Staying Light

Knowledge arms: no question.

But how encumbered am I willing to be

Seems an important question.

In poetry, in theology, in dealings with others –

Information can drown.

Think soldiers in Normandy

All their accoutrements

All that gathered up, strapped on, other-imposed equipment

Didn’t liberate them…

(It pulled them down.)
So how?

How does one sort through all what others perceive as necessity?

How does one remain equipped

But light enough to stay unencumbered?

Don’t assume the trappings

Just ’cause they’re there for the taking

Don’t take another’s word for what’s needed:

Celebrate the tools

And the capable wielding of them

– I’m not above them, I’m probably below them –

The point is, I’m not them.

Try on the armor perhaps,

See how it feels.

But don’t keep it on just ’cause it’s been offered

Find my tool, trust my voice

E’en though it be a slingshot

Such as these have slain giants: and endured.
So read, consider, deliberate

But stay afloat too

Buoyed and buoyant and in command of one’s own weight

Armed with one’s most well fitting, carefully chosen tools:

For otherwise I may easily succumb ‘neath another’s trammels

I was never meant to carry.

Good Morning

Ah, morning.

Before uncertainty, wit’s end, torn places

Before confusing, unfamiliar, troubling spaces

Before unkind, frowning, scowling faces.

Ah, morning.

All wide open and new

All quiet, serene, with no people in view

Stretched out and ahead

Before sapped strength,

Deferred hope, and fresh reasons for dread.

Fresh start. Hopeful. Still tackle-able.

Before unsure, full-on, and neurotically unstable.

Before all this wretchedness

Crowds out all this goodness

When the day’s potential’s

All fair and endless.

Ah, morning.

After coffee, before crashes

Before misunderstanding, disappointment, or miscommunication’s backlashes.

Ah, morning.

After prayer, before talking.

Before progress or insight or bad news that is shocking.

Just Him

And just me

And just peace therein,

Good morning.

Sacred

Some things are too big to be processed

Too difficult, too tragic

Not suited for fitting into

Neat little boxes

Bigger than words

“Unfixable”

In any tidy, clean-up-any-trace kinda sense.

Some things defy understanding –

Even if our tiny brains clamor for and demand it.

Some things just beg for

Peace –

As in quiet, and time, and protection.

Some things are too much for us:

And yet we’re invited into them all the same.

Some things are sacred

And ought to be treated as such –

Carefully, quietly, beseechingly

As seekers:

Not as ones ready to impose any will of our own

But as wide-eyed children:

Ready, open, and open-handed to receive good gifts,

– whatever they may be –

Wise direction

As given by the Giver

Not to be infringed upon by lesser ways of being

That we may be ready and willing to share on.

Oh, make us so…

Brain Conversation

I must insist, brain,

That you quiet down.

Yes, I am the boss of you.

Even if, at this minute,

That seems untrue.

Even if taking you captive

Seems an impossible feat,

I am.

I can no longer afford your company

In its current way of being.

You have taunted and shamed

And convinced me that

All my best parts are buried and forgotten.

Encouraged me to blame.

Riddled me with confusion.

And though “I listen to my words but they fall far below”* *Cat Stevens

As an honest admission

Sounds terribly weak and puny,

There is truth to it.

In spite of all your efforts to confound me,

(And with so much life feeling to be swallowing me up)

Maybe I ought to be relieved.

In healthier moments

Such “sensitivity” coins as “virtuous.”

I don’t know what makes the difference:

Why and when moments posing as majestic or terrible

As savor-able or unbearable

As breathtaking mountaintop or suffocating pit

Pose thus.

That song

Before today too light, too cheesy

In light of today’s darkness

Held just about too much poignancy to bear.

I want to put words to this

more-than-anxiety more-than-depression more-than-difficult

overwhelming-not-severe-enough

terrifying-may-be-a-start

Experience.

Suffice it to say

I want to figure it out,

Only it’s you who needs do the figuring

(you and your ridiculously murky waters).

Come to think of it,

Such navigation requires a sounder captain.

I think I’ll ask your Maker.

He’ll know.

Brace yourself.

‘Cause for all your best efforts,

He’ll undo you

In all and truly best ways…

New

Even though I’ve not been here before

Going through the motions

As though I have.

Where nary an original thought

Feeding reaction

S’to be found.

Ideas

Expectations

Roles

Ways of responding

All seem irritatingly preconceived.

Decided upon.

Not deciding’s deciding too.

I must decide to remind myself

That I’ve not passed this way before.

This is a new day

A new thing

(Full of promise and opportunity)

Why does this remembrance seem the exception, the extra?

A pleasant surprise? A life-changing epiphany?

Why does succumbing to lesser quality modes of responding seem to be the most common rule?

Going through the motions will reign

If I don’t fight for lusher, more vital grounds.

