My "Song of Songs"

 Like a truth ~ I did not really understand.

Till now...  

This poem, dating back to my college years, still speaks to me.  

I found a rock upon the beach

A weather-beaten, battered rock

Who loved to stand and bear the waves

And greet the rushing waters - day by day.

I bound myself to that rock I found -

I could not tear myself away.

Two fearless lovers we became

And met the rushing waters in our way.

But rocky coast turns into sand

When time and waters have their way.

And two who stood to face the waves

Turned into sand and blew away.

"The souls of the virtuous are in the hands of God... In the eyes of the unwise, they did appear to die, but they are at peace."  [Wisdom 3:1-2,3]

Mystery lifts its veil ...

There are times when Holy Mystery manifests itself to us.  Dying is one of those times.  And interestingly, the metaphor of death or dying often describes the entry of Holy Presence - into our midst - beyond the veil of normal seeing.  As if one had happened upon a boundary between the world of sense and the world of spirit:

Photo ~ Courtesy of brotherjohn OED

This story was told to me by a witness, whose veracity I can vouch for.  She sat behind me in a seminar a few years ago, and related the events within days of their occurrence.  Some months later, via email, she assured me that my recollection of her story was accurate.  It is a very simple story.  Yet profound.

My source, a social worker employed by a home hospice, coordinates chaplaincy visits for individuals receiving hospice care at home.  The hospice serves anyone within a county-wide area, who is dying at home.  Thus, nothing out of the ordinary was to be expected, when she went to the home of a dying patient, along with her supervisor - a man unknown to the patient.

As soon as she introduced her supervisor, the patient immediately said to him:  I didn't know that you knew ____."  And her supervisor's response was:  How do you know that I knew ____?  (Knew.... because ____ was dead.)

And the patient answered:  Well, he's sitting right there!  (pointing to thin air) And he just told me.

Now that is the story.

Make of it what you will.....

But the story is true:  My source is entirely credible. 

Something there is - which is way beyond our ken.  Something which the dying often give witness to.  Which spiritual traditions and sacred writings give witness to.  Something which manifests itself within holy individuals; and I have met some.  Something which can break through normal events - so they shine with mysterious translucence - as if a veil were momentarily lifted, as if one could see from one world into another Reality...  one which transcends our world entirely or marks it as mysteriously shot through with holiness.

Places in the Heart

"There are places in the heart that do not yet exist;
  suffering has to enter in for them to come to be".

[Leon Bloy]

God in heaven

      Watching you and me

God in heaven

      Is sad as he can be.

                ~

The hurt we feel

      Does pierce His heart

But the hurt we feel

      Is just a part

Of the hurt inside His heart.

               ~

God feels our pain

      And others' too

It may be feeling hurt

      Is all He gets to do.

              ~

The world he made

      Has gone astray

So sad he feels

      To see what people do and say.

              ~

So sad is He

      That He's depressed

That He's worn out

      And sad as death.

              ~

Perhaps our God

      Is like us too

That when He's sad

      And feeling blue,

He cannot even tie his shoe.

              ~

Perhaps He lies

      In bed all day

And can't make hay

      Or even play.

              ~

Perhaps these hurts

      He feels

Are such,

      He can't do much.

             ~

He can't get up,

      Get dressed, get food

And all He does

      Is lie in bed - and brood.

             ~

The worries that A God can have

So heavy, heavy do they weigh

      That He's depressed,

      That He's inert

For all the long of a Godly day.

             ~

He may need help

      But cannot call

Who's thought that

      God needs help at all?

             ~

It makes me very sad to think

      That God's so hurt and lonely

      (And no one thinks of this at all)  

That nothing does He get to do,

      But suffer only.

             ~

To suffer for eternity

      In hopes the world will change

And all He gets for this

      Is hopes and prayers and

Curses for the things he doesn't arrange.

             ~

I don't think I would like to be

A God like this - who cries all day 
And sees all pain

      And suffers still

      And still again

And suffers every, every day

And feels our pain in every way.

             ~

It's bad enough

For me to know

That suffering

That has brought you low.

            ~

If I had had to know - What He has seen and felt

I don't think I could bear to know

And feel - and still go on.

