First Robin of Spring

I posted the photo above yesterday on Facebook.  It was so exciting to see my first spring robin of the year.  I wonder where he is today, braving the winter storm that is sending wet snow flying horizontally from the east-northeast at a furious pace.  The weather reports say we may have sixteen inches of heavy new snow before this is all over.  It took this storm longer to get here than the meteorologists thought it would.  Snow didn't start to fall till it was nearly noon.   My comments with the picture prompted two different friends to suggest that I write a poem.  So, procrastinating desperately on a sermon last night, that is what I did instead.

Namaste

Over my head, a pale worn old blue farm shirt

Soft with fog

Caught and tore

When geese honked through

Just past sunrise,

Wings’ wild beating, 

joy in a V.

Our not quite pet squirrel,

Sleek from the nuts

my friend next door fed him

Through the dark and cold days now past,

is on his perch

Beween old snow drifts

--Now gym-shoe gray--

And goose-rent sky.

He flips and spins,

Hangs upside down

On his cottonwood (with buds

On the tips of each arced branch)

no goal in mind but to joy

in the sun’s strong rays.

In a place close by,

where snow-melt has pooled,

a crow wades.

That makes three suns.

The light in the sky greets the light in the pond

Greets the light in the bird’s bright eye.

Neat brown sparrows,

Pert black capped chickadees,

Chirp and tweet to claim the tree,

And a lone robin, puffed and still,

Puts up with them,

Thinks he was wrong

To come home so soon,

Not yet the hardy

Bird of cheer

He will be soon

When he tugs a worm out of warm ground.

The Weather Man has read his signs

And warns of snow on snow

Harsh winds, drifts, cold, cold.

Do the beasts know?

I doubt his news for us

Is news for them.

Yet still they bask in the sun and preen and sing.

The Day Between the Days

The Vigil light extinguished and the Aumbry door standing open have long symbolized for me how the whole world: time and eternity, hang by a thread on that Sabbath between Good Friday and the Day of Resurrection.  About ten years ago I wrote a poem about this.  It's a villanelle, and I've been tinkering with it ever since.  Here it is in its present form. 

Villanelle for the Easter Triduum

Easter, 2002 (revised 2012)

The aumbry door stands open, the Host  gone,

The purple stoles, the books, gone, the Cross veiled

The dark night sighs, we wait, for God alone.

There stands our king, cross soon to be his throne,

 In purple robe, brow thorn-crowned, bloody, flailed.

The aumbry doors stands open, the Host  gone.

The blood is shed,  spears stab flesh, don’t break bone,

The passion spent, life giv’n, David’s Son hailed.

The dark night sighs, souls wait, for God alone.

The body claimed, it lies in tomb of stone.

Forsaken (like their Lord!) the mourners wailed.

The aumbry door stands open, the Host  gone.

We women leave, exhausted, burial work done,

Our sorrow raw, we ask, Has our God failed?

The dark night sighs, we wait, for God, alone.

Two nights have passed, it’s day. The tomb has drawn

Us women, missing him…  Our faces paled!

The  stone tomb’s door is open,  Body gone.

The dawn-wind sighs, we wait, for God alone.

                                    Mary Johnson

Sourdough Bread

This is a photo of some sourdough bread that I made a few days ago that I posted on Facebook.  It received more comments than most of my status posts do.  My friend Anne asked me why I was making sourdough bread.  Was I seeking a way to reproduce the delicious sourdough bread that I had enjoyed when I lived in the Bay Area of California in the 1970's?

I admit, I have become somewhat obsessed this summer by what I'm thinking of as my Sourdough Project.  So, how did it all begin?  What am I up to now?  What am I learning?

I don't know exactly how far back into my life to look for a beginning.  There are roots all the way back to some of my earliest childhood memories.  We traveled most summers to visit my dad's brothers who farmed in Norquay, Saskatchewan.   Uncle Halvard and Aunt Eveleen had five daughters.  Uncil Phil and Aunt Ioleen had eight children.  I had my first experience of "brown bread" at their tables.  It was very different from the 1950's supermarket soft white balloon bread we had at home.  Bread had a high profile at the tables of my Norquay cousins.  Bread took a lot of my aunties' time.  Their big wood stoves kept their baking bread and the whole kitchen hot.  Bread tied my aunts to the kitchen in ways that my Montreal-raised urban mother didn't quite understand or appreciate.  She kept suggesting that my aunts save labor by buying their bread from the local baker, whose product was actually very tasty and fresh.  My aunties somehow managed not to act offended by my mom's suggestion.  Maybe they didn't romanticize bread production the way I think I would have in their place.

My aunties' Norquay brown bread had a unique smell.  Those smells perfumed the kitchen as it rose in a big enamel pan the size of a washtub.  The smells became more intense as the loaves went into the oven.

