Note to Self...

It is said that we are made in the image and likeness of God.

It is also said that God is Love.

What else, then, do you need to know?

The answers to your endless questions exist in that one simple truth.

You are not the fear that occupies you

You are not the doubt that undoes you

You are not the selfish lies you speak

Nor the selfish acts you do

You are not the envy that you feel

You are not the shame of your failings

Nor the pride of your victories

Mystic Monologue

Follow me…follow me…follow me…

Hello?

Follow me…follow me…follow me…

Hello?  Who is this?

Do you hear me?  Are you listening?

Yes, I can hear, although it sounds like we have a bad connection… I can barely hear you.

There’s nothing wrong with the connection; you’re just learning how to listen.

Who are you?

I am your soul.

My soul?

Yes.  Do you hear me?

Yes, I guess so.

Follow me.

Where?

If you believed that I am real, you would not need to ask where.  Do you not believe that I am?

I…I don’t know.  I mean, I think I’ve always believed in the idea of having a soul…

You think.  Ideas.  Yes, you have many ideas, don’t you?  But not many beliefs.  Isn’t that so?

I suppose that’s true… Is that a bad thing?

That depends on the beliefs.  

Well, doesn’t the very fact that we’re having this conversation tell you that, on some level, I must believe that I have a soul? 

That is a very smart answer, which is not the same as a good one.  I don’t know, does it tell you that?

I guess so. 

Follow me.

But why now?  After all these years, why, all of a sudden, are you speaking to me now?

Well, that seems rather self-evident, doesn’t it?  Because you are listening, of course.

So, I had to start listening before you would speak to me?  Isn’t that kind of backwards?  Wouldn’t it have been better for you to speak first, so that I knew there was something to listen to?

I was speaking; you weren’t listening.

So you’ve been speaking to me all along?

Always and forever.

And I just wasn’t hearing it?

Or listening.

So what happened?  What changed that now I can suddenly hear you, or listen to you, or whatever it is that I’m doing?

Earthquakes and Heartbreaks

When the earthquakes hit Japan last March, I was still teaching.  Many of us had been given smartboards in our classrooms just a few months before, smartboards being these high-tech devices that are part whiteboard, part projector and part computer.  As a result, I was able to show my classes almost real-time images of the devastation occurring on the other side of the Pacific.  I knew that for most of them, it would be difficult to appreciate the magnitude of the tragedy; hell, I couldn’t appreciate the magnitude of the tragedy, and still can’t, and hopefully (and I say this with all due respect) never will.  

Somehow it felt right to experience the geographically distant catastrophe with the community of my students.   We didn’t talk much about it; we didn’t know much beyond what we were seeing.  We just looked at the horrible, impossible images together, and drew a little closer together as people in the classroom.

The Sixth Day

If you've been reading the poetry here, you've probably noticed by now that I am more inspired by nature than anything else.  To me, the math is pretty simple.  We were created, and the world around us was created, to be together.  No matter how distinct we try to make ourselves from the rest of creation, it is a fundamental fact of our existence.  In fact, the greater the distance we try to put between ourselves and nature, the more we try to separate ourselves from it, the more we see ourselves in it, at least the true parts of ourselves.  So, if you want to find truth, look to nature - it's incapable of lying.    

The Sixth Day

Traveling in Alaska one summer

I witnessed the land

-no, not witnessed-

I became the land. 

Because I

became the land, I know

what it feels like to be

gouged by the scratching

fingernails of glaciers

pulling back,

exposing my fresh, bright earth

to the air

for the first time in eons

if ever.

Wild rampant green

born from gray ice.

Saguaro Stand

The saguaro stand

ranges along the upward slope

of a deserted mountain.

Stretching

from the ancient rock

-the talus of creation-

each one

soldier straight 

facing the firestorm heat

of a summer sun.

I saw my soul

This poem comes from an image that has been burned in my memory since we took a trip to Alaska in 2005.  We flew into Anchorage and rented an RV.  We arrived late in the day, so we only made it about 70 miles out of the city before stopping at a campground next to a lake for the night.  The next morning, I was by myself, walking along the shore, when I saw this enormous bird swoop in silently and land on the lake maybe fifty yards away.  It was larger, more powerful, and a purer white than any egret or heron I’ve ever seen.  I was completely dumbstruck by the sheer improbability of this amazingly pure thing in such a dirty place (literally dirty; it was a forest after all - there was dirt everywhere).  This vision also touched me on a deeper level, but I couldn’t quite figure out how or why. 

So this morning I was working on this image in connection with another poem about Alaska.  I was trying to combine it with some other impressions and observations, and they just weren’t going together.  Then I realized:  this image is its own thing, and needs to be its own poem.  Once I separated it from the rest and began looking at it in a new way, I understood exactly why it was etched so clearly in my mind, and what it meant to me.

I saw my soul

in the incomprehensible

pure whiteness

of a trumpeter swan.

Delicate, dignified and brawny

descending calmly

to merge onto the mirrored lake

amid the ring of pine-spiked and

bouldered shore

within a corrupt and

brutal wild.

Imagine the sublimity of seeing one pure white swan settling down on this. . . 

gift

Grace

doesn’t excuse

it erases.

It forgives, and then it frees.

Grace

doesn’t console

it relieves.

It wordlessly lifts, carries weight away.

Grace

doesn’t tolerate

It accepts everything, makes the past ok.

Grace

doesn’t understand

it just does.

It buys pain, and pays with peace.

Grace

doesn’t help

it heals.

It cleans the mortal wound, makes good again.

The greatest gift is to be good again.