August 26: "Whelks," Helen and Mary, Wild Darkness

Mary Oliver has been restless . . .

Whelks

by:  Mary Oliver

Here are the perfect

fans of the scallops,

quahogs, and weedy mussels

still holding their orange fruit--

and here are the whelks--

whirlwinds,

each the size of a fist,

but always cracked and broken--

clearly they have been traveling

under the sky-blue waves

for a long time.

All my life

I have been restless--

I have felt there is something

more wonderful than glass--

than wholeness--

than staying at home.

I have not been sure what it is.

But every morning on the wide shore

I pass what is perfect and shining

to look for the whelks, whose edges

have rubbed so long against the world

they have snapped and crumbled--

they have almost vanished,

with the last relinquishing

of their unrepeatable energy,

back into everything else.

When I find one

I hold it in my hand, 

I look out over that shanking fire,

I shut my eyes.  Not often,

but now and again there's a moment

when the heart cries aloud:

yes, I am willing to be

that wild darkness,

that long, blue body of light.

My friend Helen and Mary Oliver had a lot in common.

Both were ocean gals--in their element when they were walking along a briny beach, finding clams and oysters and quahogs and other weedy mussels.  

Both went for long daily walks, finding wonder along the way.  For Helen, it was raspberries or blueberries or sandhill cranes or mating seagulls.

Both were poets--they understood the world better through words.  That was their medium.  Read one of Oliver's or Helen's poems, and you will taste salt on your lips. 

Both found the world endlessly complex and endlessly simple.  

Both believed in some form of Higher Power.

Both were willing to be that wild darkness, full of mystery.

Both were willing to be that long, blue body of light.

I guess what I'm saying is that every time I read Mary Oliver, I find Helen.  

Today, I hosted a day-long celebration of joy at the library.  It was beautiful, exhausting, and filled with art and words and music and healing and singing bowls.  I texted a friend on Wednesday or Thursday that I'd been experiencing Helen miracles all week long.  Tiny moments of beauty.  Rabbits eating in my backyard.  Clouds shot through with light.  Rain coming down so hard it sounded like the drum solo in Led Zeppelin's "Moby Dick."  This morning, I opened my front door, and a chipmunk was sitting on my top step, staring up at me.  

Just like Oliver, Helen taught me how to slow down and take note.  That's what I did today.

Saint Marty is now going to take note of a bowl of ice cream.  Helen taught him that, too.

May 22: "The Gift," Storytelling, Singing Bowls

Mary Oliver finds a small gift from the sea . . . 

The Gift

by:  Mary Oliver

After the wind-bruised sea

     furrowed itself back

          into folds of blue, I found

               in the black wrack

a shell called the Neptune--

     tawny and white,

          spherical,

               with a tail

and a tower

     and a dark door,

          and all of it

               no larger

than my fist.

     It looked, you might say,

          very expensive.

               I thought of its travels

in the Atlantic's 

     wind-pounded bowl

          and wondered

               that it was still intact.

Ah yes, there was

     that door

          that held only the eventual, inevitable

               emptiness.

There's that--there's always that.

     Still, what a house

          to leave behind!

               I held it

like the wisest of books

     and imagined

          its travels toward my hand.

               And now, your hand.

Oliver finds the Neptune and gives us its story as only she can--full of wisdom and astonishment.  Everything and everyone in this world has a story, from the tiniest of seashells on a beach to the Himalayas.  It's very easy to walk through a day without thinking of any of those stories.  Let's face it, human beings are pretty self-absorbed creatures, myself included.

Perhaps that's why I like hanging around poets and writers.  Poets and writers train themselves to tell stories that nobody else may notice or care about.  In a poet's hands, a tiny shell on a beach suddenly becomes an astounding odyssey of survival akin to anything that Homer sang about.  (Yes, I just used the word "akin."  I'm a poet, so I'm allowed.)  There's real power in storytelling, because it's difficult to dismiss the worth of anyone and anything if you know the "once upon a times."

This evening, I attended a session of singing bowls meditation.  If you don't know that that is, don't feel bad.  Until a couple years ago, I had never even heard the term before.  Singing bowls are bowls made out of hammered metal that, when struck with a mallet, create a ringing and chiming.  The sound creates vibrations that are supposed to heal and relax.  When you have many of these bowls (and gongs) singing together in a space, it creates an energy difficult to describe.

The most amazing part of a singing bowls meditation is that the bowls make different sounds, depending on the people present.  Each individual brings a unique story and energy to a place, and the bowls respond to that story/energy.  The gentleman who led the meditation tonight told me a story.

Once upon a time, he was leading a singing bowls meditation at a local Episcopal church.  He set up his bowls and gongs in the basement of the building at first, and they did their thing, singing and vibrating.  But then he moved into the sanctuary of the church.  When he began striking his instruments, the man said, "The energy was so powerful."  The pastor of the church told him, "When you pray in a place for over 100 years, that prayer has to make a difference."

Think about that.  All the sick and dying relatives.  Griefs and joys.  Baptisms and funerals and weddings.  Christmases and Easters.  All those stories swirling around you as you sit in a pew.  When I attend Mass at my home church, I can sometimes still hear my mother's soprano voice above the organ, feel my father sitting in his place in the choir loft.  Their stories are still there, the wisest of books, as Oliver says.

The singing bowls vibrate with those stories.

We should all do the same.  The next time you see a homeless person sitting in a library or outside a gas station, remember that person has a story, just like you, full of happiness and heartache.  When you see a dandelion growing on your lawn, think of the impossible process of photosynthesis that allows it to exist.  Your story.  My story.  The dandelion's story.  The homeless person's story.  They're all chambers of the same Neptune shell.  Chorusing and humming.

Saint Marty hopes you all sleep happily ever after tonight.