[Image description: Photo of a collage of pictures taken from magazines. The bottom picture shows a shoreline with large rocks and a tall island silhouetted against a blue and orange sky and the sky is reflected in the shallow waves of the water. The top picture is a black-and-white ghostlike picture of trees with drooping branches reflected in calm, glasslike water. In the center of the collage, overlaying the other top pictures is a Viking ship. The word “Gathering” is pasted on the ship.]
We are told not to live in the past, or dwell on what has been, yet our lives ebb and flow and some wisdom is gleaned only in hindsight.
Memories, waves veining across sand in the rose-golden light of retrospection beckon us, carry us, navigate back to gather in the previously unobserved.
Wandering revealed as labyrinth path, the trivial unveiled as meaningful, former aches and longings rediscovered as deepest truth.
Time offers perspective, not forgiveness. Perspective offers understanding, shows the way to forgive ourselves for what we didn’t know.
[Image description: close-up of a black-eyed Susan blossom, with most of the bright yellow petals unfurled, except for two that are still joined together over the brown center of the bloom. In the background are green stems, leaves and buds of other black-eyes Susans.]
You don’t have to keep wasting time in attempt to fit in, to conform, to meet arbitrary expectations.
There are reasons you are the way you are.
Learn them. Examine them. Take the time to understand all their light and shadows.
Follow the breadcrumbs to the mysteries you haven’t yet discovered, the truths yet to unfurl.
Your Pandora’s box fears are unfounded.
Your truest self is a gift of beauty to yourself and to the world.
Sometimes I want to listen to something different. Folk music. Indie pop. And sometimes I do, even though I have to pay attention to the words, get caught up in any genius of the lyrics, get distracted from whatever else is going on.
But mostly I listen to Claudia Berti and Hania Rani on repeat for hours every day, no lyrics to get tangled in, just vibrant piano notes resonating, tones filling chest, clearing mind, softening breath.
God, I’ve always loved the sounds a piano makes.
Sometimes the music makes me think of my six-year-old self who longed to learn all the notes as well as the lady who played hymns on the old piano at church, who would sometimes let me sit next to her on the hard wooden bench and nod at me when it was time to turn the music page.
I would tell that younger me it’s okay she couldn’t make herself sit long enough to really practice and never passed book four.
Sometimes music calls to mind my teenage self, desperate to fit in, find her place, her people, who learned to play music by chords on the keyboard to join the youth group praise band. Even then, always on the periphery. Performing music, performing roles, none of it coming naturally.
I would tell her it’s okay the group dynamics always felt forced, through a mask, never intuitive.
I would tell her one day she’ll discover she forms connections in a way that make certain attention and certain relationships feel just out of reach, near-misses, through a veil.
And I’d tell her someday she’ll discover the way her mind can meander, swirl into being a collage of words that connect, invoke clarity, resonate, piano-music tapestry, woven by others, the backdrop of her own expression.
Our eyes perceive only destruction when all that remains are remnants, desolation, isolation, severed branches, tangled roots.
Relief, impossible to comprehend, desperation closing in. But Spirit whispers deliverance, painting wild possibilities.
A new day will dawn, Wisdom’s reign, when the poor and the meek and the child are safe and warm and held and equal, when harmony abounds.
Connection with the source of Love will permeate, infusing every human and non-human interaction, the world overflowing with collective liberation and we will finally know peace.
–
Note: This is one of nine poems I wrote to complement the nine readings for Lessons and Carols the Sunday after Christmas. Many commentaries I read–both Jewish and Christian–cautioned against reading Isaiah as Messianic text. So, I shied away from that, opting instead to view it through the lens of hope promised to those living in times where hope seems distant.
[Image Description: Sunny picture taken in Utah in the western United State showing a sand-colored rock formation with an opening through which other rock formations and distant landscape can be seen]
Liminal, the present already shifting, slipping, fading, yet this impulse to cling to familiarity pervades.
Daunted, point of no return closing in, unknowns creating undercurrents of ambiguity, infusing moments as they pass.
Bolstered, recalling previous iterations of myself on long past thresholds, hesitating in-between, stepping across despite my fear.
Held, sustained within my own gentle reassurance, yet still wondering how to bless the ending and the beginning in the same breath.
[Image description: somewhat blurry photo of the moon, looking like a tiny white dot right-of-center in the picture, mostly obscured by light and dark gray rainclouds.]
Last night I caught a glimpse of the full moon gleaming through the clouds shedding tiny raindrops over our backyard.
I read some Indigenous folks call her Long Night Moon during what I’ve learned to call December, and I like that name because right now the night arrives so early and it’s still dark long after I wake up to start my day
and I feel a small bit of comfort knowing that at her most revealed this final month on our calendar, she’s companioning us when daylight eludes.
[Image description: Photo of a forty-something white woman with long brown hair and wearing a dark blue winter coat in the foreground. She is in the woods on a sunny winter day, with mostly bare trees in the background and sunlight flooding the frame.]
How little we genuinely can perceive of someone else’s experience, our perception stemming from our own awareness.
A cool hand may soothe a flushed cheek or be felt as shock from icy fingers. A nonchalant observation may be forgotten or forever taken to heart.
Regardless of intention, or our observed response, we can’t fully know another’s interoception.
Even explanations can fail to bridge the gap, tempting as it is to think we comprehend.
Compassion, empathy, involves remembering how limited is our insight into bodies, minds, and lives not our own.
Gently gather in the loose threads that came unraveled while you were busy trying to hold together the self crafted carefully under other people’s scrutiny.
Replace what no longer serves with tenderly collected fragments until you can explain yourself in your own damn words, not syllables you memorized to stave off raised eyebrows and sidelong glances.
Or maybe don’t. Maybe stop trying to explain and instead wrap yourself joyously in the love you’re weaving from understandings reassembled, until you live your beauty and your wisdom so fully that you need no explanation.
[Image description: a path in the forest, covered by fallen leaves and framed on either side with tall trees full of bright yellow leaves with sunlight streaming in through the leaves on the left side.]
A long way off for so long, separation mostly out of focus, only sharp when jolted, when glancing back revealed the distance never understood.
Looking for explanations seemed too much like searching for excuses, best to forge ahead, maintain armor, match and mimic and blend in, hoping to forget you never feel at home.
Bless the glimpse, the epiphany, the light, the turning that initiated understanding, illuminated the returning way.
Bless the hindsight, the pieces falling into place, the gleaning, the gathering up the truth— tattered and frayed from disregard— now seen, embraced, and known.
Bless the kindness, the compassion, the gentle regard that accompanied comprehension, the tender, loving warmth with which you welcome your own knowing, your return to the truth of yourself.
The Forest and the Trees 