Friday, April 30, 2010

Dancing on the Waves

He stretched forth his hand o’er the water
And bade me come dance on the waves
With nothing at all to sustain me
But the love that heals me and saves.

My Lord, I did long to embrace him
As he called to me o’er the sea
And my heart long sore
From the burdens I bore
Did burn with desire to be free!

So out of the bark I did leap
Eager to grasp my Lord’s hand
And lo, the waves did uphold me
As if water had turned into sand.

But then rough gales began to blow
And fear rose up in my throat
And my eyes did stray
From the Lord’s way
To the safety of my boat.

Now darkness and doubt did assail me
Recalling all I had lost
While the travails that still lay before me
Made me shudder to think of their cost.

So I hardened my heart ‘gainst my Lord,
Turning from him to me,
Till weighted down by fear and woe
Lo, I sank ‘neath the ravening sea!
















But a hand reached out to grasp me
Just as hope was nearing its end
And from deathly waters he drew me,
This fool who’d turned from his friend.

Not a word—
But a look that said, “Could you not trust?”
Moved my cowardly heart to grieve,
Because in that turning from him to me
I knew I’d ceased to believe –

Believe that he loved me more than life
That for me he’d willingly die,
Believe there’s forgiveness to salve every sin
As sure as the sun’s in the sky.

Fool that I was to count the cost,
Fool to think that some earthly reward
Could outweigh the joy of my knowing him
Who is my Life and my Lord.

Now as I gaze upon his face
And dawn’s light fills the sky
The love that I see
When his eyes rest on me
Proves there’s none more blessed than I.

One day I shall walk on the water
One day I shall dance on the waves
Embraced by my Friend and my Master
Whose love alone heals me and saves.

Loser

Things have a way of abandoning me.
My wallet didn't even say goodbye
when it departed from the train station
posthaste in some philandering hand.
That first cheap cellphone
I'd been reluctant to buy
sped away in a taxicab
leaving me clueless at the curb.
And somewhere there must be
an island resort where all
the umbrellas I've ever owned
come to toast the chump
they dumped in a church pew.
Let's not even mention the  keys,
credit cards and watches
numberless, nameless
one night-stands
that think they're doing you a favor
by just showing up.

3 Haikus on a Hillside (# 29, 30, 31)



Hillside at twilight -
bare feet on green sward, our
laughter deep and sweet.

In the cool moonlight
the stillness between us like
the scent of pine needles.

Take the long way home.
Meandering in the dew
will be good for you.

Haiku # 28 Missing


The tongue probes the gap
where the tooth had been-- this heart
full of your absence.

Bougainvilleas



How the bougainvilleas
seem to leach color
from the landscape
embracing the trees
they glare
preternaturally bold
in the sunlight
defiant - like trollops
parading their wares.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Hold On to the Thread

   Today I thought I'd share a poem that I've found personally meaningful. It's by the late William Stafford, a poet with roots sunk in the Quaker tradition. Here it is:
THE WAY IT IS
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
    What is that thread for you? Faith? A personal calling? Conscience? Integrity? God? All I know is, to go through life without finding  that thread is to be like a kite adrift on the shifting winds - not free, but lost.
   Holding on to the thread when you do find it-- that's another challenge.  We just want so many things at different levels of our being -- and many times what we want on one level can contradict what we want on another. Much as we'd like to have it all, we can't. There are priorities to be set, choices to be made, doors to be closed. That's why holding on to the thread can be scary and painful.
   At some point however, you discover that the thread is not just a guide through the labyrinths of life, it is also the safety line that bears you up, keeps you from falling even as you descend inch by inch past chasms of inevitable grief and loneliness. In that darkness where there is no light to see, the thread no longer seems fragile; it is a steel cable bearing the full heft of your burdened and burdensome self. In those moments, you seem to know instinctively that even if everything else in your world were to fall away -this connection would remain.
   Where does the thread lead? I dare say it leads us home, and here I mean home in the sense of all that our  deepest hearts want "home" to be - the place where we can be ourselves, and love ourselves, and know ourselves to be loved and cherished in our own particular quirkiness. It is that place beyond fear where we can embrace one another freely, and laugh at our sins and failings knowing they too have ultimately led us to this sacred ground. It is that place of reunion and reconciliation. It is the place where we experience ourselves as one with one another, and one in God.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Tar Baby Thoughts

One story I remember from childhood  concerns Br'er Rabbit, hero of the Uncle Remus stories, who tangles with a tar baby-- literally, a gob of tar and turpentine  molded and made up to look like an infant by the cunning Br'er Fox.

