Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet. You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, skill — more of each than you have — inspiration, work, growing older, patience, for patience joins time to eternity. Any readers who like your work, doubt their judgment.
Breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensioned life; stay away from screens. Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in. There are no unsacred places; There are only sacred places And desecrated places.
I stalked her in the grocery store: her crown of snowy braids held in place by a great silver clip, her erect bearing, radiating tenderness, the way she placed yogurt and avocados in her basket, beaming peace like the North Star. I wanted to ask, “What aisle did you find your serenity in, do you know how to be married for fifty years, or how to live alone, excuse me for interrupting, but you seem to possess some knowledge that makes earth burn and turn on its axis.” But we don’t request such things from strangers nowadays. So I said, “I love your hair.”
Human beings suffer They torture one another, They get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song Can fully right a wrong Inflicted and endured.
The innocent in gaols Beat on their bars together. A hunger-striker’s father Stands in the graveyard dumb. The police widow in veils Faints at the funeral home.
History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave… But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge. Believe that a further shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracles And cures and healing wells.
Call miracle self-healing: The utter, self-revealing Double-take of feeling. If there’s fire on the mountain Or lightning and storm And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing The outcry and the birth-cry Of new life at its term. It means once in a lifetime That justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.
– Seamus Heaney –
Earlier this week, I heard Irish poet Pádraig Ó’Tuama read this poem in a live stream and from him learned that Joe Biden has been reciting it in his campaign for president. Once the election results are certified, it would appear that poetry will have once again returned to the White House.
This blessing keeps nothing for itself. You can find it by following the path of what it has let go, of what it has learned it can live without.
Say this blessing out loud a few times and you will hear the hollow places within it, how it echoes in a way that gives your voice back to you as if you had never heard it before.
Yet this blessing would not be mistaken for any other, as if, in its emptying, it had lost what makes it most itself.
It simply desires to have room enough to welcome what comes.
Today, it’s you.
So come and sit in this place made holy by its hollows. You think you have too much to do, too little time, too great a weight of responsibility that none but you can carry.
I tell you, lay it down. Just for a moment, if that’s what you can manage at first. Five minutes. Lift up your voice— in laughter, in weeping, it does not matter— and let it ring against these spacious walls.
Do this until you can hear the spaces within your own breathing. Do this until you can feel the hollow in your heart where something is letting go, where something is making way.
– Jan Richardson – Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons
A PRECIOUS CURIOSITY “…ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” Jeremiah 6:16
Little girl clutches her mother’s hand struggles to keep up as her mother’s long legs make one step to her every four.
Slows down to touch the flower. Stops to look up into the golden leaves through to the endless blue. Tilts her head to hear the subtle birdsong.
Mother, impatient, tugs her forward into their destination. So much to do again today, always. No time to waste. No time to wonder.
And yet…
The sudden remembering of her own small self. So easily and so often touched by a simple beauty not yet named. Senses alive and alert to a precious curiosity.
Her mother tugging her hand making her trip to keep up.
Imagining that lineage of hurried and harried mothers, walking on ancient paths, tugging the hands of their little wondering ones.
Walking in an ancient memory, to find a good way now, to slow down, to be tugged by her little one into rest for her soul.
Things are changing; things are starting to spin, snap, fly off into the blue sleeve of the long afternoon. 𝘖𝘩 and 𝘰𝘰𝘩
come whistling out of the perished mouth of the grass, as things turn soft, boil back into substance and hue. As everything, forgetting its own enchantment, whispers: I too love oblivion why not it is full of second chances. 𝘕𝘰𝘸, hiss the bright curls of the leaves. 𝘕𝘰𝘸! booms the muscle of the wind.
I’m standing on the cusp of the seasons, now dressed for winter when I walk Annie. Gloves need to be swapped out for mittens, trail runners for Blundstones. Tomorrow, we’ll go shopping for a new winter coat for Annie, as I think with age, we’re both feeling the cold more. Today there’s a skiff of snow on roofs and yards, the shallow pond froze last night, and during yesterday morning’s river valley walk, the shoreline was edged with ice. Yet, still the red, golden green and light brown falling leaves.
