Reminders of the futility of worrying - Poems by Mary Oliver

Here are two more poems from Devotions by Mary Oliver, that remind me of the futility and uselessness of worrying.

This first one I had read before. It reminds me of God's response to Job.

I Go Down to the Shore

I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall--
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.

This one makes me smile.

I Worried

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not, how shall
I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

I'm thinking I'll take my old body and sing "Let All Things Now Living."

Dogs - Poems by Mary Oliver

These are two sweet poems about dogs. I am reading Devotions by Mary Oliver. My friends and family who love dogs will like these, I think. And I do, too.

Little Dog's Rhapsody in the Night (Percy Three)

He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I am awake, or awake enough

he turns upside down, his four paws
    in the air
and his eyes dark and fervent.

Tell me you love me, he says.

Tell me again.

Could there be a sweeter arrangement? Over and over
he gets to ask it.
I get to tell.

Percy (Nine)

Your friend is coming I say
to Percy, and name a name

and he comes to the door, his
wide mouth in its laugh shape,

and waves, since he has one, his tail.
But there are days I wish

there was less in my head to examine,
not to speak of the busy heart. How

would it be to be Percy, I wonder, not
thinking, not weighing anything, just running forward.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

It's been years now since I've re-read The Hobbit. When I was growing up, every couple years or so I'd think, "I'd like a visit to Middle Earth," and I'd re-read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Back when someone told me that someone was going to make a movie of The Lord of the Rings, I went into a kind of rant, saying that Hollywood would ruin it and no one would know how great the books were, etc., etc. But they proved me wrong. Peter Jackson and the others actually did seem to catch the spirit of the books, and I like the movies.

I've just started my re-reading of The Hobbit and I'm struck by the friendliness of the author's writing. I'm curious to see whether he writes this way in The Lord of the Rings.

The wind was howling and the thunder still growling, and they had a business getting themselves and their ponies along.

"They had a business." Can't you just hear a British accent in that? Sometimes I like to use the phrase "to-doing," which I hear in British movie conversations. "Oh, what a to-doing!" I also like "argle-bargle." I'd say that to my kids sometimes. "Time to go to bed, and no argle-bargle."

Tolkien also speaks directly to the reader -- a lot. You feel like he's telling the story to you the entire time.

He lit up his wand--as he did that day in Bilbo's dining-room that seemed so long ago, if you remember--, and by its light they explored the cave from end to end.

I can just see Tolkien looking at me as he says "if you remember." And he calls Bilbo "little Bilbo" a lot. It's endearing.

Somewhere in this mess of a library I have a hard cover copy of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings but I happened to find this paperback first. I like that it's old and worn (copyright 1973). The picture on the front was painted by J.R.R. Tolkien himself. And don't you love the map? He was a pretty amazing man.

In the Shelter by Pádraig Ó Tuama

I heard of Pádraig Ó Tuama (pronounced Pah-drick O Two-ma) listening to his interview with Krista Tippett on “On Being.” In that interview, he spoke of saying “Hello” as a prayer.

In In the Shelter, I learned more about that. Ó Tuama tells about going to a Taizé retreat and the Taizé monk has several people read the story of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples in the upper room (in John) in several different languages. The monk noted that Jesus greeted his disciples by saying, “Peace be with you.” 

The Taizé brother suggested that we pause for a moment and consider the words “Peace be with you” that the resurrected Jesus says to his locked-in followers. The Taizé brother said that, in a real sense, we can read that as “Hello.” After all, it’s the standard greeting in Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic.  

The disciples were there, in fear, in an upper room, locked away, and suddenly the one they had abandoned and perhaps the one they most feared to be with them was with them, and he said hello. 

