You’ve already jumped,
looking up now is wasted effort.
Look down, there is your destination.
Look in, there is your courage.
Wait, now, for the updraft of your salvation,
easing your unparachuted fall into the beautiful mundane.
Photo from www.barnorama.com
A while back I posted a piece entitled Laundry Day Jesus. It was a tip of the hat to a favorite doctrine of the Incarnation. This is a second attempt at the same…
Just having an empty page and pen in hand does not guarantee a lucid exchange of journal-thoughts, accurate reminiscences or profound epiphanies. What it does freely give is some open, lined space in which to articulate, albeit poorly, the state of my guts.
I cannot say from whence come the complex, oft competing impulses that so shoddily guide me through my days. The cracked, grey skies of the winter months hide well the last gasp of spring, but generally offer a steel-blue repose for artsy contemplatives like me. Conversely, the giggly swagger of summer lays out the easy welcome mat of joy and frivolity for most. I, on the other hand, struggle with an uneasiness that taunts me into believing I should feel and behave similarly.
I am often depressed in summer. The rather mystifying collage of incoherency that is my life refuses to pay attention to the obvious. With people laughing, dogs barking, frisbees flying, lovers kissing, one would think these the prelude to perfect afternoons. But my stubbornly individualistic mystic-whimsy makes unreasonable demands of me. It says pretentious things like “this is all too obvious; there is no sense of the obliqueness and nuance of the later seasons to satisfy this needy soul.” With such utterly ridiculous, almost morose sensibilities, is it any wonder that I so easily lose my way in other things?
Relationships baffle me. They frighten me while simultaneously providing hope. For too many years my relationships have been more responses to the gaping holes in my psyche than the proactive contributions of reciprocity. It makes me wonder how many times those I call friends were quite happy to see my ass on the way out the door. It also makes me wonder what others’ perceptions are of me. Further, it forces hard questions – questions that ask the deeper concerns of motivations, neglect, apathy, loneliness, desperation…even subtle hostility.
Do I leave friendships better than I found them? Do I take away more hope than I bring? Do I engender trust and ease or the tension of interpersonal unknowns? Would I be the hurting person’s first line of defense? If I make people laugh is it to bring them joy or me recognition?
At the risk of crudely undertaken and ill-advised self analysis, I poke my nose into this new calendar year. Knowing what I know (or think I know) of myself, I would not be easily given to hope. What I cling to instead is this crazy idea that, in Christ, God has sought us out; sought me out. Jesus is God’s jacketed dream for the confused and confusing, whimsical and uncritically romantic person like me.
Therefore, when I otherwise might be inclined toward a pewter-grey hopelessness, I need only notice the hooded Savior seated on the park bench of my soul. From there he feeds my questioning birds with the manna of presence he keeps hidden in his coat pocket. It doesn’t always satisfy right away. But it keeps me hanging around for more.
And he doesn’t seem intent on leaving anytime soon.
Picture at www.foodfashionandflow.blogspot.com
The ticking of the clock divides the morning
into equal slices of time spent and gone.
Foisted upon the relentless days, it ever reminds her
of this backstage rehearsal for eternity’s untime:
the bittersweet welcome of the farewell to morning.
Photo from www.chakrabodyyoga.blogspot.com
To those who have graced my life with their presence and friendship. You know who you are. My rose-colored sentiment reaches out to touch your faces.
He sits in his den, writing to unseen friends
with fingers deftly reaching out through keyboard strokes
to other faces elsewhere – washing dishes,
rubbing the dog’s belly, changing diapers, making love –
he knows not what.
* * *
Will the clicking sound of these tiny letters
sufficiently churn his insides out? Reconfigure
his heart, itchy and bothered, his
stories, stale and old, too long in storage?
His ideas grown too certain for the pitch and yaw of good friendships?
* * *
Candles burn more quickly in good company,
their scent, unnoticed; their light, unheeded.
But their gentle presence is the necessary accoutrement of delight,
the required prelude to fellowship and laughter
in dimly lit rooms made lighter by other eyes.
* * *
In the intimations of the evening he gives a sigh
and with one last look at a screen, long dark,
he remembers. He steals from the back shelves
a glimpse or two of those he cannot see, rendered pink
in the red and white of dreams.
