Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Friday, April 19, 2019
Holy Saturday: On Tombs, Prisoners, and Antelopes in the Grass
On Christmas Day 2018, I opened a gift from my son, the junior high principal, the poet. It was a hardback edition of a William Stafford book of poetry (the softcover edition having been on my bookshelf for many years).
But this one different, and not just that its cover was hard. On the title page was Stafford’s signature, a luminous find in the mammoth Powell’s Bookstore of Downtown Portland – likely landing there after Stafford’s teaching career at local Lewis and Clark College.
Tears filled my eyes, because I have a son who thinks about these things, who loves poetry and literature.
And tears filled my eyes as I randomly opened the pages and read whatever my eyes fell upon, moved again by Stafford’s utter simplicity and by his way of jumping into the stream and letting the current take him wherever it would. He had no sense of building to a great crescendo in his poems, just tracking along to see where the poem led, as if each line were some golden thread which the reader could hold onto and trace to something else that might arise in his or her imagination.
I sat among grandchildren -- busily devouring gifts amidst loud laughter and chatter -- quietly reading along in Stafford, choking back the Christmas tears.
This is one of the poems that had my address on it, and still does . . . maybe because it explores themes I’ve often pondered for myself . . . and maybe because it is sufficiently unresolved to remind me of my life.
On this Holy Saturday, I give William Stafford’s poem about tight spaces, prisoners, and antelopes in the grass to you.
A Message from the Wanderer
William Stafford
Today outside your prison I stand
and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen;
you have relatives outside. And there are
thousands of ways to escape.
Years ago I bent my skill to keep my
cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies,
and shouted my plans to jailers;
but always new plans occurred to me,
or the new heavy locks bent hinges off,
or some stupid jailer would forget
and leave the keys.
Inside, I dreamed of constellations –
those feeding creatures outlined by stars,
their skeletons a darkness between jewels,
heroes that exist only where they are not.
Thus freedom always came nibbling my thought,
just as – often, in light, on the open hills –
you can pass an antelope and not know
and look back, and then – even before you see –
there is something wrong about the grass.
And then you see.
That’s the way everything in the world is waiting.
Now – these few more words, and then I’m
gone: Tell everyone just to remember
their names, and remind others, later, when we
find each other. Tell the little ones
to cry and then go to sleep, curled up
where they can. And if any of us get lost,
if any of us cannot come all the way –
remember: there will come a time when
all we have said and all we have hoped
will be all right.
There will be that form in the grass.
[William Stafford, Stories That Could Be True (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 9.]
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
The Way In: A Rilke Poem
The Way In
Rainer Maria Rilke
Whoever you are: some evening take a step
out of your house, which you know so well.
Enormous space is near, your house lies where it begins,
whoever you are.
Your eyes find it hard to tear themselves
from the sloping threshold, but with your eyes
slowly, slowly, lift one black tree
up, so it stands against the sky: skinny, alone.
With that you have made the world. The world is immense
and like a word that is still growing in the silence.
In the same moment that your will grasps it,
your eyes, feeling its subtlety, will leave it. . . .
[Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Robert Bly, p. 71.]
I have lived with this Rilke poem for the better part of a year now. It first appeared on my radar as I considered a change of work and a move to another state. Last week I read it to a group on retreat at a Benedictine monastery. It seemed to have as much resonance with persons in that body as it has had with me.
Initially, the overlay on my life was obvious. I held a job I loved for 18 years, among a people I dearly loved. As such, I lived in a comfortable "house" for all those years, a house that was cozy and somewhat predictable, with regular rhythms and a consistent way for me to exercise my gifts. I was free to explore as needed, to occasionally move beyond the fences which would predictably arise. I found myself most fully "at home" in that house.
To step out of my "house" meant distance from friends and life-companions who were my extended family . . . distance from practices that had grown to be second-nature . . . and distance from financial security as I enter the late afternoon and evening of life.
Yet, as Rilke described the house, I knew it "so well." As familiar and cozy as it was, once the door cracked open and the light from outside the house rushed through the door-ajar, I had to step through . . . for reasons I did not fully understand then, and which I still cannot adequately verbalize.
I had other, previous experiences leaving "a house I knew so well," but in those experiences I was suffocating inside the house. In order to live and offer my life in service to the world, I had to step out of those houses. Last year, though, I was not pushed out the door, nor stepping away with a sense of desperate survival. I could have rocked along, business as usual, for a good, long while.
Nonetheless, it was time to "step outside the house." In a sense, this time as at other times, I had to do it. The invitation to step outside the house, as Rilke says, is the opening into the "enormous space" nearby . . . into the wild immensity of the world.
I'm no hero, villain, or saint for stepping out of that particular house. People make life-altering decisions all the time, sometimes out of courage, sometimes out of desperation, and sometimes just to survive. And truth be told, there are still plenty of houses I live in which I've yet to step out of.
A house is a structure, a confinement, a place of dwelling. It roots us, in the sense of limiting our movement, travel, or journey. Even on an intentional journey, a spiritual journey, humans seem to want to build dwelling places in which to settle. Maybe we do that out of our fear or for the sake of security. Whatever the reason, we seem to be very good at building and living confined within houses.
If "journey" is metaphor for moving onward in life, then "house" is metaphor for staying put where we are. Rilke simply says, "step out of your house some evening, the house that is so familiar to you."
Growth, especially spiritual becoming, does not consist in making sure everything is comfortable and well-ordered, safe and secure within the confines of my current "house," but rather, stretches, reaches, explores. Spiritual becoming means always expanding, including, opening. Authentic growth never keeps us confined, never makes us smaller, but always thrusts us into the world as redeeming, reconciling presences.
But taking a step out of our houses is no simple act. Many of our houses are well-constructed and have served us well for a lifetime.
The houses in which we dwell differ for each of us.
There is the house of what you believe.
Or the house of what you hold dear.
Or the house of what you belong to.
Or the house of your deepest loyalties.
Or the house of your politics.
Or the house of your ideology.
Or the house of your religious tradition.
Or the house of your roles.
Or the house of the way your parents raised you.
Or the house of what is required at your work.
Or the house of that toxic relationship.
Or the house of your identity group (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.).
Most of us live in many houses, and we stay in them because they are so familiar to us . . . we "know them so well." We may even say things like, "This is just who I am."
When Rilke says, "Take a step out of your house," he is not suggesting we should forsake the house, burn it down, or turn our backs on it. (Of course, there is a time to make a complete break from the house we know so well . . . but not in all cases.)
He simply says, "Step outside."
"Enormous space is near."
"The world is immense."
This is poetic wisdom: Just a simple step outside our role, our belief, or our must/should/oughts is a step into the world, into the vastness for which we were created. Most often, it is the first step that is most crucial, because without the first step there can be no successive steps. Take the first step, he says.
Last week on retreat, my friend David heard this poem for the first time. He pointed out something about the poem I had overlooked completely in months of pondering it. He noted the poem's title . . . while the main action of the poem is taking a step "out of your house," the poem is showing us "the way in."
This is how it goes. The way in, the way of living soul-fully, the way into a deepening life of significance, the way of accessing your own interior riches . . . all are accessed by taking a step out of the house you know so well!
Rainer Maria Rilke
Whoever you are: some evening take a step
out of your house, which you know so well.
Enormous space is near, your house lies where it begins,
whoever you are.
Your eyes find it hard to tear themselves
from the sloping threshold, but with your eyes
slowly, slowly, lift one black tree
up, so it stands against the sky: skinny, alone.
With that you have made the world. The world is immense
and like a word that is still growing in the silence.
In the same moment that your will grasps it,
your eyes, feeling its subtlety, will leave it. . . .
[Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Robert Bly, p. 71.]
I have lived with this Rilke poem for the better part of a year now. It first appeared on my radar as I considered a change of work and a move to another state. Last week I read it to a group on retreat at a Benedictine monastery. It seemed to have as much resonance with persons in that body as it has had with me.
Initially, the overlay on my life was obvious. I held a job I loved for 18 years, among a people I dearly loved. As such, I lived in a comfortable "house" for all those years, a house that was cozy and somewhat predictable, with regular rhythms and a consistent way for me to exercise my gifts. I was free to explore as needed, to occasionally move beyond the fences which would predictably arise. I found myself most fully "at home" in that house.
To step out of my "house" meant distance from friends and life-companions who were my extended family . . . distance from practices that had grown to be second-nature . . . and distance from financial security as I enter the late afternoon and evening of life.
Yet, as Rilke described the house, I knew it "so well." As familiar and cozy as it was, once the door cracked open and the light from outside the house rushed through the door-ajar, I had to step through . . . for reasons I did not fully understand then, and which I still cannot adequately verbalize.
I had other, previous experiences leaving "a house I knew so well," but in those experiences I was suffocating inside the house. In order to live and offer my life in service to the world, I had to step out of those houses. Last year, though, I was not pushed out the door, nor stepping away with a sense of desperate survival. I could have rocked along, business as usual, for a good, long while.
Nonetheless, it was time to "step outside the house." In a sense, this time as at other times, I had to do it. The invitation to step outside the house, as Rilke says, is the opening into the "enormous space" nearby . . . into the wild immensity of the world.
