On, In, and Around Mondays: The River Waves

I go to be alone. It's been a long week. And I took note, this morning, of a headline about how the most successful business people really know how to take a weekend.

My weekend has been okay so far. But my mind can hardly wrap itself around the day. Even though I've trimmed bushes, watered the cucumbers, scattered two children's treasure bags of seashells into my little herb garden.

Under the pine, I've stood and sprayed the white parasites from the underside of the branches, noting how such tiny, tiny insects have begun to suck the life out of my dear tall loved-one. (Maybe you remember how I sat under her, days and nights, for a year.)

Such tiny deaths, over and over, I think. These are what could bring her down.

I spray and think of the contrast. My pine slow-dying. My garden, slow-treasuring into a miniature memory of the sea.

And me?

How does a life slow-die, or slow-live? Can it be as simple as taking it one day at a time, and choosing the treasuring?

It might be.

So I listen to the tiredness inside me, and I go to the river, where I see pairs of geese and pairs of boats bobbing on the waves. A rolling repetition that soothes anyone who would take the time to see.



I watch the joy of children, so self-possessed in how they touch the day.





The water mesmerizes. Its motion. Its diamond dazzle. Its sound against the rocks.



I let it all wash over me. The breeze, the joy, the sounds. I can feel the fatigue falling away.



Yes, I stay longer than I planned. The sun begins to set. And I am one now, with the waves. We move together, it seems, to lap our treasures to the shore.


______

On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)



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This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...

On, In, and Around Mondays: Say Yes

"The heart-stopping act of saying yes."

I still remember those words from The Soul Tells a Story. They seem apt for a weekend when I talked about saying no as a path to the soul.

Sometimes the small yes's are all we can say while we are otherwise saying no. I think that's okay. It is a positive step while we are, somehow, otherwise motionless.

Now I am thinking of a Thomas Lux poem which ends...

these things
would be delirious
desiring — say yes — to touch

any part of you, and glad, a fire-fed-
with-solid-oxygen glad — say yes — to be, in turn,
touched by you

And I am thinking of the small yes's I said to beautiful natural things, just with my time and my camera, over the past two days...

Were these things made delirious by my presence? Who knows. But I felt delirious to be touched—oh yes—by them.







_______

On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

<a href="http://seedlingsinstone.blogspot.com"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5083/5217906589_c7120874ca.jpg" width="308" height="69" alt="On In Around button" />

This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...

On, In, and Around Mondays: Nothing-Doing Writing

Phone calls (a lot of them!). Projects. Schedules. Business. And two weeks of laundry piled up because of the Christmas vacation.

My head, spinning. (I know where that metaphor came from now, as I sit in the olive-green wingback chair.)

A footstep in the hallway, and my husband comes into the room, wants to know, "Are you okay?"

I am just sitting. I've taken my glasses off, and I'm holding my head in my hands (it feels good). I am doing nothing at all. Books piled at my feet. The round wooden table to my left, lights off except for the Christmas tree (we keep ours until it can't be kept anymore).

I know the way nothing-sitting can fill me up. But I've been reminded by this article, to sit and let the world go quiet.

My writing notebook is in the pile of books, and I consider opening it. But then, I don't even want that.

It is a clear mind that eventually becomes creative. I've written about this process of emptying and filling before. It never changes. The red dress is still waiting. Today, it's under the Christmas tree. And soon I'm hoping the rain will turn to the white-nothing of January snow.

_______

On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

<a href="http://seedlingsinstone.blogspot.com"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5083/5217906589_c7120874ca.jpg" width="308" height="69" alt="On In Around button" />

This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...

On, In, and Around Mondays: Embrace the Shape

I was all alone for lunch. I didn't want to be alone.

The waitress sat me facing the wall. She set the maroon menu down on the brushed stainless steel table, and placed a white cloth napkin and large utensils before me.

Is this how a restaurant seats those who are alone? Maybe the wall is supposed to make the lonely diner feel closer to something. Maybe it gives a sense of safety and connection to something, if only a decorative picture of Eleanor Roosevelt.



Let me see the room I am alone in, I thought. Let me embrace the shape of this time. I picked up the leather menu and switched sides. The room was large. I saw groups of people laughing together, a set of businessmen pushing pencils, waiters moving from table to table.

Maybe I'll write, I thought, and went reaching for my purple notebook. But no, I thought. Embrace the shape of this time.

