GRACE

I needed to revisit this tender, grounding passage by Susan Stinson today. May it speak to you, too -  

". . . May your hands weather with grace. May your fingers smell good. May chill on your arms keep you alive to your skin as much as warmth might do. May you grieve when you need to and know your own lacks, with matter-of-fact awareness, like you know the landscape of leaving where you sleep to begin the day. Leave the sleep. Begin the day. Offer things. Work. Build. Step toward others. Take a lean and a fall as a chance to spin on the floor on your back. Gather your courage. Make beautiful meals. Know your gifts and delight in them with specific, attentive vigor. Shovel. Pedal. Cruise. Oh, my darlings and others, listen as if you mean it, as if it matters, as if that act, in itself, were consuming and a kind of completion. When the moment opens, answer. The toilet might be running again in the other room. Get up, shake the handle and keep going. If the water goes quiet, there will still be ticking. We are our ordinary lives, and they have such depths and textures. We brush against the nap in relationship, or we're pressed to the plush, or something is jabbing, the plastic stem of an old tag, a broken zipper, but we dress in the fabrics of the lives near ours, however we bring them near. Such clothes. Such colors. . . "

Thank you, Susan. (Visit Susan's website here and her blog here.)

_/\_

Temporarily disheveled

My feathers have been in disarray these past few weeks. (Actually, the ones I'm showing here belonged to Murray, plucky bird that he was; no doubt, still a zealous preener.) 

In time, I might find language to write about aspects of my recent 'in-house' process, but for now, suffice to say most of the changes taking place involve 're-' words... recognizing, reconfiguring, recycling, re-booting, remembering, redistributing, recharging, releasing - and ultimately, the realization that I feel a sense of gratitude and relief at finally reaching a place of relative respite and reasonable resolution.  

There's a way to go yet (isn't there always?) but let me risk saying this; while so much depends on the angle and way we look at things, the straggly bits really do have a habit of finding their place. Which is pretty remarkable, don't you reckon? 

There are times when - no matter how squiff & skew we let our tail feathers get - grace abounds. 

   

     

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Miriam Levine's poetry collection The Dark Opens has kept me company during these 'off the wire' days. 

Thank you, Mim. Your writing is tough and delicate; striking and wise. The dark does indeed open and when it does, light is already there, eager to come skipping on in...