My response
when asked
about my
leadership style:
I seek
to inspire
for we are wired
to feel productive
to have purpose
to believe
in what we do
in who we are
and why
therein lies
the candle
of purpose
to be lit
by inspire
fire
Purpose
On Faith
Amen
Here is a memory
I shall keep for you
all of my days:
when we ask
Where is your turkey?
you pat the colorful creature
adorning your shirt
while attempting to say
gobble gobble
and when our family
gathers round the table
to pray
amid the reverent cadence
of your Grampa’s words
I hear you say
nen
nen
nen
—I shall keep it for you,
this memory:
Thanksgiving gold
your one-year-old
baby voice
blessing us all
Amen
Thankful acrostic
This day, every day
Holy in its own way
Abundance immeasurable
New mercies pleasurable
Keeping mindful of blessings
For living, for giving
Until the final ingathering
Let me not cease to give thanks
Drawing by Scout, age 6
Thanksgiving blessings to all
Monostitch poem
with thanks to Kim Johnson for the inspiration on Ethical ELA’s Open Write today. Kim offers the monostitch form: “a strong sense of connection between a title and a poem of one line inspires the writer to consider the relationship between the title and the word.”
And so I share an observation from today…
Heaven’s So Near
Little girl sings The cattle are lowing…preacher-Grandpa’s face is streaked with tears.
Here’s a two-line version, for good measure:
Heaven is Near
Little girl plays in the floor, singing so pure, so clear: The cattle are lowing…
Preacher-man Grandpa rests in his recliner, listening, face streaked with tears.
The duality of slow
In my recent reading
I have encountered
the duality
of slow…
educators know
DEVOLSON:
Dark
Evil
Vortex
Of
Late
September
October
November
a mysterious force
an epicenter
impacting
gravity,
functionality
(=dark matter:
a nonluminous material
causing several effects
in space)
yet in my reading
I also stumble
across the word
Slowvember:
an admonishment
an acknowledgement
that one cannot possibly
do all the things
well
so one might as well
choose to act
vs. being acted upon
a recognition
a submission
a slowing of the pace
even at the edge
of holidays
brimming
glimmering
they are,
after all,
celebrations
of light
(=holy-days)
allow me
an antidote
in an anagram
or two:
DEVOLSON…
Solved? No.
Do novels.
Carve the time
vs. letting it
carve you
nourish
your inner light
it is only flickering
not snuffed
enough is enough
-evil? No.
A divine pull
to the gift
of slow.
slow down, slow down, slow… Victor Bezrukov. CC BY-NC 2.0.
with thanks to Chris Margocs for the DEVOLSON inspiration
Stargazing
The Boy and I
are stargazing
with our SkyView
phone apps
reading names:
Dabih
Mirzam
Capella
Aldebaran
Taygeta
Elnath
Tien Kwan
Betelgeuse
Fomalhaut
Altair
Vega
Deneb
the Pleiades
—makes me remember
that God knows all the stars
and calls them by name
I tell The Boy.
His face is turned up
toward the glittering heavens
after a long moment
he speaks:
I wonder what names
they are.
—Me, too, Boy.
He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. – Psalm 147:4
Spiritual Journey: Holy
Why is it that, as I began to think of a November theme for my Spiritual Journey writer-friends, that the word holy came to mind?
I suppose it was connected with the start of the holiday season…holiday, from the original Old English, hāligdæg, means holy day.
I am writing this on a holy day to many around the world, All Soul’s Day. Following All Saint’s Day. Following All Hallow’s Eve…a holy triduum for remembering the dead, collectively known as Allhallowtide. On Halloween morning I saw a mystical fiery rainbow in the clouds, a colorful band of light joining earth to heaven. Genesis 9:13 played in my mind: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. A promise from God. There’s also a rainbow around the throne of God (Revelation 4:3).
Holy. As in hallowed.
I think of votive candles lit in memory of deceased loved ones, the bright flames driving the dark away, the way that hope does in the despairing soul. So many holy-day observances involve the lighting of candles.
My little granddaughter had her first birthday at the end of October. A solitary candle burned on her cake, representing her one year of life.
Holy.
It also means blessed.
For me, holy is closely linked to my life-word, awe, in that they encompass the divine and a reverence for it. Even a shadowing of fear. When I was a small child attending church with my grandparents, I sensed all of this on entering the sanctuary, long before I had words to convey it. I did not know, then, about the ancient Holy of Holies, the inner sanctuary of the Tabernacle where God’s presence dwelt, that only the High Priest could enter it once a year to make atonement for the Israelites, and that anyone else trying to do so would die. Even the High Priest had to prepare with great care.
Holy. It means sacred, consecrated, set apart.
The ancient Jews considered the Holy of Holies the spiritual junction of heaven and earth.
I looked at all the white-rail decor in that long-ago Methodist church and could not understand, describe, or convey…but I sensed holy and trembled.
My other granddaughter, age six, was baptized recently. I watched her, robed in white, descending into the baptismal pool where the preacher—her stepfather, my son—held out his hand to her. Her little face was aglow with the faith of a child (the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these), looking up at her dad with absolute trust. My son was overcome with emotion.
Holy. Pure.
My spirit clings to the word. Although it seems like life is often consumed by an ever-raging sea of unholiness, the holy is always there, like a luminous lifeline. It shines in faces of children. It swells in birdsong, in music so beautifully composed that it draws tears. It lives in extraordinary, self-sacrificial acts of love. It manifests itself in healing. In forgiveness. I see it often in nature, obeying its patterns, displaying such breathtaking glory and wonders that one forgets the brokenness of things. Yes, when the slant of light is just right, one gets a shot of awe, a glimpse above and beyond, a perceiving of holy. Of the presence of God. Like a fiery rainbow on Halloween morning.