So I watched. I watched the candle burning in foggy rose-colored glass. I watched a man outside in the courtyard, talking, talking, talking on his phone, head bobbing, hand in jeans pocket. He talked through my focaccia with olive oil. He talked until I noticed the watermelon shape of my goblet and its sweat dripping down and the cubes melting inside. In his red and white striped Brooks Brothers styled shirt, he finally walked away when the burrata on bread with prune jam and basil arrived.



I cut small pieces of the burrata and moved it slowly up to my mouth. I let the fragrance of the jam and basil meet me before I put the bite on my tongue. It is like a spiritual experience, I thought.



I did the same with the tiny sweet potatoes covered with brown sugar and pecans. Slow movement, fragrance, take it in. I watched how the waiter who served me smiled. What's your name? I asked when he came to me again. It was Christian.



Finally, I took my phone out to check the time. How much longer would it be until I had my next meeting? I might need to go somewhere else and wait, pull out that paper and pen I'd been after.

But the time was gone. Somewhere in that hour and a half, I'd melted into the embrace.




________

On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

<a href="http://seedlingsinstone.blogspot.com"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5083/5217906589_c7120874ca.jpg" width="308" height="69" alt="On In Around button" />

This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...

Taking Back the Morning

I found this fun prompt via Maureen Doallas. It was supposed to involve a post-it note. Mine involved a morning.

Reading all these God in the Yard posts, I've been jealous of my own past experience, thus the mornings. Sitting on the back porch at 5:30 am, watching the sun come and touch all the things I've left unmown. Buttercups and field grass. And the Lamb's Ear watching from the garden.

Anyway, my mornings have been bringing back questions, and poetry. Thus, the answer (the questions) to the prompt...


Existential

How can I
how can you
how can we?
Maybe the answer
lies in poetry.

Freeing Myself From Distraction

I feel tense. It's been busy around here.

What to do?

I return to the idea of outdoor solitude. Drink roasted-rice Japanese tea and listen to the dog next door. Something fragrant is on the air. It smells white and iridescent, if that makes any sense.




Freed from distraction, I remember Claire's PhotoPlay. So when I am finished sitting, I retrieve my camera and go in search of simplicity.




Not quite getting it, I don't care. It is good to be a beginner at something. To be, again, a person who tries.


Flowers, Shadows, Doorknob photos, by L.L. Barkat.

Enforced Solitude

I want to tell you about the Brooklyn Bridge, which I walked over this weekend. And about how Art can change the course of a life. Thoughts about attentiveness have been swirling too. So much to share!

But.

My computer died. Sort of. Or maybe I was visited by an angel. More on that when I get the machine back, oh, about nine days from now.

Until then, it's enforced solitude. With the exception of a few borrowed moments over here at my gracious neighbor's house. Of course, I'll miss you. I really will.

Journeys

Recently, Long Island Express Girl talked about how her journey to Mount Hermon shook things up in her soul. Sorted things. Righted things. Clarified. As a result, she's actually going to change churches.

Journeys can do that for us. Turn things upside down and sideways. Take us away, only to bring us home with a new perspective. Bring us to action.

In his book The Attentive Life, Leighton Ford talks about embarking on a second journey, along which we begin more and more to become our true selves, to discover the true End of our lives. We often need, he says, a spiritual jolt to start us on the second journey, to make us stop and listen long enough to pay attention to what God is saying to us. (p.139) As I thought about Long Island Express Girl, I considered that, in going away, she had experienced a jolt that got her to stop and listen, to pay attention.

In the past year this jolt has been for me, quite simply, going nowhere at all. Just my own back yard. And I'm going to write about that, as many of you already know.

But even as I prepare to write about that, I'm quietly stepping into a new place. Yes, I spent a year going nowhere to go somewhere. Now I'm thinking about the flip side. Going somewhere to go somewhere. I may not manage to do any of these retreats offered by the people at Laity Lodge (sigh), but I am feeling a nudge to step beyond my own geography to discover the true End to my life.

I don't know where you're at. Maybe this year you need to stay put in your own back yard. Or maybe you need to journey elsewhere. If you're led to take a journey, you might just want to retreat to Texas. The offer to win that opportunity might be all the jolt you need.




Photos of Laity Lodge provided by Laity Lodge. Retreat Logo and Banner design by L.L. Barkat. If you want to join the High Calling Blogs group writing project and share your thoughts about the issue of retreat, alert Mark Goodyear and link to Chris Cree where all posts on this theme will be featured.

