June 8: "Six Recognitions of the Lord," Wilbur, Fancy Words

Mary Oliver encounters God . . .

Six Recognitions of the Lord

by:  Mary Oliver

1.

I know a lot of fancy words.

I tear them from my heart and my tongue.

Then I pray.

2.

Lord God, mercy is in your hands, pour

me a little.  And tenderness too.  My

need is great.  Beauty walks so freely

and with such gentleness.  Impatience puts

a halter on my face and I run away over

the green fields wanting your voice, your

tenderness, but having to do with only

the sweet grasses of the fields against

my body.  When I first found you I was

filled with light, now the darkness grows

and it is filled with crooked things, bitter

and weak, each one bearing my name.

3.

I lounge on the grass, that's all.  So

simple.  Then I lie back until I am

inside the cloud that is just above me

but very high, and shaped like a fish.

Or, perhaps not.  Then I enter the place

of not-thinking, not-remembering, not-

wanting.  When the blue jay cries out his 

riddle, in his carping voice, I return.  

But I go back, the threshold is always

near.  Over and back, over and back.  Then

I rise.  Maybe I rub my face as though I 

have been asleep.  But I have not been

asleep.  I have been, as I say, inside

the cloud, or, perhaps, the lily floating

on the water.  Then I go back to town,

to my own house, my own life, which has

now become brighter and simpler, some-

where I have never been before.

4.

Of course I have always known you

are present in the clouds, and the

black oak I especially adore, and the

wings of birds.  But you are present

too in the body, listening to the body,

teaching it to live, instead of all

that touching, with disembodied joy.

We do not do this easily.  We have 

lived so long in the heaven of touch,

and we maintain our mutability, our

physicality, even as we begin to

apprehend the other world.  Slowly we

make our appreciative response.

Slowly appreciation swells to

astonishment.  And we enter the dialogue

of our lives that is beyond all under-

standing or conclusion.  It is mystery.

It is love of God.  It is obedience.

5.

Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with

the fragrance of the fields and the 

freshness of the oceans which you have

made, and help me to hear and to hold

in all dearness those exacting and wonderful

words of our Lord Christ Jesus, saying:

Follow me.

6.

Every summer the lilies rise

     and open their white hands until they almost

cover the black waters of the pond. And I give

     thanks but it does not seem like adequate thanks,

it doesn't seem

     festive enough or constant enough, nor does the

name of the Lord or the words of thanksgiving come

     into it often enough.  Everywhere I go I am

treated like royalty, which I am not.  I thirst and

     am given water.  My eyes thirst and I am given

the white lilies on the black water.  My heart

     sings but the apparatus of singing doesn't convey

half what it feels and means.  In spring there's hope,

     in fall the exquisite, necessary diminishing, in 

winter I am as sleepy as any beast in its

     leafy cave, but in summer there is

everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts,

     the hospitality of the Lord and my

inadequate answers as I row my beautiful, temporary body

     through the water-lily world.

It's a pretty common theme in literature--this quest for the Lord.  Think about it.  Wilbur's quest for a friend in Charlotte's Web, and Charlotte answering from above.  The little spider sacrifices her life to save her porcine friend's life.  Then there's Holden's fantasy of saving all the children of the world from rushing off a cliff into adulthood.  All Holden wants to do is preserve everything innocent and pure.  Then there's Luke Skywalker using the power of the Force to defeat the Emperor with the help of the holy ghost of Obi-Wan.  And Scrooge's redemption because of visits from a trinity of Christmas spirits.  Frodo has to carry his ring/cross to the top of Mount Doom, and with it the hope of all of Middle Earth.  I could go on if you want me to, but you get the idea.

Oliver's encounters with the Lord in this poem are very transcendental--she sees beyond what she can see.  The Lord is in sweet grasses, clouds, a black oak, the wings of birds, and water lilies.  Basically, signs of the divine are everywhere, Oliver says.  We just don't open our minds or hearts or eyes enough to recognize them.  Because we are limited, impatient creatures.  To borrow from Biblical narrative, we are Paul on the way to Damascus, having to be struck blind to fully see and hear and experience God.

It has been a long day.  I got to the library at around 7:15 this morning, and I didn't leave until around 8:30 tonight.  I worked on event planning and a PowerPoint presentation and handouts.  For most of the day, I was holed up in my office, staring at computer screens.  However, it was work I enjoyed--creative and challenging.  This is my first recognition of the Lord today.  

It was my son's last day of school for the summer, and he managed to maintain all A's this academic year.  My daughter is studying to take the MCAT in July and will graduate with her bachelor's degree this coming December.  Even though my wife has some mental health struggles, she seems to be doing alright, at work and at home.  This is my second recognition of the Lord today.

