Pre-Lenten Ponderings

This song (above) is several years old.  It came about when I was driving.  I was struggling that day - I can't for the life of me even remember why - I just remember being in the car, in the midst of a panic attack, while crying, and then (because I was alone in the car) starting to sing these words.  For some reason I was thinking about if the other day in relation to Lent, to fear, to pushing past fear and felt compelled to share the song.  The recording is not great, just an attempt to get thoughts down.  I recorded it before I was married to a sound genius.

Life is bizarre.

The rhythms of the body,

welcomed unconsciousness,

resurrection,

the weighty feel of the mind,

the awkward unmentionable movements,

and the light hold of reality

all accepted as normal.

Consoled by blankets, tea,
and -hushed clanks of heater, refrigerator's whoosh,
dog's breath- something like silence,
I quiet myself
-Or attempt that perplexing process.-
I need more: silence, hearing, humor.
Less: distrust, words.

I feel the malady of the quotidian of late.  The swiftly moving days, the inability to stop myself mid-motion and let myself see.  It is good to stop and listen, to look, to find the beauty in the full tilt.  There is much I need to hear, to learn, to celebrate.

Beauty has been sneaking up on me, pushing itself into my squinted eyes.  To be honest, I don't always recognize it.  I mistake it for other things, for a good nights sleep maybe, or simple science.  As is the case often with me, I am hesitant.  Hesitant to claim it, reluctant to state an absolute I can not defend with well phrased logic.  I am also hesitant to gush, for fear both of loss, as if an overabundance of words could kill a thing and for fear of oversimplification, this cannot be explained in my half-knowing language.

And yet, there it is.  Happily, tentatively.  The pessimist in me fears beauty for how easily it can be lost, however I am starting to be able to latch onto the joy of it, while knowing, even if... "all shall be well" for fear and over-thinking can also kill a thing.

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.

Adrienne Rich
Ideal Landscape

We had to take the world as it was given:
The nursemaid sitting passive in the park
Was rarely by a changeling prince accosted.
The mornings happened similar and stark
In rooms of selfhood where we woke and lay
Watching today unfold like yesterday.

Our friends were not unearthly beautiful.
Nor spoke with tongues of gold; our lovers blundered
Now and again when most we sought perfection,
Or hid in cupboards when the heavens thundered.
The human rose to haunt us everywhere,
Raw, flawed, and asking more than we could bear.

And always time was rushing like a tram
Through streets of a foreign city, streets we saw
Opening into great and sunny squares
We coudl not find again, no map could show—
Never those fountains tossed in that same light,
Those gilded trees, those statues green and white.

Mystery

"Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland."

-G.K. Chesterton Orthodoxy

"Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you. The mould in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance..." C.S. Lewis

I have recently finished The Problem of Pain and can't keep the last chapter out of my head. So beautiful. I love how Lewis explains the mystery of our longings. I highly recommend this book, though lets be honest, I would highly recommend anything by C.S. as would a ton of other people.

Confession

Doubt and longing are my recent repeating anthems. Recent being years old.

Normally I shoulder my insecurities with laughter, but have recently found myself too weary for mockery.

I find this flow of my brain rather melodramatic, and yet, though I wish to be someone who can shrug off the judgement of others, who can laugh at oneself and at the inelegant plight of being human I sometimes find going from one activity to the next all I can do.

In the silence I must admit that I am not always sure. Of myself. Of others. Of God.

I cannot fathom how to hold my posture in all this chaotic shuffling, in these griefs present, past and waiting. I long to be be strength and stability or to at least feign these foreign figures. Truth of late, however, seems to seep from my eyebrows raisings, from my jests, from the way my body slumps. Truth and confusion, or the truth that I am confused.

In these moments I am thankful for the landscape of the earth and the huge, unreal looking clouds - the yearning of them, because they help me to step out of my own insistent dreads and doubts and make me feel more certain that there is more, that there is hope.

"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." Ps. 34:18

"The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup, you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places: indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance." Ps. 16:6

An Appeal

You, my friends, wherever you are,

Whether you are grieving just now, or full of joy,

To you I lift this cup of pungent wine

As they often do in the land of France.

From a landscape of cranes and canals,

Of tangled railway tracks and winter fog,

In the smoke of black tobacco, I make my way

Toward you and I ask you a question.

Tell me, for once at least laying

Caution aside, and fear and guarded speech,

Tell me, as you would in the middle of the night

When we face only night, the ticking of a watch,

The whistle of an express train, tell me

Whether you really think that this world

Is your home? That your internal planet

That revolves, red-hot, propelled by the current

Of your warm blood, is really in harmony

With what surrounds you? Probably you know very well

The bitter protest, every day, every hour,

The scream that wells up, stifled by a smile,

The feeling of a prisoner who touches a wall

And knows that beyond it valleys spread,

Oaks stand in summer splendor, a jay flies

And a kingfisher changes a river to a marvel.

