Repeat (Repeat, Repeat)

It's 11:05, and I'm up again.

These past months have been full of dichotomies that are difficult to wrap my head around. Days have been threaded through with grieving and with yearning for what is impossible to have, but they have also been tinged with a hope so deep that it shakes me, a promise that has nestled itself so far inside that there's no pulling it back out.

I feel a combination of largeness and smallness, of glory from knowing that God's image somehow rests on my weakness and makes it more than what it is to utter humility at being so unequal to living this life well without help from my Father.

What I can say, and will say, and must say now--to look back on when the days seem heavy and the nights dark--is that God is enough. I am known.

We are known.

The bonds of human affection are tenuous, gossamer blown about compared to the cords that bind us to our Maker. This is a mystery.

I've written of it before and will again, but I'm transfixed by the thought of how one soul can meet another and somehow each can search the other out. How do we know each other? Each tentative look into Another is an unnamed miracle. And God watches over it all, this shadow of me knowing you, friend, and of you knowing me.

As He watches, I think perhaps He smiles, waiting for the day when we will finally understand what Knowing is.

Until then, may we have the courage to seek each other out, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, friends. May our shadows become more like the Light which casts them.

I Have To Get Up At 5:00 Tomorrow...

...and I have a tidy list of things to do before I sleep. 

But somehow I just needed to come here for a moment. My heart is so full. Full of the good and the breaking and the true and the beautiful and the difficult to understand. 

Right now I'd like to take the whole world in my arms. 

But I can't, and I know that God's already got that covered. 

So instead, I'll leave you with this.

I love you all something fierce. 

You are precious.

And I am grateful for you.

Yep. 

You.

Homeless Man

I watched a short documentary about a man named Rich Mullins a couple of days ago. I'm still thinking about it.

Here's a very small sampling of his music (he isn't the one singing the last song--he wrote it and it was recorded after he died in a car accident).

Hold Me Jesus

Creed

Step By Step

My Deliverer Is Coming

It isn't that I put him on a pedestal; I don't. I don't idealize him or make a hero of him. I appreciate his reality, though, his trueness, his honesty, his heart. I want to want Jesus like that. I want to love people like that.

I wish I could have met you, Rich Mullins.

Perhaps I will one day.

Thank you for pointing up.

The Valley of the Shadow of Death

Love Sorrow

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must 

take care of what has been 

given. Brush her hair, help her

into her little coat, hold her hand,

especially when crossing a street.

[...] 

She is strange, mute, difficult, 

sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.

And amazing things can happen. And you may see, 

as the two of you go 

walking together in the morning light, how 

little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;

she begins to grow.

-- Mary Oliver, Red Bird

Tonight I find that I don't know how to do this. And I don't like doing it Here rather than There. Perhaps I ought to love Sorrow, but her strangeness, muteness, difficulty, unmanageableness are difficult to get to know.

I miss being fretted over. I miss the phone calls to make sure I hadn't died while I was walking in the park, to make sure I hadn't fallen asleep during my dark drive on the highway from Binghamton to Bainbridge. 

There are so many things I miss that I fear to start naming them. 

I just re-read some of the many cards that I had hung on the doorframes and archways in my apartment after Dad died to help fend off the dark with their bits of light. So many words, so many beautiful friends. It does help to have ink and paper in my hands again, to remember the words.

I don't know what it is about tonight. I can't stop replaying those days of disbelief, the hours spent in the hospital desperately trying to know this father God gave me as deep as I could before he left. Remembering the big, crinkly hands that didn't work to feed himself. I was happy to use mine instead. A barrage of stills, snippets of memory playing again and again. 

It still doesn't seem real.

And Psalm 23 strikes a part of me it hadn't touched before.

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. 

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: 
He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: 
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:

for Thou art with me;

Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: 

Thou anointest my head with oil;

my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

The Snow that Lands Like a Kiss: Thoughts on a Friday Afternoon

One Train May Hide Another
By Kenneth Koch

In a poem, one line may hide another line, 

As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.

