Lynn Underwood

Art, science, and personal experiences all help us better understand who we are and how we can flourish

Tag: poetry

  • Wu Wei and Grace 

               I have been revisiting a tattered book of mine, The Way of Chuang Tzu by the Cistercian monk Thomas Merton (first edition, New Directions, 1965), with excerpts and poems of Chuang Tzu, a chief spokesperson for Taoism and its founder Lao Tzu, written in the fourth and third centuries BCE. I made this drawing of one of the poems, The Fighting Cock. There are also many other good poems in the book. Alongside re-reading this book I have been listening to podcasts on Chinese philosophy, which place Taoism in the context of philosophers reacting to Confucianism’s very strict rules in an orderly societal context. One episode of a History of Philosophy podcast compares Confucian notions of virtue to Aristotle and more recent exponents of “virtue ethics” from Aquinas to the present day. Virtue ethics tends to emphasize developing character rather than only relying on rules as we make ethical decisions, even though the rules can be helpful too.

                The Taoism of Chuang Tzu emphasizes wu wei, or a kind of action in inaction. Taoism and many of the poems from the book, sees wu wei as nested in the context of strict societal and personal constraints in that time. As I read the poems and Merton’s introduction to The Way of Chuang Tzu book, I see similarities to a notion of grace, flowing rather than ego-centric pushing, and it seems to harmonize well with other readings I am doing during this time of Lent in the Christian calendar.

                A friend of mine once told me “Don’t push the river.” I find myself trying too hard sometimes. Reading these poems is helpful to me as I think of how to do things like moving my current book project out into the world, and trying to help others daily. The poem of the fighting cock also opens me up to how to I might react to the inevitable arguments and animosity from others in my own life. Can these be of any use to you in your daily life?

  • Stitched with compassion and wire

    art by lynn

    “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small deeds of ordinary folk that keeps the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.” – JRR Tolkien

    The little things. 

    In the midst of the many really bad things happening in our world now, it feels easy for me to just give up, toss in the towel. What good can I do?  

    The drawing above is of a nut person, given to me as a gift. It was carefully created by my friend Jane from bits and pieces of nature. It is hanging on my kitchen wall. She sends these out at Christmas as gifts. Each of us has ways of being in the world, and actions that are ones that only we can do. I do not make nut people and carefully package and send them out.  I am not called to run for political office. I can admire those who make a difference in ways that I do not. But we all, through all the small things we do in life, by standing in our own shoes and listening for what is next for us, can help to ‘hold evil in check’ as Tolkien wrote.

    I can ask a friend how she is doing. I can bake something nice for family. I can smile at the cashier at the grocery store and ask them how their day is going. I can paint a picture and share it. I can really listen. I can send a few cards via snail mail. I can mend a hole in someone’s sweater. I am trying to discover how on earth I am going to get my latest book project out into the world to reach those who would find it helpful in their lives. I am daunted by the task, but is there one step I can take towards that this week? Each one of us has something we can do today that can make a difference for good in the world.

    “In our imperfect world

    we are meant to repair

    and stitch together

    what beauty there is,

    stitch it with compassion and wire….”1

    1. From the poem ‘“Holding the Light” by Stuart Kestenbaum ↩︎

  • writing a poem for fun

    mouse by lynn

    Thank you for my limits–

    They are gifts.

    I do not have unlimited energy or choices

    And so much is unknown.

    All will work for good.

    I can be at peace.

     

    Welcome peace.

    Be glad for imperfections and limits.

    They are good–

    Truly gifts!

    The future is unknown,

    Not determined or fully controlled by my choices.

     

    Don’t fear choices.

    Rest in peace.

    Step into the unknown,

    Warmly accepting my limits.

    Receive them as gifts.

    The limitations are good.

     

    I want all to end well and be good.

    As I invite grace into my choices,

    I expect the future to hold many gifts

    And peace.

    Today I will embrace my limits

    And see adventure in the unknown.

     

    Do not fear the unknown.

    Expect good.

    Welcome my limits.

    Dive enthusiastically into my choices.

    There is reason to feel peace.

    Thank you for all my gifts.

     

    Look for gifts

    in the unknown.

    Know peace.

    The future will be good.

    Have confidence in my choices.

    Be friendly with my limits.

