Fall Song (excerpt)

I try to remember when time's measure

painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing

to stay - how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever

in these momentary pastures.

---Mary Oliver, American Primitive

thanks, new (dream) job

Having struggled in the muck of a mediocre job placement with a quite toxic and deprecating environment for nearly a year, I finally discovered a heaven-sent employment move. Hello, I am the newest member of the Missions Office for the Archdiocese of Seattle. While it is strange to be working for the pope (hierarchically speaking), and for the Catholic Church directly, I am crazy happy right now. The Missions Office does some amazing work, including such biblical directives as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and loving (in appropriate fashion) on the poor. (See Matthew 25)  The work is so fulfilling that there is no amount of administrative strife to ever match the joy and satisfaction I feel. Well, not so far at least. More to come on that I suppose.

I am grateful for my formative years of being a dummy kiddo, collegiate alcoholic, existential crisis-ed mini-adult, and now, a floundering grown-up. My life is so shaped and filled by all the luck and love of existence--thank you thank you! To the universe, family, friends, mentors, lovers, enemies, cats, failures, triumphs, and of course, to you dear--thank you for this one wild and precious life.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamen

'Tis April No More

May by Mary Oliver

May, and among the miles of leafing,
blossoms storm out of the darkness—
windflowers and moccasin flowers. The bees
dive into them and I too, to gather
their spiritual honey. Mute and meek, yet theirs
is the deepest certainty that this existence too—
this sense of well-being, the flourishing
of the physical body—rides
near the hub of the miracle that everything
is a part of, is as good
as a poem or a prayer, can also make
luminous any dark place on earth.

"...don't waste time looking for an easier world ..."

Dogfish by Mary Oliver

Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing
kept flickering in with the tide
and looking around.
Black as a fisherman's boot,
with a white belly.

If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile
under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin,
which was rough
as a thousand sharpened nails.

And you know
what a smile means,
don't you?

Salish Dogfish print by Randy Stiglitz

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.



It was evening, and no longer summer.
Three small fish, I don't know what they were,
huddled in the highest ripples
as it came swimming in again, effortless, the whole body
one gesture, one black sleeve
that could fit easily around
the bodies of three small fish.



Also I wanted
to be able to love. And we all know
how that one goes,
don't we?

Slowly



the dogfish tore open the soft basins of water.



You don't want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story---
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.



And look! look! look! I think those little fish
better wake up and dash themselves away
from the hopeless future that is
bulging toward them.



And probably,
if they don't waste time
looking for an easier world,

they can do it.

24 March 1980

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador by paramilitary trained here at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) in Ft. Benning, GA. It's sickening. Having visited El Salvador a couple of times and having seen the chapel where Romero was shot dead while delivering mass (the Hollywood version doesn't exaggerate the gruesome reality), I feel connected to this modern martyr if by Catholic proximity only. The Jesuit institutions of my high school, undergraduate and graduate education have pumped Catholic social justice teaching into my veins for the past thirteen years. I found an excellent article on the National Catholic Reporter's website about the life of Romero and his influence in the Catholic Church and on the Christian imagination.

Lent opens on Ash Wednesday with the command that we are to remember that we are from dust and will again return to dust ... so, in the words of poet Mary Oliver,

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

RESOURCES:

Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 2000)

Marie Dennis, Renny Golden, Scott Wright, Oscar Romero: Reflections on His Life and Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000)