I'm no hero, villain, or saint for stepping out of that particular house. People make life-altering decisions all the time, sometimes out of courage, sometimes out of desperation, and sometimes just to survive. And truth be told, there are still plenty of houses I live in which I've yet to step out of.
A house is a structure, a confinement, a place of dwelling. It roots us, in the sense of limiting our movement, travel, or journey. Even on an intentional journey, a spiritual journey, humans seem to want to build dwelling places in which to settle. Maybe we do that out of our fear or for the sake of security. Whatever the reason, we seem to be very good at building and living confined within houses.
If "journey" is metaphor for moving onward in life, then "house" is metaphor for staying put where we are. Rilke simply says, "step out of your house some evening, the house that is so familiar to you."
Growth, especially spiritual becoming, does not consist in making sure everything is comfortable and well-ordered, safe and secure within the confines of my current "house," but rather, stretches, reaches, explores. Spiritual becoming means always expanding, including, opening. Authentic growth never keeps us confined, never makes us smaller, but always thrusts us into the world as redeeming, reconciling presences.
But taking a step out of our houses is no simple act. Many of our houses are well-constructed and have served us well for a lifetime.
The houses in which we dwell differ for each of us.
There is the house of what you believe.
Or the house of what you hold dear.
Or the house of what you belong to.
Or the house of your deepest loyalties.
Or the house of your politics.
Or the house of your ideology.
Or the house of your religious tradition.
Or the house of your roles.
Or the house of the way your parents raised you.
Or the house of what is required at your work.
Or the house of that toxic relationship.
Or the house of your identity group (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.).
Most of us live in many houses, and we stay in them because they are so familiar to us . . . we "know them so well." We may even say things like, "This is just who I am."
When Rilke says, "Take a step out of your house," he is not suggesting we should forsake the house, burn it down, or turn our backs on it. (Of course, there is a time to make a complete break from the house we know so well . . . but not in all cases.)
He simply says, "Step outside."
"Enormous space is near."
"The world is immense."
This is poetic wisdom: Just a simple step outside our role, our belief, or our must/should/oughts is a step into the world, into the vastness for which we were created. Most often, it is the first step that is most crucial, because without the first step there can be no successive steps. Take the first step, he says.
Last week on retreat, my friend David heard this poem for the first time. He pointed out something about the poem I had overlooked completely in months of pondering it. He noted the poem's title . . . while the main action of the poem is taking a step "out of your house," the poem is showing us "the way in."
This is how it goes. The way in, the way of living soul-fully, the way into a deepening life of significance, the way of accessing your own interior riches . . . all are accessed by taking a step out of the house you know so well!
Tuesday, August 14, 2018
Beyond Gathering Information
A poem to ponder today . . .
Information
David Ignatow
This tree has two million and seventy-five thousand leaves.
Perhaps I missed a leaf or two but I do feel triumphant
at having persisted in counting by hand branch by branch
and marked down on paper with pencil each total.
Adding them up was a pleasure I could understand;
I did something on my own that was not dependent on others,
and to count leaves is not less meaningful than to count the stars,
as astronomers are always doing.
They want the facts to be sure they have them all.
It would help them to know whether the world is finite.
I discovered one tree that is finite.
I must try counting the hairs on my head, and you too.
We could swap information.
I haven't read much poetry by David Ignatow, but I'm imagining his tongue planted firmly in cheek . . . as if knowing the number of leaves on a tree could tell all you needed to know about the tree . . . or as if counting the stars in the sky gave you all the information you needed about galaxies and solar systems . . . as if knowing how many hairs were on your head could exhaust the richness and complexity of being you.
Does having "facts" or the right information mean an object is finite, limited, able to be thoroughly understood or defined? Even in a culture where truth is reduced to "alternative facts" I think we know better than that.
**Take a look at a tree, a real tree, outside your window or from your porch. Better yet, go sit underneath a tree.
Then make your own list of what is important about that tree.
What makes it a tree?
What sustains it?
How would you describe that particular tree to someone who had never seen a tree before?
Or how would you describe that particular tree to someone who has seen thousands of trees before?
What makes this tree the unique tree it is?
**When the night-sky is clear, spend a few minutes sitting or lying underneath it.
Are you able to count what you see?
Notice what you see . . . what nuances make certain stars stand out more than others?
You don't have to imagine or conjure up something for the stars to mean . . . just enjoy watching what is.
**Consider your own life.
In what ways are you more than the hairs on your head?
What do you consider the most important information about yourself?
Are you willing to discover something else that would supplant that particular information as "most important" about yourself?
What do you most like about yourself?
What about yourself would you most like to change?
What truth abides at the core of you and shapes your daily life?
Think of a close friend. What would he/she say abides at your core and shapes your daily life?
How many hairs are on your head?
Information
David Ignatow
This tree has two million and seventy-five thousand leaves.
Perhaps I missed a leaf or two but I do feel triumphant
at having persisted in counting by hand branch by branch
and marked down on paper with pencil each total.
Adding them up was a pleasure I could understand;
I did something on my own that was not dependent on others,
and to count leaves is not less meaningful than to count the stars,
as astronomers are always doing.
They want the facts to be sure they have them all.
It would help them to know whether the world is finite.
I discovered one tree that is finite.
I must try counting the hairs on my head, and you too.
We could swap information.
I haven't read much poetry by David Ignatow, but I'm imagining his tongue planted firmly in cheek . . . as if knowing the number of leaves on a tree could tell all you needed to know about the tree . . . or as if counting the stars in the sky gave you all the information you needed about galaxies and solar systems . . . as if knowing how many hairs were on your head could exhaust the richness and complexity of being you.
Does having "facts" or the right information mean an object is finite, limited, able to be thoroughly understood or defined? Even in a culture where truth is reduced to "alternative facts" I think we know better than that.
**Take a look at a tree, a real tree, outside your window or from your porch. Better yet, go sit underneath a tree.
Then make your own list of what is important about that tree.
What makes it a tree?
What sustains it?
How would you describe that particular tree to someone who had never seen a tree before?
Or how would you describe that particular tree to someone who has seen thousands of trees before?
What makes this tree the unique tree it is?
**When the night-sky is clear, spend a few minutes sitting or lying underneath it.
Are you able to count what you see?
Notice what you see . . . what nuances make certain stars stand out more than others?
You don't have to imagine or conjure up something for the stars to mean . . . just enjoy watching what is.
**Consider your own life.
In what ways are you more than the hairs on your head?
What do you consider the most important information about yourself?
Are you willing to discover something else that would supplant that particular information as "most important" about yourself?
What do you most like about yourself?
What about yourself would you most like to change?
What truth abides at the core of you and shapes your daily life?
Think of a close friend. What would he/she say abides at your core and shapes your daily life?
How many hairs are on your head?
Monday, July 23, 2018
When Death Comes
I wrote last week about the Dylan Thomas poem, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" (you can read the poem and the post about it below). Thomas urged, according to some who know his life and work better than I, approaching death with "rage" and with a kicking-and-screaming resistance. The poem references his dying father, though Thomas may have intended to portray his own stance toward death.
Rather than adopt Thomas' words literally, I've approached the poem's encouragement to rage and resistance as an invitation to ongoing life, creativity, and exploration, even to breath's end. For myself, I hear: "Don't stop living, don't give up your exploration, don't stop becoming, even in the face of death."
I think of my dear friend Paul, a gentle soul who did not literally "rage," but who continued to explore his own unique path right to the moment when the darkness suddenly and unexpectedly consumed him. He was not a "rager" in any way, no anger in him that I could see. He was a lover, yet full of questions that could not be answered. But Paul's doubt was an honest doubt. It wasn't showy doubt, or doubt for the sake of doubt. He had honest questions about God and life. But every day he gave himself to a core practice of prayer and meditation. He faithfully kept searching, even in his questioning.
When I talked with him, he was never interested in convincing me of anything. He had no agenda in which he needed "converts" to his own intricate pattern of belief and unbelief. He simply loved in his gentle way. I always felt that Paul's spirit in the world was healing, so great was his capacity to love without condition. Up to his last day, he honestly explored what, for him, were the big questions of life. And he did so with love. When he died suddenly, he left a huge void in the world . . . a loss of his presence, his love, his questions, and his healing.
I think of another dear friend currently in hospice care. She is not literally raging while in palliative care in Houston, but she is exploring this new threshold fully. She is not passive nor idle. As her sister said to me recently, in life she taught us how to live, and now as another threshold approaches she is teaching us how to die. Even now, she is centered by a daily practice of sitting prayer and meditation. She is held, not in rage, but in ongoing exploration, in her continual creative impulse to live the one life which she has been given, and in her openness as she moves through this season of her life.
She has been my spiritual guide for decades, and has been the wise soul of the spiritual landscape in Southeast Texas, as well as within her own religious order. She has guided us in life, and now she is guiding us as she approaches a different threshold . . . not by a kicking-and-screaming rage, but by her own life centered in the heart of God.
