Hazardous Attempt

For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding; it is the deepest part of autobiography.

-- Robert Penn Warren

​Poems can be a unique way of telling a story. At other times, they have a unique way of only inferring something, implying something or creating an impression of something. Something that more straightforward narrative or prose doesn't quite capture -- a part of something deep within us, profoundly personal...even risky, in the attempt to discover or in the exposure that may result.

February 29:
An extra day—

Like the painting’s fifth cow,
who looks out directly,
straight toward you,
from inside her black and white spots.

An extra day—

Accidental, surely:
the made calendar stumbling over the real
as a drunk trips over a threshold
too low to see.

An extra day—

With a second cup of black coffee.
A friendly but businesslike phone call.
A mailed-back package.
Some extra work, but not too much—
just one day’s worth, exactly.

An extra day—

Not unlike the space
between a door and its frame
when one room is lit and another is not,
and one changes into the other
as a woman exchanges a scarf.

An extra day—

Extraordinarily like any other.
And still
there is some generosity to it,
like a letter re-readable after its writer has died.

-- Jane Hirshfield

“Behind this poem, written February 29, 2012, was the death of a friend. I had, months before, brought her the present of a traditional bamboo-slat painted reproduction of a famous Chinese painting. She had commented, with her customary inhabitance of all things from the inside, how hard it is to paint a cow so well from the front. Her death was unexpected, and a letter from her I had not wanted to put away was still out on my kitchen table. My year’s extra day circled around it.”

Graces of Lent

There are graces all around us, many more than we know; even more available to us...if we would reflect, repent, refresh, and receive.  This week, I was struck by a Lenten reading from Ann Voskamp:

...and this version of Amazing Grace by The Blind Boys of Alabama.

Extremism

Extremism is rarely the thing we need.

Absolutes let us off the hook, because they demand not to be negotiated. But absolutes usually bump into special cases that are truly hard to ignore.  

The good middles, the difficult compromises that matter, that’s where we can build things that have long lasting impact.  

We need a compass and a place to go. But the road to that place is rarely straight and never absolute.

-- Seth Godin


More specifically, here is a helpful perspective (imho) on the Syrian Refugee Crisis, particularly as it relates to fear and ignorance.  "...we allow our fears to act as confirmation for themselves"...continue below:

Controlled by Fear, Controlled by Ignorance: America Keeps Getting the Syrian Refugee Crisis Wrong

Unexpected Tears

Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if you soul is to be saved, you should go next.

-- Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

Unexpected

Organic:  The efficacy of an unexpected complement is surprising.

I Have Noticed: Less Patient

I have noticed...​that the less patient I am with myself, the less patient I am with others. Patience with others often occurs more easily when I recognize how I am like them.

Both are clues.

I Would Have Writ

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "The Poem I Would Have Writ":

My life has been the poem I would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it.

-- Henry David Thoreau

The first words are the hardest. Sound
surrounds you in the womb, grows louder
when you’re born. You listen. You know
the day will come when you must speak
words, too — that’s how we make our way
through this trackless landscape called
the world. But how? And what to say?
And what does saying do?

Later, words come easily. You learn
to speak the language of what you
want and need, to help you find a
pathway into and through your life,
to make it clear what you believe,
reach out to friends, find work to do,
heal your wounds, ease your fears,
get chance on chance to give love
and receive. Sometimes words leap
out of you in ways you soon regret —
or in ways so magical you silently
rehearse them, hoping never to forget
how these words came out of the blue,
begging to have life breathed into
them by you. You live a life of words.

Then you learn that first words aren’t
the hardest. The hardest are the last.

There’s so much you want to say,
but time keeps taking time and all your
words away. How to say — amid the
flood of grief and gratitude you feel —
“Thank you!”, or “How beautiful, how
grand!”, or “I’m so glad I survived…”,
or “I was changed forever the day
we two joined hands and lives.”

As you reach for your last words,
you realize, this is it — this ebbing tide
of language called your life, words
trailing into silence, this unfinished poem
you would have writ — had it not been
for the heartache and the gift of all
the years that you've been living it.

-- Parker Palmer

30

I am really amazed at this length of time.  As of today, Tami and I have been married now for 30 years.  This seems a bit like an odd combination of unreal, surreal, and...very real.

• I feel aware of some of the dangers we've endured over this period of time...times where we felt unsure of how we would make it through.
• I feel aware that God has been more than kind to each of us, and to us together, throughout these years together.  
• I feel aware of a deep gratitude; that we are still together, that we love each other the way we do, and for the community that God has used to shape our love.  
• And, I feel aware of this desire in me:  that I would be increasingly willing to love Tami with the love that God has loved me.

