sunday grace

i dream a lot about flying, flying like a bird and metaphorically flying (accomplishment).

it's often the steps that are required to take flight that keep me grounded.

this poem reminds me to keep trying, be patient, do the work.

a strange feather

{my first painting of the year and the first in a series inspired by poets and poetry.}

a strange feather

all

the craziness,

all the empty plots,

all the ghosts and fears,

all the grudges and sorrows have

now

passed.

i must have inhaled

a strange

feather

that finally

fell

out.

{hafiz}

living poetry

for several years now in late december or early january, i choose one word to guide my being through the new year (click here and scroll down to see previous years' words). this practice has really helped me refine my dreams and intentions. i love to look back during this week between christmas and new years day and see how the soul of the word manifested throughout my life and year.

for the past week or so i've been thinking about which word i want to choose for 2016.  i chose an intention word for my upcoming yoga teacher training (trust), but that felt very focused on my yoga goals as compared to my whole life.  so i kept searching.

one of the things i like to do to help narrow it down is look and listen for a word that is in heavy rotation in my current vocabulary and conversations.  there are a few right now:  wonder, precision, frontier, practice, poetry...

poetry was the word that kept lighting up in neon when it fluttered through my brain or escaped my lips.  still, it felt quite mysterious and undefined to be a guiding word (unless i was to become a full time poet).  then i ran across this string of words by poet and mystic rumi, let yourself become living poetry.

so it shall be words of the year for me.

for me, living poetry is:

• having a structure, the components and some guidelines for how to lay life out on the page...inspiration, imagination, rhythm, precision, choice, selection, refinement, commitment
• being able to throw all of that out the window and just live from my soul in the messy moment
• seeing beauty in the ordinary
• seeing opportunity for exploration and empathy in the un-beautiful
• using words in provocative and inquiring ways to open understanding and connection
• storytelling embodied in words, paint, dance, work, image, play, clothing, food, yoga, home, relationship
• truth, spoken plainly and kindly
• reading more poetry, discovering new poets, writing more
• staying open to the twist, to changing beat, to unfinished words put aside to rest, to acceptance, to rejection, to editing, to uncrumpling those pages littering the floor and having another look
• exploring the human heart and how it shows up in the world at any given moment

a happy, poetic year to you loves.

words

lately, i have very few words.  so, these:

and above all
watch with glittering eyes
the whole world around you
because the greatest secrets
are always hidden
in the most unlikely places.
those who don't believe in magic
will never find it.

-roald dahl

today seems like a good day for a journey

one day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"mend my life!"
each voice cried.
but you didn't stop.

you knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
it was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

but little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

{the journey, by mary oliver}

the ghost of you

your salacious breath
exhales slow like midnight fog
rolling slow and heavy over flesh
like indigo blue ink
it spreads and pools in the apertures
permanently staining
the outline of me.

sunday grace: where i'm from

i am from strong women
who are not afraid of dirt
or silence

i am from neon purple sea anemones
whose tentacles sway ethereally in the tide pool
and softly embrace the finger of a curious girl

i am from the dust bowl
and the apaches
and the journey west

i am from scorching sidewalks
and mexican paletas
and bare feet cooled in sprinkler runoff

i am from swimming lessons
and tennis lessons
and piano lessons and ballet

i am from the turkey king of oklahoma
and the twist king of california
(no prom queens though)

i am from hee-haw
the bradys, mr. french
and wild kingdom

i am from the fury of the misnamed pacific
the hot santa anas
nights that smell like jasmine and alfalfa

i am from backbends
and banana seats
and clover flower necklaces

i am from afternoon naps
the doves cooing and the gardenia scenting
outside my window

i am from sam and daisy
nikki and patches
and all the lost dogs who found their way to the house on castro lane

i am from teachers
and drill sargents
and photographers and poets

i am from women's lib
and kitchen dancing
and grilled abalone for dinner

i am from skateland
and disneyland
earthquakes and earth shoes

i am from a thousand books
a few broken hearts
summer skin that smells of chlorine and coconut

i am from the tule fog
always there for the girl
who wants to be invisible

i am from mrs. agan
and my fifth grade summer camp counselor
whose name i have forgotten
who saw me
and painted my portrait on a slice of california redwood

{a spontaneous version of where i'm from}

sunday grace

though my soul may set in darkness

it will rise in perfect light.

i have loved the stars too fondly

to ever be fearful of the night.

~sarah williams, the old astronomer

on this winter solstice, wishing you just enough darkness to see the stars
and perfect light to illuminate your beautiful life.

sunday grace

because of the dog's joyfulness
our own is increased.
it is not the least reason why we should honor
as well as love the dog of our own life,
and the dog down the street,
and all the dogs not yet born.
what would the world be like
without music or rivers or the green and tender grass?
what would this world be like without dogs?

-mary oliver, dog songs

sunday grace

this is my grace space.  the anne spencer house and garden in lynchburg.  the air is infused with color, spirit, courage, poetry, art, love and light.  you can feel her here.

