missing Harrisonburg achingly. today, sitting in the lab, I had a sudden, sharply clear memory from last fall, of eating supper in the park with my home group from Early Church.
the sun setting. running down the hill with S, holding J; he still just a baby. D with a chicken in a crock-pot, and the kids telling me about butchering it. biking there and back, food in my basket; the corn salad, maybe? (how happy it makes me to realize I contributed enough times I can't remember what I brought).
oh, I thought today, like pressing on a bruise, J will be talking now, maybe. I wonder if K & J have trained Edison out of jumping on the kitchen table and chewing up their books. R will be pulling out her winter sweaters, now, and wearing them to church.
---
all I want right now is to sit in my tree on the hill behind EMU, the time and space and silence to write.
---
there are tall trees lining my street in Bethesda, and in the evening, when I am either biking home or walking up from the bus stop, I sometimes stop and look up at the leaves. the way the sun sets, the lay of the land, the hills, the location of the buildings in the neighborhood to the west means that the setting sun lights up the trees from underneath. they glow, the bark turning orange and the leaves lined gold.
---
how to love the place I am in:
---
"...time is always time,
and place is always and only place,
and what is actual is actual only for one time
and only for one place,
and I rejoice that things are as they are..."
I can't remember, anymore, if I ever wondered if Eliot was being sarcastic, the first time I memorized this poem.
But then again, I was 19. I took everything seriously.
ugh! to get out of my head!
"...and pray to God to have mercy upon us
and pray that I may forget
these matters that with myself I too much discuss
too much explain..."
it's like I'm trapped in an irony spiral. stop. analyzing. now.
---
(it's quite possible that I shouldn't have read Candide right before graduation.)
---
Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the
hour and the bell; grant me, in your
mercy, a little more time. Love for the
earth and love for you are having such a
long conversation in my heart. Who
knows what will finally happen or
where I will be sent, yet already I have
given a great many things away, expecting
to be told to pack nothing, except the
prayers which, with this thirst, I am
slowly learning.
-Mary Oliver
the sun setting. running down the hill with S, holding J; he still just a baby. D with a chicken in a crock-pot, and the kids telling me about butchering it. biking there and back, food in my basket; the corn salad, maybe? (how happy it makes me to realize I contributed enough times I can't remember what I brought).
oh, I thought today, like pressing on a bruise, J will be talking now, maybe. I wonder if K & J have trained Edison out of jumping on the kitchen table and chewing up their books. R will be pulling out her winter sweaters, now, and wearing them to church.
---
all I want right now is to sit in my tree on the hill behind EMU, the time and space and silence to write.
---
there are tall trees lining my street in Bethesda, and in the evening, when I am either biking home or walking up from the bus stop, I sometimes stop and look up at the leaves. the way the sun sets, the lay of the land, the hills, the location of the buildings in the neighborhood to the west means that the setting sun lights up the trees from underneath. they glow, the bark turning orange and the leaves lined gold.
---
how to love the place I am in:
---
"...time is always time,
and place is always and only place,
and what is actual is actual only for one time
and only for one place,
and I rejoice that things are as they are..."
I can't remember, anymore, if I ever wondered if Eliot was being sarcastic, the first time I memorized this poem.
But then again, I was 19. I took everything seriously.
ugh! to get out of my head!
"...and pray to God to have mercy upon us
and pray that I may forget
these matters that with myself I too much discuss
too much explain..."
it's like I'm trapped in an irony spiral. stop. analyzing. now.
---
(it's quite possible that I shouldn't have read Candide right before graduation.)
---
Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the
hour and the bell; grant me, in your
mercy, a little more time. Love for the
earth and love for you are having such a
long conversation in my heart. Who
knows what will finally happen or
where I will be sent, yet already I have
given a great many things away, expecting
to be told to pack nothing, except the
prayers which, with this thirst, I am
slowly learning.
-Mary Oliver
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