All the Time in the World

A Blessing For One Who Is Exhausted

by John O'Donohue

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

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.

-John O'Donohue

Sunday Poem or Prayer

 

Late Fragment

by Raymond Carver

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

 

Photo from our trip to Puerto Morelos, February 2014. Poem from Carver’s last anthology, A New Path to the Waterfall

April 5, 2014

Let the light of late afternoon

shine through chinks in the barn, moving   

up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing   

as a woman takes up her needles   

and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned   

in long grass. Let the stars appear

and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.   

Let the wind die down. Let the shed   

go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop   

in the oats, to air in the lung   

let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t   

be afraid. God does not leave us   

comfortless, so let evening come.

The Peace of Wild Things

 

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 the time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

Ten on Tuesday

1. Today Brian and I are celebrating 19 years of marriage.

I picked Bri up at work to go out to lunch, since we couldn’t get a sitter for tonight. Deliciousness at Love Muffin Café, with uninterrupted conversation. He asked if this is where I thought we’d be 19 years ago, knowing the answer was no. And yet, I love where we are.

2. When I dropped him back at work, his friend Lenard called out hello, and knowing it was our anniversary, asked how many years. When I said 19 he looked shocked. I’d like to think it’s because we barely look 30 (ha!), but I suppose it’s because so many marriages don’t make it that long. I have no advice for others---every marriage is its own mystery---but I do know a key element that’s contributed to ours: laughter. This man has always been able to make me laugh.

I know in this post-modern age, we aren’t supposed to be all Mrs.Bennet-match-making-obsessed, but even the latest treatise on women and the workplace, Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, acknowledges that the decision with the greatest impact on your happiness as well as your career is whom you choose to be your partner. I’m forever grateful to my 24 year old self for having gone with her gut and her heart on that decision. Best decision of my life.

3. Say what you want about Sheryl Sandberg (everyone else seems to be doing so) and her TED talk, or Barnard Commencement speech or her new best-seller, she’s gotten people talking. Regardless of where I’m in agreement and disagreement with her, I’m grateful to her for having raised the topic of why women aren’t in more leadership positions.

I’ve had plenty of lively conversation over the past two weeks, on hikes with friends (who had already read---months ago--- the articles I had just “discovered”) or over wine at dinner last week at a table of just women, who had each made very different choices and each had something to contribute to the conversation. I feel so blessed to be surrounded by people from whom I learn things, who share their insights and experiences.

4. I haven’t finished this month’s book club pick, Eva Luna (though I’m still determined to!) but see the last sentence above for why I try never to miss our gathering.

5. Instead of Eva Luna, I have been reading The Secret Garden every night with Sean (and Nolan usually joins us). It is often the sweetest moment of my day.

6. I love St. Patrick’s Day, but it’s a challenge. It falls in a week already full of celebrations so that it is easy to overlook even in a proud Irish household. And, if you read my post on Saturday, you’ll understand why I couldn’t quite rally this year. My sons, however, fully rallied.

Sean and Nolan set leprechaun traps, and Aidan served as a waiter at our church’s largest fund raiser, their annual Corn Beef and Cabbage dinner. I did manage to make Mom’s trademark 7-layer bars and rainbow jello for the dinner.

The recipe for Rainbow Jello couldn’t be simpler, but the challenge is finding the time to stay at home to do it. I started it with kids help, but finished it long after everyone else had gone to bed.

I used one large box each of five kinds of jello. You can see I didn’t wait quite long enough when I added the orange or yellow layers---they tend to mix with the previous layer if you do that. I recommend waiting a full 45 minutes between layers.

Last year we made it as one large dish, but since the whole thing is about the pretty rainbow look, and there’s nothing pretty about a jello mold that’s already half served, it’s worth serving in individual clear cups.

8. Speaking of Irish, I found this book at our local library: Essentially Irish by Josephine Ryan and so enjoyed it. I wish I could pin most of its photos to Pinterest. How my mom would have enjoyed it. Maybe one of you reading this could help me (Mary?). What is the Irish term for the large dining/kitchen cupboard/cabinet/buffet as featured in this image?

10.  Here’s to my next 10 on Tuesday not attempting to fit 10 different blog posts into one. Kind of like Nolan fitting FOUR birthday celebrations into 3 days. Clockwise from the left: his family celebration the night of his birthday, his celebration at school (cake by Ms. Tiger), his friend party the day before, and his church celebration on the day before that (at least that one he had to share with Aidan!).

Aidan had gone up to the front of the church for his blessing the previous Sunday, and Nolan became shy & self-conscious when it was his turn. He *might* have taken a swing at his brother up on the altar when Sean tried to put him at ease by joining him. It was hilarious but everyone’s laughter made him even more self-conscious, and he ended up burying his head in my shoulder.