"let me know now where beauty is.  i was born to know her mysteries."
{anne spencer}

sunday grace

{the backyard at gypsy hill}

where i'm from
by george ella lyon

i am from clothespins,

from clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.

i am from the dirt under the back porch.

(black, glistening,

it tasted like beets.)

i am from the forsythia bush

the dutch elm

whose long-gone limbs i remember

as if they were my own.

i'm from fudge and eyeglasses,

          from imogene and alafair.

i'm from the know-it-alls

          and the pass-it-ons,

from perk up! and pipe down!

i'm from he restoreth my soul

          with a cottonball lamb

          and ten verses I can say myself.

i'm from artemus and billie's branch,

fried corn and strong coffee.

from the finger my grandfather lost

          to the auger,

the eye my father shut to keep his sight.

under my bed was a dress box

spilling old pictures,

a sift of lost faces

to drift beneath my dreams.

i am from those moments--

snapped before i budded --

leaf-fall from the family tree.

___

last year at the creative joy retreat, jen louden read this poem to us and then instructed us to write our own "where i'm from".  this was such an amazing exercise.  even as the memories of those october retreat days grow hazy, the voices of women reading the words they strung together around this theme echo clearly in my mind and heart.  as each sixty second poem was read, i learned more about each of them than if we had spent hours or days or weeks becoming acquainted the regular old ways.

my own, which includes a daughter of apache warriors, pacific tidepools, backyard dinners (a tradition that continues), a roller-skating grandpa, avocado groves, flying dumbos and the smell of my eight-year-old summer skin (chlorine, heat, dove soap and watermelon paleta drips), is treated as a work in progress, a place i go when i need clarity.  and respite.

click here to read some other ideas on how to explore this personal history writing exercise on your own.

when we can gather up and dust off our childhoods and family histories and gaze upon them with the relative objectivity of distance, time and adult perspective; when we can hold them with curiosity, gratitude and possibly forgiveness; when we can claim, write about and share those things that made us and sit with who we are and where we come from, that is grace.

sunday grace

whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

{from wild geese, by mary oliver}

sunday grace (on a saturday)

don't you love it when you hear a message, perhaps one you've heard a million times before, and it suddenly resonates and shifts your thinking?  maybe this time it is presented with language that speaks to you or it is delivered by just the right messenger, someone you respect and admire.  or maybe this time life events have swirled into the perfect magical vortex of time and space and experience and in this moment the message radiates with glowing truth in the center.  maybe your mind became quiet and still and open enough to finally hear it.  maybe it's grace in action.

a big part of my focus on aliveness this year involves paying attention to and exploring those things that keep me from living the life i want, from being the human i intend to be.  a resource that has been extremely helpful to me is jen louden's book, the life organizer.  jen was one of the facilitators at the creative joy retreat i attended last october.  especially resonant for me in jen's work is the concept of shadow comforts, those things we dive into when we are overwhelmed, bored, anxious, sad.  food and sleep are two of my comfiest shadow comforts; they tend to get the most airplay around these parts.  but as i explore more, i am noticing other more subtle, more insidious shadow comforts i run to on a regular basis.  one that i'm paying particular attention to is being right.

what i love about jen's message it that we don't have to abandon or give up our shadow comforts, because often they are valid components to a life well-lived.  what we need to do is pay attention to when and why we choose them; partner with them for understanding rather than battle them for domination.  this mind shift is a pure moment of grace for me.

jen louden is teaching the life organizer navigation course starting later this month.  i'll be there, doing the work, paying attention, soaking up grace and wisdom, moving into aliveness.

sunday grace

is found in the littlest moments:

• poetry read aloud
• a house that smells like blooming paperwhites and spruce and cardamom coffee cake (christmas house!)
• tiny bonfires
• a blue sky after yesterday's gray
• a warm bed
• gazing upon the talent of friends

these words

my short temper

that is so short
it sometimes can’t reach
a kind word
lives right beside
my skyscraper heart
that paints all its windows
to save all the little birds

andrea gibson

embrace the process

"life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. this is a kind of death."
-anaïs nin

how to be idle and blessed

i don't know exactly what a prayer is. 

i do know how to pay attention, to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields.

which is what i have been doing all day.

tell me, what else should i have done?

doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

-mary oliver

the summer day

diner haiku

our soft private words
eggs coffee toast forgiveness
peace within chaos

c is for courage

god speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

these are the words we dimly hear:

you, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
embody me.

flare up like a flame
and make big shadows i can move in.

let everything happen to you:  beauty and terror.
just keep going.  no feeling is final.
don't let yourself lose me.

nearby is the country they call life.
you will know it by its seriousness.

give me your hand.

"go to the limits of your longing", by rainer maria rilke

the peace of wild things

when despair for the world grows in me
and i wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
i go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
i come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.  i come into the presence of still water.
and i feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.  for a time
i rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
~wendell berry