Both of these friends have embodied in their journeys what Mary Oliver has written in her poem, "When Death Comes." For me the poem is a statement of intention about becoming, searching, questioning, and exploring right up to the end of life. Never angry or raging, Mary Oliver in the poem simply invites an explorer's heart that carries one to the final threshold.
When Death Comes
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
[Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press]
Rather than adopt Thomas' words literally, I've approached the poem's encouragement to rage and resistance as an invitation to ongoing life, creativity, and exploration, even to breath's end. For myself, I hear: "Don't stop living, don't give up your exploration, don't stop becoming, even in the face of death."
I think of my dear friend Paul, a gentle soul who did not literally "rage," but who continued to explore his own unique path right to the moment when the darkness suddenly and unexpectedly consumed him. He was not a "rager" in any way, no anger in him that I could see. He was a lover, yet full of questions that could not be answered. But Paul's doubt was an honest doubt. It wasn't showy doubt, or doubt for the sake of doubt. He had honest questions about God and life. But every day he gave himself to a core practice of prayer and meditation. He faithfully kept searching, even in his questioning.
When I talked with him, he was never interested in convincing me of anything. He had no agenda in which he needed "converts" to his own intricate pattern of belief and unbelief. He simply loved in his gentle way. I always felt that Paul's spirit in the world was healing, so great was his capacity to love without condition. Up to his last day, he honestly explored what, for him, were the big questions of life. And he did so with love. When he died suddenly, he left a huge void in the world . . . a loss of his presence, his love, his questions, and his healing.
I think of another dear friend currently in hospice care. She is not literally raging while in palliative care in Houston, but she is exploring this new threshold fully. She is not passive nor idle. As her sister said to me recently, in life she taught us how to live, and now as another threshold approaches she is teaching us how to die. Even now, she is centered by a daily practice of sitting prayer and meditation. She is held, not in rage, but in ongoing exploration, in her continual creative impulse to live the one life which she has been given, and in her openness as she moves through this season of her life.
She has been my spiritual guide for decades, and has been the wise soul of the spiritual landscape in Southeast Texas, as well as within her own religious order. She has guided us in life, and now she is guiding us as she approaches a different threshold . . . not by a kicking-and-screaming rage, but by her own life centered in the heart of God.
Both of these friends have embodied in their journeys what Mary Oliver has written in her poem, "When Death Comes." For me the poem is a statement of intention about becoming, searching, questioning, and exploring right up to the end of life. Never angry or raging, Mary Oliver in the poem simply invites an explorer's heart that carries one to the final threshold.
When Death Comes
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
[Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press]
Friday, July 20, 2018
Do Not Go Gentle
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
[From The Poems of Dylan Thomas, published by New Directions]
Long ago I made peace with my own level of comfort with darkness. It's not that I like nor prefer the dark to the light, but over time I found, through life experience -- including joblessness, disease, and relational discord -- that I was not scared by the darkness. I discovered something within my interior unwilling to make a "whatever-it-takes-to-get-rid-of-darkness" deal to provide temporary relief. I've learned a lot about God, myself, and life in the darkness. I seldom enjoy it, but I have made some sort of friendship with it, awkward as it may be.
So I was drawn this week to the Dylan Thomas poem, "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night." I'm not so very familiar with Thomas nor his poetry. It is easy enough to find basic information about him, his life, and his poetry online. He lived a rugged, tumultuous life from what I have read, and apparently drank himself to death, literally. This poem references his father's pending death, while also likely including a good bit of autobiography.
Some commentaries on the poem propose that Thomas advocates a "kicking and screaming" approach to darkness and death, a kind of literal rage. Knowing something of his life, Thomas may indeed suggest a "raging-against" stance toward life's end.
I wonder, however, if rage is the wisest, most life-giving approach to the darkness. Darkness comes to each of us. Death will claim all of us. Rather, "rage" may more richly suggest a stance which does not lie down before the darkness, a posture in which even the darkness does not shut down abundant life. Perhaps the poem's wisdom moves us toward a way of continuing onward in creative living, even when life is shrouded in tumult. Do not go gentle, keep exploring, do not give up your own true self, do not stop creating, move toward your next discovery . . .
Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
[From The Poems of Dylan Thomas, published by New Directions]
Long ago I made peace with my own level of comfort with darkness. It's not that I like nor prefer the dark to the light, but over time I found, through life experience -- including joblessness, disease, and relational discord -- that I was not scared by the darkness. I discovered something within my interior unwilling to make a "whatever-it-takes-to-get-rid-of-darkness" deal to provide temporary relief. I've learned a lot about God, myself, and life in the darkness. I seldom enjoy it, but I have made some sort of friendship with it, awkward as it may be.
So I was drawn this week to the Dylan Thomas poem, "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night." I'm not so very familiar with Thomas nor his poetry. It is easy enough to find basic information about him, his life, and his poetry online. He lived a rugged, tumultuous life from what I have read, and apparently drank himself to death, literally. This poem references his father's pending death, while also likely including a good bit of autobiography.
Some commentaries on the poem propose that Thomas advocates a "kicking and screaming" approach to darkness and death, a kind of literal rage. Knowing something of his life, Thomas may indeed suggest a "raging-against" stance toward life's end.
I wonder, however, if rage is the wisest, most life-giving approach to the darkness. Darkness comes to each of us. Death will claim all of us. Rather, "rage" may more richly suggest a stance which does not lie down before the darkness, a posture in which even the darkness does not shut down abundant life. Perhaps the poem's wisdom moves us toward a way of continuing onward in creative living, even when life is shrouded in tumult. Do not go gentle, keep exploring, do not give up your own true self, do not stop creating, move toward your next discovery . . .
Friday, June 22, 2018
The Journey of Unknowing (part 3): "The Journey" by Mary Oliver
The Journey
Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
(Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems: Volume One, Beacon Press)
It is possible to spend a life waiting for just the right circumstance to arise in order to live your "one wild and precious life" . . . waiting for the way to come clear, waiting for the obvious marker or the clear sign that illumines the path ahead of you.
And further, it is possible to know there is a path calling to you and even to search for that path, while at the same time making all kinds of contingency plans that will catch you if the path does not work out. These safety nets -- "a life of contingency," I heard someone once call it -- are constructed of all our fears . . . the fears that we will not be as successful in the path as we had hoped, or that we might be misunderstood if we take an alternative path, or that we'll be embarrassed before peers to be seen on this less-traveled road.
Yet, there is also a weariness to the life of contingency, a sense of exhaustion that comes from continually creating safety nets that can catch us when we fail. We grow weary of life, and even weary of our own efforts to control and manipulate our own lives according to self-made plans and dreams.
And then, a few times in every life there come moments when "you finally know what you have to do, and you begin" . . . against all odds, against your well-trained instincts, against the bad advice of your controlling mind, against the grain of your friends and family.
You begin. Finally. You set out, though you cannot see where the journey will take you, and you cannot see clearly the road you are traveling. You simply know that you must walk this way. You finally know what you have to do, led by your soul . . . and you begin, led by your feet.
The long waiting waiting waiting for this moment to arrive may itself be a kind of procrastination, frozen in place waiting for just the right recipe of ingredients to be mixed together, waiting for clarity about the way forward, waiting for an unobscured view of what the days ahead look like.
When I get frozen in this place, perhaps "knowing what I have to do," and yet without the courage to "begin," it sometimes takes a life-jolt, some unexpected event to push me where I have not been willing to go on my own . . . a separation or divorce, a betrayal, a difficult diagnosis, an unexpected loss . . . something that more or less presses my position or forces my hand. I find in those moments, then, the struggle is not so much to move onward to a new path, but rather to stay where I am -- it would take more energy to stay put than to embark on a different path.
The image is something like the baby bird who wants to stay in the comfort of the nest, yet finally must step out into the vast unknown.
In fact, the place of comfort and safety where we have made our nest may not be as comfortable and safe as we think. And to be "pushed out" of that place may actually mark the beginning of "life."
Of course, there are all sorts of reasons not to set out on a journey which is largely unknown to us. So many valid excuses can hold us in place, paralyzing us in shame . . . or keeping us locked in a small room of fear . . . or warning us about dangers of going where there is no security . . . or reminding us of the unknown obstacles that are not evident from where we currently stand.
In fact, the voices from within me "shouting their bad advice" may be louder than those coming from outside me.
For all the reasoned excuses for not taking this path, Mary Oliver writes, "But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do."
This is the very nature of the spiritual journey, of the path which is not visible. Understanding and seeing are not necessary for this journey, or at least seeing in the sense of an outer seeing.
On this journey, we learn to see with the inner eye. We learn to notice the interior landscape more than the exterior landscape (because in the "cloud of unknowing," we cannot see the exterior landscape!). With increasingly sharp focus, we see what our own inner self looks like, what we have believed, what has shaped us, what we have trusted (and mistrusted), what ideas we have built life around, what we have clung to for life which could not possible give life.
The what's, where's, and how's of the outer journey simply become tools for the more interior work which is our life's work . . . unfolding to be the persons we were created to be.
Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
(Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems: Volume One, Beacon Press)
It is possible to spend a life waiting for just the right circumstance to arise in order to live your "one wild and precious life" . . . waiting for the way to come clear, waiting for the obvious marker or the clear sign that illumines the path ahead of you.