Hello to you in this locked room. (p. 10)

Throughout the book, Ó Tuama does that – he tells a story or writes about something, and then ends it with “Hello to … something.” I find that use of “hello” very helpful. A while ago I wrote to my family about the fact that, ever since my brother died 11 years ago, Nov. 4, 2006, the Fall season brings on a kind of melancholy for me. I love the Fall so the first time it happened to me I had said to a friend that I didn’t know what was wrong with me, I felt sad for no known reason, and I was crying easily. She said, “Didn’t your brother die in the Fall?” and went on to say that sometimes our bodies somehow hold that memory. I think she was right. And this year, with the death of both my parents, it seems more acute – even though they died in winter at the beginning of the year. I find it somehow helpful to think to myself, “Hello grief. Hello sadness. Hello melancholy.” I’m not sure why it helps, but it does.

In another story kind of about saying hello (p. 14), Ó Tuama writes about a National Geographic story he read where a photojournalist wrote about a tribal group she’d lived with who “had no word for hello. Instead upon seeing someone, one simply said, ‘You are here’.” Then he writes, “The answer, as I recall it, was equally straightforward: ‘Yes I am.’ Whether by fact or fiction, it remains that for decades I have thought of the words ‘You are here’ and ‘Yes I am’ as good places to begin something that might be called prayer.

These phrases – “You are here” and “Yes I am” – made me think of hinani, the Hebrew word for “Here I am” that I have written about and thought of often. Things keep attracting me to that concept, of saying “Here I am” to God, ready for the mission you will give me.

One of the things I loved about In the Shelter and Pádraig Ó Tuama is that he loves The Lord of the Rings. He quotes from those books quite a few times. I love those books, too, so it gives me a lot of joy to see the words and stories from them used as ways to discuss deep things such as faith and prayer.

Ó Tuama writes some interesting things about religion. In one place (p. 24), he writes, “Religion had rarely been something that gave me hope for happiness. Effort certainly…” That made me sad. I hear that so often, where people obviously think that being religious is a matter of effort, of following rules.

It reminded me of a time with my grandma (Grace Kok, my dad’s mom). For the year my dad was in Vietnam we lived next door to my grandma, in Lynden, WA. This was a time when CRC churches pretty much all had “night church,” an evening service. Sometimes my grandma wouldn’t feel up to going to church in the evening, and instead she’d listen to the service as it was broadcast over the radio. I sat with her and listened to the service this night. Afterward, Grandma said that she was always disappointed when ministers gave sermons that did not talk about the joy of Christianity. She said something like, “Why don’t they talk about how happy it makes you?”

Don’t you love that? I didn’t think that much about it back then, but I think about it often now. Just the other day I was talking to a friend who has left the faith she grew up with. I forget exactly what my friend said, but like my Grandma I responded with something like, “It’s too bad the way people think religion is a bunch of rules. It’s all about Jesus’ love, so much love. It gives me so much joy.” As Pádraig Ó Tuama would say, hello to joy.

Pádraig Ó Tuama also writes about religion needing to know that it may not always be right (p. 193). He recalls a Peanuts cartoon where Snoopy is writing a book of theology.

Charlie Brown comes along and says, “…I hope you have a good title.” Snoopy looks up, in a superior fashion, and indicates that he has the perfect title. He resumes typing and the title of his theological oeuvre appears in typeface in the sky. “Have you ever considered that you might be wrong?”

…It is evidence of religious integrity to be fluent in living well with the questions underneath our hope. “Let us cling to you,” we say to our Jesus, and he answers, “Have you ever considered that you might be wrong?” He says, “No, do not cling to me.” He says, “Live well” and “Change” and “Learn.” He asks, “What are you doing with your power?” and he answers, “Do not miss the mark again.” He praises those who act and criticizes those who focus only on their words. He tells stories that do not end and ends stories that do not start.

Hello to the gift of being wrong.

Hello to the need for change.

In another part of the book (p. 74) he tells a story that pierced my heart. He says, as far as he can remember it, it’s a “transcript of something a twelve-year-old girl said one day.” The girl talks about a story told by a woman at a church event who “said that she was going to tell a story about God that the children would love” (p. 73).

She told us this story about the station master of a train station. The station master saw that a train was coming along and saw that the line was broken. If he didn’t change the line that the train was on, then the train would go off a cliff and everyone would die. So he needed to change the line, but he saw that his son was playing on the other line, the safe one. So he had to decide if he’d save the people or save his son. He saved the people.

