there have been nine juvenile homicide victims in Philadelphia. During 2004 there were a total of 34 kids slain.
…"If a child can't depend on you for protection, what is society coming to?" asked Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson.
But Johnson said it can be hard to prevent some of this violence.
"It's hard to fight spontaneous shootings," he said. "These things can happen any time, anywhere. They just don't care. They have no compassion." Philadelphia Inquirer April 29 2005

Last year there were only 11 days when no one was shot in Philadelphia.
On average, more than four people a day were struck by bullets. About one in six died. The increase in violence to children in our streets, playgrounds and schools begs our attention and our response. The gravity of the present moment for Philadelphia’s children can hardly be overstated. The situation is dire. Just last week a little boy in nearby Oak Lane was shot in front of Elwood Elementary. So far this year there have been nine juvenile homicide victims in Philadelphia. During 2004 there were a total of 34 children slain. Everyday we read accounts of shootings, but these are the ones which grab the headlines. Far more are never mentioned in the paper at all. According to an article in last month’s Philadelphia Inquirer, last year on average, more than four people a day were struck by bullets. About one in six died. In their report card the welfare of children in our city, Philadelphia Safe and Sound reported the staggering statistic that in 2003, the number of young victims of gunshot wounds reached 881, and it is expected to climb still higher this year.
The numbers themselves demand a response, but the traumatic effects of so much violence on the children in our city neighborhoods, the bullying and fear, means that this brutal epidemic has many more victims than simply those who go to the hospital.
One way that children can get a time out from this reality is the opportunity to come to camp, to be children, to play, to be out of harm’s way. The camp we run at Face to Face is a month of simple pleasures.
We have the goldfish pond and the garden, this year full of fruiting trees and bushes for their wonder and delight. We offer opportunities to create and share in the wonders of creation through nature hikes, arts and crafts, making music. And on the last day of camp, we offer the whole neighborhood a joyful festival with face painting, balloons, pony rides and a petting zoo, free and open to all. It’s a joyful celebration of our shared effort to protect these children and give them a safe place to simply be themselves, to be children.
If you have any interest in supporting this effort, please contact me through my e-mail, listed on the end of my comments, or have a look at our website, and you can see where you might send a check. Of course, there's a good chance that where ever you are, the concern about violence to children is just as high. Supporting a summer camp for poor kids in your own community will still help increase the hope for future peace.

2005-05-03T11:52:00.000-04:00

Things are looking a little more serious once they start to pull the feckin' yoke apart...

2005-05-03T11:51:00.000-04:00

Father and son with a "new "parts tractor. Now the fun begins!

From there to here

2005-05-03T10:15:00.000-04:00

When he was a young lad, there were no toys in the house, no tools in the shed except for some ancient heavy iron wrenches, a few screw drivers and a hammer. The tools quickly became his tools.

He'd spent the first five years of his life, mostly sitting by the fire, beset with sore throats and ear infections. Being Ireland, the weather was always damp. The thatched roof let in as much dirt as damp, the air was always thick with the damp, the dust, the smoke when the wind blew the wind down the chimney. He'd ask his mammy and for him she'd open the little door on the stove so he could watch the turf as its blazes danced or as it burnt down, how the sparks would twinkle through the ash. His father would come in from the fields smelling of fresh turned earth and tractor diesel. He'd look over at the lad "Is that yoke going to live or die?" or some other loving, derisive remark.

Later when they sent him to school the teacher was the witch who'd taught his father and his uncles and hated them all, so he became hated too. Besides he was a kithoag, a southpaw, and even in the late 60's the left was considered the divil's hand, so of course he was switched. "You will write with your right hand, the fair hand God gave us all to write with." He hated the ancient teacher. A struggle of wills ensued which would last all the six years she would teach him.

At home then, being out in the fields, down round the bog or tinkering in the shed was his solace. After school he'd have his tea and head directly down to the bog to the old dumped car he was pulling apart, piece by piece. He'd stripped his first motor by the time he was six, but he'd be 10 before he learned how to put one together again.

Meanwhile in the shed, there was always a project he was tinkering on- building a little tractor from a pram, complete with a front-end loader fashioned from the rounded front of the pram bolted onto little arms cut from the handles of the same. He’d drill out the holes with a nail wired onto the end of a coal chisel. On the heavier metal pieces, one hole could take three weeks, pounding at it day upon day.

He recalls now when he was ten and just home from the hospital with a broken arm, hopping on his bike and riding down to the bog with no hands, the old iron wrenches, the chisel, and screw driver all gripped fast in his good hand. There was a new old car someone had hauled down the borreen just the day before. Virgin territory. His treasure for a summer of fun.

Soon he was putting together bits and pieces of bikes his father would find at the local dump. He must have made up ten or more bikes along the way. His favorite was done chopper style, with super-long forks leading down to a mini wheel in the front. Along with that too he made the high ape-hanger handle bars, all very 70’s style. And by then, he wasn’t banging away at scrap; he was doing stunts on the bikes he made, popping wheelies, racing down the hill and peeling out in the barn yard.

A few years later he turned to the big bikes. The dislike of school and interfering teachers never ceased. But through it all, the childhood difficulties with writing and schools expectations, and the challenge of fashioning tools and machinery out of bits of scrap--out of it all the fellow dug the foundation of a rich and varied life, full of original and very personal interests. Years on the bike led to years as a vagabond, led to meeting his wife and settling down.

These days his kids when they visit back at the home place, and all his young nephews whose families there remain, take turns on the bikes, trikes, scooters, skateboards, going down the hill, popping wheelies and peeling out in the yard. The wild streak is still there, but now the toys and tools are easy to come by, and quickly left behind.

In the back of his father’s barn there hangs the frame of his first bike, like the bones of a favorite horse, hung and half forgotten on the wall. All those years his dad watched him. Giving him little praise. His dad likes to see it though, likes to remember all those early years. Sometimes to, late on an evening when there’s a good crowd in the house, he likes to tell the stories from those days. Likes to tell how his son went pedaling no-handed down to the bog, to take apart another car.

And sometimes you see the two of them, working on a project together. The gleam in their eyes, you know it’s more than the work that their enjoying.

Friday Free Verse

2005-04-29T15:07:00.000-04:00

This is really an autumnal poem, but makes reference to April and here we are in April. I went to see my granny last night, she's nearly 103 now. She is still as cheerful as ever, and with an audience she can be quite animated. She can't hear too well, can scarcely see, but is still quite lithe and limber, and by far the best legs in the family--which she shows to advantage by tipping round in her high heels.

We've long debated if as an artist its her enormous self-interest which has kept her so young, or if it's in fact the sulphur she seems to bathe in every day, or gargle or take as snuff...no one's too sure what she does with it, but she's a firm believer in the stuff, and you know she's near by the fragrance of rotting eggs. She and her 96 yr. old brother both swear by sulphur-- actually Dr. Charles linked to an article on the life-prolonging properties of sulphur the other day, so perhaps she's on to something.

She's beginning to fade though. She doesn't have as much holding her to the planet, which is probably both good and bad. She seems to have no hope of heaven nor fear of hell. No expectations of anything after this life, but she's never been willing to give an inch to anything not of life. She is a person who made knot gardens and made dandelion wine. She knew the lore of wild mushrooms and other wild edibles...one time a few years ago, as her sight was fading, she cooked us a delicious dinner with greens she said were lambs quarters, but the taste was far more delicate than that. When we asked her to show us the spot, we realized it was actually Jewel Weed we'd eaten. Fortunately it isn't poisonous.

This past week my mother and aunt have gone to begin the enormous task of cleaning out her house. They are planning to divide the treasures of antiques, and try to make sense of the collections of thread, wool, shoes, jars of dye, buttons etc. So many projects still to be completed, now to be given up. It's not easy for any of us to let go of our hopes of time to come, to untangle the many projects in our lives. Still, my granny is finally ready to lay it down. Her flower is faded now. Just a ghost of a memory of the person she once was. And still she goes on. And still often you can see her smile and laugh.

For My Grandmother
on the Occasion of her 100th Birthday~
What is April doing,
Dancing in your face,
At the corners of your eyes
And the sly upturn
At the edges of your smile?

What is Springtime playing at?
Breezing through your spirit
When now it’s near November
And the neighbors have all raked the leaves
Off their dry lawns,
And are readying shovels and chains,
Buying salt, anticipating bitter winter…

Did you ask her in?
Or has she just forgotten
To leave this corner bare?
Or did she never learn that elsewhere
Her curtain’s been long drawn,
And her season played out?

I think its time to sow some winter wheat
Or contemplate a second harvest,
For springtime still plays the coquette in your face
Beguiling us with your girlish promise.

Choosing Less

2005-04-25T08:56:00.000-04:00

I did the inventory a few weeks ago, at a workshop designed to help people recognize and make better use of their charisms, gifts of the Spirit. Not unlike the Meyers Briggs or MPI or half a dozen other of these quizzes we've all done through the years. ( Are you a mouse, a wolf a buffalo or a deer...that sort of thing) but this one was simply giving you an opportunity to notice and experiment with how you are gifted by the Spirit to be of service in the world.

When all was said and done there were few surprises for any of us I suppose. Still there was one which indeed seemed right, but still took me by surprise: the gift of Voluntary Poverty is mine. Yes indeed. I looked at that and groaned "My poor husband," but in my heart I knew it was true and knew I wouldn't want it any other way.

Fortunately, to some extent anyway, we both embrace voluntary poverty-- or, living as we do in an overdeveloped society, at least voluntary simplicity.

Years ago I had the choice to go into what would have been a fairly lucrative position in Journalism. Being the institution that it is, you need to be tapped for a journalism career, and some of the best editors at the city paper were opening doors for me. But I saw the life of the journalist. The days and nights chasing a story, putting all the rest of life on the back burner. I decided instead on a quieter life and packed my bags for a year in Africa.

Since then, it's been one decision after another for life and against material gain. We have enough. We have a house, food, school for the children so they can make their own choices when they're grown. We have honest work to do, which we care about, but isn't the be all and end all of our lives. We have close family and friends, and the occasional trip off to see folks in far away places.

Maybe best of all, we live virtually debt free. By recognizing the difference between wants and needs, we've managed not to fall into the credit card trap, which gives us a freedom to respond to the present moment without as much worry about a future which has already been borrowed on.

I've got a clothesline in the back yard, a patch of garden, and woodlands in walking distance. Life is good.

I wish there were more people standing up and telling the truth that material wealth is not the ultimate experience. I wish before they threw themselves into deep debt for the sake of trappings of a full life, young people could hear that there's a lot more to life than simply owning and caring for things. --You don't need a new sofa ( or kitchen table or set of lawn furniture etc etc) to make you happy. And if you can keep your life from becoming a race on the hamster wheel by not throwing yourself into a pit of debt, you can live very simply and discover the joy and freedom of living for the day.

Making your own fun, noticing the tiny gifts of the day, weather it's birdsong in the morning, a flowering crab apple in the neighbor's yard, or the warmth of the woodstove after a day at work--it's worth more than anything they could sell me in the malls.

And given the nature of supply and demand, learning this lesson, that a simple life is a life of richness, may in itself lead to new hope for our planet whose richness is getting swallowed up and converted to dross through the greed and manipulation of capitalism run amok.

Friday Free Verse

2005-04-22T17:20:00.000-04:00

Fairy Boats

On the Neshaminy, May 2001
-for Clair

Find a flat stick or scrap of bark,
Add ornament of moss, violets, forget-me-nots,and celandine.
A broad leaf Maple sail,maybe a votive on the prow
to illuminate a golden path past the dark river snake
That winds under and is this waterway.

