The Great Designer

I have been posting poetry recently. This is ironic. I have never felt a mastery of poetry, and have always viewed it from "afar"--as if it is a mystery too great for my involvement. Ms. Shipley, my 9th grade English teacher, was a bizare and intriguing person. She was shorter than any of us, and would be described as "round" in physique. Her hair was a natural mess of wavy grey/brown streaks. Pieces of uncontrolled beauty would fall down into her view while she was talking to you, causing her to frequently brush hair away from her face and adjust her glasses. Her glasses were often slipping down toward the end of her nose. She was both very calm in her demeanor, and very agitated. She wore a sullen look on her round, wrinkled face, but smiles would pop out of nowhere and soften her into a youthfulness. I was drawn to her quirky, surprising approach to teaching and relating with us. It did not intimidate me, as it did so many other people in our class. An example of her element of surprise can be seen in this one snapshot moment from class: We were all working quietly at our desks. Sitting in rows of about 5 desks in each row--it was a long narrow classroom. It was an advanced English class, so we were emersed in our work, and no one was causing any disruptions. Ms. Shipley's desk sat facing her students' profiles. On her desk was a two-tiered wire basket, like an in/out basket of grading. As we sat quietly working, Ms. Shipley sat at her desk grading papers. With one swift move, rising out of the stillness of that bleak, monotone classroom, Ms. Shipley grabbed the entire top wire basket and flug it across the room. The wire basket flew in an arc above our heads and bounced hard against the empty desks at the far side of the room, landing with a clatter on the tile floor. As it sailed over our heads, papers fluttered down, raining on us. A changing of seasons in the classroom. All of this occured in a split second. But being ripped out of a lull by such a surprise, made the experience play out in slow motion. I remember looking over at Ms. Shipley. As papers floated down around us, she sat at her desk, grading the stack of essays she had been working on since the beginning of the hour. She didn't look up. She didn't say a word. I was facinated by Ms. Shipley. Others were intimidated. I liked that she kept us guessing as to who she was and what we might experience. Mrs. Shipley was a well known and awarded poet in the state in which I went to school. She socialized and worked in circles of creative people who valued the power of the word and its ability to impact the soul. She would tell stories of facilitating writing workshops in high security prisons across the country. She would read us poems that men who were on death row had written. Then, she would ask us to write poems. I was intimidated by Ms. Shipley's offer to engage poetry. Poetry was mysterious and surprising to me. It seemed to invite me places that I wasn't expecting to go to. When I arrived with the poem in this private place in my soul, I couldn't figure out how we had gotten there. How could a poem about ordinary things linger in my mind all day long? How did it intice me ponder things of life and death? I was used to writing my thoughts in a composition and getting wonderful feedback from my teachers, but how do you take a handful of words carefully picked arrange them in a purposeful way, and carve out a path the soul? I tried to write poetry in Ms. Shipley's class, but it was stiff and stilted. She did not like my poetry, and she told me such. She never said I couldn't write poetry. She just told me she didn't like the poetry I was writing. Ms. Shipley intrigued me. Poetry intimidated me. I find it ironic that as I am processing some thoughts in my life right now, I am drawn to poetry. I think I owe this to Ms. Shipley. She allowed poetry remain mysterious. She engaged us with intrigue. She let me wrestle with words and emotions and thoughts. Thank you, Ms. Shipley. The desire to look for my soul in the reflection of poems today is a result of her invitation. We have been talking about sovereignty and love in Seminary. The discussion has been in terms of "which is greater." I have been contemplating my ability to embrace Sovereignty. Some discussion of this concept tends to produce fire in my soul, and other thoughts draw me in close to my Designer. Here's a poem I found that makes me understand the Soveriegnty of God, the Master Designer. Design
by Robert Frost
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth-- Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches' broth-- A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite. What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall?-- If design govern in a thing so small.
From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1916, 1923, 1928, 1930, 1934, 1939, 1947, 1949, © 1969 by Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright 1936, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1951, 1953, 1954, © 1956, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970 by Leslie Frost Ballantine.

Robert Frost on the Seasons of the Soul

AFTER APPLE-PICKING

by ROBERT FROST


My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing dear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

thank you, Robert Frost, for your warm eyes and gentle words that embrace the winter, the harvest, the labor, and the sleep.

Emily Dickinson #657

I dwell in Possibility--
A fairer House than Prose--
More numerous of Windows--
Superior--for Doors--

Of Chambers as the Cedars--
Impregnable of Eye--
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky--

Of Visitors--the fairest--
For Occupation--This--
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise--

thank you, emily. beautiful.

Movie Recommendation

Yesterday. Would you like to meet her? What about her daughter, Beauty? And she is. They both are.

If you think the most engaging thing this side of heaven is the simplicity of a human's story, you should watch the story of grace unfold before your eyes in the movie called YESTERDAY.