It tasted different and had a different, more substantial texture than the bread I was used to.  It functioned as a ubiquitous accompaniment to the many meals and snacks we ate together around the tables crowded with cousins. At our house we had toast for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch, but never the stacks of this fragrant brown treasure that disappeared during the course of every meal.  And this brown bread usually came with butter and homemade raspberry or, more rarely, strawberry or chokecherry jam.  I will always cherish a memory of my Uncle Phil, a generation later, holding his year-old grandson on his lap during a break for "morning lunch."  Kurtis was happily licking the jam off a slice of his grandmother's buttered bread, and Uncle Phil cheerfully replenished the jam when Kurtis was down to the butter. 

It is no wonder that my father always praised and encouraged my mother's attempts at baking bread, especially Limpa, the round, sweet Swedish rye loaf she would make at Christmas time.  But making bread was a big-deal production in my mother's eyes, a special occasion.  I got the sense from her that it was a lot of work, but worth it to put something festive on the table, something that would make my father grin from ear to ear. 

While my mother encouraged me to bake cakes and cookies, and to try out all kinds of recipes, she somehow led me to believe that working with yeast was a challenge, something not for beginners.

I first baked my own bread a couple of years after Wayne and I married, when a dear friend gave me a copy of Laurel's Kitchen (Laurel Robertson and Carol Lee Flinders.  Nilgiri Press, 1976--and still available in a later edition from Amazon), a cookbook that I still think has the most gentle, accurate, and literary introduction to the art of bread making that I've encountered anywhere.   With some trepidation I followed those directions and discovered that it was a tremendous joy to make bread.  I felt like I was connecting with women across time and space who had ground grain, moistened it, formed it into dough, worked it rhythmically and lovingly,  allowed it to rise, and, as it baked, prepared a table to welcome and feed family and friends.

We moved a few years later to Princeton Seminary.  We were a little short on money.  Our married student housing was comprised of two physically non-contiguous rooms connected by a public hallway.  There was a bedroom with a bathroom.  Wayne built a platform for our bed.  Underneath was a desk and his piano.  If you faced one way on the bench, you could play the piano.  If you faced the other way, you could work at the desk.  Down the hall was a kitchen.  It had two big closets.  One became our pantry.  The other held my theological books.  I had a table and a rocking chair with wide, flat arms.  It was my study den.  We had a teeny tiny apartment size oven that served as a dormitory for dozens of cockroaches when it wasn't being used.  Princeton had a wonderful health food store where, every day, hard winter wheat was freshly ground into flour.  I kneaded that flour into dough that rose while I studied.  I baked that bread regularly in four coffee cans that produced loaves that looked like silos.  When you cut it up, the slices looked like English muffins.   I also made my own yogurt in mayonnaise jars that I would set in a bath of warm water inside a cooler designed for a six-pack of beer.  Sometimes I put yogurt into my bread, and it gave it a mildly sour taste and a softer crumb.  But most often I would use the basic Laurel's Kitchen recipe that had nothing but a tablespoon of yeast, a teaspoon or two of sugar to "proof" the yeast, six cups of flour, a tablespoon of salt,  and water.  Laurel recommended Crisco for greasing the coffee cans.  I followed her instructions, having found for the first time in my life a decent use for Crisco.

Somehow I got away from regular bread baking when children and full time jobs came along.  My forays into baking with yeast were limited to almost-weekly pizza bakings on Friday nights.  Five kids and their friends could inhale 3 or 4 big pies in about fifteen minutes.

Sometime during those years of intensive parenting, the bread machine came along.  My mother, always a kitchen gadgeteer, first in her neighborhood to own a blender, then, decades later, singing the praises of her new discovery, the immersion blender, found bread machines on sale somewhere and bought three: one for herself, one for my sister, one for me.  So we began baking bread again.  My mother loved her bread machine.  I think my sister did, too.  My kids expected me to make a loaf each day for their sandwiches.  But I hated it.

The bread machine was noisy with the kinds of mechanical buzzes, alarm bells, rumblings and vibrations that I did not want in my environment.  It took up precious counter space and even more precious storage space.  It was a pain to get the paddle out of the freshly-baked loaf.  (And that was another problem: you could only bake one loaf at a time, hardly enough to satisfy seven people.) The texture wasn't right.  The end product did not please me; and I missed the soothing rhythms of kneading, the feel of the dough becoming satin and elastic under the heel of my hand.  I was thrilled when, one time too many, the bread machine precessed off our kitchen counter, and broke irreparably.

Fast forward another decade or so.  I had moved to Florida.  I was between jobs.  My dear friend, Tom, from Georgia, also unemployed at the time, had been experimenting with amazing home-baked bread.  His onion rye sourdough with a dense, moist crumb was intense, perfect for slicing thinly and toasting, especially delicious with goat cheese spread over it.   I was getting the urge to bake bread again.

