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April 04, 2009
I stare into the Lenten mirror and nothing stares back at me
It's been a long empty barren Lent for me. Kind friends tell me that's what Lent's meant to be but it doesn't feel like what I imagine the hot desperate passionate suffering of Christ must have been like - and then I think well maybe I did meet my demons and of course, it wasn't very pleasant - and does feel very dull as I've got to know them all quite well by now except of course that there's always a trickster in the pack.
Anyway, just as the Holy Week station approaches and there really does feel nothing to report - this is extra worrying as I've got to produce something spiritually nourishing for other people next week - a poet showed up at the 11th hour. Poets have been my preachers for such a long time now - maybe always have been actually. I live in Oxford and we have just had the Literary Festival. I've never been - it happens in the university and isn't really my scene. Indeed entering big marquees in the grounds of Christchurch college did feel like being an unkempt kid with chocolate all over her face at knee level in a very upper class wedding. However, I was prepared to infiltrate these strange ranks to worship at the altar of David Whyte. I had been very strongly recommended by the 2 friends I was with - we were late and so were indeed like the 3 wraggle taggle gypsies at the back of the class.
I had been put off by his website - he is Anglo-Irish but lives in the States and so charges thousands of pounds to go and spend a week with him in the Lake District. Suddenly all those literary people letting me in for £7.50 seemed very kind indeed. I'm not sure he (or anyone else) is worth thousands of pounds but I recommend an hour in his company strongly. Like John O'Donohue (who he is very like and they were friends), in that hour it all seems so simple and then you go blinking back out into the sunshine of a normal day and you know quite soon it will feel complex again. But it was great to be reminded. And to be fair, he never said it was simple. He talks of life not as if you are at the centre of it naming things but that you pay attention to things and they speak back to you. It is a conversation. And how this is like poetry - that we try in our little garrets to name things but we need the external world to speak back to us:
Everything is Waiting for You
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
-- David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You
©2003 Many Rivers Press
Posted by Tess at April 4, 2009 09:31 AM
Comments
Your poetry is so powerful Rose - it does what David Whyte talks of - converses with the external world and allows each thing (your pain) to speak of itself and speak back to you and so speak to us. Tho I am not in at that place at the moment people I love are. In fact I have wondered whether the dullness I feel is quite a precious gift when some around me are having their (very real and difficult) dramas because my own might distract me.
Your poem speaks of more than Lent - Holy Week and Easter too. Have you met my favourite living poet - Mary Oliver. She has written some of the best poetry ever and these, a few of my favourite lines (from In Blackwater Woods) echo what you have written:
To live in this world
You must be able to do three things
To love what is mortal
To hold it
Against your bones knowing your own life depends on it
And when the time comes
To let it go
To let it go
Posted by: Tess Ward at April 6, 2009 08:01 AM
Another's hot, desperate Lenten suffering. Does this make up for yours? It's called Chameleon.
i walk through the door of death
and pain mocks me:
'you are still living
and you feel, you feel
a living death
you have the privilege to touch
death's jewelled robe
though you are not yet dead
you drink death's poison
you imbibe her acrid fumes
and yet, and yet
still you breathe
the breath of the living
and though you wear the shroud of death
you must parade in the finery of the living
you confront the darkness of death's dungeon
and yet, and yet
still you are living
there is no grave whereto reside
you walk through death's door
and you feel the pain
you feel the suffering
you feel the curdling of rancid blood
you feel the cold granite of fear
you meet with the spirit of death
but she turns you away
and your body yet breathes
with no respite, no consolation
of annihilation.'
then pain speaks to me
in tempered tones:
'i want you to know me,
to feel me, to embrace me
and then to let me go.
how can i tell you
that i am your greatest confidante
and not your foe?
i walk through the door of death
and in the terror of my blackest night
i hear pain's gentle whisper:
'hold me, embrace me,
and then, as you would know me,
let me go.
i am the chameleon:
in your peaceful presence
i am the greatest wisdom,
the lightest joy,
the brightest light,
the deepest love
that you will ever know.'
fear and sorrow singing
we dance through the door of death
and in the still dark of her dungeon,
on the wall, a vision I behold:
the chameleon is changing
from black to whitest gold
,
Posted by: rose at April 5, 2009 11:29 PM