And further, it is possible to know there is a path calling to you and even to search for that path, while at the same time making all kinds of contingency plans that will catch you if the path does not work out. These safety nets -- "a life of contingency," I heard someone once call it -- are constructed of all our fears . . . the fears that we will not be as successful in the path as we had hoped, or that we might be misunderstood if we take an alternative path, or that we'll be embarrassed before peers to be seen on this less-traveled road.
Yet, there is also a weariness to the life of contingency, a sense of exhaustion that comes from continually creating safety nets that can catch us when we fail. We grow weary of life, and even weary of our own efforts to control and manipulate our own lives according to self-made plans and dreams.
And then, a few times in every life there come moments when "you finally know what you have to do, and you begin" . . . against all odds, against your well-trained instincts, against the bad advice of your controlling mind, against the grain of your friends and family.
You begin. Finally. You set out, though you cannot see where the journey will take you, and you cannot see clearly the road you are traveling. You simply know that you must walk this way. You finally know what you have to do, led by your soul . . . and you begin, led by your feet.
The long waiting waiting waiting for this moment to arrive may itself be a kind of procrastination, frozen in place waiting for just the right recipe of ingredients to be mixed together, waiting for clarity about the way forward, waiting for an unobscured view of what the days ahead look like.
When I get frozen in this place, perhaps "knowing what I have to do," and yet without the courage to "begin," it sometimes takes a life-jolt, some unexpected event to push me where I have not been willing to go on my own . . . a separation or divorce, a betrayal, a difficult diagnosis, an unexpected loss . . . something that more or less presses my position or forces my hand. I find in those moments, then, the struggle is not so much to move onward to a new path, but rather to stay where I am -- it would take more energy to stay put than to embark on a different path.
The image is something like the baby bird who wants to stay in the comfort of the nest, yet finally must step out into the vast unknown.
In fact, the place of comfort and safety where we have made our nest may not be as comfortable and safe as we think. And to be "pushed out" of that place may actually mark the beginning of "life."
Of course, there are all sorts of reasons not to set out on a journey which is largely unknown to us. So many valid excuses can hold us in place, paralyzing us in shame . . . or keeping us locked in a small room of fear . . . or warning us about dangers of going where there is no security . . . or reminding us of the unknown obstacles that are not evident from where we currently stand.
In fact, the voices from within me "shouting their bad advice" may be louder than those coming from outside me.
For all the reasoned excuses for not taking this path, Mary Oliver writes, "But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do."
This is the very nature of the spiritual journey, of the path which is not visible. Understanding and seeing are not necessary for this journey, or at least seeing in the sense of an outer seeing.
On this journey, we learn to see with the inner eye. We learn to notice the interior landscape more than the exterior landscape (because in the "cloud of unknowing," we cannot see the exterior landscape!). With increasingly sharp focus, we see what our own inner self looks like, what we have believed, what has shaped us, what we have trusted (and mistrusted), what ideas we have built life around, what we have clung to for life which could not possible give life.
The what's, where's, and how's of the outer journey simply become tools for the more interior work which is our life's work . . . unfolding to be the persons we were created to be.
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Rilke: Flare up like flame
God speaks to each of us
by Rainer Maria Rilke
I, 59
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you:
beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
[Rainer Maria Rilke, “Gott spricht zu jedem nur, eh er ihn macht,” I, 59, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, 88.]
Rilke imagined our creative beginnings as God's walk with us out of the darkness, speaking into us the words we will take a lifetime to recover, to hear fully, and to live into. We hear them dimly. Any journey of enlightenment or illumination is partially the journey of recalling our original purpose, our original identity.
Part of what we slowly hear again is the invitation to "flare up like flame." Perhaps this became Rilke's way of saying, "You are the light of the world." Let the inner fire of your origins, your purpose, your identity become flame. Live from the center of that fire, so that which enflames your life will enlighten others also.
Rilke was a complex man -- aren't we all, after all, complex? -- who heard faint voices most all of his life. I imagine he, like me and you, "dimly heard" these words. Did he live them well? Or not so well? Did he, in his life, "flare up like flame"? I do not know.
But I do know he heard the voice, if only dimly.
And I know we are here, a century later, reading his poem and talking about his vision of our genesis.
YOU are the light of the world. Flare up like flame.
by Rainer Maria Rilke
I, 59
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you:
beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
[Rainer Maria Rilke, “Gott spricht zu jedem nur, eh er ihn macht,” I, 59, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, 88.]
Rilke imagined our creative beginnings as God's walk with us out of the darkness, speaking into us the words we will take a lifetime to recover, to hear fully, and to live into. We hear them dimly. Any journey of enlightenment or illumination is partially the journey of recalling our original purpose, our original identity.
Part of what we slowly hear again is the invitation to "flare up like flame." Perhaps this became Rilke's way of saying, "You are the light of the world." Let the inner fire of your origins, your purpose, your identity become flame. Live from the center of that fire, so that which enflames your life will enlighten others also.
Rilke was a complex man -- aren't we all, after all, complex? -- who heard faint voices most all of his life. I imagine he, like me and you, "dimly heard" these words. Did he live them well? Or not so well? Did he, in his life, "flare up like flame"? I do not know.
But I do know he heard the voice, if only dimly.
And I know we are here, a century later, reading his poem and talking about his vision of our genesis.
YOU are the light of the world. Flare up like flame.
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Forgiveness: A Poem
forgiveness
after winter's harshness
the slow greening
again
of spring
April 7, 2018
May 12, 2018
Friday, November 18, 2016
The Soul's Sadness and Love-Dogs
Within my soul I've felt a deep sadness in recent days. Something tender and unhealed within me has been touched by the world around me. My sadness has mingled with anger, and I've swung between the two in regular rhythms.
I'm also feeling desperate on behalf of others who are hurting in ways that are much more tangible (and real) than my own superficial difficulty, by those who regularly find themselves marginalized because of skin color, national origin, orientation, gender. A few of these persons I know by name, and vast millions have names and identities I do not know . . . but with them I nonetheless share a common life in this world. We are more the same than different, and of that I am confident.
This poem goads me on, presses me on down the path, pushes me to not give up or give in, says to me that even the sadness and anger of loss are full of union. Rumi's wisdom tills the field for connection.
Love Dogs
by Rumi
One night a man was crying,
Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
“So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”
The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”
“This longing
you express is the return message.”
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love-dogs
no one knows the names of.
Give your life
to be one of them.
[trans. by Coleman Barks, in Robert Bly, The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures, p. 155 – 156.]
I'm also feeling desperate on behalf of others who are hurting in ways that are much more tangible (and real) than my own superficial difficulty, by those who regularly find themselves marginalized because of skin color, national origin, orientation, gender. A few of these persons I know by name, and vast millions have names and identities I do not know . . . but with them I nonetheless share a common life in this world. We are more the same than different, and of that I am confident.
This poem goads me on, presses me on down the path, pushes me to not give up or give in, says to me that even the sadness and anger of loss are full of union. Rumi's wisdom tills the field for connection.
Love Dogs
by Rumi
One night a man was crying,
Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
“So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”
The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”
“This longing
you express is the return message.”
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love-dogs
no one knows the names of.
Give your life
to be one of them.
[trans. by Coleman Barks, in Robert Bly, The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures, p. 155 – 156.]
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Learning: A Poem by William Stafford
I have lots of reasons to love William Stafford's poetry. This poem is one of them . . . simple, straight, spare.
Stafford was a pacifist and a conscientious objector. It's worthwhile to spend some time keeping company with this poem.
Learning
by William Stafford
A piccolo played then a drum.
Feet began to come – a part
of the music. Here came a horse,
clippety clop, away.
My mother said, "Don't run –
the army is after someone
other than us. If you stay
you'll learn our enemy."
Then he came, the speaker. He stood
in the square. He told us who
to hate. I watched my mother's face,
its quiet. "That's him," she said.
[Stafford, The Way It Is, p. 9]
Stafford was a pacifist and a conscientious objector. It's worthwhile to spend some time keeping company with this poem.
Learning
by William Stafford
A piccolo played then a drum.
Feet began to come – a part
of the music. Here came a horse,
clippety clop, away.
My mother said, "Don't run –
the army is after someone
other than us. If you stay
you'll learn our enemy."
Then he came, the speaker. He stood
in the square. He told us who
to hate. I watched my mother's face,
its quiet. "That's him," she said.
[Stafford, The Way It Is, p. 9]
Monday, September 15, 2014
Thoughts about Genie-Gods and Darkness
The story is too long to tell today. In brief, while in a restaurant recently, I heard a monologue at the table next to me in which a person was "instructing" others at his table in how to get good things ("blessings") from God. This fellow described God as "a blank check" who is just waiting for us to ask for "all the treasures in God's storehouse." We don't have more, he said, "because we don't claim what is already ours."
I won't describe the mix of emotions I felt as this scene unfolded within a few feet of me . . . those of you who know me well will be able to guess a few of my feelings pretty easily.
What I finally came to as I walked out of that scene was the desire to reach out to the 5 or 6 people around that table and say, "You know, if this doesn't work out for any of you in the days ahead, come see me. Here's my card."