We have a wonderful "downtown" lifestyle.  We live in an eminently walkable urban neighborhood in Orlando.  Almost everything (with the exception of a hardware store) is handily accessible on foot.  Apart from my Sunday drive to the little mission I serve, Wayne and I did not need to get into our car, sometimes for weeks at a time.  There is a Publix grocery store on the ground floor of our building.  It has a pretty decent selection.  I love shopping there.  It is the single biggest reason that we chose to live in the building we do. But there was nothing downstairs at Publix that could compete with the kick-ass organic Pain au Levain at Whole Foods.  Whenever we would make a trip to Whole Foods for meat and poultry, we would buy a couple of loaves.  However, getting to Whole Foods meant getting into our car, which, on principle, we like to do as infrequently as possible.  And that Kick-Ass Pain au Levain comes at a price that is something of a kick in the ass of our bank account. 

I consider myself a baker of delicious bread with an intuitive sense of how yeast and grain perform together, more of a Bread Poet than a Scientific Baker.  But I had never tackled sourdough.  I didn't quite see how it would work to order San Francisco sourdough starter from an online retail source.   I didn't want to be outdone by my friend Tom.  If Tom could make sourdough, maybe I could, too.

One of the walk-to amenities in our neighborhood is the main branch of the Orange County Public Library.  I especially like trying out cookbooks from the library.  Several weeks ago I was intrigued by Mark Bittman's masterful (and weighty) tome, How to Cook Everything.  I lugged it home, settled into my reading chair, and fell in love, so much so that I've renewed the book twice and I held on to it until I determined that my children took my extremely broad hints and give it to me for my birthday.   Bittman's chapter on the theory and practice of making bread with yeast is as masterful in its own way as Laurel Robertson's and Carol Flinders'.

At that same time Wayne was in North Dakota for seven weeks, helping out his cousin and her husband on their farm.  That meant I could experiment and, if my results ended up with a texture as weighty as Bittman's cookbook, I wouldn't have to endure the teasing about "substantial" bread.  Bittman has a recipe called "Jim Lahey's No Work Bread."  I haven't been able to try it because my Dutch oven is in storage, and it would be perfect for this recipe.  But what I took from this recipe was the almost scandalous idea that you can let time do the work of developing the gluten in the bread dough instead of helping that to happen by kneading. 

I've always been in love with kneading bread, and usually gave my bread two ten-minute kneadings.  The rhythm of kneading is truly beautiful.  It is a near cousin to the meditation and contemplative prayer that have become such a big part of my life in recent years.  I wasn't sure that one could obtain good results without kneading--after all, bread machines surely didn't produce a result that I liked.

I kept on reading, and saw Bittman's instructions for creating a sourdough starter from scratch.  I also did a little bit of exploring on the web.   Sourdough bakers must be a special breed.  There are dozens of websites devoted to the pursuit of the perfect Pain au Levain or San Francisco Sourdough or Eastern European Rye, or German Rye loaf.  You can pay $50 for special baskets to cradle the dough in while it rises.  You can buy equally expensive bread pans, and spend hundreds of dollars on home-size flour mills.  Some people take a very scientific approach to their bread making.  They argue about the difference between wet and dry measure, between measuring by weight  and by volume.  They do analyses of what kinds of yeast ultimately prevail as the levels of lactobacilli rise and kill off some of the less desirable denizens of the sourdough culture.  They discuss the moisture content in the ideal wheat flour.   But however fancy they got in their analysis, they all agreed that it was possible to start a culture from the wild yeast in the atmosphere and, more importantly, living symbiotically with the grain crops themselves--and that it was important to remember that bleaching and brominating flour could have the effect of killing off that yeast.

It was time to plunge in.  And it didn't take much to get started.  I combined equal parts flour (half rye, half whole wheat) and water.  The flour was unbleached, organic, whole grain; and the water was filtered.  (I don't know if that takes the chlorine out or not.)  I stirred them up in a glass bowl, and I covered the bowl with a dish towel and popped it into my electric oven with the oven light on.  I took it on faith that there was wild yeast on the surface of the grain and perhaps in the air in my apartment.  And, sure enough, after several hours the mixture was a little bit bubbly and smelled like fermentation might be starting.  

For several days, I felt like I had a new pet in the house.  (Does anybody name their sourdough cultures? One of the two sourdough cultures living in my fridge answers to "Mabel," I believe.)  I had to feed and stir the culture, and throw part of it out, twice a day.  I chose to add 1/4 cup of rye flour and 1/4 cup of water in the morning; and 1/4 cup of wheat flour and 1/4 cup of water in the evening.  The odors coming off the culture were more and more interesting: increasingly sour, but with lovely, fruity, winey overtones.

Finally it was time to try a baking.  I measured a cup of my culture into a bowl and added salt, water, and flour.   The dough acquired a consistency I was familiar with from baking bread with active dry yeast.  I kneaded it lovingly and left it to rise for a couple of hours.  I kneaded it again and formed a round loaf.  The dough spread more than it rose as it doubled in size.  I baked it, and the result was a delicious, if somewhat flat loaf.