Place the bark on the water's back
Then lift a little as oblation
To that good God or dancing sprite
Which carries wishes to a happy end.
Or set it off with a stick,nudging it away from
the slime and last year's leaves that might grab it
in the shallows.
Maybe even wade out a way to keep it upright
as it meets the swifter currents.

Then watch and fret and pray,
Laughing at last as that tiny craft bobs,
Then slips lightly over the rocks
And sails on serene
To the bend and beyond.
To that hidden place which calls all
Floating things
back to their beginnings or ends.

The Creative Act

2005-04-19T10:30:00.000-04:00

A close friend and I are in talks about collaborating on a book, something on myth and meaning. She and I are like idea generators whenever we get together. But taking a few of those ideas and pinning them down is the harder part. This has got me thinking about the nature of making things & living a creative life. Trying to encourage her, I wrote this little rift and thought I'd share it here:

Every positive act of creation is a sort of summoning of faith, the existenstial crisis of saying I AM and I WILL inspite of all the universe asserting an entropic nihilizing force over you. It's an act of faith, stepping into the void and asserting that here is SOMETHING to replace the sense of nothing. --Even though it sounds like it has nothing to do with God and Spirit, it actually has everything to do with God and Spirit. It's like you're looking at the face of the void and saying "fuck it anyway...." And out of that, life is made, creation happens. It's a holy act, requiring a serious leap of faith, but it has to be done and taken as lightly as a spider, launching boldly, lightly off into the abbyss, expecting but not certain of finding a landing spot on the far side of the void.

or this thought:

It's kind of like a vision or a dream. You can get to certain place, and then you try putting your foot down and the path has disappeared. Do you go on, or pull back to safe ground?

I think if you go on, very lightly, like finding the hidden path in the bog, you can make it on to the next bit of more solid ground, but if you try to build the bridge yourself, you generally mess up the whole thing and can't find the true path again.

and finally this:

it will become real only if we take it seriously-- which can feel a bit absurd and grandiose, but on the other hand, if we wait for the voice of God on high, or some other authority to come down and annoint us as the best people for the job, we'll wait for ever. It's like all the courage, the can do etc has to come from our willingness to make this up out of thin air.

Which perhaps just goes to show you that you can't trust someone whose been bitten by the blogging bug not to go mining their own private e-mails for material to post.

Still I'd like to know if this matter of the creative effort speaks to you. It's more than a sideline, I'd say it's at the center of all I care about. Back in my college days we were so in touch with our existential despair, and sense of only the ability to assert the absence of meaning. My whole life, post college, has been an effort to find ways to express the is-ness,the positive case in ways that are life affirming and vital. (I suspect that the Neo-Cons have the same urge, but with their patriarchal mindset, the results they've gotten are utterly life destroying, go figure...)

Three Wheeled Wonder

2005-04-18T16:09:00.000-04:00

The Maiden Voyage: Last summer, getting the trike rolling was the first goal. Yesterday we took it out for a ride. What a great day. The sun was shining, the trees are all in bloom, and the three wheeled wonder ticked along like well oiled machine, which I guess it was --that's probably not biker lingo, but I'm not a biker, just a biker's wife.

Mr. Speechless has been in love with speed and power since he could first walk. Growing up on a farm, taking apart old cars and trackers is the best entertainment going. Putting them back together and making them run takes a little longer. I didn't know when I met him that bikes were such a big part of his wife, but I began to get an idea of it when I saw him giving someone ( I believed it was someone) too long a look from across the street in Athlone, not long after we first met. Antoerh woman, I thought, indignent. If he was going to be that type, he could find someone else! But when I finally got his attention and asked what he was looking at, he smiled naievely and explained that "that" was last year's Strabanne road race from up in the North. Sure enough, a tv repair shop was trying to attract custom by playing the bike race in their shop window.

I remember when he brought home his first bike after we were married and settled in the States. It was a Honda 750 that had caused a barn fire through a faulty fuel line dripping onto the batery. It was seriously ugly, with melted plastic hanging from the thing, and no sign of a motor anywhere. "You're not going to run that thing?" I inquired tentatively. Vision of my new husband, sprawled out on a highway somewhere arose before me. "Oh no. I'll just fix it up and sell it." he fibbed. I should have known...his reassurance had the same quality of that other great Irish line "We'll just stop off for one. Just one..."

So, 16 years and some 36 bikes later, the fellow has retired from the race track -- yes there was about 12 years of racing in there, and you ask me why I resort to prayer?-- He generally keeps one bike to ride for the summer, has one he's fixing up to sell, and another project going. As he reminds me, it keeps him out of trouble...and a good thing it is too.

The trike is the niftiest thing he's done yet, since he designed the whole thing his own way, balancing the weight by putting the motor in the middle rather than in the back. He's spent months working out gear ratios, getting the gears of a bike to cync with a Porsche's differential. I've become familiar with Spider gears, matters of torque and various metal tolerances and bore sizes. And you'll never catch me driving one.

Still, there's nothing I like better than sitting behind Mr.Speechless himself, holding on for dear life, and giving him a big hug as we take each turn. The smell of grease, gasoline, the bitter taste of metal grime are some of the nicest fragrances on a fellow ( seconded only by the smell of saw dust, mixed with Ivory soap and sweat.

So this summer, who knows? We may just come bouncing out across the country, stopping down in Lousianna, then up in Washington State to see a few friends... Get ready. More pictures will be coming soon...just don't tell Mr. Speechless I told you all of this. He's a quiet unassuming fellow and would be abashed to think I'd been bragging about him this way. Too bad!

Friday Free Verse

2005-04-14T21:58:00.000-04:00

(I'm offer this for my friends Cervantes and the Dynamic Swami with whom I've engaged in word-be squirmishes this week. )

Minnows
Oh to catch the minnows
Which quick silver slip, then
Shimmer slowly in the sun splashed creek.

But theirs is substance you might never hold.
Better let those fishies nibble round your toes
Than plash up the mica-lighted stream,
Trying to wrest one to your knowing or control.

So too the light glances off the water's rim
Illuminates your own inner hidden stream,
Somewhere you know you've been before,
But a place unmarked on any map.

You've arrived here without compass or coordinates.

You may name the minnow,
Name the brook, the light,
But what word can ever hold
That catch of your eye,
The catch in your throat
In that long held moment of wholeness?

The light flashing over the stream,
Moving to music of the wind,under clouds,
Filters through shivering willow leaves,
Revealing the perfectly ordinary motions
Of the lowly and luminous little fish.

Holy Ground

2005-04-13T22:11:00.000-04:00

I'm fairly sick of the sound of my voice, but three things have pulled themselves together. Thought I'd try to offer them here, and see if they speak to anyone else.

First came this from Janeboatler, in the Comments over at Robert's blog. It's source is the Carmelite Monastery, Tallow, County Waterford, Ireland.

Death is nothing at all - I have only slipped away into the next room. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Laugh as we always laughed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effort. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was; there is absolutely unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of your mind because I am out of your sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near just around the corner. All is well. Nothing is past; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before - only better, infinitely happier and forever - we will all be one together with Christ.

So few "words of comfort" do anything for me, but these did. They made sense, but also went way past the cloying comfort of a sugary teat. And it made me consider that probably more than half of my poems are devoted to trying to capture that sense of having stumbled on a holy place or moment. I understood it from the ghost stories I'd been reared on in chilidhod, but it was TS Eliot in the Four Quartets who made it make sense, about being in a place made holy through prayer, and prayer being more than words strung together.

We have so little of that left in this country, so much has been bulldozed and cemented over. Sad. Still there are places. Near here there's a winding bit of the Neshaminy where Chief Tammanend, leader of the Delaware, is buried near my parent's home. That whole area round the Neshaminy has a sacred feeling, and I imagine that there's lots of other native peoples who were buried there. And then there's other woodland places where you can get a feel for those who were here and kept their lives in rhythm to the seasons.

Then I was reading Cervantes' post on the Ho De No Sau Nee or Mohawk people, over at the platodialogue.blogspot.com, which set me thinking about the words of Chief Seattle which I've loved so long. I went hunting for those lines, and when I found his speech, I found there were of course variations and discrepancies. But I found one part from what is said to be the original version of his speech (www.halcyon.com/arborhts/chiefsea)
that I wanted to share here:

Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. ... And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone.

I wish I had been given that to read when I was young. I wish I'd been taught far more about the Indian people who were here before the White man. It wasn't until I was out of college that I even began to understand how long a time those people had been here. What we'd disrupted with our arrival.

Several years ago I found a book which told about all the major roads and highways in Pennsylvania, and how they related to Indian Trails. That certainly woke me up to the reality of that past. And in my mind's eye, I began to see this land as it must have been then. The feeling of love and loss stays with me still.

I wrote this poem six years ago, trying to express some of that understanding. It seems to me to carry some of the vision Chief Seattle was describing, and some of the awareness which the

Conshohocken

Sometimes I stare from my window
Across the hills which fringe
The Schuylkill river's edge
Wondering what feet trod there
Along that fertile forest floor
Long before the highways ran.

What native eyes
Greeted this valley each Spring
With the long lingering gaze of a lover returned?
Remembering how the sandy limestone ridge
Cut steeply down to the green water floating slow?
And knew that island there below the falls
Ringed with wineberry bushes and bramble rose?

Back when shad leapt in the stream
And the canopy teamed with chattering life
In the verdure our ancestors names Penn's Woods.

Today beneath the traffic's constant roar
I hear and half recall
The sound of our Eastern Woodlands filled with song,
From birds, frogs, crickets, crows
The mourning dove, the mocking bird.

Then when the breeze shakes the long recalling rees
Or a big wind comes booming in a storm
I sense the loosening and letting go of what the city's built on
And again we're out in the rain
Alive in the wind,
Forced to take it slow,
To listen at last to what was before our start
And will be again, come our end.

I've got the Goods on JaneBoatler

2005-04-12T15:41:00.000-04:00

Here is the good JaneBoatler's response to the bookie's missive. In my opinion she's brilliant in her taste for Henry James, and I certainly thank her for keeping P& P alive in the F451 world to come. I so want my daughter to read it, but she's still to young to appreciate Austen's wit. So thank you JB! (all that follows from here is genuine Boatler Prose:)

I'm stuck inside Fahrenheit 451; I would be Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

My crush: I lean towards detectives; my favorite would Roderick Alleyn in Ngaio Marsh's mystery series, with Dorothy Sayer's Peter Wimsey a close second, but then I really like P. D James's Adam Dalgleish. I'm so fickle when it comes to my crushes.

The last three books I bought: Diarmid McCulloch's The Reformation, Jim Wallis's God's Politics, and Angela Bourke's Maeve Brennan; Homesick at the "New Yorker".

Current reading: God's Politics.

Five books on a desert island: The Bible, The New Oxford Book of English Verse, edited by Helen Gardner, The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, Persuasion by Jane Austen, because I already have Pride and Prejudice committed to memory, and a P. D. James mystery, maybe Devices and Desires.

I do not know three bloggers who have not already been tapped, so I'm going to break that chain.

Towards a More and Less Perfect Thing

2005-04-12T15:08:00.000-04:00

A truly home grown jumper. Made from home spun wool from home grown sheep, designed in the head of yours truly and worn by himself for warmth and homey beauty.
***

The longing had been there since childhood: sustainable farming, self-sufficiency, living a life completely connected and in balance with the earth.

Over time, the scope became narrower. The urge to farm was still strong, but we lacked the necessary capital. Our farm is a little house in a small town on the outskirts of the city. We connect to the earth through our local co-op, supporting a network of sustainable farms, and that feels good.