Because I know a whole bunch of people -- many of the folks I hang out with day in and day out -- for whom religion and cultural expressions of Christianity have not worked out. From old-school Catholics to prosperity-Gospel evangelicals to hard-shell Baptists . . . and everything else along the spectrum . . . I spend a lot of time with folks whose personal experience has not lined up with the teaching of a particular expression of the Church. Many of these folks have dropped out of organized religious expression, yet they have not given up on some expression of their faith. They wait and they hope. They are people of soul who long for something authentic that will not shrink from the darkness of our world -- or the darkness of their own interior. They are people for whom religious expression and spirituality are not an escape from the real world, but a healing engagement with it. They are people who take seriously the inner life and its expression in the outer world, not because it gets us "the treasures of God" as some kind of self-interested blank check, but because it connects us to a Source that is generously endless and life-sustaining.
I wanted to say some of this to those sitting at that table . . . to offer them a place to go and a people to be with when their God-as-Santa-Claus systems stopped working. Alas, I didn't intrude on their party, so I let them be. (I likely would have been written off by them as an infidel, anyway.)
The entire scenario, as I've reflected on it for a couple of weeks, has also reminded me of how much more appealing is a life of goodies and treasures, a life of all sunlight where a huge Genie-God makes all the roads smooth, takes away all the disease, removes all the stumbling blocks at work, gives us what we want on command . . . as if we shouldn't have to deal with difficulty, crisis, tragedy, or death. (In the Genie-God scenario, Jesus dealt with death, tragedy, and darkness so that we would not have to. His death means that we get the goodies.)
Maybe it's just my personality, but I tend to be drawn to those who are honest about both the darkness and the light. It seems to me that those who are in touch with darkness -- the world's and their own -- offer a tremendous gift to the world. They don't gloss over the darkness, nor do they run from it. They are comfortable in it, not needing to change it into sugar-canes and sweetness. Sometimes the darkness does get transformed into light, but those who can abide in the darkness do not demand that it be so in order to be happy. They find their happiness and delight regardless the weather.
I've noticed in recent years, for example, that poets who are familiar with darkness catch my attention. I've thought of all this today because I re-read a poem by R. S. Thomas this morning. Thomas was a Welsh pastor whose poetry is tinged in darkness. No, more than tinged, his poetry is immersed in darkness. It would be too breezy to call him a pessimist. I simply think of him as a realist, fully engaged with God and with life so that he doesn't hide from the difficult questions. He sometimes is comforted by God's presence, for example, but more often he confronts God over God's perceived absence. His poetry has the feel of the Hebrew Psalms that confront God and question God and demand answers from God, knowing that they may or may not come. And whether they come or not ceases to be the issue. At the core Thomas, like the psalms, engages God.
This is the poem I have considered again today. The last few lines are the lines I'm living with today.
Pilgrimages
R. S. Thomas
There is an island there is no going
to but in a small boat the way
the saints went, travelling the gallery
of the frightened faces of
the long-drowned, munching the gravel
of its beaches. So I have gone
up the salt lane to the building
with the stone altar and the candles
gone out, and kneeled and lifted
my eyes to the furious gargoyle
of the owl that is like a god
gone small and resentful. There
is no body in the stained window
of the sky now. Am I too late?
Were they too late also, those
first pilgrims? He is such a fast
God, always before us and
leaving as we arrive.
There are those here
not given to prayer, whose office
is the blank sea that they say daily.
What they listen to is not
hymns but the slow chemistry of the soil
that turns saints’ bones to dust,
dust to an irritant of the nostril.
There is no time on this island.
The swinging pendulum of the tide
has no clock; the events
are dateless. These people are not
late or soon; they are just
here with only the one question
to ask, which life answers
by being in them. It is I
who ask. Was the pilgrimage
I made to come to my own
self, to learn that in times
like these and for one like me
God will never be plain and
out there, but dark rather and
inexplicable, as though he were in here?
-- R.S. Thomas, Later Poems: 1972 – 1982 (London: Macmillan, 1983), 125 – 26.
I won't describe the mix of emotions I felt as this scene unfolded within a few feet of me . . . those of you who know me well will be able to guess a few of my feelings pretty easily.
What I finally came to as I walked out of that scene was the desire to reach out to the 5 or 6 people around that table and say, "You know, if this doesn't work out for any of you in the days ahead, come see me. Here's my card."
Because I know a whole bunch of people -- many of the folks I hang out with day in and day out -- for whom religion and cultural expressions of Christianity have not worked out. From old-school Catholics to prosperity-Gospel evangelicals to hard-shell Baptists . . . and everything else along the spectrum . . . I spend a lot of time with folks whose personal experience has not lined up with the teaching of a particular expression of the Church. Many of these folks have dropped out of organized religious expression, yet they have not given up on some expression of their faith. They wait and they hope. They are people of soul who long for something authentic that will not shrink from the darkness of our world -- or the darkness of their own interior. They are people for whom religious expression and spirituality are not an escape from the real world, but a healing engagement with it. They are people who take seriously the inner life and its expression in the outer world, not because it gets us "the treasures of God" as some kind of self-interested blank check, but because it connects us to a Source that is generously endless and life-sustaining.
I wanted to say some of this to those sitting at that table . . . to offer them a place to go and a people to be with when their God-as-Santa-Claus systems stopped working. Alas, I didn't intrude on their party, so I let them be. (I likely would have been written off by them as an infidel, anyway.)
The entire scenario, as I've reflected on it for a couple of weeks, has also reminded me of how much more appealing is a life of goodies and treasures, a life of all sunlight where a huge Genie-God makes all the roads smooth, takes away all the disease, removes all the stumbling blocks at work, gives us what we want on command . . . as if we shouldn't have to deal with difficulty, crisis, tragedy, or death. (In the Genie-God scenario, Jesus dealt with death, tragedy, and darkness so that we would not have to. His death means that we get the goodies.)
Maybe it's just my personality, but I tend to be drawn to those who are honest about both the darkness and the light. It seems to me that those who are in touch with darkness -- the world's and their own -- offer a tremendous gift to the world. They don't gloss over the darkness, nor do they run from it. They are comfortable in it, not needing to change it into sugar-canes and sweetness. Sometimes the darkness does get transformed into light, but those who can abide in the darkness do not demand that it be so in order to be happy. They find their happiness and delight regardless the weather.
I've noticed in recent years, for example, that poets who are familiar with darkness catch my attention. I've thought of all this today because I re-read a poem by R. S. Thomas this morning. Thomas was a Welsh pastor whose poetry is tinged in darkness. No, more than tinged, his poetry is immersed in darkness. It would be too breezy to call him a pessimist. I simply think of him as a realist, fully engaged with God and with life so that he doesn't hide from the difficult questions. He sometimes is comforted by God's presence, for example, but more often he confronts God over God's perceived absence. His poetry has the feel of the Hebrew Psalms that confront God and question God and demand answers from God, knowing that they may or may not come. And whether they come or not ceases to be the issue. At the core Thomas, like the psalms, engages God.
This is the poem I have considered again today. The last few lines are the lines I'm living with today.
Pilgrimages
R. S. Thomas
There is an island there is no going
to but in a small boat the way
the saints went, travelling the gallery
of the frightened faces of
the long-drowned, munching the gravel
of its beaches. So I have gone
up the salt lane to the building
with the stone altar and the candles
gone out, and kneeled and lifted
my eyes to the furious gargoyle
of the owl that is like a god
gone small and resentful. There
is no body in the stained window
of the sky now. Am I too late?
Were they too late also, those
first pilgrims? He is such a fast
God, always before us and
leaving as we arrive.
There are those here
not given to prayer, whose office
is the blank sea that they say daily.
What they listen to is not
hymns but the slow chemistry of the soil
that turns saints’ bones to dust,
dust to an irritant of the nostril.
There is no time on this island.
The swinging pendulum of the tide
has no clock; the events
are dateless. These people are not
late or soon; they are just
here with only the one question
to ask, which life answers
by being in them. It is I
who ask. Was the pilgrimage
I made to come to my own
self, to learn that in times
like these and for one like me
God will never be plain and
out there, but dark rather and
inexplicable, as though he were in here?
-- R.S. Thomas, Later Poems: 1972 – 1982 (London: Macmillan, 1983), 125 – 26.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
A Wendell Berry Poem about Liberty
We Who Prayed and Wept
We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.
Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
sent Thy necessity.
[Wendell Berry, The Gift of Gravity: Selected Poems 1968 - 2000 (Ipswich: Golgonooza Press, 1968, 1970, 1973, 1980, 1982, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002),41.]
We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.
Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
sent Thy necessity.
[Wendell Berry, The Gift of Gravity: Selected Poems 1968 - 2000 (Ipswich: Golgonooza Press, 1968, 1970, 1973, 1980, 1982, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002),41.]
