Author: itoccurstocp

Photo taken of one of the Portland, Oregon bridges a few years back.

Photo taken a couple of years back inside (obviously) Mel’s Pub, a dive bar in Detroit (They made me go!) That I immediately recognized the neon as five syllables for a haiku calling for twelve more syllables speaks volumes, though I am not sure exactly what is being said. But this has been sitting my my “ready to go” folder for some time and today seemed like a good day to release it into the world. That, and nothing else came to mind today.

Today from Howard Thurman:

“[T]here are many things that move unchanged, paying no attention to a device like the calendar…that are not noted by the calendar, even though they may be noted on the calendar….  There are desires of the heart or moods of the spirit that may flow continuously for me whatever year the calendar indicates.  The lonely heart, the joyful spirit, the churning anxiety may remain unrelieved, though the days come and go without end.”

It becomes easy in life to focus on, to get tied up in the calendar, and to lose site of the fact that there are many things not on the calendar that deserve attention.

Photo taken a few summers ago in Malibu. Ran across the text recently and am still exploring it.

It can be difficult to generate a chuckle early in the morning, say within the first hour of waking up.  Chuckles seem more likely to occur as the day progresses, or doesn’t, as the case may be.  However, these lines from William Meredeth’s Poem About Morning accomplished that difficult task so efficiently this morning that the chuckle may last me until late evening:

*

But the clock goes off, if you have a dog

It wags, if you get up now you’ll be less

Late.  Life is some kind of loathsome hag

Who is forever threatening to turn beautiful.

Now she gives you a quick toothpaste kiss

And puts a glass of cold cranberry juice,

Like a big fake garnet, in your hand.

Cranberry juice!  You’re lucky, on the whole,

But there is a great deal about it you don’t understand.

*

Indeed, “life is some kind of loathsome hag” but there is “a great deal about it I don’t understand.”  But I do appreciate the chuckle.

The more I delve into Billy Collins’ poetry, the more I appreciate his style, particularly his ability to mix the right amounts of seriousness and irreverence and shake them gently into a pleasant cocktail.  As the concoction goes down smoothly there arises that pleasant reminder that while life is indeed serious shit, one needs to be wary of taking it too seriously.

From Nightclub:

You are so beautiful and I am a fool

to be in love with you

is a theme that keeps coming up

in songs and poems.

There seems to be no room for variation.

I have never heard anyone sing

I am so beautiful

and you are a fool to be in love with me,

even though this notion has surely

crossed the minds of men and women alike.

You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool

is another one you don’t hear.

Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful. That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

Photo taken some time back on a Galveston morning. Text from Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart.

So last night, watching the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony I had recorded (how can one miss Joan Baez and Garth Brooks?), I heard Garth Brooks say this, which I promptly wrote down on a post it note and stuck on my desk as food for thought.– “The truth is we all become who we are by somebody else.”  

Sitting down this morning at the same desk, post it note nearby, I opened a book to this from Howard Thurman, and had one of those “Okay, God, I get it” moments I felt was too good to not share:

*

The Thread in My Hand – Howard Thurman – Meditations of the Heart

Only one end of the threads I hold in my hand. The threads go many ways, linking my life to other lives.
One thread comes from a life that is sick; it is taught with anguish

And always there is the lurking fear that the life will snap. I hold it tenderly.  I must not let go….

One thread comes from a high-flying kite;

It quivers with the mighty current of fierce and holy dreaming

Invading the common day with far-off places and visions of bright….

One thread comes from the failing hands of an old, old friend. Hardly aware am I of the moment when the tight line slackened and there was nothing at all — nothing.

One thread is but a tangled mass that won’t come right;

Mistakes, false starts, lost battles, angry words — a tangled mass;

I have tried so hard, but it won’t come right….

One thread is a strange thread — it is my steadying thread;

When I am lost, I pull it hard and find my way. I am saddened, I tighten my grip and gladness glides along its quivering path;

When the waste places of my spirit appear in arid confusion, the thread becomes a channel of newness of life.

One thread is a strange thread — it is my steadying thread. God’s hand holds the other end….

*

All of which leads to two questions now on the same post it note — 

What threads am I holding?

What is my steadying thread?

Continuing with his riff on Matthew 6:25, Howard Thurman writes this:

“Take no thought for your own life.  What a strange thing it is, this injunction.  Up to this period in my life, I have seemed to survive by taking thought for my life.  Upon deeper reflection, I begin to see that my lie is not now, nor has it ever been, my own.  I did not create nor have I sustained my life through the years.  In so many ways, without my own plans and purposes, hard places have been made soft and rough places smooth.  It is a source or immeasurable satisfaction and comfort to me to know that God, who is the Source and Sustainer or life, can be trusted to see me all the way to the end and beyond.  Take no thought for your life – it is in God’s hands and ever, when I am obeying the laws of life, it is God who works through me.

Take no thought for your life.”

Take no thought for your life.  That’s a BIG ASK for a stubborn old man, especially given, as Thuurman notes, “I have seemed to survive by taking thought for my life.”  “Seemed” being the operative word. But it occurs to me that this is perhaps a potential benefit of age – to become weary to the point that those ideas and thoughts that have been knocking at the door for years finally find a door left ajar, if only because it seemed too much effort/trouble to get up and close it. (See one of my favorite German words, “weltschmerz.”)