rest

Still waters

/ Fran Haley / 15 Comments

It’s been a while since I wrote a post, dear Reader and Writer Friends. Life keeps happening. The spiritual journey presses on, across craggy, unforgiving mountains with paths cut too near the edge; down through the valleys steeped in shadows and heavy rainfall; alongside the sea, where sun and salt pull at the wings of the soul longing to be free; and by the shady garden path where one can sometimes find an unoccupied bench to sit awhile, inhaling dewy flower-fragrances. —What is the spiritual journey, if not metaphor?

The beach is always the first summer getaway for my husband and me. Now that the children are grown and married, it’s just us…except for the new puppy, Jesse, now five months old (could this be a reason I haven’t written much of late? Indeed.). And so we headed east with our Jesse in tow.

We needed the break. There are a thousand reasons why. You have the same, yourselves. It so happens that this particular destination is in the quietest community we have ever experienced. New, colorful beach homes with impeccably manicured lawns, rustling palms, rippling birdsong on the ever-present stiff breeze —the ocean, making its nearby presence known. Human voices are almost entirely absent here. We marvel at it. Almost eerie but for the incredible sense of peace and intense sunlight that lasts longer than a summer day ought. Outside with Jesse, soaking up the radiant light, the silence, the rejuventating breeze, the word paradise comes to mind over and over. As does a longing for it to never end.

After dinner one evening my husband and I take a drive. I am the driver now; the loss of his eye and his heart condition make him nervous about driving the new car. This is how it is, now. This is how it will be, as long as our journey continues. On this particular evening, we travel to a beach our children enjoyed when they were small. The road meanders through marsh and lakes. As I am the driver, I can’t look at everything. I catch glimpses of big white birds sailing over the water. Egrets. Elegant. White as snow, poetry come to life. We round a bend and I see a whole colony of them, roosting in a tree by at the waterside.

I could not get a picture…even if I had, it would not do justice to the reality, the breathtaking beauty of that colony of big white birds in the deep, dark green tree by the still waters. Again, the word paradise returns to mind, with a fleeting recollection of being a little child in a bathtub singing a song I made up for myself: Bird of paradise, bird of paradise, you’re so pretty and nice…I don’t know what inspired me. Maybe I’d just learned the term “bird of paradise” and loved it for its lyrical feel.

How quickly time passes. One day a child splashing in a tub singing made-up songs, to—poof!—forty years married, splashing in the sunset chapters of life…still savoring the beautiful, all along the journey.

For it is there, it is there, if we but take time to see.

Thank God for the moments of awe and rest that only He can provide.

AI-generated image of egrets roosting in a tree by the water…does not do justice to the real sight.

*******

With thanks to Karen Eastlund for July’s Spiritual Journey “still waters” theme, and to my fellow SJT writers, who are such good company.

The duality of slow

/ Fran Haley / Leave a comment

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

What the sea teaches

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and, greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.”

—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift From the Sea

Lindbergh’s words come back to me as I contemplate the frenzy of living and the pull of making the most of every moment, especially on vacation (how often do we say we need a vacation after returning from our vacation?). Life is not always a matter of doing, of endlessly digging for treasure…but carving out time just to be and to see what treasures may come. For they will. And we will be far less likely to miss them.

Dog day rhythms

/ Fran Haley / 1 Comment

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.

—John Lubbock

haiku story poem

dog days of summer
triple-digit heat index
white haze cloaks the air

one can drown in it
too hot for lying in grass
even in the shade

lethargic rhythms
settle on all living things
except for insects

unrepentant sun
shimmers on dragonfly wings
iridescent darts

buzzing cicadas
in feverish frenzy sing
of love high in trees

remaining unseen
falling silent before storms
darkening the skies

as lightning’s forked tongue
snakes from the heavens to earth
(thunder, they told me

when I was a child,
is just the angels bowling;
that’s their pins, crashing)