The woman ended the story and said: “That’s what God’s love is like. He saved us instead of his son.” She said, “That’s a story I know the young people will love.”

I thought it was a stupid story because it just made me worry that my daddy is going to murder me.

Ó Tuama goes on to say:

The clarity of this girl’s analysis of the story was compelling…It was clear that she was, as we’d say in Cork [Note from Mavis: Pádraig Ó Tuama is Irish.], not backwards about being forwards – she said what she thought when she thought it. I thought she was marvelous. I asked her if she sometimes got into trouble in school for saying what she thought. She looked at me, as if amazed that I might have perceived this about her character, and said, “All. The. Time.” I said, “Well, take it from me, you’ve got good things to say, keep saying them,” and she looked puzzled but pleased.

Hello to being right. It’s not always easy.

This whole passage makes me happy “on many levels,” as people are wont to say. First, as I said earlier, that train story is heart-piercing, don’t you think? It’s like a cruel trick question. And for that woman to think it would be a story “the children would love.” Seriously? Ha!

Then the twelve-year-old girl’s conclusion – “It just made me worry that my daddy is going to murder me” – cracks me up.

And Pádraig Ó Tuama’s admiration for her forthrightness, I love that. I myself often get in trouble for saying what I think when I think of it. It’s so great when someone finds that to be a positive trait! Hello to being “not backwards about being forwards.”

I could go on and on about this book, but already I’ve written quite a long blog entry here. I feel like this book is “an embarrassment of riches.” There’s so much in it, so much to soak in, so much to enjoy, to savor, to tuck into your heart. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

As you can see, I used my post-it note method again.
Testimony to it being an embarrassment of riches!!

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

I don't know why I didn't do this long ago, but I just looked up the definition of "Bardo".

(in Tibetan Buddhism) a state of existence between death and rebirth, varying in length according to a person's conduct in life and manner of, or age at, death.

Interesting. Maybe if I'd looked that up first, I would not have been so surprised at this book. We chose it for our book club. In a way, I felt kind of freaked out about it, but in another way it was really good, with lots to think about.

As I'd read in short blurbs about the book, the entire book is about one night, the night after Willie Lincoln's death when Abraham Lincoln, his father, visited him in the cemetery where he (Willie) was buried. (I think I thought "Bardo" must have something to do with graveyards.)

It's strangely written, with little separate paragraphs, with tiny names and sources typed after. At first I thought this must be some kind of thing the author was doing before each chapter, or at the beginning of the book. But it went on so long I finally looked further, and this style of little paragraphs (although a few went on for a page or so) went on for the whole book.

The rest of this blog entry is a spoiler. I want to write about the book and remember it.

Most of the paragraphs are what the dead people in the cemetery are saying. The two who "speak" the most are Hans Vollman and Roger Bevins, III (always written in small letters, "hans vollman" and "roger bevins iii"). The definition of "Bardo" makes sense as I realized that these people were dead but calling themselves sick. They were, I believe, around and, in a limited way, still interacting with the world, hoping that they would return to the world, somehow, someday. Hence, they were "sick," not dead, and their coffins were "sick boxes."

Not to put too fine a point on it, they were ghosts. They did not call themselves that but they certainly fit my definition of ghosts. Willie, too, is a ghost, but he does not realize it. When his father comes, he expects his father to hug him and talk to him. He is agitated as he realizes his father cannot hear, see, or feel him.

You get a very real sense of Abraham Lincoln. Many of the small paragraphs are from records of people who knew Lincoln, often people who worked closely with him, even servants who lived with him and the family.

A few times during the course of the story, Willie, or Hans or Roger, and once a whole bunch of the ghosts, inhabit Abraham Lincoln. They attempt, by all thinking concentratedly of the same thing together, to persuade Lincoln to do something they want him to do.

