GALWAY KINNELL

I've recently been enjoying a Galway-Kinnell trifecta: Body Rags; Mortal Acts, Mortal Words; and The Past. He is, of course, one of the masters. But poets and their poems don't stick with me simply because someone long ago said, "He's a real genius," or, "That's one for the Norton Anthology." 

This particular Kinnell poem has been my mind-companion for many weeks. Reading it every time is like this blurry memory: after so many days of traveling -- sleeping in crowded train cars, making new friends in hostels, reading and walking through history, getting lost down cobblestone streets -- finally, cold-nosed and limp, I heave open a heavy wooden door. It is warm inside. I walk toward the altar and sit. I am quiet for the first time in days - longer even. I slouch, base of my skull on the wooden pew, and look up. For a long time, I watch the murals of time and the story of being perpetually told on the cathedral ceiling, and I feel known. A tiny being with vaster inward space. 

[Pause] 

I observe the hours and yearn.

Wait

Wait, for now.

Distrust everything if you have to.

But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?

Personal Events will become interesting again.

Hair will become interesting.

Pain will become interesting.

Buds that open out of season will become interesting. 

Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;

their memories are what give them

the need for other hands. The desolation

of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness 

caved out of such tiny beings as we are 

asks to be filled; the need

for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.

Don't go too early.

You're tired. But everyone's tired.

But no one is tired enough.

Only wait a little and listen:

music of hair,

music of pain,

music of looms weaving our loves again.

Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,

most of all to hear your whole existence,

rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

PLATES, THEY WILL SHIFT

It's been a few months since I've written this. It's still true, so I post it now.

"Plates, they will shift, houses will shake, fences will drift. We will awake only to find —nothing's the same." – "Home Is A Fire," Death Cab for Cutie

Artists of all colors talk about reinventing themselves. But then, if you are a moving human, no matter your artistic ability, you also know about reinvention – even if that is not what you call it: these shifting plates, these drifting fences, these dissimilar days even when the places and people might remain the same.

I wonder about our vision: we see as if in a kaleidoscope – each conversation becomes a shard of glass, shaped and colored particularly to its particulars, and that becomes a part of our vision. We may self-discover via world-discovery via God-discovery. A new country, a new job, a new backyard moves our fences and our landscapes change, slide sideways, flip over.

Even our lack of action becomes a part of our vision: the failure to learn more about someone with whom we've had a bad first impression; the reluctancy to have that truth talk; avoidance of fixing the microwave or calling your best friend. Maybe we are constantly stuck between two sticky particulars, maybe we are blind to yellows and greens, maybe we are altogether blind about how feelings and people and things are changing and when we'd like things to stay the way they are. Still, they do change. Good or bad, plates they will shift.

Good and bad, plates have shifted for me this year. I am grateful and I struggle. I'm new in ways and the same in others. I still feel as if I am in the upheaval of the last year of teaching at LCC International University and working with Christian Reformed World Missions. I've witnessed lots of friends' lives changing, many through marriage, this summer. I am moving northward again - Michigan. I am sorting out the shards of glass and trying to figure out how and where they fit in my vision, and, the internal processor that I am, this has been a bit difficult to do aloud. A great shout of thanks to all who've been patient with me through this silence.

The silence is beginning to crack and fissure at this point, largely due to my admittance of the bout of depression that has followed – or rather, has hummed right along with – the culture shock post-Lithuania. Conversation and medication go a long way into letting an internal processor out of her own head for a bit. More on that in awhile.

Plates that I rediscover newly each day by their shifting:

The Lord is good.

I am blessed beyond what I deserve.

The only logical response to these always-true statements is to give beyond what I currently imagine I am able to give.

It is so good to find these truths newly and differently each day.

Walk in the light as s/he is in the light; be grateful for every shifting plate; and find good ways to be new.

REREADING SENIOR SEMINAR

Something I created this evening via Wordle in order to relive some thoughts in a new way (click on photo for larger/original image):