Knowing something of his prey's character--both garrulous and easy to take offense--the fox knew that the rabbit couldn't resist tussling with the mannikin, ineluctably getting stuck in its gooey clutches. Which is what happens.  The more Br'er Rabbit kicks and punches, the more deeply he becomes ensnared in the tar. Only through the exercise of superior wit does the rabbit trick the fox into throwing him into a briar patch so he can make good his escape.

Oftentimes, dealing with negative thoughts and fears can be like tangling with a tar baby. There are days I find myself obsessing about things I have no control over (other people's pains and struggles, their perceptions of me, work outcomes) past issues (the meaning of a perceived slight, regret for a choice made, past sins) or  a fear of what may or may not happen (the tyrannical "what ifs"") in a way that distracts me from the gifts and invitations of the present moment. The more I wrestle with these "issues" the more I become  frustrated, resentful, self-pitying, self-doubting or anxious. And of course, none of the struggle actually resolves anything--all it amounts to is emotional exhaustion. Inspite of my knowing this pattern in me, I find myself falling into it again and again. Something in me just can't pass the tar baby by.

I am coming to realize that happiness requires a high tolerance for what is ambiguous, incomplete, unsatisfactory, and resistant to control. It's my expectations that everything needs to be clear, orderly, smooth, easy and tension-free, this wanting to know every twist and turn in the path ahead before I can walk it, that sets me off when life turns out to be messier than I want it to be. Happiness requires an asceticism of mind.Not everything needs to be "fixed". Just because I see the tar baby sitting by the side of the road doesn't mean I have to  stop and tangle with it.

Rilke in one of his letters counsels a friend to be "patient with what is unresolved" in his life," to  live the questions trusting that he will one day live into the answers. Though I've repeated those words often enough, I realize that more often than not, I am trying to THINK my way into the answers, to SOLVE rather than LIVE the deep questions of my life.  Living the questions means first of all embracing the ambiguity of things and realizing that it's ok not to have all the answers and solutions beforehand. There are times when one has answers he can't profit from because although they may seem like plausible solutions, they aren't answers he is as yet prepared to own and live. At that point, they may feel like other people's answers, not his. Perhaps "living into the answer" means enter into the valley of unknowing and moving through one's quota of reflecting, waiting, praying, grieving, trusting, enduring, suffering, working and hoping in order to appreciate the truth one does find. Without the often painful but necessary inner work, the soil of our lives may not be ready, may not be fertile and welcoming enough for the seed of the "good news" to take root and flourish.

To live patiently with ambiguity, to live for a time with not having the answers we feel we need is what it means to "live by faith and not by sight." It takes a lot of trust that somehow there is a power at work in the universe that will make things clear in time. Faith allows us to move calmly through the instances of pain, darkness and confusion without needing to fix things which in the end may not even need fixing because they are not problems to be solved but rather marks of our unique human condition calling out for acceptance, understanding and integration.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Confessions of a Poetry Fool

There's poetry leaking from all my pores,
My skin is slick with metaphors.
In double -dactyls my heart skips
As  dizzy quatrains drip from my lips.

I'm not quite sure how I got this way,
Just a simple Joe with not much to say,
Till the fever hits and for a time
I can't suppress this urge to rhyme.

Should anyone ask who shaped my views
On works poetic, I'd say Dr. Seuss
And that matriarch on a white gander mounted 
Whose influence litteraire just can't be discounted.

Versification is just so addictive
Even when the results are afflictive.
Such bliss they don't ever teach you in school
And yet here I am -- a poetry fool.

Blessing or curse? Who can say?
Perhaps this is my metiƩr
Good verse, bad verse, to me it's all one
At least I can say I'm having fun.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Jesus when I cling to Thee
Only then shall I be free
Only know love’s true bliss
When soul surrenders to Thy kiss.
Knowing there’s no joy apart
From Thee—thou Master of my heart
I’ll cleave to Thee, Thou crucified
Dying the death which Thou hast died
Thence to rise on wings of grace
Enfolded in Thy love’s embrace
Remade as I was made to be—
Come Lord Jesus, reign in me!

