Divine Nature

Saturday, February 6, 2010

The Wolf

According to Native American traditions, a wolf is both a teacher and a pathfinder, guiding the people on their neverending journey through life and beyond.

What a wonderful animal to have as a spirit guide!

New stones have risen up earth's labor
toward air. Everything rises,
the ocean in a cloud,
the rain forest passing
above our heads.
Children grow inch by inch
like trees in a graveyard,
victors over the same gravity
that pulls us down.
Even our light continues
on through the universe, and do we stop to
wonder who will see it
and where,
when the light of this earth is gone?
May there long be our light.

And then it falls. Shades are pulled down
between two worlds, clouds fall
as rain. Light returns
the way rain from Brazil falls
in New York and the green parrots
in their cages feel it, shake their
feathers, and remember home
and are alive
and should they be thankful
for that gift
or should they curse like sailors and grieve?

I tell the parrots,
I too have wanted to give up
on everything
when what was right turned wrong
and the revolutionaries who rose up
like yeast in life's bread, turned
against those who now rise up.

That's why I take the side of light--
don't you?--with the weight of living
tugging us down and earth wanting us back
despite great thoughts and smiling faces
that are prisons in between
the worlds of buying
and selling even the parrots
we teach to say "Hello."

Hello. Did I call this poem
the direction of light?
I meant life
so let this word overthrow the first
and rise up to the start.

How to Love

" Love extravagantly!"

--Corinthians 13:13

(Trying the b&w effect with snow. Converted from color.)

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Blessedness

Happy--nay, most blessed!--are they who are able to do in adulthood what they enjoyed in childhood.

The Osprey

Watchful, watchful, the osprey
On the islet in the river
Comely, goodly, the maiden,
A fit mate for our lord
--Shi jing

"The Osprey"

by Mary Oliver

This morning

an osprey

with its narrow

black-and-white face

and its cupidinous eyes

leaned down

from a leafy tree

to look into the lake - it looked

a long time, then its powerful

shoulders punched out a little

and it fell,

it rippled down

into the water -then it rose, carrying,

in the clips of its feet,

a slim and limber

silver fish, a scrim

of red rubies

on its flashing sides.

All of this

was wonderful

to look at,

so I simply stood there,

in the blue morning,

looking.

Then I walked away.

Beauty is my work,

but not my only work -

later,

when the fish was gone forever

and the bird was miles away,

I came back

and stood on the shore, thinking -

and if you think

thinking is a mild exercise,

beware!

I mean, I was swimming for my life -

and I was thundering this way and that way

in my shirt of feathers -

and I could not resolve anything long enough

to become one thing

except this: the imaginer.

It was inescapable

as over and over it flung me,

without pause or mercy it flung me

to both sides of the beautiful water -

to both sides

of the knife.

--from West Wind (Mariner Books, 1997)

Monday, January 4, 2010

What Is Goodness?

Here is a quote from the film Chocolat that I wanted to share, along with photos of some lovely enticements.

At the end of the film Père Henri delivers the following short comments as his sermon during the Easter Sunday mass, after a Lenten season that turned his village upside down:

I'm not sure what the theme of my homily today ought to be. Do I want to speak of the miracle of Our Lord's divine transformation? Not really, no. I don't want to talk about His divinity. I'd rather talk about His humanity. I mean, you know, how He lived His life, here on Earth. His kindness, His tolerance. Listen, here's what I think. I think that we can't go around measuring our goodness by what we don't do. By what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think we've got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include.