She picks at this and that, her beak sharp, her aim impeccable.
Her friends gather around her, cheering her on, or competing
for last year’s garden’s last release of freshness, slow dying.
She forages, undeterred by her bickering counterparts,
intent on stealing what little there is to glean.
Deep and hungry throats extend upward, awaiting
what choice morsels, newly culled from the stingy earth
are forthcoming; gathered gifts from a mother’s maw.
From small bits of winter’s old have sprung spring’s new.
Here it is we find ourselves,
deciding what goes and what stays
in our frantic efforts to stay the course of time’s uneasy, forward lurch.
How easy to stumble over the tiny nests
found hidden under forgotten branches of earlier efforts.
There, life and hubris kiss to produce our next steps.
This new precipice, the hungry days of leaning
into a grey wind with unseen destination,
cannot deter this year’s meal from last year’s waste.
Photo from www.bbc.co.uk
Once upon a time, there was a wealthy theatre owner who said, rather inauspiciously, “well, the show must go on.” The actors had learned their lines. The sets were complete, dazzling in their allure and exactitude. The news was spread far and wide of the coming of this great spectacle. All was ready. But, if this was so, why the hint of shrugged shoulder skepticism in this phrase?
Anyone who has ever had the delight and electricity of live performance knows the unspoken pressures of day-to-day rehearsals against a backdrop of innumerable unseen dangers. What if the lead takes ill? What if her understudy also takes ill? What if the set designers or lighting coordinators or musicians’ union decides to picket the whole affair? What if the venue goes into receivership three days before opening curtain? What if? What if? What if…?
But then the lights dim. There is a moment of silence. The air is palpably more solid and we struggle to breathe, awaiting…something. Then, the orchestra swells with timpani crescendo as the first characters stride onto the stage. The thing we had been waiting so long to see unfolds before us in an explosion of color and swirl and dashing costumes. If only for an hour or two, we become pirates, animals of the forest or gods of mythology. For us, it is worth the wait just for these spine-tingling moments when our simple, cardboard lives are invited into a larger than life story.
As an enthralled audience, we often have little idea of the many strange and stressful tornadoes that beset the stories that move us. All we know is that we love what we see. We tell our friends. We are all a-twitter (yup, pun intended) about our experience that becomes ever greater in the telling thereof.
We are often spectators of our own lives. We give ourselves stage cues and arrange the sets for maximum impact. We choose our characters and assign actors carefully lest we become less than believable. We resign ourselves to a show-must-go-on attitude and then, against all odds, burst onto the stage where others get caught up in our orbit.
But we’re left empty somehow. Our post-performance lull in the backstage dressing room can boast nothing more than a tired, sweaty, makeup mess on a face we do not know. We’ve acted well. We know our lines. We’ve become one with our character. But the character has become symbiotic with what lies beneath it. The mirror shoves back a stranger in our face.
What kind of story have we constructed for our own audiences? Who have we hired to perform the most admirable parts of our stage-play characters? From where do we glean our deepest inspiration to shape our personas? A story is an ongoing pleasure, one meant to reveal ever-deeper treasures of delight, surprise, awe or fear with every turning page. But unless we have a commitment to unmask and expand our story beyond the stage and, with courage, risk the critics’ page, we never make it out of our dressing rooms.
A new year has dawned. The curtain has opened once more upon a new stage with different lights, an updated script, actors both old and new and an audience that awaits us. We alone are a
ware of the maelstroms that have brought us to this place. We are the ones who now stand before our audience and decide whether or not to remove our makeup, leave our script behind and let the lights show us for who we really are. Said that greatest of all playwrights, Shakespeare, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts….”
But if we are willing participants in the Kingdom narrative, we’re given help with our lines, the cast has been selected to shape our character for maximum delight and impact, hope and excitement can replace dread of opening day and our only real audience already knows how great this performance will be. He has used us to write the script. We are in fact co-writers.
So, in spite of everything, let the show go on. Our audience of one will be cheering. The critics have little to say on this one.
Dates on a calendar do not determine our stories.
We do.
