2nd Sunday in Advent

I spent a good deal of this morning anxious, frustrated, and, to be honest, feeling downright crazy (and it might have been more than a feeling).  My thoughts can get so caught up in what should be something simple, and can then be found somewhere far away from their original course.  Trying to distract myself I pulled up facebook (yes, facebook) to find one of the first posts declaring that today is the second Sunday in Advent where we light the advent candle of peace.  I immediately felt my body lose some of its tension.  The Prince of Peace is coming, has come.  "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."

I am so easily discombobulated.  It is so easy to let peace slip past.  It is easy to let the perplexity of people, of words, of emotions, of relationships frustrate.  So much in life is muddled.  I am also the kind of person who wants desperately to understand, and wants to be understood.  This is frustration.  I feel as though I keep having to come back to the places where like in Job, God answers from out of the whirlwind, out of the mess of the storm and says you cannot understand, says it with a lot of sarcasm (which I always kind of loved) says it over and over again using so many various analogies.

 "Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

Dress for action like a man;

I will question you, and you make it known to me.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

Tell me, if you have understanding.

Who determined its measurements—surely you know!

Or who stretched the line upon it?"  (Job 38:1-5 ESV)

However, not stopping there I also need 1 Corinthians 13:12

"For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."

So then, in a sense I arrive back to where I started.  Words and more words making everything murky, however, thankfully the first 2 advent candles are hope and peace.  There is hope that this frail limited mind that yet seems so complex and frustrating to me can be both known and will know.  For now I only see in part, and that gives me peace as well.  I know (if not at all fully) the one who knows.  

Jane Kenyon

"Having it Out with Melancholy" f many remedies are prescribed for an illness, you may be certain that the illness has no cure. A. P. CHEKHOV The Cherry Orchard 1 FROM THE NURSERY When I was born, you waited behind a pile of linen in the nursery, and when we were alone, you lay down on top of me, pressing the bile of desolation into every pore. And from that day on everything under the sun and moon made me sad -- even the yellow wooden beads that slid and spun along a spindle on my crib. You taught me to exist without gratitude. You ruined my manners toward God: "We're here simply to wait for death; the pleasures of earth are overrated." I only appeared to belong to my mother, to live among blocks and cotton undershirts with snaps; among red tin lunch boxes and report cards in ugly brown slipcases. I was already yours -- the anti-urge, the mutilator of souls. 2 BOTTLES Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin, Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax, Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft. The coated ones smell sweet or have no smell; the powdery ones smell like the chemistry lab at school that made me hold my breath. 3 SUGGESTION FROM A FRIEND You wouldn't be so depressed if you really believed in God. 4 OFTEN Often I go to bed as soon after dinner as seems adult (I mean I try to wait for dark) in order to push away from the massive pain in sleep's frail wicker coracle. 5 ONCE THERE WAS LIGHT Once, in my early thirties, I saw that I was a speck of light in the great river of light that undulates through time. I was floating with the whole human family. We were all colors -- those who are living now, those who have died, those who are not yet born. For a few moments I floated, completely calm, and I no longer hated having to exist. Like a crow who smells hot blood you came flying to pull me out of the glowing stream. "I'll hold you up. I never let my dear ones drown!" After that, I wept for days. 6 IN AND OUT The dog searches until he finds me upstairs, lies down with a clatter of elbows, puts his head on my foot. Sometimes the sound of his breathing saves my life -- in and out, in and out; a pause, a long sigh. . . . 7 PARDON A piece of burned meat wears my clothes, speaks in my voice, dispatches obligations haltingly, or not at all. It is tired of trying to be stouthearted, tired beyond measure. We move on to the monoamine oxidase inhibitors. Day and night I feel as if I had drunk six cups of coffee, but the pain stops abruptly. With the wonder and bitterness of someone pardoned for a crime she did not commit I come back to marriage and friends, to pink fringed hollyhocks; come back to my desk, books, and chair. 8 CREDO Pharmaceutical wonders are at work but I believe only in this moment of well-being. Unholy ghost, you are certain to come again. Coarse, mean, you'll put your feet on the coffee table, lean back, and turn me into someone who can't take the trouble to speak; someone who can't sleep, or who does nothing but sleep; can't read, or call for an appointment for help. There is nothing I can do against your coming. When I awake, I am still with thee. 9 WOOD THRUSH High on Nardil and June light I wake at four, waiting greedily for the first note of the wood thrush. Easeful air presses through the screen with the wild, complex song of the bird, and I am overcome by ordinary contentment. What hurt me so terribly all my life until this moment? How I love the small, swiftly beating heart of the bird singing in the great maples; its bright, unequivocal eye.

