Enough

Having returned home last evening after 10 days at St. Benedict’s Monastery, and being my way to a 6:00 physical therapy appointment this morning, I am way too tired to have much by way of original thought to share this morning. (And I have to save some energy to grade exams today.)

So I thought I would share a beautiful poem by David Whyte my dear friend Richard sent to me the other day, when I wrote about the need to accept that the best I could do (on a day I was feeling sick) might not be as much as I would like, but it was all I could do.

We all need to remember that it is enough. That we are enough.

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now.

(Enough, David Whyte)

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Follow Me

I tend to accumulate scraps of paper with notes to myself, some of which I actually look at again, although I confess that sometimes I can’t actually remember what the note means (and sometimes can’t even read the scribbles).

Cleaning out some excess papers from the folder containing things relating to my book talks, I came across one that said “Roland Flint follow.”

Roland Flint was a member of the English department at the time I was an undergraduate at Georgetown. He was both a wonderful teacher and an extraordinary poet.

When I saw the note, I remembered a woman coming up to me at one of my talks and talking to me about him. Since I wasn’t sure about the “follow” part of the note, I did what I’m guessing most of us in this internet age would do: I put “Roland Flint follow” into Google. And what I discovered was this poem, titled Follow, written by Flint:

Now here is this man mending his nets
after a long day, his fingers
nicked, here and there, by ropes and hooks,
pain like tomorrow in the small of his back,
his feet blue with his name, stinking of baits,
his mind on a pint and supper – nothing else -
a man who describes the settled shape
of his life every time his hands
make and snug a perfect knot.

I want to understand, if only for the story,
how a man like this,
a man like my father in harvest,
like Bunk MacVane in the stench of lobstering,
or a teamster, a steelworker,
how an ordinary working stiff,
even a high tempered one,
could just be called away.

It’s only in one account
he first brings in a netful -
in all the others, he just calls,
they return the look or stare and then
they “straightaway” leave their nets to follow.
That’s all there is. You have to figure
what was in that call, that look.

(And I wouldn’t try it on a tired working man
unless I was God’s son -
he’d kick your ass right off the pier.)

If they had been vagrants,
poets or minstrels, I’d understand that,
men who would follow a different dog.
But how does a man whose movement,
day after day after day,
absolutely trusts the shape it fills
put everything down and walk away?

I’d pass up all the fancy stunting
with Lazarus and the lepers
to see that one.

I know nothing about Flint’s theology or his relationship to God or Christ. So I have no idea if what the poem captures is his own feeling.

What I do know is that the poem captures a question that can only be satisfactorily answered by experiencing Christ. What made those men drop everything is not something that can be explained intellectually, in a manner satisfactory to someone who has not had a personal encounter. (And if you’ve had the personal encounter, you know what it is that made them put everything down and walk away.)

The only answer is the one Jesus gave to the disciples of John when they first inquired about who he was: “Come, and you will see.”

This week, our invitation is to continue to follow Jesus all the way to the cross. And the same thing that caused those fisherman to drop their nets and follow Jesus is what allows us to stay with him all this week.

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Review of the Day

Like many stepped in the Ignatian tradition, my daily prayer includes an Examen, a means of prayerful reflection on the events of the day to detect God’s presence.

I don’t know if George Eliot prayed the Examen, but her poem, Count That Day Lost offers a simple examination of our day.

If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And, counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard,
One glance most kind
That fell like sunshine where it went —
Then you may count that day well spent.

But if, through all the livelong day,
You’ve cheered no heart, by yea or nay —
If, through it all
You’ve nothing done that you can trace
That brought the sunshine to one face —
No act most small
That helped some soul and nothing cost —
Then count that day as worse than lost.

I pray we may all sit down at the end of today and count the day well spent.

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Glory Be to God

I love this time of year. We had the mildest winter since we’ve moved here this year, but still, spring is welcome. Dave has planted the herb and vegetables, flowers have been making their appearance, breezes no longer bring a chill. It is impossible not to smile on days like this.

I’ve mentioned before my love for the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. One of the poem of his that comes to mind on days like this, which I have hanging in my law school office, is Pied Beauty. I offer it as a sweet song of praise this morning.

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

Praise God! And blessings on your day!

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Prayer Experience: Write an Advent Poem

In different Advent retreat settings, including the Advent Retreat in Daily Living I’m currently offering at UST, I’ve encouraged retreatants to write their own O Antiphons. We live in a different time and place than when the “O” antiphons were composed. In addition, each of us has our own needs and our own issues with God. Writing our own “O” antiphons gives expression to questions such as: Who is God for me? How do I name God? And what are my deepest needs? How do I need God to come to me.

I came across a suggestion on my friend Neil Willard’s blog that invites a similar kind of activity, this one using poetry. The suggestion originated with Jan Bucher, a psychotherapist and spiritual director, who have a Rector’s Forum at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, where my friend Neil is the Rector. I shared it at yesterday’s session of the Advent Retreat at UST, but wanted to highlight it here because I think it is a wonderful suggestion.

The invitation is to write a five-line poem that describes either God or ourselves in relationship to God using this pattern:

one noun
three adjectives
four verbs
phrase
one or more words that connect with the first noun.

I love exercises like this, that encourage us to reflect on how we name God and how we see God. By their nature, they help deepen our relationship with God….regardless of whether or not we are great poets.

I’d encourage you to try it. To give you inspiration, take a look at the poem written by St. Stephen’s Associate Rector, Nancy Brantingham, which Neil posted here.

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Using Art, Music and Poetry in Our Prayer

Yesterday was the second session of the four week fall series I’m giving at St. Edward’s parish on prayer. The idea of the series, which I’ve offered in different forms in the past, is to expose the participants to forms of prayer that might be new to them. Last week, I talked about Ignatian Contemplation and the participants spent the week, engaging in that form of prayer.

Our subject yesterday was praying with poetry, art and music. I spoke about the ability of these media to evoke an affective response in us that helps us deepen our appreciation of God’s unconditional and boundless love for us. After my talk, participants prayed with either a piece of poetry of an image from among those I provided.

During our sharing afterward, I was struck, as I always am during programs that address this subject, by the depth of the prayer experience of those who were there. For many, this was a new form of prayer. But all responded at a very deep level to the material they prayed with.

If you have not before used poetry, art or music as part of your prayer, I strongly encourage you to do so. Although I did not record my talk yesterday, I have previously posted both a podcast of a talk on this subject and some prayer material. You can find them here.

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Returning to Oneself

Some weeks are just exhausting. For me, the combination of playing catch-up after taking my daughter off to college last week, the effects of physical illness, the emotional fatigue associated with the 10th anniversary of September 11, and various activities during the week meant that by last night I found myself in a state where even walking upstairs to brush my teeth so I could go to bed seemed like an enormous task.

I sat in my study and, as I often do, picked up my copy of John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us. And, as is often the case, I found a blessing that spoke to me – a blessing titled, appropriately enough, For One Who is Exhausted.

After describing the state of weariness, O’Donohue offers a beautiful prescription, and a promise:

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

Amen.

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Beauty as a Way to God

Occasionally I give talks on praying with art, music and poetry. Each evokes an affective response in us that allows us to access God’s love in a deep way.

In a recent general audience Pope Benedict spoke on this theme in a way that expresses well my own experience of poetry and music and what I try to convey when speaking on this subject. He said

Perhaps it has happened to you at one time or another – before a sculpture, a painting, a few verses of poetry or a piece of music – to have experienced a deep emotion, a sense of joy, to have perceived clearly, that is, that before you there stood not only matter – a piece of marble or bronze, a painted canvas, an ensemble of letters or a combination of sounds – but something far greater, something that “speaks,” something capable of touching the heart, of communicating a message, of elevating the soul.

The Pope’s description of his reaction to a concert performance of Bach’s music resonated with me; there is something in a beautiful piece of music (or a poem or a painting) that causes our soul to exapnd, that “irresistibly expresses the presence of God’s truth.

The Pope urged his audience to “rediscover the importance of this way for prayer, for our living relationship with God.” Good advice to follow.

You can find a podcast of a talk I gave on this subject a couple of years ago here.

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Foundations

There were several other Visiting Scholars at St. Benedict’s Monastery while I was there last week. One of them was a man named Michael Maurer, who was doing some work on a novel he is writing. I learned during a conversation we had one evening that this was his first foray into novel writing, having previously put his writing energies into poetry. He gifted me with a copy of a book of his poems, titled A Journey Through a Warrior’s Soul.

Maurer is a veteran of the Vietnam War and, like many vets, still carries the scars of that experience. You can see it in his face and hear it in his voice when he speaks, and he speaks with an incredible honesty. His poetry bears powerful witness to the tragedy of war though his vivid images and compelling stories. They make for some powerful reflections at a time when we are still sending young men and women off to die.

Many of the poems touched me deeply. One struck me for the truth it speaks, not just about an experience like war, but about all that we experience. It reminds us everything we have undergone becomes part of the fabric of who we are today. The name of the poem is Foundations, and I share it with Mike’s permission:

Our past, the good and the bad
Is the rudder of our future.
It is the foundation on which we are built.

“Let it go, forget it: Some say,
But to deny our past is to deny ourselves.

Holding on to your past, embracing it,
Allows you to grow and learn from it,
To build your future on a strong and honest foundation.

Vietnam is my past,
One of the walls of my foundation,
The good and the bad,
All that I learned
About life, about death,
About love, about friendship,
About hate, about fear,
About ignorance and about arrogance,
But mostly about myself,
It is imporant to embrace and remember all of it.

It is not all that I am,
But it is part of my foundation,
And part of who I am.

We are not defined by our painful experiences. But they don’t ever go away either. They form part of who we are.

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Praying

Sometimes when I sit down to pray, everything flows easily. I feel the presence of God, and the absence of any struggle.

There are, however, times when I have something I want to express to God and just can’t find the words to do it. When things seem much harder.

There is a short poem by Mary Oliver, called Praying, that I call to mind at such times. Oliver writes:

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice can speak.

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