So it ever is...so may it ever be

Sacred Memory

The other day Kyla and I were working together to organize her room. We rediscovered a bag of stuffed animals etc. we'd put away and among the items was a baby doll she carried everywhere when she was toddling around. It was fun to share with her this happy reminder of precious days passed.

Later we moved her little shrine to her bedside table.

 





















A holy card fell out, St. Kateri Tekawitha.

It has a relic, (a bit of red cloth) and Kyla commented that it was strange to think a piece of someone's clothing was sacred. I was surprised by my emotion as I shared with her that this bit of cloth was like her doll, which is 'just a doll' but also more, simply because it was hers, and is full of meaning and memory for us. She teared up too, 'getting it'. Happy grateful tears, a really good hug and yes, a sacred moment.

Listen and attend with the ear of your heart - St. Benedict

When someone deeply listens to you

it is like holding out a dented cup
you've had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.
When someone deeply listens to you
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind's eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!
When someone deeply listens to you
your bare feet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.
-John Fox

 

Without Intention

I wake in the night.  Cricket song fills the air, so expansive I can barely hear the hum of the fan at the foot of the bed as I lay beneath the thin summer sheet.  I listen awhile and then realize I am thanking God for such a moment, and all the graces this has stirred within me.  Thus occupied, thoughts flow easily in gratitude until I am overcome.  And then I hear it...silence.  The crickets have quit their song.  I hear the hum of the fan at the foot of the bed as I lay beneath the thin summer sheet.  I hear my husbands steady breathing.  I roll over, settle in, and sleep.

Helen Masacz - Empty Bed / How Can You Sleep At Night. Oil on Board

Daily

  by Naomi Shihab Nye

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips
 
These T-shirts we fold into
perfect white squares
 
These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl
 
This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out
 
This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of sky
 
This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it
 
The days are nouns: touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world

Unarmed Truth & Unconditional Love

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.  
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I love this image of 'unarmed truth'.  We hear that phrase 'to speak the truth in love' but his words move it from a pious phrase to such a visual image of true humility. 

unarmed: without weaponry ( anything to injure, defeat or destroy) to have empty arms, to not hold something that provides security, strength, or efficacy to defend oneself...

This is how my husband speaks to me; with unarmed truth and with my closest human experience of unconditional love.  He speaks the truth to me; and even if it stings I see it is because the truth wants to live in me more fully and I have, in that moment at least, resisted.  He disarms me.

When I think of my human experience of unconditional love I think of my own children (and for that, all children) in that wonderful baby to child phase of wide open arms.  How they would rush into me with joyous abandon whether in affection or need.  How they could speak to me, even without words, and how I long for that truth to live in me more completely...to believe I am loved unconditionally, and to be that same love.  This is my image of God.  And from that place, as james taylor sang, to shower the people you love with love. 

My failings are close to home.  Those moments when unarmed truth is not chosen and I pick up the weaponry (I am right, or the one in control here, or just too tired of this)

Thankfully, I don't have the final word.  Dr. King was right.  Unarmed truth and unconditional love do have the final word, not in some last day when the world reaches it's conclusion, but each day, and having received, I offer my deep felt amen to God's grace.  May unarmed truth and unconditional love have the final word in me and you.

THIS MESS IS A PLACE

This came in the mail from our oldest - Jessica.  Part of her Mother's Day package to me.  Included in her note so full of love and thanks was this line, "to allow that 'place' to develop, to grow, to bloom". 

This mess is a place -  This place a mess that we tidy a thousand times over, pick up the tossed jacket, the dirty dish, the Band-Aid that fell off, the damp towel off the floor, the moments glory lost in embarrassment, the laundry stacks to put away, the baby crying in the night, pick up the papers with stick figures smiling- sunshine tucked in the corner, pick up the blanket and cover them again, the shoes under the sofa, pick up the dirty socks and turn them a thousand times, pick up after practice, after the skinned knee; the fall from the tree, pick up the tab, pick up the hair in the sink when she cut her first bangs; he cut his curls, pick up the rag and wash behind the ears, pick up the pieces and start again, pick up the toys, the popcorn in the cushions, pick up a boy by his feet, pick up a girl and put her in the swing, pick up the room while they play, pick up the prayer that began in a dream, pick up the Christmas gift, the birthday card, the medicine, pick up the note, the one I can hardly lift anymore but still needs my full embrace, pick up the pillow and talk, pick them up and over the waves, pick up the pieces after the fight, the paint and crayons and threads,  pick up after the dance, the game, the moments of shame, pick up the pizza, the dog poop, the broken heart you want to mend, pick up the keys and hand them over, the one thing they had to have, the trash overflowing, the homework they forgot, pick up the things left behind as they grow and go, let go.