Wonders can not reach me.  Balanced edges hang around forced continuity.  If I dared I might run, clipped knowledge seeping from flailing limbs, abandoned wisdom and displaced responsibility left to cling to nothing but thin air. And yet I know that I am not brave enough for such wild decisiveness.  I fear the empty expanse, the lonesome fate of freedom, the harsh wisdom I could acquire.  So I rest, stayed by a thought, caught in the heavy silence.

I wish for long looked, bracken brimmed coast lands,
for a steady silence, and a comfort found in this stumbling skin.
For reconciliation between presences and privations.
For empty space in which to simply subsist, for a time.
In short, for peace to pervade, for hope to heighten.

These days, teal tinged, are untouchable. Memory, curled and cracked, cannot bear the reality of things past, but instead echo it back in half understood yet intangible forms.

Each night I wonder as I fold threads upon threads over myself, as my mind spins through not only the foggy events of the day, but days and years meshed into a cohesion impossible to work out, but ever present, whether each day is actually a new life. If I will fall asleep this person, freckled, suspended between doubt and decision, and wake up another with all the back stories of this new life wedged in the unsolid mind's memory. This could happen infinitely over and over and I, ignorant and feeble, would never know.

Wendell

"Thus the proposition that it would be good to know everything is probably false. The real question that is always to be addressed is the one that arises from our state of ignorance: How does one act well - sensitively, compassionately, without irreparable damage - on the basis of partial knowledge?

Perhaps the most proper, and the most natural, response to our state of ignorance is not to haste to increase the amount of available information, or even to increase knowledge, but rather a lively and convivial engagement with the issues of form, elegance, and kindness. These issues of "sustainability" are both scientific and artistic."

-Wendell Berry Life Is A Miracle

Current disappointment in life: I cannot know/do/be everything. Wendell Berry has been helping me come to terms with this. It's dangerous to think we can know everything, that what we are doing is THE most important thing anyone can be doing (I sometimes struggle with this arrogance about the arts, of course other times I struggle with the opposite where I think my efforts to become better in painting and music are meaningless, both are dangerous). I'm coming to realize how very much I do not know, no matter how desperately I cram all kinds of things into my brain. And I'm thankful, at least at times. Thankful that I am limited, because it becomes horribly exhausting when you think you can know everything, or should know, or must know. And also because it helps me have more grace both for myself and for others.

Mainly, all that is to say, read Wendell Berry.

Song.

Recently thoughts have not been coming out in a normal word fashion. Though the recording quality is pretty terrible (I need money) here is a recent song instead.

L'Engle

Sonnet, Trinity 18 by Madeleine L'Engle

Peace is the center of the Atom, the core

Of quiet within the storm. It is not

A cessation, a nothingness; more

The lightning in reverse is what

Reveals the light. It is the law that binds

The atom’s structure, ordering the dance

Of proton and electron, and that finds

Within the midst of flame and wind, the glance

In the still eye of the vast hurricane.

Peace is not placidity; peace is

The power to endure the megatron of pain

With joy, the silent thunder of release,

The ordering of Love. Peace is the atom’s start,

The primal image: God within the heart.