That is, if you are waiting to cross

The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at

Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read

Wait until you have read the next line--

Then it is safe to go on reading.

In a family one sister may conceal another, 

So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view

Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.

One father or one brother may hide the man,

If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.

So always standing in front of something the other

As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.

One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide

The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another

On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe;

One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia Antica 

     one tomb

May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide 

     another,

One small complaint may hide a great one.

One injustice may hide another--one colonial may hide another,

One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath 

     may hide another bath

As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.

One idea may hide another: Life is simple

Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein

One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory

One invention may hide another invention,

One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.

One dark red, or one blue, or one purple--this is a painting

By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,

These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin

May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The 

     obstetrician

Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but

One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here. 

A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides

Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in 

A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag

Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it.

In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by 

     the mother's

And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker

May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee

Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love or 

     the same love

As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers

The better love fingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts" 

Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that"

And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the 

     Garden of Eden

Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve. 

Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.

When you come to something, stop to let it pass

So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where, 

Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory

Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about, 

The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading 

     A Sentimental Journey look around

When you have finished, for Tristam Shandy, to see

If it is standing there, it should be, stronger

And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore

May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk

May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and 

One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs

Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the 

     foot of a tree

With one and when you get up to leave there is another

Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher, 

One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man

May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.

You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can be 

     important

To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

_________________________________

Yesterday I walked Talik home in the dark, just the two of us on a snowy sidewalk. He admitted he was glad I was there. 

"I was worried I was gonna git snatched."

I was glad I was there, too.

Glad of his talk, glad of his child-mind doing its best to comprehend God. 

"God is always with us," I said, "and He takes care of us even when we feel alone." I told him that's why I wasn't afraid of walking back by myself in the dark.

He replied, "Maybe He won't always be there, though. Maybe He'll have to leave for a minute to get a drink." Eager, persuasive.

I assured him that God is bigger than us--He doesn't need to eat or drink. 

"You never know. He prob'ly gits tired from watchin' us all the time..."

I'm glad You don't get tired.

__________________________________

Learning with children is vast and intimate and inexpressible. There is depth in those moments, moments when one humanity touches another, when you look at them and see eyes like lit windows, shades cracked open enough for you to see inside.

_________________________________

Lines for Winter

BY MARK STRAND

Tell yourself 

as it gets cold and gray falls from the air

that you will go on

walking, hearing 

the same tune no matter where 

you find yourself--

inside the dome of dark

or under the cracking white

of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.

Tonight as it gets cold

tell yourself 

what you know which is nothing

but the tune your bones play

as you keep going. And you will be able 

for once to lie down under the small fire

of winter stars. 

And if it happens that you cannot

go on or turn back

and you find yourself

where you will be at the end, 

tell yourself

in that final flowing of cold through your limbs

that you love where you are.

Lament

Abba, redeem!

Hard and silent underfoot,

stitched with shadows 

inexorable, immovable,

the earth groans

beneath its own weight.

There is much travail as we wait 

for our hearts of flesh, 

for tongues that know 

the words for 

father, daughter, son.

Abba, redeem! 

I hear the rocks cry out. 

The questions rise like sparks.

But hope that is seen is not hope 

and the presence of Light

is told by shadow.

In the thickest night

the blackest dark 

the darkest black

the Spirit groans. 

Abba, redeem!

Mercy, only mercy, consumes,

compassion does not fail,

and we know that it is good

to hope and quietly wait

for the salvation of the Lord.

White

Bundled up.

Snow dusted, nestled, caught, clasped.

An excerpt from River Teeth

"There comes a time, thanks to rivers, when a few beautiful old teeth are all that remain of the two-hundred-foot spires of life we call trees. There comes a river, whose current is time, that does a similar sculpting in the mind."

Echoes ricocheted from the other side of the iced-over river--children shrieking as they were pulled behind a snowmobile on sleds. If you look closely, you can see them through the gap in the trees.

The ice lives.

And further down, molecules loosen up and water springs over rocks, glad of liberation.

Serene.