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
A Poem about Change and the Spiritual Life
The storms lumbered
across the landscape
shifted your shape
as they beat
upon your house
Those who followed
who knew you
and embraced you
looked for you
in the usual places
They could not find you
you were not where
they last
set you down
you were not where
they last
saw you
you were not where
they last
loved you
Where the storm
blew you
they had never gone
They could only look
in all the usual places
This life is brutal
and expensive
when you are invisible
to those
who love you
The cost of this life
is appallingly high
and the road is littered
with those
who don’t make it
to the end
[Jerry Webber, June 16, 2012]
across the landscape
shifted your shape
as they beat
upon your house
Those who followed
who knew you
and embraced you
looked for you
in the usual places
They could not find you
you were not where
they last
set you down
you were not where
they last
saw you
you were not where
they last
loved you
Where the storm
blew you
they had never gone
They could only look
in all the usual places
This life is brutal
and expensive
when you are invisible
to those
who love you
The cost of this life
is appallingly high
and the road is littered
with those
who don’t make it
to the end
[Jerry Webber, June 16, 2012]
Thursday, May 31, 2012
When I Die: A Poem
When I die
read nothing that rhymes
and tastes like sugar
read some Rilke
something fierce
and raw
something that
shapes the awe
and cloud
that compels us
toward the mystery
of what has not yet
appeared.
read nothing that rhymes
and tastes like sugar
read some Rilke
something fierce
and raw
something that
shapes the awe
and cloud
that compels us
toward the mystery
of what has not yet
appeared.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
A Rilke Poem about Your Beauty
Initial
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Let your beauty manifest itself
without talking and calculation.
You are silent. It says for you: I am.
And comes in meaning thousandfold,
comes at long last over everyone.
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Images, a bilingual edition trans. by Edward Snow (New York: North Point Press, 1991) 107.
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Let your beauty manifest itself
without talking and calculation.
You are silent. It says for you: I am.
And comes in meaning thousandfold,
comes at long last over everyone.
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Images, a bilingual edition trans. by Edward Snow (New York: North Point Press, 1991) 107.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
One Foot in the Dark and One Foot in the Light: A Rilke Poem
I'm aware of my tendency to label things as "good" or "bad" depending on how they impact me. It may be that way with most all of us. Our vantage point is always self-referenced, so that we evaluate the events in our lives and in our world by the measure of how they impact us. Those things that are "good" bring me happiness and well-being. Those things are "bad" that cause me pain and discomfort. These are the standard value-judgments with which most of us live.
I'm convinced that a growing life with God relies less and less on such value judgments. Over time we recognize that there are some things that are "good" for me that don't necessarily feel good in the moment. Pain and struggle are valuable parts of the human experience, as well as laughter and gladness. As we grow up spiritually, we acknowledge that we can't fully see through every situation to the bigger picture. Our sight is limited, so that we don't often see the larger work God is accomplishing in our lives and in our world, even in the struggle and uncomfortable seasons of life.
[I read an excerpt from Richard Rohr a couple of weeks ago in which he mentioned discernment as the spiritual gift of being able to see that what may be "good" for me may also be "bad" for someone else in the world . . . for someone close to me or for someone somewhere else on the planet. It takes a maturing person, a person who is becoming a spiritual grown-up, to recognize that not everything that feels good or appears beneficial to me is also good for others and for the created world.]
It is difficult to hold this tension, to live in this liminal space where things are not as we wish them to be. We tend to want one or the other. We want the bad turned into good, the water turned into wine, the darkness turned into light, the earthy turned into the celestial.
Most often in life we are invited to stand between the two, to wait at the threshold, to live with one foot in the light and another foot in the darkness. It is a marvelous grace to be able to do this, and one that runs counter to what most of us want from life.
Last week a poem from Rainer Maria Rilke's Book of Images found me. The poem, in German, is entitled "Abend." In English, that would be "Evening" or "Sunset." It speaks, at least to me, of this way of holding the tensions, of living the "both/and" rather than the "either/or."
Evening
by Rainer Maria Rilke
The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;
and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;
and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.
[Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Stephen Mitchell (New York: Vintage International, 1980, 1981, 1982), 13.]
Some contemporary critics of Rilke's poetry call this poem "ludicrous" and "bombastic." I'm not up on my poetry criticism, so I don't know about that. I do know that the poem stirred me with its images.
First, there is the image of evening or sunset, that twilight (literally, "twin lights" or "two lights") when the daylight lingers but also the darkness of night is closing in. I recognize that much of life is lived in this evening time, holding onto the light of day and resisting the darkness of night. In this twilight, a person belongs to both the light and the darkness, while at the same time belonging to neither one.
As the poem unfolds, Rilke shifts the image from the light/dark of evening to the two movements represented by stars ("journeying to heaven") and earth ("one that falls"). Again, Rilke says that we live in both realms. Both are true of us.
The old rabbis taught that each human has two pockets. In one pocket is the message, "You are the dust of the earth." In the other pocket, the message says, "For you the universe was made." I think of the "dust pocket" as my humanity. I'm not to deny it or to change it. I am invited to live a fully human life. I am the dust of the earth. From dust I have come and to dust I will return.
I am also, however, created in and for connection with God. There is a grand, bigger-than-life design woven into my DNA by God. I, like you, have a destiny that is larger and more expansive than I can possible imagine. So there is a part of me that lives fallen to the earth ("stone in you," Rilke says) and a part of me that "journeys to heaven" (the "star" in me).
So here's the challenge: I am invited to recognize each within me, simultaneously, and to live into the fullness of both. In Rilke's poetic language, he says it leaves you, "inexpressibly to unravel your life (or "untangle your life") with its immensity and fear" . . . both "bounded" and "immeasurable."
"Immensity" speaks to the feet which stand with light and with the heavenlies . . . and "fear" speaks to the part of us that is familiar with darkness and with the earth/dust.
In fact, in the original poem, "immensity" and "fear" are only two of the three words Rilke used in that line. The third word is rendered in other translations of the poem as "growing" or "ripening."
These are the challenges of every human life . . . to untangle our lives in their immensity and fear and ripening. I sense the invitation to live into my God-designed life in all its hugeness and fearfulness and growing edges. I can have feet planted in all those places. I don't have to choose one or the other.
It is in this way, I believe, that I'm invited to live fully with and for God in every season.
I'm convinced that a growing life with God relies less and less on such value judgments. Over time we recognize that there are some things that are "good" for me that don't necessarily feel good in the moment. Pain and struggle are valuable parts of the human experience, as well as laughter and gladness. As we grow up spiritually, we acknowledge that we can't fully see through every situation to the bigger picture. Our sight is limited, so that we don't often see the larger work God is accomplishing in our lives and in our world, even in the struggle and uncomfortable seasons of life.
[I read an excerpt from Richard Rohr a couple of weeks ago in which he mentioned discernment as the spiritual gift of being able to see that what may be "good" for me may also be "bad" for someone else in the world . . . for someone close to me or for someone somewhere else on the planet. It takes a maturing person, a person who is becoming a spiritual grown-up, to recognize that not everything that feels good or appears beneficial to me is also good for others and for the created world.]
It is difficult to hold this tension, to live in this liminal space where things are not as we wish them to be. We tend to want one or the other. We want the bad turned into good, the water turned into wine, the darkness turned into light, the earthy turned into the celestial.
Most often in life we are invited to stand between the two, to wait at the threshold, to live with one foot in the light and another foot in the darkness. It is a marvelous grace to be able to do this, and one that runs counter to what most of us want from life.
Last week a poem from Rainer Maria Rilke's Book of Images found me. The poem, in German, is entitled "Abend." In English, that would be "Evening" or "Sunset." It speaks, at least to me, of this way of holding the tensions, of living the "both/and" rather than the "either/or."
Evening
by Rainer Maria Rilke
The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;
and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;
and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.
[Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Stephen Mitchell (New York: Vintage International, 1980, 1981, 1982), 13.]
Some contemporary critics of Rilke's poetry call this poem "ludicrous" and "bombastic." I'm not up on my poetry criticism, so I don't know about that. I do know that the poem stirred me with its images.
First, there is the image of evening or sunset, that twilight (literally, "twin lights" or "two lights") when the daylight lingers but also the darkness of night is closing in. I recognize that much of life is lived in this evening time, holding onto the light of day and resisting the darkness of night. In this twilight, a person belongs to both the light and the darkness, while at the same time belonging to neither one.
As the poem unfolds, Rilke shifts the image from the light/dark of evening to the two movements represented by stars ("journeying to heaven") and earth ("one that falls"). Again, Rilke says that we live in both realms. Both are true of us.
The old rabbis taught that each human has two pockets. In one pocket is the message, "You are the dust of the earth." In the other pocket, the message says, "For you the universe was made." I think of the "dust pocket" as my humanity. I'm not to deny it or to change it. I am invited to live a fully human life. I am the dust of the earth. From dust I have come and to dust I will return.
I am also, however, created in and for connection with God. There is a grand, bigger-than-life design woven into my DNA by God. I, like you, have a destiny that is larger and more expansive than I can possible imagine. So there is a part of me that lives fallen to the earth ("stone in you," Rilke says) and a part of me that "journeys to heaven" (the "star" in me).
So here's the challenge: I am invited to recognize each within me, simultaneously, and to live into the fullness of both. In Rilke's poetic language, he says it leaves you, "inexpressibly to unravel your life (or "untangle your life") with its immensity and fear" . . . both "bounded" and "immeasurable."