I took half the starter with me when I went camping with my daughter, and baked a loaf at her apartment before heading to the campground.  The starter just sat in the cooler bubbling along, and when I got home, I had two starters, with two distinct personalities.  One makes a more sour loaf, and seems to have a little less leavening power.  The other makes a more conventional-looking loaf and is not quite so sour.  It takes a little bit of imagination and maybe some generosity to keep that first culture around, because the second culture really is better.  Both sit in labeled jars in my refrigerator, and I mark when I pull them out to feed them or bake with them.

Here's a loaf from my "lighter" culture.

I'm discovering that, while the science of sourdough cultures interests me, I am not at all scientific about my baking.  And every batch turns out a little different from the last.

My latest effort relied much more on techniques borrowed from the Jim Lahey recipe in Bittman's book.  It was so tasty that I don't have a picture to share.  I hardly kneaded it at all.  I let the ball of dough sit in the oven with the light on all day and evening, covered with a piece of saran wrap.  Just before bed, I shaped it into a loaf, adding as little flour as I could and still handle the dough; put it back in the oven.  The next morning I took it out of the oven, set a cake pan of water on the bottom shelf, preheated the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit, and baked the loaf, dropping the oven temp to 375 about ten minutes after it went in.  The texture was grand; the sour flavor was not overpowering; it smelled like heaven.  It tasted great, both with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and basil; and with raspberry jam and butter.

The only problem is that I really don't need to be eating quite so much bread.  In spite of spending an hour on the elliptical trainer and/or jogging 5 or 6 days a week, plus walking to any destination less than about 4 miles away, I'm putting on weight.   But that may be a topic for another blog entry.

Feast of St. John the Baptist--two poems, an essay, and an icon

!

I found this icon, reproduced without attribution, at the blog below.  If anybody can help me with a more accurate attribution, I would appreciate it.  So many of the icons of John show him beheaded.  I didn't find many that show him baptizing.  (Probably if I'd looked at "Baptism of Jesus" I would have hit the jackpot.  How like John, who said of Jesus, "He must increase; I must decrease"!)

http://ecumenicalbuddhism.blogspot.com/2011/01/last-old-covenant-prophet-john-baptist.html

The two poems which follow are somewhat different responses to the life and ministry of St. John the Baptist, written over the past several years.  For some reason, I suspect that I will return again and again to reflect on how God was at work in the life of St. John the Baptist; and how God is at work in my own life.

First Poem -- I stayed with the Sisters of the Community of St. John Baptist in Mendham, New Jersey last year on retreat for a few days the week before their patronal feast.  As a "thank you" to them, I wrote this poem.  The Community's motto is John's saying: "He must increase, but I must decrease."

John, with rough, prophetic voice—a strange

imposing figure, clad in camel’s hair--

Three Gospels tell us of his tragic death,

And Matthew shows how, when he meets Our Lord,

(Thirty years of age—as he begins,

before he teaches, heals, or wakes the dead

he comes to John, he asks to be baptized)--

John points upward—maybe with a shrug:

“Must you, who bring the Spirit’s holy fire

be baptized here?     

                              By me?.......”

                                           

                                         He frowns.  We see,

In crease of forehead, how he strives to grasp

what Jesus wants: the Fire in Water plunged.

But can this faithful, odd Forerunner know

how, ever after, we who are baptized,

I and you, and all who follow Christ,

Must die in baptism’s waters? Then we’re raised,

Must find the Cross the way to Paradise,

must never let the longing of our hearts

decrease for that Celestial Banquet, when

the Lamb of God, the Spirit and the bride

say, “Come! Come feast on Living Water, Child!”

 **********************************************************

Second Poem--I wrote this one a few years ago.  It's not as disciplined as the first poem.  It's longer, and I would still like to rework it some day.  But I'll share it anyhow.  

The Way of John

I am an old man.

Not in years—

In years I am in the prime of life.

But I am now not long for this world. 

This I know.

I was one who baptized,

Also,

I was one of those who define ourselves

By who we are not,

(“I am not the Christ, or Elijah, or the Prophet…”)

This is knowing our limits--

I was one who baptized,

Also,

I was one of those who define ourselves

By what we don’t know,

By whom we fail to recognize.

“There is one in your midst,” I once said,

“ whom you do not know….

You thought my words were harsh?

But we are not so different, you and I. 

There was a time when

I did not know him either.

More than one time.

First came my mission: “Baptize!”

Baptize, trusting, believing

            that Israel will know him when he comes.

I did not know him at the start. 

But I started on my mission.  I baptized.

I baptized and preached--and

Still I did not know him. 

But a Voice once told me,

Told me what to watch for—

“Him on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain--

Watch for this one!”

I baptized the young and old of Israel,

trusting: “Israel will know him when he comes.”

I baptized rich and poor.

I baptized sinners blatant and secret,

trusting: “Israel will know him when he comes.”

Always I watched.

Always I longed.

He was no different from the rest,

not glowing with the Light to come,

no mighty hand, no outstretched arm,

not more beautiful, nor taller, nor special in any way.

In fact, he was my cousin.

