Thursday, October 25, 2018

Poetry Thursday

Poetry
 ~Claude McKay

Sometimes I tremble like a storm-swept flower,
And seek to hide my tortured soul from thee,
Bowing my head in deep humility
Before the silent thunder of thy power.
Sometimes I flee before thy blazing light,
As from the specter of pursuing death;
Intimidated lest thy mighty breath,
Windways, will sweep me into utter night.
For oh, I fear they will be swallowed up—
The loves which are to me of vital worth,
My passion and my pleasure in the earth—
And lost forever in thy magic cup!
I fear, I fear my truly human heart
Will perish on the altar-stone of art!

Friday, October 19, 2018

Grace, Part 2

In the early years of my schooling at a Catholic elementary school, I learned about Grace.

It was one of the most interesting and difficult to grasp concepts I remember learning.

I think if you asked each of the forty of us in that class what we took GRACE to mean, you would get forty different answers.

This is what I remember from those lessons: Grace is something that you want to collect - that you will bring with you from this world to the next. It is something only God can grant. Grace is not something you can buy or sell. [I guess I learned at a much later date about the buying of indulgences, note, this is quite different from Grace.]

There were ways that you could EARN Grace. I understood from what the teacher told us that Grace was earned by doing things selflessly; that you would never know when the Grace was granted, rather the heavenly tally was something God and St. Peter would know when you met them after death.

I am not sure that I was moved to try to earn Grace by that lesson. It seemed like one of those things that was so out of your control that you shouldn't worry about it. Besides how would you know if you had reached the correct level of selflessness? Wouldn't that just invalidate the action if you were worrying about whether or not your act was selfless.

By the way, I was probably seven when I was trying to assimilate this concept into my life.

I equated the concept of Grace with my dad who would literally give the shirt off his back if you needed it, even if you didn't ask for it. My dad never appears to stop and consider whether or not he should give. He certainly doesn't seem to worry about whether or not the act of giving is selfless.

In my mind, this meant that Grace was another one of those amorphous rules, like the Golden Rule, that you strove to achieve, but that was not something you could reach and then coast through. Rather it was like a heavenly measuring stick you needed to keep trying to reach. I don't remember fretting about it at all.

I had a classmate, though, who clearly spent much more time considering how to achieve Grace. Let's call her Melanie. I discovered Melanie's Grace quest by accident.

Our school, like many Catholic elementary schools, was on the grounds of a Catholic Church. We walked by it everyday. We played in its shadow at lunch and recess as its parking lot became our playground during school hours.

At this Catholic Church, like many others in the country, there is a morning mass every day. It starts at 8am and runs roughly thirty minutes. Though my dad's regular schedule when I was in school had him leaving the house by 7:30am, during Lent, I would often walk past the church parking lot in the morning and see his work truck, painted bright orange, parked there.

It turns out during Lent, my dad liked to go to morning mass every day. It is now his daily practice in retirement to go to mass every day. I started leaving for school as early as I could, and this was extremely challenging for me as I was almost always late for school. I wanted to spend a little more time with my dad, so my reasons for trying to make it to morning mass were anything but selfless.

I noticed, on those mornings that I arrived in time for mass, that Melanie was there. As I got one last hug from my dad [who we have to say is lovely and wonderful in so many ways, does not really do well will showing physical affection], I noted that Melanie was sitting in a pew outside the confessional.

It turns out during Lent you can also go to confession right after morning mass. Maybe not everyday, maybe only one day a week. I can't exactly remember. But on those days, I started to notice that Melanie would be late for school, but she never got in trouble. Being inquisitive and not employing filters, one day at lunch I asked Melanie about it.

Melanie was one of four classmates who came from an inordinately large family. The "large" families ranged from 8 to 12 children. And Melanie was number 10 of 12 in her family. Her mother prescribed to the healthy, earthy-crunchy lunches way before it was fashionable. So, there was Melanie with her perhaps homemade whole grain bread, thickly sliced, with peanut butter and jelly. I asked innocently why she was coming late to class sometimes.

She answered briefly, "I went to confession after mass." This is why I think it was every day during Lent because my response, probably read in my eyes widening, was astonishment and shock. Pretty sure my follow up question was, "What do you have to confess every day?"

She looked at me innocently and resolutely and said, "I'm collecting Grace."

We clearly had gotten different messages about earning Grace from the same lesson.

What does this have to do with Jamey? Sorry, it's getting long, you'll find out in part 3.

Thursday, October 18, 2018

Poetry Thursday


Grace
~Sarah Gambito

You will transcend your ancestor’s suffering

You will pick a blue ball. You will throw it to yourself.

You will be on the other side to receive.

Green leaves grow around your face.

Hair stands on your body.

You look at old photographs

that say:

The bread is warm!

A child is a blessing!

That’s what I said!

I meant it!

You could say this is a poem.

Like the great halves of the roof

that caved and carved together.

