I wish when God created the world (as God still does)
and spoke those blessing words to it and us,
It Is Good,
I wish the world had answered back in joyous shout, "No, You!",
as she watched creation's wheel spin all about
in colours new and bright.
But it was only later that she thought of what she should have said.
By then it was too late, for she had turned and fled.

How Good Do We Have to Be?: A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness by Harold S. Kushner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book has done me good. As soon as I finished the last page I wanted to begin it again.
A redefinition of the creation story, and a re-envisioning of the meaning behind the concept of Original Sin, the author's reinterpretation frees one to let go of the unattainable aim for perfection, forgive and accept imperfection in ourselves and each other, and realize that "...God loves us in our aspiring and in our stumbling." Regarding Original Sin, he says, "the Original Sin that affects virtually every one of us and leads to other, worse sins is the belief that there is not enough love to go around..." Knowing that we do not need to try to earn God's love by being perfect allows us to identify with those around us and treat them equally and fairly.
I think that the reason this resonates so well with me is that as a mother I know what unconditional love for my children feels like, and the notion that this is a small example of God's love sounds to me like a fitting definition of the God who is Love.
"To be whole before God means to stand before Him with all of our faults as well as all of our virtues, and to hear the message of our acceptability."



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There is an acreage in southern Manitoba, with woods. A variety of oaks--some quite large, some twisted and slightly bent in acknowledgment of harsher soil, or injury in their youth--and poplar, also known as trembling aspen, stand silent witness to the days and nights that pass. The smaller but persistent hawthorn, the unpretentious chokecherry, the clumping hazelnut shrubs, all claim their places to fill in the forest.
This small piece of land has never been cultivated (or 'improved', the term used on our property tax statement) as far as I know. It has had various herds of cattle, deer, and bison wander through in their times of occupation, especially the open pasture and adjoining wooded areas.
Now there stands along a trail through the trees a small log cabin, erected decades ago not for survival but for novelty.
Today I sit in this sturdy little hut with the Sunday morning sunshine streaming in through the two single pane windows, a warming fire going full blast in the ancient cookstove standing off to one side, the boastful roaring of the flames a contrast to the humble compactness of the stove.
As I walked here, I realized it is not the hills, not the hills whence my help comes. It is the trees, the company of trees, that bring me sanctuary. This small patch of woods, one of several on the land that we own, has been a part of the gradual process of the land coming to own us. For more than three decades we have been landowners, my husband and I, he for closer to four decades. You could say it has been our passion. There has always been a desire to be farmers, to try and make a living from this land of ours, to raise our children where they could run barefoot, escaping to the woods and fields for hours of freedom. Some years, especially at the beginning, we made sacrifices of lifestyle, leisure and status (living in a mobile home for sixteen years must have had our friends' and family's heads shaking).
Now, approaching our 'golden years' (our now adult children would say firmly entrenched in) we have been rewarded, or blessed--if we admit it was not only our hard work that brought us to where we are today--with the option of a more relaxed pace, with more choice about our daily life and our lifestyle, than those first stressful years.
So I have time, or I take the time, to make the fifteen minute trek through pasture and woods, to this slightly secluded cabin, leaving cares and griefs behind, or at least bringing along just the one or two I choose to accompany me. And while I spend the hours reading in the cabin and putting wood on the fire, or walking and noticing the surprising number of colours tree lichen comes in, or coming upon secret wild nests in spring with tiny hopeful pastel-coloured eggs, or snapping the ten thousandth close up photo of the purely artistic lines of a curled leaf or translucent flower petal, I must always head back, when the time comes, to the life of the farm, the cities beyond it, and the larger world past that. But there is something I bring with me when I return from the woods, something bestowed by the silent trees, the golden grasses, the still and peaceful air. Though it is hard to define, a part of it could be said to be thanksgiving, a sense of renewed appreciation.

