something you can do when your soul (or mine) just can't take one.more.thing.

Last week was the worst. Really, the worst. It was a four-job rejections-in-one-week-some-for-reasons-beyond-my-control-and-some-for-the-worst-reason-of-all-that-is-I-fell-flat-on-my-face-because-I-was-too-afraid-and-blew-an-opportunity-sky-high kind of week. It was one of those week when just when I felt I really couldn't take one more thing before I crumbled and fell into a pile of tears or despair or worse, apathy--one more thing seemed to keep happening.  I was tired, heavy, and shell-shocked by it all. Maybe I took it all a bit too personally, but I've discovered that that is the way of things for me. Things affect me.

So what does one do? I didn't know, and really nobody does in that moment. How do you put back the pieces of your own confidence and find a way to move forward? I didn't know. I didn't even want to know (I think this is okay sometimes). So, I read. I just picked up a book and let everything just sit heavy on my shoulders as I read. Quietly passing time in pages rather than minutes.

This sound like a small thing. It wasn't. I remembered the healing power of fiction, of stories, to restore our soul and to slowly bring life back and to move it forward in some unspoken way.

I read the Life of Pi. I had started it ages ago. A student wanted to read it, and even though I wasn't finished, I could tell how badly he wanted to read it, and just gave it to him. I never saw that copy of it again. I have since seen him around, I think he loved it as much as I did. That is a bond worth all the lost books in the world. He and I shared that story.

I am glad that life made me wait until now to finish it though. It was the exact book that I needed to read at this exact moment in my life. It talked about fear, and losing, and winning, and hope, and grief, and holding on, and fighting for things with your very soul, and then being forced to let them go. Oh, I cannot tell you what it meant it to me. The writing was beautiful. The story moved slowly and that's just what I needed as well--a slow moving, soul searching story. The kind that turns you inside out.

Good fiction works itself out hard and beautiful in the painstaking details,  and often before we even know it, we are changed. It helps us to be unafraid, it helps us to lie low, and to listen, and to wait--goodness is always on the horizon. In it we can find courage, or rest, or joy, or cathartic pain. It will bring us what we need at that moment.

So when your soul cannot take even one more thing, or when you are afraid and cannot take one more step, maybe just start by turning one more page. In it you will find hope, you will find motion, and a slow steady momentum. And when you are finally ready to lift your head from the pages and face reality again, you may find that your spirit has been strengthened to hold on, or let go, or fight, or give up, or whatever it is you needed the strength to do.

So even though nothing in the world seems to have worked out in a way I would have guessed or wanted, I am least reminded of the salvation that can be found in a good piece of fiction. Sometimes we fight our fears quietly, and in the pages of book and not out in world. Sometimes it is the power of stories that see us through.


“I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.” 

― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

bringing the boat in at night...

You start out gliding through glass.

Quiet, just you, under a wide, full moon, rising over the dark waters. Dimly lighting the way.

There are lights, others, like you, drifting with some purpose in mind.
Sometimes you can't tell how far or close they really are. 

The trick is to not try to see too far ahead. To see what's right there.

Stay centered, and bring her safely in.

It takes a special kind of vigilance,

keeping your eye on the shore lights but still right on ahead,

watching for stray buoys, or logs,  settled in the silent night waters.

Then the shore lights near a little,
Specks on the horizon, growing bolder, hailing you to a safe place.

But it will still take longer than you thought.

You'll start to wonder in the black if you really saw what you thought. If that is the shore you wanted?
Or was it a ways back? If you are really moving towards dry ground. 

Stable and solid.

But you must see it through. You must trust what you knew of this place in the brilliant light of day.

When sky and shore and water were all so distinct.

You must move inch by inch through the depths.  For eventually the shore will near and you will find yourself tied sturdily off on a dock. 

You're feet firmly on the ground.

findING a place

Today is one of those days for me. A dark day.

It is one of those days for no particular reason at all, and for every reason in the world.

It has been a gray, rainy, lonely, ragged, tired, heavy, tried-to-pull-myself-up-but couldn't, kind of day.

It is days like this that I must write. Sometimes without really having anything to actually say, but I must say something.

