December 27: "Lead," Heartbroken, "Going My Way"

Mary Oliver lets the world break her heart . . . 

Lead

by:  Mary Oliver

Here is a story

to break your heart.

Are you willing?

This winter

the loons came to our harbor

and died, one by one,

of nothing we could see.

A friend told me

of one on the shore

that lifted its head and opened

the elegant beak and cried out

in the long, sweet savoring of its life

which, if you have heard it,

you know is a sacred thing,

and for which, if you have not heard it,

you had better hurry to where

they still sing.

And, believe me, tell no one

just where that is.

The next morning

this loon, speckled

and iridescent and with a plan

to fly home

to some hidden lake,

was dead on the shore.

I tell you this

to break your heart,

by which I mean only

that it break open and never close again

to the rest of the world.

For Oliver, having your heart broken is not necessarily a terrible thing.  It means that you have experienced love--for a person or place or animal or bird or tree or lake or comet or book or poem.  To be in a constant state of heartbreak, then, allows light to touch the dark corners of the soul, those places that every person keeps locked up and hidden from the rest of the universe.

I spent my day at the library mapping out February programs and events.  That's my job--always thinking about and planning for the future.  The one bad thing about doing this is that I often don't enjoy a lot of what is happening in the present.  Thus, by the time the holidays roll around in December, I'm already at Valentine's Day or St. Patrick's Day or, sometimes, summer.

I have to make a conscious decision simply to focus on what is right in front of my face.  I got home this afternoon around 4 p.m. and took a walk because it was sunny and warm.  I wanted to enjoy the greenness of this December.  The sun was quickly descending, and, at one point, I stopped and watched it touch the trees and houses with gold.  And I felt my heart breaking open for all the people and things I hold dear.

When I got home, I decided to watch a movie, and I streamed Going My Way with Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald.  It was one of my parents' favorite movies.  Whenever it aired on TV, we watched it together.  It's a very Catholic film, with its two stars playing priests.  (SPOILER ALERT:  I'm going to talk about the ending of the film.)  At the conclusion, Barry Fitzgerald's character--an old man in the golden years of his vocation--is reunited for this first time in 46 years with his mother from Ireland.

I remember always crying a lot as a kid when I watched that scene.  This evening, I found myself again crying so hard that I couldn't even see the screen.  Time seemed to collapse around me.  I was a seven-year-old watching the movie with my parents.  I was a teenager watching the movie by myself after being dumped by a girlfriend.  I was an adult watching my father breathe his last breaths in the hospital.  I was an adult holding my mother's hand for the last time before she died.  I was so many heartbroken versions of myself.

And, for those two Going My Way hours today, I was reminded how important it is to love the here-and-now world.  To hold everything close.  To cherish this fragile life.

Saint Marty hopes that everyone reading these words have hearts that are broken open, that never close again to this beautiful, beautiful world.

August 23: "The Sun," Transition, Disciple's Comment

Mary Oliver worships the sun . . .

The Sun

by:  Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen

anything 

in your life

more wonderful

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,

or the rumpled sea,

and is gone--

and how it slides again

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer,

at its perfect imperial distance--

and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love--

do you think there is anywhere, in any language,

a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

that fills you,

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you

as you stand there,

empty-handed--

or have you too

turned from this world--

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?

There wasn't a whole lot of sun today to feel that wild love Mary Oliver talks about.  But there was plenty of fog and mist.  I used to be a person who preferred dark days filled with rain or snow.  An endless winter of sheet metal clouds never bothered me.  Now, however, I prefer sun and the long hours of summer.

Yesterday, my friend, Rosalie, made her transition after being in hospice care for about a week.  I found out this morning and sat in my library office, staring out the window for a long while, thinking of her and her daughter.  

Grief is like some unwelcome cousin, the kind that shows up at your front door with a suitcase one day, moves in, and just won't leave.  Grief has been my houseguest since May, 2014, when my brother, Kevin, passed unexpectedly.  (That's not a euphemism for suicide.  It's simply the truth.  We didn't expect him to die.)  Since that time, grief has hung around, eating my food, taking long showers, sitting on my couch, watching bad Netflix movies.

A disciple wrote a comment on last night's blog post about Joseph, saying all I think about is death.  Granted, the last few posts have been about people I've lost/am losing in my life--a brother, two sisters, my parents, some best friends.  There's this mistaken perception that once the pageantry of death is over, the last casserole eaten, grief packs up and leaves for home, wherever that is.  I'm here to tell you that grief is a lifelong job, like breathing.  You don't get over loss.  You get used to it.  It becomes a part of your life, like the sun streaming upward every day on its heavenly oils.

And you can't have sunny days without rainy ones.  Or light without darkness.  And you can't have joy without sorrow.  That's the way the universe works.  Rain makes the sun brighter.  Darkness makes the light more blinding.  And sorrow makes joy even sweeter.

Saint Marty celebrates it all--clouds and rain, sun and sorrow, darkness and joy..