As I begin to write these words it is just after 8.30 in the morning, as the office of Lauds is being said and sung a few miles away at Turvey Abbey Benedictine monastery.

Yesterday, I returned from Turvey after co-leading our first Enneagram weekend of the year, introducing a new group of people to this insightful system of personal and spiritual growth. And what a positive and thoughtful group they were.

At the same time, the six-week online course I’ve been part of, Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist, led by Christine at Abbey of the Arts has ended. I’m grateful to have been a part of this community of people, all of us ordinary yet extraordinary.

I am so full of hope and joy about the groundswell of desire for growth that I sense all around us, and not only because, in the Northern hemisphere at least, spring is beginning to break through the frozen ground. I’ve noticed that increasingly when I talk about what could be seen as a somewhat eccentric preoccupation with Benedictine life and with spiritual and creative growth, people I meet are interested and asking questions. There’s a different feeling around from the days a few years ago when colleagues would look at me as if I’d suddenly grown two heads. Or perhaps I’m simply less tentative in my self.

This morning I read a poem from the awakening hour section of Macrina Widerkehr‘s book seven sacred pauses. It reflects perfectly this sense of grace and renewal that I’m aware of:

What lifts the heron leaning on the air
I praise without a name. A crouch, a flare,
a long stroke through the cumulus of trees,
a shaped thought at the sky – then gone. O rare!
Saint Francis, being happiest on his knees,
would have cried Father! Cry anything you please.
But praise. By any name or none. But praise
the white original burst that lights
the heron on his two soft kissing kites.
When saints praise heaven lit by doves and rays,
I sit by pond scums till the air recites
Its heron back. And doubt all else. But praise.

John Ciardi

What grace and renewal can you see in the moments that make up your life?

Image by S Wolfe

Elsewhere:

And as we approach the sacred time of Lent, Claire Bangasser talks about Cultivating our Soul, and Jan Richardson meditates upon Ashes and Sojourner Truth.

Like many people, I’m choosing a word to guide me through this new year. Last year, it was heart. This year it is hospitality. Why? What does it mean to me?

The dictionary has this to say:

Hospitality: the quality or disposition of receiving and treating guests and strangers in a warm, friendly, generous way.

It’s an important part of Benedictine spirituality; St Benedict says in his Rule:

All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, who said “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” … Once guests have been announced, the prioress or abbot and the community are to meet them with all the courtesy of love.

The welcoming of people into my life, and especially into my personal space, is not something I’ve been good at. I have kind of a push/pull relationship with others: I want intimate friendship and I love my friends, and I also value my own company and my solitude. That’s fine, but in recent years the balance has tipped too far into solitude. Subconsciously, I’ve put up all kinds of barriers, both physical: a house too messy and dirty to invite others into (I’m not exaggerating), and mental: cynicism, procrastination, hostility, depression, putting on a good “face”. I’ve become isolated.

So there’s definitely a selfish side to my choice of hospitality as both word and concept. But I’ve decided not to worry about that; a person could go crazy peeling away all the layers in this sort of thing, it’s enough for now to be aware that they exist.

But of course hospitality isn’t only about people. It’s about welcoming into my life all kinds of concepts, ideas and imaginings. And it’s about the less welcome guests, and what I can learn from them. All those negative emotions: what do they mean, what are they signposting?

There’s a poem by Rumi that many of you know, and that I first posted here back in 2007, which expresses this brilliantly:

This being human is a guesthouse;
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all.
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture.
Still treat each guest honourably.
She may be clearing you out for some new delight
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them all at the door laughing and invite them in
Be grateful for whatever comes
Because each has been sent as
A guide from beyond!

In my more flippant moments, I think of Rumi as an honorary Benedictine, but of course his words point us to the deep wisdom flowing beneath all faiths and all humanity. Christine uses the poem and writes beautifully of this same concept in one of her posts from 2008, Radical Hospitality. And I’ve just found this post by Jan Richardson which talks of the home as sacred space and describes the custom of blessing the house for Epiphany (on the 6th January). She then extrapolates this into thinking of the year we’ve just entered as a space to inhabit. It’s powerful stuff.

So a commitment to hospitality, to welcome, is what the space of this year will mean for me. What about you?

Image by Hamed Saber

Elsewhere:

Words of the year are flourishing everywhere, and I find myself a little envious of some, such as Roxanne’s “discipline”, which I need so badly. And Epiphany Girl’s “courage” was very nearly what I chose. Lucy’s flowing with a watery theme, and Christine is embracing “sovereignty”. I know there must be many I’ve left out, so let me know in the comments.

Today is National Poetry Day in the UK. This year’s theme is heroes and heroines.

