Lines from the months of this last year: May

May

5.
We were the only ones there, and chose a spot behind a park bench that overlooked the valley to the south. It was beginning to dusk, and the trees in the park were shady with full and fresh green leaves, but the sky was still clear and warm.
It was one of the happiest picnics I’ve ever had, under those trees, looking out over the valley and hills beyond. The full moon began to rise right in front of us, from behind a distant electric tower. At first it was so faint we asked each other if it was truly the moon. But it rose, and began to glow as the sky turned a duskier blue, and we grew silent every few moments, gazing at it, watching it rise. [He] laughed at us for our childlike delight. But we all loved it. We laughed, and shared food, and talked. And then [she] unveiled the shortbread cookies, peeling the aluminum foil, on which I’d spontaneously scrawled “LOVE,” from the plate. We ate them all...
We finished the wine.

[She] and I talked before I turned out the light, and laughed because both of our stomachs were making noises.

It is Sunday morning now, and raining softly. I’ll be going to Mass within the hour.

Praise Jesus.

11.

Help us wake with singing.

13 - 15.

Her hair, braided, reaches to the crease behind her knees.

Standing there smiling love at me and not even able 

to pretend to say bad things about me. They just melted. 

I didn't know I could be loved that way. It gave me life.

Adam and Eve weren't cultural.

Forgive me watching my hands. Forgive my foolishness.

I'm not sure what my response should be. It's harmless, but it's not harmless. 

It's really not harmless.

Jesus, I want to stay up with You. Help me sleep in You. I am Yours. 

That is a lovely thing, and it contents me.

17/18.

She mentioned at lunch how, the first time she saw me, she thought, "the monastery!" And how yesterday she wondered while we were shut out of Vespers whether it was God or Satan, trying to keep me from becoming a nun. 

Then she said not to take that seriously. It was just her imagination.
But of course I'm thinking about it.

The gnome-wife, lucky penny, fairy godmother, owl, badger, St. Bernard.

18.

"Those who use the things of this world, as if not engrossed in them."

- 1 Corinthians 7:31

Things of the world used loosely, lightly, lovingly.

Make me not a caricature of myself.

Groan for me.

21/22.

I am safe in Your cocoon. You are teaching me to trust You. I am in a good place.

22.

I need You. I cannot forget, cannot ignore. Only need You, desire goodness.

24/25.

Is eavesdropping ever a blessed thing? I wonder sometimes.

"Do you love me?"

I love You. You are my life, and I'm learning that.

26/27.

"You two were too intent on the cat to see the celestial consequences of your worldy endeavors."

-Marilynne Robinson, "Gilead" p. 9

Thank You for the swallows and crows over the park today. The loaf of bread. The sharing.

Calling me "old soul" a few days ago.

Thank You for Your Word. Please bless us, guide us. I said that automatically. What I mean is make these dry bones live.

Pentecost tomorrow.

Peace, peace, to those far and near. Your Shalom.

27.

Pentecost.

Saw the dove descend.

[She] reminded me to look at the moon.

There were two swallows in the Duomo.

28.

I don’t know how to let go.

I’ve never let go in my life.

And I don’t even know how to write. How to describe the clean 

sky morning, the damp smudge of ink on paper, 

the heart’s incline. Desire and

The thudding of feet on pavement, on cobblestone. The cobbler. 

A pretentious glance, a sheepish foolish dance, three biscuits. A toss

and a catch and a weariness. 

A strange disjunction of tears through a computer screen. Being seen. 

Being welcomed across a room. Being spoonfed. Being led. 

Being piled with seven small tasks and a last enjoinder to be genuine.

Unicorns and music at pranzo. Sweetness of closeness and ache 

of estrangement. Balding. Better than he would expect 

under the circumstances. A long, long hug.

A red wax chipmunk holding magic beans in the cubby.

We all liked the men with trumpets yesterday. And the firecrackers 

on the little boys’ bellies.

Art and faith. Humility.

“Free yourself from the chains on your neck, O captive daughter of Zion.”

-Isaiah 52:2b NIV

Lines from the months of this last year: April

4.
Help me count myself welcome more often.
Help me welcome.


6. Maundy Thursday
This is one of the best days of my life.


10.
Jesus. The deep, deep love for all of us that You are building inside of me.
Please heal my feet.
I can't see her the way I saw her at first. Our goofus-on-the-roofus today. In the courtyard. "CHASE me!" and dancing. Praying.

