Friday 28 November 2014

Mixed feelings in Snowdonia

After walking the lush green valleys of the Clywd, the Elwy, the Aled and the Conwy, it was sad to see the majesty of the mountains so harshly treated...


Welsh slate
They gouged deep scars in your beauty
tearing the skin
blood flowing hard and grey. 

As if in sympathy
sad terraces streak your face
running down to pool
in the flooded cemetery square.

It’s hard to see the beauty
under your disfigurement -
the raw wounds draw the eye. 

The healing green is slow to grow
on these dark rocks.
Only the snow pulls over
a cold white sheet.

Words from a prayer card - by Hub Oosterhuis

Sometimes
your words are like hands
embracing me, enfolding me.
Sometimes
your words are like a sword
piercing to the core of me.
Sometimes
your words are like a net
drawing me in
from the deep waters.

Thursday 27 November 2014

Retreat gatherings

Sometimes retreats are the settings for profound encounters with God, like the one referred to in this first poem, which was given in the chapel in the picture (and there just happened to be a storm that night).  The other poems show the way that 'ordinary life' can take on an extra level of significance to the person on retreat...


     Standing under a tree

     It was the night of the thunderstorm
     when lightning struck.
     In the Woodland Chapel
     I sat rooted to my chair
     a surprised conductor
     of joy.             
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Happy blending 
 
Silently aware of my fellow retreatants
in all their rich variety
(which, after four weeks together in silence, you know)
all tucking into our vegetable soup
it occurs to me –
God doesn’t hate celery.
 
Even if, for some of us
it isn’t to our taste
or disagrees with us
- no reference to fellow diners intended.
 
Which is good
because I am certainly some people’s celery.
 
 Maybe, as I begin to see
how much God appreciates my flavour
that will help me to acquire
more inclusive tastebuds.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
God given
 
Take a picture
get an experience
steal a look -
our words betray our urgent grasp.
 
But to receive a gift
requires waiting.
The stream presents its tumbling notes
singly to the open ear.
The landscape’s complex shape and pattern
is unfolded slowly to the patient eye.
The blessing of the birds is laid gently on the shoulders
of one who pauses under the tree. 
 
Only the heart that is held open -
opened, held -
can receive the slow look of love,
the slow love of God.
 





Colloquy by Rory Geoghegan SJ
Inner Colloquy
 
Mind                This ‘talking with the Lord’ is fine, I’m sure
                        as long as you don’t think he’s really there.

Heart               My ‘really’ means much more than what’s up there
                        - I know the love that fills me when he’s near. 

Will                  If I can just let go, then he comes near
                        and answers with his calling my desire. 

Soul                 There is the taste of God in that desire
                        and he becomes the clothing that I wear. 

                        So, maybe we’ll both differ and concur:
                        we know, although we never can be sure.

 
 

After the retreat

A wise person once told me about how a retreat marks you. That is my hope...


heart felt
 
I know that your soft hands of love
have smoothed and thinned
the rough hardness around my heart
to something permeable, translucent
yielding to the touch.

I know this because
the last yellow leaves of the hazel
blazing in the hedge
strike joy to the centre of me,
and the birds collect my soul
to ride with them
the autumn skies.
 
 

In at the deep end

I was sent the first wonderful poem by a friend just before going on my 30 Day Retreat. It stayed with me, resonating with my experience of being wonderfully overwhelmed, with the experience of a fellow retreatant who went swimming every day, and with the from Tagore in a card given to us by our director. The last poem is my own beginnings of a response.


House by the Sea : Carol Bialock 


I built my house by the sea.
Not on sand, mind you.
Not on the shifting sand.
And I built it of rock,
A strong house.
By a strong sea.
And we got well-acquainted, the sea and I.
Good neighbors.
Not that we spoke much.
We met in silences.
Respectful, keeping our distance,
but looking our thoughts across the fence of sand.
Always, the fence of sand our barrier;
always the sand between.

And then one day
(I still don't know how it happened),
but the sea came.
Without warning.
Without welcome, even.
Not sudden and swift, but sifting across the sand like wine.
Less like the flow of water than the flow of blood.
Slow, but coming.
Slow, but flowing like an open wound.
And I thought of flight and I thought of drowning and I thought of death.
And while I thought the sea crept higher,
till it reached my door.

I knew, then, there was neither flight nor death nor drowning.
That when the sea comes calling you stop being good neighbors,
Well-acquainted, friendly-from-a-distance neighbors.
And you give your house for a coral castle,
And you learn to breathe under water.
 
 
 
Traveller, where do you go  by Rabindranath Tagore

 
'Traveller, where do you go?'
I go to bathe in the sea in the redd'ning dawn,
along the tree-bordered path.'

'Traveller, where is that sea?'
'There where this river ends its course,
where the dawn opens into morning,
where the day droops to the dusk.'

'Traveller, how many are they who come with you?'
I know not how to count them.
They are travelling all night with their lamps lit,
they are singing all day through land and water.'

'Traveller, how far is the sea?'
'How far is it we all ask?
The rolling roar of its water swells to the sky when we hush our talk.
It ever seems near yet far.'

'Traveller, the sun is waxing strong.'
'Yes, our journey is long and grievous.
Sing who are weary in spirit, sing who are timid of heart.'

'Traveller, what if the night overtakes you?'
'We shall lie down to sleep
till the new morning dawns with its songs,
and the call of the sea floats in the air.'
 
 
 
 
 

Going under

We put in a toe
have a paddle
then maybe take the plunge – or fall
into this other way of being.

Barrelling along,
drifting
floating in stillness…
or masked and snorkelled
to look down in wonder at this other world.

Until one day we’re taken by the hand
and gently pulled right under –
discovering that there is no need
for flailing panic or for gasping breath.

This is our element now, and we are in it
fully, fearless and free
gliding with him through the golden light.
 
 

Pilgrimage meetings

I'm finally getting round to updating the blog with some poems I have written during my sabbatical this Autumn - and hopefully then some of the earlier ones I never put on. Here's the first, inspired by discovering that meeting people (on the North Wales Pilgrim's Way) was even more of a gift than watching the birds...

Watching 

You begin to learn how
if you just keep your eyes fixed
on that tree, that group of bushes, where
you thought you saw
a flash of wing
a bright eye looking back 

then, drawn along the line of your attending
from branch to branch
a movement in the leaves -
there!
- the bird will come. 

We also are great hiders,
wary of the world
keeping our vulnerable selves
safe in the topmost branches
or the deep hedge shadows. 

But I am learning how
if I just keep my face turned
towards your face, if I can -
I may then notice there, with eyes alert
(and other nameless senses)
the briefest shadow
or the flash of fire. 

And if I keep my eyes and heart so still and steady - open
with my attention fixed and fully given -
then down along that line between us
may come, slow inch by inch,
another such as I 

learning that here is one that can be trusted
teaching that I can trust this time of meeting
finding that we can learn to trust together
the one who watches us.