Lines from the Months of This Last Year: February

4.
Saw an ocean of geese...one of the most beautiful things in a while, though the sunsets & moonrises have been prime recently.

Help me to be earnest. I need need need more of You and what You care about; I want to be obedient. To the people I'm meant to love, the work I'm meant to do.

I threw away my shoes today!


5.
Just briefly, I want to thank You.
For a dream prompting me. For a possible new commission. For "Smoke Signals" with Mom, a call from JL, the reminder that You knew me before I was born.
For the small miracles of Your Spirit guiding me... and my obedience (if stilted).

You're asking me to dance.
Show me tomorrow?


7.
The wink of You in my Isaiah verse...bitterness. Isaiah 38:17

Please help me this week, to give all burstingly. And also to be still and comforted.
To draw on Your sap. To give it out. To know You.


8.
Dear Lord,
Thank You. The last two days have been so full, and in many ways I'm still in the thick of it all. But You're here, thanks. Rich thick porridge blanket lather sleep.
Please keep stirring us up.
I am very glad to be rid of my black shoes. I am very glad to have a full tank of gas & oil.
To have fruit. Milk. Eggs. L's contra videos. For the prospect of MAKING IT to CA, OR, ME.
Thank You for my thick-skinned feet. My short hair. My whole body, which I underestimate and criticize and adore. Help me love giving You myself drop by drop and whole,
holy,
healed.

Please speak through me.


12.
Thank You that You don't cheat, lie, or disappoint. If anything, You give better than You promise.


13.
Thank You for purifying me.
Emeth. For being that live bird dipped in dead bird's blood, released in the field, dripping pink water on my arms and face.

Thank You for the rich undeserved kindness You give to me, through S, Mom, L...
Such a sweet morning with the granddaughters and S.
Sweet messy noisy sensitive inquisitive generous selfish adoring children. Bless You for making them.

Thank You for the very small ways we see our duty, see where virtue lies, and can follow You. Please help us do this.

God, they swell and press against my ribs. These brothers and sisters I could spend all afternoon spelling out and crying out for.
Still me and plant me.

Yesterday, in that raw moment with Mom, she observed that I care about place. It would be very hard on me to be a nomad. And, though she did not say this, I care about words that are...gracious. Savory and undiminished. Courteous. Acerbity would wear on me like acid.

Grazie Dio. What a week. I feel a bit weathered. Like the numbness late at night when you've been up too late and don't know how to put yourself together enough to sleep.


15.
Sunlight is streaming in, glittering on the candle holders and wine glasses, illuminating the cut paper cards and spreading amaryllis blossom.
There are lots of things to grow this spring. To do and be. I'm afraid, but I'm trying not to over-think it.
What things will I have learned? How ready is my heart? The seeds are there...

I want to be capable and sweet to the core, unafraid because I know Your love and trust it. Trust You, because I know You. Help me.
Help me make "critics into coaches". Help me live the Gospel. Speak the Gospel. Believe the Gospel (prove it true).

All this helpless expense of life. Help me live carefully, generously. Giving thanks, making do, doing without. Help me be present.  God, show me Your heart. How do You want to be known? What are You up to, here?
If I am in a hurry I will miss it completely.


16.
Thank You for making good out of even today.
I do want heroes, but not idols. You are all the sweeter. Speak Lord.


17.
Unclog my heart so the love only flows out thicker and faster. Help me be ready to live with You.


18.
ASH WEDNESDAY
Thank You for helping me pray this morning, early, even after that horrible sex-with-a-crocodile dream. Protect me through all this. Help me breath and heal, laugh and enjoy and be firm and true unto death. Save Your people.
Thank You for for the ashes still clinging to my forehead like a bruise.
Bring things to mind. Be glorified in me.
Prepare me for great love. Lover, love You, me.


19.
CONPRESDU   CONtinue PRESent DUty

Such a happy, blessed day. Thank You.


20.
Dear Omes,
Thank You. You are everything.
I <3 U.



21.
Buon Gesu,
Thank You for taking J and I to Longwood and back in one piece. Terrible, like the ocean. I'm safe, You're with me, but at the end, with my frayed nerves, I want to blame You for allowing me to come so close. Like Chesterton's anarchist, ~"I want to know why I hurt so much."

