cliffs and gulls and boats Port Anthony, Newfoundland, 2015
The World Has Need of You everything here seems to need us… – Rilke
I can hardly imagine it as I walk to the lighthouse, feeling the ancient prayer of my arms swinging in counterpoint to my feet. Here I am, suspended between the sidewalk and twilight, the sky dimming so fast it seems alive. What if you felt the invisible tug between you and everything? A boy on a bicycle rides by, his white shirt open, flaring behind him like wings. It’s a hard time to be human. We know too much and too little. Does the breeze need us? The cliffs? The gulls? If you’ve managed to do one good thing, the ocean doesn’t care. But when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth, the earth, ever so slightly, fell toward the apple as well.
– Ellen Bass –
This notion of being reminded…remembering…knowing that we are needed by the world has been a theme in the poetry I’ve chosen for these recent Friday posts. Given that I retrieve many poems from social media, saved in a file for future sharing, apparently, I’m in good company – being reminded and inviting others to this remembering. When I read these poems, I feel soothed. My breath slows and deepens. A spaciousness from which to settle, reset, and choose emerges.
Yes, among many of us, last month’s US election and the subsequent appointments of those who will assume positions of power (over?) have evoked a collective bracing, an autonomic tightening of our bodies. This month, as we (in the Northern Hemisphere) are nudged or tossed into winter’s cold and growing darkness, and into a Holyday season where Hallmark cards and streamed movies consistently and reliably portray “the happily ever after,” and stores are filled to the rafters with Christmas tchotchkes, many of us are living a vastly different reality.
Yes, for many of us right now, it’s a hard time to be human. We know too much and too little. Suffering devastating losses, living in that tension, actually that grief, we may need to be repeatedly reminded – from whomever, wherever, whenever – that the world – animate and inanimate, human and more-than-human – has need of us. That “everything here seems to need us.”
Caretake this moment. Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed.
Quit the evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now. You are not some disinterested bystander. Exert yourself.
Respect your partnership with providence. Ask yourself often, How may I perform this particular deed such that it would be consistent with and acceptable to the divine will? Heed the answer and get to work.
When your doors are shut and your room is dark you are not alone. The will of nature is within you as your natural genius is within. Listen to its importunings. Follow its directives.
As concerns the art of living, the material is your own life. No great thing is created suddenly. There must be time.
Give your best and always be kind.
~ Epictetus ~
I’m glad to have not only a folder of saved poems for Friday’s photo and poem feature, but ones already crafted and sitting in the draft folder that occasionally fit the mood. Today was my good fortune as after yesterday’s grueling session at the dentist for a root canal (“Hard work,” declared the dentist. “Tell my jaw,” thought I.), all I was up to last night sipping soup, with a side of Tylenol and Advil, was watching the recommended new Netflix series “‘Man on the Inside.”
Epictetus says it. And in a similar vein, John Muth in his classic children’s tale, The Three Questions, a reworking of Leo Tolstoy, here read by Meryl Streep. Too, a verse from Mary Oliver’s poem, Dogfish, that I love:
“…And anyway it’s the same old story – – – a few people just trying, one way or another, to survive.
Mostly, I want to be kind. And nobody, of course, is kind, or mean, for a simple reason.
And nobody gets out of it, having to swim through the fires to stay in this world…”
Better late than never, here it is.
May your Friday be touched by the glow of nature that shines as much from within you as it does from outside. And may we each and all be kindas we caretake the moments of our lives.
Finding the words for this blog has not come easy. I gave in to tiredness and wanting to spend “pack time” with my husband and our Annie dog on Sunday night when I usually sit in our office, tapping out my musings for Monday’s posting, music in the background. Monday, still stalled, I walked with Annie, and caught up listening to several episodes from my favourite poetry podcast, spiraling through several times, the dozen or so minutes of brilliance, both in the poet’s words, but also in host Pádraig Ó’Tuama’s commentary. One moved me to tears every time I heard it.
Maybe it’s the time of year. The coming of winter – though of late, ours has been remarkably warm, sunny, with snow and cold enough for chunky cross-country skiing and ice skating – can be unsettling for some. Personally, I grow each year in my love of the growing darkness…the stillness at dawn…the quiet muffling that a snowfall brings…the restful flat light and monochromatic colour exterior scheme.
So, it’s probably the month. December and all it evokes. Dreams of “Christmas Pasts” that can run the gambit emotionally, that for some us, can be anything but the Hallmark happily ever after. And this year, made all more so by a pandemic that is worsening world-wide as we grow more fatigued, complacent, desensitized and doubting. Just yesterday my province implemented a month-long lock down, including no social gathering, indoor and out, beyond family members living in the same home. And I wonder with a renewed and deepened empathy, how does one navigate when you know this will be your last Christmas with an ailing family member? Or you’re already neck, or even knee, deep in grief now most certainly unabated without the physical support and presence of those who care for you, those you trust?
“While your faces on the screen have to be enough, I miss you in my bones and by my body.”
Since December’s arrival, it’s as if a switch goes on and I feel myself grow tense and tired and tearful. It doesn’t take much to trigger a “Christmas Past” memory and mood. Today a Christmas carol brought a near flood of tears as I wheeled the cart down the aisle of my favourite Italian grocery store, thankful for being only one of a handful of customers at that early hour. And then I take a deep breath and I remind myself of the guidance I’d offer every December to my colleagues working in schools. That in those ready-made relational fields, ripe to bursting with the emotional charge of personal narratives – known and unknown, lived and inherited – feelings and reactions, seemingly unapparent, become amplified with the resonance and echoing to our own stories.
So, it’s important – critical really – to be tender and kind. Especially to oneself. Especially now when there’s so much out there, unabated, for so long.
If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.
The Buddha
That poem that brought me to tears, each and every time I heard Pádraig recite and interpret it – “Phase One” by Dilruba Ahmed – is about forgiving oneself. In it she spells out a litany of things she’s done, big and small, that she’s held against herself. And she writes, “I forgive you.”
“The really interesting thing in this poem is that the word “forgive” occurs 13 times. And then that phrase, “I forgive you,” occurs six times. The first time, it appears just as a single sentence. It occurs just by itself, those three words, “I forgive you.” And then the next time it appears, it occurs twice, “I forgive you. I forgive you.” And then the final time it appears, it’s three times: “I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you.” It’s like this poem is trying to learn a mantra to say to itself, and in the hope that a life can learn a mantra to say to itself, knowing that saying it once isn’t enough and, also, that forgiveness is something that we return to over and over again, even self-forgiveness — that it needs to be a mantra.”
Pádraig Ó’Tuama
Listening, I felt that resonance and echoing with my own harboured sins and shortcomings. But it was this that pierced my heart, that brought my tears:
“…I forgive you. I forgive
you. I forgive you. For growing a capacity for love that is great but matched only, perhaps, by your loneliness. For being unable
to forgive yourself first so you could then forgive others and at last find a way to become the love that you want in this world.”
Dilruba Ahmed, “Phase One”
My husband and I are practiced in the art of celebrating Christmas on our own and so can do this one easefully, though missing the joy of being with our friends. While we want for nothing, we are intent for good health to be our life long companion, relationships to enliven and encourage us, work and pastimes to fulfill and affirm us. And I, to become the love I want in this world, I give myself, over and over, the gift of forgiveness.
“My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.”
Maya Angelou
May this be yours, with, too, the gift of self-forgiveness.
A Wabi Sabi Life 