Mary Oliver's Song of the Builders

While on vacation a couple weeks ago and sitting outside a coffee shop on the two-lane highway that runs from Duluth up to Canada, I noticed a free library box off to my right. Inside were a couple of good finds, including a book of Mary Oliver poems, New and Selected Poems, Volume 2. In my book bag in the car I already had a couple volumes of Oliver's essays, which I'd taken along to reread, but I didn't own this book of poetry so added it to my stack of books for the road.

Inside I found this poem, "Song of the Builders." I love its take on work: humility, effort, and hope all merging together to rebuild the universe. Read it and see what you think.

~~~

[Photo: taken of a humble and hopeful daisy.]

Making visible signs of hope

This past week I've been reading Henri Nouwen's, The Wounded Healer. Written in 1972 and primarily to an audience of ministers, I'm finding that it offers much wisdom to anyone who seeks to be a caring and positive presence in the world. I'm going to write more about it in my newsletter this weekend, but here's a place to start:

“More than anything, else, he will look for signs of hope and promise in the situation in which he finds himself...[and have] the sensibility to notice the small mustard seed and the trust to believe that ‘when it has grown it is the biggest shrub of all and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and shelter in its branches.’ (Mt. 13:31—32) He knows that if there is hope for a better world in the future the signs must be visible in the present, and he will never curse the now in favor of the later. He is not a naive optimist who expects his frustrated desires to be satisfied in the future, nor a bitter pessimist who keeps repeating that the past has taught him that there is nothing new under the sun; he is rather a man of hope who lives with the unshakable conviction that now he is seeing a dim reflection in the mirror, but that one day he will see the future face to face.

The Christian leader who is able not only to articulate the movements of the spirit but also to contemplate his world with a critical but compassionate eye, may expect that the convulsive generation will not choose death as the ultimate desperate form for protest, but instead the new life of which he has made visible the first hopeful signs.”

Please forgive Nouwen the exclusive use of masculine pronouns (which he apologizes for in the introduction to the edition I read). Next, consider that his term "the convulsive generation" can apply to any person who is troubled or needs hope.

And then, most importantly, let's please imagine ourselves (dare I say) in the leader role, articulating the spirit, considering our world with a compassionate eye, and making visible signs of hope to whomever among us needs it.

~~~

[Photo: reflections on a summer sidewalk]

A reminder of the journey

This past week I put back on my finger a ring I bought in Santa Fe during my first MFA residency, 13 years ago next month. I wrote about this ring in a chapter of Finding Livelihood.

“I crossed the street to the Palace of the Governors. Blue, green, and burgundy blankets laid side-to-side in a row the length of a city block as if ready for a picnic if the goods don’t sell. On the blankets were pendants, necklaces, earrings, rings, guitar picks, barrettes, and broaches made of silver, copper, turquoise, coral, and lapis. Each Native American artist or artist’s representative presided over his or her wares from the head of the blanket, seated either on a chair, a low stool, or the veranda floor.

Small crowds gather at each blanket, and so patrons often wait for a turn to look down, crouch, pick up, and try on. I saw a ring but couldn’t reach it. The young woman with long black hair, seated on a stool, smiled and reached out with a long narrow stick she kept on the floor next to her. She slid one end of the stick through the ring’s opening, lifted it from its black velvet display box, and glided it dangling from the stick to my hand. I slid the ring on my finger.

“Did you make this?” I asked.

“Yes,” the woman said, and she showed me where the band bore her maker’s mark.

It was a split ring, open in the middle—for design purposes of course, but also conveniently accommodating the changing ring size of women throughout a lifetime or the month, like elastic in a pair of durable pants. On one side of the split is an oval turquoise, more blue than the earrings and with fewer veins. Along the stone’s perimeter, a hefty sterling silver band curves ever so slightly over its surface as if the stone were floating on hidden water and would bounce right up without the metal’s angled hold. The other side of the split is a vertical silver bar. Engraved in the silver bar and around the band is a zigzag design—a mountain range, the woman told me. It means journey.”