"Immensity" speaks to the feet which stand with light and with the heavenlies . . . and "fear" speaks to the part of us that is familiar with darkness and with the earth/dust.
In fact, in the original poem, "immensity" and "fear" are only two of the three words Rilke used in that line. The third word is rendered in other translations of the poem as "growing" or "ripening."
These are the challenges of every human life . . . to untangle our lives in their immensity and fear and ripening. I sense the invitation to live into my God-designed life in all its hugeness and fearfulness and growing edges. I can have feet planted in all those places. I don't have to choose one or the other.
It is in this way, I believe, that I'm invited to live fully with and for God in every season.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Letting Yourself into the River
Sometimes I'll read a poem by William Stafford and be taken by its simplicity. Further readings of the poem will peel back layer after layer of meaning, and I'll find more and more points of connection. That's what a good poem does with me . . . it allows me many places through which to enter into it, to find myself in it. Stafford's poetry gives me plenty of doorways and windows through which to enter.
As I read various poets, I find that many, many contemporary poets were influenced by William Stafford. Many feel indebted to him.
I don't know whether Robert Bly would say that about Stafford, but he might. Bly has something of Stafford's spirit about him. His poetry is often tied to images from the natural world, like Stafford's. Bly has devoted many years to helping men give attention to matters of soul and spirit. Though he has done so outside the Church, he is familiar with the human soul, and his poetry reflects his sensitivity to matters of life-meaning and soul.
I read both Stafford and Bly quite a bit. Awhile back my eye was drawn to Bly's poem, "When William Stafford Died." I've read it and pondered it quite often recently. I've given quite a bit of time to exploring the poem's points of entry, the places where I find resonance with it.
Here's the poem.
When William Stafford Died
Robert Bly
Well, water goes down the Montana gullies.
“I’ll just go around this rock and think
About it later.” That’s what you said.
When death came, you said, “I’ll go there.”
There’s no sign you’ll come back. Sometimes
My father sat up in the coffin and was alive again.
But I think you were born before my father,
And the feet they made in your time were lighter.
One dusk you were gone. Sometimes a fallen tree
Holds onto a rock, if the current is strong.
I won’t say my father did that, but I won’t
Say he didn’t either. I was watching you both.
If all a man does is to watch from the shore,
Then he doesn’t have to worry about the current.
But if affection has put us into the stream,
Then we have to agree to where the water goes.
[Robert Bly, Meditations on the Insatiable Soul (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 16 – 17.]
I can't say anything about what Bly intended through his poem. But I can say something about what I discover in it for myself.
The striking image for me is the water flowing downhill . . . gullies, streams, rivers . . . all with their current flowing downstream, flowing to wherever the gullies take you. Once in the current, you have little say about where you go. You have to accept the limitations of the banks. You have to accept what the terrain looks like and feels like as you flow down to sea-level. And you have to accept what is at the end of the journey.
The option is to stand on the bank, to never let yourself into the river. If you leave yourself on the bank, you can watch the current, you can notice the nuances of the stream and study its science, but you cannot really engage it. And you will never end up where the current goes. Bly says, "If all a man does is to watch from the shore, // Then he doesn't have to worry about the current."
It seems to me that this is a crucial image for life . . . that if something (Bly says, "affection") puts us into the stream, "then we have to agree to where the water goes." There are things in life that I don't get to choose. There are things in life I wouldn't choose if given a choice. But once in the current, I open myself to whatever comes, to wherever it takes me. And then my life becomes about how I navigate those waters, how I stay in the flow, how meaning comes from even the rocks and ravines of the journey.
Bly says, "If affection has put us into the stream . . ." I've wondered the last couple of weeks what that word would be for me. Is it affection? Or something else? freedom? passion? hunger? love? What puts me into the stream?
Then, last week . . . four days at the Benedictine Monastery in Pecos, New Mexico . . . the Pecos River valley and mountains on every side . . . walking on a trail that heads north from the monastery, along the Pecos River . . . this is what I saw.
Immediately my mind went to the poem. I had been with it enough to remember the lines, so when I saw this tree just off the trail, my mind immediately went to, "Sometimes a fallen tree // Holds onto a rock, if the current is strong."
This fallen tree, stubbornly holding onto the bank, refusing to drop into the current, resisting the life of the river became a kind of symbol for me. If this fallen tree would not let itself go, what about me?
The end of the river may be death -- the poem, after all, is called, "When William Stafford Died" -- but the tree that never drops into the current is dead already.
So the convergence of poetry with real-life images from the created world -- river and tree -- stays with me. The poem is not finished doing its work with me. And though my time in Pecos is over and I'm back in my daily life-work, the image of the fallen tree lives on within me.
As I read various poets, I find that many, many contemporary poets were influenced by William Stafford. Many feel indebted to him.
I don't know whether Robert Bly would say that about Stafford, but he might. Bly has something of Stafford's spirit about him. His poetry is often tied to images from the natural world, like Stafford's. Bly has devoted many years to helping men give attention to matters of soul and spirit. Though he has done so outside the Church, he is familiar with the human soul, and his poetry reflects his sensitivity to matters of life-meaning and soul.
I read both Stafford and Bly quite a bit. Awhile back my eye was drawn to Bly's poem, "When William Stafford Died." I've read it and pondered it quite often recently. I've given quite a bit of time to exploring the poem's points of entry, the places where I find resonance with it.
Here's the poem.
When William Stafford Died
Robert Bly
Well, water goes down the Montana gullies.
“I’ll just go around this rock and think
About it later.” That’s what you said.
When death came, you said, “I’ll go there.”
There’s no sign you’ll come back. Sometimes
My father sat up in the coffin and was alive again.
But I think you were born before my father,
And the feet they made in your time were lighter.
One dusk you were gone. Sometimes a fallen tree
Holds onto a rock, if the current is strong.
I won’t say my father did that, but I won’t
Say he didn’t either. I was watching you both.
If all a man does is to watch from the shore,
Then he doesn’t have to worry about the current.
But if affection has put us into the stream,
Then we have to agree to where the water goes.
[Robert Bly, Meditations on the Insatiable Soul (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 16 – 17.]
I can't say anything about what Bly intended through his poem. But I can say something about what I discover in it for myself.
The striking image for me is the water flowing downhill . . . gullies, streams, rivers . . . all with their current flowing downstream, flowing to wherever the gullies take you. Once in the current, you have little say about where you go. You have to accept the limitations of the banks. You have to accept what the terrain looks like and feels like as you flow down to sea-level. And you have to accept what is at the end of the journey.
The option is to stand on the bank, to never let yourself into the river. If you leave yourself on the bank, you can watch the current, you can notice the nuances of the stream and study its science, but you cannot really engage it. And you will never end up where the current goes. Bly says, "If all a man does is to watch from the shore, // Then he doesn't have to worry about the current."
It seems to me that this is a crucial image for life . . . that if something (Bly says, "affection") puts us into the stream, "then we have to agree to where the water goes." There are things in life that I don't get to choose. There are things in life I wouldn't choose if given a choice. But once in the current, I open myself to whatever comes, to wherever it takes me. And then my life becomes about how I navigate those waters, how I stay in the flow, how meaning comes from even the rocks and ravines of the journey.
Bly says, "If affection has put us into the stream . . ." I've wondered the last couple of weeks what that word would be for me. Is it affection? Or something else? freedom? passion? hunger? love? What puts me into the stream?
Then, last week . . . four days at the Benedictine Monastery in Pecos, New Mexico . . . the Pecos River valley and mountains on every side . . . walking on a trail that heads north from the monastery, along the Pecos River . . . this is what I saw.
Immediately my mind went to the poem. I had been with it enough to remember the lines, so when I saw this tree just off the trail, my mind immediately went to, "Sometimes a fallen tree // Holds onto a rock, if the current is strong."
This fallen tree, stubbornly holding onto the bank, refusing to drop into the current, resisting the life of the river became a kind of symbol for me. If this fallen tree would not let itself go, what about me?
The end of the river may be death -- the poem, after all, is called, "When William Stafford Died" -- but the tree that never drops into the current is dead already.
So the convergence of poetry with real-life images from the created world -- river and tree -- stays with me. The poem is not finished doing its work with me. And though my time in Pecos is over and I'm back in my daily life-work, the image of the fallen tree lives on within me.
Monday, January 23, 2012
For the Sake of Your Soul
Robert Bly is one of my favorite contemporary poets. He writes from the deep place of soul and soul-consciousness. Several of his poems are among my favorites. Over the last couple of months I have regularly read his poem (which I may post later), "When William Stafford Died." It is about the power of affection and passion, and the willingness to live the life one has been given. It challenges me to live the only life that is authentically mine to live.
Then this evening I heard this Bly poem read, and in the few hours since have read it myself another 10 - 12 times. Try it on for yourself.
One Source of Bad Information
by Robert Bly
There’s a boy in you about three
Years old who hasn’t learned a thing for thirty
Thousand years. Sometimes it’s a girl.
