Month: February 2012

To meet what is coming

Please accept with all my love this inner and outer chronicle of those last weeks of our old century and our old millennium – and the first weeks of your own beginnings  – when so many things were on their way to us, things we neither anticipated nor, in some cases, ever could have imagined.  This is the story of how we met them and were changed by them.  May we continue to meet what is coming to us with courage in our hearts.  – Gail Godwin, Evensong

These lines, on the last page of Gail Godwin’s gorgeous Evensong, have been ringing in my head for days.  I believe utterly that there is some hand at work out there – some design, even in the vastness – and therefore I’m not surprised that it was right now that I picked up Evensong.  I won’t even try to write about this vast, beautiful book, beyond saying that it moved me immensely.  Godwin grapples with issues of faith and doubt, evokes humanity in all of its flawed complexity, dives into the deepest manifestation of what it means to trust.  And I read, spellbound, until the end.  And then I found these last lines.

May we continue to meet what is coming to us with courage in our hearts.

Indeed.  Is there a more eloquent way to describe the topics I’ve struggled with here – so loquaciously, so repetitively, so inelegantly – for years?  I don’t think so.  And so I walk on.  Gazing at the world, at the nets of black branches against cornflower blue, at the glowing, ragged-edged moon rising in the dusky sky.  Trying, every single day, to meet what is coming to me with an open mind and heart full of trust.  My courage flags, my eyes fill with tears, I trip and fall.  And all I can do is wake up every morning and try again.

My subject chose me

I am honored to have my essay, My Subject Chose Me, published at Literary Mama.  I love so much of what Literary Mama stands for, most of all the power that is contained in commingling motherhood and writing.  The work that I’ve read there is without exception both beautifully-written and thought-provoking, intelligent and honest, suffused with love of both the written word and the small, noisy people who populate our days.

Please click over to read my piece and spend some time on the site.  You won’t be disappointed.  I’d love to hear what you think.

Walking

I’ve mentioned that things are a bit shaky chez moi lately, with unanticipated changes and tremors, a brand-new and somewhat startling shakiness to the ground.  Last week I felt tentative and edged my way out into the world only when it was necessary.  Other than one dinner out (a celebration with a few of our dear local friends) I have been staying very close to home.  The truth is I am feeling internal again, quiet, and there are only a few people I feel comfortable being with.

I have been working a lot, writing, reading, sleeping when I can (not that well), and curling up with Grace and Whit.  Cooking random vegetables out of the bin that arrives weekly, making my way through Gail Godwin’s glorious Evensong, working slowly on a couple of essays I have in process.

I’ve also been going for walks in the afternoons.  Whenever I can, when I have breaks between calls, I sneak out, bundle up, pull on a fleece hat and mittens and parka and head down the street.  It’s often late afternoon when I go out, so in particular I have been watching the light change.  In the space of a couple of days it suddenly seemed as though the days were markedly longer.  A movement which had seemed slow, almost imperceptible, like the hour hand creaking around a clock, suddenly jumped and made itself known.

I walk and I watch.  I see the light on the trees, the black nests in bare tree branches, the glowing rough-edged moon in the saturated, still-blue sky.  The unfortunate thing, though, is that I seem to go on every walk with myself.  No matter how far or how fast I walk, I can’t get away from myself.  Sometimes I can still my racing thoughts and heart with the abiding calm of a late afternoon in deep winter, but most of the time I can’t. I’m right there with myself.  As it were.

And still, not really knowing what else to do, I keep walking.  Looking up, looking down, noticing things every step of the way, often feeling waves of wonder.  Realizing that no matter what, I can’t outrun myself.  Even as the world turns towards light again, I am, in ways big and small, turning inward.  Who knows how long this will last, this phase of inwardness, this time of late-afternoon walks, this season of anxiousness and waiting, of patience and fear.  I can’t know how long.  So I just keep walking.

 

Blazing before my eyes

“Throughout my whole life,” he noted later, “during every minute of it, the world has been gradually lighting up and blazing before my eyes until it has come to surround me, entirely lit up from within.”

Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

Trust your struggle

I’ve seen this image several times, all over the place, and finally I downloaded it because I love it.  I love the font, I love the gray and white, and I love the message.

Trust your struggle.

These words honor that we all have struggles, and they contains within them trust that all the effort and difficulty is in service of something.  That we’re all where we are supposed to be, doing what we’re supposed to be doing, no matter how painful or pointless it might seem.

I’m doing both right now.  Struggling, and trying to trust.