     

    Expect surprising and good gifts,

    As I make choices when so much is unknown.

    Acknowledging my limits can give me peace.

     

    In my last post I mentioned how I was writing sestinas for exploration, playing with words during my morning contemplative time.  The above is one of mine from a couple of days ago.  You can see the structure of repeating over and over the end words, in a set order, and then in the final triplet using all 6 words.  I picked words that I wanted to grapple with, enabling them to sink ideas into me in a mantra-like way., pushing the words to their limits.  I am not a poet, and usually I do not share any poetry I write, but I am doing this to encourage you to dabble too, and see where it leads you.

    I suggest that you pick 6 words and try this yourself. They can be very concrete ones or more conceptual, or more feeling words. The structure for the end word repetition is 123456, then 615243, then 364125 then 532614, then 451362, then 246531 – I hope I copied this correctly! – you will detect the pattern as you go.  And then a final three lines using all 6 words, two in each line: 1-4, 2-5, 3-6, or just put them all in there somehow in 3 lines. It may take a few tries to get into the swing of it, but taking a playful approach can make it fun.  And here is an online form that I shared with my students who did sestinas, that can help if all of that seems too much trouble: http://dilute.net/sestinas/

    You may be surprised what has emerged as you read it after you have finished.

  • Becoming friendly with words again

    Have you ever written poetry? Not to produce a poem as professional poets do or with the aim of creating something to be admired, but just for the fun of playing with words, being friendly with them? Sestinas are a poetic form, where 6 words are used over and over again in 7 stanzas, no rhyming.  (A good example is Elizabeth Bishop’s poem entitled Sestina, which was my first introduction to the form in the book, The Redress of Poetry by Seamus Heaney.) In a college class I taught, students were asked to write sestinas to explore who they were and picked words that resonated with them or meant something to them.  The repetition took them beyond the superficial as they continued with repetition to put the words in different contexts, with a final stanza pulling all together.  Although skeptical to start with, most of them quite appreciated the process in the end, and many also enjoyed the opportunity to share their final poem with others if they wanted to.

    I am currently writing sestinas myself as a daily exercise.  I pick my 6 words, sometimes the day before, and then in my morning contemplative time I write one.  These are not intended to be great poems, or read by anyone other than me, but the stretching into the words, the playing with them, the exploration – this feels good.  I dig into my desires and emotions that are under the surface, unarticulated. I sometimes pick words from my journal from the day before, or take a theme of interest to me, and pick words related to that.

    Structure helps. I follow the requirement of having the 6 words at the end of each line in the first 6 stanzas, in a set order, and then pull all together in the last 3-line stanza using all 6 words, which feels very satisfying. You may want to try this.  The rules seem complicated at first, but once you get the hang of it, it really is simple to follow as you go from one set to another as in a square dance, picking up the last word in the last line, and making that occur at the end of the first line in the next stanza.

    We so often think of poetry in terms of the end result, the poem itself to be read and hopefully appreciated.  But this exercise of writing these sestinas has no such aim.  My aim is to become friendly with words again, and to dig into my thoughts and feelings that are bubbling under the surface, and give them air.

  • somewhere

    I ‘listen’ to poetry to hear what speaks to me.  Each of us hears a poem in a different way.  I have been finding nourishment in these lines from the poem “Somewhere” (from Laboratories of the Spirit, Macmillan 1975) by the Welsh poet R.S.Thomas.

    What speaks to you in these lines after reading them slowly?

    …the point of travelling is not

    to arrive, but to return home

    laden with pollen you shall work up

    into the honey the mind feeds on.

     

    What are our lives but harbours

    we are continually setting out

    from, airports at which we touch

    down and remain in too briefly

    to recognize what it is they remind

    us of? And always in one

    another we seek the proof

    of experiences it would be worth dying for.

     

    …Surely there exists somewhere,

    as the justification for our looking for it,

    the one light that can cast such shadows?

    Where do you find evidence of “the one light that casts such shadows”?  Now that you are spending more time at home, do you find yourself using the pollen you have gathered up on your travels in the past, to make honey for your mind to feed on?

  • fighting roosters

    I do not like conflict.  But we just cannot avoid some of it in life. Others can be aggressive, we can feel outraged, or we can just have strong disagreements.  The words in this drawing of mine are from a set of translations/interpretations from The Way of Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton.

