February 6: Grace Moments, Catie Rosemurgy, "Billy's Vision of Grace"

Everybody experiences grace.  Grace is a moment when the world suddenly seems good, or open to some kind of goodness.  I know, when I experience grace, it feels as if I'm opening up.  I'm a room with a door that's been locked for a couple of decades, and suddenly that door swings open and sunlight enters, along with wind, fresh air.

I really treasure those grace moments, because they give me hope.  Make me believe in God.  Christians experience grace.  Muslims experience grace.  Buddhists experience grace.  Atheists experience grace.  They all just call it something different.  Goodness.  Enlightenment.  Luck.  Whatever.

Saint Marty has a little poem about grace for you.

Billy's Vision of Grace

by:  Catie Rosemurgy

She lands next to me.  She hides in my heart
and pecks.  She's a sudden bird, my own
small, ruffled piece of nowhere.  She can't stay.
Her heartbeat forbids it.  She leaves me behind,
as blue as a robin's egg in the grass
She's the color of sand by day, the color
of the bottom of a well at night.
She's the color of everything at night.
She's a charming shape, and so the moon tries
to use her as a stencil.  She's what it wants
more and more of.  She emerges and emerges.
She's born and born.  Not very many things,
maybe only a bird at night, can keep
flying and still seem completely empty.

I like accordion music . . .

February 5: Making Up for Lost Posts, Catie Rosemurgy, "Jesus, the Perfect Lover"

Yes, I'm making up for the couple of posts I missed earlier this week.  I'm not going to get all philosophical.  My mind won't allow it this evening.  Too tired.  Too long of a week.

A couple of days ago, I was talking with a writer friend.  He started sort of interviewing me about my approach to religion.  He's fascinated by my relationship with it.  He sees me as both irreverent and faith-filled.  He asked me to explain how I can maintain both of those states simultaneously.

It was a rather lengthy discussion, but it all came down to the fact that the thing I love about Jesus Christ is that He is both wholly human and wholly divine at the same time.  Mostly, I love the human Christ.  The Christ that gets pissed at the temple and whips people with a rope.  The Christ that weeps at the death of a friend.  That's my Christ.  I still grapple with the divine.

Catie Rosemurgy likes the human Christ, as well.

Saint Marty will always be more human than divine.

Jesus, the Perfect Lover

by:  Catie Rosemurgy

2000 years and he's still rising.
I know, I know, girls.  If Hell didn't exist before,
it does now.  Just for my mouth.  But if I explained

how his skin feels, how timeless and damp,
how raw and in need of bandaging
from my constant, constantly

forrgiven touch,
you'd toss your hair one last time
and put on your suit of flames too.

How often have we all said, "If only
I never had to leave the house again, if only
my wishes were fishes and my supernatural boyfriend

could make thousands more of them, if only no one else
ever existed at all."  My Jesus spreads himself out
permanently and looks a lot like me:

a bit disappointed but not too surprised.  Still, he's glad
that he can at least distract me from whatever
crude nails my palms have room for.

But look how he hangs so quietly--there's definitely
an ingredient missing.  Someone very large
didn't think it through and forgot

to add absolute strength.
So he's my undressed apology,
my portable laboratory

where "Dear Lord, no" and "My God, yes"
were simultaneously invented.
I can tell by the amused look in his eye

that, straddling and blond
and incomplete, I am not responsible
for what I do.  Mostly, though, the way

we squirm together
is like sleep, only brighter.
After I press against him

for an hour or two, he can see right through me.
He knows the glint of my ribs,
the steam escaping my heart.

Any fool can see
how he looks down at me,
wanting to hold me, extinguish me, wishing

he would've thought of this before,
of everything he could have done for me
with his arms.  That's what makes him perfect,

he always admits
to my burning image
when he's wrong.

February 4: Live Water, Tale of Woe, Catie Rosemurgy, "Billy Sees Stars"

Live water heals memories.  I look up the creek and here it comes, the future, being borne aloft as on a winding succession of laden trays.  You may wake and look from the window and breathe the real air, and say, with satisfaction or with longing, "This is it."  But if you look up the creek, if you look up the creek in any weather, your spirit fills, and you are saying with an exulting rise of the lungs, "Here it comes!"

Annie Dillard is talking about healing, about welcoming the future with excitement and joy.  It's hope in the air, rising on the wind, like some kind of beautiful kite.  She starts with live water.  Baptism.  Memories.  The real air filled with the smell of spring, of hope.  Yes, this is it.

Hope has not been in abundant supply in the last 48 hours.  It has been a really . . . really . . .  long . . . few . . . days.  Lots of snow.  LOTS.  Lots of work and teaching.  LOTS.  Yesterday, when Winter Storm Kayla blew into the Upper Peninsula, my day started at 4:30 a.m. with a shovel and a whole lot of white stuff.  Close to a foot.  By 6 a.m., my driveway was clear, and I was climbing into a hot shower.

If my morning had ended there, I would say that I had a good day.  Unfortunately, I had to drive to work, stay there for nine hours, and then teach.  All.  Night.  Long.  I got home close to ten o'clock, and then I had another hour of shoveling.

Into this wintry tale of woe, let me include the fact that I received some really unwelcome news yesterday afternoon (nothing life-threatening, just a little soul-crushing).  I have been sort of wallowing in this swamp of self-pity all day long.

(Now, let me put my disciples' minds at ease:  nobody I know is dying; I am still fully employed; my car is running and functional; and all of the ceilings in my house are still ceilings.  The news was about an almost realized hope.)