In the end, it is all a matter of opening the soul to seeing.
Here’s to finding the holy in every day of the journey.
I wrote a poem about the rainbow on All Hallow’s Eve; people forget the Christian connections to the day.
Spiritual Journey Friends, please share your links in the comments below – blessings to you all!
All Hallows’ Eve
misty mystic morn
divine light, cloud-flaming bright
holy hope reborn
I cannot recall ever seeing a rainbow on Halloween before. This morning, there it was, gleaming bright in the clouds. Thus begins Allhallowtide, the age-old Christian tradition of prayerfully remembering those who have died.
Why I Write—2022
Every year for National Day on Writing, I reflect on why I write.
It’s like looking at a diamond ring in a semi-darkened room. Different facets catch the light, scattering sparks of brilliant color, red to orange, green to blue. Writing, for me, is an inner fire. A living fire. It is in my blood the way that farming was in my grandfather’s blood, that music is in my son’s, that crafting was in my mother’s, that a love of children was in my grandmother’s. I see different facets even in these comparisons. Farming is about sustenance. Cultivating the earth, harnessing resources to make it produce—this is what earth is designed to do. Music is expression, form, response, sounds in time, even color. It can be endlessly repeated and replicated; it is the unique and universal language of humankind. Crafting…it takes skill to make a new, useful thing from pieces placed exactly right, sewing them together so that the seams don’t detract. My mother was given a hand-me-down sectional sofa covered with pink scratchy fabric (it was 1970s horrible). She studied it, measured it, bought earth-tone floral fabric and cording and systematically created a custom slipcover that lasted for years. The love of children…does this not tie all of the above? Creating, nurturing, producing, expressing, a contribution to the future.
Writing is all of this.
One can make the argument that all these things are learned, and so they are. But that doesn’t account for the compulsion to do them even when there is no need. Granddaddy gardened into his nineties when he didn’t have to produce his own food anymore, when all he could manage was two small rows in the old dog pen after the dog was dead and gone. He carried a chair to sit on and rest between the kneeling to weed. My son hears all the instruments, all the harmonies, in a song; he spends hours recording a song over and over with different instruments, singing the different vocals, until it all comes together like he wants it…simply for the joy of accomplishing it. My mother received little income from the clothes she made for people; she crocheted countless baby blankets as gifts. She made flop-eared stuffed bunnies with changeable clothes, for the whimsical fun of it, never making a dime. Craftsmanship is beauty unto itself. Like art. Like music. My grandmother’s face shone like the sun at sight of children. I was one of her greatest beneficiaries, my life indelibly shaped, still being shaped, by her love. I might also mention it was Grandma who sparked my love of reading and writing long before I could do either.
Writing, in the end, has much to do with story. At least for me. The story of having lived and loved. The story of seeking the beautiful. The story of gratitude for finding it, in all of life’s brilliant facets and sparks, even in the shadows. There would not be shadows if there were no light. It is there, always there, for the capturing.
And so I write.
Necklace given to me by my father. Years later, it still shines.
Spiritual Journey: Revenants
with thanks to Chris Margocs for hosting October’s Spiritual Journey Thursday. Chris invites our group to write about those who have passed and left something behind in our hearts, in preparation for the upcoming holidays of All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day. She says: “As a person of Celtic heritage, the idea of the thinning of veil between here and the hereafter on these days intrigues me…”
—Me, too, Chris.
*******
The stirrings begin with the first breaths of cooler air.
As September gives way to October, while the trees and grass are still green, before any obvious turnings of yellow, orange, or fiery red, they appear.
I sense them most often at doorways. Portals.
There, on weatherworn sidewalks, a smattering of fragments from dead leaves surreptitiously dropped—I can never tell exactly from where—comes to life just as I approach. A soft rattling, a lifting, a sudden swirling… the upswept pieces begin dancing in a circle.
Fairies, I think.
And then I think, Children.
Small children delight in collecting such things, bits of leaves, tiny twigs, acorn caps, a butterfly’s bright-patterned wing, cicada shells. Nature’s cast-off scraps of life. In the hands of a child, they become treasures, magical objects, if only for a moment, in the mind of the child.
Watching the leaf-bits dancing in a circle, round and round and round again, I wonder if invisible children are at play. I almost want to linger long enough to hear them laughing…for there’s a stab of joy in it that I cannot explain, a piercing longing, a wild freedom…why should I perceive these things?
I wonder, then, about memories, so like the leaf fragments rising anew at the portals as I continue walking through the stations of my life, here to there, there to here…it is real, this revenant of my own childhood, the child that I was, holding onto the treasures that were given to me, reliving the precious bits that remain. As memories swirl round and round, I delight in them, in re-immersing for a moment in long-ago moments with people I loved, who loved me, who sheltered me, sustained me, prepared me…and who are gone but never far away. I see their faces before me, their eyes shining. I remember their stories. I hear their voices: I love you.
People die. Love does not.
Autumn comes with its fiery promises, its contrasts, its losses; trees will soon release their fragile organs in hopeful glory of surviving the winter. They shall sleep until spring, until the reawakening, life made new.
I walk on, remembering, wrapping gratitude round and round me like a hooded cloak, still sheltered, sustained, loved, awed by the beauty that deepens around me every passing year.
The stirrings begin with the first breath of cooler air.
Dancing revenants of what was, hinting at what is to be.
Perhaps they are whispering Allhallowtide.
lit bits and pieces 