I wrote this last year while on retreat in  the Benedictine Monastery of the Transfiguration, Malaybalay, Bukidnon. If anyone has a hankering for monastic life, I highly recommend a stint there. For me, it's one of those "thin places" where a bit of heaven filters through. So many good memories, so many graces.

Haiku #27 A Friendship Renewed




My  pinched toes have missed
these old slippers' soft caress
- friendship beyond price.

Haiku #26 On Trying to Write Poetry in the City of Pines Part 2

 



In the patchwork light
you and I sit
plucking poems
from between
treeroots.

Haiku # 25 Inspiration

This butterfly
poised
on the point of my pen -
inspiration.

Haiku # 24 On Trying to Write Poetry in the City of Pines






Overhead the crows
sans paper and pen mock us
with effortless verse.













No, I didn't get anything else written that day.

Haiku # 23 Break Your Heart Like Bread


Take
your
heart
in
hand
break
it
like
warm
bread
bid
the
hungry
feast.



I think we can understand the mystery of the eucharist only when we know the love that embraces pain as the cost of loving.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Christ's Wounds and Ours


Isn't it strange that when Jesus appears to Thomas and the other apostles, he still bears the marks of the crucifixion? You would think a bodily resurrection might have some cosmetic effect, might erase those unsightly gashes that mar Christ's body. But the resurrection doesn't erase wounds, rather it glorifies them, turns them into signs and trophies of mercy triumphant. This is good news. It suggests that not just my virtues but even my sins and woundedness are the openings God uses to work his redemption. When I yield to God's mercy, then even my experiences of shame and failure will become a cause for celebration, for in the end I will see that each prodigal fall will have been a step closer to the divine embrace.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Prayer to a Gentle God

You beckon Lord, your gentle smile
Bids me stop and stay awhile
Find respite from my restless pace
And lay me down by streams of grace.

Though days are hard and trials long
Your compassion makes me strong
Heals this sinner poor and lowly
With tender embrace that makes all holy.

Friend of my soul, I pray your gaze
Of love accompanies all my days
Though prone am I to stray and roam
Your gentle touch shall call me home.

Haiku # 22 Hey Up There

Hey! Come down to earth.
Up there the rarefied air
can give you nosebleeds.















The intellect is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.

Friday, April 16, 2010

What's with the haikus?

Haikus invite us to pay attention to the world around us, to focus on details one would normally dismiss. In a way, the haiku writer is like a photographer who simultaneously captures some aspect of the visible world but also presents it to others in a way that invites deeper insight and appreciation of that reality.  This kind of attention is spiritually valuable.

The temptation in much spirituality is to, well. . . spiritualize, to get caught up in what is abstract, theoretical, and disembodied; to dismiss what is sensuous, affective and particular as if such were unworthy of our regard. Such an approach is wrongheaded.  One's experience of the divine is mediated through our experience of created reality. God is not encountered directly but "in and through" our engagement with particular events, persons and objects through which we sense an unexpected depth and richness.  Ignoring the reality of this mediation leads to a pernicious "angelism",  a sterile intellectualism, a profound disengagement from the stuff of  life. Haiku-writing is an antidote to this "angelism" precisely because it celebrates what is sensuous and particular. It forces one to attend to the things of this world with something like love. In the process, we may discover that God is in the details.

Haiku-writing involves capturing the amalgam of insight and sense experience in the fewest possible words. This compression means that a lot of deliberation goes into choosing the appropriate words to communicate an experience. Words used carelessly and excessively convey nothing significant--they become facile and opaque. Haiku-writing challenges us to make not just words, but even the silences between our words, speak.

To my mind, the aformentioned  reasons constitute the virtues of this particular discipline. For "heady" people like me, haiku is a way of cultivating an attentiveness to human experience that contributes to the appreciation of life's richness.

3 Haikus on Parting (# 19, 20, 21)


The moon that shone through
my bedroom window has gone
stealing heaven's bliss.

Memory's a lamp
burning in this dark cottage
till you come again.

Yes, droplets flung high
on a wand’ring wave one day
fall back to the sea. 


Thursday, April 15, 2010

Haiku # 18 Fireflowers



Bougainvilleas blaze 
devouring air - I scream
drowning in wet bedclothes.

On "Falling Upward"

Why call this blog "Falling Upward"? Francis, a good friend, told me the other day that it reminded him of Shel Silverstein's whimsical "Falling Up". I'd never read that poem, so I looked it up. Here it is:

I tripped on my shoelace
And I fell up-
Up to the roof tops
Up past the tree tops
Up over the mountains
Up where the colors
Blend into the sounds
But it go me so dizzy
When I looked around
I got sick to my stomach
And I threw down.


