Knock Knock

Some lessons we learn early in life. While cleaning out a file cabinet I came across a folder of old stuff, including a poem I wrote on Thursday, December 6, 1973. In my twenty short years on earth I had apparently already stumbled upon the inconvenient truth that pain and love are partners. They are a package deal, and try as we might, we simply can’t have one without the other. Not if we want the real-meal-deal.

Looking back at that young woman in the midst of her last year of college I’m not exactly sure what prompted the writing of that little verse. It could have been the disappointment that comes when the boy you love doesn’t love you back (or even see you in the first place), the loss of her own voice and with it the vision for an advanced degree and a bigger life, or simply the inevitable angst of growing up. Regardless of their origin, her words still ring true.

Love hurts.

It isn’t in our nature to welcome pain, much less invite it in when it comes knocking on our inner door. But pain is the price of admission to a life of love. It is a messenger sent to get our attention, letting us know that something or someone is in need of tending. We are fallible folk, prone to mistakes that will inevitably hurt those we love, including ourselves. Love’s task is to understand the source of the pain and do what it takes to address the underlying cause. Sometimes it’s a quick fix, sometimes a long haul, but almost always worth the trip.

When pain knocks at the door, love invites it in for a visit.















A New Start To The Day

The news ain’t great these days.

Most mornings as I wait the recommended four minutes before I can press the coffee, I scan my email inbox. Along with the tantalizing smell of freshly ground coffee brewing, my senses are assaulted with the latest New York Times Breaking News Headlines. While there is the very occasional headline that to my heart constitutes good news—the swearing in of Judge Katanji Brown Jackson—most of the time what I read breaks my heart a little more—the past two weeks have almost put me under—and hope is hard to find.

It’s not a great way to start the day.

So, I changed it.

I unsubscribed to The NY Times newsletter.

I subscribed to Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s A Hundred Falling Veils: there’s a poem in every day

This morning I was greeted with my first poem from Rosemerry, about, of all things, hope. (You can find her poem, Longing to Be Seen here)

How we start the day matters. Along with coffee and time with my husband and our dog as the sunlight first hits the meadow, I’m choosing to start my day with poetry, and a little hope.

Maybe you will too.

(Now before you go jumping to any conclusions, it’s not that I don’t want to be informed about the goings on in the world. I am simply choosing not to start my day there. Being part of a well informed citizenry matters to me, and it should matter to you too. Our democracy depends on it. There are good sources of news, as in real information as opposed to opinion and rhetoric out there, and, spoiler alert, they are not found on social media.)




Word Of The Day: WHOLEHEARTED

Over the next few weeks I will be focusing on a word of the day drawn from a list created at the beginning of January. Each word was chosen to serve as a guide to inspire and inform my steps through 2020. If you are just joining me now and want to look in on earlier posts on this topic, you will find links to each at the end.

WHOLEHEARTED

One of my core beliefs is that we are all called to live wholehearted lives. I aspire to live into that truth every day with varying degrees of success, and with sometimes slow but always steady progress. In my work, through speaking, writing and teaching, I invite others to aspire to the same.

It is a way of living that on the surface is hard to disagree with. I mean who would admit to wanting to live halfheartedly? And yet, what does it really mean to live with our whole heart? Our entire heart? All of it?

A friend recently reminded me of the truth found, but potentially overlooked, in the very title of David Whyte’s poem, Everything Is Waiting For You. The good news is that everything is waiting for us. The harder news is that everything is waiting for us. Everything. The good and the bad, the easy and the hard, the energizing and the exhausting, what we welcome and search for and what we dread and avoid. A whole heart has space for it all. (Hear David Whyte read Everything Is Waiting For You in his interview with Krista Tippett.)

In Autumn: A Season of Paradox, Parker Palmer, the educator, activist, and founder of The Center For Courage & Renewal puts it this way—“Split off from each other, neither darkness nor light is fit for human habitation. The moment we say “yes” to both of them and join their paradoxical dance, the two conspire to make us healthy and whole.” To live wholeheartedly means to encounter and engage with the truth of our lives, the whole of which can only be found by welcoming the dark as much as the light.

