Love That is Creating, Healing, and Sustaining

May the love that is creating us,

and the love that is healing us,

and the love that is sustaining us

be in you and with you and through you,

for your healing and the healing of the world.

Amen.

--The Rev. Alice Fulton Haugen,  Episcopal priest

Sometimes

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile,
but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

--Thich Nhat Hahn (1926- ), Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, peace activist, teacher, poet, and writer


Photo: Dance of Joy, St. Lucia, 2013, Photo mine

In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden

Last night the apple trees shook and gave each lettuce a heart
Six hard red apples broke through the greenhouse glass and
Landed in the middle of those ever-so-slightly green leaves
That seem no mix of seeds and soil but of pastels and light and
Chalk x’s mark our oaks that are supposed to be cut down
I’ve seen the neighbors frown when they look over the fence
And see our espalier pear trees bowing out of shape I did like that
They looked like candelabras against the wall but what’s the sense
In swooning over pruning I said as much to Mrs. Jones and I swear
She threw her cane at me and walked off down the street without
It has always puzzled me that people coo over bonsai trees when
You can squint your eyes and shrink anything without much of
A struggle ensued with some starlings and the strawberry nets
So after untangling the two I took the nets off and watched birds
With red beaks fly by all morning at the window I reread your letter
About how the castles you flew over made crenellated shadows on
The water in the rainbarrel has overflowed and made a small swamp
I think the potatoes might turn out slightly damp don’t worry
If there is no fog on the day you come home I will build a bonfire
So the smoke will make the cedars look the way you like them
To close I’m sorry there won’t be any salad and I love you 

--Matthea Harvey, from Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form

Discipleship Benediction

Go in Peace

to feed the hungry,

clothe the naked,

welcome the stranger,

and follow the one who is your savior,

Jesus Christ our Lord.

And the blessing of God Almighty,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

be upon you and remain with you forever.

Amen.

Send us anywhere you would have us go

Holy God,
Send us anywhere you would have us go,
only go there with us.
Place upon us any burden you desire,
only stand by us to sustain us.
Break any tie that binds us,
except the tie that binds us to you.

And the blessing of God Almighty,
Creating, Redeeming and Sustaining, be with you — 
those you love, serve and challenge —
this day and forever.

Amen.

Depart now in peace

Depart now in peace

and as you go, remember
by the goodness of God you were born into this world,
by the grace of God you have been kept all the day long
     even unto this hour,
and by the love of God revealed in the face of Jesus, you are being redeemed.

The Blessing of God Almighty,
Father, Son & Holy Spirit
be with you and remain with you all you days.
Amen 

--The Rev. Dr. John Claypool

The Lanyard

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room
bouncing from typewriter to piano
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the 'L' section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word, Lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past.
A past where I sat at a workbench
at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips into a lanyard.
A gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard.
Or wear one, if that's what you did with them.
But that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand
again and again until I had made a boxy, red and white   
    lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold facecloths on my forehead
then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim and I in turn presented her 
    with a lanyard.
'Here are thousands of meals' she said,
'and here is clothing and a good education.'
'And here is your lanyard,' I replied,
'which I made with a little help from a counselor.'
'Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth and two clear eyes to read the 
    world.' she whispered.
'And here,' I said, 'is the lanyard I made at camp.'
'And here,' I wish to say to her now,
'is a smaller gift. Not the archaic truth,
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took the two-toned 
    lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless worthless thing I wove out of boredom
would be enough to make us even.'

--Billy Collins (1941- ), US poet laureate 2001-2003

The Wind Will Show Its Kindness

A man

born blind can easily

deny the magnificence of a vast landscape.

He can easily deny all the wonders he cannot

smell, taste, or hear.

But one day the wind will show its kindness

and remove the tiny patches that

cover your eyes,

and you will see God more clearly

than you have ever seen

yourself.

Meister Eckhart (ca 1260-ca 1328) German mystic, poet, theologian, and philosopher, from Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from East and West, ed. by Daniel Ladinsky.

View across Yosemite Valley to Bridal Veil Falls, 2011.

Variations On the Word Love

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It’s the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn’t what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there’s the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It’s not love we don’t wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It’s a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

- Margaret Atwood  (1939- ), Canadian novelist, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and poet.

Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken
 It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
     If this be error and upon me proved,
     I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

-- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English dramatist and poet



Photo: Bill and myself at St. Martin's yesterday, the day before our 30th anniversary. Photo by Ruby Downs.

Ashes of Life

Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
Eat I must, and sleep I will, — and would that night were here!
But ah! — to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
Would that it were day again! — with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;
This or that or what you will is all the same to me;
But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through, —
There's little use in anything as far as I can see.

Love has gone and left me, — and the neighbors knock and borrow,
And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse, — 
And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
There's this little street and this little house.

--Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), American poet and dramatist

When I Returned from Rome

A

bird took flight.

And a flower in a field whistled at me

as I passed.

I drank

from a stream of clear water.

And at night the sky untied her hair and I fell asleep

clutching a tress

of God's.

When I returned from Rome, all said,

"Tell us the great news,"

and with great excitement I did: "A flower in a field whistled,

and at night the sky untied her hair and

I fell asleep clutching

a sacred tress..."

-- St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), Italian saint, deacon, and founder of the Franciscan religious communities of the Order of Friars Minor, the Order of St. Clare, and the Third Order of St. Francis, from Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, edited by Daniel Ladinsky.

The First Time Percy Came Back

The first time Percy came back
he was not sailing on a cloud.
He was loping along the sand as though
he had come a great way.
"Percy," I cried out, and reached to him--
                               those white curls--
but he was unreachable. As music
is present yet you can't touch it.
"Yes, it's all different," he said.
"You're going to be very surprised."
But I wasn't thinking of that. I only
wanted to hold him. "Listen," he said,
"I miss that too.
And now you'll be telling stories
                               of my coming back
and they won't be false, and they won't be true,
but they'll be real."
And then, as he used to, he said, "Let's go!"
And we walked down the beach together.

--Mary Oliver (1935- ), from Devotions: the Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, 2017, originally published in Dog Songs, 2013



Rest in peace, Tyco Scoopmire, the best of boys, April 10, 2006-August 1, 2018.

Benjamin, Who Came From Who Knows Where

What shall I do?
When I pick up the broom
     he leaves the room.
When I fuss with kindling he
     runs for the yard.
Then he's back,
     and we hug for a long time.
In his low-to-the-ground chest
     I can hear his heart slowing down.
Then I rub his shoulders and
     kiss his feet
and findle his long hound ears.
     Benny, I say,
don't worry. I also know the way
     the old life haunts the new.

-- Mary Oliver (1935- ), American poet, from Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, 2017, previously published in Dog Songs, 2013

Servant

Whatever title, privilege or prestige
others may give me,
I am your servant, Holy One.

When I look at another,
may I do so with eyes
of compassion and generosity,
not of desire and deception;

when I speak to another,
may I do so with a voice
of wisdom and trust,
not of manipulation and arrogance;

when I am given a chance
to serve my sisters and brothers,
may I do so with an open heart
and outstretched hope,
not grudgingly
while worrying about my loss;

when you seek
to dwell in my heart,
may I empty myself
so I can be filled.

I am your servant, Holy One.

--Thom M. Shuman, in from Like Leaves to the Sun: Prayers from the Iona Community, 2013