Contribution to our meeting of minds

Walking Carle’s labyrinth in time of pandemic

Here.

A clear start and a clear end.

Head north, then make the required turn to move on in

 

I’m breathing easy just now, after the bike ride

Catch up, catch me if you can, catch the wave

Here on in

Ah

The center, there’s

A seat for me

 

Won’t you come with me as I walk south

Back into the world?

Your presence strengthens me

You carry me and breathe for me

Jesus I know your lungs will make it through this

And I will let you

Breathe for me

 

(Let you?)

What choice do I have?

 

There is always a choice, David

You can say yes … or no

 

But not now.

Now

Just take the next step, push on the pedal

One more time

Breathe.

 

Plenty of time after you get home

To think about your choices

 

Today on NPR’s Weekend Edition, Chicagoan Scott Simon interviewed Dr. Suzanne Koven, writer-in-residence at Massachusetts General Hospital, whose role is to help hospital staff reflect on their work and open up inside themselves. She is doing spiritual direction, of course, although that is not what she would call it.

As she said, “reading poems remind us of what our calling is, and what actually gives us the greatest joy. On the front lines, in our goggles and masks, we are still able to have intimate interactions with families and patients.” And, I would add, with ourselves and with God.

Together they appreciated poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), himself a doctor who straddled the years of both house calls and hospitals, of carriages and automobiles. He wrote “Complaint” in 1921:

 

Complaint

They call me and I go.

It is a frozen road

past midnight, a dust

of snow caught

in the rigid wheeltracks.

The door opens.

I smile, enter and

shake off the cold.

Here is a great woman

on her side in the bed.

She is sick,

perhaps vomiting,

perhaps laboring

to give birth to

a tenth child. Joy! Joy!

Night is a room

darkened for lovers,

through the jalousies the sun

has sent one golden needle!

I pick the hair from her eyes

and watch her misery

with compassion.

And in the year before his own death, before his body was settled into its own small grave, Dr. Williams wrote “Tract:”

 

Tract

I will teach you my townspeople

how to perform a funeral–

for you have it over a troop

of artists–

unless one should scour the world–

you have the ground sense necessary.

 

See! the hearse leads.

I begin with a design for a hearse.

For Christ’s sake not black–

nor white either–and not polished!

Let it be weathered–like a farm wagon–

with gilt wheels (this could be

applied fresh at small expense)

or no wheels at all:

a rough dray to drag over the ground.

 

Knock the glass out!

My God–glass, my townspeople!

For what purpose? Is it for the dead

to look out or for us to see

how well he is housed or to see

the flowers or the lack of them–

or what?

To keep the rain and snow from him?

He will have a heavier rain soon:

pebbles and dirt and what not.

Let there be no glass–

and no upholstery, phew!

and no little brass rollers

and small easy wheels on the bottom–

my townspeople what are you thinking of?

 

A rough plain hearse then

with gilt wheels and no top at all.

On this the coffin lies

by its own weight.

 

                      No wreaths please–

especially no hot house flowers.

Some common memento is better,

something he prized and is known by:

his old clothes–a few books perhaps–

God knows what! You realize

how we are about these things

my townspeople–

something will be found–anything

even flowers if he had come to that.

So much for the hearse.

 

For heaven’s sake though see to the driver!

Take off the silk hat! In fact

that’s no place at all for him–

up there unceremoniously

dragging our friend out to his own dignity!

Bring him down–bring him down!

Low and inconspicuous! I’d not have him ride

on the wagon at all–damn him–

the undertaker’s understrapper!

Let him hold the reins

and walk at the side

and inconspicuously too!

 

Then briefly as to yourselves:

Walk behind–as they do in France,

seventh class, or if you ride

Hell take curtains! Go with some show

of inconvenience; sit openly–

to the weather as to grief.

Or do you think you can shut grief in?

What–from us? We who have perhaps

nothing to lose? Share with us

share with us–it will be money

in your pockets.

 

                         Go now

I think you are ready.

#

 

So many poets in both prose and verse. I think of three, and here are excerpts from what they have recently written.

 

Clarence Heller is our friend, who retired from his engineering career and took up leadership of the Month/Week of Guided Prayer, newly renamed “Moments of Grace & Prayer: A Retreat in Everyday Life,” in the St. Louis area. Monthly, and sometimes more often, he sends us a painting or poem …

 

April 21, 2020 from Clarence Heller

 Being human is messy business. We are light and shadow, generous and selfish, kind and cruel. While we know that we are sustained in the embrace of Divine Love, we are afraid.

 During this time of social distancing, much has been said about staying connected, reinforcing our awareness that whatever we may be going through, we are not the only one and we are not alone. I suggest that we connect through what we have been feeling lately. Recognizing our own feelings and the feelings of others, and honoring them.

 Recently I described my prayer times to a friend as sitting and sharing my feelings with God, and waiting for God to respond. I share with you some of the poems that came from those prayer times. I welcome you to share with me or others how you have been feeling – perhaps through words, images or even colors.