It was a quiet evening. Please bless the vegetarian beggar.
Help me rejoice in others.


13. Today. Pigeon caught in the balcony bars.
Walked back alone for the third time.

Running in the park, in drizzle. Oh, help.
Oh, help! I can't stand suggestions. I need cold hard burning certain truth.
Show me. Woo me. Purify me, Lord Jesus.


17.
I am well
I am deeply well
I am a garden
I am a cistern
I am a sister
I am a friend
I am a guardian
I am a well.

Saturday: All Mown, mysterious music shared. Wordless prayers to You.


20.
Oh, to be less self-conscious.

Shame on us.
Humility. Cookies. And hope in Your grace.

Praise to You, Lord Jesus. All wise,
all pure, all gracious.
Brave and strong and obedient
beyond all humanity. Loving.
Amen and amen.

I don't want France. I want You.


22.
And then I realized that all along I had been
trying to capture the light.
And I saw myself. And I was beautiful.

They would feed me vegetables and teach me to cartwheel.


23.
My arms...
[She] took my arm as we walked today.

"The obligations of normal human kindness - chesed, as the Hebrew has it - that we all owe. But there's a kind of vanity in thinking you can nurse the world. There's a kind of vanity in goodness."
-Madeleine L'Engle, "A Ring of Endless Light," 61

"Anything on the side of life's worth a try."
-Ibid, 133

"If I'm confused, or upset, or angry, if I can go out and look at the stars I'll almost always get back a sense of proportion. It's not that they make me feel insignificant, it's the very opposite, they make me feel that everything matters, be it ever so small, and that there's meaning to life even when it seems most meaningless."
-Ibid, 147.

"He made me feel very real, not replete with me at all, only real, and hopeful."
-Ibid, 164

"And nothing loved is ever lost or perished."
-Ibid, 167


29.
Those who hope in You will not be disappointed. Show us! Is that true?
Then show us!

Lines from the months of this last year: March

March

1.
"Falsehood is never in words; it is in things."
-Italo Calvino, "Invisible Cities," p. 62

"There is no language without deceit."
Ibid., 48


2.
Wisdom calls from the highest point in the city. Proverbs 9:3.


3.
A truth beyond the language of the skin, of which skin plays a part.
Today: mercato, lower Orvieto, kissing the kind nun, playing futbol. Drawing Heather at the Duomo.
You have an original face.

Lord, please bless my cashier today, who allowed me to go back for another yogurt after I dropped my first one, trying to put it in my bag.

"It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear."
-Italo Calvino, "Invisible Cities," p. 62


4.
Nine days!
It feels like three weeks in some ways. Time is heavy here, heavy from richness, from movement, from growth. It chokes me a little sometimes. I can get into the rhythm of the swirling water, and I can seem well. But eventually I must stop. And as I stop, the movement pushes against me, inertia, and the forcefulness required for stillness overwhelms me...
But here, in this rest that You have allowed me, help me to be truly still. Still enough to feel Your gentle ripplings over the surface of my thoughts, from within my soul.


5.
A new thought: how terrible it would be
not to be able to worship You,
respond to Your beauty,
or give You pleasure.


6.
Fragrant with mint and rosemary. Gently, gently, breathe again.
Say, "This is not for nothing."
Believe in beauty. Believe in the fecundity of darkness. Rich soil, birthing.
Beating drums.
Pulsing and rippling muscles beneath my skin, soft and taut as camellia petals.
And now I long for a purity beyond safety,
a joy beyond laughter.
Belonging in a place is a delicate state of being.
Pressed against these pillars, these daughters, I, Caryatid,
strong in an ageless being.
Decorous is not a word to describe me. Intent on truth,
but let propriety die when it kills the soul. Be whole,
be very good. Allow yourself the terror of a conscience,
allow yourself the comfort of a rule.
Be queen, be fool.

These strange textures of beauty in the knuckles of my hand. Crevices marked out in charcoal black.
I could believe the best of you, for you. You are capable of a great beauty, a great truth. Quietly expressed in a stack of logs, a drainboard, shared fruit in a basket. Lagging behind, and we talked and you wanted to listen. What a gift is given in listening. Tell me your story. Tell me your loves. Trust me with your thoughts.
I will lie beneath this rectangle sky, on the ground. Sparsely grassed and pebbled. Hear the cats whisk by or pause to eye my long red woolen coat. Hear voices passing, pray to be alone.
Lonely is dangerous, lonely is safe.
Like the woods, where I loved while I shrank from the human face.
Clothe my eyes. Robe me in a sacrifice of furs,
and burn my leaves.