I need someway to move forward. Something concrete to look at. Words. Maybe they aren't really concrete. But they are the something that I need right now.

Words are the something that I need to write or read or hear or speak.

I am an emotional person. I've finally, after many years, embraced this about myself. All of the joy, anger, grief, quietness, anxiety, "blah-ness", empathy, and any other emotion you could possibly think of need some place to go, and today they go here.

They become words.

People need words. It is our words that inspire and move and change us. Words can break us into a thousand bits. The absence of words can do the same. And sometimes that's just it I've noticed. The absence of words can break us to bits. The absence of words can destroy us.

I often wonder why I blog or why does anybody else for that matter, and that's just it. I do it for words. Mine and others.

We need each other. We need words. And although, I will always, always,  value the real life words, of a real life person--flesh and bone and heart and beauty--sitting across from you with the weight of the world or the joy and wonder of it within them, so much more. Somehow, I think we, or at least I, need this. This space. This very odd, public space to give and receive the wonder of words.

So, as I make it through this dark day, that is here for no reason in particular and for every reason in the world, I at least have the quietness, and steadiness of words to see me through.

Thank you for being a part of it.

movING on...

It is this time of year,
that the tall and golden sun flowers bow their great heads, to mourn the end of summer.

quietly and carefully the garden has been turned under in a kind of closing ceremony,
like the fresh and sacred ground of a tomb.

Preparing the soft and giving earth to wait out another winter.

The sweat and wonder of summer has long since left, and we wait.

We wait in the fiery, golden, light of autumn, set against it's lengthened shadows,

deep and mysterious.

We wait in its damp morning fog

Or its gray drizzling mornings.

Our hearts grow in heaviness and awe at the sight of the first frost, cold and unforgiving
and lovely.

The geese call out, harsh and metallic, a warning
and a wanting.

Different days are coming.

It is this time of year, that we celebrate and grieve. We let go, and hold on, and we wait, and remember, the days that are to come.

celebratING a simple life

I wasn't going to garden this year.

 "I have too much going on."

But in the busyness of this summer. I needed something.

I needed at least one, small, summer, miracle.

One that gives all summer long, and even gives into early fall,

and with a little sweat and diligence, gives all winter,

through cans of salsa, and sauce.

I wanted something to remind me of the beauty of giving.

How if something has roots, and is cared for,

it will grow, tall and lovely, with leaves and fruit,

in the warm summer sun.

I needed something, just one thing this summer,

to carry me through.

It is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life."
--Bilbo Baggins

Easter mornING

So, I may have failed at this poem everyday thing (that was sort of inevitable). The good news is, it has accomplished the goal of reviving creativity. It has made me think about poetry and writing, which is what I really wanted anyway. 

This year, due to scheduling mostly, we didn't go to our regular church for Easter. We went to a sunrise service that was held on the Moravian settlement of Schoenbrunn Village . This was my first sunrise service ever. It was so surprisingly beautiful to me. It was the simplicity and quietness of it all that was so moving to me.  Normally, I love what our own church does but,  being outside, with no lighting or bands, or shows was a refreshing change of pace for me. I honestly don't know what I think of this...it's still a work in progress.

__________

This year it came without billboards, without signs.

It came without announcement, much like it really would have back then, I guess.

When it came, we gathered,

 at dawn,

ragtagged.

Dressed not in the normal frill fit for the day,

but still in the drab and heaviness of winter,

to ward off what remained of it’s chill

on that early spring morning.

Thankful for scarves and old mittens,

boots, and wool coats meant for hunting, or farming.

The mismatched lot of us, huddled to say together,

“This we believe, this we truly believe,”

Under an ancient oak,
as old as the ground we stood on, as time-worn as our words.

“This we believe, this we truly believe”.

Quiet, we stood,

and listened, as The Story was read to the music of our own breath,

 in

and out.

“This we believe, this we truly believe.”

It’s words rang out clean and clear and confident,

standing still

but stirring our souls until we joined the song together,

“This we believe, this we truly believe.”

Moving from the silent sacred to our own resurrected joy, as we sang the old hymns, chanting together.

“This we believe. This we truly believe!”

