May 20, 2012

This morning there is no pleasant singing to wake to, for some reason the mockingbirds have decided to be angry birds this morning, about six of them in the yard all making almost the same demented sound as angry squirrels.  They are driving the cat crazy, the striped one too chubby to really be able to chase them, but he has been launching himself half way up the crepe myrtle just to get close.  He drops down on the canoe with a thud like a 50 pound sack of cement.  I don't know what is making the mockingbirds so cantankerous, they are chasing each other through the trees and sitting there on different branches just making that horrible hissing, or the loud rusty door noises.  The flashes of their white barred wings are opening and closing through the leaves like fans of ladies annoyed by too much sun, and not enough air.   I am at a loss to even begin to know why there are so many out there this morning, and why they are so riled up!

It's Sunday, and the day for the blessing, and this morning I'd like to find a nice peaceful one to counteract the battleground of the back yard.

When the Holy Thaws

A woman's body, like the earth, has seasons;
when the mountain stream flows,
when the holy
thaws,

when I am most fragile and in need,
it was then, it seemed,
God came
closest.

God, like a medic on a field, is tending our souls.
Our horns get locked with desires, but don't hold yourself
too accountable; for all desires are
really innocent.  That is what
the compassion in His
eyes tell me.

Why this great war between the countries -- the countries --
inside of us?

What are all these insane borders we protect?
What are all these different names for the same church of love
we kneel in together?   For it is true, together we live; and only
at that shrine where all are welcome will God sing
loud enough to be heard.

Our horns got locked with the earth and sky in some odd
marriage ritual; so what, don't worry.  We should be proud of
ourselves for everything we helped create in this
magic world.

And God is always there, if you feel wounded.  He kneels
over this earth like
a divine medic,

and His love thaws
the holy in us.

St. Teresa of Avila

For all the times when I feel vulnerable and fragile, I'm glad there is someone out there stronger to lean on.  The idea that all desires are innocent is an unusual one, that what we want is part of the world, part of who we are, that there is compassion somewhere for those needs, those desires.  It's the inclusion I like about this poem.  I would like to write on a wall somewhere, hundreds of feet high so thousands would see and notice: Only at that shrine where ALL are welcome will God sing loud enough to be heard.  There is something sad about all those countries inside us and the borders we impose on ourselves and everyone else, making the world narrower, making people strangers to us when we are all so much the same thing, so much in need of the love that thaws the holy in us.  How can there be so much anger between all the people who love God?   How can there be room for all that anger, all that making of borders to divide us, if we are having the love of God and for God in our lives?  The idea or perhaps the ideal of love sometimes sounds so much like a cliche, watered down and made into some weak tea that has nothing to offer.  But real love is not weak, it's harder than almost any other choice, and choosing it over everything else can be a choice that takes years to finally be able to accept.  Love takes work, and a lot of knowing, and a lot of courage most of the time.  Thinking of loving like God, thinking of God in everyone, all of us, even the people we don't understand, who are not like us, who believe strange things and do things we cannot believe in, even they are like God, made in the image of the creator.  And that image is just that, an image, even the bible says you cannot know the true God, no image, no thought we have can contain the whole, so we think of the parts we can understand, we think of the parts we can relate to, the human parts, the parts our mind can touch, and so we all think of different parts, because we come to understanding in different ways.  There is no wrong way to love.  Sometimes in our terror or despair or fatigue we want an answer, the answer, so we can rest in that belief, and for those times there is that answer, the same answer for everyone dressed up in clothes they can wear and go on living, sometimes we take that answer and make of it a crusade, when all that is wanted is that we just accept the love and share it.

For today I wish the mockingbirds more love, perhaps they will go back to singing.  The birds and the cat and the squirrels all living the lives they were created to live and so am I, with all my desires and with the love I understand, sometimes even with the love I don't understand but just keep on loving.  The sunlight is beginning to fill up the edges of the yard, the light clear and bright.  A Sunday morning full of that light, people I love, and a lot of noisy birds!