The Anguished Seriousness of Advent, Thomas Merton

Three years ago this week I drove around a roundabout on Main Street in Concord Massachusetts where I taught preschool, snowbanks full, candles glowing through dark windows, a wooden Nativity scene.  Concord is an intellectual town not particularly concerned with religiosity other than for the sake of tradition, and so the sight of Christian celebration was very striking. But I reacted with an involuntary cringe that was evidence of my ambivalence for religious yearning at the time, at least within the walls of a church.

Today I had planned to begin a new blog tradition, "Mary Oliver Monday."  I went to the store to buy a book for my nephew, whom I will miss so much this Christmas while staying in Florida. I came home with a few bags of materials for gift making, did some laundry, and spent the evening decorating ornaments with the ladies of the church I am now attending. Throughout the day, a growing sense of emptiness began to knot into a sorrow which did not allow me to concentrate on anything I tried to do. The dark silhouettes outlining the evergreen trees in Washington had been present in my mind all day, as though I would be going home.  And every year I am stricken by the darkness that hits so early in the afternoon this time of year, even if I grew up with it. Just an hour under the fluorescent overload of commercialized Christmas today was enough to drive me back to the same hunger I have so often felt since that anguished New England season, a slow hope bringing me home. Thomas Merton may have been on to something when he said that "advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments." More than any other writer I know he talks about finding hope in Christ in deep darkness. And so, for Monday, here is Thomas Merton on Advent:

"It is important to remember the deep, in some ways anguished seriousness of Advent, when the mendacious celebrations of our marketing culture so easily harmonize with our tendency to regard Christmas, consciously or otherwise, as a return to our own innocence and our own infancy. Advent should remind us that the “King Who is to Come” is more than a charming infant smiling (or if you prefer a dolorous spirituality, weeping) in the straw. There is certainly nothing wrong with the traditional family joys of Christmas, nor need we be ashamed to find ourselves still able to anticipate them without too much ambivalence. After all, that in itself is no mean feat.

But the Church in preparing us for the birth of a “great prophet,” a Savior and a King of Peace, has more in mind than seasonal cheer. The Advent mystery focuses the light of faith upon the very meaning of life, of history, of man, of the world and of our own being. In Advent we celebrate the coming and indeed the presence of Christ in our world. We witness to His presence even in the midst of all its inscrutable problems and tragedies. Our Advent faith is not an escape from the world to a misty realm of slogans and comforts which declare our problems to be unreal, our tragedies inexistent."

beach song

To discover a poet

ON THE PIER
by Brenda Hillman

I'd like to walk out on ignorance like this,

long and brown like the ignorance of myself,

see water shimmer and jump,

see the birds find something they could accept.

I would be voicelessly condemned, a bad

sailor walking the plank, hearing the boards

cry out like the boards of an old desk,

slightly gaping, wet with a collection of mornings.

And the end of the pier, at the end of this ignorance,

I'd celebrate, The sea, like many wine glasses

tipped, "Here's to you--you know nothing at all!"

And birds crashing--white gloves, in applause!

Lately I have been hearing the long stretched out call of unclaimed experience; to act, to be a little bit braver, to be a lot braver.  There is so much fear in art. The water is so cold, that first dip, the feeling that rushes into the clammy solace you find in hiding.  Where if you stay, you might be okay, you might see a little sunlight darting onto the wall from the shimmering water where you ought to be, you might just smile at the view with the consolation of tomorrow. And an amount of time will pass, an hour or a year or even many years,  when the poet in you, the lover in you must suddenly rise and do what it needs to do, to come alive and to create, to love the way you are meant to love.