The people of Africa with their dark, smooth skin, radiant smiles, and penetrating eyes. The Zulu language complete with staccato clicks intermingled in words that bubble off of the tongue. The sociolinguist custom of long greetings and courteous inquiries at the crossroads of the journey. The singular images captured against the canvas of the African landscape---a child playing in the river, a mother standing in a dusty garden, women sharing in community around the village water pump. The love of a woman for her child. The capacity of a human to bear a gift not asked for and still forgive and love the broken giftgiver.

Thank you for the recommendation, Maris. I want to share this movie with someone just as you did with me. YESTERDAY an hbo film on dvd

Sacred Silence

It's been a good month. I've watched seven monarch catapillars transform into butterfies. Each one has been shared with other people. Each person has been simply surprised at their own reponse. Most people do not realize that they will be so moved by watching the transformation and releasing the butterfly. Here's a picture of the last one I released this past Saturday.I have seen transformation in three relationships in the past three months. Not any different than the stages of this insect's transformation. Each is in a different stage, but significant none the less. Most notably, a foster daughter has returned home to find me and brought a heart desire to reconnect. Ten years of waiting. She initiated the return. I had told God I would wait. It was very difficult. But the return was beautiful.

I thought it was all I could do to wait on that one relationship to find it's way through God's hands. Then I was asked to wait on another friend, a very dear friend, who was needing to sort pieces of life out for a time. She initiated a return to relationship this past week. One and a half years of waiting. Forgiveness and the beginnings of restoration. It was beyond hard. But the return was beautiful.

Waiting is not easy for a dreamer. A dreamer is someone who connects good eyes to see with a passionate heart to feel. When you have eyes to see, you want to see. When you have a heart to feel, you want to feel. Eyes are not meant to wait. Hearts were not meant to wait. The heart was made to beat with consistency---no hesitation.

I've thought several times about the story of the prodigal son. I wonder often about the father. Why do we get some verses on the prodigal son's day to day happenings, even some interactions he has with others. Perhaps we even see a bit into the older brother's life--what he is doing and thinking. But I have always felt like there is a gap--a glaring gap--in the story. My heart needs to know what the father did, who did he talk to, what did he say, how did he spend his days waiting, how was his heart...while he waited? I think because there is no insight into the days, weeks, months, years (?) the father waited---how he grieved and lived--I think we may tend to sugar coat his experience. Perhaps we make him out to be this resilient man who had no problems releasing his son, no problems waiting for the unknown, no problems handling his sorrow for a broken relationship.

Tonight, I'm thinking the scripture is silent on the father's days of grief because of how sacred his experience of waiting was . I'm thinking off the top of my mind and heart here, but really the only person I can think of that we get an up close look at the face of pain, loss, and grief in the New Testament scriptures is Jesus--seeing his blood drops, hearing his cries of mercy, watching him look around for others to join him for relief and support. The only other places I can think of (with the amazing exceptions of the Old Testament lives of Job and David) would be that we see people mourning at Lazarus' tomb, but what a brief glimpse! We can understand that the father of the prodigal son must have been deeply affected by the loss of a most precious relationship, but we do not see how he handles it. It is so personal. It is so sacred.

I want to see what happens in that chrysalis. It's the only part of the transformation I'm not privy to. I can watch the caterpillar chomp on milkweed. I can watch it shed it's outer layers of skin. I can watch it weave a connection to a flat surface and hang in a "J"--waiting to change. I can even watch the caterpillar begin to shed that last layer and become a chrysalis. But then...I can no longer see anything. I wait. The most amazing transformations are happening at that point in the process. What once was a caterpillar mouth with jaws and "teeth"--in the chrysalis becomes a butterfly's tongue--no chewing leaves, only an apparatus for sucking nectar from flowers. Legs turn to wings. Thick and pudgy turns into light and free. But in the meantime, all there is to see is an emerald green sack dotted with shimmering gold "buttons." No movement. No changes. I have no window to peek in. No matter how long I stare, or how many different angles I look from, or how many different people I get to check the chrysalis...I can see nothing happening. Even the 12 days of a caterpillar melting in a chrysalis crucible are too sacred for us to know.

I wait.

I AM HERE

yes. i am here.

i'm on my hands and knees.

coughing.

taste of blood on my cut lip.



first, a blow to the jaw

next, shoved to the ground

finally

kicked in the gut.

the wind,

my last breath,

knocked out of me.



from here i see the sky

clouds scroll above

swimming through a blue mute canvas.

I can hear kids playing in the park.



blink.

blink.

blink.

tears run down the side of my face

landing in the dust

with no sound.



where am i?

why did that happen?

who am i?

when will help come?



im on my hands and knees

filling my lungs with breaths of air

taste of blood and dust in my mouth



yes. im here.


i'm about to stand up.