I want.

I want.

Lion Sands Tree House, Sabi Sand, South Africa

Easy Like Sunday morning

This morning at church this poem was read. Chris Woodhull was preaching and he said Thirst and Mary Oliver and I leaned waaaaaayyy forward ready to listen. And in listening, to walk into this poem and right into the woods and be among the trees and this poetic voice that I recognize and is so comforting and always clear and familiar to me.

Saint Mary Oliver, patron saint of poetry and simplicity.

When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

~ Mary Oliver ~

(Thirst)

Mary Oliver and I just had church together in the woods. I got home and my roommate is baking cheesecake in the kitchen. And she has flour on her face and and she's on her tip-toes pressing the crust into the pan with her hands. "Sweetened Condensed Milk does the body good ... There's just not that many things I like more than graham cracker crust". She loves Mary Oliver about as much as she loves baking which is about as much as I love Mary Oliver. That is a hell of a lot of love for one kitchen. I find the poem in the book on the table in the living room beside the window, where all my poetry lives and stand there and leaned against the door frame of the kitchen and read it to her. And the music that is playing a slow bluegrass "Come thou Fount". I read the poem slowly, like trees growing slowly, it's raining outside, slowly, and we're standing in the kitchen reading poetry. It's so damn good. and so simple. And I couldn't tell the difference between being in the kitchen with the crust and the flour or being in a church or being among the trees. I got done and held the book over my face and screamed. Her poems are just that good to me. As good as graham cracker crust. "I would almost say that they save me. and daily."

Come Visit. I live in a house near the corner I have named Gratitude.

Mary Oliver said she wakes every morning to the dawn and give thanks for another day, eats breakfast, takes a walk with her dog Percy, and works for 3-4 hours, at which point she is tired.

This life seems about perfect to me.



Such Gifts

The Place I Want to Get Back To
is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness
and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me
they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let's see who she is
and why she is sitting
on the ground , like that
,so quiet, as if asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;
and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way
I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward
and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years
I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed,
can't be repeated.
If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

(from Thirst)

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around youkept shouting
their bad advice--though the whole house began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles."Mend my life!"each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones. But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--determined to save
the only life you could save.

"And it's all still going on"

Words are as strong and powerful as bombs, as napalm. Dorothy Day

Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily. Dorothy Day

I firmly believe that our salvation depends on the poor. Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day was a Marxist and an anarchist and a wild bohemian. She lived with men in common law arrangements. She was jailed for controversial demonstrations on behalf of workers, women's suffrage, and the rights of the imprisoned. She preached a pacifism that knew no limit, and she wrote at least one book which in her later years she regretted so much that she declared she would do anything if she could have every copy of it destroyed. She loved Opera. She loved to knit. She is a candidate for Sainthood. She became a devoted Catholic and began the Catholic Worker Movement that included poorhouses and newspaper in Chicago. Someone wrote that "She was a fool for Christ's sake: her boss was the individual on the street who was forgotten by society, the one we see each day, the one on the park bench who smells of alcohol and urine. " Her books called On Pilgrimage and Loaves and Fishes, and The Long Loneliness. I have only read The Long Loneliness, and I loved it.

This the postscript The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day.

“We were just sitting there talking when Peter Maurin came in.
We were just sitting there talking when lines of people began to form, saying, “We need bread.” We could not say, “Go, be thou filled.” If there were six small loaves and a few fishes, we had to divide them. There was always bread.
We were just sitting there talking and people moved in on us. Let those who can take it, take it. Some moved out and that made room for more. And somehow the walls expanded.
We were just sitting there talking and someone said, “Let’s all go live on a farm.” It was as casual as all that, I often think. It just came about. It just happened.
I found myself, a barren woman, the joyful mother of children. It is not easy always to be joyful, to keep in mind the duty of delight.
The most significant thing about The Catholic Worker is poverty, some say.
The most significant thing is community, others say. We are not alone any more.
But the final word is love. At times it has been, in the words of Father Zossima, a harsh and dreadful thing, and our very faith in love has been tried through fire.
We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.
We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
It all happened while we sat there talking, and it is still going on.”

25 Dorothy Day quotes

Saint Dorothy?

joy

Got this today from a friend today who is working on a farm as a Jesuit Volunteer in Georgia. beauty beauty beauty.

sweat rolls down into your eyes everyday
and everyday is the same
except when tilling up earth and pain with Eh Kaw
except when flinging red radish seeds all over your common toil
except when the skies are so blue you wanna cry and you go out with your handkerchief to find warm fat purple grapes and let them pop and slide out on your tongue.
except when your eyes open at dawn to walk across to the fig tree and suck down its sweetest flesh and when roosters announce day is coming and chickens wait for you to let them out of their sleepy roosts
except when you find God walking in the garden.
everyday's the same except when Po Reh learns to spell his name
learns to hold a pen and spell his very own name at 75 years old.
and when Dah Reh laughs when you, his teacher, try to move hay with your city hands
sometimes all your muscle fibers are on fire at the very same moment
and your eyes are still stingin with that sweat
and sometimes you wonder why Po Reh has to be here at 75 learnin to spell his name
and you wonder why the world is in the shape it is
but then..
almost always in the very middle of that space where tired bones and tired souls meet
you know everyday will never be the same after this
and no day is the same
and the resurrected Christ has come to visit you here,
has come in so close you tremble

-written by my sweet soulfriend

and give thanks. like this: thank you.

We can see Spirit made visible when people are kind to one another,
especially when it’s a really busy person,
like you,
taking care of a needy, annoying, neurotic person.
like you.
In fact, that’s often when we see Spirit most brightly.

It’s magic to see Spirit, largely because it’s so rare. Mostly you see the masks and the holograms that the culture present as real. You see how you’re doing in the world’s eyes, or your family’s or-worst of all- yours, or in the eyes of people who are doing better than you-much better than you-or worse.
But you are not your bank account or your ambition.
You’re not the cold clay lump you leave behind when you die.
You’re not your collection of walking personally disorders.
You are Sprit, you are love, and even though it is hard to believe sometime,
you are free.
You’re here to love, and be loved
freely.
If you find out next week that you are terminally ill- and we’re all terminally ill on this bus- what will matter are memories of beauty, that people loved you, and that you loved them

So bless you. You’ve done an amazing thing. And you are loved. You are capable of lives of great joy and meaning.
It’s what you are made of
…And it’s what you’re here for
…Take care of yourselves. Take care of one another.
And give thanks like this.


Thank you.


(By Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts On Faith)