It occurs to me…

Today I stumbled across this from poet Billy Collins:

“By the end of a poem, the reader should be in a different place from where he started.  I would like him to be slightly disoriented at the end, like I drove him outside of town at night and dropped him off in a cornfield.”

It occurs to me that many (?most, all?) of the my great experiences in life – friendship, love, travel, accomplishment – all involved that feeling, that slight sense of disorientation.  As much as I bemoan it at the time, that sense of unease is a harbinger of growth, and all growth stretches me a bit, makes me feel a bit uneasy until I grow into/become accustomed to it.

My task is not simply to tolerate the cornfield, but to accept, even enjoy it!

I don’t know.  This poem just seemed to settle in and fit the day for me:

The First Green of Spring – David Budbill

“Out walking in the swamp picking cowslip, marsh marigold

this sweet first green of spring.  Now sauteed in a pan melting

to a deeper green than they ever were alive, this green, this life,

harbinger of things to come.  Now we sit at the table munching

on this message from the dawn which says we and the world

are alive again today, and this is the world’s birthday, And

even though we know we are growing old, we are dying, we

will never be young again, we also know we’re still right here

now, today, and oh my! don’t these greens taste good.”

“An another regrettable thing about death

is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,

which took a whole life to develop and market —

the quips, the witticisms, the slant

adjusted to a few, whose loved ones nearest

the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched

in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,

…The whole act.

Who will do it again?  That’s it: no one;

imitators and descendants aren’t the same.”

Photo taken on a recent run

From yesterday’s Easter sermon from Fr. Mike Adams:

“We did not CHOOSE to be here, and realize some day we will NOT be here.”  And while I don’t recall his exact words, the gist of what followed was – So what do we choose to do while we ARE here?

In this I am reminded (as I often am) of the last line in Mary Oliver’s The Summer Day

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Hmm!  That seems like a good question to ask this day after Easter – though it occurs to me it is a good question to ask every day.

“There ain’t nothin’ not affected when two hearts get connected.”                                     Two People Fell In Love – Brad Paisley

I thought I had heard every Brad Paisley song, but this one has somehow escaped my attention until now.  In the context of Paisley’s song, he sings of a couple meeting, falling in love, and having a child.  The child grows up, “cures all sorts of things, wins the Nobel prize, and saves a million different lives.”  The punch line is “It’s funny when you think about the reason he’s alive, is all because two people fell in love.”

It is a bit saccharine, as most all good love songs are.  Still, the line hung with me and it occurred to me that it is a truth.  When two people connect, two hearts connect, the world changes.  The connection need not result in marriage, a child, a Nobel prize, and it need not result in saved lives.  No, lives can and do get changed when “two hearts get connected” by a smile and an encouraging word, by an apology and forgiveness, by dropping money into some receptacle, by just showing up and being there.  Those simple acts, the momentary connection of two hearts, change lives.

“There ain’t nothin’ not affected when two hearts get connected.”  Believe it.  Count on it.

“To love and admire anything outside yourself is to take one step away from utter spiritual ruin….”  C. S. Lewis

Reading this, it occurs to me that Lewis has, in one portion of a sentence, gotten to the heart of Christianity.  It is easy, so easy, to fall into the trap of acting as if the world spins around me, to  put value (or not) on people or things based on how they impact me.  In this I am reminded of the quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin – “A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.”

Today, I will endeavor “to take at least one step away from utter spiritual ruin,” maybe two.

C. S. Lewis on pride:

“The Christians are right; it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began….  In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself.  Unless you know God as that…you don’t know God at all.  As long as you are proud you cannot know God.  A proud man is always looking down on things and people, and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

Heck, when I am looking down on people, I can’t even see the people that are on my level.  Wait, aren’t we all on the same level?

“[I]n the things that really matter, life, love, reality, God, no one can teach you a thing….  They can, at most, point in the direction of Reality, they cannot tell you what to see.  You have to walk out there all alone and discover for yourself.”  Anthony DeMello, The Way To Love

What jumped out at me here is DeMello’s last sentence – “You have to walk out there all alone and discover it for yourself.”  This is where the trepidation comes in, the vulnerability.  I can read about experiences from the safety of my home, have others tell me of them over a leisurely dinner, but that is not the Reality DeMello refers to.  He uses the analogy of going on a tour but never leaving the tour bus, and keeping the bus shades down while the tour guide tells the tourists what they would see if they could see, what they would experience if they could exit the bus.

It occurs to me how easy it is, particularly these days, to “experience” things vicariously.  The temptation if there to have someone tell me about the fragrance of the rose rather than me pausing, walking over to the bush, pulling the stem my way (avoiding the thorns as best I can) and inhaling the fragrance.