I have spent the biggest part of my life bending down in this mess of a place we call home.  I have bent crooked, imperfectly, begrudgingly and gloriously.  I still am asking to tidy up - to make room for another beautiful mess.  My walls have strange markings left from crayons and growth lines charted through the years, (so do I, come to think of it).  I woke this morning, picked up the stuffed animal in the hall on my way out to the kitchen, picked up my glasses, my heart full to overflowing, I pick up that prayer again and again.  Tonight we will gather round the table, pick up the conversation, the mess of dishes and food on the floor, pick up a child, a husband, a bride.  Every bending down, every picking up to offer thanks to the God who has blessed me beyond belief through this ordinary grace. 

Easter Eggs

Minute to Win it!

Feasting before the fast, we play a quick game of gratitude...in one minute write all you are grateful for, then share with one another.  It's a fun and simple way to honor God's Blessings before the fast.  Just as Jesus entered the desert "full of the Spirit" it is good to recall the fullness of God's love experienced in our lives as we enter a season of simplicity, seeking to deepen that life in us.  I love her list! 
Your turn...what are you grateful for...in one minute?  Go ahead, write it here!



Family-a Cosmic View

I get these daily astronomy photos and find them so awe-inspiring,
but this weeks description drew me into playful reflection...

GALAXY as FAMILY
Bold lines are from the original description of the above photograph...
Typical in grand spiral galaxies
( aka the massive and complex family tree in which we all live and from which we all come)
dark dust lanes
(you know who you are and where you’ve been)
youthful blue star clusters
(the delight of youth's unique gifts that keep perpetuating the legacy)
and pinkish star forming regions
(ah…love making; love begetting love)
trace spiral arms that converge on the bright nucleus of older yellowish stars
(the embraces shared with love-worn elders, big-hearted wisdom, grandparents)
But this composite hints of two anomalous arms that don't align with
the more familiar tracers
(two who were once strangers fall in love, make a life, and the family expands)
Seen here in red hues
(passion, blood & roses, the cost and glory of love, like God’s own self-donation in Christ)
sweeping filaments
(the mysterious ties that bind)
seem to rise from the central region
(heart/gut, home)
evidence of energetic jets of material blasting into the galaxy's disk
(don’t need to spell this out, do I?)
The jets are likely powered by matter
( and what matters, the daily lived reality in which we cling to one another)
falling into a massive central black hole! 
(Could be your child's room, the disorienting busyness of life,
the way the days turn into years,
or the deepest mystery that holds us all) 

But look...isn't it glorious, residing in the heavens, bigger than anything
I could ever imagine, and more magnificent than I have ever dreamed.
Now tell me this imagery doesn’t speak to the best of the experience we call family…

Forgetting to Remember

Forget: To treat with thoughtless inattention. To fail to become aware. To leave behind unintentionally. To not recollect. Disregard. To lose oneself.

Sometimes I can go for hours forgetting to remember.  Wilson barks outside the front porch. Kyla laughs at Papa’s silly joke, rubs his nose with hers.  I lose track of time and then it’s a mad dash of a mad woman and the scrambled mess I leave behind tells the tale straight.

We pile out to dance class and when Kyla climbs in after, I can see that she is barely holding herself together, and when I ask her what's wrong, she chokes out, "They forgot what I know.  It was like I had to start all over again." Oh I know, daughter of mine, I know.   I am newly amazed at how God knit us together from such circumstance.  We hold hands.   Back home, we cuddle cozy on the couch and share some clementines.  She smiles. Roger smiles too at the sight while she begs him to join us, pleeeease.  This girl simply loves to sit tight together.

As the afternoon shadows lengthen Kyla sings songs, sorting what she might do for the talent show that is months away.  I only have to ask twice for the colored pencils to be picked up off the living room floor.   The phone rings, "Can Kyla play?" and she's bouncing out the door, arms full of dolls, heading down the street to the neighbors house.

My husband comes in like Atlas, but smiling.  He is a man whose smile comes easy.  I have been loved by him for as long as I can remember and my throat catches at the sight of him.  I show him the iris that bloomed today.  I remember.  Fix his dinner plate and he thanks me.  There’s that smile.  We share a glass of wine, talk about our day, continue the long conversation we've been having; discerning decisions that lay before us, discover peace under it all.   
 
