Beauty

This is so beautiful, I can't find words for it yet. Watch it to the end.

A note to my LBL followers

This is a strange post, but I've been wanting to write it for ages:

I have a little function on this blog where I can see the general area of the world from which people are reading. I cannot tell who you are, I can just see if someone from Paris or Kenya is reading.

I'm not really one of those chatty bloggers who encourages long conversations under each post. I'm more of an introvert by nature; and life is also crazy busy with kids, school, and work. However, I do often work through those clicks and pray for the people behind them, because I don't know what you folks are facing that brought you here.

In particular, there is a person from the Middle East who keeps checking LBL. I am not going to say which country, etc., because I want to be sensitive to any dangerous/sensitive conditions he/she might be facing. However, I just wanted that person to know (especially) that every time I see your location pop up, I pray for you. I will keep doing that. I wish I had something more to offer you than words written from my location of abundance and comfort, but I can at least give you my prayers. Someday we will meet, I think. I'm looking forward to that.

Becca

I am wretched at regular e-mail communication, but if any of you want me to pray for something specific, my email address is mosessupposestwoATearthlinkDOTnet.

The Prayer of the Undomesticated

These dishes I wash, these floors I clean, these rooms I bring to order in the chapel of the silent unseen.

I offer up my hands do the work that wears them away. They wrinkle and they ache. I can tell that they are aging.

I am a Sister of the Abbey of Imperfection, serving in the Diocese of Chaos and Perpetual Need.

The vows I took suit neither my joy nor my gifting.

I would prefer to paint on the walls than fold leavening into the dough.

I would prefer to let you find your own dinner.

I would prefer to let you make mine as well.

I would prefer to find quiet place to read Thoreau.

It is my nature to wander like a doe in the forest, blinking black-eyed at a thousand handfuls of fallen sunlight, nuzzling and sniffing. For the confetti of heaven falls upon the low, dark, rotting places. Life rises here.

I would prefer to behold this miracle than to be it.

Two mites I have to give. Sometimes I only offer one.

I leave smudges on the glass. I leave the basket of clean towels sitting on the couch. I couldn't fry a chicken to save my life.

Yet hidden beneath twin veils of absurdity and obscurity lies the communion of the washing of feet. And so I kneel, pushing my hands below the water. In weakness, I am baptized anew.

Everything Broken and Everything Beautiful

Since August, I have been working on writing lyrics for one of my favorite musicians, Ron Block. His new album will hopefully be released in the fall of this year, and I am so excited about the whole world hearing the beautiful melodies he has written.

Last week, we wrote a song just for fun, and Ron gave me permission to show it to you here. This won't be an album song this go around, it's just something we made that I liked. 'Thought you might like to hear it.

Becca


VERSE ONE
Low, low flies the shadow owl,
Across the morning waters;
Low makes her gentle way.

Low, low lies my soul before Thee,
Beside the morning waters;
Low have I come to pray.

BRIDGE
The wild heron cries,
With the wind in her eyes,
The carp dances honest and free,
It stirs my soul, to see,
O, Lord.


CHORUS
Welcome everything broken,
And everything beautiful,
Trembling and holy,
And drifting and brave.

There’s a cup of a moon,
Sleeping white on still waters,
(It) climbs a silver ladder,
In the fracture of the waves.

VERSE TWO
Low, low burn the stars in waiting,
Across the womb of heaven;
Low make their tender way.

Low, low stirs the hymn of promise,
Beneath the womb of heaven;
Low in the birth of day.

BRIDGE
The fog angels bathe,
In a choir of praise,
‘Yield to the sun as it rises;
Sighing in silent reprises,
O, Lord.

CHORUS
Welcome everything broken,
And everything beautiful,
Trembling and holy,
And drifting and brave.

There’s a cup of a moon,
Sleeping white on still waters,
(It) climbs a silver ladder,
In the fracture of the waves.

The Liturgy of the Skinless

Growth hurts.

It is lonely,

and scary,

and disorienting.

It is like that dream where you fall forever,

or show up somewhere without pants,

or sit down to a final for which you haven't studied.

Growth exposes everything that is most wrong with you,

your weakest places,

your deepest shame,

the things you knew better than to do, but you did them anyway.

Often that exposure happens in the company of unsafe people who believe the worst instead of the best. They name you by your ungrown places, because they only see part.

You hear their critique, and you know it is somehow true. Yet, you also feel in your stomach's pit that there is something they have left out, something equally good and beautiful. Yes, there it is. You can almost see it. It is something hopeful -- and it is just beyond the tips of your fingers. You can't remember what it is, because you are trying to find your breath like a child fallen off a swing.

Growth is awkward. Sometimes your arms grow before your legs, or your mouth before your ears. It is lanky, and gangly, and uncoordinated. When you try to move, you trip over things. You feel disproportionate. You feel unfinished.

You pray things like, "Lord, hide me a while. Hide me until I am done with this awful business of growing." For there is so very little grace for growing in the world. We have known that lack. We have heard the wolves howling, circling the weak. We have also been them.

And yet, here is the wonder of it all. None of this conquers.

We receive ungrace, and we grow. We fail, and we grow. We are named with lies, and we grow. We lie sweating through nights where our stomachs burn with fear or failure -- and yet, we grow.

We very nearly die of thirst, and loneliness, and broken hearts, and despair.

But we do not die.

Our hearts keep beating. The sun keeps rising. The King is tender forever, and ever, and ever.

There is in this a faith. A confession.

The liturgy of the skinless.

