Mother’s day, 2018

To my siblings,

Dear loved ones,

A week before Dad died, he called me into his room.  He was having a hard time getting words out, but I could tell there was something he needed to say to me.  I knelt down on the shag carpet in that little yellow room, next to his narrow bed and held his hand.  He was crying.  

With a lot of false starts and repeated words, he told me that when I was very little he had done some very bad things to me.  “Messed with you” were his words.  He was sorry. So sorry.  Would I forgive him?

Yes Dad, I said.  I forgive you.  there was little more conversation after that.  I kissed his forehead, he patted my hand and went to sleep for a while, exhausted from this difficult work that not many have the strength to undertake.  He died just days later. Years later I’m still processing that conversation.  

Here are the lessons I’ve taken so far.  I’m sure I’ll be learning from it for the rest of my life.

1.    Forgiveness is a mysterious process and this moment really seared it into my consciousness. He asked for my forgiveness.  I gave it.  It took two of us.  He wasn’t asking for absolution of sin (that belongs to God alone) but for the bond between the two of us to remain strong even in the face of hurt.  

2.    I didn’t remember the incident.  I actually remember (have always remembered) a conversation with Mom about it—I had to have been 3-4 years old because I remember where I was and how small I was. Even so, there are things in my adult life that are probably a result of that incident, up to and possibly including my divorce.  Pebbles in the water creating ripples and all that.  

3.    It’s crucial that I forgive when asked.  Now, when I have hurt someone’s feelings, or have done something in an unfeeling/unthinking way I always specifically ask for forgiveness.  I don’t say “Sorry” anymore.  I want the process to be a two-way street.  Not that they have to grant forgiveness—but I always have to ask for it.

4.    There is never a time when my being “right” trumps someone else’s heart.  When I’m dead and thrown into my hole in the ground, my being “right” won’t amount to a hill of beans.  I would have been “right” to march out of the house and never gone back when Dad told me his story.  Sometimes we hurt hearts and justify it by saying, “We were right.”  It is never right to hurt a heart.  We make mistakes, we admit our mistakes, we live with the consequences.  We are human. Asking for forgiveness says, “I hurt you.  Are we still connected?” Forgiveness says, “You hurt me AND our hearts are always connected with love.” 

That’s my story to this point.  As we do, I learn more with reflection and hope to grow wiser with each passing day. I am bound to each one of you with indissoluble bonds that the changes and chances of the world cannot break.  

loving you a bushel and a peck and more.  

Mothers of Mercy

kecharitomene

Carven, gilded, broken, winsome,

         sinless, frowning, tearful, smiling,

Held by angels, glued to dashboards,

lissome, frozen—

plastic, stone—

         flesh or gold.

Many mothers.

         

We walk in  museums of mothers.

         We live through millennia of mothers

all holding this one child,

         this every child,

this child of a million mothers.

These mothers transubstantiating one cell 

         into someone ready to redeem the manifest—

         into something ready to reclaim the hidden.

Sweet babe aborning with hosannas,

and stars and rosy light and hope,

         torn from its tomb,

landing in this hellish, muck-filled stable of a world.

This amazing image:

Mary—all of us—man and woman alike—all of history,

         laboring to birth one child.

Transforming almost nothing

into Salvation.  

She woke one day to the realization 

that everything had been stolen for her 

from other people.

This worried her greatly. 

“It’s just the way of it,” said her parents. 

“Someone stole from us, 

we stole all of this, 

and it will be stolen again in the future.”

"I don't believe it," she said.

“Oh yes,” said her many elders.  

“We were enslaved, 

we enslaved others, 

and someday we shall be slaves again.”

They spoke with the conviction of history and sorrow, 

but in her body she heard something else:

She heard singing in a language she struggled to understand.

She woke one day to the realization 

that she had always heard the song

It told her that the air pouring into her 

and flowing out from her 

had been in the hearts and minds of another people; 

a people who sang with this very air in their lungs.

She heard that the food she ate had grown in an earth 

holding the sacred remains of another people, 

and they were still singing.

“It is all sacred,” said the song.

“We are related to all things,” said the song.

She woke again, and made haste to leave so much behind

—so much of it unnecessary

           —so much of it drowning out the song.

She hastened to let go—

                                 To cleanse—

                                      To quiet—

To stand with both feet

on the sacred, singing soil,

Adding her own breath to the song.

Cave Sedem!!!!!

Cave Sedem!

Beware the deadly Sitting habit,

Or, if you sit, be like the rabbit,

Who keepeth ever on the jump

By springs concealed beneath his rump.

A little ginger ‘neath the tail

Will oft for lack of brains avail;

Eschew the dull and slothful seat,

And move about with willing feet.

Man was not made to sit a-trance

And press, and press, and press his pants;

But rather, with an open mind,

To circulate among his kind.

And so my child, avoid the snare

Which lurks within a cushioned chair;

To run like hell, it has been found,

Both feet must be upon ground.

Theodore F. McManus (1800 something until he died.  )

(probably of too much exercise.)

To Sleep, Perchance

Sleeping Woman, 1890

Artist:

 Theo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926)

To Sleep, Perchance

When I rouse at night—

Mired in bedclothes,

Twisted in pajamas,

Wrestling every wrinkle—

Then I understand better

How it is to tire of the body—

To think it might be time to wake up.

To wake up and finally

Get out of bed.

 Rhonda Palmer

Our Valley by Philip Levine

We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass, something massive, irrational, and so powerful even the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it. You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains have no word for ocean, but if you live here you begin to believe they know everything. They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine, a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls slowly between the pines and the wind dies to less than a whisper and you can barely catch your breath because you're thrilled and terrified. You have to remember this isn't your land. It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside and thought was yours. Remember the small boats that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men who carved a living from it only to find themselves carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home, so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust, wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

The Visitor

The old rebbe lay dying in his narrow bed,
face toward the sky.
High clouds became letters of light,
and thunder sounded on a distant hill.
The family changed his name then,
hoping to fool Death into looking elsewhere,
but the old man traced invisible letters with his breath.

Death came to him then,
not fooled by the name,
not concerned with tears.
Death came to see what the old man
had written in the air.
When he presented himself before the old man,
Death bowed low and respectfully.
"I saw your name in the sky,"
said Death, "and came calling on you,
as anyone would."