—the heat breaks at last
like evening revival
saving weary souls

murmuring water
seeps into my dreams
ephemeral streams

summer’s lullaby
syncopated rain-fingers
tapping windowpanes

no sleep is so deep
as that borne by rhythms of
dogs days descending

summer rain. annalisa ceolin. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

*******

with thanks to Ruth Ayres for the inspirational quote at SOS-Sharing Our Stories: Magic in a Blog

December dawn

/ Fran Haley / 33 Comments

I wake
after having slept
without rest
mind weary
of turning, turning

I throw off
the heavy blanket
of night
of darkness
to stand shivering
on the chilly cusp

there is no sound
just hush

and my heart grasps
before my eyes glimpse
the glimmering

before I know it
I’ve thrown open the door
to stand
barefoot in the frost
still nightgowned
as birds glide high above
round and round
tracing infinity signs
against rose-gold clouds
in silence
in ceremonial welcome
of day

first light, ever bright
parts the pink veils
a sun so, so old
yet so golden-new
peeks through

and I think
of beginnings
not endings
of possibility
not inadequacy
of movement
not stasis

there are no words
only the distant
occasional rustle
of feathered wings
from on high

and in that

I rest



*******


with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life invitation to write
and to all who gather here to encourage one another
on the writerly journey

Blanket

/ Fran Haley / 13 Comments

I am more tired than I realized.

I wake up early every day, around 3:30. Not intentionally; I just do. Instead of lying awake or drowsing for another couple of hours, I get up and write. It’s the perfect time, before my menfolk and canines begin to stir.

My early mornings are a logical reason to be tired.

And spring break is still a week away. The last mile is always the hardest . . . .

And I am twenty-five days into a thirty-one day writing streak, the Slice of Life Story Challenge, which requires an extreme level of thought-immersion and attention to the minutiae around me (everything is a writable moment). My receptors must be wide-open all the time. This, however, is a good kind of tired. Even though I am mentally composing while I’m sleeping.

And I am fighting an allergy or a cold; I feel it lurking around my edges. My boys, when they were small, used to say, “I am catching up to a cold.”

And it’s been a long winter. There may be a few snowflakes tonight. Spring hasn’t fully sprung. There’s still a lot of darkness.

And my family marks a year of losing loved ones, young and old, sudden and by inches with dementia. My husband, his sister, and I need to finish cleaning out their mother’s house.

The dogs, knowing I’m the mom of everything, trail my every step. Henry wriggles like a worm, with an insatiable need for pats, for attention, and even poor old Nikolaus, his eyes like clear marbles full of misty clouds, is still able to scamper behind me in hopes of a treat.

And so, I’m tired.

Yesterday, being Saturday, I did something I almost never do:

I finished my post and went back to bed.

My husband, who’s now been up for a short while, reading in the study, comes looking. “Oh, you’re back in bed?”

“Just for a little while,” I say.

“Okay.” He closes the door.

I pull the blankets up to my chin. So cozy. I drowse. I hear bits of blog posts echoing in my brain.

The door opens. Older son. Henry’s so-called “dad.”

“Are you sick, Mom?”

“No. Just resting.”

“Oh, okay.” He goes to fix his breakfast. He loves a big breakfast. His brother won’t eat until lunchtime.

Snuffling outside the door. Henry. He usually begins to grumble-half-whine to come in and snuggle to me, or to sleep on my bed if I am getting ready for work. Today he must sense something. He goes away. Unusual.

Distant clanking in the kitchen. Muffled voices. Footsteps in the hallway.

The door opens. Younger son, Cadillac Man.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. Just resting.”

“Okay. Lowees.” This is how he first said ‘I love you’ when he was a baby. Lowees. It immediately became part of the family lexicon. We all say it to each other. His father reminds me again and again that Cadillac Baby said it to him first.

“Lowees,” I say.

I can’t stay here long. None of them will be able to take it. There’s too much to do, anyway. There are places to be.

But I pull the covers partway over my head, sinking into the warmth, the softness, savoring the moment, grateful for the web of words knitting itself from random scraps in my mind, for the abiding blanket of love wrapped over and around my life.