In you, as in me, there is a hidden certainty

That soon you will rise, in undiminished light,

And be real, strong, free from what restrained you.

That above the mold of broken flagstones,

Above memory and your transfomration

Which is like the lifhgt of birds when ice

Crumbles in the traces of hooves – above everythin,

It will be given to you to run as celestial fire,

To set sails ablaze with your flame at dawn

When ships trail smoke and archipelagoes

Wake up, shaking copper from their hair.

No, I address you here, from the ashes of winter,

In the simplest words, not to induce doubt

Or to call melancholy, for instance, the sister of fate.

On and on. The heart is still beating.

Nothing is lost. If one day our words

Come so close to the bark of tress in the forest,

And to orange blossoms, that they become one with them,

It will mean that we have always defended a great hope.

How should I defend it? By naming things.

That isn’t easy. I say the word “dawn”

And the tongue by itself affixes “rosy-fingered”

As in the childhood of Greece. The sun and the moon

Have the faces of gods. I am not certain

That Poseidon won’t emerge suddenly

From the sea bottom (he wears an earring)

Ploughing the waves with his motor, towing a retinue of nymphs,

And when I wander in alpine forests and meadows

Every cleft in the rock seems to me a gate

Through which one enters the underworld. I wait for a guide.

And space, what is it like? Is it mechanical,

Newtonian? A frozen prison?

Or the lofty space of Einstein, the relation

Between movement and movement? No reason to pretend

I know. I don’t know, and if I did,

Still my imagination is a thousand years old.

Jump into the water with your clothes on.

Such heaviness (deadweight, as sometimes in our dreams).

It’s the same with us. We wear the brocade

Of past centuries or dress in false purple.

Covering our faces with velvet masks,

Classical, playing again what has been played before.

And yet, I affirm, this is the earth of wonder.

It gives us the gift of eternal youth.

To you I lift this cup, here, on the stage.

I, one voice, no more, in the vast theater.

Against closed eyes, bitter lips.

Against silence, which is slavery.

- Czeslaw Milosz

I have been thinking far too much about future plans recently. Possibly this is to keep my mind occupied. I don't think I want to process the last couple of weeks, of sadness, of what means to be back in the States, but around 2000 miles from where I might possible call home, (I'm really not sure where to call home), what it will mean to be back here again in just a few months surrounded again by family, but also by the unfamiliar and by the impermanence (I'm not currently planning on staying in Montana forever). I don't think I can process it all, so instead I dream about grad school, about going back to Belgium, about the millions of possibilities (normally highly unpractical) so that I don't feel like giving up already at coping.

It has been so good being surrounded by family, around people who get my sense of humour, who I can be completely random and annoying around without fear of rejection, yet at the same time it has been highly difficult. Highly difficult to acknowledge a goodbye to someone I really love, to see my Grandmommy on repeat and missing my Granddaddy (telling the same stories over and over), to say goodbye to the one place on earth that has remained truly like home to me and to my dad and to my siblings (my Grandparent's house) to see my little sisters (particularly one little sister) sad with all the huge things she has to deal with of late (moving, death and dealing in general with the ups and downs of life) and to feel myself incapable, incapable of healing any of these wounds and sadnesses, incapable because I too am sad, incapable because I have no advice to give, because I feel a tad lost in all these things as well.

This whole past year has been full of humbling and these past few weeks have been particularly so. I can't say that I understand what God is doing in these things, but I am attempting to trust. At times I feel as though I have peace, that despite my incomprehension I am capable of acknowledging at least that God has these things in control and that ultimately all will work out. I still fear though, for this life, for these things. I don't always trust. I waver, doubt and worry. I am thankful that grace is not dependent on me.

Mainly, I am currently just overwhelmed will all these things. I have read 5 books in these past 2 weeks just attempting to keep my head above water and also to keep some perspective as well (thanks God for stories!). I both do not want to process and desperately want to be able to wrap my brain around things so that I can function more fully.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Reminder.

"When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

"Where, O death, is your sting?”

“Where, O death, is your victory?

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." -1 Corinthians 15:54-56

Trying to feel this passage and not to just know it. Sometimes it is hard to feel as though we have the victory over death in Christ. Though it's good to remember that Jesus still cried over the death of Lazarus even when he knew that he not only had the power to raise him, but was going to do that right away. I have to remind myself that sadness is still okay (though it is no fun) and at the same time that it is not the end either.

My hands ache to be making something of value.

Sweet arias sound just beyond comprehension,

vivid colors blink in and out of focus,

you, even, at times untouchable, me too hesitant to try to reach

past doubt, past insecurity.

Still, I will remain here, rooted yet waiting

to be dug from the confines of dirt, sand

and earthworm's slimy trace against my toes.