Labor Day : Sencillos Meditaciones

Dorothy Day

Faded hand scripted notes flew around the room as a bad moon storm of memories began to deluge the wandering spirit. It was almost a forever ago that a retreat on the theme of Spirituality and Work found it’s way from inspiration to implementation. A voice kept whispering,  “It’s never been about the money!” 

The pilgrim teacher didn’t listen as the whirlwind almost brought down the house. His heart was a beat from being seized up from all the desire and pressures to fill the siloes. A nephew of Richard Cory whose heroic last attempt at salvation was to rescue the pilgrim eventually suffered the same fate as his infamous uncle. Meanwhile Dickens’ spirits continued to work overtime on the pilgrim.

Waking to a morning of the Second Chance Dance the pilgrim teacher could be heard singing,  “ I don’t know anything, never did know anything…” and asked, “What day is this?” He recalled how Ebenezer’s first acts on his day of redemption sought forgiveness from family and friends as he commenced the practice of Ignatian generosity. The pilgrim has been a little slower to respond to the illumination and amazing grace.

One portrayal of the “Carol” classic has Fessiwig proclaiming that labor is “… an opportunity to use one’s gifts to provide for one’s family.” Then there is Thomas A‘Kempis depressing the pilgrim teacher with the proclamation, “At the Day of Judgment we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done."  

“But I have read so many books!” The pilgrim teacher protested.

Sociologists and economists can’t shoot straight and constantly miss the point .The movement of weights or the execution of activities have very little to do with the nature of work. It’s been said one’s labor is the expression of authenticity. Albert Camus’ observation then becomes even more haunting…“Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.” The pilgrim frets, “ Is Freud right that ‘love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness?’ ”

Off in the tall distance a retired Jersey Johnny breaks out the blues harp attempting a new song in a new key. He mutters in between breaths “This is work!”

 ++++++++

^"As the rain and the snow
 come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
 without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
 so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
¹¹ so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
 It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
 and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
¹² You will go out in joy
 and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
 will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
 will clap their hands. 

Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,

This will be for the Lord’s renown,
 for an everlasting sign,
 that will endure forever.”

       

                    Isaiah 55:10-13

+++++++

“A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him….
 The more a tree is like itself, the more it is like Him….
 This particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before or after it ever did or will do….
 The special clumsy beauty of this particular colt on this April day in this field under these clouds is a holiness consecrated to God by His own creative wisdom and it declares the glory of God.
    The pale flowers of the dogwood outside this window are saints. The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of that road are saints looking up into the face of God.
    This leaf has it own texture and its own pattern of veins and its own holy shape, and their beauty and their strength canonize the bass and trout hiding in the deep pools of the river.
    The lakes hidden among the hills are saints, and the sea too is a saint who praises God without interruption in her majestic dance.
    The great, gashed, Half-naked Mountain is another of God's saints. There is no other like him. He is alone in his own character; nothing else in the world ever did or ever will imitate God in quite the same way. That is his sanctity….
 for me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.
    Trees and animals have no problem. God makes them what they are without consulting them, and they are perfectly satisfied.
    With us it is different. God leaves us free to be whatever we like. We can be ourselves or not, as we please. We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal. We may be true or false, the choice is ours. We may wear now one mask and now another, and never, if we so desire, appear with our own true face. But we cannot make these choices with impunity. Causes have effects, and if we lie to ourselves and to others, then we cannot expect to find truth and reality whenever we happen to want them. If we have chosen the way of falsity we must not be surprised that truth eludes us when we finally come to need it!
    Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny….
 The seeds that are planted in my liberty at every moment, by God's will, are the seeds of my own identity, my own reality, my own happiness, my own sanctity….”

       Thomas Merton, The Seeds of Contemplation

amdg

The "Delightful Surprise": Poetry 101

"O me, o life of the questions of these recurring, of the endless

trains of the faithless, of cities filled with the foolish.

What good amid these, o me, o life?”

- Song of Myself, Walt Whitman

Why am I always taken back by those experiences that are little delightful surprises? You know what I mean. I am marking time doing this or that throughout the day and then suddenly out of nowhere comes an unexpected, un-planned, unseen event or person that brings a humble smile across my face and my heart. These surprises seem to come in all forms, sizes and scope. Some are more dramatic than others. Some seem some so coincidental or unnatural that others consider them as miraculous. Some call these graces, blessings or tender mercies. Some say it is a result of just being present to the world, as sometimes we move so fast that we can often miss those “delightful surprises.”

Recent meditations and reflections on where I have been and what I have done with my life and discerning where I want to go from here have been arduous exercises that would seriously disappoint Ignatius of Loyola. Weaving in and out of the busy-ness of the day and the consideration that my journey so far had been a series of Odyssean mis-steps that kept me away from being open to the current song of the morning bird or immersing myself in the beauty of bright piercing orange-red streak across the heavens at sunset. Opening the street posted mailbox the other day I received a package from the college where I recently served as advisor and faculty member. The departure was not planned and I had been attempting to put

the complete experience behind me. That desire for amnesia would change with the opening of the packet.

