yes

the world is my monastery.
i will chant prayers under my breath
at all hours of the night or day.
with pure attention,
wash clothes and dishes,
feed my family.
i will feast around the table--
break bread, drink wine,
hear the sound of my own laughter.
i will welcome every stranger as the Christ,
offer sanctuary to the exile
even when the exile is myself.
i will sit in the silent cell of my heart
distilled down to one smoldering
flame of desire;
see burning bushes everywhere.

life is my canvas.
i will cast out my creativity
like seeds in a field
and wait in anticipation
for a harvest of joy.
i will take note of--and play with--
color, movement, texture,
incandescence;
swing my arms wide in
explanation and demonstration.
i will fall in love a thousand times
and a thousand times more;
be mesmerized, enchanted, seriously delighted
and not once
and not once
silence my voice or hide my heart.

when i press into my life,
i am like a tuning fork
vibrating with a
recurrent, resounding
yes.

self-portrait

i don't care about your
certainties and your correct answers.
tell me instead what it is that you love--
and why.
tell me have you made friends with
loneliness and disappointment;
are you intimate with beauty and gladness?
do you let life's daily humiliations
return you to the ground of your being
or do you pretend they don't exist?
do you let the sharp piercing
of sorrow or joy
move you to the edge,
take you through a doorway,
so that you can shed your skin
and emerge transformed?
tell me, have you mined the secrets
of your shadow self,
felt the curse of it and
turned it inside out to find the gift?
do you know how to breathe underwater
and do you know what it feels like to fly?
tell me.
tell me and
i will listen.

here now

in that liminal space between day and evening
when the mysteries flame forth,
catch fire with the blaze of the dying sun,
then burn down into a smoldering blue light,
i was walking the circuitous, ancient path of the prayer labyrinth,
soul-deep in silence and offering my heart’s prayer to God
with the fervor of one who is seeking yet has already been found,
when i heard the voices; sadly, not of angels
but of humans.

i looked up at the noise and saw them
coming along the bamboo-lined path.
the little boy broke away from his mother and
ran out onto the stones of the labyrinth with me.
irritation surged up,
my agenda altered and
my centering meditation fractured.
but remembering the enticing words i’d heard earlier—
the call to walk through my moments and days with
uncharacteristic leisure, relaxed, unhurried,
present—i was chastened. . .
and reminded of my life back home with two young boys
who disrupt my quiet, prayerful spaces
with uncanny regularity.

“aha, a metaphor of my life,” i smiled to myself
as i watched the child trying to navigate
his way to the center of this unicursal path.
and i, reluctantly, let go of my original purpose
for being in this space.
i have been asked to love whatever comes,
to take it all “with great trust."

my soul’s labyrinth toward divine union,
the perpetual enchantment, the persistent invitation,
is to see and touch and taste God in the ordinary
everydayness of all things and in all places,
and to lay down my solitary visions and my ecstasies,
to find the Sacred
here, now.

my literary boys

yesterday was the awards assembly at wyatt and seth's school, and during this assembly, The Unfinished Jigsaw for 2010/2011 (an anthology of literary and art work by students from c'ville city schools) was released. the children who have literary or art work chosen to be in the publication are mentioned and presented w/ a copy of the book. well, both collier boys had their work chosen! seth wrote a story, and wyatt a poem. i’m including them below:

___________________________________

The Fire-Breathing Dragon
by seth collier, grade 1

There was a boy who saw a big, green dragon. The dragon woke up and saw the boy. He got out of the dark cave and chased the boy named Seth. Seth saw a sword and a shield. He picked it up and the dragon breathed fire at Seth. Whoosh! The dragon broke the shield. Seth put the sword up and stabbed the dragon. Uhhhhh! The dragon fell down and died.

Trapped, a haiku
by wyatt collier, grade 3

In the cell with bars
You start to cry for some help
No one comes for you.

___________________________________

now, if you’re like me, you are delighted by seth's story--so like him to be the hero of a dragon story, ha ha--but you might start freaking out about wyatt’s poem: “wow. such a stark, powerful image. . .but oh no! why does wyatt feel trapped? why does he feel like no one is going to come for him?” because of course this poem surfaced from the depths of his subconsciousness. you might assume that here, in written form, is finally the proof that you are a terrible parent. (unless you are not his parent, in which case you think “oh dear, something has gone terribly wrong with the way miska is parenting her child. here is the proof in written form, published no less.”)

this must be investigated--or "gently explored"--with this 9 year old child. last night as wyatt was playing his new keyboard in his room (he has memorized swan lake, the one-handed version, and we hear it repeatedly), i walked in as nonchalantly as possible and asked him if he would tell me about his poem. he said sure. i asked how it came about and what prompted him to write about being trapped. he told me his class went outside and sat under the covered sidewalk while it rained and wrote their poems and that his friend gave him the idea. “oh, really?” i was still so casual with only a tiny bit of hysteria creeping into my voice. “but do you feel that way, wyatt? like you’re trapped and no one is coming to help you?” (so subtle.)

“huh?” was his initial response. then he looked up at the ceiling to think about it, and said, “hmmm, i don’t think so. . .nah, i don’t feel that way.”

we can only hope, people. we can only hope. that boy is deep and God only knows what goes on inside him.

he was finished with the conversation after that, ready to move on to something else, and i was summarily dismissed from his room.