Stage pictures from www.zimbio.com
The day has nudged me with her prêt-à-porter greetings,
dried flower wish lists fit for nothing more
than the plastic, manikin smiles of little men.
Still, a molded smile sits nicer on the face
than dishonest eye-shadow hiding eyes
looking for their own freedom.
When time has pressed her hand in yours,
take the hint of friendship.
Her loyalty is straight and plumb-line true
but has a short shelf-life.
Speak, or the moment is already gone.
Dedicated with love and respect to Lois Keffer – writer, editor, friend, mentor
Pound for pound these words say less than they mean
and weigh more than they say.
Pull away every other petal and one still gets half a flower;
a down payment for the coming Spring
when the world doesn’t mind repetition
for the sake of simple beauties, multiplied.
A fire makes its heartening presence known, tucked under the hearth upon which hang individual stockings and an antique clock I inherited from my Dad. A delightfully chaotic looking tree, augmented with bobbles made by the growing dexterity of my boys’ fingers – the accumulated little-boy detritus of Christmas past – stands guard at another window gazing out on a trusted neighbor’s house. Snow falls without sound or pretense just past living room windows that shield us from the oblique, grey winter, and all I can think is this: if Christmas, I.e. the incarnation, God with us, means anything at all, it must mean more than the Thomas Kinkade painting I’ve just described. It must have the same insidious undercurrent, rife with danger, of the stable. It must reek of real life spread out over a table of ambiguity and hopelessness scrounging for scraps of hope. It must mean that God is longing to burst forth into our own souls, finding enough room to receive the gifts of our own inner Magi. It must be genuine, like the rough and tumble character of a once-upon-a-time, ramshackle stable.
It was messy and scary and uncertain, but the perfect crucible in which to illustrate all that is truly important: the broken, smelly manger of human hearts made ready to receive the only thing powerful enough to draw them out of pain and darkness, God himself. And, apparently, God loves children. Enough to become one.
Not a soldier.
Not a business man.
Not a political revolutionary.
A crying child laying somewhere so shocking that he would be handily removed from us by social services. Understand that this was God’s chosen means of getting our attention, then study the faces of your frail, trusting and needy children and read the story again.
Yeah, it’s like that.
O come, o come, Emmanuel…
Is that where you stood
that morning when the sheath’d, embarrassed moon
hid herself too soon behind earth’s broad shoulder?
Inured to tenderness but not without skiff and shuffle
you never made it your way to sing
past noon when the capricious cool lay waiting
for her summons from the heat of shimmering day.
Why must the geese shout so loud,
parading their brash story, torn through the ashen sky?
Their mockery only makes you braver
to twist your weary neck from shifting dirt;
the clumping, clodden landscape,
your only refuge.
You turn for home and take your place
among the pawns of potential.
Eat enough to remind yourself
of Eden’s meta-narrative, your textbook
with pages missing, the ones you planted.
Only here do you hear,
the song of dust, the foreplay of longitudinal seed-smithing.
Despite your doubt, here it makes sense.
Here it doubles up to surrender
the deep bellies of earth.
If we are made in God’s image and God sings, then we should be singing, too.
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Seekers
Spiritual Direction for Integrated Living
From liquid courage to Sober Courage
an anamcara exploring those close encounters of the liminal kind
Collaborating with the Muses to inspire, create, and illuminate
...in such kind ways...
"That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works." Psalm 26:7
Blog for poet and singer-songwriter Malcolm Guite
…in the thick of things
REFLECTIONS & REVIEWS
Seeking that which is life giving.
… hope is oxygen
Homepage of Seymour Jacklin: Writer - Narrator - Facilitator
If we are made in God’s image and God sings, then we should be singing, too.
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Seekers
Spiritual Direction for Integrated Living
From liquid courage to Sober Courage
an anamcara exploring those close encounters of the liminal kind
Collaborating with the Muses to inspire, create, and illuminate
...in such kind ways...
"That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works." Psalm 26:7
Blog for poet and singer-songwriter Malcolm Guite
…in the thick of things
REFLECTIONS & REVIEWS
Seeking that which is life giving.
… hope is oxygen
Homepage of Seymour Jacklin: Writer - Narrator - Facilitator
innerwoven 