Sabbath 110

An early rise this morning, the full moon falling below the church next door. Out of sight. And reading about sight and recording what we see. Mark Doty’s World into Word. Perception and possession. Finding the right word. All day yesterday, thinking about words to describe my work with people for over thirty years: deep listening, contemplative, changing light, still moving, beside the clear stream. And don’t forget the work of making poems. For both I read Kenyon, Oliver, Basho, Woolf, Emerson, Muir. My keepers of words. Words I want for my own. I claim for myself: ocean, moon, creek, marsh, bridge, beloved. The infinite divine. Discontent and distance. Wary and weary. Silence and solitude. Live oaks and pine groves. Wisp and wonder. Wandering. The work of naming, how we describe what’s before us. Three churches, ancestors, the Golden Gate Bridge, children and grandchildren. Yellow pencils and one blue fountain pen. Fire wood. Paper. Quilt. Brewed tea. Tending words. Making myself useful. Tending to people. Often a mishmash. Never just one focus, yet only one desire, words. A lexicon, a library. The vernacular. I’ve made a shelf for myself to hold the mysterious along with the known. Snow still covers the north side of the street. The south side, only scattered patches. I like looking toward the white. The brightness blinds if I stare too long. Searing my sight. I close my eyes to whats written: my private language, my personal mode of knowing. I receive the sun through the front windows of my study.

Sabbath 108

This morning I woke with Eliot’s East Coker swirling. Home is where one starts from. As we grow older  / The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated / Of dead and living… We must be still and still moving  / Into another intensity…In my end is my beginning. Begin again. How often I say that to myself. Just begin again. Bi-annually, monthly, daily, sometimes hourly. Begin anew. Writing, walking, yoga. Always beginner’s mind in the Zen sense of things. It is Sunday and I’m still away from home and how strange to hear church bells ringing in North Bennington. The wind whirling and the sky darkens as I write. A winter storm. I’m almost packed and ready to return home, renewed and infused with the atmosphere of literature and community.

Sabbath #107

A different view today:  meadow and tree line. Mountains in the near distance. And  melted snow revealing  garden plots, untended in winter. This morning strangely, fog. But now it’s afternoon and I have a moment to tend to myself. Duties, over for the day. The tea I brought from San Anselmo, stepping. My window cracked, fresh air. Sun shines across this double desk in a dorm room which usually holds three people. I am just one and it feels luxurious to occupy it entirely. Books, note paper, pictures of loved ones,  chocolates, warm and warmer clothing, notebooks for various assignments and a few bars of Panier des Sens en Provence, savon extra dour. Lately I’ve needed extra gentle. Before the Christmas trip to California, before the pilgrimage to Vermont. And both journeys leading me to loved ones and sweet companions. Familial and familiar. People and paths who know me. This moment I’m considering the particular, the personal, first person,the singular voice, letter writing, assay, inner wonder, the story of thinking, daydreaming, the word “perhaps,” vocation and conversion, a knock on the head or a broken collar bone, a change of heart, in spirit. All inspired and ah inspired by a lecture delivered today by Patricia Hampl. Strange for an author to come alive off the page. Someone I have only known until now through her writing. During the question and answer time she asked the speaker to say her name and give her genre. A first, here. Not just acknowledgment and consideration, but information regarding perspective and individuality. Authenticity. Revealing and revelatory. Another lesson. I look up and realize clouds have moved in. I can raise the shade entirely now. I remember too it’s a new moon rising. Yes, the sun setting and new seeds in the palm of my hand. I’m holding them loosely.Only a few this time. One, two, three. It’s enough for now. First world, as Liam used to say.  A world of abundance.

Sabbath # 106

Before the sun had fully risen, I walked outside. Overnight, rain. The temperature, warmer then at bedtime. I walked back for the breakfast my husband had prepared earlier.  I brewed the tea brought back from San Anselmo. Sat in silence. Today, January 6. The Epiphany. And also the birthday of my first child, some forty years ago. Today, kings or wise men arrived at Bethlehem. They brought gifts.  And then I remembered The Journey of the Magi by T. S. Eliot. I found the poem quickly on the shelf, sat on the side of the bed and read it aloud to my husband who was just leaving the house to preach a sermon regarding this biblical story. A cold coming we had of it, / Just the worst time of year / for such a journey, and such a long journey: / The ways deep and the weather sharp,  / The very dead of winter.  It was the same, the day Alex was born: winter and cold. The labor was long and hard. We were unprepared. No crib even. Just one blanket. She was born beautiful and pure of heart, as she remains this day. Her given name, Helaine Alease. Her chosen name, Alex. Born, female with masculine essence. Something we have worked together wrapping our brains around for years. For Christmas her brother gave me a beautiful necklace with two small discs: H and J engraved. I am wearing it now, in celebration.  A child is born, you love with a love that has no limits. No set of specifications, if this then.  You say, be yourself and you mean it. What faith Mary must have had. As a mother you want other people to see the intelligence, the song, the brilliance. Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, / Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation…And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon / Finding the place; it was (you may say ) satisfactory. I know that satisfaction. We are but twenty years apart. Our lives, as adults, parallel. I lead, she leads. Earlier this week, she said. What choices do you have? Voice your desires. A healer, a helper, a wise person. A soulful person. Today, a wet, warmer day. Her birthday. The day the kings set down their gifts. But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation. Perhaps they knew what was to come. They took a different road home. And we manifest a life of reunion where our distances are less and we can celebrate joyfully this day by perhaps walking at Chrissy Field or to the meadow near Point Ryes with all our family members and be in the company of ones we love especially on the day celebrating a birth. The gift we bring: presence, our full presence and joy.