He stepped into the water and

the Spirit came…

Always I sensed the Spirit come

when water dripped in shining rivulets

from faces released from guilt and shame and sin.

This one time only, the Spirit came,

bright bird-like wings flickering in the light,

And stayed.

Dropped like a hawk, I tell you,

onto his Victim

Bright Raptor shot from heaven,

with talons spread.

Someone may try to tell you it was like a dove

But they would be wrong.

So there he was.

And I saw.

And I testified.

Once I knew I knew.

I’d been saying all along: “Get ready!”

I’d been saying all along: “Turn around!”

I was out there in the wilderness.

But that was what I said.

I said it in what you might call

The wrong place and the wrong time,

to the wrong people.

So here is where I am:

in this dungeon now,

dark, with walls of stone.

Light a couple of hours a day when the sun is far to the west.

I know I saw the Spirit.

Let me humbly correct myself.

…I think I saw the Spirit.

Once I did not know him.

Do I know him now?

The world goes on,

so little changed.

The wicked are still wicked.

(I cried so long and loud.)

Israel  will know him when he comes.

I thought I knew him…

But Israel pays him so little mind.

Is he the One who is to come?

He is not long for this world, I fear.

The Spirit—the Holy Hawk-- is with him still.

He is still God’s Victim.

He is the Lamb.

 


The Essay

This was a short column for the Pickens County Progress that I wrote when I was the December religion columnist one month.

We all know people like him.   They are very bright, gifted in their own way. They pay no attention to fashion in how they dress.  They don’t pay much attention to the rules of etiquette, either.  They live on the fringes of society.  Their eating habits are strange—maybe there are only a couple of things they will eat at all.  They get so focused on a subject important to them that they don’t notice when people’s eyes glaze over.  They say what they think, even if it offends people.  They draw no distinctions between “important” people and ordinary people.  A couple of generations ago we might have called such people “quirky.”  Today they’re likely to have a diagnosis on the autism spectrum.

There’s a biblical figure we know as John the Baptist, because baptizing people was one of the things he loved to do. We might have called him quirky, too.   He had a brilliant, electrifying way of speaking to the crowds. He dressed in clothing made of camel’s hair, cinched with a leather belt. He lived in the wilderness. He ate locusts (yes! the bugs—I once thought the Gospel writers must have meant locust beans, but they didn’t) and wild honey. He would speak the unvarnished truth to any who came out to hear him.  He didn’t care or notice if his message made him popular.  He simply had to bellow it out: “Repent! Get ready for the coming of God!”

 God couldn’t have picked a better man for the job than John. John jarred people out of being set in their ways.  John called them to repent, literally, to turn their lives in a new direction.  John told them this repentance was urgent because the Lord was coming, and it was their job to prepare for that coming. 

 Christian churches that follow a calendar based on the life of Jesus are now in the rich and wonderful season called Advent. “Advent” means “Coming,” and in Advent we tie together time and eternity.  We remember the comings of God into our lives. We remember the coming of Jesus, fully human and fully God—God’s most profound and beautiful way of speaking to the human race.  We remember that we are still longing for the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven where mercy and truth, justice and love coexist.

John is the classic Advent figure.  He’s not on Christmas ornaments or in crèche sets.  But he is the Bridge that holds the Comings of Christ together.  He is, like the Hebrew prophets, concerned with calling God’s people to repent, to allow God to turn their lives in a new direction.   John proclaims that the new path leads to One who will set their lives on fire with his love.

In Advent, John the Baptist reminds us that the Baby in the Manger grows to be the Son of Man, and if you follow him you will never be the same again.  Take some time with John before Christmas this year.  John calls us to prepare for the Lord’s coming. You can find his story in your Bible in Matthew 3, Mark 1, Luke 1 and 3, and John 1 and 3.

Practicing Poetry

Last winter a friend, responding to an offhand comment I'd made the previous fall, invited me to join her and two other women in forming a poetry group.  The four of us have been writing poems for years, but we were looking for a way of sharing our work and learning from one another.  Two of the women had been in groups before; for two of us this is a new experience.  We meet once a month in a home.

Everyone brings enough copies of a poem she has written for each member to have one.  With no introductions allowed by the poet, someone--not the author--reads the poem aloud.  Then the poet reads the poem aloud.   Conversation follows about the poem:  the choice of form, rhythm, words; the context, the hearers' responses.   Each evening I leave, delighted by the fresh perspectives and skills of these poets, and inspired to keep at it.

The first meeting I had a number of poems I'd written in the last several years that I could choose from to present.  But after that I had to produce a new poem.  Recently, I've been playing with traditional forms: haiku, ballads, sonnets, and even villanelles.  I'm still trying to decide if, in our post-modern era, these forms serve.  The three poems below rather strictly follow the forms of Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets and the villanelle.

