Two poems for wilderness wanderers.

Water drops on leaf

We began our most recent Community Conversation with Lectio Divina, using the first lines of Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese. We laughed, we cried, we shared. One community member contributed David Whyte’s lovely poem to our conversation. l am deeply grateful to you all.

Both poems are potential resources for you who find yourselves walking in a spiritual wilderness. They speak to the loneliness of wandering and the joy of finding home again. And perhaps to the realization that home was there all along. Perhaps even to the realization that the wilderness is home.

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Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~Mary Oliver

The Well

Be thankful now for having arrived,
for the sense of
having drunk
from a well,
for remembering the long drought that preceded your arrival
and the years walking in a desert landscape of surfaces looking for a spring hidden from you for so long that even wanting to find it now had gone from your mind
until you only
remembered the hard pilgrimage that brought you here,
the thirst that caught in your throat; the taste of a world just-missed
and the dry throat that came from a love you remembered but had never fully wanted for yourself, until finally, after years making the long trek to get here it was as if your whole achievement had become nothing but thirst itself.

But the miracle had come simply from allowing yourself to know that you had found it,
that this time
someone walking out into the clear air from far inside you
had decided not to walk past it anymore;
the miracle had come at the roadside in the kneeling to drink
and the prayer you said,
and the tears you shed
and the memory
you held
and the realization
that in this silence
you no longer had to keep your eyes and ears averted from the
place that
could save you,
that you had been given
the strength to let go
of the thirsty dust laden
pilgrim-self
that brought you here,
walking with her
bent back, her bowed head and her careful explanations.

No, the miracle had already happened
when you stood up,
shook off the dust
and walked along the road from the well,
out of the desert toward the mountain, 
as if already home again, as if you
deserved what you loved all along, 
as if just remembering the taste of that clear cool spring could lift up your face
and set you free.

~David Whyte

 Photo by Thomas Kinto on Unsplash

“She’s so street, but she’s such a lady.”

Bulldog in the grass

Mabel obviously knows her Whitman.

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself 51

Mabel is a bulldog. She’s brazen, bodacious, bold. She’s one of those brawny, hefty, low-slung bulldogs, built like a brick house. I met her yesterday on my river walk. She’d just come up out of the water, dripping wet and ready for action. A taller dog came around the bend just then to find Mabel ready to go. Much romping ensued, Mabel very much holding her own.

Mabel is beautiful in and of herself. The icing on the cake of Mabel’s Mabel-ness, though, is her collar. She sports a sparkly pink collar studded with rhinestones. When I complimented Mabel, her mom said, “She’s so street, but she’s such a lady.”

Mabel knows she doesn’t have to choose between being “street” and being a lady. Mabel is who Mabel is, period.

You and I can be more than one thing, too. We don’t have to choose. We contain multitudes.

Photo Credit: Gabriela Torzsa on Unsplash

Ordination

I consecrated you with blood and salt water at your birth. I bestow upon you daily ordinations. I tell you of your belonging every moment. ~Barb Morris

ORDINATION

You say you’re waiting for permission.

You say you’re waiting for direct orders from an irrefutable voice. A voice from the heavens: This is my daughter, in whom I am well pleased.

Listen to her.

An ancient ritual, laden with pomp and circumstance– Proper form and order.

An ordination with weighty words and codified gestures, performed by men wearing heavy gowns and rings of gold, who seal decrees with wax.

You on your knees on the floor of a long narrow dusty hall ruled by straight lines.

My love, that’s not how this works.

My ordination comes through rock and stars.

This holiness is swimming in the mighty river welling up in you that will not be dammed.

This holiness strips your old tough too-small skin from your body with gentle-edged hands you’ve forgotten you had.

This holiness is living in new thin porous skin permeable to excruciating joy.

I consecrated you with blood and salt water at your birth. I bestow upon you daily ordinations. I tell you of your belonging every moment.

Hear my voice in the piney wind, songs of birds and frogs, and laughter. Feel my hand as butterflies and bees, sun on skin, feet in cold river. See me in seasons’ spiral, cycles of day and night, everyday dying and rising.

Your sweat and tears taste like ocean.

You know my wordless urge and tug in a baby’s cry and the need of a friend. Or a stranger.

Here’s your permission: Daughter, you are here.

You are flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. Breath of my breath. Blood of my blood.

I feed your body with my body.

Anoint yourself with oil and honey.

Stand up, and walk.

Do your work.

©Barb Morris, first published in April, 2017. Stock photo edited on Canva.)

On the Last Day of the World

Here’s a poem about the last day of the world.

W. S. Merwin, “Place”

 

On the last day of the world

I would want to plant a tree

 

what for

not for the fruit

 

the tree that bears the fruit

is not the one that was planted

 

I want the tree that stands

in the earth for the first time

 

with the sun already

going down

 

and the water

touching its roots

 

in the earth full of the dead

and the clouds passing

 

one by one

over its leaves

And here’s my poem in response:

“On the Last Day of the World”

 

On the last day of the world

I would want to swallow dirt

 

what for

not for the dirt

 

to thank this sweet earth

for the gift and miracle

 

to bow to my debt

to take this earth into my body

 

as earth will

at sunset

on the last day of the world

fold me into hers

 

and the stars appearing

one by one

 

singing

 

~Barb Morris, after W. S. Merwin’s “Place”

What would you do on the last day of the world? Feel free to respond in prose form!

photo credit: raphael nogueira on unsplash

 

Going Wild

This is an inconvenient time for going wild. I have responsibilities. And it’s cold outside. …..

