Time for Frühlingsfest

We drank Bier by the liter,
because we're burly Mensches.
We ate Wurst by the meter,
and danced on the benches.

I remember that day,
when we sang songs we can't explain;
when we never wanted to say,
Auf Wiedersehen.

Airports

Three hour layovers
are themselves vacations
in the rural town of
Transition where
the longer you stay,
the less of a local
you are.

Everyone in the food court
seems to be at home
in the bustle and stress:
walking with sack lunches
bearing blazing logos
and clear water bottles,
holding twisted refractions,
looking at glowing screens
or glossy magazines,
which like those who read them
are merely passing through.

I catch the eye of a guy
mummified in a business suit
taking a drink of pop from a straw
and with a glance he seems to say
"You're not from around here, are you?"

I'm sitting across from a kid
too young to read the glossy pages
too young to own a phone
filled with friends not calling.
He's even too young to
buy the emblazoned bags
or the twisted bottles,
though he watches his parents
flipping through phones and pages.

We catch eyes and seem like friends
sitting on dry rocks watching
all the restless water rushing around us,
and seem glad to share a moment
of peace in the sun, while fully knowing
this stream might also sweep us away.

Hebel Hebelim

Breath of Wind, O Breath of Wind ...

All is the Breathing of Wind and Spinning of Air 

(Ecclesiastes)

There are sometimes when I remember all I ever wanted to do growing up was to draw.  Those days are Saturday evenings, when I turn on the radio's folk music, voices and stories.  When I set the light on some common and neglected part of my life.  A few hours and a pair of sincere eyes are all you need.  The secret to good art is just paying attention.  In those immediate moments, I'm that younger me, with scribbled leaves of paper lying scattered all over the living room floor.  I always dreamed of being an artist when I was older (My middle name is 'Ward' and that's just 'draw' spelled backwards).  But when I went to college, I stopped studying art.  I traded my studio for a study.  I moved on to the more reliable and lucrative profession of theology (God's a great boss, but there are some who pay better; not that it really bothers me).  But really how different is studying the Creator of art from studying the art of creation?  Paying attention is prayer.  Being able to appreciate the gift your eyes are giving you in this moment is grace and ευχαριστω.  Pencil marks and paper might not be the shoes themselves, but they aren't meant to be.  The articulations of theology are not God Himself, but they're not meant to be.  Rather sketches and theology are invitations of perspective: Look at these shoes how I do.  Look at Him how I do.  I may have volumes riddled with marginalia or lecture notes on my desk, but Saturdays remind me that no matter how many people (if ever) call me 'Dr. Granger' or how far I seem to have come, I am always still going to be that little kid with scribbled papers falling to the floor as he slowly learns how to pay attention.

Luminous II

Aqua lateris Christi, lava me.
Sanguis Christ, inebria me.

Everyday our souls are wed
but it's so hard to celebrate
when we're all so poor in spirit
and the wine so often fails.

The joyless evening's emptiness
does not even offer distant walls
against which our frail voices
might find an echo.

But instead our cries are drowned
before they leave our mouths
and the silence seems to pour in
to fill our throats and hearts.

In these muffled moments
we can do nothing, but clutch
our fingers around rosary beads
as the backdrop of the evening
smothers our sorrows like
the folds of Our Mother's robes.

She turns to her Son in our stillness
and, with us, He tilts his head back
to drink those last lonely drops
lingering in His also-empty cup.

We are jars of clay filled to the brim
with water so pure, simple, and clear,
with water so obvious, boring, and mundane.

Water for washing, but not for a wedding
which calls for spirit and fire,
which calls for wine and dancing.

He draws from our mundane moments, a memory,
a single drop between our thumbs and forefingers,
and tells us to squeeze until it bursts like a grape.

He says,
Remember the face
of someone you love,
someone vanished into
the silent smothered past.

Remember how they shine
as clear as water all the way
down to your gut where all
memories and emotions are
trampled underfoot,
pressed and fermented.

How often do
the little things they did
pour out rich and burning
as wine through your eyes?
How is it that in our tears
water can burn so much?

It's been a while
since life tasted rich with mystery
and every hour seems to stretch out
like a transparent and obvious sea.

But remember every moment's vintage
calls to be uncorked, poured, and drunk
in the aromatic Now.
For the simplicity of life
is daily aged in love's fires.

Let your prayer come out
of its lonely longing
into the First Miracle
where it's raining wine
and our laughter echoes
from the bottom of our glasses
in joyful disbelief at the fact that,
He has kept the good wine until now.