            ~

I'd get depressed and cry all day

And feel so sad - in a Holy way

And I'd give up and say:

      "I'm tired of being God this way!"

            ~

I'm tired of knowing all the woes

       And all the hurts and all the pain;

I'm sick to death of suffering.

       Please can't I die?

And not go through all this again?

            ~

But God can't die

He only lives

For all eternity

Alone and sad, a whole world's pain

He bears for you and me.

            ~

I could go on - in the middle of the night

Telling you all about God's plight.

Like I, He cannot sleep

So sad is He, so sad, so deep.

            ~

Imagine being god

      Where day and night

      Without surcease

He watches all our sufferings

      And takes them in His heart

And can do nothing more - That is his part.

            ~

So when you're sad - and He can't help

           At least you're in - His suffering heart.

1-31-94

Written for one who suffered much.
Dedicated to all who suffer without comprehension.

I have learned a little - in my work - of Divine Compassion:
Love for - and with - those who suffer.
This suffering love, in which I have participated,
This compassion, which has enlarged my heart,
I cannot call it "mine" alone.
It teaches me - from whence it comes.

Mining the ground you're standing on ...

Snippets of Poetry - Moments of Insight

I.

In the depths of the Self
        A River of Prayer

You're not aware
        But it's there

II.

These individual moments, which I thought to be like separate beads upon a string...   strands of my life:  Now appearing ... as I look back ... part of a single braid... now disclosing its secret beauty.

Or perhaps like a mine that's gradually being dug in one place.  As if my life were like a piece of ground I'm standing on, ground I've been given.  And as I dig down, gradually, over the years, mining my life:  Sometimes for its insights and blessings.  More often just the daily shoveling of dirt.  But from time to time,  I find ... there in the darkness ... beautiful jewels - like sparks of darkness... leading me on.

Especially has suffering - on behalf of others particularly, but also my own - hollowed me out, deepened me - opened me up, through yearning and stretching at times of utter extremity:  Seeking  to feel my way into the hidden heart and soul of another.  To place myself in a receptive state.  Or to bear the unbearable, along with others.  Or weather the storms of emotion in the mystery of relationship.

Even when I was looking in all the wrong places for the wrong things... that emptiness or nothingness or receptivity or openness - seems to have been answered or echoed or set up an inner resonance, to which I responded, or which simply rose up like a fountain.  As if it's been going on there all the time - and I never knew.  Like a stream running through me - of which I am also a part.

I think we need to value where we're stuck.  Rather than try to get away from it.  To mine it.  To take what we've been dealt - and dwell with it.  That stuckness may be a place of potential transcendence.

Not that I'm very good at any of this .....


III.

Newly arisen -
An emptiness
Appears and reappears

A solitude
A space
A sense of freedom

In the hurly-burly
Of my day

My soul?
A sign
Of the Divine?
A foretaste?

IV.  This lovely photo of stratofrog's seems to belong here.  Click on it and enlarge it.   Ponder it.  There is so much in this photo.  So much beauty.  So much mystery.  So much sheltering darkness.  The transcendent beauty of the clouds above.  Opening in places.  The mysterious translucent peach colors in the distance... like a channel between heaven and earth, clouds and mountains.  It says so much to me!  Thank you, stratofrog!

V.

I am beautiful
        in my soul.

There --
        Even the dark places
              are beautiful
        In silence and in mystery

Be Still and Know....

So many incidents through my life.  As I look back ... 

I think they have often come when I was feeling at my uttermost limits - when I'd done all I could on my own and I was reaching out - beyond myself.

About 35 years ago, when I was teaching young children, third graders, I had a particularly challenging class of children.  I was at my wit's end.  I would go to bed at night, thinking of a child or an issue - and usually by morning something would come.  Some new idea.  Some energy to try again.  Some way to empathize with a child or find a way to reach them - personally or educationally.  But I was getting weary... and nothing was coming...

As I say, I was at my wit's end ~ at a point of nothingness.

It was during the time when TM was all the rage.  I'd heard about the method.  Relax.  Say a mantra.  But TM cost money.  And we were poor.  My husband was in grad school.  If we had had another child at that time, the children, if they'd been in school, would have qualified for free lunches.  And as I recall I also was taking grad courses, one per semester, in order to get my permanent teaching certificate (to keep the job).  So paying for TM was out.  (Oh, TM? ... Transcendental Meditation)

But I figured, what the heck, give it a try....

