A very good man died today,
Was gone on a breath of light.
He could not stay: it seems
There were other pressing tasks
Beyond our sight, souls to serve,
Somewhere we might, one day, know.
He will lower his head to those souls too,
And soothe hearts, sharing grace;
His hand at a shoulder, sharing care,
Facing with them, too, the question of how we live.
He, so rare, knew how.
Contemplation
My version of sitting quietly with God
Is no kind Eden.
Sounds, thoughts heckle,
Like skinheads in a bar,
Hating my couth look.
Stillpoint
Is a faraway shade moving in slow,
Ominous.
I dread the possession,
Yet seek it;
Eyeballs strain further within,
Socket flesh tight.
Like a dark whale rising
He comes.
And there’s no, no, no room for me.
I slap and flash and flail,
Occipital urgency
To get out, get out
Now.
Tendrils of dream climb my spine,
Like interweaving snakes,
Selfish helix, hemlock rising fast.
Did twin snakes coil Eve’s tree,
Not one?
I watch them come.
And plead for Him to find me
When they’re done.
Storm Rising
There’s a wildness in nature tonight
I cannot answer.
They say a storm is coming,
But I think these surging trees,
Beckon only to eternity.
You and I have known
The glistering cosmic draw
That counters with the urge
For peace, in careless complacency.
How better would it be to have left these things unknown, as before?
There’s a wildness in nature tonight
I cannot answer.
The Question
My heart I made a place for you,
My home I made a space for you,
At sunrise I would wake with you,
By sunset I would ache for you.
Why question my emotion
In light of this devotion?
When passions surge and break with you,
And all I am I stake with you.
Whalesong
Sun streams down
Through blue to a
Spangling point,
Deep.
Still shade below
Could not be life, as I
Flail, graceless, on the surface.
Haunting purrsong
Grows louder;
Timeless, melodic moan
To sound the world I’m here,
Come to me.
Come to my darkling piece of blue
And know my peace.
Rising shadow knows my
Feeble frame and eyes deep inside.
As I wonder, shallow,
At his calm clarity;
Accepting, in ageless wisdom.
John Irvine
A stranger gave John Irvine fifteen quid
To take him to West Lingua.
Slow daybreak on their breath,
The two men sailed in silence,
Leaving flickering Whalsay for Lingua’s dark shore.
John was glad for the cash;
But he’d seen this man’s look in other men,
And guessed he was a suicide.
Ha’else would wan’ three days in that manless, Godless place,
No’but stones and dust?
THE FIFTH CONFESSION
Tell me, O Lord, I beseech you, what can my soul pretend, if it seeks anything with you which is an impediment to my truly loving you? What can I, I say, pretend, seeing no peace or comfort can be found, but in you alone? What do we when we desire comfort outside of you, but deprive ourselves of a most happy liberty, which they enjoy who desire nothing for time or eternity, but (without all regard of themselves) to be perfectly conformable to you?
If we would live without all intention or wish but of enjoying you (which cannot be done but by a truly humble and faithful soul), the devil could not overcome us by any wile. We should easily retain true peace with ourselves, with all the world, and, above all, with you. For when we adhere to any created thing, we become a slave to our passion and are in imminent danger of sin. No way is plain, secure, easy, and without peril of all error but this: that the soul seeks nothing but you, her creator: this is the way in which a fool cannot err. This is the way, without question, in which a soul without all impediment adheres to you, the fountain of all true wisdom, who willingly illuminates our needy souls, if we will but give you our heart and soul for yourself.
You consider not our former sins after you have once blotted them out, but do most bountifully and abundantly bestow your grace upon those who have had the manners of beasts in time past and do refresh them with the sweet dew of your grace. This, having been tasted in their soul, makes them loathe all that is less than you. Neither can they take any content but in hearing your name, speaking to you, and longing for you, after you have wounded their soul with your divine charity.
Oh, let me sit alone, silent to all the world and it to me, that I may learn the song of love and praise of you which is infinitely due to you from me! This song none can sing but those that truly love you, and whose only consolation is to be without all comfort as often and as much as it shall please you. In nothing, as you know, do I put any joy or comfort but in sighing after you, who cannot here be seen by us as you are.
