On Sunrises at 47

DiDi took me to watch the sun come up over the ocean today. It was a present; my birthday is later this week, but the weather is predicted to turn.

The experience reminds me of motherhood.

You wait as the sky begins at black, flat stomach busy only with consumption.

And then the sky tinges gently at the edges, softening, roundness forming from a place you can't see.

The bulge grows larger, a gradual magic that happens before your eyes, apparently without motion.

Your view of the universe changes as you watch. The sky so stable and predictably blue or steel striates suddenly into pink and orange and violet. The world is changed as you watch; everything is colored by this miracle unfolding.

Finally it crowns. Gloriously unique, magnetically miraculous, filling your heart with the wonder of creation and the joy of possibilities.

You watch as it continues to rise, distance increasing. The colors fade as it progresses, as if newness and color are one, both of them worn away by time.

Throughout the day you check on it, this creation you remember as wonderful. You watch it and set your clock by it and live your life by it and are grateful for it. Every hour.

Inevitably, bittersweet, you watch it go away again. A burst of color if conditions are right. A cloudy withdrawal if they are not.

And you stand in the dark, serenaded by stars that sing or drenched by their weeping.

That's MY God

Another Holy Spirit moment from my recent trip. Both DiDi and I have family in the area that we visited, and so our week was broken up between relaxation together and time with mothers and sisters and neices and nephews of every size. I had not been to an ocean in years, and so one of our goals was to spend some time on the beach. Our flight home was not scheduled till late afternoon, and so on that day we packed up all our gear and decided to go for one last hour or two at a beach before heading to the airport. 

It was beautiful, and turning away was hard. So hard in fact, that we ended up staying later than we should, and our frantic drive to the airport included a bit of hysterics on my part along with much rushing and hustling and scrambling. I've struggled lately with time, and have repeatedly underestimated times I've expected to get back from the grocery store, or from church, or from this or that event. Returning home an entire day late really would have been the icing on my cake of lateness. I was wracked with guilt. DiDi would undoubtedly say I was overboard with it. (Might have had something to do with the farewell wine I'd consumed. But that's another tale for another day.) 

 We eventually arrived and rushed up to the desk to check our bags and check in. I looked a sight; all mascara-smeared cheeks, wind-tangled hair, and reined-in hysteria. The two airline reps looked at eachother and muttered "These must be the ones." They knew we were rushing, knew the flight we must be looking for, and also knew the connection we needed to make. They were bracing for the conversation that was about to take place. "You DO know that your flight has been delayed, don't you?", the closest one said. My jaw literally dropped to my chest. I was saved. Somehow, I had been saved. But looking at them, I could tell there was more they had to say. The rep braced herself again, then informed us that the next flight out would be too late to make our connection back home. We could not leave until the following day. 

Not only was I saved from being my usual, lame, late self, I was also given an extra day with no familial obligations and nothing to do but relax with my closest, dearest, and most beloved friend. I gaped a slack-jawed gape at DiDi, and saw that she was wearing the smug look she reserves for occasions when our Lord does something fantastic and stunning that knocks me sideways. The look that says "Yeah, that's MY God. You know it. Mmm Hmm." All casual while simultaneously bursting with pride. 

 The airline reps, beleaguered from having to give bad news to customer after customer all afternoon, looked bewildered and one of them asked: "You're happy about this???" DiDi, being the cool chick that she is, God's comrade, Daughter of Thunder, calmly tossed back "Answered prayer." 

So that's the story of how I got to stay another day, to drive a convertible back toward the beach, to eat a lovely, relaxed meal in a nice restaurant, and to huddle wrapped in a blanket with the friend of my heart watching the sun come up over the ocean. 

Imagine: the maker of that sun and that ocean and that incredible miraculous sand, desired to give -me- these gifts. Yep. That's MY God.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

-- John Keats

I Sing the Body Electric (III)

I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

--Walt Whitman

Day 5: It's hard to hear Him while rushing

No news flash this: it's hard to hear God while rushing around in the busyness of life.

Slept in today (ah bliss!) and then drove to visit my Mom for the afternoon.

I increasingly love to drive longish distances for the chance it provides to gaze at the world and think, though my thoughts didn't go very deep either to or fro. No great mystery of life solved.

Thought more about the Matthew passage in which Peter walks on water, and suspect that it might have been intended to connect with OT water miracles such as the parting of the Red Sea and the Jordan. Interesting that instead of parting the waters for Peter, He gave him power directly over them.

I still need to dig more deeply into this passage and see what Matthew was trying to tell the Jews about who Peter was.

Sarah McLachlan: I Love You (song lyrics)

(Listen here.)

I have a smile
stretched from ear to ear
to see you walking down the road.

We meet at the lights
I stare for a while
the world around us disappears.

It's just you and me
on my island of hope
a breath between us could be miles.

Let me surround you
my sea to your shore
let me be the calm you seek.

Oh and every time
I'm close to you
there's too much I can't say
and you just walk away.

And I forgot
to tell you
I love you.
And the night's too long
and cold here without you.
I grieve in my condition
for I cannot find the words to say I need you so.

Oh and every time
I'm close to you
there's too much I can't say
and you just walk away.

And I forgot
to tell you
I love you.
And the night's too long
and cold here
without you.
I grieve in my condition
For I cannot find the words to say I need you so.

Shakespeare on love (5)

The sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath none.

Screwtape on Christ and pleasure

From The Screwtape Letters, referring to Christ:

He’s a hedonist at heart. All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a facade. Or only like foam on the seashore. Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure. He makes no secret of it; at His right hand are ‘pleasures for evermore’. Ugh! I don’t think he has the least inkling of that high and austere mystery to which we rise in the Miserific Vision. He’s vulgar, Wormwood. He has a bourgeois mind. He has filled His world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least — sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it’s any use to us. We fight under the cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side.

--C.S. Lewis

Poetry for Valentines Day (II)

Love's Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever,
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle;--
Why not I with thine?

See! the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven,
If it disdained it's brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;--
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley