Mary Oliver Monday - Don't tell the CDC we're starting an epidemic

Mozart, for Example by Mary Oliver from Thirst (Beacon Press)
All the quick notes
Mozart didn’t have time to use
before he entered the cloud boat

are falling now from the beaks
of the finches
that have gathered from the joyous summer

into the hard winter
and, like Mozart, they speak of nothingbut light and delight,

though it is true, the heavy blades of the world
are still pounding underneath.
And this is what you can do too, maybe,

if you live simply and with a lyrical heart
in the cumbered neighborhoods or even,
as Mozart sometimes managed to, in a palace,

offering tune after tune after tune,
making some hard-hearted prince
prudent and kind, just by being happy.


I'm posting this poem in honor of someone who will likely never see it.  I don't know much about him.  I don't know his name or where he lives.  I don't know who his friends or family are.  I don't even know if he has friends or family, although I can't imagine he doesn't.  I don't know if he's gay or straight, partnered or single.  I don't know if he's Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist or Hindu or Zoroastrian or unaffiliated or other.  

All I know is that just when I needed a shot of positive energy this weekend, there he was, bouncing down Connecticut Avenue by the firehouse in Kensington, beaming at everyone he saw.  He exuded joy and I found myself smiling as I drove past, infected by his contagious smile.  

So thank you, happy-guy-walking-down-the-street with your backpack on.  Today I'll do my best to help spread the epidemic of light and delight, just by being happy.  

In case you need a little motivation and don't have a bouncy guy in a backpack walking down the street to inspire you, here's a 30 second clip from the brilliant movie, Amadeus, of Tom Hulce as Mozart laughing. 

Looking Forward to Being Swept Up in Joy

The Great Sea Moves Me by Uvavnuk trans. by Jane Hirshfield

The great sea

frees me, moves me,

as a strong river carries a weed.

Earth and her strong winds

move me, take me away,

and my soul is swept up in joy.

 

    I hadn't heard of Uvavnuk until I stumbled upon this poem.  An early 20th century Inuit, legend has it after she witnessed a meteor in the sky she was gained the gift of healing and became a poet and a shaman.  I'm heading to the great sea on Sunday for a few days.  It's the landscape in which I feel most at home, most alive, most swept up in joy.  What is the landscape that most speaks to your soul?

 

 

A Word for the New Year

We Shake with Joy by Mary Oliver from Evidence (Beacon Press)
We shake with joy, we shake with grief,
What at time they have, these two
housed as they are in the same body.



The practice of choosing a word (or having one chosen for me) for the new year began several years ago on the first-ever New Year's Eve retreat I attended.  After we'd finished reflecting on and letting go of the year that had passed, the retreat leader went around to everyone gathered and offered up a basket with little folded rectangles of stiff paper with a single word printed on each. As we chose one and opened it, we were invited to share with the circle our guiding word for the coming year. 

I remember being impressed and inspired as people shared their words-- grace, forgiveness, healing, courage, transformation.  It seemed like everyone was pulling out weighty words.  Powerful words.  Words that could echo like thunder or shine like a beacon in the year to come.  The basket finally made it to me and I expectantly unfolded my paper and read, "Beauty." 

I was miffed.

Beauty seemed like such a fluff word compared to all the others.  I felt like the universe had armed everyone else with a treasure trove of virtues and sent them off to boldly explore and conquer the new year while I got a pat on the head and a lollipop.  But I stuck with beauty throughout the year and, as it turned out, the universe knew what it was doing.  

One November I was on a train traveling through the Grampians in Scotland, a gentleman in the seat across from my showed me how to spot the herds of red deer that were grazing in the burnished heather.  It took a while for my eyes to distinguish the shapes of the deer in the distance but once I got the hang of it, I discovered the mountains were teeming with the creatures.  Beauty opened up to me in much the same way that year.  Once I had the word and started learning how to recognize it, I soon discovered it was all around me, despite what the trials and tribulations of the previous year had left me thinking.  

The next year I was back at the same retreat center, with many of the same people in the circle, when I chose the word gratitude, which opened me up in a similar way.  The year after that the word was discipline.  That was a word I consciously chose for myself feeling I needed it . . . an experiment that didn't go so well.    The next year I didn't choose a word but the year after that I was given the only word left in the basket after a New Year's retreat I helped planned but couldn't attend due to a family emergency:  Risk.  The retreat leader apologized but I knew that was the word I was meant to have.  That was the year in which my full time job ended, I spent the summer traveling to distant shores (often on my own), I started working for myself, I completely discarded my dissertation research and topic and began work on a new project, and I finally decided to take my writing seriously . . .  and more importantly, telling people I was doing just that.  (Accountability is another word I need but haven't chosen yet.)

In 2010 my spiritual director chose my word for me-- spontaneity.  In 2011 the word was gift, a word received as a gift in a dream on New Year's Eve.  In 2012 I was back to picking a square of folded up paper and got love.  (And, in hindsight, I did get a lot of love last year, albeit none of the romantic nature.)

And this year, this year the word is joy.  Thus the Mary Oliver poem above. 

Joy is actually a good word for this year.  Last year ended on a wave of sorrow swept in by the events in the world.  In recent years I wouldn't  have allowed myself to feel grief or joy or any intense emotion in between.  Somehow along the way I had come to confuse detachment with non-attachment. All the great spiritual traditions have a component of non-attachment to them-- not holding onto the things of the world too tightly.  But I wasn't just not holding on, I kept my fists ungratefully closed.  I thought that if I didn't let myself feel any extreme emotion, life would be better, easier . . .   By avoiding pain though, I also missed out on elation.  And you can't have one without the other.