Like it once was,

centuries ago, as they sang these same words, on this same solemn ground,

huddled in their own wool coats, to celebrate their own winter’s end, their own new Life,

and This,

“This we believe. This we truly believe.”

It came this year, quiet and rising.

Without programs, without sound systems, without lighting or rehearsal.

Without any real warning.

It came this year, full of subtle but expectant hope.

This we believe, this we truly believe.

revivING creativity

April is National Poetry Month. For me, it could also very accurately be named national (or just Harding household) procrastination month. I have several final projects I should be working on, emails to type regarding end of the school year events, and my Praxis II I could be studying for...yet, here I am. This happens every year at this time. There is just something about April that makes me run from school work like it's a serial killer. (Although, let's be honest, it sort of is one, in  a slow torturous sort of way...)

In the spirit of procrastination and hopefully more so, poetry, I have decided to try and write or at least post a poem everyday. This is honestly more for myself then it is for anyone else (you may now bow out gracefully if you hate poetry). I love to write and don't make time for it, and I feel I am giving my procrastination a positive outlet, making it into more of an "alternate productivity" than procrastination. Right??? It can be anything, a freestyle, sonnet, even a haiku. Just something. This could blow up in my face. This could really just be a month of awful poetry. 

I know that I probably won't post everyday. I say post instead of write because I'm not sure if forcing myself to write a poem everyday is conducive to good poetry or not. That really is a question more than a statement. So, on some days, I may just find a poem by a favorite poet and post it here. All in all, I'm hoping for this to be a revival of creativity for me.

procrastination,

one test, a paper to write,

so I'll clean the house.

p.s.---This isn't starting out well. I just stared for forty minutes. Wrote a whole poem about morning I'd been thinking about lately anyway, hated it, tried to post poem by a favorite poet but it didn't seem to "fit". So, I gave up and wrote that dumb haiku. I'm trying too hard.

writING

For my teaching reading and writing class, we had to take sometihng we had written earlier in the class and make it into a four page piece. I've never tried this before, but I chose a poem. I chose The Dark Things. I don't know if this helps or kills the poem. It a four poem piece. Each poem is connected to the others, but hopefully distinct. I have no idea if this is good or not and I'm not just being modest. I'm just not sure. Its really long, so if  you don' tlike poetry, this isn't for you.  Well, here it is:





Four poems about you, for whenever you need them most:



Part 1: What you are not.

You are not too small.
You are not too unimportant.

You are stronger than you know.

You are not too tired,
You are not what they say.

You happen to have what it takes.

You are not alone.
You are not undone.

You are not as fearful as you think.

You are not unlovely,
You are not a coward.

You are not about to fall apart.

You are not too weak.
You are not too faint-hearted.

You have what it takes for one more step.

So take it, for then, you will find you have the strength for the next.

Because this is not your stop.



Part 2: What is in you.

Some days, the dark things win.
The days that are deep down and heavy hearted.

Those dark things are down inside our shaded souls, tremendous, and terrifying, and cold.
When try as we may, we cannot imagine life any other way.

We cannot pull ourselves from those dungeons, deep, and spiraled down.
We know what it is to want.

But, we know too, that that’s not all we are.

We know in us lies light and loveliness, beauty and bravery,
and the quiet, wild, courage to carry us through.

but, that all seems worlds away in some high castle tower.

For somedays,
some days,
the dark things win.



Part 3: What belongs to you.

This is your adventure.

It is not what you thought it’d be.

It is not always as exciting as you’d once imagined,
at least not on the surface.

It is darker and scarier than you could have dreamed.

Some of the days seem long, and tiring, and you don’t always feel like
the hero you’d always thought of,


Strong, valiant, and brave.

Other days seem difficult and impossible, the kind they never told you about.

The kind filled with back breaking work, or even the slow strange tears of failure.

There is sweat, the kind that causes you to stop for just a moment and wipe your brow, before you just keep plodding on.


It’s not at all like they said.

It doesn’t feel like an adventure.



-

But it may be one still, an adventure that is,
and it’s yours.

-

There, beneath what seems so dim and cold.
Or, so ordinary and normal, not the stuff of some great story.