Still the urge is there to be connected more deeply to the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the objects that surround us. And as a result, Mr. Speechless and I have a long history of projects, attempts to see ourselves in the world around us.

I won’t bore you with the details, but the list includes wine made from grapes harvested on my sister’s farm and squished in a -new- trash can under my feet; our daily bread and baked goods; beer- every batch comes out like Newcastle Brown Ale, but I love Newcastle Brown Ale; a Welsh dresser, made from oak gleaned from old houses and churches; a potter’s wheel …yes as I warm to the effort of describing these projects, I realize I have too much to tell.
Nevertheless, I want to write about one thing,perhaps I'll make this an irregular feature around here. Telling tales of creative efforts, since after all what's fun in life is what we make of it. So today I'll tell you of the husband’s tunic.

I'd knit him several jumpers before, but wanted to make one from wool I’d carded and spun myself. On a visit over to the Ireland, my father-in-law gave me the fleece. He was amused I suppose by his Yankee daughter wanting to try her hand at the old way. His motherand grnadmother had spun all their own wool, and so it wasn’t as strange to him as I feared.

I came home, salvaged what I could and scoured the fleece and then began the tedious work of carding it, getting out the bits of thistle and straw, and getting all the fibers properly alligned. All I had for spinning was a drop spindle, but I kept at it for an entire winter, spinning a skein at a time, then washing the wool with shampoo, and hanging it out on the line with a weight at the bottom to try to give it its proper finish.

Then I began to consider the design. The fellow in question, Mr. Speechless, has always carried something of the air of one of the Knights of Camelot who perhaps got separated from his comrades, and was continuing on his solitary way, seeking the grail (though perhaps he’s forgotten that it’s the grail he’s seeking…) Anyway, he reminds me of a knight, so a tunic, in the manner of knights hauberk, seemed most apt. The wool was already a silvery grey, so the likeness to chain mail was already there. Fortunately this would be warmer, softer and more practical than a true hauberk.

Over the course of a summer, the project came together. I did the band at the bottom in a seed stitch, and gave it a split welt, so that, without the modern ribbed waistband, the sweater skirted out at the bottom, tunic-style. The body was done in moss stitch, with seed stitch bands under the arms. Double rows of purple done in double rows of pearl stitching defined the yoke. A keyhole neckline outlined with a tracery of purple wool set it off. Through the neck I laced a twisted purple braid. I made the sleeves long and uncuffed in the classic tunic style.

All in all I was very pleased with the project, as was himself—or at least he certainly seemed to be, and often wears it for special occasions.

I love looking at that jumper when he’s wearing it, knowing that in it I can see a winter and summer of work. In my mind’s eye I can see the fields where grazed the sheep who gave their wool. It’s a very good feeling, knowing that I was completely connected to the process and the product. The result of course is far from perfect, I can see now ways I would have altered the design. But on the other hand, the charm of a handmade offering is not that of the cold perfection of anonymous machine made goods. It's the humble work of my hands so despite all imperfections, I’m pretty happy with the results.

(It was funny when we went back to Ireland the last time, one day Himself was wearing the jumper. His old lad looked at it and –not realizing that this was the result of the fleece he’d given me—made a crack about “taking off that quare yoke, and putting on a proper shirt.”

Ah well, we’re not all such romantics in this world. Probably just as well)

The Book Meme

2005-04-11T19:12:00.000-04:00

Mercy Philathetes, I suppose the going tone in response is for some reason I'm supposed to be aggrieved and perturbed by the question of books, but in fact I'm delighted.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
After much casting about I suddenly realized that life is simply too short to be anything other than that most delightful of Henry James' books, The Ambassadors. To spend my days drinking in the charm and intimacy of Paris would be the life for me.
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Yes yes, all my life. Early on there was Curdie in George McDonald's Princess and the Goblin. Then as a teen I was constantly falling for Tristan in the many versions of Tristan and Iseult. I loved all the versions, but spent a lot of time with Howard Pile’s versions. Later, well there was of course poor Jude in Jude the Obscure, Tarry Flynn, from Patrick Kavanaugh’s fine autobiographical novel. Also Paul Morel in Sons and Lovers. Later Aragorn in Tolkien’s Ring Trilogy. Yes, I suppose I am a hopeless romantic.
The last book you read: I suppose you mean finished? Well that would be Anthony Burgess Nothing Like the Sun --his speculative fictional biography of Shakespeare. Just before that I read his Dead Man in Deptford on Marlowe. Also very good.
The last book you bought is: EK Chambers: The Medieval Stage (on the re-emergence of Drama in England and Europe after the fall of Rome up to the point of the Elizabethan stage)
What are you currently reading?My night side table is full of books because I tend to go off on enthusiasms, reading everything I can on a subject, and then doing the same on another subject. Ever since I was a teen I was famous in my family for spiriting half a dozen books on one subject off to my room and disappearing for days at a time. The enthusiasm for a subject would take hold and I’d consume everything I could on the topic. And, rather than drop one enthusiasm to take up the next, I just keep piling on in a very undisciplined way.

A lot of books on languages and in other languages, because I’m always about a step from proficiency in French, Latin, Gaelic, Spanish, Italian. I entertain hopes of getting on to Greek and Portugese, but I haven’t gotten too far with either of those. Having studied a few of those languages seriously in school, they are not so hard to make out, and keep me up on languages. Some optimistic patch of blue in my brain is hoping to arrive at some universal understanding of Indo-European languages through reading and re-reading them.
Robert Graves: The White Goddess
William M. Murphy: Prodigal Father on John Yeats ( the poet's father)
Seamus Heaney: Beowulf (it’s amazing that you can get a feel for the Old English if you read it as you go)
Julius Caesar: HistoriesHerodotus: Histories
Joseph Hart’s edited anthology Che, the Life, Death & Afterlife of a Revolutionary
Mario Vargas Llosa: The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta
Eduardo Galeano Open Veins of Latin America
Pablo Neruda:Extravagaria

Richard Rohrer: Everything Belongs
Pema Chodron: The Places that Scare You
(Most of these I dip into before sleep or in the early morning. They are working all together to get at something deep down I want to get a handle on, though exactly what is a mystery even to me)

Five books you would take to a deserted island:
Yeats Collected Poems
Seamus Heaney Collected Poems
James Joyce Finnegan’s Wake (for the laughs)
Hugh Kenner The Pound Era
Chambers Dictionary of Word Origins

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?
1.One of my favorite priests, Joe F who runs the Vincentian NGO at the United Nations and always has a few good books going.
2. My buddy Bill, a labor lawyer with the heart of a poet. He can recite long passages of poems from memory.
3. Janeboatler who is fellow reader of Henry James, and always has wisdom to share.

So there we are. Nothing too exotic I suppose, but then of course wherever you go, there you are...

And what of you who might be lurking? If you haven't answered the question elsewhere, I'd love to hear the names of your favorites. Who says books are obsolete?

Friday Free Verse: You be the Editor

2005-04-01T09:03:00.000-05:00

Maybe you'd care to help me out with this one. Here's a poem that came quite happily one morning, but I've never been thoroughly happy with it, especially with the ending. A little too pat, finished. ANd, while recognizing that one can only write one's own poem, for this your thoughts and advice would be most welcome.

Morning Grace

I awake by reflected light
And am beholden
To a mucky puddle
Or the van’s mirrored door,
For this gold on loan,
Pooling on my north-facing
One-windowed writing room floor.

I’ve been lying in bed
Enumerating to keep at bay
The response-possibilities
Of a new day.
But then the passing light
Pauses golden on the floor
Illuminates the everyday writing desk,
The clutter of pens, paper staples, glue
Tools of the effort to say something true.

Light on loan is honest light,
Being simply Is.

Under the heavens we spin
Beneath the moving tree.
Still the quiet gift of light
Wrests some peace from me.

Crowning the Bog with Thorns and Gold

2005-04-01T08:50:00.000-05:00

This is a picture of the Furze that blooms in large clumps on the bog through the spring. I don't believe it's related, but the flower is in the shape of a legume flower, like Crown Vetch or Butter & Eggs. It has the remarkably exotic fragrance of coconuts! and its woody stems are very prickly.

Like a lot of local plants, it has local names. I've thought it would be called Gorse, but at least in County Offaly it seems to go by the name of furze, though why one needs to bother with a name is something the locals might wonder. Only the rare tourist on the bog asks about the names of the flowers. Most everyone else just takes them slightly for granted.

And while you'd never pick any of this stuff, it's not uncommon to see an old lad coming up from the bog, his boots fairly mucky, but with a daisy in the buttonhole of his jacket. It's a comfort to me to think of a time and place where time moves slowly enough that a person might enjoy their lunch, or at least a cup of tea in a jam jar, out on the bog, feeling the breeze, listening for the cuckoo's song.

For a day when our hearts are rivven, in tatters with sorrow and relief, joy and mourning, it's good to remember the prescence of beauty in our lives

2005-04-01T08:37:00.000-05:00

God is nearer to us than our own soul, for he is ground in whom our soul stands, and he is the means that keeps the substance and the sensuality together so that it shall never depart. For our soul sits in God, in true rest, and our soul stands in God in sure strength, and our soul is naturally rooted in God, in endless love. And therefore if we will have knowing of our soul, and communing and daliance therewith, it is right to seek into our lord God in whom it is enclosed.
· · ·
Also, as truly as God is our Father, so as truly God is our Mother. And that he shows in all and namely in these sweet words, where he says,'I it am'. That is to say,'I it am, the might and goodness of Fatherhead; I it am, the wisdom and the kindness of Motherhood; I it am, the light and the grace, that is all blessed love; I it am, the Trinity; I it am, the Unity; I it am, the high sovereign goodness of all manner of things; I it am, that makes you to love; I it am, that makes you to long, the endless fullness of all true desires'.

God is nearer to us than our own soul, for he is ground in whom our soul stands, and he is the means that keeps the substance and the sensuality together so that it shall never depart. For our soul sits in God, in true rest, and our soul stands in God in sure strength, and our soul is naturally rooted in God, in endless love. And therefore if we will have knowing of our soul, and communing and daliance therewith, it is right to seek into our lord God in whom it is enclosed.
· · ·
Also, as truly as God is our Father, so as truly God is our Mother. And that he shows in all and namely in these sweet words, where he says,'I it am'. That is to say,'I it am, the might and goodness of Fatherhead; I it am, the wisdom and the kindness of Motherhood; I it am, the light and the grace, that is all blessed love; I it am, the Trinity; I it am, the Unity; I it am, the high sovereign goodness of all manner of things; I it am, that makes you to love; I it am, that makes you to long, the endless fullness of all true desires'.
~Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love

The Cultural Vacuum of the Xian Right

2005-03-30T00:54:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure if I can express the epiphany too well, but it seems worth the effort to try. Off and on through my adult years I've tried to make sense of the conservative impulse, and in particular the Christian conservative impulse. 25 years ago I was deeply involved with a fellow who was the product of right wing christian conservative lunatic family. He was an avowed atheist, but had grown up in a Bible thumping, prophesy spewing family in southern Missouri.

When we weren't engaged in exploring more mundane and stimulating aspects of the physical, we were busy trying to make sense of the Christian Conservative mindset. Growing up in Quaker Philadelphia, I had no idea that more than half of the country was becoming so rabidly conservative. Christian and Intolerant were not equivalents in my neck of the woods. This fellow, trying to make sense of the East Coast zeitgeist, also tried to make sense of his bizarre childhood, the prayer services night upon night; of the witch hunt for Satan worshippers after "evidence" was found in the town; of his preacher father kidnapping him from his mother and driving half way cross the country so she would never find them again.

