Order

As a ritual,
he lines up the wooden tiles of letters
for the word I have added to the board
so the edges are as if a ruler
were laid against their side.

Half a state away
I am listening to a fellow pilgrim
speak about the chaos
that has crossed her life
a husband plucked from an idyllic scene
extinguished by an indifferent tower of a wave.

Our teacher speaks of order,
the holy as not the momentous
but the mundane--
I am feeling only momentous disorder,
as if someone knocked the game board
and the tiles are jagged lines.

7 Mar 08

As we began learning about the rules of St. Benedict, we heard how he brought order into the chaos of the middle ages. I was reminded of the rituals in our lives, even the small OCD moments of my younger son's., and how they help us face the chaos in our lived. I cannot begin to fathom Carol's story in the second stanza. But I can connect to how the "disorders" that befall us throw everything out of line. I was also reminded of one of Father Mayberry's favorite lines, that God draws straight with crooked lines. I left that one out of the poem but it's here nonetheless.

Getting Up

"What do you here?"
the monk is asked;
"we fall down,
we get up;
we fall down,
we get up"
again and again

I am at the bottom of the stairs;
in my hand
I hold a Q and Z
but no matching vowels
I listen to the letters' sounds
and stutter.

7 Mar 08

I love this answer. This is what I suppose the guru at the top of a mountain would say when you finally reached the summit. When we fall down, we are reminded that next we get up; when we are on top of the world, we are reminded that we fall down. Learning to speak that language of wisdom is like holding the letters Q and Z in Scrabble--which returns from the prior poem--without a U or two O's.

Disconnecting the dots

She called them blowers
with the wonder of a four year-old;
she held it by the stem
a tiny constellation
at the purse of her lips
and blew--
all the stars in this orb of spores
tailed off into the wind
its dots disconnecting
into the air,
scattered, random.

I was left
with a stamen moist at the end
of a shoot that leaves stains
on my fingers.
It is gone;
or just becoming?
Is it is?

7 Mar 08

This title of this poem is a chapter title in Dean Slutyer's wonderful book "The Zen Commandments," my Lenten reading for this year. Among other things, the book is about the opposite of the rational mind that ever seeks to connect the dots. In the image of the ripe dandelion I remember my daughter picking and blowing with glee, I saw that my reality of the Dandelion is my memory of it, my interpretation--and yet it isn't so, it's gone. The rational mind asks "is it becoming?" The Zen master challenges to see it as simply being; it is.

Integrity

He tells a story
of a group grappling
with definitions--
integrity is today;
it's sharing roots
with integrate
and integral.
In this teaching,
the clutch pedal lifts,
the hidden gears
mesh, turn and hum
as a chord engaged.

7 Mar 08

This is a story from a wise counselor triggered by Dr. Linman's etymologies. How do we become whole? Perhaps by connecting to our roots as individuals and as community.

Connections

Watch for those times
in your life
when you come alive,
animated, he says;
see your arms gesturing
like two old men in the market
relating the news--
pay attention;
there lie the clues
to authenticity,
authority,
author.
Go to that place;
write it down.

7 Mar 087

These were words from another wise counselor years ago. I was reminded of the relationship in words but the etymology Dr. Linman presented in each meditation. Getting back to sources, to the roots is reading the dictionary of ourselves.

Slowing

The river slows here,
full of froth
from the rapids upstream;
it makes a turn,
nudged by this rise of land
as a liner coaxed by a tug--
it moves with a weight
of all that is.

I go to the summer,
a slowness in the air

legs and arms
over the inner tube,
floating

7 Mar 08

The Housatonic was such a presence this year. The heavy rains had the river raging. And yet in all the turmoil of the river, brown with silt and branches, it slowed around the bend where the hill on which the conference center sits. It was reading a book on meditation, on slowing down the mind and just being in the present, floating around a turn.

Awakened

"She hath often dreamed of unhappiness,
and waked herself with laughing" --Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"

I am telling the story
of the pig with a wooden leg--
a bit of a shaggy dog
with a surprise turn at the end;
we are both laughing
from our hips
and life is good.
It may be a hundred times
and still I laugh,
awakened from the season's misery
in the shining of the telling.