• One, "Crumb Cake," is really just a little light-hearted exercise with the form.  
• The second, "Egypt," I wrote after hearing about an American woman journalist, assaulted in the aftermath of the populist revolution in Cairo's Tahrir Square, and the commentary that event engendered from other women who constantly endured a spectrum of disrespectful treatment on the streets of Cairo that ran from catcalls, leers, and groping to rape.  I don't know if the form helps or hinders the message.  Or, to put it another way, I don't know what I think of poetry as a medium for social commentary.  Also, I chose to split several lines and to indicate spatially how two lines actually comprised one "sonnet line."  I thought it might make it easier to read.  But maybe it merely obfuscates.  You tell me.
• The third, "In which the Poet Audaciously Argues with William Butler Yeats," is very much a work in progress.  It's the poem I will take with me on Tuesday to the Poetry Circle.   The form, the villanelle, is tortuously restrictive. (I broke the rhyme scheme in the final stanza.)  But its repetitions and circling back lend themselves to a tone of regret.  This sense of regret and dissatisfaction about my mis-spent months of unemployment is what I sought to express in the poem the audacious argument I took up (for the moment) with Yeats.  The point of contact is the "public solitude" of a cup of coffee and a book enjoyed al fresco.  But where Yeats experiences 20 minutes of unanticipated and profound joy, I did not.

So here they are:

I.  Crumb Cake Sonnet

There’s coffee in my mug, and though the cream

I poured in-- and, okay, I must admit,

liqueur and cocoa mix--perfume the steam,

it somehow fails to satisfy, or fit

into that labeled place that, as a child,

I saved inside my belly for “dessert.”

A recipe for crumb cake that I filed

away--for when it really wouldn’t hurt

to use the bag of cranberries that lurk

long past the holidays, still festive red,

on my refrigerator shelf—could work.

Ahhhh, Sweet, tart, crunchy,  densely warm! My head,

my nose, my tongue are longing for a taste.

 No!

            Crumb cake only settles round my waist.

II.  Egypt

“When Israel was in Egypt-land,” we sang—

and “Let my people go!”         

                                     I saw a slave

in Alabama cotton fields, who, brave

and desperate, exhausted, heard the clang

of Freedom’s bell.

                                     I saw a prison gang,

chained black men whom white juries wouldn’t save

despite their innocence. (The white folk crave

a scapegoat.) 

                                     I saw lynch-drunk crowds shout “Hang

him high!”

                                     I never thought that in my day

I’d see the squares of Cairo full of men

of Egypt-land,  their Pharaoh holding sway

for thirty years, but finally toppled when

they cried “Enough!” 

                                     But not enough till they

Sing, “Let my women go!”

                                     They’ll be free then…

 

 

III.  In which the Poet audaciously argues with William Butler Yeats

My fiftieth year had come and gone,

I sat, a solitary man,

In a crowded London shop,

An open book and empty cup

On the marble table-top.

While on the shop and street I gazed

My body of a sudden blazed;

And twenty minutes more or less

It seemed, so great my happiness,

That I was blessed and could bless.

                                    William Butler Yeats, from “Vacillation,”1932

            Five years ago, I longed for time to sit and gaze

Alone, with pen and paper, open book at hand,

The poets’ vivid vision teaching me their ways.

            My terrace now, with concrete floor in shades of grays,

Rug gray, chairs red, teak table, coffee iced: it’s grand!

Five years ago, I longed for time to sit and gaze--

And now I have that time.  More time, less work that pays.

A balcony herb gardener; this I hadn’t planned:

The poets’ vivid vision teaching me their ways

To contemplate tomato blossoms, and the haze

Of basil blossom fragrance. Almost bored, I stand.

Five years ago, I longed for time to sit and gaze,

Then, choosing words with care, attentive, in a blaze

Of insight, write a poem, strong and real, not bland,

The poets’ vivid vision teaching me their ways.

In Florida, six floors up, and now that all my days

Are free to think, to write, I yawn.  I got my wish.

Five years ago, I longed for time to sit and gaze,

The poets’ vivid vision teaching me their ways.

                                                                                   

On the Via Dolorosa

On Monday mornings I pray with a contemplative prayer group some of whom have been meeting together since 1975 at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Luke here in Orlando.  We range in age from our mid-fifties to mid-90's.   Normally, we begin our time of contemplation with a quiet, measured, repeated recitation of the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Then the officiant claps her hands once and we lapse into silence, to continue, each in her own way.  (I say "her" because at the moment only women are in the group, though at times in the past there have been men, as well.)  Some of us continue with the Jesus Prayer or other forms of breath prayer.  One finds her meditation formed by the hymns that come to mind unbidden, but virtually always appropriate to her spiritual condition.

During Lent, we have taken a break from this practice, and have instead been led in our meditation through several Stations of the Cross.  Four of us have been to Jerusalem and walked the Via Dolorosa during Lent or Holy Week, and this experience surely has shaped all subsequent contemplation on the Stations.  (An aside: I often hear people refer to this Way of Pain as the "Via de la Rosa," the way of the Rose--and find my thoughts moving to the thorns and blood-red color of the rose, and the Advent hymn, "Lo, How a Rose e'er Blooming,"  in which Christ is the Rose.  So maybe Way of the Rose is not so far off....) 