The rear brakes on my Subaru have been grinding terribly for a couple weeks, getting progressively louder and more alarming.  Today, the husband of my wife's cousin fixed our brakes.  (From what I understand, the pads needed replacing.)  He did the work for free, and the parts only came to around $40.  I will do something to thank him for his generosity of time and labor and spirit.  This is my third recognition of the Lord today.

This evening, I got together with some poet friends for a monthly meeting of the Marquette Poets Circle.  Although only a few people showed up (it is summer), I was able to talk poetry, read poetry aloud, and listen to others read poetry aloud.  This might not sound like a whole lot of fun to my disciples who aren't into poetry, but, for me, it was my fourth recognition of the Lord today.

Also this evening, one of my best friends had an art gallery reception at the library.  We've known each other for over thirty years, and she has helped me through a lot of difficult shit in my life.  Her art is needle felting, and she created some amazing work for this show.  I got to hang with her for a little while tonight and enjoy her beautiful exhibit.  That was my fifth recognition of the Lord today.

Like I said, I was inside most of the day.  However, the view from my office window was alive with blue, blue sky and the kind of green you only see in Bob Ross landscapes.  Not a happy little accident of a cloud to be found.  And that was my sixth recognition of the Lord today.  

Like Oliver, Saint Marty knows a lot of fancy words.  Tonight, he tears those words from his heart and tongue, and offers a prayer of thanks for this water-lily day instead.

February 9: Catholics, Sarah Vap, "Faulkner's Rosary," New Cartoon

I said I'd enjoyed talking to them a lot, too.  I meant it, too.  I'd have enjoyed it even more though, I think, if I hadn't been sort of afraid, the whole time I was talking to them, that they'd all of a sudden try to find out if I was a Catholic.  Catholics are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic.  It happens to me a lot, I know, partly because my last name is Irish, and most people of Irish descent are Catholics.  As a matter of fact, my father was a Catholic once.  He quit, though, when he married my mother.  But Catholics are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic even if they don't know your last name...

Of course, Holden has an opinion about Catholics.  Holden has opinions about everyone.  He reserves his most negative criticisms for people he considers to be "phony"--pretentious teens and adults who try to pass themselves off as smarter or more important than they actually are.  Holden prizes humility and truth.  That's why kids like his sister Phoebe and brother Allie are so central to him.  They are unspoiled by life.  In the passage above, Holden is talking to a pair of nuns he's met at a diner, and he likes them a great deal.  Holden claims to be an atheist, but he admires people with strong convictions and beliefs, because, at the moment, Holden is not sure what to believe or who to trust.

I've been lucky.  For the most part, I've had a strong spiritual life.  I was raised Catholic, and, aside from the usual teenage diversions, I've maintained my beliefs.  My faith informs most of what I do--working, teaching, husbanding, parenting, and writing.  I may get mad with God.  I may question God,  I may even wrestle with God from time-to-time.  That's normal.  Even healthy.  It's my faith, however, that is the thread that holds the elements of my life together.

Sarah Vap's collection of poems, Faulkner's Rosary, follows this thread, from pregnancy to birth to new motherhood.  Each poem is a bead, a cell, a prayer in the fabric of life.  Vap uses the concept of the Catholic rosary, with its concentration on meditation and mystery, happiness and sorrow, love and death, to create a circular poetic portrait of life.  Each line vibrates with a peculiar energy and light:

Fallopian

I don't know what it was like for you,
before me.          Wrapped-up, did your night

walk with you?  And practice speaking

like the black rock
slipped secretly, hand to hand, by a new love

to a new love?  Then, is forever looked-after?
Welcoming,

and not very happy, the black cat
turns into a white one

as it crosses the stone wall of the Street of the Holy Spirit.
Something untouchable, we know,

is still voluble.

I would be lying if I said I understood all of Vap's poems.  They resist understanding at times.  Like reading a Faulkner novel, Faulkner's Rosary is a journey through time, from the inner space of the womb to the outer space of the Street of the Holy Spirit.  Vap sees the miraculous even in the frayed string that holds her rosary together:

A cradle of warmed oats for the chickens on the Epiphany

Last week you formed the chambers of your own heart; this week
the lobes of your brain.  I wake up thinking overcelebrate.

I wake with the phrase as I am wont.

Chronology doesn't enter--my birth and yours,

my mother's pregnancy
and mine, they are the same:          blessed,

and tendered thanks for the infinite detail--windowsills,

before or after Advent, where the worm lived

by your vanished sister.  You must dream

of animals, afraid,
pitching themselves

into hollowed-out buildings, built

several stories down into the earth.

Sarah Vap's work frustrates me at times.  It leaves me puzzled, wondering.  Yet, I keep returning to it, the way my mother returns to her prayer books every morning or my father to his black-beaded rosary.  The poems in this book make me say a holy "yes" to life in all its vicissitudes, from the subatomic to the cosmic.

Saint Marty is in love with Faulkner's Rosary.

Confessions of Saint Marty