Fight to remember this new day

The thrill of new ways.

Will I fight?

Will I perceive it?

Will I see the new thing

And refuse to be swallowed

In the old?

Be remade, live fully alive,

In the new?

Craftiness

Wondering if adding to the beauty

May also take from it.

Not always or necessarily, and thankfully not exclusively.

But if indulging one’s craft

Does more to contribute to self indulgence

(And this may be a given to some degree)

Then “adding to the beauty”

Is a misspeak.

Before one satisfies one’s desire to create, or pursue, or whatever,

There’s something of a decision:

Will I serve them, or will I serve me?

(One’s “craft” = one)

If I decide to serve me (one)

There may creep in an eventual sense of entitlement.

And if not acknowledged and made to stand in its

Truthful non-entitlement place,

May grow – quiet-like – but insidious.

And if not checked,

And then if not indulged,

The ‘I’s not indulged.

And if the I’s not indulged

It must be your fault.

And if the self can convince the self it’s your fault

– That it was somehow owed its “autonomy”

And not paid what it was owed –

Then you must be punished

– Whoever “you” are that was replaced, misplaced by my craft.

I might not tell you.

But quietly hold on to resentment

(When I didn’t quiet the voice’s demands, I got to stay mad and entitled)

Hold it, feed it, coddle it, start to act in its favor ‘stead of yours.

And soon, there’s no beauty to be seen,

No pure craft to be had.

Only I, me, my and the muddle of inanimate “craft” in my hands.

Hospitality

Dinner company

Requires that the split personality

Meld for a more gracious hostess.

The day’s thoughts-chaos and weariness

Forced to the backseat

While social graces take the wheel.

It’s not dishonest

– I don’t think –

But therapeutic:

My self blessedly forced to give way

To your self

To the hospitality’s remedy

Of your preferences, your comfort.

Up and out from my own stagnant waters

To the living, rushing waters of present others

Makes being a good sharer

So much more than the stuff of playground politics,

The “I” put aside

In deference to the “you”

Is the great healer.

Wisdom (and its elusive accumulation)

I accumulate

Snippets and scraps of wisdom

Furiously copy and collect quotes

Try and grab on to ideas in hopes that they’ll stick.

But they drift and settle

In nondescript locations

And no matter how badly I want to hold on to their quality

They dry up, break down, and lose their initial splendor.

Rarely permanent

A wind change and they’re scattered.

I grasp at them;

But no sooner does the fist close ’round

Than they dissolve and fade from memory.

No sooner do I identify one

Than that leaf blows neath the rest of the heap

No longer remarkable, decipherable, identifiable

From the rest.

Further proof that

All these – none of these –

Are mine to keep or hold as my own.

Neither wisdom, nor moments, nor leaves, nor snowflakes

Nor any other of the divine’s holdings

My property.

A steward is all

Whose domain’s graciously on loan

And hopefully, whose care and keeping

Not wasted.

Love’s Thrill

When the children came, “thrill” left

Replaced by care and caution and love’s breadth

Not always safe: the pursuit of safe.

Lots may die in the wake of hesitate.

But ah! That is not all there is.

Before them wonder was a largely private (selfish) affair

After them – with them, because of them – I am expanded

Expanded in delight not just my own, but in delight in theirs

What a gift! What a gift to be enlarged

And stretched beyond my own thin skin

These trenches and crumbs are not beneath me

These are where the real life is – the full life is

Forced outward love stretches all my womanhood

– anyone’s personhood through parenthood –

Battle waged I am forced to reckon with these, with me

To find that my self’s death is the truest liberty

To be present and free from my own way:

(Not just in order to indulge another’s whim)

– But to provide what’s needed –

This is liberation: realizing wholly the love within.

So to find I’ve grown – and am willing more still –

Becomes the delight of sacrifice – true love’s thrill

To find that before I gloried in the small

I’d venture I knew Glory not at all.

The Toll Booth Attendants (and other small but blessedly profound encounters)

It lasted what, maybe 15 seconds?

Those four times at the toll booths today.

In the scope of eternity

That’s not much

(If you’re counting time).

So not to make too much of it,

But the attendants’ calm, cool, professional collectedness

– and most of all the smile and the eye contact at the end –

And an unexpected stability crept in my car,

Sidled comfortably into my psyche.

Men and women fulfilling their role, in their place,

– temporary or not –

In those well done isolated moments

Helped catalyze

A centering solidarity

A happy empowering awareness

Of folks.

Folks working their shifts

Capably, willingly,

Wholeheartedly

Profoundly inspired me – in reminding me – to well-work my own.

Such a sturdy this-sphere’s-intact-and-life’s-going-forward posture

Set me better on my way.

Thanks for your part in paying it forward,

Whoever you are.