I missed the first Monday of Lent because I was traveling.  The second week, we were at Stations 4 and 5.  The woman assigned to lead our meditations on these events was the one who prays in hymns.  She is a retired school music teacher.  Having made a remarkable recovery after hip surgery in the summer and knee surgery in the fall, she walks enthusiastically, sings in a jazz ensemble, and leads the music at her church's monthly children's Eucharist.  She is charming, athletic, and not given to unnecessary speech, though she has a wry sense of humor.  She is nearly 90, and has outlived her husband and one of her sons.  Our facilitator had assigned her these stations because, she suggested, they might be the easiest for children to connect with, and Mildred works regularly with children.  She even lent Mildred a little booklet of Stations for Children.

Mildred chose to address us as children, as if she was teaching a Sunday School class and we were her pupils.  For some reason, it enabled us all, "teacher" and "pupils," to access some tender spots in our hearts.  All of us are mothers; all of us are still children, though none has a mother still living. 


Station 4:  Jesus Meets his Mother

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you
because by your Holy Cross
you have redeemed the world.

Simeon said to Mary his mother: "This child is destined to be the downfall and the rise of many in Israel, a sign that will be opposed. And you yourself shall be pierced with a sword, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be laid bare." 

Holy God,
Holy and mighty
Holy Immortal One,
Have mercy on us.

Mildred said words to this effect: "Boys and girls,  have you ever been lost in a crowd and then suddenly noticed your mother?  Do you know how much your mother loves you?  Do you remember to say 'Thank you' to her?  Jesus was doing something very hard, carrying a heavy wood cross to the place where he would be killed.  A crowd was mocking him and his mother could see how Jesus was in pain and how tired he was, but she could not do anything for him, except to be there."  Mildred's eyes were filling with tears.  Her voice was almost breaking with quiet emotion.  Every one of us found ourselves weeping quietly. 

All of us had been there. I think all of us missed our mothers. All of us thought of what we might have said to express our gratitude for their love.  All of us had longed, as mothers, to be able to do something more than simply be there, at some time or other, when our children were suffering or in trouble.  Maybe it is axiomatic that all mothers know that sword that pierces the heart. 

This stained glass piece suggests the possibility that Our Lady was perhaps able to touch her Son again while he was on this painful journey.  The look in her eyes, of love, pain, concern, worry is compelling.  James Ceaser of Fiatlux Glassworks in Vancouver is the artist, and this is one of the fourteen Stations, completed in 1998, at St. Mark's College at the University of British Columbia.

Station 5:  Simon of Cyrene is compelled to carry Jesus' cross.


We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you,
because by your Holy Cross
you have redeemed the world.

A man named Simon of Cyrene, was coming in from the fields, and they pressed him into service to carry the Cross.


Holy God,
Holy and mighty
Holy Immortal One,
Have mercy on us.

"Boys and girls, what do you do when you see somebody --say, a boy or girl on the playground who has fallen down?  Do you tease them and laugh at them, or do you help them?"

Our discussion turned to how Simon, like so many of us, was just going about his own business.  He was tired after working in the fields.  This crucifixion procession was none of his business.  But the soldiers made it his business.  He, a hard-working peasant, just trying to stay out of debt and put food on his family's table, was compelled to carry the cross for this man, ostensibly a common thief, or, more likely, what we would call today a terrorist.  I thought a lot about how the suffering of others has a way of drawing us in.  We can't immunize ourselves from the hurt of our sisters and brothers. 

This image comes from the Stations for Xaverian Missionaries on the website of the Xaverian Missionaries, USA.  I don't know where they got them.  These are beautiful examples of the sorts of marble or stone Stations we see on the walls of so many American Catholic and Episcopal churches.

A week later, our group gathered again, and Sally, a wise and well-read woman, led us through meditations on Stations 6, 7, and 8.  After giving us a gentle introduction to the event commemorated at the Station, we were invited to meditate for 5 or 10 minutes in silence, and then to share our responses to a simple question she asked.

Station 6: Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.
This is one of the stations that has no biblical basis.  Rather, early Christian tradition has this woman compassionately doing what she could.  Often the illustrations of this Station have the face of Jesus miraculously appearing on the cloth Veronica held.  Sally asked us: Who has been an icon of Jesus for you?  Who has shown you Jesus' face?  The responses ranged from clergy who had been there at key moments in our spiritual lives to our mothers and grandmothers.  In every case, as she told the story, the woman made it clear that it wasn't because this person was perfect that they were effective in inviting us into closer relationship with Christ.  Indeed, in every instance we acknowledged that the person was deeply flawed, and that perhaps it was the brokenness that enabled the person to be effective.

This is a detail from Peter Paul Rubens' painting of Veronica.