His childhood had been bizarre, but it also served as a wonderful window into the world of what many of us now think of wingnuttery.

I've spent a long time teasing apart the elements that went in to such a world, but I still have trouble fathoming how the Right Wing "Focus on the Family" extremists have become such a force. Of course, mostly its masterful media manipulation. But the people we see on TV in front of Terry Schiavo's hospice are very much like the characters in the old boyfriend's tales of life in good old Neosho Missouri.

These days I have little interest in understanding that conservative world. But I am thinking a lot about how this all came about. It occurs to me that the problem that's developed in the Christian church in America is that it has grown up in a cultural vacuum of sorts. The Christian (Catholic) church got to be the dominant church by incorporating the cultural (pagan) practices of the locals. The sacred groves and healing wells all got turned over to veneration of saints whose relics took the place of the local wood or fertility god/dess.

The rituals were carried out in the midst of a community. Everyone knew each other and their grand parents had known their grandparents. It had gone on that way, little changed for at least a thousand years in many places. And not only did they know each other, they knew each others sins and failings. They all had been to war with (or against) each other. They knew where the bodies were buried, so to speak.

Now off they toddle to the New World of North America- the new Eden. They finally see themselves "getting it right." They can live with the conceit of their own spotlessness. They can believe that the sinners are "over there" (point wherever you like, native peoples, enslaved Africans, backward immigrant groups...)

Christians left behind their sins, and were now were living in a cultural vacuum. Convinced of their own piety, they embark on spectacles like the Schiavo case, simply because they can. Only the denial of your own history, your own wickedness can explain the phenomenon of so many people casting stones at this Michael Schiavo.

Reflecting on Yesterday, Easterday.

2005-03-28T10:36:00.000-05:00

A bleak and rainy morning today. Were it not for the flowers on the table, I'd scarcely imagine it was Easter Monday. Still, there's a relaxed feeling of going nowhere, doing nothing in particular. A day to rest after all the activity of Easter day.

I love Easter Monday this way. Time to reflect on the previous day and put together the disparate elements.

Now my children are older, 10 and 12, there's not the mad rush downstairs to hunt for eggs. As the Easter Bunny, I decorate the table with flowers, trails of eggs, china birds, a carved wooden rooster and all the other little objects which have come to be part of our Easter table. There's usually a little egg tree made with blown eggs, sometimes a nest from shavings of wood, an little china rabbits who look like they've just left this trail in the midst of a field of flowers. The children love the easter table, as much for the pretty wonderland as for their basket of sweets. Every year there's an unusual book or a little toy: a kite or jacks, or whirligig of some sort. Nothing flashy or usual, just a little something to break up the "monotony" of chocolates.

Breakfast is simple, just enough to keep everyone from fainting in church. This year we went to the later service, which meant we had time to linger over breakfast. Talk turned to a funny Irish TV show we have on DVD, Father Ted. We discussed the episode where Sister Assumpta comes to give the lads (three priests living on an island off the edge of Ireland) a right pentitential Lent. She gives them baths with ice water, chases them with sally rods,gives them indian burns. From there we went on to discuss the nature of schoolyard tricks: Indian Burns, gardens of red & white roses made on your hand, whacking your hand with a comb and making your finger bleed by swinging it round in circles for 60 seconds...

Then to church. Not unlike hearing mass in a train station, so much commotion, so many kids in uncomfortable shoes and suits. There were baptisms, so the place was charged with energy. We never seemed to settle into a quiet prayerfulness. Still the place was full of life.

Home again to hurry with the meal. Guests were coming, 9 guests, possible 13 plus the four of us. No time to waste. While I made the dough for Easter bread, the children filled eggs and hid them for their younger cousins who would be coming. We cooked a glaze for the ham, and spinach with basil for a spinach souffle ( no local asparagus to be had at the co-op in late March, so I needed to do something grand instead).

Finally at 4, the children and I gathered round the kitchen table to shape the bread dough into Easter and spring time shapes. We each took a little handful and let our fancy fly to what we could shape with dough to speak the meaning of Springtime and Easter. Soon we had a funny collection of crosses, a butterfly, a tulip, a daisy, the sun, Saturn, Jesus ( looking a bit like a girl with braids and beard) a whale, a dove, a flattened elephant, a mole, several easter eggs and a couple of Celtic knots. We laughed and talked at some of our more ridiculous efforts. The flattened elephant came about after we kept each guessing that the other's work was a flattened elephant, so finally we just produced one! We washed them with sweetened milk and sprinkled some of them with the tiny rainbow colored balls usually reserved for cookies, then in the over they went to bake.

By that time, guests were arriving. Wine was being poured. The children were trouping around in a mad dash for Easter eggs.

Dinner was delicious. The company was grand. Lots of stories, lots of jokes. A few of the strange family ghost stories as the evening wore on.

By 10 the guests were gone. One of the Speechless kids dragged out the latest book of Jeeves. We had a good laugh hearing how Bertram poured a sack of flour on himself and lost a favorite hideous vase thanks to the quick thinking Jeeves.

All in all a blessed day. Full of flowers, friends and stories. Who could ask for anything richer than all of that?

The Easter Vigil

2005-03-26T10:22:00.000-05:00

Well this is getting very church-y here. Just a few more days and we'll be back to the more usual fare.

Tonight is the Vigil, when we light the Paschal fire in the courtyard of the church. Incense, like salt, will be thrown on the flames and the sparks and perfume will rise up in the cold night air. I remember other years looking up at the sparks rising up in the night sky and seeing the stars so far above. The sparks and the stars seemed to be dancing together.

The mass begins outside, and we know ourselves connected to a vast universe of life. Then, accompanied by a big African drum, we sing "The Spirit of Christ, calls us from Death into Life" over and over and over. We process into the church, coming up onto the portico, through the big front doors into the vestibule and into the sanctuary. The procession up to the sanctuary is illuminated only by the light of that bonfire, and as we step into the dark church, I am always reminded of how it would be to be stepping away from the world of life into death-- the long weary procession of souls going off into the darkness of death-- but as we enter the sanctuary we are each given a candle which we light from a flame taken from the Paschal fire.

And as we walk up into the sanctuary, we see the faces of friends and family. All I can think of is how like the great reunion of life to come is this procession. It's very powerful in a quiet quiet way. No one has ever told me that that is what they are also mindful of the experience of how it might be in the Life to come, but they don't need to say it. The experience speaks for itself.

The whole thing feels ancient and pagan in a way that seems good to me. It's so organic. Part of the very fiber of what it is to be human, one small soul, holding the seed of a far larger fire, a larger life, alone but united in the vastness of the universe.

From there we hear "our name" our history, all the many readings which tell in an abbreviated version how we are loved, and how we have failed to love God who called us to life. The night is very long, but it ends with the glorious light of the resurrection. After the readings including the passion, the lights in the Sanctuary are thrown on, hundreds of lilies, smelling so sweet are brought into the sanctuary, the Alleluia is sung, our cathechumens are baptised and confirmed, then comes the great Thanksgiving of the Eucharist. The night which began in darkness finishes in a glorious celebration of light and joy. It's a marvelous feast for the senses.

And here,not to try to convert anyone, but for Cervantes's sake I continue to share a bit more of the interior experience of faith I offer the Prayers of the Faithful for the Easter Vigil. (~And Dread Pirate Roberts may be glad to note that I continue in my radical way to evoke the feminine as well as the masculine countenance of God)

We have seen the Paschal fire, blazing in the night. Kindle the seed of that fire in our hearts. With zeal like fire, let your love be seen in our church.

The bitter fragrance of incense mixes with the lilies sweet perfume, just as our sorrow mixes with joy this night. Unifying all we call opposites-- close as our very next breath--hold us close to the mystery of your death and resurrection.

Tonight we eat at one table and drink from the common cup. All wine would be bitter, all bread stale but for the gift of Your Presence that sweetens and sustains our lives. Help us bring this sustenance to a hungry world.

You love us like a mother, tenderly washing our soiled face and hands. As we renew our baptismal vows this night, let us feel your love in the holy water washing over us.

Waking in the dark morning of early spring, we hear the first birds, singing to the dawn. Let our hearts sing such a song of love to you, that even in darkness, the good news of your resurrection will be known.

All these gifts you give us, meeting us as we are. One by one we slip away these earthly bonds. Help us to nurture and hold dear the sick and those who mourn. We remember all who have passed on to a fuller communion with you. Shine your face upon them.

Friday Free Verse

2005-03-25T12:57:00.000-05:00

Good Friday, Good Night

I kiss the cross
As I would kiss you good night.
“Now I lay me down to sleep”
Now we lay you down to rest
And all the dreams and possibilities
Of what could be,
The sorrow at what was poorly done
And laughter at was good and fun
Is gone over again,
Released~
Ashes strewn while standing on a bridge
Time and river flowing below.
“Now I lay me down…”
“Abba, why hast thou forsaken me?”
“Mamma, don’t go, not yet…”
And I say,
“I love you
and good night.”

Holy Cow! They're walking on water!

2005-03-24T09:03:00.000-05:00

Holy Cow, they're walking on water!

Yes Ireland is a sacred place. Regular milk tastes like cream, and indeed, even the cows walk on water. These sacred cows were found just outside Tralee, down in County Kerry.

Given the reverent tone of the previous post, the little divil in me just needs to get out and run round somehow. (Once years ago I had a dream I was simultaneously buidling up and tearing down the walls of a great ancient Cathedral. I've been at it ever since.)

Triduum Prayers

2005-03-23T15:37:00.000-05:00

I'm fortunate to be part of group that writes the prayers for our church. I've been asked to do the petitions for Holy Thursday. I thought I might share them here. Some fellow bloggers, like the good Cervantes, have been trying to make sense what this faith stuff is all about. It seems to me that its easier to express this way than through the heady arguments that most discussions of faith vs doubt, morals vs dogma etc seem to break into.

This time, the week between Palm Sunday and Easter we call Holy Week, and the three days leading up to Easter are called the Triduum. It's a real example of Kairos taking primacy over Chronos. The ordinary clock time melts away and instead we are wrapped in the timeless present of the passion and ressurection.

For some reason I have always been far more in tune with Kairos than Chronos. I've never been good at keeping clock time, but recognizing the fullness of the moment, getting up and doing what was to be done when it felt like the right time to do it, has always been my way. (And when it comes to deadlines for writing grant proposals, there's a slightly hysterical interplay of Chronos and Kairos that beguiles and energizes my efforts...)

In the timeless place of the Triduum, the "past" is alive and present, we step out of oridnary time, and experience briefly the wholeness which is surely God.

Anyway, here they are:

Prayers of the Faithful: Holy Thursday

Here we gather as your people, joined in the timeless mystery of the Triduum. As we enter this place of quiet peace, anoint us, your church, with the balm of healing.

We lift up the priests of our Church-- the ordained, the newly ordained, and those still excluded from ordination—longing for the time when the gifts of all are equally recognized and available to your service.

We celebrate the gift of the Eucharist, given to us this night. As we encounter You present in our lives, we are fed. Give us compassion to recognize and respond to the hungry of the world.

Today we commemorate the martyrdom of Bishop Oscar Romero who taught us to live in defense of the poor and suffering, the victims of injustice and oppression. May we, like him, be a transforming power for our world. May our voice, our feet, our hands become those of Christ, building up the reign of God in our world today.

Our nation is caught in a vortex of moral degradation. Holy words like “A Culture of Life” are used for cynical and exploitative ends. Fill the hearts and minds of our leaders and citizens with the true power and meaning of these words.