  • waiting and life

     drawing of giacometti by lynn

    Lately I have been meditating on selections from this great collection of poems by Wisława Symborska. This is a gem that continues to speak to me.

    LIFE WHILE-YOU-WAIT by Wisława Symborska

    Life While-You-Wait.
    Performance without rehearsal.
    Body without alterations.
    Head without premeditation.

    I know nothing of the role I play.
    I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it.

    I have to guess on the spot
    just what this play’s all about.

    Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
    I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
    I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
    I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
    I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.
    My instincts are for happy histrionics.
    Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
    Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

    Words and impulses you can’t take back,
    stars you’ll never get counted,
    your character like a raincoat you button on the run —
    the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

    If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
    or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
    But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
    Is it fair, I ask
    (my voice a little hoarse,
    since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).

    You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
    taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
    I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
    The props are surprisingly precise.
    The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
    The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
    Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.
    And whatever I do
    will become forever what I’ve done.

    from Map: Collected and Last Poems, translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak

  • A daily choreography of praise

    art by lynn

    […] every bole and limb begins to dance;
    the universe’s light-fantastic prayer
    now lauds a wooer taking still a chance
    on just this cosmic ballet’s elegance
    where nothing is decided in advance,

    where hadrons jiggle in their resonance
    while galaxies bebop and flowers blaze;
    in cedars and wild animals I glance

    a daily choreography of praise.

     

    -from Micheal O’Siadhail’s ‘Five Quintets’Baylor University Press 2018

  • sestina liberation

    In so much of life I see words obscuring truth. Here is something that reminds me that words don’t necessarily hide the truth, but can liberate it.

    I have given the assignment to students to write a sestina – not creative writing students, but undergraduates from all disciplines. This was a part of my Perspectives: Art Science and Spirituality interdisciplinary course.  We were exploring the nature of the Self in various ways through the arts and sciences, and their sestina was to be about themselves, exploring who they were.The sestina is a poetic form with a set pattern of ending words and stanza structure. It uses the same 6 words as the end words of separate lines, over and over again through 6 stanzas of 6 lines each, each stanza in specific different set orders. No rhyming or rhythm needed. Then in a final 3-line stanza you use all 6 words mixed in with other words. ( 123456, 615243, 364125, 532614, 451362, 246531; 2-5, 4-3, 6-1 ) I gave them the format, and helped with online computerized ways to make it even easier to get started with it (like this). I shared Elizabeth Bishop’s Sestina as a good example.(click here if you want to read it.)

    Not everyone liked the assignment to start with, but in the end most enjoyed the process and result. Sharing their final poems in class (but only if they wanted to), let them share who they were with each other, and discover each other, in new ways.

    I have returned to this exercise and am currently writing a sestina each day.  I pick the words the night before.  By the 4thstanza most of us tire of the words’ obvious meanings. Stanzas 5 and 6 force us to dig deeper into how these words require unpacking from our subconscious.  And the final 3 lines including all 6 words can lead to a kind of resolution.  It is wordplay, and also loosens me up as well as exposing feelings and giving me insight into ideas, myself, other people, or situations.

    I am no poet, and have no illusions that mine will ever be shared or that I have written “good poetry”. But the process itself is freeing. It reminds me that words can be fun, ends in themselves, and that helps encourage my other writing.

  • St Kevin and the Blackbird

     

    This poem is one of my favorite descriptions of compassionate love. I did this drawing in response to it. This poem continues to speak to me today, to those moments when I find myself in situations where I think I just do not have anything more in me to give. Where do you get the strength to love when you seem to have nothing left in the tank?

     

     

     

     

    “St Kevin and the Blackbird”, by Seamus Heaney,

    from The Spirit Level (Faber and Faber, 1996) (c) Seamus Heaney 1996
    And then there was
    St Kevin and the blackbird.
    The saint is kneeling,
    arms stretched out,
    inside his cell, but the cell is narrow, soOne turned-up palm is out the window, stiff As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands and Lays in it and settles down to nest.

    Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
    Into the network of eternal life,

    Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
    Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

    *

    And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow, Imagine being Kevin. Which is he? Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

    From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms? Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
    Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

    Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head? Alone and mirrored clear in Love’s deep river,
    ‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays,

    A prayer his body makes entirely
    For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
    And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.

