I re-submit this to go along with my recent thoughts on Christmas, Grace, and how one might be led down a blind ally seeking God or truth in doing.
With up-lifted hands I hold my best.
I offer it to you.
With trembling I await your acceptance of my gift
With trembling I dread your rejection.
I am in need. I am broken and out of my brokenness
I have fashioned my offering.
I have pieced it together with much pain and trembling
hoping to please you.
Now it is all that I have.
Every good thing in me has been
made manifest and resides in my gift.
I await your judgment.
As you approach I am borne aloft in anticipation
of your response.
My hopes walk the razors edge between your
delight and your disappointment.
I am reeling! You walked past my gift as if
it were not there.
I was prostrate offering my sacred gift, that which
I had made for you.
I am punctured, humiliated before you.
I shrink, collapsing, naked and ashamed.
Ashes are all.
Ashes, decay, and dry barren dust.
You move into the wasteland of my soul.
Slowly and with great care you search.
Blowing away the ashes while your dirty hands
seek something in the wreck that I am.
My humiliation evaporates as I see that
you heed my filth less than you did my gift.
You find and hold a tiny ember still glowing
somehow beneath the rubble.
I rest like a child in your hands and
again offer my gift to you.
You smile, kiss my foolish head, and with
a magnet attach my gift to your refrigerator.
I searched for you again today.
I strained to find you amidst the chaos of a world seething with disappointment, battered dreams, and fragile hopes.
Millions of souls crying out for the answer to their hearts’ deepest longings.
I looked down the well-worn paths, the familiar places where I’ve sought you before.
Nature’s beauty was dulled.
The crisp cool air on my face did not quicken my senses as before.
It was only cold.
The golden red light of the sunset did not dazzle me with its splendor.
The orb hung in only two dimensions, flat against the dull sky.
It only moved me to squint the brazen light from my eyes.
The sounds and rhythms of life around me seemed out of tune and dissonant with my pattern.
I felt a stranger to the world.
Out of place.
Out of joint.
The faces, the touch, the voices of friends and loved ones did not reach me.
They seemed only to intrude upon my search.
Words of love, comfort, even humor, irritated and sparked anger hidden beneath my smile.
Exhausted, hope failing, desperate for you.
Weeping from the anguish of my bitter longing.
Prostrate, face to the earth, search ended – unfulfilled.
At the end of my search, at the end of one last bitter breath, after one final look outward,
I paused –
Stillness
My eyes sought a new path.
I slowly shifted my gaze.
As my eyes turned inward I was startled to discover your presence.
You were there where you have always been.
The wellspring of my heart was flooded with joy as I was filled with awareness of you.
You are a part of me, and I you.
I knew that which I have always known.
Nothing, no obstacle, no circumstance can separate me from you and you from me.
We exist together out of time.
We are eternal.
You and I will be always, even to the ends of the earth.
I got to the garden Saturday and the tomatoes were so overgrown that I could not see to pick the fruit. The vines were all tangled and were producing so many stems and leaves that air could not circulate. Not really problems, just the result of healthy plants doing what they do. So I set about to untangle and trim what was not needed, again.
Whew! Now I can see and it was like the plants took a long slow deep breath. I got about ten pounds of Tomatoes and three Eggplants. The grape ones are sweet like sugar. Perfect fruit produced within that tangled mess. It is kinda how I am feeling lately. I am busy reaching out to the artsy folk in our area. It is a different world for me. For the last 20 years or so I have worked as “Redneck Headshrink” in a rural county in Alabama. I do individual and family therapy. My multicultural specialities are crackheads, convicts, and Baptists. I am in private practice and contract with the Courts and Schools and Family/Child Services. Typically the referrals are abuse/neglect cases involving drugs, sex and/or rock and roll. I handle most of the domestic violence and drug cases related to children. The cool thing is that one can find perfect fruit growing, even there. But like with the tomatoes they can be easily missed if the overgrowth is not cleared frequently. I have been in that county now long enough that I am on the third generation of some of these families. Along with the ugliness and pain I have witnessed the miraculous in the power of life and hope to overcome what many only know about in theory or the Lifetime channel. These people have taught me poetry as I do it. I have always thought of poetry as the dire urgent need to bring some kind of order and beauty out of ugliness and chaos. I understand real therapy as entering into another’s world with my own imperfections and together creating some meaning, some hope, some beauty.
It is similar with my new jazzy experiments. Me and the guys have been getting together every week to explore our creative combinations. There are different people each week and every week it is different. There are so many different ways it can go. Like with growth in therapy or life in general there is always the ambiguity, anxiety, risk, and then discovering what is groovy, what works. There is a since of “yes” that is the truth. It feels right and alive. If one manages the anxiety then beauty emerges from the unknown, the chaotic on its own. It is not created, it is found or discovered. I am currently reminded to quit trying to figure it out and just go. Explore the unknown cause if the known contained what was needed there would already be rest. In that we still desire there is more to discover. The groove can not be predicted and planned only discovered as we go out not knowing.
