“Busy Griefs, Raw Towns,” is a collection of poets’ responses to the war in the Ukraine. It is edited by GF Korreck and is now available! Published by Schuler Books, all proceeds from the sale of the book are forwarded to the International Rescue Committee (IRC) to support continuing Ukraine relief efforts.
Order your copies here: https://www.schulerbooks.com/chapbook-press/pod9781957169125
Bless the “new “ in this New Year, please.
Help us know it as “renewal.”
Renew all through the great healing
we can give to one another
with authentic full attention,
greetings, gestures, hugs, and handshakes;
treasures we are waiting for.
Bless the “new” in this New Year, please.
Help us be sources of comfort
for those seared by loss and longing,
haunted by despair and distance,
cries unanswered, words unspoken.
Help us fill the wells of heartbreak
and release love’s flow again.
Bless the “new” in this New Year, please.
Help us come to know what need IS;
how it reaches from the shadows,
out of hungers, out of troubles, out of fears
that blind – it stumbles; not toward
things, but toward their stewards.
Teach us how to truly give.
Bless the “new” in this New Year, please.
Help us yield our understandings.
Help us recognize our insights
(our assured and firm conclusions),
are no larger than what we’ve lived – –
and make room for truths as valid
and real in others as our own.
Bless the “new” in this New Year, please.
Turn our eyes to focus forward,
shirking blame and retribution
for the vision of becoming
people who know of their context
here, in this shared sphere of wonder;
individuals together, choosing harmony as One.
Bless the “new” in this New Year, please.
Renew our health, our strength and vigor,
mend our spirits, build compassion
for each other; our awareness
of the sacred gift of being
in the presence of another.
Give us each other,
please?
Renew “us.”
To view a live reading of this poem, go to:
The Landscapes of Poetry Holiday Reading 2020: https://youtu.be/vxuaHFLbW4E
It’s happening. Yes, Fall is definitely upon us, layering its dark blanket over us earlier in the evenings and lifting the corners to the day later and later in the mornings.
And we crave the light.
Perhaps we are anticipating the constricting cold and the weighty skies of winter overhead, but there is a marked difference in our energy levels, movement, and outlook when the precious sun makes its appearance here, in the northern climes.
Our attentions are attracted to the things we fear as a vigilant defense against their threat. Yet the impending cover does not mean light won’t exist. Our willingness to focus on its loss, rather than celebrate and enjoy what we have, is our reaction to what we have learned through time. The days get shorter, there’s less light for months to come. But there still is light, and the days will be longer once again, and soon enough, the seasons will bring forth the new. What can we do while we wait?
Make conscious choices to engage the light we do receive. Go outside for a walk at noon, arrange your workspace indoors to receive the natural light that does exist. Train your eyes to discern the patterns in nature that are uncovered with the fall of leaves; notice the outlines, vistas, shapes, and distances now available to see. Discover something. Notice and enjoy and appreciate – inquire. Learn to be attentive, walk in a worshipful stance in the world. There is much to be aware of, and thus to be thankful for.
Constantly gathering information for meaning-making; training ourselves to examine our gathering process (what we are willing to notice and give our attention to) gives us back the control we need to construct the meaning we seek in our lives. The desperation so rampant in our culture now is a direct result of flailing about to gather all information from all sources, without filtering its usefulness or its integrity, or its ability to satisfy the soul’s inquiry. We are living in survival mode – on information overload that is received at a speed that defies intake or calculated responses. What we do receive, we choke on. We thrash our way to the surface of each hour by narrowing our intake, leaving anything but survival out. In our clamoring, we only hear the noises louder than our own. We have become a society that begs its methods of escape to overtake us rather than allow us to wander in and pick up what we seek or need.
But restoration doesn’t come from escapism. Restoration is growth; the overcoming of loss. To grow, we must empower ourselves with calm and the comfort of intake at our level of need. Calm isn’t something you can grab and run with, like a take-out pizza. You need to open yourself to it – stop and let it come as you choose what to let in: music, sights, thoughts, experiences; relationships that foster you, not overwhelm you. Be willing to let thinking, wondering, noticing, and seeking be your entertainment for awhile; being present in your own moments, instead of trading your sense of self for distractions.
In short, redefine joy. Allow it to come to you in its varied forms, and choose to contribute to the joy you want to find around you. Service is always the finest and most effective antidote for sadness, grief, loss, and the alienation and fatigue of depression. Making a difference somewhere outside of ourselves makes a difference within, as well.
