Poetry

Watching for Wisdom

Steve · November 8, 2020 · 10 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I could use a little wisdom. I’m sitting on my back porch this Sunday morning, enjoying the last remnants of warmer weather, relishing the chance to sit out here just a little longer before the days get colder and I have to stay inside for my time of morning coffee, reading and prayer.

It’s the day after the national election results and, no matter which side you were on or how your candidate did, you’re likely feeling some of the same uneasiness I’m feeling today. The battle will likely go on for a while. Social, racial and political unrest will continue. Violence and war rage. COVID continues its march across the world and seems to be resurging in some areas, including mine. My 29-year-old daughter, Jenny, and her husband and nine-month-old baby tested positive this week and are making their way through it. Sue and I would appreciate your prayers for Jenny, Zach and little Jason, who came into the world prematurely back in January and has been making steady progress ever since. He’s a fighter.

The world just seems a little disheveled these days. Maybe it always has been. But eight months of masking up and hunkering down are taking their toll on us all in myriad ways. I awoke (thankfully) this morning from a dream in which I had lost all control of my ability to make my own way through the world, and I’m still a little shaken by the whole ordeal. You don’t have to be Freud to figure out where those kinds of dreams come from.

No politician on either side of the aisle is going to make our lives right. Scientists, given time and the freedom to do their work, will ultimately bring us a vaccine, but it’s going to take some time. The country and the world can heal, but no one person or party is going to get us there. That job of healing belongs to us, and it is found in the ways each of us arise each day and set about our own work of moving and working in the world.

And where do we begin? Today’s reading from the Book of Wisdom is a start. Wisdom — deep understanding and knowledge — is not as elusive as we might believe. Rather, presented as a woman, she is ”resplendent, unfading and readily perceived”:

Resplendent and unfading is wisdom,
and she is readily perceived by those who love her,
and found by those who seek her.
She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire;
Whoever watches for her at dawn shall not be disappointed,
for he shall find her sitting by his gate.

I don’t have a “gate” these days but sitting on my back porch on this warm autumn day, I can yet imagine her out there among the falling leaves, beckoning for me to come a little closer. As I do, she offers me a seat beside her and gently reminds me where wisdom lies. For it is not the wisdom of the world and its leaders that we yearn and thirst for. That wisdom is always flawed and fleeting. Rather, her wisdom is a “knowing” that that lies deep within and comes only from the Creator. Wisdom lies in the beauty and truth of ancient scripture, yes, but also and perhaps more importantly in our deepest selves and in the sacredness of quiet times of solitude and prayer. Wisdom is not earned, nor can it be bought, sold or elected.

Wisdom is a gift that, like the peace in William Butler Yeats’ poem, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” comes, “dropping slow” for those wise enough to pause and wait.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Wisdom is not to be found in the flurry of social media and a 24-hour news cycle, but it can be found by those who look for it in faith and in the knowledge that we are not it. It’s right there by the garden gate, next to the pile of red and yellow leaves.

Prayer Time: Waiting for My Return

Steve · July 2, 2020 · 10 Comments

Father’s Day 2020 on the Meramec River in the northern Ozarks.

Today I awoke to a cool and refreshing morning that I know will sizzle and steam away as St. Louis-in-July heat and humidity takes hold of the rest of the day. On the back porch I watched the goldfinches visit their feeder and waited for the doe and two fawns to take their daily stroll through the property behind me.

I need this time in the morning, a time to slow and quiet down, a chance to regather my thoughts and point myself in the direction of Creator and creation. I slipped on my headphones and listened to my friend and musical collaborator Phil Cooper’s beautiful solo piano piece aptly called “Prayer Time,” composed back in 2005. I listened again and again, and the images that appeared were ones of flowing water — refreshing, cleansing, new and as ever-present and ever-changing in our lives as the great unchanging changer we call God. These lines came to me:

You are a stream running through me
flowing forth from deep within
seeping in like some ancient spring
hidden in the grass by the corner of the field.

Even in dry seasons you remain
a trickle of nourishment and hope in my dryness
never fully gone, only lost in the tall grass for a spell
still ever present and watching, waiting for my return.

The images and emotions of this running water kept coming, so I spent the rest of the morning creating the video below for Phil’s music. You need and deserve these three minutes.

Grace and peace to you. Grab some silence and solitude for yourself. God will show up.

Content being branches, bearing fruit

Steve · June 1, 2020 · 10 Comments

Last week, on my drive home from a long walk at a nearby county park, I noticed a sign at a local farm announcing that strawberries were ripe and ready for sale. I had been watching and waiting and hoping for this sign. I pulled onto the gravel road, drove the short distance between the fields from highway to shed, and parked the car.

I donned my mask as we all must do these days, but I think the woman behind the till could still see the smile on my face as I picked out a few cartons and paid. “I’ve been waiting for this,” I told her.

Back in the car, I set the strawberries on the seat next to me, already googling a recipe for shortcake and planning a nice surprise for our evening meal. But before I put the car in reverse and left the farm, I reached over and grabbed a plump red berry and bit into it. Still warm from the sun, it melted in my mouth and I couldn’t help but think about the goodness of God’s brown and green earth. I offered a prayer of gratitude for sun and earth and farmer and field.

Even in the midst of pandemic and racial injustice and unrest, even when we are confused and not sure what comes next, we have a gentle reminder from John’s gospel that sometimes the very best thing we can do is to hold tight to the one who created us: “I am the vine and you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit.” (John 15:5)

Over the next few days I was drawn back to that scripture passage and to others that still speak to us of this unique relationship we have (mere branches to the vine of God’s presence) and the responsibility we have because of that position in God’s great plan. For if we’re going to claim a place on God’s vine, we have the duty to bear fruit that will draw others to God. We have an obligation to be the kind of fruit that brings broad smiles to others (even behind their masks) and makes them wonder what kind of master farmer produces such goodness.

I continued to pray with these images, sitting in silence, enjoying again and again the strawberries from that farmer’s field, and finding in those times of delicious contemplation a few words that helped me, once again, through a rough patch. For what I found (or remembered) is that sometimes the very best we can do is be content with being branches that bear fruit, attached to the vine until that very last moment when someone picks us off because we have become the very thing they need.

A Week of Psalms

Steve · May 23, 2020 · 6 Comments

A few weeks ago, I posted each day on my Facebook page a short poem and photograph inspired by one of the Psalms. [I didn’t post here because I didn’t want to inundate your inbox each day!]

The Psalms, as Fr. Michael Joncas noted in an interview I posted about a month ago, can be doorways to our emotions and deepest held fears and joys. They are “salves,” he noted, precisely because there is nothing new under the sun. The words of the ancient psalmist hit us in our guts — right where we live and breathe — because even though the world has changed immensely, we are still the same as the joyful, lost, questioning, mourning souls who wandered the earth two thousand years ago. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

We try to make sense of what’s going on in our world by singing and crying and shouting and whispering prayers and songs to the One who created us and listens to us still. The Psalms help us do that.

So here are my little offerings…my takes on individual Psalms as they are speaking to me right now during this time of pandemic and change. Read one a day or read them all right now. Most importantly, open your Bible and spend time with your own favorite Psalms that comfort or speak your heart.

It’s Time to Forgive. Right now. Today.

Steve · April 30, 2020 · 4 Comments

In the midst of everything that is going on in the world, during this time of danger and fear and loss, ask yourself: Who do I need to forgive or ask forgiveness from? What if tomorrow they were gone?

Get rid of old grudges. They hurt you more than anyone else.