Journey
August 31, 2006
Where do I go from here, Lord?
Where do I start?
I’ve been away so long,
I don’t know where to begin.
Back to Job?
back to where I was
when I started
to stop believing.
All this time later,
I’m back to Job.
To be sure
I’m not the same person
who thought
she understood Job
back then.
But maybe I need to try
to pick up that thread
here I deliberately
put it down so long ago.
It won’t “be the same”
because
*I* won’t “be the same.”
But I need to start.
c. 1983
Prayer
August 30, 2006
Maybe true prayer
doesn’t start
until I don’t know
what to pray for
or how to pray.
Then the
deeply desperate
hungering silence
becomes prayer.
Perhaps that’s the prayer
most readily heard
by God.
Dear God,
hear me.
Camping Out, Age 8
August 29, 2006
Camping out, age 8
Sleeping out
under the stars
with my best friend…
dry lightening flaring on the horizon
and a hundred billion, trillion
stars
wheeling overhead.
And so we lay
counting the shooting stars
and sharing deep, dark
8 -year-old secrets.
And then,
without even realizing it,
it was morning and
we were stretching awake
and shaking off the dew
and laughing.
We woke up laughing!
We laughed at the warm clear sunshine
we laughed at the incredibly blue sky
We laughed at the way the sun
and the sky
and the trees looked together.
We laughed because it was breakfast time.
We laughed because we looked like scarecrows.
Mostly we just laughed
because of clear-to-our-toes
Life.
Fishing
August 28, 2006
Fishing….
How like gambling.
Infinitely more
acceptable
but that same
“one more try”
feeling.
One more cast,
one more quarter,
one more card game
and then I’ll strike
it big.
And every time
I’m ready to call it a night
another one
leaps into the air,
baring its
broad rainbow belly
and then,
of course,
I must cast
again
and again
and again.
Day’s End 2
August 27, 2006
I wish I could capture last night.
Out canoeing
at dusk
with one lone loon
crying and calling her mate
and a lake full
of fish that jump
but don’t bite.
And, as I drifted
in the darkness,
silhouetted pines cut the
stark gray
stillness of the sky.
And the motion against the stillness
caught and stole my breath
in the old familiar
(but strange, new,
somehow) feeling
(as solid as the pines themselves)
that indeed,
Life is fine.
Life is good.
And as I breathe deeply,
it’s infinitely good to be alive.
Day’s End
August 26, 2006
Day’s end.
overlooking the lake…
the stillness of the meadows
water still reflecting blue day-sky…
A cup of steaming jasmine tea
and the silence.
Finally,
the silence,
the music,
after the tearing discovery that
I hadn’t left the Noise
at home.
The Noise was in me.
Impossible to run
from that Noise.
I can only turn
and face it
and die a little
as I slay the seething dragon
clinging to the inside
of my
rib cage.
Consecration
August 25, 2006
Lord,
this day is yours
my heart is yours
this summer is yours
my life is yours.
I’ve tried so hard to make things work
MY WAY,
to make them perfect for me,
that every moment is riddled with disappointment.
My heart feels like a
stony, barren field.
Break it for me, Lord.
Plow me up
and turn me under.
make me fit for planting.
Help me quit trying to be the farmer
when I’m only the field.
Help me celebrate that which I am.
I can’t possibly manage
all these people here.
I can’t possibly manage You!
Oh God, help me stop trying.
Loon Cry 1
August 24, 2006
I heard the loons cry
to each other
last night.
The moment became
timeless….
As I stood there
it could have been a year ago
or ten.
It could have been a hundred
or a thousand
All nights,
for a moment,
melted into one
eternal night.
And I felt the haunting beauty of
the blue-gray loneliness
of the dark
and the loons
and the water
reflecting the moon.
And,
with the loons,
I cry.
We are each of us
alone in this
beautiful, lonely,
dark, wet world.
