in memoriam: seamus heaney (1939-2013)

today, i am sad. i used to imagine meeting him someday. it's strange, because i haven't read much of his work. but what i did read (mid term break, singing school, gifts of rain), i adored. he wrote lines that stuck in my ears for days.

so i wrote him a poem, as the overly invested fans are wont to do. a double-acrostic, even, because i needed a wall to push against.
here it is.

--

elegy

“The main thing is to write for the joy of it.”

-Seamus Heaney

and so, these things remain - but no cascade of light//

no gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear//in the porch//

dark blobs burned/like a plate of eyes. inter alia.

the world is tending towards stillness, my love. towards quiet.

heat death, they call it, the whole universe one mass of low

energy. you know. your words carry the weight. momento mori.

jesus christ, son of god, have mercy. have mercy, spirit, my will

often weak; my spirit crying out in this thin time, in this thin place. will

you remind me, a chuisle, a chroí; what is poetry for?

once, he said that there is holy force to art. and the words were

full of power. yes, they were. I believed him.

I am not a scholar of the written word, nor a

teacher, nor author. I am only a writer, and I

am also only learning. even so, I knew right from when

lines jumped from page to ear to pulse, warm

like wine hitting my blood, letting me dance, setting my

yearning loose; I knew, sitting strangely in that stranger

evening, crowded around desks on a tuesday night, the              

sweat cold on my palms, classmates reading poems where burqa                 

enters walmart, horses run under the sky, husbands          

vow to love their wives, oh, I knew I would read more, two

easy poems not enough. I knew he knew things. my throat feels tight. in

no living world, now, will I meet this man, whose picture I saw       

staring out at me, it seemed. it isn’t fair. sláinte. good health.

oblige me. lift the glass. now tilt your mouth up, smile just a little wry.

it's the little things...

yesterday The Housemate said to me, "tomorrow evening looks like rain. let's make good food."

so far i've done most of the grocery shopping & cleaning, and she's done most of the cooking, and we've ended up with:

tomatillo salsa
spicy chicken tofu soup
pesto
peanut butter chocolate banana smoothies
banana pudding pie

I think I should make note of this; rainy day = food prep time.
mmm. now it's time to tackle the dishes. ;)

(it's sooo good. try it! try it! I even left you the recipe!)

EDIT:// apparently it's true that cooking can bring good conversation into the kitchen; i was just telling the story of when i learned to make a chocolate angel food cake with my nana last year. and then i asked The Housemate if she had ever heard of the dessert graham cracker fluff (also called wooflepoof, i told her, to which she said what? wifflepuff? and then i said never mind) and when i did a google search for the dessert to try to explain it, this is the first thing that came up. oh, what a small, small Mennonite world.

on not going back to school

I realized today while I was eating lunch that this is the first time in 18 years that I'm not 'going back to school.'

I'm still trying to figure out how to define myself outside of the system that for years, for all of my conscious life has fed me gold stars in exchange for high test scores and a raised hand in class.

My current internal monologue is something like well then, kiddo, what does it actually mean to be successful, huh?

And, actually, I don't know, because my measuring stick is gone; because the measuring stick of the world I'm working in seems kind of strange, kind of warped; because I am still learning, even if I'm not in school.

Today I think success looks like remembering to write a postcard blessing for a friend's new apartment, like having the dishes done by 7:30, like having homemade granola for dessert. I'm not sure, yet, what I'll think success looks like tomorrow, but...one day at a time.

a few scattered thoughts on following christ in the midst of power

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 

When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” 

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Matthew 19:22-26

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently, and the thoughts that have been circling through my head feel important but also fragmented and hard to articulate. 

1.) When I was down in Harrisonburg a few weeks ago, I was talking with a friend who had just completed a two year term with MCC in the country of Colombia. She brought a Colombian friend with her, a woman who spoke only Spanish. During our conversation, she asked, is it okay if I translate while we talk? I nodded, not thinking much of it, and later she said thanks - I know it probably doesn't mean much to you, but it's important. She doesn't mind observing what's going on, but then it's just sort of watching a bunch of rich kids hanging out; it means so much more for her to be able to be part of it, you know?

I felt startled. What do you  mean, a bunch of rich kids? I'm used to seeing myself as pretty solidly average, like: sure, I have a car and a college degree and I grew up going on vacations and going to summer camp and going boating on the Susquehanna, but - I went to public school! I buy dried beans in bulk! The litany in my head is something like there's never enough there's never enough there's never enough.

So odd, that shift in perspective. A Colombian woman sees me, my average self, and thinks: rich kid. 

2.) I told Thia, that weekend, that I thought maybe Early Church had ruined me for normal life. I was thinking of my home group, of Brian and Rachel, a couple who are married with a year-old kid. They live in a tiny apartment and don't own a car; they don't seem to want much of anything. I don't think I'm any happier than they are, I told Thia. There I was, a week into my new 40+ hour a week job, living on my own in Bethesda, one of the most expensive places to live in the U.S., starting to realize for real that money doesn't equal happiness.

3.) It's strange, I told Meg. It's strange to live and work in a place that hums along just fine without paying any attention to spirit, to soul, to sacredness. I'm not sure what to make of it.

4.) I went to church in Maryland for the first time this weekend. A woman from NIH who graduated from Goshen contacted me and told me about a Mennonite church near D.C. So I checked it out and I like it; everyone was friendly, they invited me to the potluck after the service. It felt familiar, like a blend between CMCL and something from EMU. I felt cheerful on the way home; fond, almost, and I didn't even mind the few miles on the Beltway. It was strange, because usually I hate driving in this area.

What to pull from these scattered threads...I've been thinking, I guess, that the Christian life ought to be seen not as rules, but as a path towards thriving. It is very hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, and I am learning this new each day. I don't think that God means don't have money, but - it makes sense to me, to be wary of it. I think that Brian and Rachel are more free than I am, although they have less. The words of the gospel make sense in their context in a way that they don't in Bethesda. I feel that very clearly. The lives that my friends live in that little community in Harrisonburg don't make much sense in context of wealth and power, in context of this wealthy suburb of Washington D.C. 

[I told Thia, that weekend, that the people I rub elbows with every day might look at people from Early Church and pity them, but I can imagine Brian and Rachel showing up to visit me and pitying the people living in the huge houses around me, thinking they don't understand what life is about. (I am afraid, maybe, of growing into one of those people, of becoming someone, someday, that my friends from Early Church would pity). And so there God is, leveling the playing field, raising the weak to challenge the strong. And yet: how impossible it would be to explain this to anyone I work with!]

How to live with integrity, I've been asking myself. What does that mean? 

In regards to attending church, I guess it's easy to feel like it's an obligation, like it's a rule. Christian? Go to church. But the feeling I had coming home today makes me think, again, that the Christian life is just a path towards thriving. It is not good for (wo)man to be alone. It is good to be connected, to be loved... I was happy to be at church today, and happy on the way home. I will go back, I suspect, because I want to be thriving, because I want my spirit to feel whole.

Who then can be saved? I wonder, looking around at the power and money flowing through the streets of the D.C. area. Me? Can I? Can I be saved?

With man this is impossible, Jesus is saying to me, but with God, all things are possible.