You know something about brokenness. You know about the broken world. You know about brokenness in your country. But most personally, you know it in your more intimate life. You know we are broken people and we suffer very intimate pains. The pain of a desire for intimacy that hasn’t been fulfilled…the pain of a relationship that did not work…the pain of an addiction that is so hard to confess…The secret pain of loneliness that can bite us so much…And what I would like to say to you is don’t be afraid of your pain, but dare to embrace it. If you are wounded, and I know that you and I are, put your brokenness under the blessing.
forgiveness
five poems
Thunder and Wine
“I answered you in the secret place of thunder.”
Psalm 81:7
thick fog clearing
as thunder echoes
across Casco Bay
on Cushing Island
lights go dark
then Cliff and here
in this dim sanctuary
the cathedral bells
won’t stop ringing
no one sees
the stained-glass smeared
by the blood moon light
once again wine
turns to water bread
back to grain
Of God
Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
so that a flood of waters may cover you?
– Job 38:34
what are my chances
when your words
linger and scratch
like wool uniforms
quietly removed
when the orphan
and widow flinch
at your whispered
good night
I’ll promise to lie still
if your light but touches
the water’s edge
there an egret
white as the moon
hunts in the reeds
Creating Myth
Notes on Jack Spicer – 1978
A really perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary.
– Jack Spicer
make myth by
destroying myth
then explain
what came before
one final embrace
before departing
into meaning
or a hell of meanings
everything slipping
or sliding
haunted by the poetic
and the laughter
the duplicity
of words
and how they replace
the historical
with an empty
vessel
and though we struggle
to pull them back
our hushed shadows
will not be closed
simply by stating
their closure
My Final Thought of You
It happens often now, forgetting
the words but not the thing
itself.
This week alone the words cilantro,
Curtis Mayfield, actuary seemed
lost, erased.
You, too, are there in a slight daydream,
a glimpse of a waning moon
on a sunny day.
A thunderstorm rises from Mount Blue
not 20 miles away. The birds and I
find shelter.
The stream is silent, hopeful. My breathing
slows as I count to measure the first
strike of lightning.
Three Halves
(in which the seeker discovers
he is that which is sought)
I am on a motorcycle
say a Triumph yes
a Triumph tearing
out of town on a moonlit
night Friday or early
Saturday morning and say
I am passed by a truck
an electrician’s truck
that has no business
passing a man like me
all in black leather
you’d understand
when I pass again
looking back to threaten
the driver flipping
the bird say or sneer
my surprise
that the driver is me
and all those cables
spooled on poles
by the breakdown lane
are mine to connect
or repair or destroy in this
the third half of my life
now I understand – the path to healing
Ronald Rolheiser – In his last book, The Living Flame of Love, John (St. John of the Cross) proposes a theory of, and a process for, healing. In essence, it runs this way: For John, we heal of our wounds, moral flaws, addictions, and bad habits by growing our virtues to the point where we become mature enough in our humanity so that there’s no more room left in our lives for the old behaviors that used to drag us down. In short, we get rid of the coldness, bitterness, and pettiness in our hearts by lighting inside our hearts enough warm fires to burn out the coldness and bitterness.
The algebra works this way: The more we grow in maturity, generativity, and generosity, the more our old wounds, bad habits, temperamental flaws, and addictions will disappear because our deeper maturity will no longer leave room for them in our lives. Positive growth of our hearts, like a vigorous plant, eventually chokes-out the weeds. If you went to John of the Cross and asked him to help you deal with a certain bad habit in your life, his focus wouldn’t be on how to weed-out that habit. Instead the focus would be on growing your virtues: What are you doing well? What are your best qualities? What goodness in you needs to be fanned fan into fuller flame?
By growing what’s positive in us, we eventually become big-hearted enough so that there’s no room left for our former bad habits. The path to healing is to water our virtues so that these virtues themselves will be the fire that burns out the festering wounds, addictions, bad habits, and temperamental flaws that have, for far too long, plagued our lives and kept us wallowing in weakness and pettiness rather than walking in maturity, generosity, and generativity.
Mercy within mercy within mercy
The Voice of God is heard in Paradise:
“What was vile has become precious. What is now precious was never vile. I have always known the vile as precious: for what is vile I know not at all.
“What was cruel has become merciful. What is now merciful was never cruel. I have always overshadowed Jonas with my mercy, and cruelty I know not at all. Have you had sight of Me, Jonas, my child? Mercy within mercy within mercy. I have forgiven the universe without end, because I have never known sin.
“What was poor has become infinite. What is infinite was never poor. I have always known poverty as infinite: riches I love not at all. Prisons within prisons within prisons. Do not lay up for yourself ecstasies upon earth, where time and space corrupt, where minutes break in and steal. No more lay hold on time, Jonas, my son, lest the rivers bear you away.
“What was fragile has become powerful. I loved what was most frail. I looked upon what was nothing. I touched what was without substance, and within what was not, I am.”
There are drops of dew that show like sapphires in the grass as soon as the morning sun appears, and leaves stir behind the hushed flight of an escaping dove.
– Thomas Merton, Journal, July 4, 1952
We went through fire…
we went through fire and through water;
yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.
~ Psalm 66:12
Photo by Steve Johnson on Pexels.com
First, there is the fall…
“First there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God!” – Lady Julian of Norwich
Rumi
When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools
dig a way out through the bottom
to the ocean. There is a secret medicine
given only to those who hurt so hard
they can’t hope.
The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.
Look as long as you can at the friend you love,
no matter whether that friend is moving away from you
or coming back toward you.
(thank you, Deena)
Miserere mei
Miserere mei, Deus: secundum magnam misericordiam tuam. Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam.
Forgiving does not mean forgetting
Henri Nouwen –
Forgiving does not mean forgetting. When we forgive a person, the memory of the wound might stay with us for a long time, even throughout our lives. Sometimes we carry the memory in our bodies as a visible sign. But forgiveness changes the way we remember. It converts the curse into a blessing. When we forgive our parents for their divorce, our children for their lack of attention, our friends for their unfaithfulness in crisis, our doctors for their ill advice, we no longer have to experience ourselves as the victims of events we had no control over.
Forgiveness allows us to claim our own power and not let these events destroy us; it enables them to become events that deepen the wisdom of our hearts. Forgiveness indeed heals memories.
Edge of Atlantic 