 

Jan 7

I thank you for your gentle lies
-we'll be alright and things will get better-
while we wander in the dark
unsure of path and future.
A day is filled with stuttering tries
-I plan the menu and often cook supper-
But sometimes things look only stark
Although I cannot see far.
So let us go on acting wise
-next year we will make a garden-
though it's cold and windy in our park.
We two will be alone together.

Jan. 5
When drops of chaos splatter me
(where do I go!? where do I go!?)
it's not as painful as it used to be
on the surface of my soul.*
It stings but I can bear the pain
(though will it kill I do not know)
having learned from countless stains
to suffer is to grow.
And as the tissue puckers and scars
(they point and stare as I come and go)
and chaos drops outnumber stars
I will try to keep my hold
on the sheltering rock to which I cling
(did I find it or it find me?)
and if I, crippled, live I'll sing.
And if I die so let it be.

*This seemed true when I wrote it a few days ago, but the next day I was plunged back into the acid bath of grief.

Jan 1
Maybe faith is like love.
Before I knew this man who now has become my life,
I did not even know I was without him.
(I knew I was without something.)
And in the decades since our life together began
we have become entwined
until now I cannot imagine life without him
and cannot possibly go back to
the way I was before I knew him.
And so with God.

Though I've known and loved him for years,
I do not understand his way of thinking.

Dec29

On the night you passed, leaving me behind
to wail and mourn and lose my mind
I wanted to follow, to be where you were,
but the others I love kept me here.
Now that time has swept me along
there's another parting, feels just as wrong:
as I go on into winter's days
I leave you behind in the summer haze.
Every reminder of the season past
when you drifted away as you breathed your last
can choke me up and stop me short--
this pain is not of the healing sort.

Dec 28

A tree can remind me of you,
and I, I live in a forest.
The loss of you is a gaping wound.
If I lived alone I could fill my days with grief,
probing the wound, making it bleed,
and wearing the blood because you are worthy.
But I do not live alone,
and have a duty toward my surviving loved ones.
And so I bind the wound to hide the bleeding
lest it frighten, shock or horrify.
And only in solitary moments
do I open the dressing,
with shaking fingers probe the wound,
and realize again that
jagged shards remain deep within,
complete healing will never come.

Photo: View of sunset, from the sea wall of Stanley Park, Vancouver, Dec. 1, 2011.


How strange...last night as we listened to Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra performing Handel's Messiah, amid a crowd of people seeming in the spirit of the season, the words "Adrift at Christmas" came to mind when I thought of how I fear to face this first Christmas without our son, brother, brother-in-law, uncle, this family-focused festive time we feel so outside of this year. Today my head was filled with images of a storm-wrecked ship adrift, and I tried to put some of the words to paper.

ALL ADRIFT AT CHRISTMAS
How swiftly change past friendly seas
to ravening waves of chaos.
Where once all hands together held
our guiding sail, our trusted wheel,
now severed lie the lines, and loosely swings the wheel.
Now the sails slap despondently.
No progress in these sluggish waters;
we are a shipwreck
from the storm that hit us unforeseen.
Weakened by that storm,
we each of us, the few now left who sail in her
are caught in coils of broken lines,
and so involved in our own web
we do neglect each other.
Other ships sail smoothly by,
bound for safe, sure harbours.
We see no reason why we should,
and couldn't find it if we did,
the night so dark and starless.

From this I turned to my reading for the day (actually I'm a little ahead, it's the December twentieth reading) in Watch For The Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, Orbis Books, 2008. Entitled "Shipwrecked At The Stable", by Brennan Manning, (page189) it quotes José Ortega, "The man with the clear head is the man who frees himself from fantasy and looks life in the face, realizes that everything in it is problematic, and feels himself lost. And this is the simple truth--that to live is to feel oneself lost. Whoever accepts this has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around, for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order to the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked.  All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce. He who does not feel himself lost, is without remission; that is to say he never finds himself, never comes up against his own reality."