  • listening to birches

    Poets can open our hearts and touch us. Robert Frost does this for me in his poem ‘Birches’.  The complete poem can be found at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44260 or in The Poetry of Robert Frost (1969).

    When I see birches bend to left and right

    Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

    I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

    And then after Frost digresses about how ice storms bend the trees downwards, he continues:

    By riding them down over and over again

    Until he took the stiffness out of them,

    And not one but hung limp, not one was left

    For him to conquer. He learned all there was

    To learn about not launching out too soon

    And so not carrying the tree away

    Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

    To the top branches, climbing carefully

    With the same pains you use to fill a cup

    Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

    Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

    Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

     

    So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

    And so I dream of going back to be.

    It’s when I’m weary of considerations,

    And life is too much like a pathless wood

    Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

    Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

    From a twig’s having lashed across it open.

    I’d like to get away from earth awhile

    And then come back to it and begin over.

    May no fate willfully misunderstand me

    And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

    Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

    I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

    I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,

    And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

    Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

    But dipped its top and set me down again.

    That would be good both going and coming back.

    One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

    Each of us may be touched differently by this poem. The full poem can transport us into the woods, the natural world. The description of the boy can take us back to the sense of adventure and freedom of swinging and climbing as children, and even our adventures as adults. But the poet also gives a way to think of our desires to be free of the constraints of the world, when our faces ‘burn and tickle with the cobwebs’ and ‘one eye is weeping from a twig’s having lashed across it.’  Yet, he reminds us:  ‘Earth’s the right place for love.’  We launch out in this wild world that is the right place for love.

  • light through the crack

    cohen2lynnunderwoodcrop
    drawing by lynn

    The birds they sang at the break of day
    Start again I heard them say
    Don’t dwell on what has passed away
    or what is yet to be….

    Ring the bells that still can ring
    Forget your perfect offering
    There is a crack in everything
    That’s how the light gets in.

    These lines are from the song, Anthem, by Leonard Cohen, a great poet who expressed his words in song deep and resonant and spiritual. The words of that song, “forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in” are so potent.

    In an interview on his creative process, he said: “It’s very hard to really untangle the real reasons why you do anything. But I was always interested in music and I always played guitar. I always associated song and singing with some sort of nobility of spirit…. I always thought that this was the best way to say the most important things… I don’t mean the most ponderous or pompous things. I mean the important things — like how you feel about things, how you feel about someone else — and I always thought this was the way to do it.”

    He struggled with depression all his life, and he commented on the effect on him of the poetry of Frederico Garcia Lorca, “the loneliness was dissolved, and you felt that you were this aching creature in the midst of an aching cosmos, and the ache was OK. Not only was it OK, but it was the way you embraced the sun and the moon.”

    Here is a link to a performance by Cohen in Ireland of the song Anthem : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4U4lXgvorU

  • still life

    art by lynn

    Reflecting on the words ‘still life’ I thought of great artists I admire. How Matisse and Chardin and Cezanne see so much ‘life’ in groups of objects. I bought this jar of mustard because I loved the container. The idea of “Löwensenf” appealed to me, and I loved the shape and colors of the jar. I was also fascinated by the shape of this wooden gizmo that is used to release muscle tension.

    Lion soft and strong

    Mustard bites and warms

    Pressing muscles till they melt

    Grinding gently

    Freeing flavour

  • means to a means

    Well Water

    https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/well-waterwatercompressedlynnunderwood

    Well Water, by Randall Jarrell, Vintage Contemporary Poetry, pg 65-66, Discovered in the notebooks of Gertrude Beversluis)

    Immanuel Kant, not my favorite philosopher, was adamant that we should treat people as “ends in themselves”, not only as means to an end.  Some people try to manipulate us, flatter us, and basically see us as means to their ends, ways to get what they want to happen. This is demeaning for us, even if we don’t consciously realize what’s going on.

    We even do this to ourselves in our daily lives. And this is what this poem reminds me of. I so often slip into putting myself on the “squirrel-wheel”, pushing the wheel, getting only rusty water.  When I treat myself as only a means to an end I demean myself.  Instead I want to see daily life like the author does at the end of the poem, and gulp from the clear fresh water of the dailiness of life as I do tasks, relaxing with pleasure into the flow of life.