One other little thing. Brace up and spend time on what is producing. The Eggplants and Peppers were leaning over because of all the fruit on them. What is working for you right now? Make sure and give it some attention and it will continue to produce in its season. Cut back the overgrowth. Let go of busyness and hangers on and that which is in the way. Remember that perfection may not look perfect and can emerge from what seems to be chaotic if given room to breathe. Tend your garden but remember ultimately there are powerful friendly forces at work which have plans for your good and not evil. Be Groovy!
Just as I was entering the season of harvest I arrived to check on the garden and saw three of the Zucchini plants decimated and prostrate, yellow and brown and full of bugs. June bugs! Hundreds of them.
I didn’t get any good pictures of the bugs because when I saw what was going on I quickly began to pull the plants out of the soil and get them out of the garden. I was ill. Hundreds and hundreds of them were busy making their home there in my garden. Eating and mating and laying eggs to provide for their next generation. I remember why they are called June bugs now. The plants and the fruit was ruined. My intention and vision for that pace was taken over and used for another’s purpose. They did not ask or say thank you or even kiss my ass. They had their own purposes and set about to accomplish them. After I calmed down during the clearing of the mess I remembered seeing some small signs of them last week which i did not attend to. By not acting then I in effect gave my leave for them to do as they willed in my garden. With no deterrent from me I guess they felt they were entitled to whatever suited their needs. There are some people like that. Those who seem to just take what they want as though their needs, wants, whims, should be addressed simply because they are. The problem is that many times they intrude into others’ gardens to satisfy them. If they are not deterred there is a risk the garden will be ruined. I was raised in the Christian faith and from childhood was taught that I should be kind. I agree with that. The problem is that many times that sentiment is not correctly interpreted. It is taught as though the command is to “be yea nice.” But kindness and niceness are very different things. Nice always says “yes” even when a “no” is required. It can be sweet and gentle but it can also be weak and allow predators in with the sheep. Kindness is based on a true response to a given situation. Kindness seeks the yes but can if need respond with an unequivocal hell no. It was not the June bugs fault that they wanted my garden. It was beautiful and lush and rich. An ideal place for them to reproduce. It was my fault for allowing them to get a foothold and then not acting after they did. I saw a short video which may be instructive.
I am guessing the boy went home and perhaps rethought his life’s path. What ever was the result I am guessing he did not attempt to put down roots in the big boys garden anymore. I think there are times in a person’s life when god’s will for them is a swift ass whipping. I think that it is most likely the only hope for stupid. I am not promoting violence but force is the only thing a bully understands. It may just save their life later on. A skinned knee and a knot on the head won’t damage a boy, but being allowed to continue down a predatory path may just lose their soul. Even Jesus gave some folks a good country ass whipping with a whip he made himself. He was clear, decisive, and used appropriate force. I don’t think the money changers harbored any doubt about his intention and willingness in that matter.
Are there people in your life who have been allowed to bully, and take, and intimidate, and set up shop in your temple? God’s will for them and you is that they do not inhabit your garden. They need to cultivate their own. And it is incumbent upon us to tend and protect what was entrusted to us. No, or even hell no, is also kindness.
Lesson remembered. So I looked around and found that there was a Yellow Squash and one Zucchini that I doctored and trimmed and may yet salvage.
I planted a young Zucchini and two purple Russian Heirloom tomatoes in the empty space. The young Zucchini will probably last through the late summer into fall and the tomatoes are something I have never grown before. So, it’s all good. I planted watermelons in the large container and they should be pretty spilling down onto the hay in a month or so.
The cool thing about all of this is that in spite of the little setbacks the garden continues on producing its fruit. Perhaps not my original intention but this may even be better. I was going to have way too much Zucchini anyway and the Cucamelons in this container were stunted because the plant in front blocked the sun. Now they have full sun everyday and can grow. Plus I can have some watermelon to go with the cantaloupe.
Just remember that bugs nor bully’s give a shit about you. If there is going to be a shit given about your garden or your temple it will need to be you who gives it. Cause if you don’t no one will. And remember that grace sometimes comes in the form of a knot on the head. Be redneck Groovy! 🙂
Perhaps it is that when one feels washed overboard, afraid, exhausted, and without a raft there is something in the depths of grace for us there. Perhaps the raft is what keeps us from knowing. Blessings, sweetness, and understanding that you are not alone.
Whatever flavor of spirituality that you may tend toward there is a depth and beauty in this. All poetry is metaphor anyway. Hold them lightly or risk their death. Where there is beauty there is the perfume of truth. It resonated with my soul from that place in me that is too deep for words. It allowed me to weep. That is a good gift for a hardened sometimes stupid man like me. 🙂 Maybe my chakra thingy is better for it. Blessings on your quest for the One who is beyond all metaphor.
