A Thousand Mornings

Posted on by
image copyright Joel Brotzman 2013

image copyright Joel Brotzman 2013

A Thousand Mornings
by Mary Oliver

All night my heart makes its way
however it can over the rough ground
of uncertainties, but only until night
meets and then is overwhelmed by
morning, the light deepening, the
wind easing and just waiting, as I
too wait (and when have I ever been
disappointed?) for redbird to sing.

Now I know my ABC’s

Posted on by

first day of school

Spell
Malcolm Guite

Summon the summoners, the twenty-six
enchanters.  Spelling silence into sound,
they bind and loose, they find and are not found.
Re-call the river-tongues from Alph to Styx,
summon the summoners, the shaping shapes,
the grounds of sound, the generative gramma,
signs of the Mystery, inscribed arcana,
runes from the root-tree written in the deeps,
leaves from the tale-tree lifted, swift and free,
shining, re-combining in their dance
the genesis of every utterance,
pattering the pattern of the Tree.

Summon the summoners, and let them sing.
The summoners will summon Everything.

I’ll be starting first grade again today, for the fourth time. I’d thought our homeschooling season would end when Baby Girl the First finished high school, but you know what Mr. Burns said about the best laid plans of mice and men…Baby Girl the Second came along just in time for my fortieth birthday, giving me one more opportunity to begin at the very beginning.

When you read you begin with ABC, or summon the summoners, the twenty-six enchanters.  What a motley set of characters – only a couple of them able to stand alone, but let them start joining up, and there they go, spelling silence into sound.  How do they do that?  How do a bunch of little black marks on a white page bring forth purple mountain majesties and amber waves of grain?  And that’s just the most obvious manifestation of their powers.

They bind:  once you know a rose is a rose you can’t very well imagine it by any other name; and loose:  the rose isn’t just a rose, it’s velvet and fragrance and innocence and my luve is like a red, red rose.  They are the shaping shapes:  sometimes they actually do take on something of the shape of the object they signify – bed, for instance, or hollyhock .  How cool is that?

These twenty-six little bits of code are signs of the Mystery – like the Word that is from the beginning, they lend form to the intangible, showing us glimpses of things beyond our comprehending; runes from the root-tree, searching down to the bedrock of our knowledge; leaves from the tale-tree, spreading, reaching, leaping greenly.  And speaking of re-combining, do they mean the things they name, or do they name the things they mean?

In a strange, fascinating book I read a few years ago (Libyrinth, by Pearl North), I came across an alternate ending that I really like:  “Now I know my ABC’s, all the books are mine to read.”  Yes.  They are the genesis of every utterance, the keys that open the books that open the world.  What a joy it is now to watch Baby Girl the Second testing her power to summon the summoners, and let them sing, and see the magic light up her eyes as she discovers how the summoners will summon Everything.

This post was originally published August 12, 2012 on http://www.allninemuses.wordpress.com.

Thoughts for the journey

Posted on by
image copyright Rebekah Choat, 2013

image copyright Rebekah Choat, 2013

Remember when you were a very little child, going on a trip with your parents?  You had no conception of how to drive a car, often no clear idea of where you were going, no understanding of how long it was going to take, and absolutely no sense of how to get there.  And it didn’t even occur to you that you didn’t know those things.  You simply trusted, without realizing it, in the love and skill and knowledge of the ones who had appointed the journey.  1 John 5:19 – “We know that we are children of God…”

Shadows, Part Six

Posted on by
image copyright Joel Brotzman

image copyright Joel Brotzman

shad – ow (n):  a relected image

 I find this image, taken by my brother, intriguing.  I’m fascinated with how the trees and shrubs and algae, so much green mingled together, are crowded and hard to distinguish from each other; yet the shadow reflected on the surface of the pond is somehow serene, and shows a crisply clear image of a treetop not itself visible in the picture.

I had a good talk with a good friend last night.  Big, important things are happening in both our lives – so quickly in mine that it’s something of a blur, so slowly in his that there hardly seems to be any progress at all.  At either pace, it’s hard, nearly impossible sometimes, to see things clearly, to find a focal point.

My friend and I serve as sounding boards and mirrors for each other.   We can pour out our jumbled thoughts and mixed feelings and talk things through and share different perspectives until somehow our vision comes a little clearer.  Once in a while we can even see a lovely reflection of a beauty not visible in the current frame of the picture.

dawn takes forever…

Posted on by
photo by Chris Choat

photo by Chris Choat

Dawn takes forever some days.
the sky remains unchanged for hours,
oblivious to the ticking of the clock
growing louder each second.

It’s no use to sit and watch for it.
I know.  I’ve tried.

The best you can do is
go on about your business,
muddle through however you can in the dark,
until you are surprised, dazzled by the light.

~ Rebekah Choat

What stood will stand by Wendell Berry

Posted on by
photo by Rebekah Choat

photo by Rebekah Choat

What stood will stand, though all be fallen,
The good return that time has stolen.
Though creatures groan in misery,
Their flesh prefigures liberty
To end travail and bring to birth
Their new perfection in new earth.
At word of that enlivening
Let the trees of the woods all sing
And every field rejoice, let praise
Rise up out of the ground like grass.
What stood, whole in every piecemeal
Thing that stood, will stand though all
Fall — field and woods and all in them
Rejoin the primal Sabbath’s hymn.

~ Wendell Berry