On the Road Again: Turn!Turn!Turn!

“…Use my body like a car,
Taking me both near and far
Met my friends all in the material world…”

-       Living in The material World, George Harrison

 “To everything there is a season, and
a time to every purpose under heaven…”

                       - Ecclesiastes, 3: 1-2

Sometimes the world changes in the blink of an eye, the taking of a breath or the beat of a heart. Before one has a chance to have another thought everything that was has been transformed. It is almost as if that everything that was is now a memory and that which is to come is a new challenge and experience ineffable until it too has been experienced and then is past. Suddenly that source of comfort, security and familiarity is swept away. That long winding road ahead takes a sudden turn and everything is new again.

It is guaranteed that if you were to suggest to Hawk Hill Girl number 2 that her eyes welled up with tears as she said a final farewell to her faithful friend she would deny it, once, twice and even a third time. Her companion and protector for the past few years would no longer be a part of her. Digital representations online and in photographic journals would become the prompts to conjure the memories of journeys taken together and how they survived unforecasted storms. One day they were cruising along together on the roads of life to work, to school and to play with blasting beats and harmonies when suddenly without warning the companion stopped as if to say “Please, no more.”

The grateful eulogy about those incidents when she was protected from harm poured forth from her heart. There is no greater gift but to give one’s life for a friend. Her mother contributed her voice to the lament of the requiem, but she is also one proud not to show too much emotion, she reverently touched the cold resting body as if to say “Thank you for being good to my daughter and farewell good friend.”

“We are known by our friends,” a homilist suggested.

Isn’t it interesting how we let attachments to people and things define or influence who we are? We all know we are not those things or people and they are not we but some how mystically and maybe magically a unique bond is often made between us that of this world. Sometimes it seems that these things or people have been coincidentally placed in our path to help us along until we can strike out with our own voice.  Maybe it is true that there is a purpose to all things. Maybe the divine intervention is greater than we can imagine. Ignatius says God is in all things. Some eastern teachers suggest Buddha comes in all forms.

So it was for number 2 and her companion, they became one…bold, adventurous, independent, no terrain forbidden, hope-filled, confident and ever strident. If you saw the companion it was easy to think number 2 and often the opposite was true. Then that unforeseen moment surfaced when the old friend would say farewell. All that had gone before was a formation process. Some behaviorists call this individuation while others suggest that as the universe constantly expands nothing stays the same. “Impermanence is life” write the cloistered Tibetan monks. The body, mind and spirit simply evolve say others.

Sometimes human nature often struggles to hold onto what has been and who has been with us during our experiences of maturation. That attachment to those and that which have been an essential part of the molding our own being can sometimes fetter us from becoming who we are meant to be. Some of us need more time and help in the art of becoming that we are. Then there are a few of those who seem to have been planted in holy ground and blossom with amazing grace.

It was in this situation that her once reliable friend had aged quickly. The miles traversed together were beginning to show their wear and tear. Tried, true and tested it was time. She was the vessel that delivered freedom and now she was being set free, her mission fulfilled. Her name appropriately described her purpose - Liberty.  As the family departed leaving her behind in her stillness she somehow broke the silence and said, “And, Thank you.”

A new journey with new adventures awaits the rogue warrior as she is welcomed to who she is to become. Though we are aware that things and others do not define who we are, we are sometimes fortunate to be cognizant of role others have played in the birthing of our own identity. The formation taken place and complete there comes that moment when it is right to be grateful for the blessing and move on to the next chapter.

She gave one last glance farewell to her resting black Jeep Liberty.




amdg

Finding your voice and your dream

During an English class I was teaching this morning I showed my students a video of Susan Boyle who is a contestant on a British talent show. You have probably seen it or heard about it.
I asked the students , "What does this video have to do with poetry?Why did the audiennce who witnessed this performance react the way they did ?"(I am not going to describe the video event here as it is ineffable and you have to see it for yourself.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

The contestant,Susan Boyle, had decided to sing "I dreamed a dream" from Les Miserables. After witnessing the video my students began to discuss how the performance exemplified the significance of holding on to one's dreams. One student volunteered that the relationship between this video and poetry is about finding one's voice. "Our voice is our spirit.Our voice is who we are." There was a consensus that those who witness this woman's performance are lifted up with admiration for her but they are also fed a sense of hope for this contestant as well as for themselves.In many ways the singer has proven her own words of her own song to be wrong.One who dares to keep the dream alive can live the dream. She sings for us as well as for herself.

I couldn't help but to think about one of my favorite poets,Mary Oliver, and one of her poems ,"Autumn Poem." Here Oliver writes about persistence, hope and finding one's own voice. This is not a celebration of accomplishment or success but rather a desire for an awareness of becoming who we are meant to be completely. It's been said that "where you heart is there is your treasure also" Matt 6:19

A good friend, Pat, reminded me today that we need to celebrate our second chance every day we wake, and pray that this will be the day that we find and celebrate our own voice(our own heart our soul.) Somedays I feel like a contestant in some great master talent show. Somedays I feel like a plain Susan who has been given a second chance to live my dream by finding my voice and to have it heard. I hope today is your day.


Autumn Poem

In the last jovial, clear-sky days of autumn
the mockingbird
in his monk-gray coat
and his arrowy wings

flies
from the hedge to the top of the pine
and begins to sing — but it's neither loose, nor lilting, nor lovely —

it's more like whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges.
All birds are birds of heaven
but this one, especially, adores the earth so well
he would imitate, for half the day and on into the
evening,

its ticks and wheezings,
and so I have to wait a long time
for the soft, true voice
of his own glossy life

to come through,
and of course I do.
I don't know what it is that makes him, finally, look
inward

to the sweet spring of himself, that mirror of heaven,
but when it happens —
when he lifts his head
and the feathers of his throat tremble,

and he begins, like Saint Francis,
little flutterings and leapings from the pine's forelock,
resettling his strong feet each time among the branches,
I am recalled,

from so many wrong paths I can't count them,
simply to stand, and listen.
All my life I have lived in a kind of haste and darkness
of desire, ambition, accomplishment.

Now the bird is singing, but not anymore of this world.
And something inside myself is fluttering and leaping, is
trying

to type it down, in lumped-up language,
in outcry, in patience, in music, in a snow-white book.

- Mary Oliver