I could be content reading Mary Oliver poems for the rest of my life, but even she would say that one who would write poetry, must also read poetry, and a lot of it. This morning I discovered the poet Brenda Hillman on everyskinnytree, a blog whose author is a poet herself, and a lover of children. The post included her poem A Dwelling, which speaks so pointedly to the poet, to that place of trembling.

on bonding with tools

My earliest memory of working with tools was going into my Grandpa's workspace when I was a little girl and playing with several of his vice grips.  I just loved putting a scrap of wood between the metal teeth and turning the handle until the wood was held tight, always amazed that the wood would not drop!  My brother and I must have looked like some kind of elves, picking up tools we had no idea what to do with and pretending we were master artisans, even if we were just hammering two blocks of wood together. Something about that space filled me with so much awe, it was part of a strange and wonderful new world we had found ourselves in that I only recall at the time as being warm. I knew so little of the violence that my mother had escaped to bring us there, how brave she had been, what shelter she had found for us all. Lately I have been missing my Grandpa so much, his suspenders, his working boots, the thousands of memories I have of him working with his hands, whether he was building a barn or a fence or crafting a wooden marble maze. This here tire swing is the result of a typical rainy afternoon. He never made us go away when we hovered nearby with so many questions, but would give us something to do. And in the house which he built he incorporated features which I am convinced were purely for children, like a laundry shoot from the upstairs bathroom, perfect for throwing down strips of toilet paper, and the opening in the wall right by the doorway where Grandpa would place firewood,  which opened on the other side into the living room right next to the fire. Of course it was really meant to be a spy hole.  My favorite hiding space was a rounded curve between two stairwells, where I would lean as I parked my keester on the cold granite rock floor, and poke the legs of my Uncle who would readily oblige with horrible shock. My grandmother I'm sure either laughed or rolled her eyes when she found who knows how many mysterious pieces of TP in the laundry basket down in the basement, but she never scolded us. These days my Grandpa's health does not allow him to spend as much time being as "active" as he likes to call it, though one day lying on the couch is about as much torture as he allows himself to handle.  As for me, I would just like to gather my own set of tools without heading down some dreaded and impersonal mass production aisle.  This here video featuring the Liberty Tool store in Maine gives me some motivation.  Mr. "Skip" Brack is the kind of proprietor I wish I could meet, so far away from my Grandpa's advice.


There's No Place Like Here: Liberty Tool from Etsy on Vimeo.

words are poor things

lonely these days for 

old landscapes

wet windowpanes

leaves soaked by rain

reaching for a place

where hollows of loss

and seared damage

can grow into

new space

so full of grace

here
where every 
morning the

sun brushes 
my face

this song Thao & Mirah - Hallelujah

this book Housekeeping

Singapore, by Mary Oliver

In Singapore, in the airport,
a darkness was ripped from my eyes.
In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.
A woman knelt there, washing something
     in the white bowl.

Disgust argued in my stomach
and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.

A poem should always have birds in it.
Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.
Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.
A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain
     rising and falling.
A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

When the woman turned I could not answer her face.
Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and
     neither could win.
She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this?
Everybody needs a job.

Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.
But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor,
     which is dull enough.
She is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big as
     hubcaps, with a blue rag.
Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing.
She does not work slowly, nor quickly, but like a river.
Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.

I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life.
And I want her to rise up from the crust and the slop
     and fly down to the river.
This probably won’t happen.
But maybe it will.
If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?

Of course, it isn’t.
Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only
the light that can shine out of a life. I mean
the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,
the way her smile was only for my sake; I mean
the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.

www.32poems.com

dreams like cloth

"But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly..."

~Yeats

       My dear friend Corri once spoke to me about how some dreams are ours because there is something in them that makes our hearts sing,  and how other dreams develop from some type of burden, dreams that we never chose to have, but that we have come to carry nonetheless. When I think of the thousands and thousands of survivors of sexual abuse and human trafficking everyday,  I am reminded of Fredrich Beuchner, who once compared faith to a lump in the throat.

     Here are two places that have been the result of dreams to restore survivors, that took shape organically and through communities of people who dared to push through the thick of what is so often an elusive and intangible battle.  In the early stages, like any dream,  I imagine it took some very soft treading on the grounds they were laid.  

  

Therapy tree house in the Round Home in the Philipines. Dr. Gundelina Velazco is a psychiatrist whose vision and approach to aftercare of human-trafficking victims, in cooperation with Love146, creates an environment that promotes healing of body, heart, mind, soul.

