Tag Archives: poetry

This Week

Fair warning. No pictures. This blog will be different but may very well be my most candid.

Two months since the last posting and news abounds. Sitting in my regular pew this morning I reflected on a promise I made to my friend Leslie that I would finish a blog by today, October 1. I don’t want to disappoint my first friend and blood sister.

Deleting the multitude of ideas and drafts over these weeks, we’ll call it writers block, my creativity has been dry as a bone . This morning it struck me, many times I write about the past, not because I believe in glamorizing or romanticizing yesterday but because I’ve needed to learn from it.  We learn, we grow from history. Our choices. They become a part of our present and stepping stones into our future. The past can’t be changed. There are no mistakes or regrets waiting there to be repaired. It just is. 

Wonderings

Without such growth we become self-absorbed, wallowing in our ‘what ifs’.

More than ever, this week I’ve experienced the grace of companions: family and friends, those who are present in times of joy and stress. Their presence is meaningful…they make joys sweeter, they are balm in times of trouble. Their absences are felt.  Their love is unconditional. I hope I have been that for them.

For years I made this prayer by William Martin my own for my children…..

It became my prayer for a simple life after they grew up. 

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is a way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples, and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

 

This week my daughter said “yes” to the “touch” of another hand. Our family is elated that this young man will be joining our family.

This week I learned to an even greater depth that my son is a ‘wonder’ and has found the ‘marvel in an ordinary life’.

This week I reflected on the people I love. I don’t say “thank you” and “I love you” nearly enough.

“Sometimes” by The Carpenters

 

Three months…..

“People always think that happiness is a faraway thing”, thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains – a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book when you’re alone – just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.” Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Three months since the last blog. Last weekend my oldest friend and forever ‘sister’, Leslie asked ‘what happened to your blog’? July seems a lifetime away. Several times I sat down to write and edit photos but the stories both in photosand words came at a snail’s pace.

In all certainty the Summer of 2016 will be remembered. . .

Lazy days spent with family and friends.

patrick-and-me-in-covingtonSweet hsarah-and-me-at-austin-roller-derbyellos, bittersweet good-byes. gary-and-rosemary

Undoing and and rebuilding.

Army. Navy.

A region and people figuratively and literally inundated by tragedy….swallowed by the blessings of those same people.

Yesterday morning I woke up, disappointed,  thinking–“Today the family was supposed to be in Boston”. Life sometimes changes our plans for us, but as Francie points out in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn contentment can be found embracing the “simple things”. We have much to look forward to….

Floods wash away tragedy. Friends move to be closer to family.

And so on this October 7, 2016…..Fall break…..here’s a thought:

“Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.”  Betty Smith,  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 

old-state-capitol-bldg

Yay family…..shake a little love….

 

 

Wisdom Journey

Saturday was the Summer Solstice.  A time to renew, Summer Solstice Sunsetrefresh, reinvent. Within. Around.  Remembering that in doing and not doing there is joy. Sometimes it takes  a while to discover  the rhythm but once found the cadence of summer is sweet .

Joseph Campbell called it ‘following your bliss’. I rediscovered those delightful days  last summer— along with this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. . http://intoitevents.com/2014/05/29/like-a-river/

“May what I do flow from me like a river,  no forcing and no holding back.”

This summer I’ve remembered the flow of that river with ‘no forcing or holding back’,  ‘the song as no one ever has’. The discovery that we each compose our own song is sweet and freeing.

Not that I hadn’t been true to the journey….sometimes there’s a detour, a bend in the river….. a flat tire….tire

 

Aladdin 2I once thought to be true to myself meant embracing the world with a wide-eyed, über-enthusiastic grasp. Doing EVERYTHING with such passion.  Now I believe it’s wiser-eyed enthusiasm.  A passionate calm. Making wise choices about time, talent, treasure. Friends. Family. Sometimes easier said than done on the journey.

I was reminded of a personal anecdote last week. At age four I walked seven blocks to my grandparents house without my parents permission or knowledge. My parents thought I was lost, missing.  The family story goes that when I was asked how I got there I answered: “On my own two yegs“.   Was the act independent and fearless or disobedient, I don’t remember. I’ve thought about that little girl; the courage to take that seven block journey, other life journeys.

Summer Fitzgerald Gatsby

 

Yes, summer is quiet.  A time of wisdom. Standing at the doorDSC_1017-001….ready and waiting….. on my ‘on two yegs’.

 

 

 

Time, on the edge of Forever

Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.

 ~ Marcus Aurelius-MeditationsDSC_0439

Do you remember the old Star Trek episode “The City on the Edge of Forever”?  Kirk and Spock pursue an hallucinating McCoy to 1930’s New York City through ‘The Guardian of Forever’.  While in the past Kirk meets and falls in love with Edith Keeler. (of course he does, he’s James T. Kirk) Unbeknownst to Kirk, McCoy has stumbled into the mission where Edith takes him in. Meanwhile, through reviewing the Guardian’s images of the original and altered timelines, Spock has discovered that Edith was supposed to have died in a traffic accident which McCoy prevented.  Kirk knows that Edith must die in order for time to return to normal.  In the end, Kirk does what he believes is the right. “Time has resumed its shape. All is as it was before.”  

Forty seven years have passed since Harlan Ellison’s screenplay was first televised.  Last week I was reminded of that story, the fluidity of time.  People. Places.  Peace.DSC_0583

…..And found myself at the portal of my own “The Guardian of Forever”.

Children grow up. Parents age. Friends get sick, some die. It is the natural course of things. Surrender. Letting go. Time, like life, can be about choice. How we choose to spend it. Open to and examining the possible. Riding the wave of time.

Sometimes we grasp so tight, the ‘water’ slips through our fingers.  DSC_0280
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As much as wish for it, time doesn’t stand still…..nor would we really want it to.

 

 

 

 

“Seize the day, then let it go.”  ~ Marty Rubin 

Life happens bit-by-bit, drop-by-drop, moment-by-moment. Accepting people as they are and ourselves where we are. Discovering  joy along the current. Not perfection. Not manipulation. But joy. Even James T. Kirk knew he couldn’t trick “flow of time” but be content knowing he found peace.

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