Ephesians 3 talks about this love.  The ESV describes a 'strength to comprehend'...this love.  The NIV describes it as a 'power to grasp'...this love.  I need this kind of strength and power to love...another 30 years.

Returning

As part of Lent this year, I am reading these verses out loud each day...

If you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts,
  then rid yourselves of the foreign gods...
    and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve Him only,
and He will deliver you out...

-- 1 Samuel 7:3

...if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

-- 2 Chronicles 7:14

...anticipating how meaning from these apply to me these days.

Getting Old

Unrelated (I think), I am finding a beautiful reprieve on Saturday mornings from the typical, daily requirements of these early-50s days of my life.  The option to choose what to do and when to do it is...liberating, freeing, relieving of something that I now more normally live under.  I get just as much done, but the option to choose when and how is like fresh air or what you feel like after a good night's sleep.  I can even stop to jot down a thought I might have because of the spontaneity of these moments.

I think what I am grateful for is the space of these mornings...and for the kind of fast that it is from the others.  Of course, I may just be getting old.

Small Places

Many of us find ourselves in small places. And it is not because we can't get to the big places. It is because in small places people often are more open to listening, to hearing things, to being needy and because God has put us in small places; he wants us here. In the big places, few people are interested in what others have to say. They're primarily interested in advancing themselves, in getting bigger, for their own sake. They're not needy or don't recognize that they are. And, they're not listening.

We need to get more comfortable with small, the inconspicuous.

Ins and Outs

Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.

-- C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

I Used To Think: Not Enough

I used to think...that there was always something about me that wasn't enough. Now I know that this is completely true and that this misses the point.  I am never enough; God is always enough.

More Courage

It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield.

-- W. B. Yeats

Silence

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "Silence":

Within each of us there is a silence
—a silence as vast as a universe.
We are afraid of it…and we long for it.

When we experience that silence, we remember
who we are: creatures of the stars, created
from the cooling of this planet, created
from dust and gas, created
from the elements, created
from time and space…created
from silence.

In our present culture,
silence is something like an endangered species…
an endangered fundamental.

The experience of silence is now so rare
that we must cultivate it and treasure it.
This is especially true for shared silence.

Sharing silence is, in fact, a political act.
When we can stand aside from the usual and
perceive the fundamental, change begins to happen.
Our lives align with deeper values
and the lives of others are touched and influenced.

Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses,
to our selves. It locates us. Without that return
we can go so far away from our true natures
that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves.

We live blindly and act thoughtlessly.
We endanger the delicate balance which sustains
our lives, our communities, and our planet.

Each of us can make a difference.
Politicians and visionaries will not return us
to the sacredness of life.

That will be done by ordinary men and women
who together or alone can say,
"Remember to breathe, remember to feel,
remember to care,
let us do this for our children and ourselves
and our children's children.
Let us practice for life's sake."

-- Gunilla Norris

Tami and I commented again yesterday on the beautiful silence of snow.

Hardness of God

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him of whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

-- C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

Who’s Really Addicting You to Technology?

“Nearly everyone I know is addicted in some measure to the Internet,” wrote Tony Schwartz in a recent essay in The New York Times. It’s a common complaint these days. A steady stream of similar headlines accuse the Net and its offspring apps, social media sites and online games of addicting us to distraction.

There’s little doubt that nearly everyone who comes in contact with the Net has difficulty disconnecting. Just look around. People everywhere are glued to their devices. Many of us, like Schwartz, struggle to stay focused on tasks that require more concentration than it takes to post a status update. As one person ironically put it in the comments section of Schwartz’s online article, “As I was reading this very excellent article, I stopped at least half a dozen times to check my email.”

There’s something different about this technology: it is both pervasive and persuasive. But who’s at fault for its overuse? To find solutions, it’s important to understand what we’re dealing with. There are four parties conspiring to keep you connected and they may not be whom you’d expect.  Continue here....

-- Nir Eyal

From the article referenced above, I think this observation by Eyal is true:

...we should come to terms with the fact that it’s more than the technology itself that’s responsible for our habits.

Recognition and Resistance

[There’s] hardly a sin I can think of that isn’t somehow born of misperceived need, of haste and its accompanying inattentiveness, of some feverish variation once more of Hurry up and matter! Being true—ringing true—will have to involve a slow work of recognition and resistance to that mad and nervy, deluding spirit. To begin to be true is to try to choose—or risk choosing—presence over progress, really showing up, and taking the time to wonder what we’re really up to, what we’re doing and why.

