Tag Archives: walking

Walking with Moses and rain.

my garden, poetry, Psalms, winter, , , , , , , , , , ,

This morning was frosty enough to make ice in my garden fountain. I wore a thick wool sweater to church, and kept it on until I got home again five hours later and changed into my firewood clothes. Both the supply of logs near the wood stove and the nice rack I have in the garage needed replenishing from the stacks outside. I bring in a dozen or so logs at a time to dry out, and to have handy when it’s raining or just dark and I don’t want to go out.

Opposite that rack I have tubs and boxes and bags of kindling and newspapers, a place to split the kindling, and a bucket for collecting ashes. I don’t see how I’m ever going to make room for my car in the garage, which has been a minor goal for a couple of years now. That space serves as my pantry and laundry room and tool shed, and holds all the sorts of things that my daughter Pearl says you have to keep in the garage if you don’t have a basement.

The little guy below came in with a load of logs; the young house guests squealed and their mother scooped him out of the fireplace corner into a dustpan. He was trying to fall out of it, so I picked him up and tried to hold him in such a way that the children could look at him for a bit. But they would have none of it, and just wanted him out of the house, so I let him out the back door into the rain. I hope it washed him of all the woody litter.

The pewter wise men have arrived, after journeying across the table in my entry, to take up their worshipful positions in front of the Christ Child. I’ve removed a small amount of Christmas decor, mostly the fresh cotoneaster berries that weren’t fresh anymore. The redwood branches and candles remain, because they have life left in them, at least for today. And the faux tree will last as long as I want it to, which is, until I have some mental space to give to it.

For now, I have too many other projects going on. Writing thank-you letters to a few grandchildren, cooking soup for our women’s book group this week, and maybe a two hour trip to see my niece — just in this week.

At the same time, I am working on new habits. For more than a week now, I have taken a walk every day, outdoors, not on the treadmill. This was the scene on the bike path less than a week ago; can you see the leaves falling?

Since then we got a big dumping of rain, and the leaves aren’t so pretty anymore. One day I walked my old two-mile loop and it was quite delicious, because everything — the trees and earth and grass, and especially the air — was wet and refreshing and not cold. I wore my rain jacket and was prepared for a sprinkle, but when I was still ten minutes from home I got fairly drenched. Excitement like this has been adding to my general winter happiness.

Even before I read an encouraging article about the value of memorizing things, I had been planning to renew my effort in the coming year to learn some Psalms and possibly other poems by heart. “The Great Forgetting,” by Ruth Gaskovski, about “How ‘critical thinking’ and outsourcing of memory are withering culture, and how to turn the tide,” is giving me a boost.

Last year — or even before? — I had started to memorize Psalm 90 and 91 (89 and 90 in the Septuagint), and then lost my focus. This year, so far, I have noticed how my memorizing project coordinates nicely with my improved walking habits. I have the psalms written on 3×5 cards and can practice them as I stroll along — unless it’s one of those rainy days.

Here are the first few verses I am working on:

Psalm 89 — A Prayer of Moses, the man of God

Lord, Thou hast been our refuge in generation and generation.

Before the mountains came to be and the earth was formed and the world,
even from everlasting to everlasting Thou art.

Turn not man away unto lowliness; yea, Thou hast said: Turn back, ye sons of men.

For a thousand years in Thine eyes, O Lord, are but as yesterday that is past,
and as a watch in the night.

Things of no account shall their years be; in the morning like grass shall man pass away.

In the morning shall he bloom and pass away; in the evening shall he fall
and grow withered and dry.

The poetry of these verses, the rhythm of their music and the depth of meaning, as I tell them to myself phrase by phrase, is so beautiful to my mind and heart. Glory to God!

The Prophet Moses

Blessed Monday

nature, , ,

Monday is usually for me a recuperative day when I try to stay home and catch up with myself after a lot of Sunday “output.” It didn’t happen the same way today, because I wanted to get to the post office early and mail lots of Christmas packages. It was a cold but not freezing, clear and sunny day, and once I was relieved of my burdens, I knew I would take a walk.