It’s there.

The quiet slow kind of adventure,
the kind that makes you who you’ve always wanted to be.

Someday it may come, quicker than you dreamed, or slower,
that is not for me to say,
nor you,

Someday, You will find yourself again on some marvelous mountain top.

Standing on two strong legs,
And that will be your adventure too.


You will have conquered, and fought, and rejoiced, and sang.


But this, this dark and ordinary day,
this one moment,


this, dear friend,


This is your adventure.


Live it well.



Part 4: Where you must be..

When you have made it through,
when you have crossed safely to the other side.
when you are feeling strong,
nd have walked with straight sure steps for awhile:

Remember this,


Somebody carried you,


Whether through words or deeds,
Whether an embrace or glance,

someone helped you up and walked that bravest mile

with you.

Whether aware or not, they were there.
They were there to speak hope and life,


or to be silent.

to listen, to search with you, to sit with you, to laugh with you.

They were there to make you feel normal for a moment,
they were there to tell you the tale of their own strange story,

a journey not unlike your own.

They were there with gentle hands, or the courageous caring of someone who has walked that road.
Back when their world was harsh, and unforgiving, and dark.

They were there to pass along sand bags, or buckets of water,
they stood in the night watches with you, in those long awful times.

Somebody carried you,

They were there.

They were guardian healers,
The makers of a safe place, a landing strip, lit up in the night,
when you needed a harbor from some storm.



What you must remember is this:


You must be there,


wherever there is.


You must be a quiet place
a strong place
a knowing place.


You must be ready with tears
or with smiles
or with silence.


Or with hands ready to work, and a brow ready to sweat.


You must tuck someone under your wing for just awhile,
You must make a place for them to breathe.


You must be there.


You must remember where you once walked,

And that now you have what it takes,



to be there.

makING it through

It has been a long time. A long long time since I have really posted or read anyone elses blog. Life has been busy and difficult for me lately.

There are many many factors contributing to life's difficulties and busyness, and I don't feel like this is the time or place to really go into it, but suffice to say, I've been going through a period of burn out. Burn out on school, and church. I'm burned out on people--some very critical and exhausting people.

However, I will say this, that even this time--this funk, I guess-there is still goodness. For one thing, I have learned that with all of my heart, I believe that encouragement will carry people much farther than criticism..."constructive" or not. I am thankful for this, and hopefully a better person because of it. I hope (hope hope hope) that the next time I am in the position to criticize, that I choose to encourage. I hope I choose to search for goodness.

Also I recently attended a literacy conference required, but still enjoyed, for my undergrad work. It was just what I needed to get me through I think. To keep me going and hoping and trying and dreaming. It reminded me of not just why I want to teach, but it even reminded me of the loveliness in the people I may have the honor to work around and with someday.

I met a lady who did a session on found poetry. Found poetry takes words straight from a text (we used an excerpt from The Tale of Despereaux). You use the authors own words, fragments, etc. and restring them to create a poem. Simple enough, but powerful.

More powerful than the strategy though was the woman who taught the session. She was quiet and passionate and giving. With everything in her, she wanted us to create a poem close to us. She wanted us to share and to learn, and to connect. She created a beautiful almost unexplainable sense of community with the people in that room. We shared and laughed and even cried together.Coming through this time of  being face to face with critical, negative people, this was a chance to regain some confidence in humans in general.

When I wrote my poem, in this rich, warm, environment--a resting place really. It was cathartic. Here it is:

The Dark Things

Somedays the dark things win,

the days that are deep down, and heavy hearted

The dark things are down in our shaded souls, tremendous, cold and vast,

When try as we may, we cannot imagine life any other way.

We cannot pull ourselves from those dungeons deep and spiraled down.

We know what it is to want.

But we know to, that it's not all that we are,

We know in us lies light and loveliness, beauty and bravery,

and that quiet, wild, courage to carry us through

but that all seems worlds away, in some high castle tower.

For somedays, some days, the dark things win.

So thank you, Lisa Patrick, where ever you are. You got me through.

huntING, a wife's perspective

I get the call,

“I got one, a doe.” He says.