RELATED POSTS:

LL's Retreat to Appreciate
Kathy's poignant Only the Strong Retreat and Surrender
Carl's enchanting and profound Sacred Ingress
Gordon's lull-you-into-longing A Listening Prayer
Sam's touching story Asleep I Sang with the Body of Christ
Robert's surprise meetings, body and soul: The Power of Retreat
Mary's simple thoughts: Retreat, Retreat, Retreat... at Home
Spaghettipie's brief but powerful time of Retreat
Heather's poetic thoughts on Retreating into Creation
Gerrard's persuasive 10 Reasons: Retreats, Why?
A. Anjeanette's thoughtful (as always) It's God Who Draws Us to Retreat
Brandon's climb to retreat: The Symbol on the Rock

JUST A NOTE:
Ted Gossard started a book club for Stone Crossings. I love his first post and the surprising place of his conversion! If you'd like to listen in or comment on the conversation, check out Stepping Stones-Conversion. It would also be great to hear your own stories of conversion. If you post on the topic, you could feel free to upload your story to the Zimbio Stone Crossings Book Club.

Solo at the Red Sun

On the way to Calvin, I temporarily lost a necklace. I'd gone through security, laid the jewelry on my jacket, and put both into a gray plastic tub to send them through the x-ray machine. After walking through the metal detector, I began chatting with one of the security people while I tried to reassemble my belongings and get dressed again (it feels like one has to undress these days to walk through security!).

About 10 minutes later, after I'd settled into eating yogurt with strawberries while waiting to board, I saw a woman waving a necklace around, "Did anybody leave a necklace?!"

I retrieved it.

When I am distracted by conversation, I clearly lose track of details. But when I am alone, they press in from every side. Being alone, then, is a special gift...though it may not feel that way at the time.

Today I offer two poems from my gift of going solo to the Red Sun Buffet. Arriving a day early for the Calvin conference always means I'll be eating alone. I consider, in retrospect, that this set me up for a few days of keen awareness of details; it also meant that my singleness made me more connected to the longing that seemed inherent in the waitress and the buffet setting itself...


"Solo at the Red Sun Buffet"

Signs: sushi, grill, barb-q,
in green, orange neon.
Trill and hum of fridges
ovens, clack of friers.
Red crustaceans stacked
near fried rice, their eyes
black and fixed, like the gaze
of the leaning waitress; silent
in faux pink silk, she follows
every sip of my hot and sour,
each bite into my slight,
stale spring roll.


When I finished with my odd buffet (I ate things I don't usually eat— shrimp, chocolate pudding, fried rice— along with things I generally do... salad, green beans, tofu, soup), the waitress who had spent her time watching me brought the check and one fortune cookie. Upon reading the fortune, I immediately decided there was a poem in it. And there was a bit of prophecy too, as the days to follow would confirm...


"Fortune at the Red Sun Buffet"

Everything
will now come your way.


Tomorrow I'll begin to consider the flip side of going solo. Since a conference also offers the gift of connection.


RELATED POST:

LL's Leaving

Leaving

It is good to sometimes go, travel alone, find myself in extended solitude that asks me to face an empty hand, a quiet bed, a table for one and no one to pour the tea.

This solitude opens me, jigs my mind, shakes things from the far side of my limbs, gives me permission to think things I may not ordinarily think. In short, though I rarely welcome my leavings at the entrance side, I generally come babbling out the exit experience... reshaped, renewed and full of imaginings.

Going to Calvin was no different.

For the next week, I'll share the journey as I remember it, or as I was careful enough to write down along the way. To start, I'll give you this five-line poem that I found at Chicago O'Hare. It was just there, waiting to express what it feels like when life seems predictable and all wrapped up and figured out... only to be turned on its head, opened and directed towards possibility. The poem is called "Belle Nanon", which has a bit of French history behind it, but which is more simply a kind of pink rose.

"Belle Nanon"

Startling,
at this late hour,
that I should begin to
blush, surge, open
to young dew.


Later, on the plane, I found another poem, after the woman next to me shut the window shade so I could take a picture of the tray table. I'm sure she was wondering if I was suffering from a lack of lunch. I tried to explain that I wanted the picture to illustrate something I was thinking of writing.

Then the poem, which is not what I was thinking of writing, presented itself. Here it is...


"Flight"

Fasten seatbelt while seated, not while
kneeling yawning chatting spitting kissing
standing or (God forbid) walking to the lavatory.
If you fail to secure yourself and experience
unexpected turbulence, you can always use
your bottom cushion for flotation device.


That's it. Two little appetizer poems. Tomorrow I'll share some that I found when I got to my hotel and walked across the street to eat alone at the Red Sun Buffet.


Tray Table photo by L.L. Barkat.