  • milagros

    I found myself trying to find words and image to convey something of this tiny arm and hand full of promise.

    Milagrosdrawing by lynnb

     

    Loose

    in the breeze of the holy

    spirit

    draw near

    flow through

    unclench –

    no need.  New

    power now.

    Will of good pleasure

    through my body

    my arms

    my hands.

     

     

  • valentine days

    photo of my daughter by lynn 2015
    photo by lynn 2015

    I received an email from a counselor/researcher in Kenya last week. He was researching what makes for flourishing marriages. And it reminded me of a study in the Science of Compassionate Love book that reported predictors of good marriages many years on. When people began their relationships with both a global adoration of the other, and an accurate picture of their flaws, they had a better chance of the relationship still being strong and good years later. Being loved by someone who knows our flaws, our weaknesses, and still thinks we are wonderful, ‘the bee’s knees,’  is so great. I think it has a divine source, a source that is ‘more than’. Some of us do not experience this kind of love in romantic relationships, but taste it in other human relationships and/or our relationship with God. To receive this kind of love requires vulnerability on our part.

    In my Perspectives: Art, Science, and Spirituality class, one assignment is to select a piece of art — film, poetry, visual art, fiction — that represents compassionate love. One young man brought this one in. When he read it to the class, this poem gave most of us a taste of a kind of love that is truly nourishing. It transcends the romantic, helping us to inhabit eternal love.

    Gate C22 by Ellen Bass

    https://www.missourireview.com/ellen-bass-gate-c-22/

     

     

  • the beautiful unknown

    drawing by lynn
                                          

     

    There will be something,

    anguish or elation,

    that is peculiar to this day alone.

    I rise from sleep and say:

    Hail to the morning!

    Come down to me, my beautiful unknown.

     

    Hail to the Morning, by Jessica Powers, from The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, ICS Publications,1999.

  • welcoming

    rentcolor3LynnUnderwood
    from Scaffolding: Selected Poems, by Jane Cooper, Tilbury House, 1993

    Our relationships with others challenge our sense of ourselves, and our perception of the spaces we live in. How do we listen? How do we make space for each other? How do we envision the places we live in together?

  • love remains

    What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross”

    wrote the modernist poet Ezra Pound in Canto 81.

    drawing by lynn
                                                                                     drawing by lynn

    Limited descriptions in the media and by others about the way the world is structured frustrate me. Pinning dead butterflies to a wall, scientists and those describing science so often remove the vibrancy from concepts and the rich tapestry of life. Science is very useful – informing our understanding of the world in practical ways that can make life so much better. I spent years doing cancer research and public health work, and the result, even of my work, was that some lives were saved, through earlier detection. But to frame everything up in scientific terms, to give reductionism and determinism the high ground, is a mistake. Science can inform our understanding of love – illuminating some of the situations and circumstances that might promote love – and in other ways such as helping us understand some of the psychological and biological impediments. But in the end, there is something about self-giving love centered on the good of another, that is just amazing, and cannot be reduced to equations, and mechanical and chemical flux. A transcendent element of a full life.

  • Ode to Things

    The objects in our lives are made up of particles of the universe, and they can also unite the past and present for us.  The most ordinary things can speak of life to us. How can we tune in to feel, taste, or see the ‘more than’ in the mundane objects around us? Teilhard de Chardin, paleontologist, geologist and priest, said that his first ‘feeling of God’ was when he held a piece of metal.

    drawing by lynn
    drawing by lynn

    I love things with a wild passion,

    extravagantly…

    not only the grand,

    but also the infinite

    -ly

    small.

    from Ode to Things, by Pablo Neruda, from Neruda’s Garden: An Anthology of Odes, selected and translated by Maria Jackett, Latin America Literary Review Press, Pittsburgh Penn,1995.

  • useless?

    photo by macrina wiederkehr
    photo by macrina wiederkehr

    Useless

    Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu:
    “All your teaching is centered on what has no use.”

    Chuang Tzu replied:
    “If you have no appreciation for what has no use
    You cannot begin to talk about what can be used.
    The earth for example, is broad and vast
    But of all this expanse a man uses only a few inches
    Upon which he happens to be standing.
    Now suppose you suddenly take away
    all that he is not actually using
    So that, all around his feet a gulf
    Yawns, and he stands in the Void
    with nowhere solid except right under each foot:
    How long will he be able to use what he is using?”