Jesus. I'm too full and stretched. Help me quiet tonight. Thank You tremendously for the reminder (via The Amazing Spiderman 2, no less!) that I, Your Woman, don't want to just be protected. I want to be involved. It's my choice. I want to help, even if it means danger, even if it means death (and You've told me it does...death, and life). Give them to me. Prepare me to be such a one as can take it.

Bless You for a day ended in love and hope and laughter. "Baci, baci, abbracci."
Lord, reign over our recalcitrant and discombobulated hearts, REIGN SUPREME. In peace and power, grace, justice, love.


23.
It's still a mystery to me how these songs even happened. They are Yours, take them.

We only know love when it's modeled for us.


27.
Cowardess.

Lord, this is small of me, but I feel cheated. Here I am with my noble plans, "giving" them to You, and what do You do? Take them. :P
Ughhh okay, do. But I need You to take out the poison that makes this another ocean, where I stand confused and suspended, asking, "Is this my invitation into danger? Or my warning to stay away?" and hold my cowardice like a fish.
Do I release it into the sea, or let it die, sticky and subdued, in my hands?

To lose the poetry, I'm up, it's before 6am, and I'm at home, rather than at church for prayer, because of a delicate coating of snow. Before Saturday I would have hopped in the car, geared up the engine, and sloughed off the windshield, thinking nothing of the unplowed road. Now I'm terrified. Like walking my familiar route...but not feeling safe now, because last time I was mugged. I take detours. I take the bus. I wonder if I should be changing at all - after all, You protected me, and that's all I ever need...

Lines from the Months of This Last Year: January

January

2.
Please bring me back to the very basic basics, my Lord. Humble me enough to do the bottom-rung work, drink milk, if that's what I need.

4.
What do I need to learn? I'm feeling the need for love. For more love, truer. To really love. To not be worried if I am taken amiss.
Open my heart to You.
And please show me how to love him as You do, not controlling, not worshipping, not suffocating - clear and fluid and unafraid. Help me be ready. Make the way upright completely.

8.
Today I chipped a tooth.
Honestly, You're almost unbelievable. So creative and precise with everything. Be always bringing me in.

11.
So, yeah. You really do answer prayer. Thank You. Oh, man. Wut even iz this. On a day when I was especially feeling the pinch.
And now. Help me Sabbath rest/worship/do good with You, come closer, mean it more, glow from our conversation, our intercourse. I hope You like the smell of nard...

12.
Boko Haram killed ~2,000. Jews, jewish bodies. Casper ten Boom. I need Your help. Will You help me? Do You really love me that way? Spoiled. Rotten?
Compassion? Obedience? Surrender?
You, I want to please You. I want to remember that this room, too, is a coordinate in Your universe. I am known by angels. "Doubling" again may be a problem, or it may not be. Please till me. I want to share all this, to make You sweat and tremble. To look in Your eyes, have You look into mine, 4 whole minutes plus forever and forever amen.
Help me love so much that I won't seduce. That I won't manipulate, enslave, tear apart. Bring him only good all his days. And You, too.
Teach me love love love love love LOVE.

18.
Thank You for cherishing me enough both to let me be stretched and to help me feel safe, have heart.
What a concentration of power there is in a place where walls are broken down and people know they are broken and have motivation to get well.
Thank You for real love from family, friends. For the promise of You even when I am disoriented and still afraid of dogs and driving and the city and every real thing about life.
I choose You. Aye. If I'm mumbling, claim me.

21.
Help me submit myself to You today. Not because I mentally know it's best, but because I love You.

Chastity. . . oh . . . sometimes I just hate things. The bald empty ugliness of promiscuity. It's like a slavery, a whimpering for acceptance, a hollow grin. Help me recognize holiness for all it is, and not be afraid of being misunderstood. Help her to be honest and simple, even in complexity. I don't mean simple. But true.
The way an arrow is simple, hitting the mark.
The very hardest most vigorous and trained (and oft-failed) simplicity.
Dad and I started a crummy "Scarlet Pimpernel" and switched to a second-rate Alfred Hitchcock. The male figure said he wanted his girl to be "simple, honest, loving." I asked Dad, scoffing, what he meant by simple. Dad said, "Uncomplicated". I wished him luck.
Living is complicated, man or woman.
But there are some things to stand on.
"Who is this coming up from the desert, leaning on her lover?"
It's me.