“Fist, stick, knife, gun.” Our world is living and dying by violence and warfare. You tell us to put away the sword. Guide us in the way of Peace, the ways of Forgiveness and Humility.

Hardly understanding what we do, we tenderly wash each others’ feet. Bind our hearts to this moment, this gift. Remind us to bring such tender compassion to all our dealings with family, friends and strangers.

We lift up our sick, our beloved dead and all who mourn, knowing that You love us to the end. We ask you to embrace our sufferings and comfort us with your presence.

2005-03-17T13:03:00.000-05:00

The road to the bog.

Outside the Singing House

2005-03-17T12:54:00.000-05:00

The Speechless family,

Paddy's Day Lament

2005-03-17T12:34:00.000-05:00

Dispersal without Benediction
the children's cemetary, Glebe

We broke ranks and moved freely
From that hill, up above Moyclair
We shuffled about
Pausing for a moment's chat
Or bit of consolation
From our concelebrants
Trying to break the solemn mood,
The sense of loss,
To recall the optimism that had been ours
Coming into this Pentecost.

Surely we’d gather again, soon
As we were before his leaving.
But this time instead a chill wind
Blew down from the glen,
Mist wrapped the path in grey fleece
Obscuring rocks, roots, wrong turns
We stumbled on the pathway home.

That damp clung on day upon day
Shrouding all in mizzle doubt,
A summer of uncertainty.

And when at last the sounding gong
Rolled down Moyclair to our homes
Calling us to gather again
We strayed in like lambs
Unaware of the fold.
Only to find ourselves now
Unwelcomed
Initiated in exclusion
Having stumbled on those stone walls
That for sixteen centuries at least
Let rest the little ones unwashed
Or those too poor to pay for
Consecrated ground.
We stumbled over the hardness of those walls
That for too long and too often have served
Turning the altar of the Living God
Into a burial ground.

Response today to Plato's Dialogue

2005-03-16T11:33:00.000-05:00

You need a steel trap mind to hang with some of these guys over at the dialogue but here'a a little poem that sort of relates:

View from the Bridge

One of those flighty people
I’ve long known
I’d never serve as
The footing or pier
To elevate a span,
My legs sunk deep in bedrock
Unstirred by the cold flow
Or sudden flood.

Nor have I ever sensed
I’d make a more worthwhile
Bridge surface
Stretched groaning, glad
Under the hundreds of tramping feet
And wheels rushing mad
To accelerate the racing
Machine of commerce.

Instead I suppose I’m one of those
Capricious well-strung cables
Going slack or taught
By conditions of heat and air.
Tuning myself,
With all the others,
To play a thrumming song;
Moved or jangled by the wind’s caress;
Giving to and pulling from
The heart of the earth,
While reaching toward the sky’s expanse
Daring to lift hands in prayer
To the Impossible Divine who
Hooks me it seems out of the air
To find myself,
By some miraculous gift of a plan,
Freed to sing
By all the limits
Which bind me.

Repeating myself

2005-03-14T17:54:00.000-05:00

(Repeating an old post for Cervantes' amusement here.)...Over at the the dia-blog , the hot new spot to consider the way toward common ground between theistic and humanists, things are just warming up. The journey embarked on feels rather like a trip into the uncharted wilderness of old, to look for dragons, and to decide if we all can name and agree that what we see are dragons or demons or angels, or simply forces of nature.

But back here in the Arcadian Retreat where I am reclining, picnicking on the peeled grapes and persimmons of my imagination, I'm considering the idea of the wilder lands.

As a child I couldn't bear the notion of Eden. Somehow it sickened me to imagine a "first place" where life began. I didn't believe it anyway, not literally then or now. I recall asking my mother who made God if God made humans. At four or five I had already cussed out the notion of God making smaller God making still smaller God, like a set of nesting boxes. Lucky for me I had parents who let the questions be just questions. Nevertheless it sickened me to think of the place beyond that initial biggest of all boxes. Still does sort of.

And pretty soon I cam to see the creation stories as simply stories. Reading the Epic of glazing, people via (much as I could...) and other versions, it was easy enough to accept the sense that we humans are story-making people. And at the same time, perhaps that we call God moves through us as the breath of our stories.

One day recently I awoke from sleep with an all out awareness of what Eden might have been, how it felt, what the like was light. Now I'll grant you, I was reading one of the Narnia books to my children at the time, so I'm sure the flavor of his perspective poured into my consciousness. What I got was, essentially this:

He loved to surprise me. He would bring them regularly for me to name, singly or in a pair, or sometimes a whole little family of creatures nosing around, or gamboling over the ground together.
Our days were so slow. We'd sit together and look, laughing with surprise, delighting in each new kind; the variation was all the fun. Some with fur and tails, some tripping over too many legs, or big feet. Some flew, some crept, others leapt.
And there we'd sit together, or sometimes even join in, but mostly beholding each creature, feeling deeply into their inside and finding their name.
How did he find them? Did he sing a song for them to find him? I'm not sure, at the time I never thought to ask, but he would go and then come back with a sly gleam in his eye and a tiny bird or a wee large-eyed fur ball of a thing hidden in his hand.
We'd been there what seemed like forever, and we never stopped discovering new creatures. The land was so complete. Even now if I close my eyes, breathe in and out slowly, I find I 'm there, at home again. --The trees were tall, cedars we called them. Their branches began far above us. And the spot was high with large flat rocks underfoot and more scattered about. These we used as table and chairs. The sun streamed in round the day, and the sweet songs of the birds filled the air, along with the deep scent of pine needles and the freshness of the stream.
I guess it was a kind of camping really. Later I thought of it as playing house, and the entire outdoors was our home. We called it Galleon's Lap. I never thought of it then, but I'm not sure now why we called it that. It just seemed like its name. Now it seems like it might be helpful to help people find it again, to recognize it if they were to stumble upon it themselves.
In the mornings we would listen to the birds, and try their different songs. I would sweep the floor clean, then have a swim in the stream. And as I sat with my hair spread out, drying on a sun warmed rock, he'd come whistling up the path with a tiny creature in the crook of his arm or a few more following behind.
In the afternoon there'd always be a storm. From there at Galleon's Lap we'd see the clouds gathering across the great rift valley. The land would come alive under the power of the wind. Streaks of light would slash the sky, silver blue clouds, white lightening, then the rain would fall. Some days we'd dance in the rain, other times we'd simply watch the spectacle, safe beneath our giant trees, resting our backs on the cool rocks.
After that we'd lie down together and join together, touching and kissing and making love, making each other feel so good. Then we'd fall asleep for a little while, then get up and have our dinner. I had found the trees which gave their fruits, or he'd have a clutch of eggs, and we'd pluck herbs from the rocky places. We had milk and honeycomb, and always the cold sweet water from the spring.
We went on this way for the longest time, and I can tell you we were happy. It's hard now for others to imagine contentment complete. We were full of knowing each other wholly, and knowing too the land.
Yes, it felt more like forever than just the few moments it takes to tell about it. We didn't even wonder about it then, no thoughts of the past or questions of the future, just enjoyed it, day upon day. Yes, it was blessed.

Paddy's Week Poem

2005-03-14T11:22:00.000-05:00

Soliloquy on Things Missed from Home

"You could do far worse than pass a wet evening
Feet up to a turf fire
A cup of tea and a lump of curn cake
In your hand.

"Or of a Sunday afternoon
Sitting along the Shannon-side
Having the craic with the lads,
Chatting the girls,
A pint and the river slipping by.

"Or walking through the fields
After a shower
When the wind lifts the clouds
So the sun streams gold under a silver sky
And all the meadow weeds are crowned in gold.

just in that second
If you half close your eyes
You can catch a glimpse of treasures more common than rare,
The breath of heaven in a summer's evening,
Driving home the cows through the rain blown air."

Her hair a lovely green

2005-03-13T22:59:00.000-05:00

I just came from Philadelphia's St. Patrick's Day Parade. This is the fourth year I've gone for a stroll up Broad Street, following behind my daughter's dance school, along with 50 other parents.
I suppose parades often bringing out the bizarre minstrel element of society, but what parade is quite so weird as Paddy's Day? And, while in most parades the people on parade are the spectacle, for Paddy's Day you'd be hard pressed to decide who looks odder, the marching girls in electric color sequined frocks, poodle socks and poodle wigs, or the spectators bedecked with kelly green jewels, boas, stove pipe hats 2' high, tri-color hair and faces...the bizarro tackiness goes on and on. Of course besides the dancers, who seem to come in sets of the dozen dozen variety, there are the Ancient Order of Hibernians with their old style sashes, derbies and walking sticks, the marching bands with flags, bells and whistles and multiple fraternal hoards of this and that. Interspersed with these are the floats addressing the theme which this year was how Patrick brought the Eucharist to Ireland, and how through the Eucharist we are one people. -- Great stuff, that theme, but more an idea than a visual guide.
For goodness sake, why couldn't the theme be something simple like "Ireland at the Crossroads." You could work and rework that theme for years, like a favorite gansey pattern, following the same pattern but in different stitches, and new wool...But bizarre as it sounds, this was the theme. As a result, this year there were not just about 100 St. Patricks, but also about 25 Jesus's running round the place, floating by as it were, offering the sacred cup, the morsel of bread. You had the urge to bless yourself everytime you saw the man, but caught yourself just in time.
Perhaps the parade would be better understood and appreciated if we'd had sense enough to bring along a little flask of Jamison's or Paddy. Without a drink, all those green headed people made you feel you must be soused.
Talking it over with a dear friend whose father was part of a group that really brought new life to Irish Traditional Music, who really can be blamed for all the best and worst of the Irish scene today, we speculated on how many of us have deep deep emotional ties to Ireland: the sense of loss, of having been banished from Eden in some way is part of it. And too the humiliation of having been a people so long oppressed. And seeing our families sucking in their own emotions to what was lost and left behind...it's something better felt than explained. Nevertheless, you can't help but wonder if the raw sentiment of loving your dead ancestors and the old homeplace wasn't perhaps so very tender that it needed to be covered up.
The green hair and ridiculous hats, I can see now, are not so much people trying to connect with their heritage, but really people trying to cover their vulnerablity and pride in something which , when you examine it, their pride of only because it's the only bag their family could give them when they left home so long ago.
The Ireland they hold such memories of is almost gone. It's maybe more alive in memories on this side of the Atlantic than over in Ireland itself. Still the land is the same land, the light is the same light as it was at the time most of our ancestors left the place.

Bonus (Free!) Friday Free Verse

2005-03-12T09:47:00.000-05:00

Dryad of the Masque

She made up her face for the day.
First of course there had been the washing
Followed by cream.

Now under the eyes the masking stick
For dark circles,
She remembered still how her eyes had been
like murky springtime pools
Spawning unexpected life beneath silt covered leaves of last autumn
Slime molds, frog eggs, mosquito grub.
Now they were just dark holes she peered into through the glass.

Now the foundation, a light powder
soft and pale as a blanket
they'd buried the baby in
there beside the old house in early spring.
The thin white wool had hardly seemed enough
To keep away the chill wind which drove them
Too quickly away, back in the house.
And her face then had become itself a mask
For months conversation came her way
People rose before her eyes,
She smiled and nodded at the appropriate places
But her ears were listening for the baby's cry
Her eyes were searching for some stirring under
The blanket of snow covered leaves, under the earth.

She powdered her face, and now the mascara,
Just a touch, to make her lashes long
Lashes that had not blinked back tears
In all these many years
But sometimes standing before the raw abundance of new life
Blazed with an anger at what was given so cheaply
And ripped away at such a price.
Only to avoid shocking those who expected her eyes to be
Still and steady, did she persist with frivolous mascara.

