then the knowing comes

The first thing I did yesterday was get coffee with Christine. Through every spiritual, emotional, relational valley in my life since I've known her (about 10 years) she has been by my side - when I'm stagnant, still, or in the first stages of movement, she is there. I think she has influenced me more than any other person in my life aside from my parents.

Yesterday she encouraged me to deeply consider what things comfort me and to pursue them on a daily basis. Pleasures that contribute to, rather than detract or distract from, the fullness of my desires and need for stability, confidence, and love.

I gave it some thought and two of the things I listed are

1. Reading and writing about poetry

2. Journaling

So I'd like to share two things I read today as a result of this pursuit. I'm trying to read a Psalm a day from The Literary Bible. Here is an excerpt from Psalm 23:

You set a table before me

in the presence of my enemies.

You give me grace

to quiet them

to be full with humanness

to be warm in my soul's lightness.

The grace to quiet my enemy - despair. To be obtain, or even just begin to hope for, fullness and warmth when I am empty and cold.

The second is a poem by Rilke. I picked him up off my shelf tonight and found a new poem that I have an instant affection for. Interestingly enough, I just listened to an episode of On Being in which the host interviewed the translator of the book of Rilke's poems that I own. She referenced this poem. I probably wouldn't have recognized it, if not for the memorable first line:

I love the dark hours of my being.

My mind deepens into them.

There I can find, as in old letters,

the days of my life, already lived,

and held like a legend, and understood.

Then the knowing comes: I can open

to another life that's wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree

rustling over a gravesite

and making real the dream

of the one its living roots

embrace:

a dream once lost

among sorrow and songs.

If you're wondering how a poem that beings "I love the dark hours of my being" can lift my spirits, I understand. But there's just something about "meeting" a man or woman who can voice the condition I'm in. It's comforting to me to know I'm not the only one who has felt this way, and in fact, there are people who can describe it beautifully.

This poem makes me think of journaling.

Old letters to myself, some of which it takes me years to be able to read again.

Held like a legend and understood - there have been times when I've wondered "Was that real- the love I thought that person had for me; the faith I felt and clung to during that time; the movements of my heart and mind that I seem to have no way of accessing anymore.

By looking back, I see what was possible then and I am free to hope that some sort of growth is possible now, to maybe even imagine what shape it will take.

In the presence of the gravesite that now hosts my barren expectations and hopes, I am tempted to think that the roots of my being have no place left to go. But Rilke says that the tree embraces rather than repels the gravesite's soil, drawing strength from the plot of land provided, not chosen. My recorded thoughts bear witness to this cycle of birth, growth, death, and resurrection. I read my journals and I remember what happened last time and rustle, to borrow Rilke's language, as I consider what hope is available to me now.

I think of another unforgettable opening line of perhaps my favorite poem, by Louise Gluck of course. This has echoed in my mind countless times over the years.

At the end of my suffering there was a door.