There are no two ways about it. Living a wholehearted life is not for the faint of heart. It is the most challenging, and the most exhilarating, work we will ever do. It’s why we are here.

IMG_1319.jpeg

In Need of a Dock

There are days when I am so in need of grace that I can hardly catch my breath. When it seems that try as I might, I am unable to find an inner dock on which to drag myself out of the murky waters in which I am drowning.

As you might suspect, today is one of those days.

Our family arrives tomorrow for our annual Father’s Day Glenwood Rodeo Weekend Gathering, which I love.  It is way too hot, which I hate. Projects are running behind, which should be expected, but somehow have caught me by surprise. Again. Gracie-the-chocolate-labradoodle picked now to have intestinal issues, which should evoke my compassion, the operative word being ‘should'.

I could continue, but you probably get the gist.

Searching madly for something to grab onto an hour ago, I remembered a poem by Carrie Newcomer that my spiritual director, Dane, shared with me after our last session together. I had every good intention of reading it the day he sent it to me, and, as we all know, the road-to-you-know-where is paved with good intentions.

Drinking in the words, I found a grace soaked dock on which to rest, and there is no doubt that the timing of finding it was heaven sent. If you are in need of a dock on which to rest, feel free to join me there, and we can sit with not knowing together.

I’m Learning to Sit With Not Knowing

Carrie Newcomer

 

I am learning to sit with not knowing.

Even when my restless mind begins jumping

from a worried

“what next”, 

to a frightened

“what if”, 

to a hard edged and impatient, 

“why aren’t you already there?”

 

I’m learning to sit and listen

to pat myself on the knee,

lay my hand on my heart,

take another deep breath, 

laugh at myself,

befriend my mistakes,

especially the ones,

that showed me how,

I most needed to change.

 

I’m learning to sit with whatever comes

even though I’m a planner,

because so much of this life

can’t be measured or predicted

or evenly portioned.

Because wonder and suffering visit

when we least expect 

and rarely in equal measure.

 

I’m learning to sit with what

I might never know

might never learn

might never heal

with what might waltz in and surprise me

might nudge me into the risky business of growing

might crash into my days

with unspeakable sorrow

or uncontainable delight.

 

I’m learning to sit 

with not knowing.

With deep gratitude yet again, for Dane Anthony for walking with me on my spiritual trail, for my one and only sister Margie for never leaving my side, for my niece Katie for always bringing a spirit of peace to the adventure, for Harper Joy for bringing us joy, for my geologist Tom for caring that I care not only about how things function but also for how they look, and for my hermano-in-law Bobby for always showing up no matter what.

Knowing Now What We Knew Then

I’ve written exactly two poems in my life, the first in 1973 when I was 20 years old. I know this because I came across it the other day in a manilla envelope with old photos and letters. It was fascinating to look back at what my twenty-year-old self already knew, and while it is clear to me why I haven’t, and never will, make my living as a poet, it is startlingly clear that even back then I had an inner developing wisdom about things I now know for sure.

The words of this young woman were often an inconvenient truth, as I stumbled in and out of love, but in the long run, it is a truth that has served me well.  What did you know when you were twenty that you now know for sure?

Pain and love go hand in hand

one often leading the other.

But the led need not struggle against the leader,

for they both travel to the same place;

They go to the clear, bittersweet pool

of human experience, where each

may drink freely and deeply of one cup.

The water is such that all who look in it

Can see themselves perfectly.

When two people gaze into its depths

They see themselves as they truly are.

Having once gazed into such a pool

One will never again desire to look into the cloudy, shallow pools of comfort,

which do not reflect, but merely swallow the reflection.

When you seek love, look also for pain, and welcome it,

That you too may drink deeply.

Molly Davis, December 6, 1973

IMG_5105.jpeg