“I can’t find her.”



“I’ll be right there.” I answer.



By the time I find him, in golden timeworn wood,

the autumn air around us,

she’s there.



Eyes on the last thing she saw. Frozen in time.

Still warm to touch.

There it hits me.


She’s gone.

She was old. Long lean legs, white tail, aged face.

Who once bounded through woodland wonder,

crossing the creak in one swift leap.

Now silent.



And still.



I wish I knew, I wish I knew,

some ancient, primitive, song,

or native, age old dance.

Some prayer, or ceremony.

Something to mourn and to celebrate,

what she has given to us,

for us.



A life for a life.

It is the archaic way of things.

One must give, for another to have.

balancING act

There  are two types of hiking packs.
One for men, and one for women.

The difference comes in how the weight is carried.


Men hold the weight on their shoulders.

Bearing up under it, lifting it up high,
wide and strong, like Atlas, under the weight of the world.

All shoulders and arms and strong backs, with grunts and heaves of power,
efficiently moving the burden from one place to another,

with such splendid strength.


A women's pack though, fastens across the two hips,

balancing the burden, evening it out, until its almost a part of them.

They carry it steadily, absorbing the weight,
carrying it for miles and miles, step after step, sometimes even forgetting it's
there, or where exactly its going.

They hold it with quiet subconscious groans and sighs, busying their free hands with some other task,
touching the world as they walk, still plodding on.



There are two types of packs,
each designed with some purpose at hand.

gettING through...

...finals week.

air conditionING

the other day along the freeway, i passed a sign,

"FRESH BLUEBERRIES, PICK YOUR OWN,"

it said boldly, blue letters on a clean white square.

i smiled, as i thought about how charming it would all be ,
picking blueberries on some sunny spring day, popping a few into my mouth, every now and again.

then i wondered,

what would happen if i told some woman,
from a hundred years ago, or even a thousand , it doesn't really matter,
about that sign,

"pick your own!" she would sigh and shout,
throwing her sturdy arms into the air,
"my whole life, i've been pickin' my own!
and cleanin' my own, and cookin' my own,
and his own, and their own! pick my own.
of all the...."

...and her voice would trail off as she thundered into the other room,
to do some thing that needed doing.

i think she would jump at the chance
to walk alone, into some fluorescent lit supermarket,
and feel the cool manufactured air breeze over her summer-stained skin,

and pick out the first, square, plastic quart of berries she saw,
throwing it in the cart, on top of the box of kix cereal,
and the boneless skinless chicken breasts.

she would remember the days she spent, up with the sun, and out in it,

knees pushing against the hot ancient earth, as she knelt down,
filling the apron that she starched herself,  watching the scarlet blue blood,
staining the perfect white,
pausing, as she used the back of or her arm to wipe the sweat from her wrinkled brow.

"pick your own." she would mutter and shake her head,
throwing in an extra plastic quart,
just for good measure.

Image Credit: Google Images

livING

                                        In the spring of the year,

there is so much life.

There is rain and grass and sun,

and they all need each other.

There are lambs.

New and white and warm,

their legs shaky, as they learn to walk in the world,

and their pink tongues, thirsty for milk.

We go outside, and dance in the streets, with our faces tilted to the sky,

and we plow the soft, cool,  earth,

and dream of what is to come of it.

We still, but barely, remember that there was winter, and cold.

Days and days where there was not sun,

Only piles and piles of snow.

And wind, that aged our faces and made our skin rough.

We have almost forgotten the months we've weathered,

and how,

 in those months, we almost forgot there was anything else.

But spring still came to us,

new and muddy,

and we still rejoice and we laugh our laughs,

and smile our smiles, when it does.

When it finally does.

The earth breaks open,

and we carefully sow the seeds, and we wait.

For in the spring of the year,

there is so much life.

Image Credit: http://www.fiberfarm.com/2011/04/pipers-first-day-out

callING all rebels

Rebels wanted:

We teachers...need rebels in our proud profession.

Teachers tend to be the straight A, club president, rule follower crowd.

we love structure.

we covet order and routine, and we live on a schedule of bells and breaks.

work in the fall and spring....have the summer off...then do it all over again.

lunch is always...and i mean always at 12:15

we got A's for the sake of A's

and we started clubs so that the word "president" was on our resumes.