When he is inhabiting his father, Willie does not try to get his father to do something, though; he just feels much of what his father feels, and hears his father's thoughts. This is how he realizes he is not sick, he is dead. His father, Abraham Lincoln, says (thinks) it, and therefore it must be true. Willie becomes joyous when he realizes he is dead. He jumps around, "hopping with joy now, like a toddler too full of water." He says,

I was good. Or tried to be. I want to do good now. And go where I should. Where I should have gone in the first place. Father will not return here. And none of us will ever be allowed back to that previous place. (p. 298)

So accepting death is good. Lots to think about there. Like Roger Bevins says, "It gave me pause."

When he shares that they are dead with all the other ghosts, many of them believe/realize it, too. When they accept that they are dead, they actually, somehow, really die. They leave this state of being a ghost. When they go, there's an explosion of some kind. The author calls it a "matterlightblooming phenomenon." What an interesting word. Reflecting on that word is one of the many areas of further thought in this book.

Of course, now I wish I had underlined and flagged pages when something especially struck me. I've been doing that in my non-fiction reading. But I was lazy, basically, and wanted to keep getting on with the story.

There's much about Lincoln's suffering as he grieves. In his thoughts (which the ghosts hear as they inhabit him), he questions whether he should have let Willie ride the pony he loved. Willie rode that pony all the time, including once when he was exposed to cold for a long time, became sick with a cold and then typhoid, resulting ultimately in his death. Lincoln also thinks about the criticism from others regarding a big celebratory party he and his wife held, while Willie was lying deathly ill in a room above the party.

Lincoln thinks about how many others are experiencing this same loss -- of their sons -- because their sons are dying on the battlefield. It seems like he realizes he has to make their death worthwhile, by making the war worthwhile. He begins to think that he must take a "bloody path" and perhaps cause even more suffering, but the bloodiest way may be the best way.

He must (we must, we felt) do all we could, in light of the many soldiers lying dead and wounded, in open fields, all across the land, weeds violating their torsos, eyeballs pecked out or dissolving, lips hideously retracted, rain-soaked/blood-soaked/snow-crusted letters scattered about them to ensure that we did not, as we took that difficult path we were now well upon, blunder, blunder further (we had blundered so badly already) and, in so blundering, ruin more, more of these boys, each of whom was once dear to someone. 

Ruinmore, ruinmore, we felt, must endeavor not to ruinmore....

We must, to do the maximum good, bring the thing to its swiftest halt and--

Kill.

Kill more efficiently.

Hold nothing back.

Make the blood flow.

Bleed and bleed the enemy until his good sense be reborn.

The swiftest halt to the thing (therefore the greatest mercy) might be the bloodiest.

Must end the suffering by causing more suffering. (pp. 306-7)

More to think about. It reminded me of those who say the atom bombs at the end of the war with Japan were the best way to end the war, even though they killed so many, because more would have been killed if we had not dropped the bombs.

Another ghost character, the Reverend Everly Thomas, has a long passage about a memory of what appears to be the judgement after death. One fellow dead person is sentenced to a beautiful place; the next one to a horrible place full of demons. When Thomas is judged, he, too, is sentenced to the horrible place. He escapes and does not go, but now he is in this ghost state (although he knows he is dead), and "is ignorant of what sin [he] committed." (p. 194) Again, food for thought. How can you be unaware of your own sin and the reason you would be sent to hell? That doesn't fit in with what I believe about the assurance of God's grace.

Near the end, once Willie has truly left (with the "matterlightblooming phenomenon"), Abraham Lincoln seems to have resolved his grief, and made it so he could resume life again.

There in his seat, Mr. Lincoln startled.

Like a schoolboy jolting suddenly awake in class.

Looked around.

Momentarily unsure, it seemed, of where he was.

Then got to his feet and made for the door.

The lad's departure having set him free. (p. 302)

He accepts his sorrow, realizes many others have sorrow, and he "must do what he could to lighten the load of those with whom he came into contact..." (p. 303)

One of the book club members sent a link to a page where it talks about the book receiving the Man Booker Prize. One of the judges has a video and says that Lincoln in the Bardo may seem a bit disconcerting at first, and it certainly was for me. As I went on, though, I was caught up in it, and discovered how rich it was, how it told many stories, and how it gave me so many things to think about.