Now the blush, make it a soft rose
No longer the first blush of young love
When they'd both been so hungry and willing.
She was as eager and confident as a young doe,
And he, fine buck had wanted her there,
In the brushy woods behind the meadows.
The bog that summer had been dry and firm as an old sponge
Afterwards they lay listening to each other's breath.
You could feel your beating heart making the bog thump
And then Willie Kenney, ambling down the lane.
They quick pulled on their clothes,
Old Willie the omadon would never tell
Nor be believed if he tried.

Still she felt her cheeks blush
when she saw him coming then
For weeks on after that summer day.

But now the roses in her cheek were just to suggest
The evidence of health and newness,
As was it all, really, a bracketed nod
Standing for the knowledge that one should try
To stand for something more.

Finally the lips, and here too the color must be rose.
The faded rose, like the fading feel of his kiss
Last on her lips some ten years before.
She tried to find the old line, that for many years had been
Drawn hard.
Now her lips seemed to mix with the wrinkles of her face
So you couldn't say too well where one ended and the other began. So be it. There was no defining things with the old lines anymore.

Then, a quick comb through the hair, and here she was,
Set to weather another day.

Friday Free Verse

2005-03-11T22:18:00.000-05:00

Song of the Salmon

Swimming upstream
River dark
All I know
I'm heading home.
Leaping up from water to air
Out of shadow to light
Then back in the stream again
Head-long arching against the tide

Oh to simply lift
Out of the suck and slog
Skim above the crashing chaos of Now
Like the eternal host of the air.

But I'm in a river
And there's a river in me
Churning ever on
Pushing myself up, out, along
While a new life's being borne
To a place where time and holdings don't matter.
No need to squeeze through this tight place.
It's finding its own way out through me.

And where is God in any of this?
God ~ the home I'm heading for
God ~ in the courage to leap
God ~ in the light glancing over the stream
God of the river
God of the light
Give me the urge
The push.

Resting on a rock in the river

2005-03-10T22:36:00.000-05:00

So why not try to see if there is anything numinous, anything that might put you back in touch with the great All that Is, living in the world today?

Not so long ago the idea was easy enough. It was living it which took a sort of foolish perversity. The first little inkling was simply that what fed the brain might not feed the body or spirit; that perhaps there was more to this life than reading Heidegger and Tillich and making intelligent conversation. Realizing vaguely that perhaps beyond just thinking there was lots to DO was a novel in those first months just out of college, but soon doing became its own adventure.

First came a few tentative stabs at action: drawing, bread baking, painting pictures. Then a garden, then sewing and knitting. Eventually spinning, pottery, dying wool, and some terrible attempts at carpentry. And too along came a husband, a farm kid who encouraged my gardens and delighted in my canned tomatoes and rhubarb pies.

Babies of course came next. Now all the strangeness of a world moving on, into their generation. New music, new ways of relating over the net. Still so much of the old holds strong. Singing songs, we all know hundreds of song. Retelling old family stories. Car rides with long talks. Saturday afternoons straightening and anymore it's almost like a party, getting the house unjumbled.

Life lived without too many words is quite worthwhile. Emerson may be all wet, the unexamined life may be the best life for living. The only issue is, it goes by awfully fast. Once you lay down in the stream, give up the power to name where you've been or where your heading, you relinquish power over time and words. You're simply caught in the currents that take you.

Still, if you let yourself sometimes rest on a warm rock for a while, you may get enough distance to get a momentary glimpse, a romantic perspective on your life as it is lived. Those moements of romance are the markers, like clues on a treasure map. Hold them close. Enjoy every one. You'll find the perfect spot at last to dig and find you've dredged up your life's gold.

Wisdom from 757 B.C. to 1962 A.D. to today

2005-03-07T12:53:00.000-05:00

We find guideposts when we look for them. There is, I believe, no one way up the mountain to Truth. Still, there are prophets, and their words have a resonance that rings true, just as a bell rings true when it is struck in the proper spot.

Here are some words which have guided me along the way lately:

This, rather is the fasting that I wish:
Releasing those bound unjustly...
Sharing your bread with the hungry,
Sheltering the oppressed and the homeless,
Clothing the naked when you see them
And not turning your back
on your own.
If you bestow your bread
on the hungry
And satisfy the afflicted,
the God will guide you always...
God will renew your strength,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
Like a spring
whose water never fails.
"Repairer of the breach,"
They shall call you,
"Restorer of ruined homesteads."
~Isaiah 58: 6-7, 10-12

And after I read that, I read this:

The charity of Christ which makes us solicitious for our families and for our American Society must also make us solicitious for the welfare of the whole world...We are overcome by evil not only if we allow {terrorism} to take over the world but if we allow the methods and standards of {terrorism} to influence our own. If we adopt a policy of hatred, of liquidation of those who oppose us, of unrestricted use of total war, of a spirit of fear and panic, of exxagerated propaganda, of unconditional surrender to pure nationalism, we have already been overcome by evil.
~Chicago's Cardinal Meyer, Lenten Pastoral found in
Thomas Merton: Peace in the Post Christian Era,
Orbis Book, p. 93

One word was substituted, yes, in 1962, Meyer used Communism where today we put Terrorism Cardinal Meyer spoke for his times, but he still speaks to us today.

I don't spend too much time worrying about dentological systems or other rules on how to live. My actions are based on the sense that "the Word is in you, deep within. The Word is in your heart." Living so that that word is made flesh is far more important than figuring the ins and outs of why it is as it is.

In these times I sense myself and my family having more in common with the poor and helpless of Iraq than with the decision makers who run the US government. We are apparently powerless to change what's happening. We are not being heard or listened to, and any pretense of heeding the will of the people was long ago dropped by the Neo-Con Thugs in Washington.

It falls on each of us to be doers of justice, makers of peace, standing exactly where we are. May that justice reach out beyond us to a place of Ashanti, Peace, for the world at large. From my experience there is no rule carved in stone, the only rule is living, moving in our midst, it's Love, the living Word.

Friday Free Verse Vice

2005-03-04T13:41:00.000-05:00

The Longing Continues

I believe each time I set out
On my next adventure, I'll satisfy the urge,
But the longing continues.
Beyond scallops in a garlic cream sauce,
Past a slubbed silk skirt and organdy blouse,
Over and above the satisfaction of being recognized
a worthy writer, loving mother, desirable wife,
The longing has not been quenched.

There are of course, options--
Hair removal,
Teeth bleaching,
Weight loss.
There's no end to the personal care
products and makeover methods
Which promise to evince a new me,
which I can claim as my look.
A way to capture of the essence
Of Buddhist consciousness;
The Taos, Southwest;
Or Shaker austerity;
And claim as a discovered, recovered better version of Me.
And still the longing flickers on...

I can recall a dream received
Half in song.
A house settled a quarter turn
From a river, a fast flowing rock-strewn stream
Which was itself singing a song:

"Come back to the house by the river.
Come back to the house of the song."

The river, the house, appeared in a clearing in the woods
Singing this song to me.

Green moss and ivy climbed the trees
Which surrounded the house held within low stone garden walls,
Set amidst a gold light dappled woods.

The whole place sang for me
A half remembered place
Stumbled on again and now found waiting!
And now at last I was ready to live there
Content at last with the legacy received-
When the alarm clock rings-
Time to rise and rush to face the day
Despite the constant tug,
The longing to return.

Dining Room Reflection

2005-02-28T11:44:00.000-05:00

Since Friday morning, Josh, Chips and Thelma have been in the kitchen, chopping vegetables, stirring vats of gravy. Now in half an hour, the doors to the dining room will be open and the guests will enter the hall.

Electricity is in the air. In the hall, the guests are gathering, looking round to see who's here. Some talk and gossip. Others just look off into space. Ron holds out his hand to me, the hundreth time we've introduced ourselves to each other. Avoiding the long hall and its line of hungry faces, I slip in a side door, through the kitchen and into the hall.

Down at the far end is the art program, run by Mr. Snipes. I've come early today just for the purpose of meeting Mr. Snipes and seeing the program in swing. 8 adults are seated at the long table, two are engaged in checkers, the rest are waiting for coloring sheets, picking their favorite markers from the bin. I take a seat beside Charmella. She offers to read to me, Frog and Toad on the Moon. She launched in and get through a page in a sort of monotone sing-song before Mr. Snipes gives out the coloring pages, and everyone eagerly begins, though now talking softly in the distracted way you do when your engaged in coloring.

Then an anticipated guest arrives, a funder, coming to see our work. I get up and went over to her. Together she, our director and I talk about the soup kitchen, the need, the people we serve and the effort to create a feeling of welcome. She wants to stay, to see what the meal is like. We tell her that of course she's welcome.

At 12:15 the doors are opened. The guests come shuffling in. Such a sad quiet crowd. These are folks who know each other, perhaps too well, floating from soup kitchen to soup kitchen through the week. Landing on our door step on the weekends. We're serving soup, followed by a chicken dinner, coffee and dessert. Everyone takes a seat. Meals are brought out on trays.

A break in the hubub for a bible reading and grace, followed by the Lord's Prayer. The Word is offered as solace to people who may be remembering a time when they were young or had heard it before. No one is expected to pray. Like bread and coffee, the Word is simply shared.

You can see the tired look in people's eyes. Winter is long. Socks get wet. The wind blows hard. You'd like a cup of coffee, a dish of noodles to serve for more. Perhaps the food is some comfort, as perhaps is the kind word of the person offering the food.

The director announces that today there will be take out, snacks for everyone to take back to their off license boarding homes to get them through the night. There will also be a pair of dry socks offered to every guest. There's a slight murmur, perhaps a ripple of thanks over this good news, especially with storms threatening for tonight.

There's little romance in such poverty, especially when you are old or helpless and feeling too alone. Still, there's some solace in coming here, to a place where you can see others, some who will remember you, whom you might think of as friends.

Above all, here in this big hall there's a sense of shelter from the wind and more, there's a sense that, at least for this moment anyway, there is Peace. And all of us, in all our life conditions, can feel and be thankful for Peace.

Song for the Lost

2005-02-25T23:01:00.000-05:00

Feeling a little lost from myself, meaning to get back to Christopher Alexander and the marvelous quiet quality of his dialogue, I offer this. I hope it marks the start of my return to more regular postings. Still, in a life like mine, discipline has ceased to be the regimented connection to a calendar or clock. Rather the best discipline I can describe is remembering to look up, look around for the idea or object swimming just out of my ken, and being mindful that it will eventually, surely return.

So here's today's offering, for the Friday Free Verse

Song for the Lost
Oh back, back ~ when will they all come back?
All the oddments and bodkins,
The missing buttons and lost keys?
The forgotten puzzle pieces,
And library books you're certain you've returned
But now have been mis-shelved,
Ruining your already much maligned reputation
And revoking library privileges, yet again, for life.
When will they finally reappear?
After the stomping round,
The rampaging and roaring,
Calling on Anthony and aide of all the Saints,
And the fires of everlasting hell
For whoever stole the missing boot,
The essential earring,
The required cufflink…
As well as the forms~
Oh Lord the stream of forms! ~
The W-2's and auto registrations, the invoices and rebate coupons
Which must be filled in complete and mailed with the missing receipt…
They're all out dancing in the cosmos
Making a ring round Orion's belt
Lifting their little legs toward Andromeda
Laughing and having such chat
About how each managed to wriggle free
Give the slip to the laws of gravity
Lifting ethereally into the upper atmosphere
And out, skirting the Van Allen belt
And coming at last on that long happy line
Doing the Alley Cat or the Electric Slide
Having the last laugh on our earthly gravitas.
But as for me, I hold to a certainty
As on the bed I lay out the orphaned socks.
I'm sure to find a few more mates come
Marching over the counterpane…
And were I to crawl round in the dust of the hidden places
Behind the bureaus and under the beds
A few of those shimmying out among the stars
Will recall the lightness of my hold
They’ll come orbiting round to me once more.