Poetry is of huge importance in my life. I wrote here about a poet whose work allowed me to engage emotionally with my spirituality, and the Psalms are to me one of the most poetic and beautiful (if sometimes barbarically beautiful) elements of the Bible.

If we’re lucky children, our parents sing us to sleep with the poetry of lullabies. I can hear my mother’s voice:

Golden slumbers kiss your eyes
smiles await you when you rise
sleep little baby don’t you cry
and I will sing a lullaby.

I have a list of poets who are my heroes. Among them are: Marge Piercy, Leonard Cohen, Naomi Shihab Nye, Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, Rumi, Hafiz. I’m beginning to explore Yeats.

But in some ways, perhaps it’s more important to celebrate so-called “ordinary” people who write poetry. I always look forward to Christine’s regular poetry parties at Abbey of the Arts. Although my own muse has dried up in recent months, I love reading everyone’s contributions. It makes me realise how very gifted we all are in our different ways. Not ordinary at all.

Share

So in the spirit of National Poetry Day, please share in the comments who your poetry heroes and heroines are, and why.

Image by clairity

Elsewhere:

The image I’ve used above is of a statue of Phillis Wheatley. In my ignorance I’d never heard of her until today when I was browsing Flickr for photos tagged “poetry”. Brought to America on a slave ship, she was the first published African American woman poet. She was only 31 when she died.

The Poetry Book Society has an excellent little guide “Poetry Testing Kit”  for poetry newbies, by Simon Armitage. I particularly liked this: “The Test of Nerves – somebody once said that a poem shouldn’t just tell you not to play with matches, it should burn your fingers. In other words, does the poem create a sensation, rather than simply an understanding?”

Yesterday I had the huge pleasure of watching Leonard Cohen in concert for the second time this year.

Sitting here now coming down from the high – of the man, his music and his musicians – several impressions are jumbled around in my head.

The beauty of his voice and his re-interpretation of his own poetry. The early songs, especially Bird on a Wire, sounded freshly minted, as if I’d never really heard the words before:

Like a baby, stillborn,
like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
But I swear by this song
and by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee.

But perhaps that makes it all sound too solemn. The guy is a showman: funny, tender, sharp and ironic. The boulevardier giving us a mocking version of I’m Your Man has a light touch in repartee. There was fun and energy: for his (well-planned) encores he skipped on and off the stage like a six-year-old. The programme notes describe him as “…this godfather and grandfather – a mystic in a gangster’s hat…” and they’re not wrong.

You know what my overriding impression was? That going to church should be like this!

The Cohen concert was sacred territory. He took us from laughter to tears and back again; he used sexual, political and biblical imagery in ways that seemed new and fresh. Cohen the Jew, the Buddhist, the poet, musician, lover and monk spoke intimately and individually to audiences of thousands.

I can scarcely pick out all the highlights, but you know me, I’m going to try!

The song Anthem, with its haunting refrain:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

His subterranean voice without music reading his poem Thousand Kisses Deep, in a silence that defied the dropping of even the tiniest pin:

I loved you when you opened
Like a lily to the heat
I’m just another snowman
Standing in the rain and sleet
Who loved you with his frozen love
His second-hand physique
With all he is and all he was
A thousand kisses deep

The upbeat Democracy, whose refrain “Democracy is coming to the U.S.A”  took on a whole new post-November meaning which brought screams of delight from the crowd:

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

Or his complete and unassailable reclamation of perhaps his greatest song, as he roared and whispered his way through Hallelujah:

I did my best, it wasn’t much.
I couldn’t feel, so I learned to touch.
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you.
Yes even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah.

He did his best and it was electrifying.

I’ve been trawling YouTube for snippets that might give you some idea of how special this sacred space was. The video below is not quite perfect as it ends too soon, but others I found were blurry. This contains the best rendition I can find of a quiet and reverent piece which is now staying with me more than anything else: Cohen speaking his poem/prayer If It Be Your Will, the words of which are then taken up and sung with simple beauty by two of his musicians, the Webb Sisters.

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it will be your will
To let me sing

Joel and Elizabeth golden wedding portrait

This week at her regular poetry party at Abbey of the Arts, Christine reminds us that at this time of year we honour our ancestors, and has invited us to do so in the poetry we contribute.

I’ve been investigating my own family background on and off for a few years now, and have uncovered quite a lot of information. Above is a photograph of my great-grandparents taken in 1931 to commemorate their golden wedding. Census and other records show where my great-grandfather was born in rural Wiltshire and that he came to London as a young man.

My poem below tries to reflect both my interest in the facts of my great-grandfather’s life and my frustration that the facts do not allow me to KNOW him.

Youngest son of a poor rural family,
what made you take those steps?

One hundred miles to a life in London,
in a time before cars ate distance.

Was it fire in your young belly, or
too many mouths for your mother to feed?