Too large to throw my arms around. If my love is unresponsive, tell me why.
Are you alive?


7.
It is not about me.


8.
Push darks and lights, variation. Everything is important. Allow yourself to enter the objects, to know the character of each.
You cannot erase it, but it adds character.

Tear down all idols.

I startled myself singing "Lev Tahor..." tonight; didn't realize until I started it that that was what I really meant. I hunger and thirst. Blessed are those...
Help us see each other. Help old ways of seeing to fade. Wean us off the internet nets we've woven for ourselves. Help us rest in You. Help me.


19.
Just let my life be a prayer.


22.
Oh Jesus, You dismay and delight me.
You do not thing in halves.


24.
And when did I become afraid to say what I really think? Dear Jesus. Help me be fearless again. Modest without being ashamed. Totally free, totally secure, totally alive. A life-giver. Make me more accepting of myself, of everyone. Without my own silly ideas interfering. Give me a love like Yours.


26.
Which way is a worse regret? Or, which way leaves more room for You to work?
Which speaks most loudly of love?
Show me what to do. Loving is not so different now from what it was then.
That one umbrella pine bending out so pugnacious.
What old gallantries are still true in all of this?

Merciful One, have mercy on me. Whistle for me. Wrap us in a blanket by the gray sea swells, and give us bread and wine.


28.
Thank You for the words that have which have stung and churned and uprooted and spurred me to come to You with greater humility, greater need.
Help me be a true lover and a lover of truth.


29.
Preghiera:
There is no separation.
Our God reigns, saves, loves.

"Even in darkness light dawns for the
upright,
for the gracious and compassionate and
righteous man."

-Psalm 112:4 NIV


When your sleep was so fragile it could be broken by a shaft of light.

Lines from the months of this last year: February

February

3.
Jesus, please use me to make families of people wherever I go.
And I pray for the peace of Jerusalem.


10.
"There is an earned innocence, I believe, which is as much to be honored as the innocence of children."

-Marilynne Robinson

11.
Thank You for giving me life, breath, digestion, and laughter.


12.
Imagine for the good of others.

I should not call common what God has made holy.


14.
Help me to give others credit for being more, different, than I expect them to be.

"But those who plan what is good find love and faithfulness."
-Proverbs 14:22b NIV

Help me be right with You, be gentle with whatever comes, tomorrow.


15.
"The thinness of face and fading of skin,
the pain given by damp and a hard bed
to a frail body, will hardly distress me,
for I look to have frequent visits from birds
and sunlight and Jesus the King who made me,
and my mind will be calling on Him each morning."

-Irish, 11th-12th century, from "A Hermit's Song"


19.
Yes, I even want to sacrifice.

My hands are still cold, no matter how close I inch them. Do I fall in?


20.
And this is what I thank You for:
For what is deep and everlasting,
For souls that love me in my closet days.


21.
Lord, I want to be all Yours. Pure of heart, because I am fixed on one thing - One thing.
You.


23.
This day is ending where is began: in Your arms, Jesus.
Yet it feels very different.

I walked and ran outside. Kissed the trees. Rested in the grass by the crabapple as I liked to and felt so content, Lord. Caught a glimpse of a star through the thinness of clouds. And then got one of those shocking feelings of realization, how great the world is, so many people, these clouds going somewhere else - Lord, You are great and do marvelous deeds. You will provide. You are good. You will salvage my mistakes. You will save me. You will provide friends.


24. (In the air)
Lemuel's wedding.

"You always seem to help me say things I'd never say otherwise."


26.
You've been trying to get in at the window.

Help me not feel alone in the crowd of new, help me to allow myself to be seen. Not to be coy or showy or sullen, either.
Help me to speak up for holiness - not because it is a rule, but because it is good. Help me not to wrong others by withholding love or acceptance. Help me not wrong myself by hardening myself (or abusing myself) from the love and acceptance of others.
Abba... You know I want something deep and lovely and joyful, joyous, to spring within my soul. Here I am. I am here.

Season my words.


27.
Isaiah 50:4 NIV

"The Sovereign LORD has given
me an instructed
tongue,
to know the word that
sustains the weary.
He wakens me morning by
morning,
wakens my ear to listen like
one being taught."

v.7
"Because the Sovereign LORD
helps me,
I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face
like flint,
and I know I will not be put
to shame."

v. 10
"Who among you fears the LORD
and obeys the word of his servant?
Let him who walks in the dark,
who has no light,
trust in the name of the LORD
and rely on his God."