A Heart Adrift

I carry my Heart in a black wool coat,

through the white whirling of Winter

    As it beats warmth,

    Thawing frozen souls

        Trudging trenches through the snow,    

          Teeth speaking with chattering,

        Clenching palms with frigid fingers.

    . . . and so this Heart thaws with thumps.

Like that spindly black Branch, naked and lonely,

        Who writes weakly on the winds

    the story of his glory

As it leaves him every Fall.

    These days, he sways

        Clothed and glowing

            As Winter weaves him a wool of snow.

    . . . and so this Heart wishes warmth.

Singing, like that Icicle, passionate and longing,

    Chasing after his own dropped tears

        Prayers falling

            Building the other

        She rises up to kiss him,

    As he exclaims, “O Ice of my ice!”

    . . . and so this Heart prays and hopes.

Lend

Those hands

In your lap

    to the reaching and crying

        preaching and prying

            of this Heart.

For bears and squirrels have fur to warm them in frosted days,

    Where flakes tickle and tease almost numb cheeks

       Where a lake’s skirt freezes into a flying fringe along the shore

    Where a stream slows and trickles   t e d i o u s l y  along  the  trail . . .

. . . as the cold wind breathes.

So I am adrift

With this Heart

molded to be held not in

    The red-brown whiskers of my beard

      nor tattered sweaters with fraying sleeves

        nor dark recesses of black wool coats

          nor the fragile flesh of my chest,

But it was born to crackle

      warm and loved

In the hearth of your hands.

A friend once told me this poem is very 'me.'  I agree.

Words to a Friend with Dreams

Dear Friend,

Another word for dreaming can also be Hope and so I ask you to not stop dreaming.  We often speak about the "real world," and that dreams are imaginary worlds made of wind that blow away, but your experience is proving the opposite.  The "real world" falls apart, breaks and, like love letters that weren't good enough, it is crumpled up and tossed in the waste bin.  What is emerging is the Dream and the Hope and the Love, which were always just behind the passing Present, which is meant to be unwrapped.  This is why it is called the present and why St. Paul wrote,

 "So we do not lose heart.  Though our outer man is wasting away, our inner man is being renewed every day.  For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:16-18). 

Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians is one that has spoken to me a lot over the years, because it challenges me.  When I think that the world of thought, love, belief and hope is ethereal and ephemeral and that the boring everyday "reality" is thick and substantial, he tells me to flip it.  Imagine that your "dreams" are more the substantial things that don't go away and imagine that which we call "real" to be what is really passing away.

Continue dreaming, even though (or because) hope is thin.  And remind yourself that it is the nature of dreams not to stay dreams.  They're meant to come true. And, know that you are, in some sense, living the dream come true.  


Whoever you were when you were younger, even if it was just an hour ago, had a dream that she wants you to bring to life.  The Present is a hard time, and I know it is especially hard for you right now, but think of being a mother.  Realize that you are giving birth through the narrow birth canal of Now.  Our dreams come out kicking and screaming and it hurts, but this will bring you joy.  Rilke says, "Every happiness is the child of a pain it thought it would not survive" and these are times when our dreams press so heavy against our hearts that we can barely breathe.  


It feels like they are going to kill us, but we probably could not live the dream as we are now.  We have to die, because when we look at the dream-come-true face to face, it would seem that both it and we too had to be born again.  Remember when St. Paul wrote, "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood" (1 Cor 13:12).


Your dreams of winter are beautiful, and even though you think you "have not met real winter yet," I would say you have.  In your dreams, you met the part of winter that, if you loose it, whether or not you have snow on the ground, the chill on your skin or lights on the trees; it makes no difference.  


Because if you loose that part of winter, you loose the snow in your soul, the chill on your spirit and the lights in your mind.  If you loose that part of winter, you could never appreciate winter at all.  Many of us can't appreciate the fact that the dream came true and so we trod the snow underfoot and curse the cold that reddens our cheeks.  

So hold unto that part of winter, but most of all love that part of winter, because when you meet it, your grateful eyes will remind us that we all are living one another's dreams.  Your hope opens your eyes to that, which we are blind to, and so in some sense, you are closer to it than we are.  The secret is that we are all close to it and this is what friends are for.  We are only as far from our dreams as we are from friends who help us see them clearly.  In the writing of these words, I hope I was a friend as much as you have  been to me.


Sincerely,


Sam

Still Small Thoughts

Psalm 131

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,

my eyes are not raised to high;

I do not occupy myself with things

too great and marvelous for me.

But I have calmed and quieted my soul

like a child quieted at its mother's breast;

like a child that is quieted is my soul.

O Israel, hope in the LORD

from this forth and for evermore.

"You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps  you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, IV