December 31: "We Shake with Joy," Joys and Sorrows, Happy New Year

One last Mary Oliver poem . . . 

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.

As the year of Mary Oliver draws to a close tonight, I thought it would be appropriate to end with probably one of her most well-known poems.  It holds so much wisdom and perfectly suits this meditation on New Year's Eve, when everyone looks back on the joys and sorrows of the past 365 days and looks to the future.  .

Let's start with grief.  My loyal disciples may recall that I struggled many months at the beginning of 2023 with darkness.  It wasn't until the beginning of summer that a little light started breaking through the cracks.  I think it was due to an accumulation of emotions from the past few years of loss after loss after loss.  For quite a while, I simply went through the motions of my days, my eyes buried in the ground in front of me.  Because looking up required a certain amount of hope on my part, and hope was in such short supply that it was practically nonexistent.  

Eventually, as the days grew longer,  I began to feel something completely foreign and wondrous:  happiness.  Instead of looking down, I raised my head to the heavens and felt sunlight on my face.  Slowly, slowly, the darkness receded, and I began to find small moments of grace each and every day.  Sure, I still experienced sadness,  It's impossible to be a human being on this broken planet without feeling isolated and angry and alone and sad every once in a while.  Yet, I was able to find laughter and enjoyment again--with friends and family and the simple blessings of every day.  Sunrises.  Poetry.  Chocolate.  Music.  Teaching.

Which brings me to joy:  I have so much for which to be thankful in this past year.  Healthy and happy family.  Work that I enjoy a great deal with people I enjoy a great deal.  Being named 2023 Writer of the Year at the City of Marquette Art Awards.  A new, reliable car.  My daughter graduating from college and moving on with the next phase of her life--medical school on the horizon.  A son who is finding his way in the world.  And friends, friends, friends who've lifted me up, given me so much love and support.

Mary Oliver is right.  Joy and grief can and must coexist.  You can't have one without the other.  They define each other, the way shadow defines light.  If you love deeply, you will mourn deeply.  If you dance, eventually, you will weep.  No getting around it.  Oliver embraces the entire messy universe, celebrates each firefly and teardrop.  

If you are in a dark place right now, know that light is coming.  If you are clothed in light right now, throw your arms out and blossom into something beautiful.

Saint Marty wishes you all a Happy New Year!

September 28: Quiet Desperation, Joys and Sorrow, "Before 4:30 Mass"

Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." 

I agree with that statement.  Think about it.  Walking through Walmart, imagine the stories of every person that you pass in the aisles.  Each person has a story, full of joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures.  And we all started out the same way:  newborn babies, placed in our mothers' arms, pink and innocent, full of all kinds of hope.

I remind myself of that fact almost every day.  The man who flips me off as I'm driving down the highway may have just received a cancer diagnosis.  The woman who glares at me when I bump into her shopping cart may have a grown child suffering from schizophrenia.  The teenage boy who jokes about me with his pack of friends in McDonald's may have a father or mother with a drinking problem.  We just don't know.

I am not immune to being judgmental.  I'm human, and I fall into the same traps as everybody else.  But that makes me one of the mass of men, as well.  Leading my life of quiet desperation.

Saint Marty is in good company.

Before 4:30 Mass

by:  Martin Achatz

I look down from the choir loft
At the silence gathered below.
Mrs. MacDonald wears her wool coat
In the same pew she sat in
With her parents, seventy years ago.
She looks behind her, as if she expects
Her father to march up the aisle,
Sit next to her, his boots
Still red with dust from the mines.
Father George flits from person-to-person,
Like a hummingbird in an apple tree,
Pausing long enough to taste
The blossom of each sinner's grief
Before moving on.  My daughter, white
Acolyte, lights candles on the altar,
Checks chalice and paten, makes sure
Gospel and cloth are in place
For the coming show.  So much quiet
Desperation fills the sanctuary,
Everyone craving a piece of holiness
To bring home, bake with eggs and oatmeal,
Spaghetti and meatloaf for the week.
I reach down, press the red button.
The pipe organ takes a long breath,
Groans to life, resurrected again.
It waits for my fingers, holds
Music in its gold pipes that reach
Up and up to the vaulted ceiling,
To the bell in the steeple.  It waits
For that low D of the first hymn,
Voices rising like seagulls

Above the waves of Galilee.