Don’t wait for the reappearance of the Spring before you are willing to believe it will come. Plant your literal and figurative bulbs now, anticipating the bright flowers that will nod toward you in the Spring. Be the light in someone else’s darkness, and that light will spill on you as well. Walk toward the darkness with your arms outstretched, bring the candle – bring the light.
It always seems that wisdom comes with experience, and experience with time. Time’s passage unfortunately coincides with aging. And since there is no viable remedy for aging, a great deal of our knowledge, study, pursuit, energy, and effort is then given to ‘remaining young’ – or at least diminishing the signs and effects of the aging process, while we grow older anyway!
What if we were born with wisdom, understood the passage of time; the necessity of the cycle of growth and decay, saw beauty in all phases of changes, were able to live ‘hands open,’ permitting receiving as easily as letting go? What if we gloried in our experience of presence, knew about ‘enough,’ and could still smile when our own reflection in the mirror disappears, our footprints wash away, our touch to the skin of a loved one grows cool – knowing it is enough to have been fully there?
Where would all the desperation go; desperate efforts to claim, to keep, to protect, to multiply? And in the refuting of aging as loss, could we live calmly, as if we were timeless? Would we lose our fear? Wouldn’t we live better in this present world?
How much of what we perceive is what has been left behind? The blowing leaves tell us the wind was here, the arcs etched in the sand along the shore say the waves washed just this far before retreating, and a sigh of relief is the waning trail of breathless trepidation. In our awareness of remainders, what do we learn? We learn of mystery, of wonder, of awe; of one Who is other than ourselves and so much greater. And we learn of invitation, the great enticement into understanding; the ravenous hunger to know more – the essence of wisdom.
It wasn’t the first time this had happened to me. You would think I would have learned the lesson by now, but there I was – stuck at the back door, trying to open it with too much in my hands.
I lifted my left wrist against the weight of the bags hanging from it, trying to grasp the knob while 56 ounces of orange juice, a jug of kefir, a bag of celery stalks, and a bag of Pink Lady apples kept my hand from reaching, much less turning the knob.
Use the other hand, you suggest? It was equally laden with a bag of chicken, a dozen eggs, butter, and shredded cheese – all carefully balanced along my right wrist, while a coveted cup of hot mocha was precariously held aloft in my hand. No way would I sacrifice chocolate for anything as mundane as opening a door!
And in that effort to be efficient, I: (A) could not get in the door, and (B) spent more time trying (first) to get in, and (second) not to drop or spill anything, than it would have taken for me to have made the two trips I should have made!
But why was I standing there floundering in the first place? Because I was trying to consolidate my efforts and make only one trip from the car to the kitchen, carrying the groceries. And why was that important? Because that is how I have trained myself to live, apparently without regard for whether it is necessary or not.
Doing too many things at one time not only divides and distracts our attention, it also divides and distracts us from our own experiences.
In an effort to economize activities, we can jeopardize their value in our lives. Have you ever caught yourself trying to multi-task RESTING? Really? Me too. Does everything need to have an additional layer intruding upon our experience of it?
For today, resolve to be aware of your efforts to multi-task, and ask if these efforts demean the experience of the tasks at hand for you. If your answer is “Yes,” then put something down and experience your involvements both fully and individually. Notice that the earth keeps spinning, even if you are not multi-tasking every experience. Treasure the moment (and the mocha) and let it be enough for that time. You will be more peaceful, more present in your circumstances, more available to the people around you, and probably more efficient for having been more cognizant of what you ARE doing, instead of looking for ways to get the tangles of baggage off one arm while the other is still laden.
Yet the issue goes further still. What about the thoughts you carry, your divided concentration and constant internal dialogue about what else you should be doing? There are times when multiple foci are necessary, if not lifesaving. But continuously operating in a fragmented mindset is exhausting and often driven by fears that are not always well-founded. Is that thing you might miss out on even something you really want? Are you chasing your dreams, or the ones you think others think you should have? Are you trying to accomplish ‘more’ in defense against feelings of not being good enough? If so, someone else is doing the driving on your life’s journey!
Take the wheel. Put down what you don’t need to carry. Anything that doesn’t help you move forward has the potential for holding you back. Choose which thoughts and messages to carry on your journey, which experiences to savor, and which activities to bundle and simply complete. As the late Mary Oliver asked in her wonderful poem, The Summer Day, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Don’t lessen your experience of living by multi-tasking it out of your own awareness.
Quotation from: New and Selected Poems (1992), by Mary Oliver, Beacon Press, Boston, MA.