This child had to make up its mind
How to save you from death. He said things like:
“Stay home. Avoid elevators. Eat only elk.”
You live with this child but you don’t know it.
You are in the office, yes, but live with this boy
At night. He’s uninformed, but he does want
To save your life. And he has. Because of this boy
You survived a lot. He’s got six big ideas.
Five don’t work. Right now he’s repeating them to you.
[Robert Bly, Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems.]
Then this evening I heard this Bly poem read, and in the few hours since have read it myself another 10 - 12 times. Try it on for yourself.
One Source of Bad Information
by Robert Bly
There’s a boy in you about three
Years old who hasn’t learned a thing for thirty
Thousand years. Sometimes it’s a girl.
This child had to make up its mind
How to save you from death. He said things like:
“Stay home. Avoid elevators. Eat only elk.”
You live with this child but you don’t know it.
You are in the office, yes, but live with this boy
At night. He’s uninformed, but he does want
To save your life. And he has. Because of this boy
You survived a lot. He’s got six big ideas.
Five don’t work. Right now he’s repeating them to you.
[Robert Bly, Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems.]
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Good and Bad Pain . . . with a Little Rilke Thrown In
Last week several of us round-tabled about pain, gathered around the idea that perhaps there are such things as good pain and bad pain. My friend Peter Johns came up with some insightful analogies and included them last week in his blog. It's worth reading. You can read Peter's thoughts at this address:
http://edensong.blogspot.com/2012/01/lessons-from-gym.html
As a result of the open and honest discussion among soul-friends and fellow pilgrims, I was pushed to come to my own sense of what pain is and how I either step into it or avoid it. I realize that I don't like pain any more than the next person. And it's not always easy for me to differentiate emotional pain from spiritual pain, physical pain from mental pain. Often, especially when I am in the midst of it, pain is pain, and all the philosophizing or psychologizing about it in the world does not make it better. When I'm in the midst of it, I just want to cry out and make it go away.
I suppose in some things I have a pretty high pain threshold. I've been surprised from time to time, for instance, when doctors have said to me in the midst of pain or bad health, "How are you still standing this?" Then, at other times, the mere sight of a needle while I'm sitting in the chemo chair is enough to put me on the floor. I don't get it, but that represents the wide spectrum of my experience and tolerance of pain.
And I do recognize that I am largely shaped by my Western cultural heritage that insinuates that all pain is bad, that it is to be relieved, medicated or dispersed by any means possible. Our cultural emblem is "onward and upward," as if anything that holds us back from success, achievement, and prosperity must be bad. As a people, we don't have much tolerance for pain, for difficulty or for struggle.
The stories we tell in the corporate world are stories of success, accomplishment, and getting ahead.
The stories we tell in the ecclesial (church) world are the stories of the pain turned to glory, struggle that turned to victory. We have little heart-space for stories of perpetual struggle . . . for stories that do not end up with gold medals in the end . . . for stories that do not end with a heart-warming, inspirational moral.
I believe that most of us will endure a little pain only if we feel promised that it will not last long, or that it will somehow be turned to glory, or that we will be rewarded for it with some kind of earthly or celestial reward.
The difficult, wrenching spiritual discipline is to step into pain, to live in it, and perhaps to embrace it, even if we are not promised an end to it or a pleasing outcome to it. Our spiritual teachers for centuries have reminded us that in order to live a life of soul, that is a life in which we are our most authentic, God-created selves, we must make a downward journey -- often imaged as a "descent." That downward journey is most always traumatic, deathly, and painful (either physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually).
So after last week's discussion, and Peter's helpful meditation, I remembered this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. It has spoken to me for many years, especially in the difficult days of my life, the days when I have cried out, "Where are you, God? Where are you in all this hurt?!?!"
Read it a couple of times. Visualize the image Rilke paints with words . . . a massive rock . . . a vein of ore . . . the terrible darkness . . . the pressing in . . . the weight of the pain like stone. . . .
It feels as though I make my way
through massive rock
like a vein of ore
alone, encased.
I am so deep inside it
I can’t see the path or any distance:
everything is close
and everything closing in on me
has turned to stone.
Since I still don’t know enough about pain,
this terrible darkness makes me small.
If it’s you, though –
press down hard on me, break in
that I may know the weight of your hand,
and you, the fullness of my cry.
[Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996), 127.]
I am drawn especially to Rilke's line, "I still don't know enough about pain . . ." I confess, that even after 53 years . . . numerous heart-breaks, vocational struggles, disease, years of soul-work . . . I still don't know enough about pain.
And maybe in the end, what Rilke most wants is what I most want . . . to know that somehow God is present in the pain . . . and for God to hear me when I cry.
http://edensong.blogspot.com/2012/01/lessons-from-gym.html
As a result of the open and honest discussion among soul-friends and fellow pilgrims, I was pushed to come to my own sense of what pain is and how I either step into it or avoid it. I realize that I don't like pain any more than the next person. And it's not always easy for me to differentiate emotional pain from spiritual pain, physical pain from mental pain. Often, especially when I am in the midst of it, pain is pain, and all the philosophizing or psychologizing about it in the world does not make it better. When I'm in the midst of it, I just want to cry out and make it go away.
I suppose in some things I have a pretty high pain threshold. I've been surprised from time to time, for instance, when doctors have said to me in the midst of pain or bad health, "How are you still standing this?" Then, at other times, the mere sight of a needle while I'm sitting in the chemo chair is enough to put me on the floor. I don't get it, but that represents the wide spectrum of my experience and tolerance of pain.
And I do recognize that I am largely shaped by my Western cultural heritage that insinuates that all pain is bad, that it is to be relieved, medicated or dispersed by any means possible. Our cultural emblem is "onward and upward," as if anything that holds us back from success, achievement, and prosperity must be bad. As a people, we don't have much tolerance for pain, for difficulty or for struggle.
The stories we tell in the corporate world are stories of success, accomplishment, and getting ahead.
The stories we tell in the ecclesial (church) world are the stories of the pain turned to glory, struggle that turned to victory. We have little heart-space for stories of perpetual struggle . . . for stories that do not end up with gold medals in the end . . . for stories that do not end with a heart-warming, inspirational moral.
I believe that most of us will endure a little pain only if we feel promised that it will not last long, or that it will somehow be turned to glory, or that we will be rewarded for it with some kind of earthly or celestial reward.
The difficult, wrenching spiritual discipline is to step into pain, to live in it, and perhaps to embrace it, even if we are not promised an end to it or a pleasing outcome to it. Our spiritual teachers for centuries have reminded us that in order to live a life of soul, that is a life in which we are our most authentic, God-created selves, we must make a downward journey -- often imaged as a "descent." That downward journey is most always traumatic, deathly, and painful (either physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually).
So after last week's discussion, and Peter's helpful meditation, I remembered this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. It has spoken to me for many years, especially in the difficult days of my life, the days when I have cried out, "Where are you, God? Where are you in all this hurt?!?!"
Read it a couple of times. Visualize the image Rilke paints with words . . . a massive rock . . . a vein of ore . . . the terrible darkness . . . the pressing in . . . the weight of the pain like stone. . . .
It feels as though I make my way
through massive rock
like a vein of ore
alone, encased.
I am so deep inside it
I can’t see the path or any distance:
everything is close
and everything closing in on me
has turned to stone.
Since I still don’t know enough about pain,
this terrible darkness makes me small.
If it’s you, though –
press down hard on me, break in
that I may know the weight of your hand,
and you, the fullness of my cry.
[Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996), 127.]
I am drawn especially to Rilke's line, "I still don't know enough about pain . . ." I confess, that even after 53 years . . . numerous heart-breaks, vocational struggles, disease, years of soul-work . . . I still don't know enough about pain.
And maybe in the end, what Rilke most wants is what I most want . . . to know that somehow God is present in the pain . . . and for God to hear me when I cry.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Birth: A Poem
On Christmas Day I shared a guided meditation that I've called The Cave of the Heart. You can find that meditation in the post previous to this one.
After praying with the "Cave of the Heart" image a few weeks ago, the meditation continued to unfold for me over several days.
One fruit of the meditation came out in this poem, which became an expression of my desire to be open to whatever God wanted to birth within me, as well as my yearning for some hiddenness and solitude in the midst of a very full Advent season.
Birth
For some it is enough
to have a place to sleep
out of the cold
a modest cave
to deflect the swirling
wind unobstructed
across the cold plains;
Not that the necessary births
cannot emerge from the
street-corner tumult,
But I always say:
Do it in private
Let the cavern womb what
is trying to be born in you
What wants to save you.
After praying with the "Cave of the Heart" image a few weeks ago, the meditation continued to unfold for me over several days.
One fruit of the meditation came out in this poem, which became an expression of my desire to be open to whatever God wanted to birth within me, as well as my yearning for some hiddenness and solitude in the midst of a very full Advent season.
Birth
For some it is enough
to have a place to sleep
out of the cold
a modest cave
to deflect the swirling
wind unobstructed
across the cold plains;
Not that the necessary births
cannot emerge from the
street-corner tumult,
But I always say:
Do it in private
Let the cavern womb what
is trying to be born in you
What wants to save you.
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