The Place I Want to Get Back To

is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness

and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me

they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let's see who she is

and why she is sitting
on the ground like that,

so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,

but, anyway, harmless;

and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way

I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward

and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years

I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed,
can't be repeated.

If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

by Mary Oliver

This is the poem that was posted on The Writer's Almanac yesterday. It took my breath away. It reminded me so much of one of my all-time favorite nature essays by Annie Dillard called "Living Like Weasels" where she describes locking eyes with a weasel in the woods. There's something magical about experiences like the two these ladies describe.

I am about to embark on a month of intense creativity. Tomorrow begins a week working on a 60-page teaching unit on Jane Austen, which I am eager to begin. This unit will eventually be published, which is also exciting (I'll post a link here when I'm done). Then, next week I'll spend a day with my mother and sisters visiting Celia Thaxter's beautiful ocean garden on the Isle of Shoals off the coast of Portsmouth, NH (at left is Childe Hassam's painting of the garden found at the MetMuseum site). I'll also spend three days at a writing retreat on memoir-writing. The rest of the month will be spent in following up on these 9 days of specific attention.

I can't wait! In fact, I've already been doing a lot of research for the unit I'm going to create next week, looking for projects to use in connection with the regular teaching activities. Here's a cool idea I found tonight that is actually a more sophisticated (read technological) version of a project I do now in connection with Medieval Literature. What you'll see here is an illuminated version of the wonderful e. e. cummings poem "i carry my heart with me."

i carry your heart with me i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) ee cummings

One of my friends just posted the loveliest poem set to music and video on his facebook page. It's a poem by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda which reads as follows:

Leaning Into The Afternoons Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets towards your oceanic eyes. There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames, its arms turning like a drowning man's. I send out red signals across your absent eyes that smell like the sea or the beach by a lighthouse. You keep only darkness, my distant female, from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges. Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets to that sea that is thrashed by your oceanic eyes. The birds of night peck at the first stars that flash like my soul when I love you. The night gallops on its shadowy mare shedding blue tassels over the land. Pablo Neruda

Call to Prayer

I just watched a Rick Steves episode on Istanbul, taking me back a year ago to my own visit to Istanbul. I was taken by the segment on the mosques. He showed how five times a day people are called to their mosque for prayer. The call is always the same (with a slight variation for the dawn call), saying that God is great and worthy of worship.

What caught my attention was when Rick said "after a short praise service, they go back to work." A simple phrase to him, perhaps, but it gave me pause to consider my own prayer practice. Each time I've been in a country where they do this, my first thought has always been of cacophony because to my Western musical ear, it sounds like a melancholy wailing. If several mosques are within hearing distance, the discord is stressful. Still, there is something to be said for stopping what you're doing and intentionally seeking out God several times a day.

In my own life, I always start and end my day with prayer, whatever time that may be. I attend church regularly, once a week, where we pray several times during our time together. During the school year, because I teach at a Christian school, we start our day together as a staff with worship and prayer, and we do the same each day with our students. As well, I have prayer before each class I teach and we pray before our meetings and other activities. But on my own, during the summer and vacations and such, there is not that same regularity. So, I'm wondering, am I missing something during those times, when I don't have a specific call to prayer built into my day?

Truth is, I think if you begin your day in an attitude of prayer, there is no need to stop what you're doing to intentionally pray as you've been in communication all along. That's the if, though, isn't it? And I suppose that's the theory behind that call to prayer, to remind those who have forgotten...

Purple is the new Red

So...I put up two new bird feeders outside my office window, one yesterday and one today. Yesterday's feeder was filled with finch food because I had seen two goldfinch on the other side of the building last week. Mind you, I've never seen goldfinch on our property before this. So, I thought I'd see if I could entice them to the other side. Within minutes of putting out the finch food, I had my first purple finch, but no golds came.

Today, I put up another feeder, and almost before I could get out of the way, dozens of purple finches were swarming both feeders. By afternoon, there was also a pair of gold finch! Also, about 1/2 a dozen red winged blackbirds came to feed. Again, I've never seen them on this side of the building. We have a swamp on the other side of the building and across the parking lot, and I see them there all the time. But never on this side until today.

All this bird activity has been so much fun! And the baby cardinal visited again and came right to my window and was peering in at my office, very curious about what was happening on the other side of the window =)

Baby, Baby!

One of the baby cardinals got really brave today and visited my feeder several times, even getting so bold as to get up close and personal with the window, looking into my office rather fearlessly. A couple of times, he (or she) came with his father, too, and I was able to capture a few fuzzy-through-the rain-streaked-glass picture of them.

I'm almost embarassed to post them, considering I have many blogging friends who are outstanding bird photographers, but I consider these shots major triumphs given how shy the father cardinal was for months prior to this week. If I even slightly moved, he would take off. If he could see me in the office, he wouldn't come near. Only in the past week has he been comfortable eating while I was moving around in the room. The baby...is just precious. I've never seen one up close like this...

Bed in Summer

Bed in Summer by Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night

And dress by yellow candle-light.

In summer quite the other way

I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see

The birds still hopping on the tree,

Or hear the grown up people's feet

Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you

When all the sky is clear and blue,

And I should so much like to play

To have to go to bed by day?

I was looking up poetry about summer today and I saw the title of this poem. Immediately I was jettisoned back to my childhood and hearing my mother quote this poem to my sisters and me as she tried to convince us that we needed to come inside and go to bed on summer days. We loved playing outside, so it was hard to get us to come inside. I have to say the poem didn't make it any easier, but it did let us know we weren't the only ones having to "go to bed by day."

Summer here in MA has been rainy, cloudy, and kind of dreary. The major outdoor bright spot has been the amazing bird activity at my office window bird feeder. I have several families who are regulars--nuthatches, cardinals, song sparrows, grosbeaks and others. The feeder reminds me of a very busy airport with planes/birds landing and taking off constantly =)

Supersize your Faith

I had the privilege of hearing Senate Chaplain Barry Black speak not once, but twice yesterday. Hundreds of people crowded into an old-fashioned campmeeting pavillion to hear what he had to say...and were not disappointed.

The chaplain is interesting, funny, dynamic and inspiring. His first talk was entitled "Supersize Your Faith" and he detailed 4 steps by which this could be done. His second talk was about dealing with adversity and not worrying. When he finished this talk, he spent about 30 minutes taking questions. I was impressed with his diplomacy in handling some of the things he was asked.

Summer "Snow"

Every year at about this time, some kind of plant sends its fluff flying through the air for days. It is so thick, sometimes, that it looks like we are in the middle of a Nor'easter. It piles up in corners and under trees. It gets caught in the grass and bushes. I'm not sure what it is. It's not milkweed, and I don't see enough dandelions around to pile up this much (although this picture will somewhat belie that statement). Maybe it's from cattails, but I don't see them either. In fact, I have not seen anything it could come from. Yet there is the evidence that somewhere nearby, there's a plant that likes to "snow." Any ideas anyone?