    Hui Tzu said: “It would cease to serve any purpose.”

    Chuang Tzu concluded:
    “This shows the absolute necessity of what has ‘no use.’”

    (From The Way of Chuang Tzu, transl. by Thomas Merton, 1965)

  • the real work

    art by lynn

    The Real Work

    It may be that when we no longer know what to do

    we have come to our real work,

    and that when we no longer know which way to go

    we have come to our real journey.

    The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

    The impeded stream is the one that sings.

    By Wendell Berry

    My favorite line in this poem is the final one.  Most of the beautiful music of the sound of water is made when it is impeded, obstructed somehow. Music made from what seem like obstructions in my life. But the other lines of the poem are important for me to hear too. Think of those people who are always totally sure of what to do next. They are not usually the wisest ones. What do we do when up to our hips in the mud?

    http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/675

  • The House at Rest

    How do we create the space for silence in the midst of the busy-ness of our thoughts, our activities, our feelings – a space of deep rest within, where we can draw strength for our actions and our effective presence in the world? So often our days consist of constant reaction to various things without a sense of a center from which we act. How do we hush the busy house of our minds and bodies so that our actions flow out from that inspired core in good and effective ways? This poem by Jessica Powers, from The Selected Poems of Jessica Powers (ICS Publications, Washington DC, 1989) captures this imaginatively.

    The House at Rest

    On a dark night

    Kindled in love with yearnings

    Oh, happy chance!—

    I went forth unobserved,

    My house being now at rest.     

    – Juan de la Cruz

    How does one hush one’s house,

    each proud possessive wall, each sighing rafter,

    the rooms made restless with

    remembered laughter

    or wounding echoes, the permissive doors,

    the stairs that vacillate from up to down,

    windows that bring in color and event

    from countryside or town,

    oppressive ceilings and complaining floors?

     

    The house must first of all accept the night.

    Let it erase the walls and their display,

    impoverish the rooms till they are filled

    with humble silences; let clocks be stilled

    and all the selfish urgencies of day.

     

    Midnight is not the time to greet a guest.

    Caution the doors against both foes and friends,

    and try to make the windows understand

    their unimportance when the daylight ends.

    Persuade the stairs to patience, and deny

    the passages their aimless to and fro.

    Virtue it is that puts a house at rest.

    How well repaid that tenant is, how blest

    who, when the call is heard,

    is free to take his kindled heart and go.

     

     

  • difficulties

    By now I think I ought to have what it takes to do what I am doing, to deal with the various challenges of life.  But so many things still feel like an adventure (that is the more optimistic term) and I need to find new resources and develop new skills.  I like the poem “Transcendental Etude” by Adrienne Rich, from the book The Dream of a Common Language: Poems, 1974 – 1977  (Norton, 1978). Here is an excerpt:

    fly magified lynnunderwood comprNo one ever told us we had to study our lives,

    make of our lives a study,

    as if learning natural history or music,

    that we should begin with the simple exercises first

    and slowly go on trying the hard ones,

    practicing till strength and accuracy became one with the daring

    to leap into transcendence, take the chance of breaking down the wild arpeggio or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.

    –And in fact we can’t live like that: we take on everything at once

    before we’ve even begun to read or mark time,

    we’re forced to begin in the midst of the hard movement,

    the one already sounding as we are born….

  • compassionate love

    drawing by lynn
    drawing by lynn

    St Kevin and the Blackbird, by Seamus Heaney is part of Chapter 6, “The Flow of Love”, in my Spiritual Connection in Daily Life book.  I wrote:

     I think about love for my daughters and how it feels. I wonder about how it influences their obvious care for others. Where did it come from? What keeps it going?

    An Irish legend about St. Kevin forms the basis of a poem by Seamus Heaney. The poem describes St. Kevin kneeling in his monastic cell, praying with arms outstretched, one out the window through the bars of the cell. A bird settles in his outstretched hand and makes a nest there. Because of his compassionate love, Kevin just stays in that position until the eggs hatch. It must have been very hard, and he would have become very tired and wanted to stop. Not even reflecting on the logistics, where did he find the energy to continue holding the nest while the eggs hatched? Heaney in his poem touches on the eternal and rooted wellspring of love in the midst of difficulties, and how care for the bird allows that wellspring to flow through Kevin.

