Let All the Earth Keep Silence…
“Speak only if it improves the silence.” Courtesy of Chantelle Says
A friend perished tonight; I want to say ‘faded’. She faded from view. Or maybe I want to say, “she passed”, as they say in the part of Georgia where I came to know a bit more of God than I bargained for. No, just faded. Faded like the sun sinking below the horizon only to rise like the sun from another. Fading out, fading in. Setting and rising; borrowed images that, tonight, belong to others. They make me want to pray.
In her short book, “Help, Thanks, Wow”, Anne Lamott declares that prayer should be simple. I agree, but I want to add, it can still be beautiful. The question is, in whose eyes should such beauty be held? Is it possible to perceive beauty most properly when our hearts are tuned to a pitch heard only in darkest nights, or greatest joys, or deepest yearnings; a beauty encountered in the midst of mystery? Is it probable that what often passes for beauty is noisy and as likely to carry prayers ‘aloft’ as a blossom might drift into the sky borne on the backs of gilded bricks? I need more than bricks tonight.
I want to pray. I want to let a stream of yearning flow from my heart to Another’s. Sometimes words of any kind get in the way of prayer. Of all the prayers I have uttered or heard the most profound was the extended silence that followed when Dr. Raymond H. Bailey halted, mid sermon. He had just declared that we should remain silent that God might speak; the following silence provoked hope in some, joy in others, and (perhaps) surprise. In silence we held our breath and our words. We listened and our hearts found the pitch; we simply and silently prayed. What could be more beautiful?
A friend perished tonight. Her family must surely struggle to find something lost in the shambles; in the midst of their grief I pray.
“But the LORD is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him.”
– Habakkuk 4:20 KJV
Boredom Is Not a Birth Defect… It Could Be Congenital, Though…
Not too long ago I listened to an interview with James Taylor and he attributed his creativity to boredom. I guess I haven’t been bored enough for a while now? Today to add a new post to my blog I am leaning on the extraordinary creativity of a friend whose effort to invite a date to the school prom suggests that he is must suffer from congenital boredom (if Mr. Taylor is correct). PLEASE watch this:
For shame….
Thanks to The Christian Gift for a great shot.
The maple I see from my window is clearly embarrassed by the pending nudity of limbs and branches. She is blushing. It must seem odd to her, having nurtured the tree since spring, to now abandon her perch and leave the tree free from her calming presence. If only she could know nor’ easters to come are the sum of the great northern forests’ wiggly flaunting their bare selves. Oh to sing the coming stirring air and let our pale yellow blush burn with brightest passionate red!
To Die (to Write), to Sleep, to Sleep Perchance to Dream…
There is some aspect of death in the act of writing that rises in the instant of losing oneself in narrative. We writers are permitted to dream. But what dreams indeed may come? I am told that for some, writing is like a narcotic. The dictum, “You are a writer if you are compelled to write,” has been hammered into me for decades. Real writers are addicted to their narratives?!
Not me. I have always wanted to write and write well. But, in a perverse self destructive effort to prove I am not addicted, ergo not a writer I seek refuge in the mundane. How I love the distraction of a clogged toilet and cherish the joy of a late night return to the house and finding doggy hors d’oeuvres scattered from den door to garbage can.
I used to write a weekly newsletter column. One that I pompously titled “In the First Place”. Every day would start with random scribbles with the idea that I would build momentum as the deadline approached. Starting with some superfluous worlds and adding more of the same I would finally have whole paragraphs of noise. These I gleefully discarded knowing that NO ONE wanted to read my blathering nonsense. Far better that I tighten screws on a door handle, dust a window sill, and repeatedly check whether the wadded paper in the bin had enough relatives to constitute a zoning violation so I could toss out the whole lot.
But who am I kidding? What else pulls me to a keyboard late at night or forces a pen and church bulletin into my hands during prayers? What other form of insanity compels me claw through an in-flight magazine searching for a clear margin on which to scribble random thoughts and waking dreams.
It is a sad thing to believe a writer is always a Jack Kerouac, drawn by the call of a great idea to sit for hours or days birthing an idea in a single gushing stream of consciousness. There are times when I wish I could not sleep. Times when I wish my own compulsion to write was easier for me.
In my Walter Mitty life as a writer, I see myself awakened from a dream filled sleep. Flailing, groping for a lighted pen and note paper (real writers have cool tools) I record passages of sublime prose. The real me is awakened by the familiar urge of a full bladder. I stumble down the hall and I reach the toilet to find it is clogged… again. In my groggy state the only narrative is a rich and unrecorded internal discourse regarding how gross is the state of the toilet.
When it comes to writing there’s no easy way out for me. I am compelled to tell the stories in which I find, rather than lose, myself. To find myself in a narrative flow I have to plunge into a reality filled with loose door knobs, clogged toilets, and raucous hounds that feel ever so free to help themselves to the dainty treats in the garbage can. To be and to write in the world filled with be-ing, or not to be is the question indeed.
Out of Little ‘Cwacks’ What Mighty ‘Things’ May Come?
Children inspire me:
Child: Mama, there’s a cwack in the ceiling.
Mom: It’s ok. Sometimes houses have little cracks.
Child: I think it’s gonna hatch soon.
Courtesy Kellene Bishop, Preparedness Professional on preserving eggs.
A robust deconstruction of the exchange is revealing. First the child made a public service announcement about a “cwack”. Nothing critical just an FYI to the powers-that-be commonly known as Mom or Dad.
Mom replies with an enthusiastic downplay of the reported issue. “Nothing to see here. Move along. Don’t worry about it.” In kid-speak this means that there’s more here than meets the eye and the powers-that-be don’t want you to get yourself all riled up about it. The consequence is that there’s more to investigate or at least to speculate.
What could this “cwack” mean. Now, maybe, if the kid in question spent too much time in front of Fox news she would immediately consider that the earth’s crust had ruptured and whole hectares of the metropolis were being consumed by hot lava. (I know this can happen because for a whole year my kid drew pictures with hot lava coming from everywhere: the tub drain, the garden hose, the unseen pit beneath the dentist’s chair, etc.)
Not so with this kid, this one lives in the land of butterflies, chicks, and kittens (for now) and she has a simple explanation. “It’s gonna hatch soon!”
Now, if only someone had asked what was going to climb out of THAT shell?
On a whim... 