When did I begin to forget again?  Ephphetha, Jesus said to the one who could not hear, Be opened!

I remember Kyla saying after breakfast, her head cocked near the window, "Shhhh.... if you listen, you can hear the birds......"   I remember the sight of them, conspiring over their cereal bowls.  And later, the two of us girls singing out “I want to be a saint so bad…I want to see my face on a holy card” and our glad laughing at the good of it!  And why not. 

Remember: To become aware of something forgotten again. To be mindful. To keep in mind as worthy of consideration or recognition. To show gratitude, as with a gift. To use the power of memory. To mention favorably, as in a prayer or friendship.

In the morning, I leave my heart open on the windowsill by the sink.   Shhhh…if you listen…

The very real presence of God is right here.    

I hear Him in the running water as I rinse the dishes from last night, my ears anointed in the quick explosion of flame as I light the stove, in the thunder of heartbeat held good morning close, and the quiet quake of creaking floorboards as I breeze by to put in a load of laundry. 

I quiet.  Mary Oliver’s good question becomes the whisper of God
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” 

Ephphetha, I whisper…be opened.

What's in your spiritual toolbox?

Adolfo Nicolás: The strength of Ignatian Spirituality

Cada Cabesa es un Mundo

what does she think as she walks along the sea?

I watch her wander off and wonder what she’ll be.

does she search for seashells

-we’d collected quite a few-

is she content in this moment

or wishing for something to do.

to be alone together, the grace of solitude

to have ones world held in love

and room for it to bloom

cada cabesa es un mundo

(in each head, a whole world)

 what does she think as she walks along the sea?

sun in her face, walking on water.

Lord if I know, I think to myself

as she turns, smiles at me,

beautiful daughter.

Remembering To Be Kind Because We Are Living

We were at home, just the two of us, mother and child.
She is speaking to me from the other room,
(yelling actually) rudely, snappy
and I know this calls for parenting
but instead what I give her is tit for tat,
taking my turn at speaking
(yelling actually) rudely to her, snappy right back at ya.
And then, suddenly I see myself, looking back at me!
Aaargh!
Parenting has so much to teach me and it is relentless in its lessons!
Thank the Lord, my change of heart is swift as I recognize
the error of my ways and with tears and hugs we console one another
and make amends, see where we went wrong and love wins out again.

The next morning we are in the car heading for surf camp and she starts
telling me about a friends surf camp
that was just for kids who’d lost a parent to cancer.
She thought that wasn’t as good as regular camp that’s just fun,
because her friend is always having to remember her mom dying,
and then she said “Her mom was a lot more than just a person who died…
She was a clown!  Isn’t that better to remember?!”
Later in the conversation she tells me about an assignment they had at school.
She can’t recall if it was for reconciliation or the stations of the cross
but each of them had to write a reflection statement
and she remembers exactly what a boy in her class wrote to Jesus,
“When you were living, we treated you badly,
but when you died we laid you down kindly.”
“It’s true, isn’t it,’ she added,
‘we should be kindly to the living, and not just when they die!”
“That’s what we did yesterday, huh?
Remembered to be kind because we are living.”

And she reached over then and took my hand.

Honoring the Survivors

At the 4th of July Parade yesterday this lovely lady was among the Veterans being honored;  survivors of war.  Her smile captivated me, and I imagined her a nurse, full of capability and compassion.  I know, she could have been anything, but that's where my imagination went straight away. (My grandmother was a nurse).  I wanted to hear her story, her answer to surviving, her joy so triumphant, so evident in the moment.  She was somehow familiar, like a distant relative whom others see in me, whom I could not recognize myself.  And then they pull out an old photograph and ahhh, there I am!

Holy Ground

Went to visit family in Colorado over Easter.  This tree is across the street from my mom's.  And the town is full of such trees.  It was literally raining blossoms all week.  The street gutters full of fallen petals, lawns scattered with a softly speckled carpet of frangrant blooms.  It was enough to take my breath away.  Gorgeous.
As we get older and life draws to its conclusions, these visits have become ever more treasured, more translucent.  This Easter God rained down his tenderest mercies and I could not miss the sacred beauty that surrounded me.  Blossoms, yes, but also my brothers playful smile, mom's knowing hand placed on mine, a daughter's contentment, sitting close, girls laughing, gratitude expressed and received, train whistles and night stars, kindness, ourselves crowded around the table for the simple sake of being together and enjoying the good company of each.  Blessings too numerous to count, so many blown past me and gone, but I see the beautiful carpet at my feet, making up the very ground on which I stand.  I sat on the curb and slipped off my shoes.  Felt a bit of heaven under my feet.  Wiggled my toes in gratitude.

