April 11: "We Shake with Joy," Joyous Times, Saddest Times

One of Mary Oliver's most famous poems . . . 

We Shake with Joy

by:  Mary Oliver

We shake with joy, we shake with grief.

What a time they have, these two

housed as they are in the same body.

This little, three-line poem is Mary Oliver at her most concentrated.  It shakes with joy and shakes with grief.  The mystery for me is how Oliver manages to capture so much in 23 words/24 syllables.  (Yes, I did the math.)  There's something so simple and profound in this spare tercet.  (You are going to learn some poetic terms today.  A "tercet" is a three-line stanza.  You can impress your friends and family now at your next gettogether.)

Joy cannot exist without grief.  To experience deep happiness, you must also open yourself up to deep sadness.  There's no way around this equivalency.

The most joyous times in my life are connected with people I love.  On the October day I got married, I had no idea what difficulties and struggles I would face.  The Ghost of Mental Illness Yet to Come had not come knocking on my door.  On the December morning my daughter was born, I didn't know I would be a single parent during her kindergarten year, volunteering and baking cookies for special events.  When I first held my infant son, counted his tiny fingers and toes, I didn't have a clue about school bullying and suicide attempts.

These happiest times of my life contained the seeds of some of my saddest times.  Joy and grief in the same shaking body.  As I said, you can't avoid this.  If living a happy life is one of your goals, then you will experience despair.  You can't have one without the other.  Period.

That doesn't mean that I go through every day waiting for tragedy to strike.  I'm not a bellybutton-gazing Hamlet.  I accept joy when it happens, and I also accept sorrow, as well.  To go through every day trying to avoid calamity and misfortune is stupid.  That's avoiding life, not living it.  

If you want to laugh, you must be willing to cry.  Accept it.  Embrace it.  Let your body shake with it.  That is my advice for today.

Get yourself a a bracelet:  WWSMD.

April 10: "Violets," Celebration to Cessation, Smell the Violets

Mary Oliver on loss . . . 

Violets

by:  Mary Oliver

Down by the rumbling creek and the tall trees--

     where I went truant from school three days a week

          and therefore broke the record--

there were violets as easy in their lives

     as anything you have ever seen

          or leaned down to intake the sweet breath of.

Later, when the necessary houses were built

     they were gone, and who would give significance

          to their absence.

Oh, violets, you did signify, and what shall take

     your place?

The day after Easter.  All the palms have been waved.  The fires and incense have been burned.  Tons of "alleluias" have been sung.  Chocolates and ham and eggs have been consumed.  Now what?

That's always the question after some big event or occasion has concluded.  It's difficult to slip back into the "ordinariness" of life after something extraordinary.  Like December 26, after two (or three) months of buildup, there's a void that's difficult to fill.  The segue from celebration to cessation is jarring, at best, and incredibly depressing, at worst.

That's what Oliver is getting at with her poem today.  When something you deem important suddenly disappears, how do you find a replacement?  For Oliver, it's violets that have been extinguished by houses.  The sweet breath from Oliver's school truancy days is gone.  She will never be able to reclaim it.  It has become memory, gilded with nostalgia.

That's the way it works.  Experience becomes image.  Image becomes narrative.  Narrative becomes story.  Story becomes memory.  Memory becomes legend.  That's why, walking down a street and smelling orange can immediately transport me to Hanauma Bay in Hawaii, sitting on the beach, eating fresh oranges and pineapple with ocean salt on my lips.  Because that smell has forever become a talisman of that experience.  Orange = coral reef + blue water + white sand + cocoanut sunscreen + wife + honeymoon.  Memory equations can get quite complicated. 

Of course, not all memory triggers are comforting.  My sister, Sally, who passed away used to eat Skittles all the time.  She had bags and bags of them in her office.  When her blood sugar was dropping, she would pour Skittles into her mouth and chew them, and the fruity sugar of them would hang in the air around her.  For me, it's not a pleasant smell.  It brings back too many memories of my sister's last months and days.

I am not particularly nostalgic when it comes to Easter celebrations.  I have few strong associations with the holiday.  Lent and Easter mean extra work for me as a church musician.  Lots of music that I'm not particularly fond of playing, and lots of extra worship services that are complicated with lots of different traditions.

All that being said, I do experience a sense of absence after Easter--all the preparation and anticipation suddenly gone.  Like Oliver, I still feel the need to smell the violets, even if I know they've been picked or cemented over or buried.  

The memory of them lingers on for Saint Marty, like the line of a song that rattles around your head for weeks, reminding you of an old friend, a dead relative, a high school prom.

April 9: "On the Beach," Rose from the Dead, Formations and Constellations

Mary Oliver meditates on love . . . 

On the Beach

by: Mary Oliver

On the beach, at dawn:

four small stones clearly

hugging each other.