I get teary every time our boys go up though, on the threshold of a new year in their life, and we all recite the blessing. I’m capturing it here---so I don’t forget it:

Watch over thy child, O Lord, as his days increase. Bless and guide him wherever he may be. Strengthen him when he stands; comfort him when discouraged or sorrowful; raise him up if he falls; and in his heart may thy peace which surpasses understanding abide all the days of his life.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

The past few days have been filled with sadness, tears and prayers for the community of Newtown, Connecticut. My dad called, while it was still unfolding. Aidan was home with the flu, so I didn’t dare to turn on the news. I was reminded of how my dad would call me while I was in college in Chicago whenever he heard of a crime in my neighborhood. He wanted to warn me, but he mostly wanted to hear my voice and know his children are okay. It was the same this week.

He went to bed for the rest of the day, he hold later. It was all too much. “We’re still struggling so much with losing your mom,” he said, “and yet we had a whole lifetime together, and time to say goodbye. How will these parents survive?” I don’t know, I said, but we have to surround them somehow---in our love and in light. How to do that, we’ve been asking ourselves. The best answer I’ve come across is this from Katrina Kenison:

Perhaps there is no good answer, other than to honor the sanctity of life by loving more and loving better, whatever that means for each of us. Compassion is the thread that binds us to one another…Compassion is what clears our vision, so we may begin to see, even in the midst of the darkest and most unspeakable horror, the light of something larger than our own understanding at work. Compassion is what allows us to seek redemption in the midst of tragedy — to reach out a hand and step toward rather than away from, to act rather than to wait for others to act in our stead.

Compassion is, perhaps, the point of the journey, both our purpose and our calling, the place where healing and hope for tomorrow resides. A reminder that in all its shadow and its light, this fragile, fleeting life is full of beauty and meaning nonetheless.

I’ve been grateful to Katrina for her wise words so many times as a mother, but never more so than this week.

Brene Brown also has a post full of light and pointing to strong links for those wondering how to talk to their older children about such random violence and loss.

My mother loved musicals, and “Meet Me in St. Louis” was a holiday favorite. I’ve always loved the melancholic yet hopeful mood of Judy Garland’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Christmas is a time of celebration, yes, but it is also a time of advent, preparation for the birth of light within us. May we all do what we can to cultivate compassion and a heart of light this season.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the yuletide gay
Next year all our troubles will be miles away
Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us once more
Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

Light52: Week 22

"Run" by Snow Patrol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS8IZcx7tJY

Another song from the past---how I loved it in 2005. I remember listening to it on the drive to UHC in 2006, crying because I had never really listened to the lyrics closely and I had just sent Aidan and Sean to Flagstaff for the week.

In 2009-10, it was my favorite song to start a run. It starts slow and builds up to a perfect pace for me. I remember running a path along the pier in San Diego while it played in my earbuds.

There's a passage in Eat Pray Love, toward the end, when she fashions an image of herself at an older age and hears her own voice encouraging her---praying for her and offering her hope. This song lends itself to a mother's voice, but that older version of myself is whom I always hear in these lyrics.

Now it is a favorite of Aidan's; he's asked me to include it in his playlist for his next radio show. I was afraid to listen to it, thinking of the pain in that car ride and wondering what new emotions it would give rise to now. Instead, it was a gift.

My favorite lines: "Slower, slower / we don't have time for that/ all I want is to find a way/ to get out of our little heads"

I'll sing it one last time for you
Then we really have to go
You've been the only thing that's right
In all I've done

And I can barely look at you
But every single time I do
I know we'll make it anywhere
Away from here

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear

Louder louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say

To think I might not see those eyes
Makes it so hard not to cry
And as we say our long goodbye
I nearly do

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear

Louder louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say

Slower slower
We don't have time for that
All I want is to find an easier way
To get out of our little heads

Have heart my dear
We're bound to be afraid
Even if it's just for a few days
Making up for all this mess

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear

Light52: Week 20

At church a couple weeks ago, we sang "Morning Has Broken." Immediately thought of Leaf, my friend and student at MZMO who chose this song for our staff mix tape. She said at the time that she wanted it played at her funeral, which we all laughed about because it was so in character for Leaf to make such a lovely song morose.

And here I am, all these years later, just learning what she already understood.

"Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning.
Born of the one light Eden saw play.
Praise with elation, praise every morning;
God's recreation of the new day."

God's re-creation or God's recreation? Or...one and the same.

Three Wild Things

an old favorite, by Wendell Berry.

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.

Prayer to a Girl Becoming

Prayer for a Girl Becoming

by Karen Maezen Miller

May she be happy
May she sing, and make up songs
May she be safe, and feel safe
See shadows only for playing
May she seek and find
May her smile always find reflection in my own
May I find in her name the measure I need
And give give give.
Amen.
 
My gratitude to Christy who sent this to me today. I think I’ll carry it with me daily.