We use our turn signals, and very seldom speed.

It's not a bad thing....

its just what we tend to be like.

What we need....are some rebels.

rebels are not afraid.

they don't mind if the rules change, because they weren't planning on following them anyway.

rebel's don't flinch at danger but rather invite it,

and they aren't afraid of the F-word.

They ask "why?" and smirk at you when you say "Because I said so."

Rebel's have an edge, and an appeal, as they sit quietly and observe with their arms folded cooly across their chest.

We need a teacher with a tattoo, or maybe several.

we need the black sheep.

We need the kid who laughed at the school handbook if he even read it, which he probably didn't.

If you are a rebel and you're reading this, you are wanted.

I can't promise you a great paycheck,

and I can promise that you will be surrounded by the over acheivers that probably bug the H*** out of you.

But I think you'll love it.

I think you'll change things,

and that's just what we need.

the science of bakING

i bought a bread machine last month,

i measured and poured each simple ingredient
and flipped a switch to "on" and went about my day.

it whirred and it hummed, and it tapped
metallic, like some alien craft on the kitchen counter

the bread came out in soft, square, blocks
warm on the tongue
and was eaten up with butter and jam and so much soup
all just the same.


but my hands

missed the feel of oil and flour and cracked wheat
sticking to my skin and under my fingernails

and the strength my arms felt
as they kneaded and kneaded to the rhythm of my own passionate breath

pausing only to brush my hair back from my brow with my wrist
leaving primitive streaks of flour across my human cheek


like a journey, a pilgrimage
to Mecca, or the holy land
or Damascus

measuring the oil as careful as Elijah's widow

choosing a place, a warm, dry womb
to watch the dough, the yeast, the flour, rise like some miraculous, living, testimony
to the way things are and have been for centuries.
















Image credit: www.ooh.com

procrastinatING

i could write of anything right now,
anything except anne elliot, and jane austen, and mary wollstonecraft.

i could win a pulizter,
if not for this blasted assignment.

my prose would flow like paint onto the canvas of my word processor, and of of souls,
i'd move men to tears,
i'd be a regular da vinci, your everyday rembrandt.

if only i wasn't sitting in this empty room armed with nothing but a laptop and a rubric.

i could change the world with a word,
if this cursor would just stop blinking at me,
and the syllabus would just stop staring,
and it wasn't the sunday before the due date.

if i hadn't been told to write,
i swear.


i could do it.

seeING

From Grandma I learn
that there is art everywhere

if only you know how to see it.

It's there in the mountian of fabric in the basement.
Ready to be cut and sewn and shaped into almost a million different things.
Depending on what you like.

It's on the side of the road in the Queen Anne's Lace,
what other's would call weed's, ready to be pressed and framed
and made into bookmarks and wall hangings.

It's on her back porch,
in the forest of potted tomato plants.
Tomatoes of every imaginable shape and color.
But this isn't just art you see..its art you
taste
This isn't just art,
it's a miracle.

Art is in the okra growing straight up like spears into the sky,
it's in ball after ball of yarn in every possible color
if only you know how to combine them.
It's in the shape of fern leaves,
and the smell of bread.

It's there, everywhere, when you

just


slow



down


and see.


I learned from her that there is art everywhere,
but never once did she say it.
She saw it and she taught me how to look.

celebratING

Of the first year,
some told us of the terrors
of the woes
of how everyday would seem like a cold hard slap in the face
when the bills came
or the laundry piled up.

But we knew better.

We knew now was the time
to let the mundane seem so exciting to us
that everyday felt like the fourth of july.

We knew that now was our chance
to let the laundry pile
and to smile our secret smiles, the next morning.

We knew that today was the time
to spend snowy saturdays together
and marvel and rejoice when the sun finally came
and the ice from the lake melted week by week.

We knew today
we could walk down the street hand in hand
so that the old neighbors down the road
smiled
and remembered what it was to be like us.

Some still tell us of the terrible terrible days to come,
the way it will change and the ways we will change

But we know better.