Friday Free Verse

2005-02-17T23:01:00.000-05:00

Yes, the first flowers of Spring have arrived in Philadelphia, looking fairly bedraggled, half drown by the wet soil they've been steeping in. Nevertheless their tiny white blossoms amaze me. Who knew all of this would be working its way up through mucky soil? Such a gift. And so in thanks, recognizing all of life as such a gift, I offer this:

Snowdrop
Little one, brave one.
Willing to risk,
Feel,
Reach into the deep unknown.
Nurture, induce,
Educe wee roots--
The fledgling's first feathers,
Little fingers curled on embryo arms.
Unfolding self, searching by touch alone
For the next door, the hidden key.

Tiny explorer
Fairing forward.
The seed of self.
Self's own innocence,
Spiraling into a new universe
To awaken slowly, if ever,
To layers and stratifications.

Find at last some bit of soil.
Grow there, formed by conditions of earth.
Rise at last in leaf to bloom...
And this we name destiny.
All unintending, being Self alive,
Attuned to air, soil, water and light:
You flower forth
exquisite beauty.
I'm held in the timelessness of watching
The forever Now of your flower.

Speechless

Ah, Wilderness!

2005-02-16T13:46:00.000-05:00

Valentine Verse

2005-02-14T22:33:00.000-05:00

Three days on, and still no sign of photos.

Valentines Day, all those memories of the lacy doilies and red and pink paper hearts from childhood. Memories of the little pink icing cakes my father would bring home from the city to mark the day-- the one day when pink was its own flavor.

If ever there was a day for poetry, Valentine's wins it. So here's a little something, just to keep things freshed up:

Grace after Meal
You bring me lunch,
A salad, dressing on the side.
And it is enough, the gift exchanged
Received, accepted for being what it is,
A gift.

And I take and eat as if it were
Just salad,
As if it was just that it tasted good,
And not my life you were sustaining.
And all I say is “thanks,”

All day long it’s Thanks I give
And Life I receive,
Flowing out and out.

Friday in February Free Verse

2005-02-11T17:30:00.000-05:00

I'm working on posting a picture or two,
But till then, perhaps some Friday free verse will do?

I'm hunting around for something that connects with the matter of wild freedom, since that's where I started the week. How about this, as its nearly Valentine's Day, and the weather is still so February cold and grim? Though I'm glad to say life's not nearly as grim as it was when I wrote this bit of misery. Still, isn't that what February's for? The austere misery is the reason for the season round here.

As Atrios likes to say, ~enjoy!

Irish Sky
What was I thinking
When I fell for the Irish sky
That spread across your face and in your eyes?

I knew sometimes dark clouds rolled in
And sunny spells would be dearer
Marked by passing showers.
You and others warned me
I'd never stick
the weather,
To rise morning after morning
to that inevitable rhythm of rain,
The numbing constancy of so many dark days.
Each a tortured eternity.
But even in this
--like the wisdom handed on in the past --
that stirring turf would turn the fingers black
that winnowing grain would set me itching,
or of the poison laced in little almonds--
Despite words from the wise
I cast a blind eye on the clouds,
And loved the question of weather
That trailed cross your brow,
Believing my love and laughter
Luminous enough
To light the way past any pit
In whatever weather.

Lover it is bleakest February now.
Ice an inch thick is called for tonight
And I can find no sheltering place in your arms.
Haven't seen the sun for days in your face.
I clutch the forecast for hope
Surely I'll awaken one day soon
To be caught short
By raw unexpected spring,
With that fresh honest wind
Driving tears to the eyes.

Something Wild

2005-02-07T11:58:00.000-05:00

Returning to Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, p.34: He’s still trying to identify the “quality without a name,” which is the “root criterion of a life and spirit in a person, a town, a building or a wilderness.” He has gone through several possible words and abandoned them as not fully embodying the meaning he’s trying to articulate. Then he tries this:

The quality without a name is never calculated, never perfect; that subtle balance of forces only happens when the ideas and images are left behind; and created with abandon.

Think of a truck filled with bags of cement. If the bags are stacked perfectly, in lines , it may be careful, and intelligent & quite precise. But it will not begin to have the quality without a name until there is a certain freedom there: the men who piled the bags, running and throwing them, forgetting themselves, throwing themselves into it, lost, wild…

And a steel mill too can have this quality because its freedom and its wildness show there, blazing in the night.

Freedom, wildness, blazing in the night…I never thought of cement trucks nor steel mills that way, but still I get a feeling for what he means.

Experience of the world in wildness is scarey and exhilirating. Music, dance, art give us the chance to get closer to those places that stand outside the lines of order, without having to throw ourselves completely to the center of the whirlwind. Going there, to the center of the whirlwind, you might never separate from it, your life would become the wildness you'd given yourself to, but that place, very near to it, that's when you feel yourself alive, both finite and infinite.

Sometimes I imagine I'm alone in knowing this, but of course, it's something way way ancient, probably the reason religions were invented. These days in Western World, we don't let ourselves get too close to what's wild. Do we? Maybe we do. Have you felt this? Where? How?

When I think of such wildness, I think of being over in Ireland. In the midlands, the village near our family’s farm is a quiet little place. It’s right on the Shannon, and small though it is, there’s always a few tourist about, families boating up the river, or come over for a few weeks of quiet and fishing. Most of the year there’s not lots of them, just enough to add an element of surprise, a certain cosmopolitan quality to life in the pub.

And though it’s just a little town, in Offaly, not in the West, home of so much great traditional music, still now and then, just rarely enough to make you long for it, there comes one of those nights, a great night out when the music gets going, enough drink has been taken, and there’s a certain generosity of spirit and curiosity about who's there and how far things can go, when suddenly you realize this is it, you’re having a brilliant night, best you’ve ever had till now…

It’s the music mostly, when you hear the music moving to a place, at new pitch, a wildness is set loose--everyone's let go of self, the players are chasing something wild and free, you can feel it, you’re with them--it’s like you’re all off together chasing a gleam of something, a deer? a hawk?

Something just out of the line of vision, but you can feel it, feel it and the whole place is hushed, listening, following feeling the moment for real It seems to go on outside of time, as if the clock stopped...but finally it’s too hard to sustain that concentration, thatpace, something’s got to give, something’s got to break-- you can’t keep up, you want to keep up, but you know it’s completely dangerous, stepping out into the unknown of the present moment, unprotected.

And finally, finally, something does give, maybe a pitcher crashes, or a glass breaks, someone laughs, the moment is flown and its all winding down. Last round is called, the strains of Sinne Fianna Fáil are in the air, everyone’s standing together, then Mick Killeen, the publican is telling you the Gards on on the street, begging you to leave, selling you a six pack for the take away. And as quickly as that it’s over, you’re out and gone, with nothing but the memory of what it was.

And later you think back and wonder what it was, that moment when you could look around and knew for sure you were seeing it all, as if for the first time, clearly. And why it was you couldn’t stay there, at that spot, that wild spot --almost as if you were flying; or you were the wind and the clouds rushing over the fields; and you were the field, and the wee dancers-- moving in circles over it.

For a moment only, you were all that at once and more. In that moment you were there with your friends and family, and your dead ancestors, and all the others, buried up in the ancient churchyard. up the river there. But only in that moment. And now your facing into another gray day, the rain’s on your face and your going along the same road from home you’ve been walking all your life, with only the memory of that moment to make you whole.

Now how about you. Where do you go to dip into the freedom of what's wild? How to you get into it, and then out again? Tell if you care to.

Friday Free Verse

2005-02-04T14:12:00.000-05:00

For whatever it's worth, I promise to try to make poems just a Friday thing...with the occasional midweek lapse. Still can't help wanting to share them somewhere, with a few friends. Cheerio.

A.D.D. GOD
Sometimes I imagine maybe God got tired
Of ordering this incredible many-layered creation,
Much as, too often, I simply get tired
Of sorting the laundry
Organizing the baking pans
And arranging the day…

Maybe in a fit of terrible exhaustion at last
She just surrendered the whole notion
Of holding all the threads and pieces—
“Let it blow and bend as it will.
Let the stray bits slip downstream.”
And perhaps in a last gift of exhausted self
She charged it all, us all, with her creative
destructive powers—
Some mute,some obdurate
--but all of it, all of us, charged with enduring beauty
and teaming with filth and fecund possibility.
And last of all she placed in our midst
The rule of balance and consequence
That would keep the pieces cohesive by her ancient order.

Speechless
copyright (of course) reserved

The Ground Hogs of Spring are on Winters Traces

2005-02-02T10:21:00.000-05:00

Ground Hog Day, and I've got their winged sisters forefront in my mind.

In the highest reaches of the sycamore, the starlings sun themselves …despite the grayness of the day--chattering, chirping, gossiping, laughing it seems to me, and occasionally complaining of noisy neighbors or greedy kibitzers from another tree. Sometimes their bickering turns into an all out feud.

This is quite different from their spring and summer territorial disputes which mark nesting as its own avian season. Now in early winter these flocks are most gregarious. They are wholly caught up in their own lively society, visiting back and forth between trees, favoring first one, then another, until one tree is almost entirely abandoned and another crowded and wild.

They scavenge for seeds, flying off in small expeditionary groups to investigate rumors of bounty in a particular pine tree half covered with bind-weed and clematis. Then on occasion made aware of forces, dangers and delights beyond their own small society, reading the rumor of the wind or the report of an unexpected engine sounding like a shot, they fall unexpectedly silent—like the hush of a gathered meeting, lifted on wings of prayer, for a few minutes they're hiding out up there, only to begin again, their constant arguments.

I love the name starling, like darling mixed with star and starting, and I suppose startling, and too, drizzling. Which leads me round to this, a gift of a poem, something I suppose I can say for sure….

My darling darkling starling
How it saddens me that your voice
Sounds nothing like your name.
From your throat I never hear the singing stars,
and yet I see the heavens
Spread across your breast.

You secret, magic birds
Sunning yourselves today
Atop the windward winter sycamores.
Engaged in constant revisions
You rise and glide in little troupes,
Exploring the environs, investigating every rumor
Of seed or a good feed off in farther bracken.
Then returning to report that there is or isn't reason to leave,
But still your cohorts must see for themselves.
You are all a-gaggle in this most gregarious non-nesting season.

What canst thou say?

2005-02-01T13:52:00.000-05:00

Growing up in the last American Century, the agnostic century, the century that proclaimed the death of God in the waning days of the cold war, somewhere along the way I came to believe there was little that could be said for sure.

Truth it seemed was like the two sets of adjustable squares which photographers use to crop their picture. It all depended on what you took out, left in the picture. (Now with all the digital editing, we’ve moved to an even deeper questioning of the veracity of any fixed moment. Used to be truth could be framed in a snapshot. Now even the content of the snap shot is suspect. We may have thought we’d reached a place of absurdity in the past, but now very notion of truth is rendered absurd.)