How many kinds of love

might there be in the world,

and how many formations might they make

and who am I ever

to imagine I could know

such a marvelous business?

When the sun broke

it poured willingly its light

over the stones

that did not move, not at all,

just as, to its always generous term,

it shed its light on me,

my own body that loves,

equally, to hug another body.

I recently rose from the dead.

All church musicians fall into a coma around noon on Easter Sunday, after having played four, five, six or seven church services over the course of Holy Week, not to mention the extra rehearsals and practices, choirs, and special music.  (For the record, my tally this year is six, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday.)  I lasted until around 3:30 p.m. today, and then I slipped into the nether world for a good five hours.  

I literally just crawled out of that tomb.  I'm still feeling a little foggy, but refreshed.  I spent the afternoon with family, eating way too much ham and rolls and cheesy potatoes and Greek Easter bread.  Plus, I may have had one or two mimosas.  (Okay, three.  Shoot me.)  So, over-indulgence piled on top of exhaustion equals extra-long nap.

And my family just let me sleep.  I am lucky to have family I really love.  They know me and all of my quirks and failings, and they accept me without reservation.  I'm the weird brother/brother-in-law/uncle/great uncle who writes Bigfoot poetry, teaches English, swears like Lenny Bruce, and plays the pipe organ/keyboard for, on average, three churches every weekend.  I'm a weirdo in so many ways.

Yet, I am loved.  I hugged and got hugged today.  The day was warm, and the sun was shining, steadily shining on the world and all the people in it, Christian and non-Christian, brother and sister and wife and child and friend, on all the baskets stuffed with chocolate and all the snow piles dwindling, dwindling, on stones and trees and mud, all the dinner tables and people sitting around them, on all of the kinds of love that exists in the universe--these formations and constellations that tell our stories, remind us we are important.

Saint Marty wishes all his faithful disciples a happy Easter!

April 8: "How I Go to the Woods," Holy Saturday, Darkness and Solitude

Mary Oliver goes for a walk . . .

How I Go to the Woods

by:  Mary Oliver

Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.

I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree.  I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible.  I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned.  I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.

Holy Saturday.  I've always found the day before Easter quiet, like it's wrapped in cotton gauze.  Perhaps that's the Catholic schoolboy part of me.  It's not like Christmas Eve, which is usually filled with a flurry of last-minute preparations and cooking and wrapping, falling into bed at 2 a.m., exhausted with anticipation.  No, Easter Eve is more like a held breath.

The weather was gorgeously sunny all day, full of ice and snow melt.  I could almost hear the ground softening, turning muddy and fecund.  The trees seem ready to firework into buds and green.  If I were Mary Oliver, I would have sat zazen on top of a snowbank in my backyard and just breathed the potentiality of everything around me.

What did I do instead?  I corrected student papers, made brownies, cared for my injured puppy, who seemed just as pleasantly drunk on the warm air and light as I was.  As I worked, I thought about the tumult of the Easter morning narrative--a tomb opened, body missing, resurrection steaming the air like mist.  

I almost like the day before Easter a little better.  The anticipation of it.  As the old hymn goes, I know that my Redeemer lives.  I don't need all the bells and whistles and smoke of Easter to remind me of this fact.  When I was a first or second grader, my teacher conducted an experiment.  She took two Styrofoam cups of black potting soil and planted seeds in each.  One of the cups, she put on a windowsill in direct sunlight.  The other, she kept in a dark closet.

The seed in the closet germinated and grew faster and taller than its sibling on the sill.

That's the lesson of Holy Saturday for me:  darkness and solitude are necessary.  Yes, we will all sing songs with lots of alleluias in them tomorrow.  We'll listen to the old, familiar stories of the empty tomb.  He will rise again.  He always does.

Saint Marty is enjoying these last few moments in the closet of the tomb.  That's where all the hard work of Easter really happens.

April 7: "Passing the Unworked Field," Good Friday, Queen Anne's Lace

Mary Oliver praises ordinary loveliness . . .

Passing the Unworked Field

by:  Mary Oliver

Queen Anne's lace

     is hardly

          prized but

all the same it isn't

          idle look

                        how it

          stands straight on its

thin stems how it

          scrubs its white faces

               with the

rags of the sun how it

               makes all the

                    loveliness

                         it can.

Queen Anne's lace always makes me think of that time in the summer when everything momentous has already happened--the parades and fireworks and vacations are over, and the world is baked and ready to be taken out of the oven.  All the bounty of color gives way to scrubbed faces of August Queen Anne's lace in ditches and culverts and weedy fields.

It is Good Friday.  Once more, I returned to church this evening, listened to yet another recitation of Christ's Passion, this one culminating with the tomb.  The scourging and hammering and nailing are over.  Now, it's all darkness and waiting.