It’s very strange, how for more than a year I have been stubbornly averse to the long-familiar walks in my neighborhood. Is it “familiarity breeds contempt”? But as I always say, every day is different out there, and if you can’t see that, then certainly week by week you would notice, that the plants and the weather are obviously different, so that it is not the same place you are walking. I still didn’t care.

Autumn, after the rains, always tries to pull me out for an explore. But until today, I resisted. I had too much on my mind, on the calendar, and didn’t feel the freedom. It was a providential synchronicity that today, when I am transitioning into the remainder of Advent, the weather was perfect for it. As soon as I neared the creek the heady scents filled my head — of wet earth and leaves, infused with the sweetness of fennel seeds fermenting in the dampness.

We’ve had enough rain that the sheep in the pasture had plenty of bright green grass to graze on, and I think it made the fall colors extra bright. And my mood was bright. Now on to cookie baking!

A dream of walking.

quotes, women,

“My dream, even now, is to walk for weeks with some friend that I love, leisurely wandering from place to place, with no route arranged and no object in view, with liberty to go on all day or to linger all day, as we choose; but the question of luggage, unknown to the simple pilgrim, is one of the rocks on which my plans have been shipwrecked, and the other is the certain censure of relatives, who, not fond of walking themselves, and having no taste for noonday naps under hedges, would be sure to paralyse my plans before they had grown to maturity by the honest horror of their cry, ‘How very unpleasant if you were to meet any one you know!’ The relative of five hundred years back would have said ‘How Holy!’”

― Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth and Her German Garden

Some poems are heavy and longing.

poetry, travel, , , , ,
P1030257crp
Same week, some years ago…

This morning I had a date to iron altar cloths at church. If it hadn’t been for that, I think I might have read poems all day. Bright and early I found myself listening hungrily to The Daily Poem podcast, which I sometimes ignore for weeks at a time. Today, by contrast, its offerings seemed like my necessary food, cultivating hope and peace in my heart the way bodily exercise generates endorphins for the brain and psyche.

Not all poems are tasty, but even the bitter ones supply certain kinds of trace elements, hints and explorations of the worlds that lie underneath the clamoring and crowded surfaces where we walk every day. I like very much the engagement with the poets themselves, people who often do appreciate the mystery of things, but I usually avoid long poems. These very short poem podcasts help me to focus and enjoy works I might not normally read, even some longer poems; because it’s all auditory, and I can’t see how long of a poem or portion will be read, and be put off by it.

Today one of the podcast hosts, Heidi White, talked about the poem “Velvet Shoes,” by Elinor Wylie. She told us about her own longing, two days after Christmas, for peace and quiet, after the busyness of the holiday, and how this poem conveys the heaviness of the snow, and how that heaviness creates silence and a kind of weighty peace, “…the feeling you get going into the nave of a great cathedral.”

VELVET SHOES

Let us walk in the white snow
    In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
    At a tranquil pace,
    Under veils of white lace.

I shall go shod in silk,
    And you in wool,
White as white cow’s milk,
    More beautiful
    Than the breast of a gull.

We shall walk through the still town
    In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
    Upon silver fleece,
    Upon softer than these.

We shall walk in velvet shoes:
    Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
    On white silence below.
    We shall walk in the snow.

-Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928

The longing expressed in the few stanzas is impressive. We do start to wonder if the narrator will break out of the future tense and make it the present. Personally, I think that if she were truly hopeful of walking in the whiteness, she would do the activity first, and then write about it. Unless it is a sort of love letter, to someone not present at the moment. It seems to be as much about longing — and maybe purity? — as it is about snow.

Winter at Pippin’s place.
The Daily Poem hosts talked to me about several other poems as I was getting dressed, by W.H. Auden, Edward Thomas, George Santayana and Mary Oliver. Of course, many of the recent offerings have been autumnal or Advent-themed poems, but I enjoyed them all. I may save some to post here in the appropriate season next year.
 

“Velvet Shoes” may have especially impressed me because I am anticipating walking in the snow myself this week, if my plans work out to visit Pippin. And here I was, just yesterday, going on about fire and warmth….

I always think I do not want to visit snowy and cold places, but whenever I do, it’s fun. Did you notice that in spite of the narrator’s silk and lace garments, there is no mention of the cold? That might mean that it is just the poem for me!