  

Morning Comes

The morning comes,

whether the dog barked for hours or if I slept straight through,

whether I am here or not.

Some may find consolation in this certainty,

and I know that each new day brings opportunity to live, to love, to grow.

But this morning all I feel is uncertainty and fear,

wondering which of my loved ones will die,

pondering how there can be grieving and comfort absent community,

hoping most of all that death will wait at least one more day.

  

These Days

 These days, all of us are experiencing scarcity in ways never imagined.

These days, every aspect of our lives has been infected with a virus.

These days, even the quiet, peaceful times contain an undercurrent of anxiety.

And this day, his first birthday after his death,

I am amazed at how relieved I am that he is gone.

 

Sirens

The wail of sirens has become routine,

no longer do I pause to ponder the cause

or to consider a prayer for deliverance.

Death is washing over us

deliberately and unstoppable

and all we can do is wait,

and all we can do is wail.

  

More than Ever

As the pandemic unfolded

I sensed the invitation from God

as clearly as if it had been written across the sky,

“Here is a special opportunity to share my love with others.

Now is the time to be my voice, my hands, my heart.

Resist not the urge to offer peace and consolation,

for I am with you more than ever.”

 

May we accept our humanness, including our feelings, as a way of connecting more deeply with the Divine. Peace and Blessings, Clarence

 

April 25, 2020 From Clarence Heller

Dear Friends,

I hope all of you are safe and well.

I want to let you know that the Week of Grace + Prayer scheduled to start May 31 at Mason Pointe for the Religious Sisters of the Good Shepherd has been postponed indefinitely.

I also want you to feel welcome to send me any prayer requests if you want me to share them with the rest of our Moments of Grace + Prayer community.

I offer you below a poem that came to me recently.

May we all stay safe, but even more, live each moment in a full awareness of how much we are loved and cherished. I look forward to the next time we can be together in person.

Peace and Blessings, Clarence

 

Sunnier

My years have taught me that eating the last of the Easter candy

marks a return to normal,

to the next season of gardening and preparing for the arrival of summer,

but though the weather may change,

this year, this time, return to normal is impossible.

 

My years have also taught me that change is healthy,

that opportunities to live into the more are constantly available,

that my choices (even a choice not to choose)

chart the course of the world touching me.

 

My years have taught me to choose hope,

to choose love, to look for the good,

so this year, this time,

I choose that more than ever.

This year, this time, I am more convinced than ever

that I can make the world a better place.

#

 

Here are some words from John Blase, pastor-editor-writer-man. He sometimes writes public letters to Winn Collier, a pastor in Virginia, who often writes back:

Dear Winn,

Last night Meredith said that according to our personal calendar, this is the fourth full week of life in the valley of this shadow, this month of magical thinking, thinking things are going to be like they were before. I’ve been deep in Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking—this is probably my sixth time to read it. She mentions a novel—Dutch Shea, Jr.—that her husband, John Dunne wrote. She believed the novel to be about grief, but he believed the novel to be about faith. Then she drops these two lines: “Was it about faith or was it about grief? Were faith and grief the same thing?” Like I said, I’ve probably read that book five times and that’s the first time those lines snagged me. Could faith and grief be the same thing? That’s something to chew on, pal. Oh, I’m sure if I threw that question to the curb of social media that a row of expert grown-ups would quickly descend to chapter-n-verse me, set me straight, learn me something. We try so hard to be grown-ups when apparently the Kingdom prefers children.

I had to make an early morning run to Denver on Monday. Like early early. I was headed back home just a bit before 6 o’clock and I turned on the radio to listen to that AM station—KEZW— you know, the one I’ve mentioned to you before that plays the great American songbook and always spins the classics at Christmastime. Anyway, I’d forgotten that they boost their signal strength, essentially start their broadcast day, at 6am by playing the national anthem. Yeah, old school. I love it. So I crank the national anthem and start singing along at the top of my lungs and by the time I’m at “the twilight’s last gleaming,” I’m crying, man. Like bona fide crying. But you know what? It was just me-n-Jesus in the Acadia (I never quite know if he’s co-pilot, back-seat-driver or what’s his preference) so I went with it, proudly hailing in my old crow voice as tears ran down my cheeks. I guess I needed that. I believe the word is cathartic, my friend. Cathartic with a capital C. Faith and grief by the dawn’s early light. It sure felt like the same thing.

I read the other day about some neighborhood somewhere where the folks in this hard row have started the practice of emerging from their homes just before dark and everybody howls at the top of their lungs like wolves and coyotes. Cathartic. I get it. I do.

I’ll close by making a firm declaration: I love you, my friend. I do. The kind of love exemplified by Redford and Freeman playing old Einar and Mitch in An Unfinished Life. Now that’s a faith/grief movie. Mark Spragg’s book is better, as usual, but still, the movie tells it well. Which one of us is Freeman and which one is Redford? Ha, let the grown-ups strain at such gnatty questions. Do you remember the closing lines? Einar and Mitch are sitting on the porch, and Einar says—
You think the dead really care about our lives?