So, let us be gentle. For we walk in the company of those
being remade.

March 16

Oh, March breeze,
running pink-cheeked and barefoot,
with your hair drying in the sun -
I can resist neither you nor your perfumes -
wild honey, and whimsy,
and hope.

If I were a great, old mountain pine,
I would at once forsake my winters-worn dignity,
and bow low on one knee
like a love-mad soldier home from war,
and propose to you straight away.

My tired old legs would creak and groan
while I carried you to the ocean on my shoulders,
and there we would lie on our backs
in the wave-white marriage of water and earth;
and we would whisper, and laugh, and care not
for any man-made thing.

Flight

Two days ago or maybe three, a tufted titmouse flew into our sunroom and got himself trapped. Titmice are among my favorite birds, sweetly-proportioned with soft grey feathers and huge black eyes.

Our daughter, Clara, adores birds. She has studied them for years, and she knows them by name as well as song. She had already opened the doors and was trying to direct the titmouse to freedom; but he was frantic with fright. He was casting himself wildly from wall-to-wall-to-wall.

I didn’t realize the cat was watching. Of course, the flutter woke his instincts; and when the poor bird dove low to the ground, Pippin pounced. Clara was screaming. Moses was horrified.

Clara grabbed Pippin and shook him, demanding that he let the bird go, but Pip was alive with the hunt. After five seconds or so, the titmouse fell out of Pippin’s mouth, and he flapped to the floor. Those soft eyes were dark and wide, and his beak was wide with panting. I watched his chest rise and fall like a tiny bellow pumped too fast. There was no recognition in his stare. He was glazed in shock and in horror.

I made the kids go inside and locked the cat in the garage. Then I sat there with the poor little bird, watching him breathe. Surely that bite was not strong enough to kill him. There was no mark on his body. No broken skin. His feathers were barely scuffed.

I was afraid he would try to flap around and damage himself further, so I put on a pair of garden gloves and lifted him ever-so-gently. I carried him outside to a spot in the shade where he could look up into the sky and see that he was safe and free.

Yet, he was now one who had been attacked. The horror was over; and yet, he lived it still. I could watch it replaying over and over in those startled eyes.

I knelt, distraught. I made the soft sounds mothers make when they want to comfort a sick infant. I forced myself to keep my distance, because I knew he would be terrified of me. Yet, I ached to help him know he need not fear. The battle was over. His wings were strong. He could take the air, and dance it over, and sing.

He could fly, but he did not. Instead, he died.

I don’t think he died from the bite. I think he died because he could not release being bitten. I think his tiny heart could not bear the memory of such a horror.

I’ve carried this with me for days. I have carried it because I have been that little bird. After the great beast attacked me (for he attacks us all) I lay with my eyes wide, heart pounding, terrified.

“Such terrible things as even this happen in the world?”

Who can ever bear the answer to that? The pain. The guilt. The horror was comprehensive, for I was made to see what the world is. I was made to see what I was as well.

I was broken, and then I was gently held. I was carried to freedom. I heard soft things spoken over me. I was shown the sky, and I was given wings to take it.

And yet, I lay frozen. I chose instead all the names by which pain and failure had marked me.

I chose death though the March wind was heavy with hyacinths, and the hymn of a warming earth invited me to dance. Little bird, see what is true. The old has gone, the new has come. Rise. Take flight.

Seeds

The seeds have done their magic again. Furry root fibers are making their way down into the dark. Soft, first fingers of green are breaking tips up into sunlight.

You will scold me, because I planted too early again. I will agree with you. I plant like a child shaking Christmas presents; and yet, merciful are the peas. They understand how much I love them.

When I place my white winter palms on the soft black of the garden top, the cold of the earth pulses. It is awakening. I sense it like a heartbeat just beyond the range of hearing. It is nearly electricity, and it is nearly music. I can taste it with some unnamed receptor that beats in the cavity of my chest. The soil has turned from a vehicle of death to a vehicle of life. The long days of waiting are over.

Every March, I know good and well that it is impossible for a little black speck to go down into the cold dark and do anything but the work of dissolving. The four-year-old who still believes in dragons pushes me when I doubt. His fat hands are clumsy, scraping the earth over holes our fingers have poked, “Night, night, seed! See you later! I love you!”

A crow with scuffed feathers mocks from the cedar. “You little fool! To think that something so small could become anything at all. And to think that you could be a part of it.”

Yet, he is four and full of fairy tales. Unabashedly, he wanders the surface of the earth, sowing the preposterous.

“Shoot me, Mommy!” he begs.

“I don’t like that game,” I say.

“Shoot me, Mommy!” louder.

I stick my finger into the air, aiming at the sun instead. “Bang!” I pantomime. He falls to soil. Mothers cannot enjoy such play. My son, however, rolls with laughter.

“Do it again, Mom!” Dying and rising are one to him. He plants with the faith of a prophet. He is planted like a seed. He laughs like a split grave, shaking off wrappings, glorious and whole.

There are only a handful of things I have buried besides the peas. Some days I am nearly too old to laugh over them. When the children ask why we cannot travel to the ocean, I cannot always smile. There are days when I struggle over gas, or food, or clothes, turning three white seeds in the sunlight, looking for a gap in the tight, white paper skin. What can grow of this dead thing? I yearn. I fear. I find fault in what is mine. I ache for the tactile. I ache for the now. I decide I don’t like this game at all.

“Bang!” I will not play. I will not fall. I stand, clenching my fists and demanding life on my own terms - for it is March yet, and I am not completely thawed.