So, that was my yesterday.  Snow.  Work.  Teach.  More snow.  And the loss of hope.  I will recover slowly, resign myself to my particular slice of reality.  For the last week or so, I actually thought my life was going to get a little better, and that felt really good.  It made getting up at four o'clock in the morning almost tolerable.  Almost.

This morning started at 4:45 a.m.  More snow.  More shoveling.  More work.  More feeling as if someone has just stolen my stuffed-crust bacon pizza.  Still feeling the disappointment, but I'm moving on.  Part of being a Christian is believing that there's a reason for everything, that God really knows what She's doing.  I am trying to accept that.

Sometimes, it's difficult to see the stars through the clouds.

Saint Marty is looking for some starlight, for the coming of live water.

Billy Sees Stars

by:  Catie Rosemurgy

Grace's on my lap and staring at my collar.
She's scheming the best way to slither down
between my skin and the cotton without
my knowledge, my deep breathing.  She likes heaven
to be a big surprise.  She doesn't know,
but I take her like low, low star
into my hands.  In my mind she can turn
iridescent and small without much warning.
Once the ache for orbit leaves her, I hold her
up above my head and brag to the sun.
I say, "You're not the only one who
can make fire worthwhile." Without warning,
she's an armload of flesh.  She doesn't know,
but I hold her and I bray to the sun.

February 1: Snow-eater, Kayla, Poet of the Week, Catie Rosemurgy, "Why God Invented the Cold"

What else is going on right this minute while ground water creeps under my feet?  The galaxy is careening in a slow, muffled widening.  If a million solar systems are born every hour, then surely hundreds burst into being as I shift my weight to the other elbow.  The sun's surface is now exploding; other stars implode and vanish, heavy and black, out of sight.  Meteorites are arcing to earth invisibly all day long.  On the planet the winds are blowing:  the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades.  Somewhere, someone under full sail is becalmed, in the horse latitudes, in the doldrums; in the northland, a trapper is maddened, crazed, by the eerie scent of the chinook, the snow-eater, a wind that can melt two feet of snow in a day.  The pampero blows, and the tramontane, and the Boro, sirocco, levanter, mistral.  Lick a finger:  feel the now.

There are reasons why we lick a finger and hold it up:  to feel wind.  To know if it's blowing from east, west, north, south, or some combination.  East by eastwest.  South by northwest.  Or just to test its temperature.  As Dillard writes, the galaxy is spinning, meteorites showering down.  Across the cosmos, stars are collapsing, winking out like bad nightlights.  On our little ball of dirt, the winds are blowing.  Chinook.  Boro.  Sirocco.  The planet is alive.

Winter Storm Kayla is headed my way.  By tomorrow evening, the winds will start howling, and the snow will begin falling.  Well, not falling so much as sheeting.  White planes of snow flapping like clean laundry on a clothesline.  My daughter is hoping for at least a foot of precipitation.  She just announced, "The Snow Day app says there's a 99% chance we won't have school on Wednesday."  I am not thrilled with Kayla, the Snow Day app, or the percentage.  Our local meteorologist just predicted 10-plus inches, Tuesday night through Wednesday.

That is where I am on this eve, this calm before the storm.  And Catie Rosemurgy is the Poet of the Week.  Let's call her Winter Storm Rosemurgy, and she's bringing the cold tonight.

Saint Marty is tired of shoveling.

Why God Invented the Cold

by:  Catie Rosemurgy

To give the people a break
from repositioning their lawn chairs.
To give us a glimpse
of life without bugs.  Without weeping welts,
the odd fever, and yellow smears on our shoes.

To confuse the boys.
To force them to ask, "Why do teenage girls
smoke outside in January until
their nipples get stiff?  Why do they
stand around with their coats undone and life

smacked onto their cheeks?
Am I that promising?"
To caution the men
that the boys will turn into
against following their semi-aroused girlfriends

into May lake water.  Seasonal Affective Disorder.
To break up lonely highways
into manageable chunks.  To make it clear
just how stupid it is to climb
the highest mountain.  To encourage sweet futilities

like cuddling and mittens.  The powerful
sleep lobby.  To give drunks a softer, deeper
alternative to liver failure.  Blue lips
and frosted eyelashes.  Ski pants,
for Christ's sake.  Dark roads, tight sweaters,

no boots, and stalled cars.  Wanna ride,
need a lift?  Country love or homespun
complex legal issues.  His word pressed
firmly against her word.  Zero degrees
and fourteen snowmobilers missing.

Natural selection.  Two feet of fodder
for made-for-TV movies and more expected.
No fiber, calories, vitamins, hallucinogenic
properties or nicotine without the tar.  Just pain
in your membranes, unexpected falls,

sprained ankles, and hyperextended
thumbs.  To see if you can
catch yourself.  To put you down.  You thought
you were mean and hard to figure out until
you found out about windchill.

To give us a way to understand
people who won't give us sex,
meter maids, Siamese cats. what it's like to kiss
your best friend's lover.  To distinguish the sweat of euphoria
from the sweat of shock.  To up the ante.

Because he could.  Because he's lonely and it leaked
out of him.  Because he wants attention
and a fluffy blanket that big enough to cover his toes
and reach his chin.  To create melting.  To give us
another hint that the body is dead.

To add ice.  To let him come as close as he can
to holding some of the glittering water he made.
To let us skate where we couldn't two weeks ago.
To let us glide on top of darkness.
To show us what it means to break through.