Found us before words

and tender-footing.

Before wrongdoing

and the octaves of blue

above us all.

Copyright © 2018 Sarah Gambito. Used with permission of the author.

I swear it is a complete coincidence that I chose this poem for today and also felt called to write about grace. Seriously, I chose this poem weeks ago. I just reopened it today to add a photo.

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Grace, part 1

I have a friend at work, I'll call him Jamey, not short for James, just Jamey.

He is an original.

He seems to the outside observer to be slightly off. Actually, he just doesn't care what you think, and he is willing to be "ridiculous" in order to make you smile, make a point, or just entertain himself. He delights in your belief that he is ridiculous; and his very being challenges you to be some more authentic part of yourself that is associated with whimsy or joy or both.

Jamey loves to talk to strangers; rather, he loves to make strangers his friends. He knows the name of every person we pass in the halls at work from the maintenance crew to the vice presidents. Often, he knows the name of their family members and inquires about their latest trouble or triumph.

There is no one I have seen that doesn't meet Jamey with the greatest smile, head tilt or shoulder drop - the sure sign that someone has really seen you. He never addresses someone without truly wanting to make a connection.

He is the kind of person you meet and instantly know you have found one of your tribe.

But from the outside, we might look like the most unlikely of friends.

Over the year plus that I have known him, though, I have learned to see that he shows that whimsical side in a carefully choreographed, even though it may seem haphazard, way. He is not open and vulnerable with just anyone.

I told you, he is one of my tribe.

Jamey seldom rests, either sleeping or sitting still. He is almost always exhausted and subsisting on daily runs and breakfast biscuits from the same (unnamed here) fast food restaurant. I imagine him ordering at the drive-through, but also wonder if he doesn't know the name of all the workers and their family members, too.

You might also think he was textbook manic/depressive.

If you peel back the layers, though, there is more evidence for a soul struggling with dark and light than a brain misfiring despite its best attempts at "normal."

Jamey loves music, especially of the stringed variety, preferably guitar. He makes them. And then he gifts them. They are art through and through.

He likes to give his gifts as anonymously as possible. I rationalize that it is because he wants to remove his presence from the gift. He wants the gift to be pure gift, not generosity, but purity of freedom. That's not quite right, but I need more words for gift than I can recall at the moment.

If you probed Jamey, and he were feeling particularly open and willing to be vulnerable, he would admit that he gifts the guitars in a spiritual way; that he thinks the guitar is finding its way to the soul that needs it, for whatever reason. I might say the guitar is Jamey's spirit animal; and I would say that his guitars are alive.

Jamey often speaks through music in his life outside of work. And Jamey's work outside of business hours is his life. He is that extremely rare person who is inordinately good at his work, yet that work does not dominate his mind or soul.

Our work is not creative work, though Jamey's title is "author" - an apt title though the work he does is anything but cathartically creative. It might be covertly creative as he tries to weave bureaucratic language into as authentic a portrait of a people as possible. But it is relentlessly bureaucratic, the definition of boring. So, Jamey build guitars, breathes life into inanimate pieces of wood, and sometimes plastic, weaves strings into these newly animated appendages and then hands that life/spirit to someone who needs it.

In his other work, the work outside of work hours and not in our building, he ministers to the dying.

I drew the picture of the work work and the guitar work so you could see the contrast - and begin to capture the meaning of giving life in all aspects of Jamey's toiling.

Others have said to me that Jamey's sometimes depressive mood comes from his work with the dying. They say it in an accusatory tone, one that makes you see that they think he brings it on himself.

I think it is just another generous, humble life giving act that is at the base of his being.

These acts, done without need for recognition or recompense, bestow on us that ineffable nourishment I will call here Grace.


Friday, October 12, 2018

Poetry Thursday, a day late...thinking of home

Gulls
~Leonora Speyer

Fearless riders of the gale,
In your bleak eyes is the memory
Of sinking ships:
Desire, unsatisfied,
Droops from your wings.

You lie at dusk
In the sea’s ebbing cradles,
Unresponsive to its mood;
Or hover and swoop,
Snatching your food and rising again,
Greedy,
Unthinking.

You veer and steer your callous course,
Unloved of other birds;
And in your soulless cry
Is the mocking echo
Of woman’s weeping in the night.

Thursday, October 04, 2018

Poetry Thursday, secrets

Secrets
~Lola Ridge

Secrets
infesting my half-sleep…
did you enter my wound from another wound
brushing mine in a crowd…
or did I snare you on my sharper edges
as a bird flying through cobwebbed trees at sun-up
carries off spiders on its wings?

Secrets,
running over my soul without sound,
only when dawn comes tip-toeing
ushered by a suave wind,
and dreams disintegrate
like breath shapes in frosty air,
I shall overhear you, bare-foot,
scatting off into the darkness….
I shall know you, secrets
by the litter you have left
and by your bloody foot-prints.