Where We Write..Photos from Home

 

This is where I write, most days..on the bed with coffee.

 

And a place for Yarrow to play nearby..you can see she's not in her chair though.

She's never in her chair when I'm writing.

 

There she is! Distracting me..

 

Where do you write? Show me!

Link your own photos below!

 

"Do Młodego Przyjaciela" - A Guest Poem from Nanynka

We are exploring various loves for the moment, and my dear friend, Nanynka offers her poem for consideration. Love, friendship, longing, and reflection.

Thank you, Nanynka for sharing your lovely, heartfelt poem: Do Młodego Przyjaciela (to a young friend). Your loving comments, gentle critiques, and responses are appreciated!

  

* * * *   * * * * 

I like you

as I liked my little sister

those few days when she was vunerable;

when I saw in her someone who mirrored me -

unexpectedly-

and was beautiful.

I yearn over you

as I yearn over a different life I might have lived

had I been braver, more aware

a life in which my parents made me stick with my sonatinas

when I was too shy and childish to make myself.

A life in which I traded top bunks:

my own for a distant college dorm's.

A life in which I married young - 

young enough to become a mother

with my own sons and daughters to yearn over.

I dream of you

as I dream of a girl I wish I knew

though I am afraid to approach

because the crowd around her 

neither asks to be remembered,

nor expects to be carried onward.

She owns so many of my dreams

but so many more belong to you.

I love you

with some share of the love I have for the boy you remind me of

and I love him

with some share of the love I have for you.

And I don't know how you are all of these things to me

when all I know of you

is a little music;

an hour at your side; talk of snow

and small towns;

also, countless times I've watched a light come suddenly into your face

and attempted to understand why.

It's a little shameless of me, that watching,

but it's hard to miss the chance to know you better.

We have you for so little time.

I pray for you

as I prayed for my hedonist, who sang Handel -

two hours of fervent music, two hours of wild prayer -

and I pray for you

as I pray for my long-ago student, who mocked fear

and laughed at God

but shared his earphones

and hugged me to his trenchcoat;

and I pray for you

as I pray for the ones who are mine by blood

though not my own -

upheld in empty arms and heart spilling over, as you are -

when I see in them "the pure, the bright, the beautiful"

and intercede without words,

terrified at what could happen to their hearts

and their minds,

 their bodies

and their souls

in this rapacious world.

I pray for you because

there's almost nothing else I can do for you

so I do it with all my might.

 

Update

Happy Easter & Blessed May Day!

I ended Easter week on a low note. The sort of sickly, weak, and tender low note that left me feverish and bed-ridden for two days, and fragile for another two. Ugh. I haven't been sick like that for so long, it sort of came as a shock to me. I missed a chance to speak to people about the Liturgy (for real, I was invited to a Youth conference!), missed my husband's Shakespeare party, left all the baking up to him (he made an amazingly tasty chocolate cake!), and learned that Yarrow is the tenderest of nursemaids.

But last night, I realized how very recovered I was, and celebrated with a night of insomnia..the productive, happy, and just a bit manic sort of insomnia. It's been fun.

So here's what's coming up this month:

• Guest poems (send along one if you're interested in some gentle, loving responses!)
• Book reviews: More kid's books because I love them, and a few grown up books as well.
• A few thoughts on introversion and love.
• The long promised Pan's Labyrinth review!
• Some of my poems to pick apart.
• Easter Icon Reflections
• And The Bartender's Corner.. Thanks to Seth!

 
 Any special requests?
 
 

Easter Icons! Wesołego Alleluja!

 

This week we greet the Risen Christ and He reaches down to lift us to Himself. 

"I am the proud city of the Lord

and I proclaim him with a hundred voices;

in me the praises of David resound. 

I lie reclining in the twilight of the harp

while breathing the evening star."

(Rainer Maria Rilke)

 

Lenten Icons: Mary of Egypt

"Now He had made her one who was loving,

not just the lover pulled and drawn;

and having been shaken by vicious storms

she had come into her own."*

Mary of Egypt, patron of penitents. Her story is well-enough know, a prostitute in Alexandria, who rarely charged for her services (some say because of overwhelming passion, others because she simply loved people, and decided loving them was the best was to bring happiness into their lives..I prefer the latter).  Mary bought a trip to the Holy Land this way, and when she arrived, discovered that she couldn't enter the Churches until she repented. 

What I love about Mary of Egypt most especially, is that we see so obviously that she doesn't change in her conversion, she comes into her own. She is still the passionate one, the whole-hearted giver of herself, she is still promiscuous - unable to limit herself, to be proper or restrained. Only now she is made whole, and her whole self can be loving to the whole selves of others. 

In the desert, her home for years after her conversion, Mary is taught scripture by Christ Himself. She fasts, she blesses St. Zosimas who is in awe of her holiness, walks on water to receive Communion from him, and is later buried by both Zosimas and a Lion - the lion himself stands in for her beloved Christ. She in penitential, reminding us, with Oscar Wilde, that the trouble is less in what we do than in what we become.

 "I only need seven days, I guess,

which no one has claimed or covered before, 

seven pages o loneliness."**

* Rilke. The Risen One

**Rilke. The Book of Hours 

Lenten Icons

"I'm still a novice concerning pain-

that's how small I feel in this great dark;

but if you are there, be heavy and and break through;

have your whole hand do it's work on me"*

The Three Handed Virgin is the Icon in honor of the Theotokos, healer of St. John of Damascus. St. John of Damascus' hand was cut off by the Iconoclast Emperor, Leo III, but when he took his pain to the Virgin, She restored St. John's hand, and he wrote the Icon in gratitude. Originally, the third hand hung around Her neck, but later versions have it as it is in the Icon above, a natural part of Her.

The Three-Handed Virgin, the miracle working Mother of God, reminds us always that God is the restorer of hope, and the healer of all wounds. She is magical, this Mother, offering 'a river of grace' to the children of God who come in faith to rest beneath her mantle. Restoring hands and hearts, bodies and souls, to wholeness.

"And though I am like leaves and loam, 

as often as I pray or paint

it's Sunday and deep down I am 

joyful Jerusalem."* 

Meditations on the Tarot: The Chariot

The Chariot is the card of triumph, and the card of fasting. It is the card which teaches renunciation and mastery through obedience. In it I see St. Mary of Egypt, who's feast was yesterday; the woman who gave up an entire life to follow her Beloved into the desert, where she never again tasted the wines and good foods of her previous life, and, it seems, hardly missed them. 

Mary, who turned so suddenly and so completely from her sins, was saved from the temptation that comes with renunciation, the temptation toward spiritual pride. She was saved, I think, through love. She had that rich and promiscuous love; the love that in one moment falls so completely and never looks back. Love enough to give everything to Him and never question. I picture her with water-hands, Mary of Egypt..long, thin, and brown after her years in the desert, listening to her Lord whisper His words to her in the sunlight, and laughing merrily at the thought of her life to come. 

Fasting is the means to the triumph of love over death, and in these final week of Lent, we recommit ourselves to it, in hope of finding some share of St. Mary's own Triumph.The Chariot card reminds us that renunciation requires love to succeed.