Actually, I had been thinking about the implications of the Incarnation--how God's descent into human form means that everything human and all creation are taken up into the divine embrace. Even our "falling" has become a "happy fault" that can bring us back to the foundation of all things, the Hidden Ground of Love which supports and sustains all. So I guess the title of this blog for me hints at a number of things: incarnation, the immanence of grace in creation, the mercy of God, providence.

Something of this is expressed in  the poem "The Avowal" by Denise Levertov:

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.


If all is grace then even (and perhaps especially!) our falls are a "falling upward."

Haiku # 17 Lonely Bed


Sheets rasp on bare skin
Where your dear arms used to be
The bed is lonely.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Why Now?

I've been putting this off for so long vacillating between thinking I had nothing much to blog about (who would even be interested?) and thinking that writing for myself would be kind of self-indulgent because the time could be better spent on other more productive things (making lesson plans, losing weight, running programs, protesting in the streets, etc. etc.). All sorts of excuses. So last night I said to myself, what the hell, let's break the impasse and GET ON WITH IT. What I've rediscovered in the process is the pleasure of participating in that "pointless blossoming" that is creation.

At the back of my mind in all of this has been one of Langston Hughes famous pieces, a poem that especially resonates with me in midlife:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

This blog is an attempt to deal with "dreams deferred". I remember wanting to be a creative writer when I was about 9 or 10, but giving up by the time I was in college. At the time, I thought I didn't have the talent or the life experience--a facility with the written word wasn't enough. Since then, I have continued to write, but rarely for pleasure. Now I realize that part of the reason I never ventured further into creative writing was because I always had in mind some hidden audience I had to please, some ennobling mission I had to fulfill. This "bowing to the audience" is death to the creative spirit. Mine at least.

So why am I blogging today? Because I need to to keep a vital part of my spirit alive. Because the discipline of putting things into words clarifies my own thinking. Because it gives me a modest joy. While I still hope some of this stuff actually connects with people and helps them in some way, I believe that this will happen when what I write proves helpful and pleasurable first of all to myself.

A Prayer for Angels on the Street

I actually wrote this poem a number of years ago for the flyer of a fundraising project for the Kuya Drop-In Center for Streetchildren. I swear, the way these kids live, their guardian angels must really be working overtime. As much as they need our prayers, these kids need people who will embody God's compassionate presence for them. 
Gentle God whom angels bless
Make present now your tenderness
To all your children who walk the street
In tattered rags, on battered feet.
For city streets can turn to stone
The hearts of those afraid, alone.
On angel’s wings send heaven’s care
Answer the unspoken prayer
Rising above the city’s noise –
The cry of those who have no voice.
Send healing hands from up above,
Touch homeless hearts that yearn for love.
When such as these your Son did see,
He said, “Let the children come to me.
Theirs is all I have to give.”
He stretched out his arms that they might live.
For tender love embraces all
But beats most strong for what is small.
With tender love your Son did seek
What was lost and scarred and weak.
Gentle God whom angels bless
Let me serve your tenderness
That your compassion all may see
Mirrored in the heart of me.

Haiku # 16: Joy Bursts in the Mouth



Joy bursts in the mouth
Ripe as pomegranate seeds
Pressed against white teeth.

Dancing with St. Francis


Francis, the would-be errant knight
Laid down his sword and lance
To become God’s joyful troubadour
And call folk to the Dance.

Repentance was the song he sang
In a tenor sweet and strong
And wherever sinners flocked to hear
He taught them to dance along.

“The first step, thou must know thyself poor
The second, mourn thy sin,
The third, submit thy heart to God
That He might reign within.”

“The fourth, make righteousness thy bread
The fifth step, learn to forgive,
The sixth, go purify thy heart
And in God’s grace thou shalt live.”

“The seventh step, love thy enemies;
For such is God’s way to peace
And them that return only love for pain
Shall make all warring cease.”

“And should the world despise thee
For the Dance that thou hast trod
Take heart! Thou shalt dance forever
In the loving arms of God.”

Haiku #15: The Letter on My Door



Letter on my door
Cicada song as twilight falls
- a grateful sadness.

Haiku #14: Hope Stirs


Its grey nose twitches
Furtive eyes now here now there
Hope stirs—awakens!