Happy St. Valentine's Day

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
  -Shakespeare's sonnet 116

Of course, the feast of St Valentine is a martyr's feast;
but the original meaning of martyr is witness.
Someone whose whole life is a witness to divine love...
And so on this martyr's feast I come across shakespeare
and read the poetry of a life laid down for love.
  -  marriage
and because all poetry is personal
  -  my marriage

I met my husband when my own lips were rosy
and my cheeks blushed at his arrival...
not yet 16, he walked into my life and I was sunk!
He had this deep voice and wore a soft cashmere sweater
green and cozy and I wanted to settle into those arms forever.

He wore thick glasses and had an easy smile.
At first I thought him shy,
but he simply chose his friends slowly and well.
Now I know it is because his friendship is a lasting stand.
I remember walking in the cool of the evening, alone at last
as we wandered along the sidewalk,
my 16th birthday party going on inside.
He gave me his sweater against the cool and I can
feel it as though it was yesterday...thus began our courtship.

He'd walk me to the gate of my house and squeeze my hand goodbye
I still wonder was he terrified for that first kiss,
or was it his same commitment to mean it
that held his restraint firm enough against my girlish longing.

First kiss came, at the county fair,
up in the ferris wheel...
back on the ground our courage is up,
Tommy James and the Shondells are singing
Draggin the Line and I'm feelin fine!

We wed on the hottest day of the year, 1975.
There were no strangers there.
Our friends and family decorated the hall,
provided the music for mass and witnessed our vows,
more friends in the band for dancing after,
took the photos, entertained (long tall Texan).
Everyone we loved was gathered there to celebrate
and it is still the best wedding we’ve ever experienced!

I have enjoyed his strong and kind companionship through decades now.
Seen him again and again lay down his life for love.
He’s done it with a smile, an easy laugh
With pleasure and glad for the chance.
And he’s done it with unrelenting anguish
and great personal sacrifice.
A martyr for the cause as they say
And the cause is steady and clear
To live a life of love.

We’ve had a life of constancy,
faithfulness, friendship.
An easy confidence in our belonging together,
A grateful recognition of how rare a gift we share.
Lucky us, we say again and again.
Simple pleasures of home and family,
Crazy love crowded around the table,
celebrating together the moments as they come.
Easy laughter in the flow of days to years.
Burdens too, weeping days and sleepless nights.
Known to us alone, shared like a blanket
on the sofa; we huddle together
our hopes, our dreams, our faith, our lives.

God comes to us disguised as our own life...Richard Rohr

I ordered roses for planting and immediately remembered my mothers  advice,

“Better start saving eggshells.”  Eggshells?

My daughter gave me a bird’s nest for Christmas with lovely blue speckled eggs
nestled within.  It’s shape and color greet me from the kitchen shelf where it rests in a basket.
I was captivated last spring by the eggs laid in nests in my garden, doves and hummingbirds.
And eggs for breakfast, soft boiled for our youngest who loves to crack the shell open and scoop out it’s creamy goodness.
Or the perfect shape and weight of an egg in the hand, before we crack it on the edge of a bowl and mix the dough.
We visit our friend and head out to the chicken coup to gather eggs there, warm and fresh for lunch.
Color eggs for Easter; symbol of the tomb, and the resurrection.
Visit the children’s zoo and you can’t miss the excitement of the crowd gathered around the incubator full of eggs, mystery hidden still in some, breaking out in others, and the baby chicks every hand reaches for.  Holding those loveliest of creatures thrills each, awestruck with wonder and delight. Little feet tickling our hands and softest down, golden yellow, gray, white...and that high persistent chirping that draws our heads close to hear.
All that from an egg.

But saving eggshells?

Eggshells are for the garbage; messy, stinky and sharp, no good.
Yet, they have sat, collecting in a bag on my counter and only as I shared this with my husband did he tell me how many times he nearly threw them out and wondered what I was up to (he thought maybe some craft project).

“Better start saving eggshells,” my mother taught.
“Crush them fine and put them in when you plant.
That’s how you get the sweetest smelling roses.”

I think of the things ‘long sitting on the counter’ in my life,
the things I am sometimes tempted to discard; messy, sharp and stinking, no good.
I carry them with me to mass
crush them as my meager offering,
plant them at the altar...
In their place I am given Christ,
crushed and buried too,
I swallow deep, taste the water with the wine
feel it seeping into the dark earth of me.

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them,

and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.
Isaiah 35:1