Hope House (Asha Niwas) near Calcutta's red-light district. A safe environment providing girls who have been "born into brothels," with education, psychological and physical health care, and employment opportunities to   help them find the strength to change their circumstances. This all started, with a woman teaching some children how to take pictures.

Such a poem about a dogfish

Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing
kept flickering in with the tide
and looking around.
Black as a fisherman's boot,
with a white belly.

If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile
under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin,
which was rough
as a thousand sharpened nails.

And you know
what a smile means,
don't you?

*

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.

*

It was evening, and no longer summer.
Three small fish, I don't know what they were,
huddled in the highest of ripples as it came swimming in again, effortless, the whole body
one gesture, one black sleeve
that could fit easily around
the bodies of three small fish.

*

Also I wanted
to be able to love.  And we all know
how that one goes,
don't we?

Slowly

*

the dogfish tore open the soft basins of water.

You don't want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story---
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.

*

And look! look! look! I think those little fish
better wake up and dash themselves away
from the hopeless future that is
bulging toward them.

*

And probably,
if they don't waste time
looking for an easier world,

they can do it.

~Mary Oliver

not in my own strength

In the dark I rest,
unready for the light which dawns
day after day,
eager to be shared.
Black silk, shelter me.
I need
more of the night before I open
eyes and heart
to illumination. I must still
grow in the dark like a root
not ready, not ready at all.

~Denise Levertov

VIII (from Sonnets to Orpheus) Rilke

Where praise already is is the only place Grief
ought to go, that water spirit of the pools of tears;
she watches over our defeats to make sure
the water rises clear from the same rock

that holds up the huge doors and the alters.
You can see, around her motionless shoulders, a feeling
dawns--we sense more and more that she
is the youngest of the three sisters we have inside.

Rejoicing has lost her doubts, and longing broods on her error,
Only grief still learns: she spends the whole night
counting up our evil inheritance with her small hands.

She is awkward, but all at once
she makes our voice rise, sideways, like a constellation
into the sky, not troubled by her breath.

dreams

a hymn

Psalm 114

1 When Israel came out of Egypt,

the house of Jacob from a people of

foreign tongue,

2 Judah became God's sanctuary,

Israel his dominion.

3 The sea looked and fled,

the Jordan turned back;

4 the mountains skipped like rams,

the hills like lambs.

5 Why was it, O sea, that you fled,

O Jordan, that you turned back,

6 you mountains, that you skipped like rams,

you hills, like lambs?

7 Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the

Lord,

at the presence of the God of Jacob,

8 who turned the rock into a pool,

the hard rock into springs of water.

words of a yeoman, a tenant farmer from tennessee

(speaking with Robert Coles)

...I talk to my land, you know. I ask it to be good; each year at the start I do. And each year at the end I say, thank you and amen...

...But I've always believed that when we leave our house and start in out there on the land, we're meeting God and doing all we can to show Him we can hear Him and we can believe in Him; and the proof is that He's there, helping us with the gift of His land, you see, and His sun you see, and His good, good rain, His precious rain that He sends us just when we need it and sometimes in between and to spare. It's up to us to go out and do our best by Him...

...There are times when I wish the good Lord would say to Himself that He should treat us all like we're in His Garden, and He should help the good people along, and take up the bad people, the weeds, and put them someplace else -- maybe up on one of the stars, way away. Then the weeds could have another chance there, to start over and not turn into weeds, you might say. I don't want people to be killed, as if they could only be weeds and nothing else!"

on being a metaphor to a child

Integrative Project Presentations 2011 - Abigail Vizcarra Perez from Mars Hill Graduate School on Vimeo.

from Annie Dillard

"One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better.... Anything you do not give freely and abundantly will be lost to you."

from object lessons, by Eavan Boland

quoted in The Cloister Walk, by Kathleen Norris

"Exile, like memory, may be a place of hope and delusion. But there are rules of light there and principles of darkness...The expatriate is in search of a country, the exile in search of a self."