-- David Dark, Life's Too Short To Pretend You're Not Religious

I am working on something different for Lent this year.

Sometimes I feel like I am a skimmer, a purveyor of variety and breadth,  Affection for variety and breadth may be one of my beauties or strengths.  But, with every strength, an inherent weakness is also often embedded therein.  At times, I feel shallow; without depth...because of all the range.  This may not necessarily be bad or good, but I do sense a desire to go more deeply into something; to experience the beauty and strength of...focus and depth.  I am watching for signals of what this might mean for me, in the next few weeks.  Where, for example, this may lead me.  In some way, whatever this is, it feels like David Dark is describing some of it for me.

Legitimate Suffering

Carl Jung said that so much unnecessary suffering comes into the world because people will not accept the “legitimate suffering” that comes from being human.  In fact, neurotic behavior is usually the result of refusing that legitimate suffering!  Ironically, this refusal of the necessary pain of being human brings to the person ten times more suffering in the long run.

-- Richard Rohr

I Have Noticed: Diminished

I have noticed...that, by the evening hours, both my willpower and my ability to physically see clearly are diminished.

I wonder if  (how) the emotional, the physical, and the spiritual are interrelated.  Ashes.

Communication -- The lllusion

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

-- George Bernard Shaw

The Gates of Hope

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "The Gates of Hope":

Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope—
Not the prudent gates of Optimism,
Which are somewhat narrower.
Not the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense;
Nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness,
Which creak on shrill and angry hinges
(People cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through)
Nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of
“Everything is gonna’ be all right.”
But a different, sometimes lonely place,
The place of truth-telling,
About your own soul first of all and its condition.
The place of resistance and defiance,
The piece of ground from which you see the world
Both as it is and as it could be
As it will be;
The place from which you glimpse not only struggle,
But the joy of the struggle.
And we stand there, beckoning and calling,
Telling people what we are seeing
Asking people what they see.

-- Victoria Safford

Voyage Into It

Christianity is not an explanation of mystery, but rather a voyage into it.

-- Alan Jones

The Lie

Discovered Blessing

Many Friday mornings now, I look forward to 3 things:

- a good coffee
- a cranberry scone
- a new edition of Michiana Chronicles

I'm not sure how each of the above influences the other, but I'm suspecting they do.  On Fridays, I have noticed that I am almost instinctively moving a bit more quickly through my morning routines to be ready by 7:45a...with my undetected motivation, the hearing of the latest edition of MC.

I wonder about how good writing works and how it is enhanced by the physical speaking of it.  It seems creative use of words to describe something both earthy and transcendent at the same time is powerful in its reach into us.  It helps me imagine things familiar to me, but not yet identified.  It blesses me with the real, and the possible.  I love the sense of internal attention it creates in me.  It allows me to wonder how I can be that for someone else that day.  I am enriched.  ...a discovered blessing.

Neuroplasticity

The idea of neuroplasticity is simply that the brain changes in response to experience. It changes in response to our actions. It changes in our response to our relationships. It changes in response to specific training. These activities will shape the brain, and we can take advantage of neuroplasticity and actually play a more intentional role in shaping our own brains in ways that may be health promoting, and ways that can cultivate well being.

-- Daniel Goleman

I Used To Think: Very Little

I used to think...that people's behaviors towards or reactions to me were because of something wrong in me. Now I know that most of the time, those have very little even to do with me.

Possibilities

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.

-- Shunryu Suzuki

This concept needs to soak a bit....

The more we think or do something, the more familiar we become with it,  The more familiar we become with something, the more we tend to start holding on to our notions of it -- what we think we are are seeing or have already seen.  I see this in the smallest areas of our lives up through what we accept at even a societal level.  More problematic, perhaps, is that when we're doing this, we also tend not to see other things  -- problems with what we are used to, new ideas, etc. -- because we're looking for evidence of things we've already become accustomed to.

As we age, maintaining a beginner's mind feels like it takes more and more effort.  Perhaps it does.  On the other hand, keeping such a mindset may be part of what can keep us open, excited, curious...younger.

Regular Exercise Changes The Brain To Improve Memory, Thinking Skills

There are plenty of good reasons to be physically active. Big ones include reducing the odds of developing heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Maybe you want to lose weight, lower your blood pressure, prevent depression, or just look better. Here’s another one, which especially applies to those of us (including me) experiencing the brain fog that comes with age: exercise changes the brain in ways that protect memory and thinking skills.  Continue here....

-- Heidi Godman

...I'm off to clear my 'fog'.