Station 7:  Jesus Falls for a Second Time.
 The conversation continued, about how God is with us even when we are very weak.  As I meditated on this Station, I realized that I talk a good talk about how important it is to fall and to get up and to fall and to get up again on the journey.  But when it comes to my own life, I really resent falling a second or third time.  I was brought up short: falling is not a sign of sin; it is a sign of weakness; and God said to St. Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you; my power is made perfect [complete] in weakness."  This is kind of the opposite of the success mantra that appears to drive Americans in business. 

This image comes from the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee.   Of Venetian mosaic inlay, the Stations are copies of those of St. Anne's Church in Munich, Germany.  I find this very traditional depiction compelling because it illustrates how the soldiers are continuing to harrass Jesus, just because they can, though there's really no more he can do.  This is so typical of the way that ordinary people, swept into positions of relative power in the Empire, can become callous and abusive. 

Station 8: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem, who weep for him. 

"This is all of us!" said Margie.  "This is our station.  We are the women of Jerusalem."  One of the women mentioned the Libyan woman who had burst into the hotel in Tripoli where all the journalists were staying, to try to tell them the story of how she had been gang raped by the government soldiers.  As she was being violated yet again, dragged off to near-certain imprisonment, she wept and cried out.

When is is right for us to use our voices?  When does it do no good?  Perhaps Jesus was saying to the women that there was no use calling out to the authorities about the great miscarriage of justice that had been perpetrated as this innocent Man was being led to crucifixion. No one would listen.  After all, it was the political authorities who had authorized this political assassination.  But still more, in some hard-to-grasp way, I think Jesus was insisting on letting events follow their course.  The way of the Cross leads to life only through suffering and death, it seems...

This is a photo taken by Joe Goldberg in the fall of 2009, at the 8th Station along the Via Dolorosa.
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/goldberg/4098306777/ )  I like it because of the very ordinary women it depicts.  Ordinary women when Jesus was led through Jerusalem on his way to crucifixion.  Ordinary women in our time.  Pilgrims from all over the world walk the Way of the Cross in Jerusalem, through the Old City, while ordinary life is going on for the people who live there.  That, too, is not so different from the day when Jesus was led on a similar path. 

And that is as far as our journey has taken us.  Next Monday, Pam will share, and then it will be my turn.  Margie does the final meditations.  I am profoundly blessed to share the journey with these women, and we all know ourselves blessed and challenged to share the journey of Jesus to the Cross-and beyond into new life.  

Middlemarch and Middle Age

This week's New Yorker has a wonderful article by Rebecca Mead, "Middlemarch and Me: What George Eliot teaches us."

I think it's been at least 15 years since I've read this novel, and I was fascinated by Mead's comments on how differently she has read it over the years: "I have gone back to "Middlemarch" every five years or so, my emotional response to it evolving at each revisiting." On her most recent reading, Mead writes:

Rather than limning the inchoate hopes of youth, "Middlemarch" seemed to be about the resignations that attend middle age. It became a primer to the limitations on accomplishment that are, for the most part, the lot of even the most ardent and aspiring among us. (Lydgate dies at fifty, believing himself a failure: "He had not done what he once meant to do.") ...With each reading I became only more grateful for Eliot's wise, consoling grace, and only more admiring of the quiet celebration of the unremarkable that infuses the book's unforgettable conclusion: "The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

Mead's essay is challenging me to re-read Middlemarch. (And being able to read the Kindle free download on my iPhone is very convenient.) What might not have looked to me in my thirties, or even a couple of years ago, like appropriately challenging aspirations now appear honorable to me. "Living faithfully a hidden life" looks just fine to me. The novel's ending is framed by what one might wish to see as a companion quote at the beginning, in the section titled "Prelude":

Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.

From the vantage point of middle age, I see myself in just that predicament. My own attempts at goodness seem largely failures, and are, indeed, virtually always dispersed among hindrances in scope petty, tragic, or somewhere in between. Mead says that Eliot is unfailingly charitable in her authorial evaluations of her novels' characters: "even when it comes to her most flawed characters...her default authorial position is one of pity." I hope I can learn to be as charitable in my evaluation of my own life. I don't think it is possible to be as insightful or accurate about one's own life as someone else can be, given the inevitable blindness that Jesus described as having a log in one's eye.

Somehow in the world of refrigerator magnets, inspirational books, and greeting cards, people began to attribute to Eliot the sentiment that "It is never too late to be what you might have been." Mead describes her futile attempt to locate such a quotation anywhere in Eliot's writings, given that most of Eliot's work seems to argue the very opposite: that "it is always too late to be what you might have been--but...virtually without exception the unrealized life is worth living." (In a lighter vein, but expressing not too different a sentiment, G.K.Chesterton once said that anything worth doing is worth doing badly.) Middle age is about facing limits. Perhaps, one may hope, those very real, non-abstract limits may function as the rules for writing sonnets function for the poet: to give structure and context to the time that remains in one's life.

If my attempts to complete a re-reading of this novel from a vantage point of middle age do not founder on hindrances, perhaps I will follow up this post with further thoughts on Middlemarch and middle age. Is anybody else inspired to read along with me?