Mother's Day

I remember what it was like to want a baby. I remember how it felt to walk through the grocery store watching others dispose so recklessly everything I ached to be. I remember mothers, (or so-called mothers), snapping off ugly words to curly-haired toddlers. I remember mothers, (or so-called mothers), sighing in exasperation, ignoring bundles of angel on earth, telling them to hush. I remember seeing from a distance the wonder of ten little curved fingers, dimpled knuckles, wrapped sweetly around a shopping cart handle. I remember small voices saying, "Momma, Momma," and wondering what unforgivable thing I had done to become unworthy of that name. It has been sixteen years, but I will never forget Mother's Day empty-armed, trying to smile politely, running to the church bathroom, weeping the long, hard, labor of grief behind a locked door. Because of this, I define motherhood a little differently than some. I define motherhood as the womb of creativity and breasts of recreativity made full. Motherhood is an idea fluttering and kicking, compassion fluttering and kicking, music birthed, books nursed, social healing held upright on wobble knees until it walks, wounds of the heart and body dressed and bandaged. Motherhood is entrance into dark rooms where fright cries out from sleep, and motherhood is chasing away the monsters. Motherhood is the renaming of the rejected, it is the embrace of the lonely, it is a Saturday picnic packed for the hungry, it is the rocking of the forgotten in the lap of an old, sweet song. Motherhood is the soft, feminine hand of love on the cheek of the world's need. For children are born and tended in a million different sorts of ways. The earth cries out and here you are to answer. You are maternity, and you are beautiful.

The Bride

She was spun from the night-fog
that rises soft from the day-earth heat.

She was tender,
and she was wild,
and she walked with the cadence
of a mother ascending the stair.

Her hair was the first laughter of babies,
and the pretty whites of her inner arms
were woven from family stories
and sweet old songs.

Her high cheeks burned
with the exhalations
of lovers sleeping intertwined;

and the bottoms of her feet
could not impress the grasses on which they trod
for her soles were formed
from the shouts of sons returning home from war.

I watched as she knelt and collected unto herself
every orphan in all the world.

So many million gentle lights,
buoyant and tumbling in the dark,

I held my breath
and I shut my eyes
because it was a sight too terrible
and too wonderful.

When I opened them,
I saw every lost child
collected into an orb
weightless
brilliant and perfect,
delicate and hovering,
white like a summer dandelion.

Her lips parted
and she blew maternity
into the center of them.
It was a lullaby
and it was a hymn.

The children lifted.

They rose into the sky
sighing on the fullness of her love
where they became glorious,
named,
intentional,
settled like stars.

Jesus + Nothing

Read this book. Just read it.
Click here for the Amazon link.

Thoughts on the poem "excavation"

Here is an excerpt from a conversation about the poem I posted a few days ago, "excavation." If you don't enjoy reading explanations of poetry you might want to skip this one. :)

Here is the link to the piece: Click Here to Read "excavation"

"Lately I've been thinking about how many of us start life optimistic, ready to tackle the wars of the world. That optimism lasts until the battle that sinks us. We fall in agony, trying to learn not to hope because we don't want to ever hurt so badly again. Here and there, little circumstances arise, nosing up old dreams; but we push them away, letting them settle. Slowly, we allow ourselves to be named/defined by our loss. We become dull-hearted. We live forfeitted lives.

This lasts until the explosion that excavates everything. Old pains and fears emerge, rise to the surface. And yet, we are not lifted yet to the sun. We are allowed to sit in the dark cold for a while, waiting with all of our hauntings. It is here that I ask God, "Why did you allow this to awaken again if you weren't going to lift me out of it?"

I've been reading T.S. Eliot this week, and he mentions that we should not hope, for we hope in the wrong things. We should not love, for we love the wrong things. There is only faith, and waiting is a part of that. Those prayers prayed at the bottom of the ocean... aren't they terrible, and beautiful, and honest? The rawness of such need implies filling must exist in the universe. The vacuum signifies."


---- Becca

Summer Reading List - 2012

I realized today that I need to just make a list of the books I'm hoping to read this summer. 'Posting it here, in case you want to add suggestions.

Craig McDonald: A Rising Son 
http://www.amazon.com/Rising-Son-Craig-McDonald/dp/1466430419/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325499198&sr=1-11

T.S. Eliot: The Four Quartets
https://store.rabbitroom.com/product/four-quartets

Frederick Buechner: Telling the Truth
https://store.rabbitroom.com/product/telling-the-truth

An Experiment in Criticism: C.S. Lewis
http://www.amazon.com/An-Experiment-Criticism-Canto-Classics/dp/1107604729/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1336009312&sr=8-2

Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars
http://www.amazon.com/Princess-Mars-Edgar-Rice-Burroughs/dp/1466493283/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336009336&sr=1-3

Jonathan Rogers: The Terrible Speed of Mercy (June 12, 2012)

Mark Batterson: The Circle Maker http://www.amazon.com/The-Circle-Maker-Praying-Greatest/dp/0310333024/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336009457&sr=8-1 

Leo Tolstoy: What is Art?

N.T. Wright: Surprised by Hope
https://store.rabbitroom.com/product/surprised-by-hope 

Alan Paton: Cry, the Beloved Country

Marilynne Robinson: Gilead

George MacDonald: At the Back of the North Wind

excavation

With the light gait of young men 

they once walked through this door.

It turned with the ease of all openings properly maintained,

oiled and polished, 

countenance fluttering against it

like a jolly old reel of war movies.

The sea captain stood at the helm, 

pronouncing the matrimony of virility and adventure.

"All aboard!

All aboard!"

All aboard,

young men full of procedures,

worlds to see,

certainties to fight

certainties to defend,

full of glory and propaganda,

battle songs,

hope in the wrong things,

love for the wrong things,

and faith in nothing but love and hope.

Barnacles have grown 

inch-by-inch,

year-by-year,

over the door that once opened.

Bones, and flesh, and love and hope

have met fire. 

Fish, and flesh, and second death

have met sea bottom silence.

All sinking things have been welcomed 

to the black cold,

Iron-to-iron

Earth-to-earth.

The wisened souls have quieted

nearly.

Recovered nearly.

Resigned nearly 

to the chill of particulation.

Fishes nose about in the molecular impression

of lips once kissed by pretty young girls.

Carbon remembers, 

stirs, sighs,

resigns to the loss of the

day-blind lesser sun,

resigns to the muted deeps.

Blast!

Excavation cracks the door with fire.

A foot of sea earth tumbles heavily

rolls below blankets.

The seam is found,

pried open.

Foul, stagnant space

awakens.

Sunken terror rises from captivity

in a thousand tiny balls of air,  

makes its way to the surface,

bursts and wails.

"We die!

We die!

We die when youth is made for May sun,

and making love,

and music,

and growing old,

and summer peaches,

and gravel lanes."

The fire breaks

burns, reminds;

and the second cry for life

is worse than the first.

A vacuum

opened full to grief

signifies.

Deep calls to deep.

Go softly here.

Go humbly there.

The third day cometh.