How did you meet that rather severe
young woman who became half of you?

Did you think you would share fifty years?
Did you imagine eight children together?

What did you like to eat? Did you smoke?
Did you enjoy your long life, or not?

I want to put flesh on your bones,
emotion in your heart, thoughts in your mind.

I am greedy for knowledge of you that
facts and a photograph cannot give me.

As dark falls earlier each evening, and the first frosts point to the depths of winter, I’m reminded of a visit I paid to a museum exhibition about prehistory. I read a poem there that’s been circling around me ever since. It’s called Routes:

Time has frozen this midwinter night.
Outside, the pavement coated with a transparent skin.

Inside, I retreat into down, sensing the vibration
Of polar sheets creeping south, burying us

A thousand feet under blue ice, diverting the river
Out of the Vale of St Albans into the London Basin.

Welcome home. Welcome first citizen, chasing
Reindeer over the hip joint with France,

Tropical and glacial cycles, waves of migrators –
Your long trek north, from below the Sahara,

Circling a camp fire by the Thames,
The hair of wolves over tight backs; dread-

Locked beards, un-polished eyes, your slow,
Heavy mouths chewing fresh rhinoceros, roasted,

No spices; unaware that you are dislocating
From France as you eat, that the Channel is rising,

That my heated body floats above a London of birch
And pine forest, of open grassland where gangs

Of straight-tusked elephants gather in Trafalgar
Square, hippopotami wallow in the brown marshes

Of Pall Mall and from Marble Arch I gaze longingly
On sheets of marigold, meadowsweet, mint.

Bernardine Evaristo

Well here’s a thing: it’s Christine’s 25th Poetry Party at Abbey of the Arts, the inspiration for writing a poem is celebrating the gift of the written word and, despite my life-long love of books and words, no poem will come!

Ironic that the muse has completely deserted me when she should really have been paying attention.

I saw a news item today though that I loved, and I’m going to share it with you instead.

Ammon Shea is a New Yorker who has spent a year reading through all 20 volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary.

He hasn’t done so because he longs to show off long words in conversation. In fact he believes firmly that conversation is about communication and one does not, therefore, use words others are unlikely to understand.

He’s done it because he loves words. This is what he says:

All the normal emotions – grief, happiness and loss – exist in a dictionary but not necessarily in the order that you would think.

If you come across a word like “remord” (to recall with a touch of regret) it’s impossible to read that word without thinking of things that you regret yourself, he says, or to read “unbepissed” (not having been urinated on) without a chuckle.

Knowing what to call something makes me more aware of that thing. For instance, it’s not terribly useful for me to know that [the sound of] leaves rustled by the trees is a psithurism.

I don’t want to walk down the street with my girlfriend saying: ‘Listen, there’s a psithurism.’ But knowing it means I pay more attention to it.

Similarly, knowing that “undisonant” is the adjective to describe the sound of crashing waves and that “apricity” is the warmth of the winter sun brings these things more often to mind.

It’s not easy to use them in conversation and so I enjoy them for their own sake. They are like one-word poems.

You can read the full story (and more delicious words) here. And remember to head over to Abbey of the Arts to see all the wonderful contributions from those whose muse has not deserted them.

What’s your favourite obscure word?

Photograph by Abbey of the Arts

It was poetry party day at Abbey of the Arts yesterday – the Autumnal Equinox Edition. Christine invites us to contribute a reflection on the beauty of the fall. I hope you’ll go over and add your contribution if you haven’t already. Here’s mine:

The gate to the next path
on the yearly journey
stands wide and welcoming.

Lit softly, smothered
with crisp bright garlands.
The golden dark lane

invites me through richness
toward the bare, drifting
bone-deep beauty to come.

Tune - waiting

Today is Poetry Party at Abbey of the Arts. I hope you’ll join in. As usual, Christine has given us a theme and a visual inspiration – the beautiful photograph above of her dog Tune, waiting for her walk.

Here’s my contribution to the poetry party:

Waiting. The word implies
waiting for something
particular.

Listening. The word implies
listening to something
in particular.

But what if our waiting
and our listening
are no more than
waiting, and listening?

Sometimes we wait to see
what will happen.
And listen in case we hear
the voice of God.

Christine at Abbey of the Arts is back from her travels and yesterday launched her latest invitation to poetry.

This time she uses the image of music in the layout reproduced here, and the poem A Brief for the Defence, by Jack Gilbert. Gilbert’s poem, new to me, talks of the power of joy in terrible situations.

For some reason, images and thoughts of the sea have been much in my mind lately, and I drew from this for my own poem:

Spirals of sound,
pattern of notes
like a seashell

held to your ear
for the melodious
rush of tides.

If the ocean
devours the land
it will drown us

in music.