Oh, teach me those virtues which draw a soul so out of herself into you that she becomes insensible to all things but you! These virtues are true humility, which knows not how to exalt itself, perfect subjection to you, and discretion, which can only be taught by your majesty, and yet is so necessary that no virtue hath more virtue in it than partakes of true discretion. For without that, we, instead of true virtue, practice absurd follies. O my Lord, above all things let me seek your glory, and may you be praised by all creatures for all eternity! Amen.
pretend: lay claim to
Eternal,
I seek you in silence, but am so often distracted by things that I think are you but are shades of you. And, of course, by all those things that aren’t you at all. Silence my monkey-mind; strengthen my resolve to find you; and stop, stop me feeling like I’m playing at this, an habitual dilettante. My soul is immersed in me. Draw me out and to your eagle-eye view, your wound of love, that just for a moment is a glimpse of totality that only you can gift.
Amen.
I’ve recently started homeschooling my 11- and 12-year old girls. Not through any burning desire to shun the system, or any distaste for public teaching, but to accommodate their burgeoning acrobatic gymnastics schedule as they train for international competition. Thankfully, I’m not left to my own devices with their whole curriculum. They have 2 days a week of structured schooling at a co-op and 3 days with me as I marshal homework and other enrichment.
I have to tell you that faced with the frightening responsibility of getting their education right, I find I’m more excited about my children’s potential than ever. We are reading aloud together, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day, books that hum with adventure, daring, and good deeds. We nature-walk, choosing insects and plants that capture their interest, finding them in a handbook as we go. We cook and paint. Our quiet time is truly contemplative, a time for recharging busy bodies and minds. None of these things we could do with any traction before as their time was always taken elsewhere, behind closed doors, in very structured space.
They have both had at least 6 years of public elementary school. They co-op with 50 other kids and have their best friends at the gym, so I don’t worry about socialization or character development. I do worry about them keeping pace academically with their contemporaries nationwide, and I guess we have various forms of standardized testing open to us to help us evaluate that.
What I am truly grateful for is the chance to fully participate in the intellectual growth of my kids. If they must be corrected, it is with the consistency of someone who has time, love, and sufficient knowledge of the child to follow through with measured consequences. I have the time, interest, and motivation to meet my own child’s mental and physical needs. It takes an exceptional teacher – and I have taught, in community college and university settings – to get to the core of those issues and get that right on an individual basis. For most, that is a level of engagement too far, both in terms of personal comfort and logistical pragmatics.
So, I will keep you posted! Our home has changed from being mostly a place of retreat at the end of a hard day of sensory assault, to being the crucible in which the excitement happens, concepts take shape, and ideas about life and the world take form. Lightbulbs go on and there is joy! It is a change I plan to embrace moment by moment.
I have long carried with me the notion that doubt is essential to faith, so long, in fact, that I have forgotten the rational underpinnings that bring me to it, but I think they must go something like this:
–to believe without doubt is blind adherence
–to question the proposition is to give life to the proposition
–you cannot have acceptance without there first being resistance
–as faith emerges, the rational mind acknowledges its limitations, and begins to live into the mystery and resolution of paradox
Part of my spiritual walk is, and has been, to enfold doubt into my state of faith. Each re-emergence from doubt becomes a resurrection. I have even tried to walk as an atheist for a while, taking Paul perhaps a little too literally in my attempt to become the other — soaking up huge quantities of Christopher Hitchens, and trying to take on the mindset for a while of a life without mystery, without God. It was an interesting experiment, but every piece of my rational mind cried out that there was more to being than it could possibly know, and my attempt at “No!” ended up with an even more resolutely “Everlasting Yes!”
I think we should, at every point, enfold doubt, and that we will be better ministers to the others for it.
Saint Anne’s Reel is usually attributed to the great Quebecois fiddler Joseph Allard, the master who taught Jean Carignan.
Here is a very nice rendition of it:
youtube.com/watch?v=Rq-4oQHGq2…mbedded#!
St. Anne, the mother of Jesus, is not mentioned in the biblical canon at all, but first appears in 2nd century apocryphal literature. The French were the first people of western Europe to venerate her, around the 13th Century. In the 17th Century, the French brought their unique devotion to St. Anne with them to the New World. In 1658, a chapel was built about thirty miles northeast of Quebec City along the St. Lawrence River, called St. Anne-de Beaupre. Over the centuries, the site grew into one of the most popular Catholic shrines in the world. In 1922, a huge basilica was built on the site of the original chapel, which still stands today. Joseph Allard, the composer of St. Anne’s Reel, was from Chateauquay, Quebec, not far from the shrine.
Being of Shetland descent, I rather prefer the legend that the seed idea for this reel came from the reel players of the Shetland Islands, as it is also known as the Shetland Reel in some circles. But that’s just me…