29.
Drew hands.

Lines from the months of this last year: January

January.

1.
Jesus, take me fresh, as if this were the very first time.

4.
We played Apples to Apples, which Susanna brought, between dinner and the movie. I was Pure, Important, and Horrifying... Emily was Sweet, Trustworthy, Earthy, Brilliant, and Hopeless. Susanna was Wild, Nasty, and Smooth...
Jesus...
Open doors. Hold keys.
Lord, show me what to do. Help me see what is best, wisest, truest. Help me know how I can serve You. You know what I can handle. You know what is too much. And You know, best of all, how to use even the craziest things for something beautiful. I trust You.

7.
"Be thy heart a well of love, my child,
Flowing, and free, and sure;
For a cistern of love, though undefiled,
Keeps not the spirit pure."

-George MacDonald, "Phantastes," 175

9.
Lord, pave the way before me. I am so excited, frightened, full of desire and doubt, pride and misery. Help me simply be myself before You. You love me, Lord. Somehow.

15.
Mom cried when I came to the table.
This morning I dreamed sweetly.
What do I hold onto too tightly?

17.
Hurrah for Karamazov!

19.
Could I be any stupider?

20.
Jesus. Lord.
Forgive me. Help me see. Scrub me good.


23.
Do I yet know myself?
Can I know that secure Always? That brilliant constancy-dynamism? Good is so much better than evil. Good provides its own action, is complete. But Good fighting evil is the clearest we know, and it feeds us...
Can Satan be so banal and clever that he can preoccupy me with an image while there is a battle going on? he has done it. So help me, God. Please help me.

Show me clearly what I should be doing, praying for, caring about.
Your Name is Righteous and Good.


27.
Help me know Your love and and help make others more themselves.


28.
"Highfalutin mumbo-jumbo." I believe that is what Gilbert called Anne's flowery language. I've just been trying to write poetry, and really it seems pretty useless. In a way I'm relieved, hopeful. It's funny, really.
You know, there are far too many words for cowardice, drunkenness, and prostitution.
Far too few words for the really good things.
But maybe that makes them dearer.
Jesus, teach me truth. Truth in love, in faith, in hope, in obedience. I want to come and bind myself to You and find freedom. I'm really scared to give all my cards to You. Can I trust You, really? Do You really have my best interests at heart? Are You going to make me a frumpy awkward narrowminded prude? i.e. am I going to be lonely and disliked?
Jealousy rankles in me already. So I insult.
"A life lived in fear is a life half lived."
That's a quote. It's from "Strictly Ballroom."
Yuck. I'm so fearful, Lord. I just keep thinking about the ocean and choosing to go out into the waves, trusting You (testing You? Torturing myself?) and being battered and tugged by the waves. That was almost four years ago now, and I'm still not over it. And I'm still not through with choosing to trust You, either. Laying here in bed I can easily give in to fears about being unloveable, lazy, a fake, a failure, a disappointment...
Tell me who I am. Name me.
I am so afraid of fear like that. Of crippling fear, of danger. I hate feeling like a coward.
But anger won't bring me out...
Love will.

Remember?

For Sarah, because I will miss you.

The finest things are said in confidence,
to the broom, and the rough-hewn
log, and the laundry
and the sleeping one.
Or linked arm in arm.

We leave only
layers of our decay,
the things we shed in molting,
and perfumes
of our last day waiting
when we said,
"I see you"
and we meant
"do you see, too?"

Something leapt up
when we lifted a licked finger
to the wind, let another
hour take up the spare room
we intended to save
for later.
There is always a guest, and that stranger
fixed the shingles we didn't know
were missing,
and you are a friend now.

Speak seldom
under breath; speak loud
enough to be heard across the field,

because we are listening, and the moss
is listening, and so are the books
that taught us words in the first place.

And before you leave:
forgive me
because I prayed the candles would blow out.

Lonely

Press the small of my back
and out will pour ten dozen shining ants
from my nose onto the carpet, turning everything
red and diamond

tiffon, cold cooked rice and a million
numbers that are words, are memories,
are "anne is for APPLE" A
and are O U an
apology, then.

Because I do, I do,
And so do you,
and our brown looks homely,
comely, spectacularly
just so.

So humbling to be nothing
very much exciting, this is
a story.
And honey
when the sun comes through.