for the Means of Grace and for the Hope of Glory

Christine at Abbey of the Arts is hosting her 21st Poetry Party. The theme she has picked is closed doors.  Click over and read why she picked this.  I’m not going to attempt to do it justice here.

It is an interesting theme in my life right now.  Surgery in March closed some doors for me.  Some immediately and some that I probably can’t see right now.  This is how life works.  It also asked me to walk through doors that other people don’t need to.  I’ve talked about this before.  This is a slightly different aspect of what I consider the same issue.

I knelt in prayer
to ask the question
which ought to be asked
so sure of the answer
this was a good thing,
for me, for the Kingdom of God
it wasn’t too easy
it wasn’t certain death
and so I raised up my question
and my hopes
so sure of the answer
only to hear something else
the rattle of a door not only closed
but locked too
a different answer which
opened doors for other people
and kept me where I needed to be
for my own self care
and I learned that
the ways of God
are not my ways.
written 7/3/08

It has been a great week up here on thin space.  I feel as though I was helpful and facillitated good things.  I know that I have been well fed–physically and spiritually.  And that I have much to think on and think through. 
But one of my favorite parts of being here is the better attention I pay to small things.  The birds, the trees, the wind, the water.  And this squirrel.

I saw the perfect squirrel today
he was too dark
and had a scraggly tail
but he balanced
on the branch
beady eyes tracking
each movement
and I thought,
here is one in touch with
every part of his (her?) world
how perfect
written 6-27-08

Is going quite well.

I walked in
and found
space worn thin

kiva swollen round
long left fallow
feet touching holy ground

hidden in this hallow
labyrinth unwound
truth to speak, me to swallow

built of stone, built of ground
space fresh and new
knees bent, all by habit bound

this space other knew
as all knelt in corporate prayer
faith rubbed hard, faith made anew

red clay in humid air
known to my soles of my feet
cool clang of bell, humming prayer

I walk in
You to greet
in this: space worn thin
written 10/9/07

I get to spend the next week in some thin space (a concept from Celtic spirituality which holds that in some places the veil between our world and the spiritual is thinner).  It will be good for me–body and soul.  This is for me familiar space. And I need some time in space like this.

And as internet connectivity is really slow, it will help keep my email and blog addiction in check. 

I moved to Big Eastern City three years ago. I came for seminary, because this was the next step in building my life. And several weeks ago I left. I left because seminary is over, because this step is completed, because there’s a next step somewhere else. When I talked about leaving I say that I’m headed home for the short term while I try to figure out what the long term looks like. The problem?

I don’t know where home is right now.

I know that this place has been home. I know that I will always have a place with my family. I know there are many other places where I would be welcomed with open arms. But I don’t know where home is.

I don’t know the place where I will unpack all of my bags and boxes is. I don’t know where I will settle into is. I don’t know where it is that I will work to become a part of the community and to build new relationships. I don’t know where home is.

I know that there will be a new home. I have faith that I will love the place and the people I find there. I look forward to moving in, putting my books on shelves, arranging the kitchen, hanging things (like a shiny new latin diploma) on the walls, and feeling like “this, this place will become home”.

I look forward to finding it. In the meantime, I’m headed back to an old home, with a family who loves me.  I am blessed.  I have both little to complain about and much to look forward to. 

Part of what I love about writing poetry is sometimes I sit and ponder one line or a concept and hours or days or weeks later it develops into a peom, with verse and rythym and fullness. Other times I just write and then spent hours and days and weeks pondering what I wrote.
This is one of the latter times.

the sky is blue
because the waves of blue
scatter most easily
and thus the secret of a
constant of our lives
is granted scientific banality:
the blue of sky, and
the weight of gravity, and
the heat of the sun, and
the division of cells, and
the inside of the atom,
so many mysteries made simple.
And yet,
I do not think
that one day we will be able to say
so this one a doctor, and
there a teacher, and
here a preacher, and
a compassionate social worker, and
next parents, mothers and fathers, and
so on till all the gifts of the Spirit
are felt easily discernable.
The Spirit has no wavelength
no measurable properties
despite all the heat of passion it fires
and weight of responsibility it confers
apart from greatest intricacies
for the Spirit of God is
mystery which sparked all others…
written 06/05/08