Do not by any means let me grow into myself like a toenail. Let it be like "bent head under wing."


23.
Snow. Mom is HOME.
Thanks for the weeeevils in my mac & cheese. I ate the whole box, for dinner and snack. Thanks for prayer this morning.
Help me be a nurturer, not an exploiter (Berry). For Your sake, Jesus.


28.
I still don't understand.
I'm thankful for the way You speak to me, and through me sometimes, but I'm not sure I really believe all this about the fame and the money. When are things intrinsically good and worthy? Am I being entitled, lazy? Or am I still TOO WORLDLY in my expectations of productivity and success, and need to get over myself and be still and weak and willing for once?
Who am I? Does it matter? Does it matter if I feel consonance with myself? Feel anything?
Lord, I am feeling a little un-made all over again. Gather me. Subsume me...chirp chirp.
I am thankful. I am content.

ALL of this is GIFT. Pure gift. Words, talent, possessions, any taste or compassion or intelligence or wisdom I may have... it's from You. Gloria.

Right now it's strange, my Orvieto memories are heavy. Like walking past that creepy shop with the poster where a kiss was cannibalism. Like the condemnation I felt in Florence. Oh free me. Like the night at the monastery I finally stretched out on that green bed and blessed my legs for taking me through the day. Like the times I let myself be swallowed in a hug, or the ascension of voices. Or the quiet first hour of our pilgrimage.
Make me a good donkey.

31.
The last hour of January. Thank You for this month. I haven't been thankful for all of it, but help me be thankful now.
Help me talk and love and be taught and led. I am such an ass. I do know I asked You to help me be a good donkey...
You are so beautiful. Your wooing can be trusted. Help me trust You.
Please guide all tomorrow. Protect & guide Pope Francis.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Eucharist, Again

Scooped out and hollowed in the hand
all of me could fit
in a thimble,
in an oyster shell.

Crumbs I have licked from my shoulder are some-
time's sawdust, some apostrophe's miss-
placement.

Wear? Hear. Hear in this place. Wear nothing. Adam and Eve
were perfect, once, and I was
never good.
Enough.

Scooped out and swallowed, pressed against your teeth
you spread me over the roof
of your mouth. You followed
with a glass of water.

Catch up to me. I'm charred and shuddering.
As if the bells and gulls and rocks were wine,
were bread, were blessing, win me back
and clasp me from behind.

Ace

Honey child

you can care about it

going wild

spend your afternoons and evenings

in the branches and the lush leaves

Too many

things have hurt you and you

try to hide

try to love what loves you back and might

never let you down

Fly high

like the little one you held in your hand

With the eyes that seemed to understand

and made a mother of a child

His wings

will never take him very far away

you see, he comes back for you every day

and he would die at your door

(and he did)

Save a feather

as a relic of a pristine love

but realize that relics rot and rust

there’s no way to escape from loss

So let him teach you

let him teach you what I’m trying to say

Grow your loving for the living,

not forgetting what has been

Like a womb

never completely shrinking back to size,

where you’ve loved you will enlarge

but let it go, give it up and let another birth come

you’ll keep giving life…

Intercession

I can feel your prayers
as if the words were Ghostly
gossamer threads we
both are tied by,
shaking at the slight touch
of a hand.

Somehow we know, though we don't
know how to traverse this wet web,
those strands which will safely hold us,
those which will catch
our enemies.

Oh, spin -
keep spinning from inside you
silver intercession,
our home
suspended in air.  

Take and Eat

Blood and juice
indistinguishable;
Velcro pricking as I pull away,
stained. Soft berries roll off their stems
into my hand,
still warm.

Pressed between my tongue and the roof
of my mouth are
wounds, little kisses,
sweet metallic
purple black
and red.

Dame Tu Mismo

I have been swimming in air,
dipping after luxurious waltzes.
I have been breathing upside down.

Opening to You is like lilies,
like suckling at the breast.
If only I were eyes, more eyes,

and more to love You with.