So this year I'm ready to shake myself up a bit.  I've been letting myself succumb to moments of pure, surprising, joy in simple things: an abundance of my favorite apples at the farmer's market on Saturday, the splash of yellow from a solitary persistent dandelion blooming in the frost covered grass in the park where I walk, an email from a friend whom I haven't been in touch with for far too long, the start of season three of Downton Abbey, and the tentative end to the NHL lock out.  I'm holding all these things lightly,  just trying to enjoy them when they happen and not expect too much (especially in terms of that last one on my list).  I'm simply keeping my hands open to receive all that 2013 will bring.

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Curious as to what your word for 2013 is?  Here's the list I used for the New Year's retreat I led this year.  To find your word, look at the number on the list that corresponds to the day of your birth.

1.      Faith

2.      Balance

3.      Transformation

4.      Delight

5.      Grace

6.      Patience

7.      Compassion

8.      Gratitude

9.      Adventure

10.   Courage 

11. Forgiveness

12. Intention

13. Discipline

14. Creativity

15. Abundance

16. Openness

17. Love

18. Integrity

19. Healing

20. Generosity

21. Play

22. Joy

23. Trust

24. Listen

25. Harmony

26. Simplicity

27. Inspiration

28. Healing

29. Peace

30. Please

31. Awe

Two Pie Poems for Julia's 100th

Key Lime Pie by Mary Rose O’Reilly

Commas of lime in sugar and milk,
suspension, mild on the tongue
as memory of being filled,
or if you never were full before,
now is the moment --
be born again,
trailing, for all I care,
Augustine, Ambrose, all of those guys --
Aquinas, sit here, eat this pie.

Each one's longing to feel
a belly round with surfeit sur·feit 
v. sur·feit·ed, sur·feit·ing, sur·feits

v.tr.
To feed or supply to excess, satiety, or disgust.

v.intr. Archaic
To overindulge.

n.
1.
a. ,
figuring out at last
one of the why's we came for:
key lime pie Key lime pie is a dessert made of key lime juice, egg yolks, and sweetened condensed milk in a pie crust. The pie is topped with meringue, then baked until the meringue is a golden brown.^[1] Some key lime pies use other types of whipped toppings or none at all. .

Tumble with me, Augustine,
out of the pear tree of self-hate.
Here is a Buddha-pie your African grin
can barely take in. Here is a radical
homecoming pie. Aquinas,
it runs down your chin.

You will never again
have to be clever or even good.
Taste the green skin of logos
wanting to kiss your tongue.
You are undone, like a child
gone feral feral

untamed; often used in the sense of having escaped from domesticity and run wild.  to smell grass,
murmuring here it is,
all I have longed for
at last, at last.


The Poet's Occasional Alternative by Grace PaleyI was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft a poem would have had some
distance to go days and weeks and
much crumpled paper

the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor

everybody will like this pie
it will have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in it many friends
will say why in the world did you
make only one

this does not happen with poems

because of unreportable
sadnesses I decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership I do not
want to wait a week a year a
generation for the right
consumer to come along


Writing this afternoon has been a struggle.  Maybe it's because it was already mid-afternoon before I sat down at my desk today.  I've gotten used to putting in my two hours, pen in hand/laptop at fingertips, the first thing in the morning and today an early appointment shifted my writing time so I'm feeling off kilter.  Or perhaps it's because I'm at a difficult point in both of the projects on which I'm working and I'm avoiding tackling the down and dirty writing that is required to move them forward. 

Avis de Voto and Julia Child

I'm blaming Julia Child though.  I think it's her fault I've put what little creative energy I could summon into planning and preparing dinner for this evening.  Although I read this morning that it's the 100th anniversary of her birth (I even bought the Kindle deal of the day, As Always, a collection of the letters between Julia and her pen-pal friend Avis) the thought slipped my mind, or at least I thought it had.  But now that I've stuffed a beef tenderloin and wrapped it like a carnivore Christmas present in bacon and twine, peeled potatoes to mash with a healthy dose of horseradish, and assembled the makings of pesto to go with the summer squash and heirloom tomatoes from the farmers' market, I think perhaps the spirit of Julia somehow wiggled her way into my schedule. 

So the best I can offer you today are these poems about pie-- both invitations to put aside guilt, striving, longing, the desire for approval, and indulge in the sweetness of life.  Hopefully you'll find some time to do just that today, if not for yourself, in Julia's honor. 

I think she'd like that.

"Life itself is the proper binge."
~ Julia Child

Welcome Morning

WELCOME MORNING

by Anne Sexton from The Awful Rowing Toward God (Chattus & Windus)

There is joy

in all:

in the hair I brush each morning,

in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

that I rub my body with each morning,

in the chapel of eggs I cook

each morning,

in the outcry from the kettle

that heats my coffee

each morning,

in the spoon and the chair

that cry 'hello there, Anne'

each morning,

in the godhead of the table

that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

each morning.

All this is God,

right here in my pea-green house

each morning

and I mean,

though often forget,

to give thanks,

to faint down by the kitchen table

to a prayer of rejoicing

as the holy birds at the kitchen window

peck into their marriage of seeds.

So, while I think of it,

let me paint a thank-you on my palm

for this God, this laughter in the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,

dies young.

No commentary or reflection this welcome Saturday morning, just an invitation . . . to share a joy you experience today.