Tomorrow night, in the Catholic church, fires will be lit, candle flames passed from person to person, and that darkness will be chased away until the entire sanctuary is blazing.  It's quite a sight to behold--all the faces in the pews glowing like Queen Anne's lace.  It's one of my favorite moments in the Easter season.

But I won't be at the Easter Vigil Mass this year.  I will be home, coloring eggs and waiting for the Easter Bunny's midnight visit.  And that's okay by me.  I've experienced enough darkness this past year.  I don't need to sit in a church after dusk, waiting for someone to pass me a little light.  I know that there is something beyond the darkness of the grave.

As I type these words, it is past midnight.  Everyone, including my injured puppy, is asleep.  I should be asleep, too, but I'm struggling with insomnia.  I get really tired early in the evening, but I'm wide awake at 2 a.m., my mind unable to switch off.  Sometimes, I take a sleeping pill.  Other times, I  swallow a gummy from my local cannabis store.  I don't generally endorse alcohol or pot as a coping mechanism, but these nights of anxiety are very long.

In a couple days' time, I will be sitting at a keyboard, playing songs filled with alleluias and celebration.  People will be greeting each other with the words, "He is risen!"  There will be chocolate and lilies and ham and pastel eggs and mimosas.  I will be surrounded by the people I love.  

For a few joyful hours, the unworked fields of Saint Marty's life will be filled with rags of sun.

April 6: "Swan," Struck Mute, Wonder and Beauty

Mary Oliver on beauty . . . 

Swan

by:  Mary Oliver

Did you too see it, drifting, all night on the black river?

Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air,

an armful of white blossoms,

a perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned

into the bondage of its wings:  a snowbank, a bank of lilies,

biting the air with its black beak?

Did you hear it, fluting and whistling

a shrill dark music, like the rain pelting the trees,

     like a waterfall

knifing down the black ledge?

And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds--

a white cross streaming across the sky, its feet

like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light

     of the river?

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?

This poem is all about being struck mute because of beauty.  For Mary Oliver, it's a swan gliding in a river or lake, taking wing into morning light, its body a rising cross in the silvery sky.  That's what stops Oliver in her tracks, makes her reflect on the meaning of beauty.

Holy Thursday today.  The beginning of the Easter Triduum.  For most of this weekend, I will be a Lutheran celebrating Easter.  I will be playing tomorrow evening for my home parish--a Catholic celebration of Good Friday.  Then two Easter Sunday morning Lutheran services.  

I've always struggled during Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday.  I think it's the retelling, again and again, of the narrative of Christ's Passion.  I get swept up (or along) in the pathos of the whole story--the extreme humanity of the main actors.  Judas.  Peter.  Mary.  Pontius Pilate.  Jesus.  There's something quite beautiful (and heartbreaking) in all of the brokenness.

When you reach my age, you've experienced betrayal.  You've probably betrayed someone, as well.  And denied someone.  Lost someone.  Grieved for someone.  It's all there.  For me, this week is all about the beauty of being human.  In the gospel narratives of the Passion, humankind at its very worst and very best is on full display.  

My favorite moments in the gospels are when Jesus is at his most human.  When he gets pissed or sad, feels bereft or frightened.  That's the Jesus that interests me.  Because I understand that Jesus.  Yes, I get the whole Son of God part of Christ's DNA, but there's the whole Mary (Oliver) side that watched sunrises, picked flowers, admired swans, fell in love, wept for dead friends.

Maybe Jesus was a poet.  I mean, he's a descendant of King David, author of the psalms.  That means that poetry was in his blood.  It also means that Jesus was stopped dead in his tracks every once in a while by the beauty of the world.  

I think, in a lot of ways, seeing the universe through the eyes of a poet is sort of like having a divine point of view.  I'm not saying poets are gods.  I'm saying that poets recognize the importance of the small, insignificant, gorgeous things that stitch together this life.  Now, what does a person do with that recognition?

I do what Mary Oliver did:  I write poems.  That's how I change my life, sentence by sentence, word by word.

When I got home tonight after church, I led a poetry workshop.  It was a perfect way to end Maunday Thursday--with wonder and beauty.

Saint Marty wrote this:

I Came Home this Afternoon

by:  Martin Achatz

after Diane Seuss

I came home this afternoon to an extra garbage

can blown into my yard by a spring wind

so strong it brought down pine branches,

dug up Taco Bell bags, rolled an empty can

of Miller Lite down the street as if it was

late for a party, the snow banks dwindled

into piles of striated sand, an archeology

of the entire winter of storms and melts,

blizzards and reprieves  It is Holy

Thursday, when the church is stripped,

reds and purples paraded out by serious

parishioners intent on plucking the place

bare, until the world is just a knuckle, raw

and bleeding from hitting the wall too many times.