ego and soul

"Is there anything that I can do to make myself enlightened?"

"As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning."

"Then of what use are the spiritual exercises you prescribe?"

"To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise."

-Zen master to his disciple

(from Richard Rohr's Everything Belongs)

instructions upon entering darkness

You must hibernate:

Gather food,

Hold your rosary,

Hope (try to).

Always surround yourself with books,

not to read (necessarily)

But to remind yourself that some things

do last

and new stories are retold.

Transformation with time.

Don't talk too much,

Lips need slumber too.

Learn to listen,

Ears need constant vigilance.

Pray,

Only then will you know inherent value.

Drink wine with friends who don't

rush your pain.

Believe that humility rarely shows

up without humiliation.

Turn your face to the sky:

The earth will continue to rotate around an axis

toward the sun's rays.

Winter is coming,

Spring will come after.

The deep sleep will be aroused...

It will.

A frozen river still rushes water deep within.

And when the ice does thaw,

don't forget.

The sea was parted, the walls were tumbled,

the way was prepared.

Remember--for this will come again--

Just as the leaves fall, fertilize and recloak

the oaks of righteousness.

those of us most defeated and most elated

"The words 'I' and 'Love' and 'You' are the watermark of humanity. Strung together, they convey our deepest sense of humility, of power, of truth. It is our most common sentiment, even as the feeling of it is so infinitely uncommon; each to proclaim these three words with his or her very own heart and mindset of reason (or lack thereof); a proclamation completely and perfectly new each time it is offered. Uttered daily and nightly by millions, the words are said in an unending array of circumstances: whispered to the newborn in a new mother's arms; shared between best friends on the playground; in the form of sympathy--said by a girl to a boy, as the respect continues but the relationship does not. It is said too loudly by parents to embarrassed children in the company of their friends, and by grown children--to their fading parents in hospital beds. The words are thought in the company of the photograph and said in the company of the gravestone. It is how we end our phone calls and our letters...the words at the bottom of the page that trump all those above it, a way to gracefully finish a message, however important or trivial, with the most meaningful gift of all: the communication of love. And yet the words themselves have been the victims of triviality, a ready replacement for lesser solutions among near strangers, burst forth casually as 'love ya.' Truly? To what degree? Why, how much, and for how long? These are questions befitting the stature of love, though not the everyday banter of vague acquaintance. The words have also been twisted by the dark nature of deceit; to say, 'I love you' with a dramatic measure of synthetic emotion; a snare set by those who prey upon fellow humanity, driven to whatever selfish end, to gain access to another's body, or their money, or their opportunity. In this realm, the proclamation is disgraced by one seeking to gain rather than to give. In any case, and by whatever inspiration, these words are woven deeply into the fibers of our existence. Our longing to hear them from the right place is maddeningly and simultaneously our finest strength and our most gentle weakness. The album 'I and Love and You' is unashamedly defined by such a dynamic of duality. As living people, we are bound by this unavoidable parallel. We are powerful yet weak, capable yet temporary. Inevitably, an attempt to place honesty within an artistic avenue will follow suit. [...] 'I and Love and You' is an album of obvious human creation, characterized by its best and its worst. Emotional imperfection is a reality for those who recorded the piece, just as it is for those who will hear it. The conclusion of the song from which the title is taken admits that the words 'I love you' have become 'hard to say.' And perhaps that difficulty is as common as its counterpart. Perhaps the inability to say these heaviest of words is as much a part of life as the lighthearted candor of those who say them without any difficulty at all. And so it ends with the phrase whispered to and by those of us most defeated and most elated...I and love and you..."

-The Avett Brothers

everything belongs

Perhaps this is what love is for:

to live then die then live again.

Once, alone in perceiving self;

Now, hand is in the hand of nature.

Once, out of place with what seemed good;

Now, eyes see a leaf's veins as my own blood reservoir.

To know that our hearts beat

as the seasons beat

Life and Death and Life again

is good.

(Sometimes) love must end to birth resurrection.

fyodor dostoyevsky

"Love people even in their sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all of God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love."

from The Brothers Karamazov

a poem

From Mary Karr's Sinners Welcome

"Descending Theology: The Resurrection"

From the far star points of his pinned extremities,
cold inched in--black ice and blood ink--
till the hung flesh was empty. Lonely in that void
even for pain, he missed his splintered feet,
the human stare buried in his face.
He ached for two hands made of meat
he could reach to the end of.
In the corpse's core, the stone fist of his heart

began to bang on the stiff chest's door,
and breath spilled back into that battered shape. Now
it's your limbs he longs to flow into--
from the sunflower center in your chest
outward--as warm water
shatters at birth, rivering every way.

where to love and whom

I've snuck into another season.  The post and pre of travel arousal.  The middle--the in-between.  I have always only found writing easy and necessary with new, tangible sensations of different languages and colors and strangers in strange lands, and it is now that I remain in Tennessee where my roots began and were cultivated and are ever still open to rain and strength.  I don't write in Tennessee...not well, not naturally. (Well, there was that one time I gleefully dissected the male gaze theory within American Beauty).

These are ordinary times where I am training my brain to dissect the human body and press on toward the skills of nursing and being alongside those who are sick, hurting.  Ordinary hopes to fit all my hair in a ponytail by the end of the summer, not kill all the plants I planted, and take my kiddos to church where they learn that the Lord loves them and made them special.  I just saw the trailer of Where the Wild Things Are and though it may not come out until October, it keeps me going.  

I want to learn the discipline of thankfulness--for the ordinary and expected, the slow patient time that wraps into months and years.  I want to see the table in front of me with its mahogany wood once stained and now battered by coffee mugs rings and the weight of books and wonder who made it, how many thrift stores and yard sales it passed through before making home in this living room of a java market.  I want to know people with such wonder:  like the man at Kroger who works with such exhilarating confidence and joy as a grocer, or the Aussie who changed my oil the other day and had a tattoo of Elvis on his calf.  I wonder if he moved to Memphis because of Elvis, or because of a woman, or both.  

He had the inevitable dirt and oil underneath his nails that has recently become a favorite observation.  To work in the earth or with tools is getting us closer to the way things used to be, how humanity was always intended to interact with creation.  To build and plant and create are echos of necessity and birth and beauty.  Ordinary, absolutely.  Glorious, indeed.  I am hopeful that the ordinary will be so simple and intoxicating that I will gravitate to such a discipline.  But it does take new eyes and ears to see and hear the breaths of nature, the constant turning of love, mercy, restoration.

"We sleep to time's hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of time uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it's time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it's time to break our necks for home.

There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times."

-Annie Dillard 'Holy the Firm' 

May our senses break to the patient knowing of God and love.