I watch my hand that holds the hammer that pounds me into a shape that fits the proper hole. I pound and pound myself, but I don’t quite fit. I squeeze a bulge in here, shave off a sharp edge there, and pound and pound and pound. I try to whittle myself down to nothing so I can disappear. Bop bop bop on my head hits the hammer. Square peg in round hole. Redwood into toothpick. I cut the inconvenient pieces off – limbed so I can slide smoothly into the mill.

Limbs are where the wild things live – where birds make their nests.

Limbs are an impediment to masts and poles. I will wield the ax for you. Let me cut off my limbs to make myself suitable for industry. I will make myself straight and rigid and useful to you powers. Let me read your mind and do what you want before you ask it, so you are blameless.

Behold the limbless handmaid of the Lord.

I will stop pounding myself into a hole that will never ever fit. I will regrow my limbs and branches so the wild things have a place to live. I will nourish my roots and reach out for others’ roots, too.

I am no longer espaliered.

I am a redwood. I am an old ponderosa.

I am a woman following a carnivorous cat across a narrow ridgeling, an arête, on a dark night, with only my senses to guide me, to follow her – I can smell her, I can feel her warmth, I can taste her scent, I can hear her breathing and the soft sound of her paws hitting the ground with each step, and I catch a glimpse of her every now and then, in the starshine. Her eyes glow when she turns to make sure I’m following her.

I am regrowing myself. I am undebecoming.

Deep kindness. Compassionate heart.

Put down the hammer and the axe.

Let go. Free fall. Trust.

Allow yourself to be who you are.

Completely here.

I am giving birth to myself. I am gestating myself. I am both mother and child. I am womb and embryo. It’s not rational, yet it’s completely true.

We are not a fiber farm. We are not a monocultured industrial forest. We are old growth. We are complex and we harbor secrets. Sasquatch lives here. We have stories upon stories. Our usefulness is not immediately apparent. Small numbers of unusual organisms live only in us. We are interwoven and interdependent. We contain entire ecosystems in our crowns. Marbled Murrelets nest in our upper limbs, bathed in the fog from the Pacific. Treelings sprout from leaf duff six feet deep a thousand feet up.

We are the old ones. The living ones.

You fear our fertile, fecund, wild darkness.  We are at your mercy.

I am a seed on the wind.

I am an embryo in my own womb.

What’s necessary for growing a baby? Nourishment. Rest. Love. Patience. Strength. Peace. Vigilance and fierce protection.

Prepare.

You are deeply loved.

Growing is your job.

Be who you are. Exform yourself into the world.

Photo credit: jed Holdorph

Things that bother only burros.

Love Does That

All day long a little burro labors, sometimes
with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries
about things that bother only
burros.

And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting
than physical labor.

Once in a while a kind monk comes
to her stable and brings
a pear, but more
than that,

he looks into the burro’s eyes and touches her ears

and for a few seconds the burro is free
and even seems to laugh,

because love does
that.

Love frees.

~ Meister Eckhart ~

I Want Transformation and I Want It NOW.

The waiting part of transformation is HARD, at least for me. I want to just do the change, and do it quick. Unfortunately, that’s just not how transformation works. Unlike our get ‘er done culture, what happens in that chrysalis can’t be rushed. (See this previous post for more about change, transformation, and the difference between them. Today’s post goes deeper into #5, about the predictable pattern of change.)

My hypothesis is that the obligatory waiting phase is why I resist necessary transformations. I hate that in-between thing so much. (And if I haven’t done the grieving I need to do with any change, transformation pretty much stops.) All those messy feelings, when we just want to feel bright and shiny and good at life, right?

I’ve been finding these words helpful when I feel myself resisting the necessary waiting phase of transformation. It’s an excerpt from John O’Donohue’s blessing “For the Interim Time.”

As far as you can, hold your confidence.

Do not allow your confusion to squander

This call which is loosening

Your roots in false ground,

That you might become free

From all you have outgrown.

 

What is being transfigured here is your mind,

And it is difficult and slow to become new,

The more faithfully you can endure here,

The more refined your heart will become

For your arrival in the new dawn.

 

I love that the poet speaks of enduring faithfully. I love that he speaks of loosening roots and becoming free, and how he acknowledges that it’s a difficult and slow process to become new. Mostly I love that he describes the interim time as a time when our minds are being transfigured.

Stay present here and now, in your body. Spend time in nature, and pay attention to how this amazing Creation in which we are embedded actually works. A flower blossoms when it’s ready, and not a minute before. Hold your confidence. Allow your roots to loosen. Faithfully endure and allow your mind to be transfigured. You are becoming new, which is a holy enterprise.

Be faithful to your metamorphosis.

if you’d like to explore how I can help you navigate change and transformation, I offer a free 60-minute consultation. Fill out this form and we’ll set up a time.