Last week was moving week in my life.  Hence the silence here.  Moving is about packing and boxes and makes me a little crazy.  But moving is also about doors.  Last week I closed the door to the space I called home for two years, I left behind the keys that would let me back into the space I have called home for three years.  Last week I returned here and opened doors to places I will always want to call home.  Doors.  Opening and closing; permanently, for periods of transition, hopefully shortly to new futures.

I hear them, you know
the doors as they swing shut
behind me,
paths never to be chosen.
It is not that I regret
choosing this door.
I saw the other doors,
considered some,
and now they swing shut, never again
to open for me,
and I am at peace.
For across this threshold
lie all the thousands of possibilities
I could dream of wanting.
New doors, propped open
waiting for new choices.
 written 5/20/08

This past week was graduation. My classmates and I were officially awarded our degrees (and our seminary is small enough that we were handed our degrees during the ceremony) and we begin to leave. Technically, we had already begun. Movers had been called, offers made on homes, leases signed. But this past week it became official. We will all be moving away. Away from this place we have loved and been frustrated by; away from each other; away from the friends who have years left in this place.

People like to ask me what I’ll miss. I always answer that what I’ll miss most is my class, these people. And though I’ll certainly see them again, it will never again be bumping into so-and-so on the way to the grocery store, or just popping over for dinner, or sitting up late with beverages of choice trying to fix the world and the church. I’ll miss my classmates, my friends, my family for never again will we have this sort of time and ease in which to enjoy one another.

So, although this is not a permanent parting, it is worth grieving. And I do.

And, at the same time, there is much to celebrate.  Our time here was never more than a training camp, a chance to make us less unprepared for the lives we are all going to–known and otherwise.  So, alongside my grief has been the joy of the future my friends are leaving for, futures to which they have been called, futures for which they have longed.  I know this longing because I am waiting to find that future in my life.  And I can imagine the joy with which such recognition is met.

And so we leave, moving on to the next stop, the next place, the next group of people we will learn to love.  We leave with joy and sorrow and anticipation.  Which is as it should be. 

It is that time of year, when students graduate and new jobs start and as such things happen here, around and to me (still working on that job bit), I’ve spent some time thinking about what I take with me as I prepare to move. Knowledge, more books than I came with, new friendships, a network of people I know and care about, a better sense of who I am and who I want to be, a nice latin diploma. And I look around and think of what I cannot take with me. My professors, all of the books in the library, my friends–all of them, a few books it’s not worth packing, the nice chinese place down the street. And I wonder what I’ll grow to love in the unknown city where my unknown job waits. And I think, “Don’t cling.”

As I prepare to leave
I remind myself
“Do not cling too close
to this space, these people.”
For they will cling to you
in the unexpected turns of phrase,
in the dozen small gestures,
each borrowed from another,
in the smile, perpetually unexplainable.
Do not cling, I say,
for they will follow
in remembered anecdote and wisdom;
in heart and soul they too will come.
Beyond all else, I say,
“Do not cling to close,
for other hands hold surer grip.”
written 5/14/08

Today we celebrate Pentecost, the arrival of the Holy Spirit, that same spirit which we believe still breathes life into us and our Church.  That same spirit I listened to when I began this path to seminary.  The spirit which is still among us, driving us all forward.

They come
tripping over my thoughts
sliding off the whisper,
the rush,
the howl,
of the wind.
They come
demanding a permanence
from which to dissolve
they come and linger
caught on my imagination
caressing my ears
and lingering behind my eyelids.
They come
and rest here.
written 2/14/08