I recall sitting down - must have been one afternoon.  I picked a word.  Who knows what word?  Did I say "Ommmmm"?  I have no idea.  However, I can pretty much assure you it was not a Christian word - because shortly after college I had given up on going to church and stopped paying attention to "any of that".  So I assure you, I wasn't deserving of what followed.

So there I was with my "word" - whatever it was.  But here's what happened.

As I sat there, quietly, paying attention to my breathing and saying this word.....  Suddenly, from deep inside myself, I'm not kidding you....  Prayer welled up!  Yes.  Without my bidding.  Without any willing of this.

Prayer... inside myself .... as if a well had been drilled and water just gushed up.  

Shocked the hell out of me!  No kidding....

Honestly, as I look back, over these many years, I think it was like the bell was rung.  Without any effort on my part.  Certainly without any deserving on my part.

After this, certain amazing coincidences followed.  I went to the public library, maybe to return some books.  And there, on the bookshelf right near the circulation desk was Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain - the story of his early life and conversion, his entering a monastery.  It was Lent.  I just happened to pass a church - going who knows where.  There was an afternoon Mass and I went in.  We went out to the nearby monastery.  They had a bookstore.  We bought a book of psalms and started to read psalms together.   Well, one thing led to another....  And on my 30th birthday we had a big celebration - with friends.  We had our son baptized and our marriage was blessed by a priest.   This time in a church.  Yup!  The whole shebang!  (it was all one big "ceremony" - with a nice party afterward)

We eventually came to view the monastery as like a second home.  So much of a home that the next Fall, in kindergarten, our son was in the blocks corner, building:  Some kid asked:  What's that?  And after our son replied:  A monastery, the kids asks:  What's a monastery?  They had cows there then (sheep now).  Our son helped the monks milk the cows.  And they took him to the carpenter shop, where he made some things I still have.  One is just a little block of wood that says:  I love you, mama. (after he learned to write, of course)  Another was what he called the portable cross.  Two pieces of wood that fit together - to form a cross.  I still have it.

It's things like this that - for me - are so convincing.

It's not just chance.

There's something "out there" ~ inside.  Paying attention to us.  Drawing us....

At least - that's my experience - and it hasn't just happened once.

Honey Bee on Leek Flower

Our good friend, stratofrog, is a gifted photographer.  And this photo of hers deserves a post all by itself.  Today it serves to point us to the work of the honey bee.  Look carefully on the flower...  The bee is at work.

A long time ago men and women sought the honey of a life of prayer.  They went off to the desert and lived as hermits or in small colonies.  Later they formed monasteries, based on a rule of life drawn up by St. Benedict.  One of Benedict's aphorisms for how the monks should live was:  Ora et Labora - which simply means an integrated life.  A life of both work and prayer.  For prayer, or meditation, you can substitute whatever you use to turn within, to penetrate the sacred in life. Stratofrog's photography, for example, is like a meditation on beauty, depth, poetry - in nature.  And sharing that is like a prayer she's made on our behalf.

Every spiritual tradition I know of seems to have turned to poetry as a way of doing what stratofrog can do with a camera.  The Vedas and the Upanishads.  Buddhist Sutras.  Hebrew Psalms.  You can find these in every tradition.   And many of them are now being put out on the internet, arranged in such a way that you can read small portions of prayer-poems on a daily basis.

On the right sidebar, there's a piece of ironwork I like. The image itself now links to a site which posts Psalms for various Hours of Prayer.  You can pick a time of day and choose a psalm or two. 

Or you can use the banner just below to go there right now:

Like the Honey Bee in the photo, you can find nectar - in the psalms.  And over time ... honey - in your soul.

Greeting of the Myrrh-Bearers

I love this icon!

It discloses aspects of my work and myself.

Profound compassion for those who suffer:

  Myself as the kneeling women come to anoint and reverence.

Like a channel flowing through my heart ~ 

The Mystery of Suffering itself.

Could it be as well an Icon of the Mystery of the Trinity?