But even in 1979, the time Alexander wrote his first book, in the realm of humanities, there seemed little chance of arriving at truth. Socrates' way of un-knowing leads most of us to a labyrinth of questions, illuminated only by faith, inexplicable optimism or despair. But Alexander is taking us on just such a Socratic journey, posing questions and addressing them. I continue to follow:
Returning to the matter of freedom from inner contradictions, Alexander asserts that this subtle and complex freedom is the very quality which makes things live. This, he states is a quality that cannot be named.
I love this because he’s trying to move beyond words. We’re reaching the place where words are recognized as useful containers for that which they contain. We’re reaching the point where content is affirmed. There is content. What we name it, what it means: those are other matters.
The fact that this quality cannot be named does not mean that it is vague or imprecise. It is impossible to name because it is unerringly precise. Words fail to capture it because it is more precise than any word. The quality itself is sharp, exact, with no looseness in it whatsoever. But each word you chose to capture it has fuzzy edges and extensions which blur the central meaning of the quality.
Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, p. 29
Does this remind you of other 20th Century writers? I think of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, his “Meaning and End of Religion” which is a full treatise of the uses of that one word, “religion.”
Above all, in Alexander I hear cadences of Eliot:

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
TSE, The Four Quartets: Burnt Norton

Yes, it's a long section I’m quoting from TSE, but the words here speak for themselves. Eliot gets at the same matter that Alexander is exploring, and I’m exploring with him. They are both pointing to the wordless Word, the meaning below the word, the flame that burns in our lives, giving us meaning, giving us life.

And still we’re left with the old old Friendly question, “what canst thou say?” What canst I say? What is true on this day that words can carry? I’ll see where that leads in my next posting.

Subtle Freedom from Inner Contradictions

2005-01-29T12:47:00.000-05:00

A system has this quality when it is at one with itself; it lacks it when it is divided.

It has it when it is true to its own inner forces; lacks it when it is untrue to its own inner forces.

It has it when it is at peace with itself; and lacks it when it is at war with itself....
You already know this quality...the feeling, for it is as primitive as the feeling for our own well-being, for our own health, as primitive the intuition which tells us when something is false or true.
Christopher Alexander, A Timeless Way of Building, p 26.

Exploring still the early pages of Alexander's, his words seem to apply not just about buildings and commmunities but of course to our society as a whole, our government, our foreign policies.

We know that many systems in our society are inconsistent. We know that changes in acceptable parts per billion of mercury in our rivers and in our drinking water will kill us. We know that the lack of universal health care and the reality of infectious diseases are a pair of ticking time bombs, we know that we are warehousing whole segments of our population (25% of black men under the age of 30 last time I checked) in prisons; we know that the imbalance between the wealthy and the poor in this nation, and in the world is keeping millions living lives of chaos and shame.

We know that the system we live within is out of balance. Yet still, we can recognize those moments, those people, graced with an ability to live true to their center, subtly free from inner contradictions, and it feels good to be in their company.

That doesn't mean absence of doubt, or indiscriminate positive action, but simply greeting the life at hand with a hearty YES to all that is.

I first came to understand this condition, this way of being, in my association with Friends, Quakers.

Rather than a creed, a certain set of rules, Quakers rely on the teaching of their experience, held up to the light of faith. THey call these teachings testimonies. Friends Testimonies are assertions found to be consistently true over time.

The Friends' Testimony which has opened out and out for me through the years has been the testimony of Integrity. At first I took it as a matter of how I should be. Through the years I've come to see that the testimony is an articulation of what is.

Thanks to the Testimony of Integrity, Friends very early came to recognize the inconsistency of affirming that of God in every person while killing any person. And too, to see that in just such a way, it was inconsistent to enslave another person.

It is out of this understanding that there is an integrity and consistency about the nature and works of God which has made Quakers leaders for reform in Prisons and Mental Hospitals.

Efforts to articulate What Is are so different from efforts to make up rules regarding "what should be." This eyes wide open utterance of what he beholds is one of the things I so appreciate about the work of Christopher Alexander.

Friday Free Versifying

2005-01-28T23:22:00.000-05:00

Transfiguration
What is it when the last light of a winter afternoon
Reaches the bare tops of the sycamore trees
And paints the twigs and buds a rosy gold?

Or when I see the fields coated in blue-white snow
Dappled by white sheep in fleece now linen-gold?
Or see the mist rising from the nearly frozen stream
Or listen to Albinone's Adagio?

Lured by the falcon circling in the skies,
Spying on his earthly kingdom;
Drawn like warm water to rise and fill the place
Where the cold stream flows below,

What is it takes my breath, like the times
It's really love we're making, when
Our dry souls combine on a gray morning cold,
Such as us might kindle the world aflame
Recast it now, all rosy gold.

~Speechless
(copyright reserved)

January Delights

2005-01-28T10:54:00.000-05:00

So perhaps Alexander’s statement that there’s a timeless way is something that needs to be grounded in time. Living in a land with four seasons, ruled by a calendar with 12 months, driven by a cycle of 28 days of shifting hormones, the rhythms move above and below, within and without. Sometimes the clock feels completely in tune with the moment. Other times kairos and chronos are simply out of sync. Still I love to feel the seasons, layered with memories of earlier years and hopes of things to come.

Some January delights:

The brilliant scarlet and more subtle rosy beige of a pair of cardinals in the snow capped holly tree.

Frost flowers on the back kitchen windows

Michael coming home from work at noon for homemade soup & bread and tea.

Reading Anthony Burgess’s biography of Shakespeare, pausing to look up passing references to plays and poems as I go. Each thread connecting to another tapestry. Thoughts of tracing each in time.

The hiss of the kettle on the hot wood stove.

The wood stove’s glow made more meaningful by the cool draft wafting up from the front door.

The front door open and the light pouring through the glass storm door.

Sunlight on geraniums, begonias & ivy, their leafy shadows cast on the wooden floor.

Candlelight in the evening, and all of us gathered round the fire.

The crunch and squeak of snow under foot.

The children’s rosy cheeks and cold ears coming in from sledding.

Tree limbs creak & groan in the cold.

The call of a lone blackbird on the far fringe of snowy trees.

Standing outside the Rules

2005-01-28T10:35:00.000-05:00

What is it that allows life within a person or a family or a community to flourish openly?

Alexander's idea goes against my own preference really, that there is indeed one way, a right way, a timeless way about the world. It sounds like the stuff that rigid systems are made of. But Alexander is more interested in getting a line on what is essential than he is with codifiying a set of rules for beauty or pattern.

I love these lines: But as things are, we have so far beset ourselves with rules, and concepts, and ideas of what must be done to make a building or a town alive, that we have become afraid of what will happen naturally, and convinced that we must work within a "system" and with "methods" since without them our surroundings will come tumbling down in chaos.
(Christopher Alexander, The Timeles Way of Building, p 14

In the town where we live, a small blue collar town, a mostly white ethnic town where families (though not my family) have lived for generation upon generation there seems to be an unspoken rule: if you don’t know the rules, you have no business asking about them.

Call the building inspector to inquire if a permit is needed to paint your porch or put up a hen house ~the secretary gets a certain tone, implying “Who wants to know?” But if you go in there, and you can spin a good connection (“O’Malley? Why that’s the same name in Gaelic as my name. Did your family come from Tipperary?”) Then you’re alright, you’re in, you‘re recognized as belonging within the tribe.

The longing to belong grows greater as we move further from home. The world becomes stranger. The patterns we were familiar with and recognized as children don’t just disappear from our lives, but are eaten up by the hungry machine of progress itself.

And yet, we still know, and can trace our own family patterns. Local geography tells a story, a hundred connections to every spot. Look at your neighbors. They have connections to these same spots. Should you meet your neighbor or a friend of your neighbor in a far away place, you’ll feel a bond with them you might never have had at home.

Once on the kibbutz where I worked in Israel I met a kibbutzim from my home town. He’s left there 15 yrs before I’d been born, but he knew places there which I knew. Ed’s Diner, Doylestown’s greasy spoon. I’d never eaten there, warned away by my mother, and the sight of so many old townies who made me know that there I didn’t belong. This fellow loved Ed’s diner. It was a hippy hang-out in the 60’s. Suddenly I had a love for Ed’s and for this man that hasn’t left me yet. Yet if I met him there in Doylestown, would we even have spoken?

The Dozy Quality of the Garden

2005-01-28T01:45:00.000-05:00

If there is a timeless way to build, and it is intrinsic, then surely all the systems we conceive could be set in perfect motion by simply connecting to that inner knowledge.
Yet we are always stopped. When we build, its ever on the wreckage of what was there before. Never ever is there a clean slate to build upon. Always there is the trampled on, half buried, preferred to be forgotten past which serves as our foundation.
In the inner city we dream of nurturing a community that is wholly connected, centered in health and balance. That community must arise out of the reality at hand, a history of oppression, the poverty, racism, fear.
When will we come to see that a healthy person needs a healthy community to remain so? Each person is the center point, but also entirely beset by the circumstances of their place and time.
Alexander observes:
The wall runs east to west; the peach tree grows flat against its southern side. The sun shines on the tree, the warm bricks themselves warm the peaches on the tree. It has a slightly dozy quality. The tree, carefully tied to grow flat against the wall; warming the bricks; the peaches growing in the sun; the wild grass growing around the roots of the tree in the angle where the earth and roots and wall all meet.

So what is that dozy quality which C.A. speaks of? Perhaps in part it is a matter of rootedness, knowing the earth you are lodged in, knowing what lies below the surface, knowing the history of the place where you are planted, understanding what has sweetened the soil or soured the air. Just knowing what is might be the first step to cultivating a healthy dozy garden.

Welcome to the Timeless Way

2005-01-27T10:19:00.000-05:00

Cervantes' call to create a blog where faith and reason might be in dialogue, and Rexroth's Daughter's question of when we might see and end to the litany of reasons to despair, have stirred the blogger in my soul.

Being one who loves to respond to ideas and raise questions, I never thought I'd want to start a blog. But then today, considering reasons to rejoice & reasons to despair, I recalled Paul's exhortations to the Phillippians:

...whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. ( Phillippians, 4:8)

And so with these thoughts in mind, I have the sense of a number of texts which have provoked my thinking, and led me to places I where I want to spend more time.

What I intend then, is a blog which will be offered in repsonse to these texts. I claim no expertise in the areas to be examined. Instead I offer a whole hearted willingness to consider and respond to the reading as I go. And if you can join me, and join in a discussion, ah, now that would be grand.

The first, perhaps the only text I will examine is one by an architect theorist named Christopher Alexander. The Timeless Way of Building is the first of a series of volumes examing the intrinic nature of beauty, what it is, and how we as humans respond and replicate it in our fabrications.

Alexander writes about architecture, but his approach, his assertion that there is a way which is right and fitting about all good things is both preposterous and intriguing for his ideas reach out far beyond the realm of building design. He suggests that there may be an organic rightness to design of all sort of human systems, perhaps even the health system.

For me, trying to live a simple life in good relation to my neighbors, this book offers a sort of blueprint, a way of recognizing the pattern in what is already there.

And so enough of the preliminaries. Let me close by throwing out a few of the opeining lines from Alexander's book. Perhaps you have a copy already. Perhaps you will decide to find a copy and join me in feeling our way through this man's thought.

There is one timeless way of building.
It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been....

It is the process through which the order of a building or a town grows out directly from the inner nature of the people,and the animals and the plants, and matter which are in it.
It is a process which allows the life inside a person, or a family or a town to flourish, openly, in freedom, so vividly that it gives birth , of its own accord, to the natural order which is needed to sustain this life.
(opening paragraphs, p7 , Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building).

And yes, it is that sense of trying to live so vividly, from the center out, that one's self is seen flourishing in one's community. That's the challenge, to recognize and live from one's center, offering it as a gift to others.
Does this speak to you? I'd love to know.