SEPARATION
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
~ W. S. Merwin
Category Archives: poetry
How faithfully your life is delivered.
The poem below expresses different aspects of my life of late. I’ve been reading David Bentley Hart’s book The Experience of God, and there is so much in there about how our life is a mysterious gift. We did not bring about our own existence, and we can’t keep ourselves alive, either. Why should we be here? Why is anything here? I’ve been meditating on that amazing everyday occurrence of waking up in the morning, even as I am coming out of my dreams into consciousness. Some days it takes longer than others for me to remember, “I am here, God was with me through the night and Dear Father, You are here with me in my bed this morning, and will be in me all day long.” Sometimes I lie there just being happy in His presence — especially when He wakes me up extra early.
Father Stephen Freeman spoke of the same reality in a podcast I listened to, saying, “If God did not immediately and relentlessly will good for us, then no one would even continue in existence. Being and existence are inherently good things. The very fact that we exist is itself a witness of God’s good will for us.”
I realize most people can’t be so slow and lazy about the start of their day. I am really really grateful, though, that most days I can take the time for this remembrance, because there is also this other attitude in me, of fear and unwillingness. I don’t like meetings with strangers about financial matters, or having to decide what work should be done on my car. It’s not a constant thing, but a feeling of vulnerability does distract me.
Once when we were on a camping trip in the mountains, four-year-old Soldier was looking out the window of the car at the curvy highway and the steep drop-off just to his left. He turned to Baby Kate and said brightly, “God is keeping us on the road, Kate!” He must have thought his father needed help driving. I need to remind myself in these morning meditations that this day I am not trusting strangers who might not be worthy of my confidence, but I am trusting the One Who gives me existence to give me whatever else I need.
TRUST
It’s like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.
The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.
The theft that could have happened doesn’t.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.
And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can’t read the address.
–Thomas R. Smith
Time to tan the knees.
Certain philosophical questions are probably hard to focus on when you are lying on the beach trying to get a suntan. I remember a Peace Corps ad on TV that showed a couple slathered with oil and doing nothing under the sun, seemingly oblivious to their radio propped in the sand and telling the news about people suffering in a third-world country.
If you are sitting up and looking out at the ocean, you might appear to be meditating, or praying, so maybe no one would try to make you feel guilty. It’s been three years since I was on a beach warm enough to expose much skin, and I wouldn’t feel bad at all about soaking up some summer in that manner.
Well, none of this applies directly to the poem I am sharing today. I just love this lighthearted look at how we humans are.
THE SOUL AND THE BODY ON THE BEACH
The soul on the beach
studies a textbook of philosophy.
The soul asks the body:
Who bound us together?
The body says:
Time to tan the knees.
The soul asks the body:
Is it true
that we do not really exist?
The body says:
I’m tanning my knees.
The soul asks the body,
Where will the dying begin,
in you or in me?
The body laughed,
It tanned its knees.
~ Anna Swir (1909-1984), Polish poet,
translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan
Attention to gnats and devils.
One of the books that Richard Wilbur wrote for children is Pig in the Spigot, which any lover of words should enjoy, whether you are a child or not. I can see reading it with a child who is well on the way to reading, but when I was homeschooling I often would introduce material “too early,” and that can work, too. If used with a notepad and pencil, I bet I could make this book serve as reading/phonics lessons for at least a week.
One of my favorite elementary school assignments was when the teacher would write a word on the blackboard, and tell us students to make as many more words as we could, using those letters. I always won this contest! Wilbur’s exercise is more stringent, but that only gives him the chance to show his poet’s skill in imagining the logical ramifications should the words within words become literal.
The illustrator must have had fun coming up with the sometimes-wacky pictures to go with the stories that one can create with this kind of activity. Here are a few of the examples of fun verses that often carry some even deeper implications.
The Devil is at home, as you can see,
In Mandeville, Louisiana, but he
Is often on the road, and in the line
Of work he visits both your town and mine.
Some tiny insects make a seething sound,
And swarm and jitter furiously around,
Which seems to me sufficient explanation
Of why there is a gnat in indignation.
Moms weep when children don’t do as they say.
That’s why there is a sob in disobey.
I just noticed that the mother in this last picture is wearing a cross. There are many other interesting details to be explored in the images, but it’s the language of words that I get excited about. Anything that helps children slow down and pay attention to the details of letters and sounds will help them to be good readers and writers — and spellers!
But I don’t want to sound too pragmatic, even if the level of literacy in the country is dismal. John Holt said that it is not good methods but good books that make good readers, and here is an example of what he was talking about. What makes me happy is the knowledge that good readers will read more because they enjoy it, and if they keep reading good books their inner worlds will grow ever larger. They are more likely to become good writers and thinkers, and maybe they will write some more good books for children that are fun for me to read.
Gladsome Lights 