    Are you holding any birds that have begun to nest? Do you ever find yourself stuck in the midst of commitment and care, in distress yet still desiring to love? Do you find yourself overextended in some way or another? And then what do you do? How do you sustain this love and care? How does that feel? ….”

    This drawing of mine was inspired by the wonderful poem. Here is a link to Heaney reading it with his soft Northern Irish accent. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/st-kevin-and-blackbird

  • marvel

    What is a spiritual experience after all?  Sometimes we can have a sense of what it ought to be and that can get in the way. I find that the poem, Veni Creator, by Czeslaw Milosz, a Lithuanian-Polish poet, from the book, Collected Poems, 1931-1987, speaks to me.

  • anniversary

    drawing by lynn
    drawing by lynn

    Wedding by Alice Oswald

    From time to time our love is like a sail
    and when the sail begins to alternate
    from tack to tack, it’s like a swallowtail
    and when the swallow flies it’s like a coat;
    and if the coat is yours, it has a tear
    like a wide mouth and when the mouth begins
    to draw the wind, it’s like a trumpeter
    and when the trumpet blows, it blows like millions . . .
    and this, my love, when millions come and go
    beyond the need of us, is like a trick;
    and when the trick begins, it’s like a toe
    tip-toeing on a rope, which is like luck;
    and when the luck begins, it’s like a wedding,
    which is like love, which is like everything.

    This poem, Wedding, by Alice Oswald, is from The Thing in the Gap-stone Style (Oxford University Press)

  • Star

    Joseph Brodsky, Nobel laureate, wrote a poem for Christmas each year for 18 years. When asked if he was a religious person, Brodsky, a Russian Jew, responded: “I don’t know. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.” He once referred to himself as a “Christian by correspondence.” As the poet Michael Collier wrote, “Brodsky’s religious uncertainty keeps his Nativity efforts clean of tinsel and commercialized sentiments.” These poems can bring us closer to what it means, no matter what our actual beliefs, that God took on human form and really knows how it feels to be like us. Here is one of them.

    Star of the Nativity by Joseph Brodsky from Nativity Poems (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2001)

     

    In the cold season, in a locality accustomed to heat more than to cold,

    to horizontality more than to a mountain,

    a child was born in a cave in order to save the world;

    it blew as only in deserts in winter it blows, athwart.

    To Him, all things seemed enormous: His mother’s breast,

    the steam out of the ox’s nostrils,

    Caspar, Balthazar, Melchior—the team of Magi, their presents heaped by the door, ajar.

    He was but a dot, and a dot was the star.

    Keenly, without blinking, through pallid, stray clouds, upon the child in the manger,

    from far away—from the depth of the universe, from its opposite end—the star

    was looking into the cave. And that was the Father’s stare.

     

  • It must be somewhere

    Study-of-Clouds-largeMUSIC
    By Juhan Liiv

    It must be somewhere, the original harmony,
    somewhere in great nature, hidden.
    Is it in the furious infinite,
    in distant stars’ orbits,
    is it in the sun’s scorn,
    in a tiny flower, in treegossip,
    in heartmusic’s mothersong
    or in tears?
    It must be somewhere, immortality,
    somewhere the original harmony must be found:
    how else could it infuse
    the human soul,
    that music?

    Translated from the Estonian by H. L. Hix and Jüri Talvet  Source: Poetry (June 2011) http://bit.ly/kxfS8D

  • roots dangling

    roots on_lynnunderwood

    It is so much easier, when we speak to a group of people, to pretend to be someone we are not, taking the stance of the totally confident and sure expert. It takes courage to be who we are, warts and all. We think somehow if we seem perfect, then what we say will be more compelling, that people will take us more seriously. But it is when we stand with the mud adhering to our hands, and the roots dangling, that we speak authentically. I did this drawing to remind myself of this. In these days with airbrushing of photos and massaging of images on the web and in broadcast, “polished” seems to be the norm.  But who we really are, with roots dangling, mud clinging, imperfections sparkling in the eternal sun – that is real beauty.

  • Stained Glass

    art by lynn

    We,
    people
    are living stained glass windows
    Beautiful in ourselves.
    Meant
    too
    for
    light;
    for color-bathing others.

    Marlene Halpin OP