7 Mar 08

Bruce Smith and I were trading stories at dinner, before the silence. Like two blokes at the corner pub, we were telling stories and jokes. The "pig with the wooden leg" is one of my favorites. And we enjoyed a hearty laugh at the punch line--new to Bruce and familiar to me, yet in the telling and the laughing it was a shining moment of renewal and camaraderie.



Morning Prayer

"In you we live and move and have our being." BCP

We read the morning prayer
and I remember
her story of the two baskets:
the kingdom in the outer
and our fragile wicker abode
afloat in the center.
I imagine two handles
up above,
and reaching for them;
at times I can steady the rocking.
When we die, she said,
the smaller basket falls away
and we see
that we were always in the larger basket--
and I dream of falling
through the loose weave of life
and being held
in nothing at all.

7 Mar 08

Though the first memory is of last year's retreat, and Barbara Crafton's powerful story of the two baskets, this is also about the remembering in the liturgy of morning prayer whose we are.



The Unmoving


The uphill path
through the pines
has remnants of ice,
pine needles,
bark;
half-way up the rise
two naked pine trunks
have fallen across the way,
short limbs of broken branches
radiate out as the spokes of a ship's wheel;
I grab hold as if to turn
and lean into the unmoving.

8 Mar 08

The unpaved road that runs across the wooden bridge over the train tracks and up the hill to the summer cabins was blocked by two fallen pine trees that looked to be dead before they fell. All the bark was gone from both and the smooth yellow wood of the trunks shone in the rain. The branches of a pine radiate out in a rings around the trunk. It had the look of a ship's wheel, so I grabbed one and pulled. Nothing. There are times in our lives when we want to move the unmovable. But there's no way around it. We have to live it.


Speaking out loud


In the midst of naked trees
x-rayed wet with cold raw rain,
the lichen shines as lime dots
of paint on a grey canvas--
fog hangs over the river
and the luminous
is not silent.

8 Mar 08

This is a very short poem--an exclamation of sorts. Turning from the fallen trees in the prior poem, and walking back down the mountain road, I was stunned by how the lichen on the winter trees glowed in the rain and fog. I would not have seen it if it were not for the dominance of the all the grey of that day. This struck me as something of the message of Easter toward which Lent yearns.



Evening Prayer


The smoke pirouettes to the rafters
with a flourish from the candles,
extinguished to an end,
one then the other,
with a brass rook--
a bow before, between, following
the blessing.
Wicks beacon orange,
then fade into night.

8 Mar 08

The dance of the smoke from the altar candles was arresting. It was such an image of conclusion. I could not remember the name of the brass item used to extinguish the candles. A web page of instructions for a Lutheran Acolyte provided the answer. Fitting.



Lesser Feasts and Fasts


Putting away the Bible,
I see a slim volume
deeper in the cabinet,
in the last row of books
leaning into each other--
"Lesser Feasts and Fasts."
I close the paneled door,
then saying its title twice
to myself,
I open the door anew,
reach for the volume,
run my fingers down its contents,
and enter in whatever small way
I can
without the food of words.

8 Mar 08

In the great room where we meet for the meditations are a series of wooden paneled closets on either side of the fireplace. Inside are Bible of a few translations, Hymnals, the Book of Common prayer, and this slim volume I had never seen before. The title alone evoked an image that begged writing down. But they key turn in the poem is the "going back," the re-immersion in the moment that just happened. This is a kind of baptismal moment, when in that ritual we go back to the Jordan. But is it also a stopping and soaking it in.



Outlet


I dream about the electrical outlet,
the one without its cover,
the one I've neglected for years,
since the basement office was built.
It was a combination
of round and square fixtures
no standard plate would fit,
its wires exposed--
I had not searched for it,
nor changed it
to two rounds
or two squares,
where the proverbial holes
would fit;
nor was I ready to say
it would not work,
I'd make do--
obvious now that it would never
pass inspection.
I woke with a sense
of incompleteness,
aware.

8 Mar 08

Ever once in while I have a dream that just needs to be told, where my job is just to write it down. This is one of those "unfinished business" dreams about which we have a moment of panic, followed by a new awareness that there is something in our lives to which we need to pay greater attention.