— Finding Livelihood: A Progress of Work and Leisure

After buying the ring, I wore it daily for years but then took it off awhile back—no reason—and put it in my drawer. Lately, though, I've been needing the reminder again of the journey. Maybe it's the book project I'm working on. Maybe it's the conversations I've recently had. Maybe it's the passage of time. So I'm wearing it again. Maybe someone reading this post needs the reminder as well.

~~~

[Photo: taken of the mountains outside of Santa Fe.]

Heschel on the higher goal

In The Sabbath, Abraham Heschel wrote: "The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.... A moment of insight is a fortune, transporting us beyond the confines of measured time." Whether or not you think of yourself as a writer, picking up a pen to capture a spiritual insight or to describe a sacred moment is an act of wisdom, a fortune invested.

The responsibility to hope

I've been reading and re-reading Mystical Hope by Cynthia Bourgeault, which I first learned about in one of Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew's newsletters. While the book is introducing me to some new thoughts on the topic of hope, it also has affirmed much of what I've been thinking about—and learning about from others—in recent years while working on my current manuscript. Here's a section from Mystical Hope that speaks about hope as a responsibility. While the word 'responsibility' usually has a heavy ring to it, Bourgeault's language in this paragraph shines on what can emerge.

"[H]ope is not intended to be an extraordinary infusion, but an abiding state of being. We lose sight of the invitation—and in fact, our responsibility, as stewards of creation—to develop a conscious and permanent connection to this wellspring. We miss the call to become a vessel, to become a chalice into which this divine energy can pour; a lamp through which it can shine."

~~~

ps. I'll be sending out my Dear Reader newsletter this weekend; if you don't already subscribe, and would like to, you can do so by clicking here.

[Photo: taken of the Stone Arch bridge on a spring evening here in Minneapolis.]

On tending: thoughts on a used book

One of the books that I bought when a friend gave me a gift card to Half-Price Books several months ago was French Dirt: The Story of A Garden in the South of France by Richard Goodman. (I wrote about it in my newsletter last week and am writing of it here as well, adding some new thoughts.) Since I'm not a gardener, I'm not exactly sure why I put this book in my stack, but I know its cover art along with the suggestion of a creative endeavor in France held substantial appeal. A first-time gardener, plus being from New York City, Goodman had many questions about how to begin. One of the things he quickly learned was that he must "tend" his garden every day. Tend: isn't that a great word? It means "to have the care of; watch over; look after." Reading French Dirt made me think not only about how much I'd love to travel to the South of France but also about my writing and how long I sometimes go without tending it. Perhaps you have something to tend as well, something that's not your paid work but work of another variety, even work of the leisurely variety. (As his book affirms, there's sometimes a thin line between work and leisure). What a gift it is when someone shares the way in which they tend what is theirs to tend.

And speaking of someone sharing their way, another thing that interested me in reading this book is that although it looked brand new, there were three papers stuck in the pages, which I hadn't noticed until I started reading. First, there was a receipt for the book, dated New Year's Eve of 2010, from Haslam's book store in St. Petersburg, Florida, my old home town! An independently owned bookstore, Haslam's is now more than 80 years old. Next, there was a short page of four notations from the book. Among them the reader had noted a gorgeous piece of writing on page 26, in which Goodman wrote about watering the garden by moonlight, a section I had just read and delighted in before discovering this paper, and a word on page 82 that I also had paused over, estival, a new word to me but one that is most appropriate right now because it means " pertaining or appropriate to summer." Finally, there was an article from The New York Times, dated August 28, 2011, about Richard Goodman riding his bicycle nearly daily from his home on the Upper West Side down to ground zero, or as close as he could get, for three months after 9/11 ("Coping With 9/11, Riding on Two Wheels") and then writing about it in a limited-press book called The Bicycle Diaries: One New Yorker's Journey Through 9/11, which he did in partnership with the book's illustrator, Gaylord Schanilec.

I like to think the book's previous reader intentionally left these papers stuck in the pages for the benefit of its next reader. A camaraderie of sorts. A mystical tending of the community of readers.

~~~

[Photo: taken of the cover of French Dirt.]

Let nothing disturb thee

This past week I traveled for work, and too many nights with too little sleep and too many days with heavy clouds and storms left me feeling fragile and overwhelmed at the airport when my evening flight was delayed for 3 hours. A friend of mine, a friend who prays, just happened to text me as I was sitting in the crowded waiting area. Her text was about something fun. After responding to that, however, I decided to ask her to pray for me. Yes, of course, she wrote, and then she sent these words of St. Teresa of Avila. What kindness! I offer them here to you now too, as a thought to fill your thoughts, in case you also are in need of a good word, for whatever reason (and oh, aren't we all in need of a good word?):

Let nothing disturb thee,
Nothing affright thee,
All things are passing;
God never changeth.