Mitch:
Yeah, I think they do. I think they forgive us our sins. I even think it’s easy for them.

Einar:
Griff said you had a dream about flying.

Mitch:
Yeah. I got so high, Einar, I could see where the blue turns black. From up there, you could see all there is. And it looked like there was a reason for everything.

 

Here is one of John’s poems:

Love in the Time of Corona

It was inevitable: the scent of a bitter

bloom rising, opening, reminding u.s.

Au contraire, you are not gods.

Who shall be found still standing in

fields of green once this virulent

spring has wrung its dreadly course?

For starters, he who hath clean hands,

stayeth home, and toucheth not her face.

Yet this we do know: little will be as it

was before. Little, that is, but love.

#

 

Garrison Keiller, creator and host for 40 years of Prairie Home Companion, lives in New York City and posts nearly every day on his blog, limericks and stream-of-consciousness journal entries often with wonderfully  long sentences about the life he lives with his family. He wrote each day during Holy Week.

 

Palm Sunday Matters

Meanwhile, Holy Week approaches and to me, in isolation, Palm Sunday means more than ever. I attend church on my computer screen, Rev. Kate standing alone at the altar saying the prayers. I’ve never felt so close to friends as I do now by phone. Zoom is amazing. And I sit in my kitchen and I work.

When I was young and ambitious, work sometimes overwhelmed me, but now that I’m old and my career is gone, I’m busier than ever, working happily on a host of things, ripping away at a memoir, writing a musical, a Lake Wobegon novel in which the town faces the threat of a developer planning a gigantic entertainment complex and also a bovine-transmitted disease that makes people high-strung and loquacious. None of this has any prospect of success whatsoever but that does not in the least diminish the delight of the writer.

Somebody, not me but someone, needs to write about this era in which disease and death is creeping through the streets but isolated individuals find joy that amazes them. I’m a Minnesotan, I can’t write about joy, I don’t have the language. But America has suffered under a tidal wave of victim memoirs and we need some joy.

You and I are so lucky to be alive at this time. Keep that in mind. God bless you all. I’m praying for you and I’m praying for more delight.

 

On Palm Sunday, Garrison writes a few words about death in the neighborhood

I stood in the living room and Jenny walked over, weeping, and I put my arms around her and we stood there. And then Maia walked in and we got straight to the nightly game of Uno. That’s life in NY, death walking the streets, grief in the towers relieved by outbreaks of silliness. Jigsaw puzzle pieces on the coffee table, a puzzle of a U.S. map. Maia Facetiming friends, laughing like a crazy person. Me at the laptop, writing a novel about an epidemic in Lake Wobegon that is spread by eating cheddar cheese from a particular creamery and the effect is feverishness and compulsive talking. I think it’s rather funny. So I feel fine but I worry about you people who are not isolating, because of course NOT EVERYONE CAN. Food workers go to work, truckdrivers, hospital workers, and millions of people living close to the edge. Homeless people can’t stay home, they have to line up at the soup kitchen for their lunch. The sun came out yesterday and it was, briefly, warm and that was a great blessing.

Now I’m writing a novel about a virus that makes taciturn Wobegonians walk up to someone in the Chatterbox and tell secrets. God bless you all on Palm Sunday and don’t forget to wash your palms, also your fingers and wrists.

 

A Garrison limerick on the Monday after Palm Sunday:

We’re at home, avoiding the virus,

Awaiting the tulip and iris,

And somehow these days

In the midst of malaise

Do not depress but inspire us.

 

On Holy Thursday:

Today is the day I finish my memoir. I’ve said that before and I’m saying it again. Life in Corona Prison is good but you have to take it day by day. I pray for us to have a peaceful and blessed Thursday and I shall now go to Morning Prayer and do that.

 

On Good Friday:

Good Friday and the wind is moaning in the windows of 12B. I joined Morning Prayer on Zoom but the reading was too dark — “My mouth tastes of ashes,” that sort of lamentation — so I dropped out. We Sanctified Brethren didn’t observe Holy Week — for us, Lent was a year-round thing —and Jenny has painful childhood memories of the season, and then there’s the fact that, in this pandemic, we feel wildly fortunate to be secure in our apartment, the three of us, so mournfulness feels like an act.

 

 And on Easter 2020 (April 12):

It’s Easter today at St. Mike’s,

A festive day everyone likes,

But today it’s on Zoom

And we’ll sit in our room

And watch in our underwear, yikes!

It’s very simple: if the sun shines, we’ll be happy. That’s what spring comes down to, the hunger for light. Church of the Sacred Zoom is odd, of course, especially today, to not be in a packed sanctuary with people wearing bright yellows and greens, and see the tall solemn teenage acolytes come down the aisle carrying their candles high, but it’s still Easter and He still is risen.

#

 

How now with you? What poetry, what prose, what reflections in paint or words (and so many other shapes that ruah takes) are rising inside your soul? What breaths of God inspire and shape you in these magically dreary son-lit days?