This autumn, one particularly resplendent in colour and warmth with sunshine most every day, I felt the invitation to “see” what was on display and unfolding while Annie and I walked. She, ever patient, and I, and with my early generation, single lens phone camera in hand, stopped in front of a red amur maple, reminiscent of my Niagara youth. Glowing, almost vibrating vermillion, I was awestruck and until now, never thought my phone could capture what I was seeing. It was the beginning.
“I take my camera out into the world, and it invites me to slow down and linger over these moments of beauty. It opens me to wonder and delight.”
Christine Valters Paintner, Eyes of the Heart, 2013
Then it was the roses, full blown blossoms and buds, still. And the sweet peas – always an irony for me with an April birthday, and them the designated flower.
The dandelion, harbinger of spring, peeking among the dried leaves. The golden ash against our signature blue sky. Ruby globes of crabapple, sun-kissed cherries, orange mountain ash berries.
Sunflower sentinels bordering a walkway. And the skies.
One day the clouds had me spellbound. Later that day, after I’d shared their magnificence on Facebook, friends said they, too, had noticed and appreciated I’d stopped to notice, to press, to share. Another day, later in the season, I was smitten by treetops in their yonder backdrops.
And throughout, always that amur maple marking autumn’s reign.
“…this is one of the wonders of photography: to be able to frame a moment in time and, within my gaze and absolute presence in that particular moment, to discover holiness. In that single moment, I am reminded that all moments are holy.”
Christine Valters Paintner, Eyes of the Heart, 2013
Framing these moments during our neighborhood walks has easily transferred into chronicling my weekly trek in the river valley. The “Camino de Edmonton,” a thirteen-week staged event to correspond in distance to a final leg of the Camino de Santiago, finds twenty or so hardy souls meeting every Saturday at various rendezvous points in the city for an 8:00 am start. There, I bring my Lumix “point and shoot” hung around my neck, tucked securely into the hip belt of my Deuter pack.
“the graced eye can glimpse beauty everywhere, seeing the divine at work in the hidden depths of things. It is so easy to let our senses be dulled and to settle for the ordinary.”
Christine Valters Paintner, Eyes of the Heart, 2013
Most often walking alone, safely distanced, I settle into my pace and breath, letting my gaze soften, slowing to see with eyes of the heart onto what is asking to be seen. Again, vistas full to bursting with autumn’s abundance. Yet, at the same time, growing more visible with every week, the giving way to emptying, the baring, the decaying and the dying that is winter.
“We don’t have to go out and try to take ‘beautiful’ photos. We simply need to pay attention and foster a different kind of seeing.”
Christine Valters Paintner, Eyes of the Heart, 2013
And accept the invitation to see what’s asking to be seen.
Now I Understand (in response to Pablo Neruda’s An Ode for Ironing)
Your house cleaned. Your floors swept. Your bed made. Your dishes washed. Your gardens tended. Your dog walked.
You, who has the means to purchase the hands’ work of others inherited, earned, dignified
Who would have thought my taking on the task of ironing your linens and your clothes as I pressed mine –
my small act of gratitude for your generous hospitality for opening your home to me giving me sanctuary of rest and routine while I, the novice, explored the world making true and real my heart’s desire –
would be taking away this small but necessary weekly Sunday evening pleasure bringing you back to your self giving you back the ground of your being?
Now I understand this ode’s essence to bring substance and harmony to give routine and resurrection to allow you to feel with your hands your way into a new week.
It’s Thanksgiving in Canada, the 12th of October, almost as late in the month as it comes. Remarkably, autumn’s colour abounds, with gold and burnished brown, red and aubergine still a vivid contrast against the cerulean sky and dark green conifers.