After the storm


After the storm,
the river surges
angry at its banks;
in a small eddy
four white mergansers
forage;
the sun is still new,
the shadows long,
and this quartet
eats the silence,
feeds on the being in the world.

9 Mar 08

After a day and a half of heavy rain, the Housatonic is back with a fury on Sunday morning. While eating breakfast, Alice points to the four white ducks in a place of serenity in the midst of that swollen torrent. I ask her to write down the name. Mergansers. Beautiful. Those three syllables ate of all the silence for me by just being. Those who like to read the philosophers will also see the Existentialists in the final line.



Rehearsal


I rehearse the routines,
the morning and evening
rituals,
making lists
as I imagine
reaching for things
assumed in hand.
This is how I prepare
to journey,
making the granted
new.

9 Mar 08

Getting ready for my sabbatical at Dartmouth, I've been obsessed with lists, afraid I'll forget something I need (likely tied to the unfinished business it the outlet dream!) I often pack for a trip by putting in my bag each item as I use it in the evening and morning before heading for the airport. There's a ritual to this, a liturgy of packing, if you will. If you do this in your mind's eye as you pack you imagine the movements and add the items that would be at the end of your hand. These are all the things I take for granted. I assume that they will just be there. Packing and ritual, reminds me that it can be new.



Broken for me


In the prayers of the Eucharist,
in the brokenness and redemption,
I am aware that I have lived
my life in chapters,
full of words and fury,
peace and kindness,
climax and close
and ever after.

9 Mar 08

The Eucharist is a powerful and rich image for those of us in the Christian heritage. The strongest message for me is that the brokenness is not the final word.


The words

Before he reads the Gospel,
the teacher asks us to listen for the word
or phrase that speaks to us.
I choose "with her hair,"
this washing of feet not with cloth or sponge,
but a part of herself.
I imagine Mary on her knees,
leaning forward so her tresses fall
about his feet--
this is a giving that is an emptying
an opening to be filled.

9 Mar 08

Read John 11:1-45. Lazarus dominates the passage, but Mary is the one who shines.



In the eye of light


The sun moves to the high window
and blinds me,
the dust on my glasses
opaquely luminous--
I cannot read the hymn.
Visoring with my hand,
leaning forward in my chair,
the rays move over me head
and I under its hand.
At the end of the a capella song
I look up--
The single iris on the table
is a aflame in the eye of light.

9 Mar 08

Last year, the train lumbering by awoke my senses during the Sunday morning service. This year it was the sun. This had not happened in twelve years; it was the first year of day light savings time in early March. And at the appointed hour the sun shone on me and the iris, blinding me and healing me, so I could see again.

Good Friday and Easter lie ahead. As in Advent, we watch and wait. More poems will follow as this Lenten wandering unfolds.


An invitation to breathe

A sea of crocuses
rolled in early
and surprised me,
violet so not the shade
of winter,
but the stole of Lent--
oh the hope and welcome
in that upturned cradle
of a delicate palm!

15 Mar 08

Sometimes the repetition and the expected become new and unexpected. Breathing is so taken for granted, and yet the first signs of spring can take your breath away.


Leaving

Leaving on Good Friday,
the night is a bolero--
air cold, as winter
will not relent.

Through the boughs of pines
supplicating to the wind
shines a moon
so piercing
the clouds caught on either side--
illuminated.

So this leaving
down stone steps,
the crunch of sand and salt so crisp
I am in its hand

21 Mar 08

One of the most moving moments in the Good Friday liturgy, is the solemn, silent leaving at the end--especially poignant when the servicee is at night. There is no greeting, just departure. All the Passion is gone, the pain, the suffering, the evil-- gone. We have witnessed the other side of Christmas--Emmanuel, God is with us in the beginning and the end.


In the fullness of time

She opens the purple bow
on the oval box
of chocolate eggs
"oh ho ho," she says
touching the green foil wrapped one
with her tiny hand.
"Later," I say.
Wonder dashed in her eyes,
she backs away.
After dinner,
she is covered in chocolate,
ringing her lips and each finger,
the arrival sweeter
from the longing.

Easter 08

In the eyes of babes is the loss and the triumph of the Kingdom.


* * *

All Poems © Copyright 2008, E. Granger-Happ, All Rights Reserved.

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