Wednesday: Rilke

This poem tends toward the dramatic in the first stanza (excessively so, for what I mean to say), but within its second stanza nestles an image and a set of lines that have run like a refrain today. The poem is "Lament."

Lament

Whom will you cry to, heart? More and more lonely,

your path struggles on through incomprehensible

mankind. All the more futile perhaps

for keeping to its direction,

keeping on toward the future, 

toward what has been lost.

Once. You lamented? What was it? A fallen berry

of jubilation, unripe.

But now the whole tree of my jubilation

is breaking, in the storm it is breaking, my slow

tree of joy.

Loveliest in my invisible

landscape, you that made me more known

to the invisible angels.

When the following lines are threaded out of context to stand alone, the poem stands on its head. 

A fallen berry of jubilation, unripe--

Loveliest in my invisible

landscape, you that made me more known 

to the invisible angels.

This may mean something. Or nothing. But I do find it beautiful. And the invisible angels don't seem quite as invisible as they once did.

Julian, Lewis, and Hopkins: A Trio for This Night

It is sooth that sin is cause of all this pain; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

***

Images of the Holy easily become holy images--sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? 

[...] We cannot understand. The best is perhaps what we understand least.

***

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; 

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent 

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

For the Man Who Loved Obituaries

My dad was a man oddly fascinated by obituaries his whole life, cutting out those of complete strangers when he found them compelling. We wanted his to be the sort he would cut out.

Calling hours are at Coleman & Daniels Funeral Home in Endicott, NY on Thursday, November 13 from 5-7. The memorial service, also at Coleman & Daniels, will be on Friday, November 14 at 11:00. We welcome any who would like to be a part of celebrating dad's life.

Farewell, Until We Meet Again

Dad went home to be with God this morning. Thank you all for your prayers and love.

Night Air

That particular window, the one above the kitchen sink, has no screen. The air comes in just as it is. This night's air carried news of a Life hanging by a thread, and it carried the plaintive voices of autumn's last flock of geese flying to a fairer place. The cries of geese carry greater weight now that they've broken this stillness, wept on this night air.

Patience

My last memory with my dear old Pops before the sickness came is a tender one. This particular memory is a gift straight from the God Who knew I would need just such a one to pull out and hold on days like these.

It was a rainy day, really. Gray, and the kind of wet that seeps into your shoes and sloshes around. The week had been trying, and both body and spirit felt a bit trodden down, worn out, downright exhausted.  I didn't know how I was going get everything done for school and grad class and all the other things filling up the cracks. Dad, lovable worrywart that he is, is always telling me to drink some caffeine as I drive to and from my grad class in the evening so I won't drift off at the wheel.

He must have thought caffeine wouldn't be enough that Wednesday.

During my lunch break at school, I felt my own weakness all too deeply. That's when I listened to the voicemail and heard his voice telling me that he and mom were going to come pick me up after school and chauffeur me to class. And they did. Dad made sure there were pillows in the van so I could sleep. He and mom came in our trusty, too-old van (a true Johnson jalopy), windows all fogged up from the heat pouring out the vents while rain slid down the glass. And so I slept. While I was in class they bought groceries to stuff my rather mournfully empty refrigerator once we got back to Bainbridge.

Dad is no-nonsense most of the time. I'm a Grown-Up, you see, and I can care for my needs. But it is nice, so nice, to be able to pull out a memory like this one.

Even Grown-Ups need to be taken care of.

Rest at last.

And so we wait. God's arms are heavy with my family right now, but His are the arms that don't grow weary of holding.

When Love Comes In a Box...

...it looks something like this.

Thank you, Jori, for loving.

When Flowers Bloom in the Dark

It's been a few days since the little world I inhabit was turned inside out.

These past few years I've been learning that there is life in vulnerability, that the body of Christ works best when I hold up my brokenness to others just as I wish them to hold up their brokenness to me. Because the dexterity of God mends broken things. The love of God works wonders with weakness. This faith I hold, this Christ Whose name I--in all my frailty--try to bear, is the very Heart of things.

As I write this, my human heart is swelling with a mingling of grief and gratitude that makes absolutely no sense but yet is somehow the most truthful thing I could possibly feel. The grace of Abba Father cuts like a knife, but it also binds up the brokenhearted.

My dad is dying. Three days ago I was on my way to Binghamton when my sister called to tell me that he was in the hospital and had just gotten a diagnosis of acute myocardial leukemia. Right now, just three days later, he's lying on a new hospital bed in Rochester with lungs that aren't working right and a body that is breaking down. The doctor has been honest--it's a matter of time at this point. We don't know how long.

Yes, it is hard. I have cried until I feel like there is nothing left. I have prayed until I run out of words. Thank you to those of you who are supplying words to Abba in my stead. I am learning the exhaustion of wakeful nights.

But still, God is good.

My family has gathered close. Dad and I have shared more tenderness these past 3 days than we've felt free to show for many years, and I don't think I'm the only one of my family who would say that. We are all being bound together in this farewell.

I don't know how much time Dad will have before God takes his hand and leads him Up and In, but I know it will be the right number of minutes, hours, days, weeks.

I ask for prayers. That Dad would see the face of Christ, know His love, experience His peace, find intimacy with the One Who'll be leading him home. That he would be ready, as Dad himself phrases it, "to leave the porch and go inside." That my mom would rest in God, that His Spirit would be her comforter, that these last moments with Dad would be sweet, precious. That all of us children would face things with faith and a love that passes any miles spanning between us, that we could help bear each other's grief and point one another toward the God Whose name is Love. That God would give the doctors wisdom in making decisions. And in the end, that God's will would be done, whether that means lingering or passing quickly into His arms.

We're under God's wings right now.

Speaking for myself? I'm breaking, but God is mending me even as I crack.

Here are a few songs a friend shared with me. They say a lot, and they say it more beautifully than I can.

A Thousand Things   

How Emptiness Sings

Come Close Now