Or not.
26 Jan 12
Gather
Some days,
the only thing to do
is to gather yourself up
and lay yourself down
on your altar.
25 Jan 12
Receive
Today I hurt my toe–not a big deal–and I allowed someone to bandage it for me.
When I make an altar every day, I begin to see the mystical in the every day–today, in that moment of giving and receiving care.
It is not always easy to write about this.
“The irony of writing about [a mystical] experience in the modern era is such that, if I say to people, ‘This really happened,’ not unreasonably, they will be inclined to doubt me. They might suspect me of boasting, or assume that I have lost my mind. If I say, ‘I imagined it, I made it up, it’s fiction’–only then are they free to believe it.”–Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace
May I experience and believe.
23 Jan 12
365 Altars
My dear, lovely, wise friend Jeanne and faithful reader-commenter has a new project called 365 Altars, and it’s about creating and honoring and sharing the sacred beauty of our lives. 365 days a year.
365. Days.
I love daily.
Since about a week after Gracie died, I’ve posted here every day.
(Except yesterday, when I thought I clicked “publish,” but I didn’t, and that’s another story.)
Sometimes I’ve just posted a picture, other times just copied a poem.
But the dailiness has resulted in something bigger than merely the string of posts.
They’ve been transformed. Into altars. Into trail markers. And I’ve been transformed, too.
Altars and trail markers.
Objects created, collected and arranged on our journeys. Holy places of sacrifice and grace and remembrance and acceptance. Signifiers of the paths we’ve chosen. Guides for others.
Places and moments to stop and worship, meditate, express.
Maybe enclosed.
Maybe exposed.
Whether your altar is in your home or your house of worship, on your blog or flickr, Facebook, Delicious, Pinterest or Twitter, from your camera or your paintbrush or your pen, I hope you’ll join Jeanne and her people (and me) this year in creating and sharing 365 Altars.
Dailiness is alchemical.
23 Jan 12
A little distance
I love to take a close look.
But sometimes a little distance helps you see what things are.
I thought I published this yesterday–guess I needed a little more.
20 Jan 12
Anniversary 3. Take out your pencils. Begin.
Three years ago I created a blog called Graciespeaks with a link to this poem.
I think I should read it every day. Aloud. And begin again.
Praise Song for the Day
A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration
Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.
All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.
Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.
We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.
I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain: many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,
picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.
Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.
In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp.
Praise song for walking forward in that light.
18 Jan 12
Censor
I called my congresswoman today to express my opposition to SOPA and PIPA.
I started thinking about freedom. About art’s dependence up on it. And about the ways I censor myself, long before any person or government might.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND RELIGION, FROM WANT AND FEAR–these are the Four Essential Human Freedoms, from FDR’s Address to Congress, January 6, 1941:
“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want — which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear — which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor– anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
To that new order we oppose the greater conception — the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.
Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change — in a perpetual peaceful revolution — a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions — without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.
This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.
To that high concept there can be no end save victory.”
From Congressional Record, 1941, Vol. 87, Pt. I.
I am privileged to enjoy these Four Essential Human Freedoms.
But if I forget, or fail to use them, every day, with consciousness, with every breath and every creative act, then I may well lose them, and any chance I have of helping others to gain them, too.