In the package was a computer summary and detail of the student evaluations for an English class I had taught on the main campus a year ago. Opening the report I critically thought” Well, this is typical” not realizing that what was about to happen was one of those “delightful surprises”, “gift”, “blessing “ and “grace.” The students rated me, the learning environment and so on and so forth. I hate to say that I wasn’t too surprised with the almost perfect scores I received on teaching, methodology, and helpfulness and so on and so forth. What took me back completely was the number of handwritten comments about what they learned and liked most about the class and the experience. Most of the eighteen students wrote about how they liked and appreciated the sections and lessons on poetry. Comments like “ I never liked poetry before”, “who would have thought poetry can be fun”, “I like learning about the different types of poetry”, “Mr. S made learning poetry interesting and fun,” to “ “I just bought my first collection of poetry because of what I learned in this class.” Flabbergasted! Unbelievable! Humbled. These were the comments a group of 18 and 19 year olds that I struggled to keep awake in our class at eight am three mornings a week.

If you know me you already know that I am not being boastful with this illumination of sorts about my students’ perceptions and feedback about my teaching. What is important is that “who would of thought one who in his early pre- teen years hated poetry would eventually be delighted to no end that he would be a catalyst to helping young adults finding some joy in their own discovery of poetry.” So this “delightful surprise” was the seed that transformed my personal reflections into “gratitude” for those teachers and friends who took the time and care to introducing me to the world of poetry – reading and even attempting at writing my own…. specifically: Irving (professor/mentor), Bill Z. (my creative writing professor), Kirk (counselor, poet and journeyman) and all of course the gratefulness is abundance of all those poets!

It is interesting to say the least to recall those teen years and how I was embarrassed to share with my best friends that I had been a closet poet of sorts. A member of a secret society of one I struggled to craft ideas and feelings in poetic format or just rewrite favorite verses from favorite poems in a spiral notebook. I had made sure that I securely hid this collection under my bed with old paperback poetry anthologies of Blake and Frost and of course a few Playboy magazines .It was a number of years later that as teacher I had hoped to pass on what I had learned and share with my students the joy I had found in the world of poetry... and somehow maybe reach another “closet poet” or two. The “delightful surprise” suggests that maybe; just maybe I was able to do just that.

Who would have predicted that this “surprise” would happen just days before “National Poetry Month?” So here are a few items and links I used in my classes when I would teach poetry.

There is a moving introductory monologue about the purpose of poetry in the movie Dead Poets Society where the teacher, Mr. Keating, gathers his class full of prep school boys and says:

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because

we are members of the human race.  And the human race is filled with passion.

Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are all noble pursuits, and necessary

to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

To quote from Whitman: "O me, o life of the questions of these recurring, of the endless

trains of the faithless, of cities filled with the foolish. What good amid these, o me, o life?”

Answer: that you are here. That life exists, and identity. That the powerful play goes on,

and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute

a verse. . What will your verse be?”



(watch 9 minutes)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiKM6g-dfBo&feature=related

Here is from My Favorite Poem Project. It is famous and everyday folks reading their favorite poems.

http://www.favoritepoem.org/

May I suggest watching the following:

We Real Cool

OUT, OUT

The Holy Longing

Then there is a collection of videos of famous poets reading their poetry at the Dodge Poetry Festival and I have collected a few of my favorites here.

http://www.youtube.com/grdodge#p/u/18/wHT9kilQ1kg

http://www.youtube.com/grdodge#p/u/57/-sbyQzGue1c

http://www.youtube.com/grdodge#p/u/44/kKFe0wY-7-A

http://www.youtube.com/grdodge#p/u/3/6PRHqylG2ic

One of my favorite poems about finding one's voice.

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

Two more interesting poetry web sites....

http://www.poets.org/

http://poetsonline.blogspot.com/

amdg

(First) Song of the Second Chance Dance

Mary’s melancholic mockingbird metanoied me
The soul sanctified with solo song sweet sentiments.
By the hour the sun shed a final fiery flash
In her horizon departure
Not forgotten was the robin’s baptismal melody
At the advent of another consecrated dawn.
Immersion ,Redemption, confirmation, actualization,
Almost twenty two thousand days to discover
The name I was given before I was born.
The spark surprisingly fading quickly
Yet the chimes sang gently shaken by the breath of God ,
Thoreau’s morning wind , the spark transformed burst to flame.
Waves of tears flowing from your hallowed eyes.
blessed your flushed cheeks with smiles.
Answered prayers caressed your hearts.
My holy trinity had lowered this paralytic
into the presence of the great consoling healer.
New gift, original gift revisited
Humbled and undeserved
whispering “yes” to your invitation
Softly singing the songs of the second chance dance.