Yesterday a fierce wind blew from the north west. A kite hung high for an hour in the steel grey sky, its dragon-like features a foreboding of what’s to come. The scent and feel of winter waiting impatiently in the wings, typically impolite in timing its arrival. Like a takeover, one might even say “hostile”, or a coup overthrowing the trees before they’ve taken off their sovereign hued robes, and wreaking shock and havoc among the yet to depart migrating birds. This reminder of impermanence, life’s cycles, nature’s work. During a time when around the world most everyone feels fraught with uncertainty and complacent with pandemic protocol fatigue, I take comfort and find solace that yes, the days grow shorter, the sun rises lower, the trees will soon be stripped of their remaining leaves, the snow will fall, the temperatures plummet.
One morning last week, making breakfast for Annie and drip coffee for me, I heard Jill Scott sing her song, Golden. I wrote down the chorusknowing I could use it for today’s blog, because, well, it’s been so golden this past month. I’m in the sixth week of my latest Abbey of the Arts online course, “Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist,” where I’m exploring these archetypes of contemplation and creativity, two deep affinities. In one of last week’s creative exercises, I learned about the French pantoum, a poetic form that can be quite revelatory in its play and placement of lines.
So in that spirit of unabashed experimentation, here’s my tribute to Thanksgiving, living golden, impermance, presence, winter – all riffing off Jill Scott.
Livin’ my life like it’s golden it’s that time of year. Shimmering brilliant leaves remind me to be here.
It’s that time of year, winds blow strong and sting remind me to be here. Winter’s in the wings.
Winds blow strong and sting. Shimmering brilliant leaves. Winter’s in the wings. Livin’ my life like it’s golden.
With abiding gratitude, love and kindest regards, dear friends.
“Outside the Met a man walks up sun tweaking the brim sticker on his Starter cap and he says pardon me Old School he says you know is this a wishing well? Yeah Son I say sideways over my shrug. Throw your bread on the water. I tighten my chest wheezy as Rockaway beach sand with a pull of faux smoke from my e-cig to cozy the truculence I hotbox alone and I am at the museum because it is not a bar. Because he appears not to have changed them in days I eye the heel-chewed hems of his pants and think probably he will ask me for fifty cents any minute now wait for it. A smoke or something. Central Park displays
the frisking transparency of autumn. Tracing paper sky, leaves like eraser crumbs gum the pavement. As if deciphering celestial script I squint and purse off toward the roof line of the museum aloof as he fists two pennies from his pockets mumbling and then aloud my man he says hey my man I’m going to make a wish for you too. I am laughing now so what you want me to sign a waiver? He laughs along ain’t say all that he says but you do have to hold my hand. And close your eyes. I make a starless night of my face before he asks are you ready. Yeah dawg I’m ready. Sure? Sure let’s do this his rough hand in mine inflates like a blood pressure cuff and I squeeze back as if we are about to step together from the sill of all resentment and timeless toward the dreamsource of un-needing the two of us hurtle sharing the cosmic breast of plenitude when I hear the coins blink against the surface and I cough up daylight like I’ve just been dragged ashore. See now you’ll never walk alone he jokes and is about to hand me back to the day he found me in like I was a rubber duck and he says you got to let go but I feel bottomless and I know he means well though I don’t believe and I feel myself shaking my head no when he means let go his hand.”
– by Gregory Pardlo –
I heard this poem walking with Annie earlier this week. Poetry Unbound, hosted by Pádraig Ó Tuama, is one of my favourite podcasts. Now in its second season, each episode, featuring one poem, is a mere fifteen or so minutes. Yet while I listen, to Padraig’s recitation and then to his skillful, heartful invitations as to how I might hear into the poem, time stands still. I can listen to one episode several times in the course of our walk, and each time feel transfixed.
I share it here because it reminded me of the post I wrote several weeks ago on loneliness, a feeling state that continues to linger for many of us, as summer gives way to fall and the inevitable winter, as Covid-19 numbers continue to climb around the world. Click here to listen to the rather remarkable Pádraig’s reading. I hope you enjoy it as much as he and I do.
