This morning I recalled the impatience of my youth. I self-medicated the ailment with the poetry. I particularly liked Piet Hein, a Danish writer/designer. He wrote silly little poems called "grooks." I loved them. I collected his books. I loved that he was a part of the Danish resistance during WWII and used his grooks to help the underground send coded messages. One grook in particular inspired a sign I put over my bedroom door where it remained for years. If I could write a poem with a vaccine embedded or could transform the pixels of this screen into the feeling of the touch of a human hand on a breaking or a fearful heart, I would not hesitate to hit send. I am working on being less afraid and inventing new ways to love. I hope you can too. In the meantime, here is the grook that inspired the sign:
T.T.T. Put up in a place where it's easy to see the cryptic admonishment T.T.T. When you feel how depressingly slowly you climb, it's well to remember that Things Take Time. by Piet Hein
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Full Stop by debgrant
In the midst of the full stop that the trajectory of our lives has experienced in these corona days, Do I have any body soul calendar memory of anything that feels like a full stop? More recently, the days after the end of a career. The routine of office days, Sundays, Holy Days over. The label of my profession shelved leaving a vacuum of questions mostly a reborn woman child asking Who am I? Who am I now? But these plague days feel more like the time I was riding a friend's horse alone through a pasture. A gentle walk urged into an easy lope, urged into a gallop. The ecstasy of wind created, a powerful creature, warm and thrumming percussion section of human, horse, and earth. And then the horse stopped. I don't know why. He just stopped. I did not. I experienced the trite but true metaphor of head over heals. It was an Olympic moment of movement Speed and form. And then I stuck the landing or it stuck me. Not a breath left in my lungs to make a noise. Shock, then pain, then feeling the leather rein still wrapped in my fingers. Then seeing the rock my back missed when I landed. The rock that would have cracked me dead or lame. Today it isn't a story of being grateful to be alive or even getting back on the horse that threw me which I did perhaps because I love a metaphor. Today it is a story about how difficult it is to stop when it wasn't our choice to stop. Learning how to stop may be how we survive. ### Sometimes, when lightning strikes, I can generate some lovely truth. Most often, however, the best I can do is point to it when I hear it or see it.
This is written by Mark Nepo entitled The Anthem of Our Day. It probably violates copyright law, but I will risk it today for your sake. In the ocean of history, things build and then are worn away to what is most essential. This is an irrevocable and recurring tide of time. And while the storms, whatever their form, first push us away, it is only by coming together that we endure and emerge even stronger, clearer, and more loving. This seems to be where we are now. And the practice, so simple and so difficult, is how to move through the days with caution and care, without feeding our panic. For the other virus spreading now is fear. We all feel it, calling us with its hypnotic frenzy. But one thing I’ve learned from almost dying from cancer is that fear is to be moved through and not obeyed. And we need each other in order to see clearly so we can right-size what is before us—day after day. Just as you can only see stars at night, it is during times like this that our inherent light and kinship are most visible. And while the pandemic is traveling across the globe, we must remember and reach for the miracle of life, which is still everywhere. This is not just stubborn optimism but a declaration of our need to stay available to the undeniable resources of life. It is those resources that remind us of the truth that we continue to affect each other and need each other. When one of us does something or doesn’t, it affects all of us. As Dr. Sanjay Gupta has wisely put it, “When you care for yourself, you care for everyone.” So when you wash your hands, you are keeping everyone you meet healthy. As all the traditions affirm, the deepest self-care is, at once, caring for the human family. If humanity is a global body, every soul and life is a cell in that body. And we are being challenged, more than ever, to keep the global body healthy by keeping ourselves healthy. In later life, the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, said, “I want to see what is necessary as beautiful, so I can be one of those who makes things beautiful.” I invoke this as an anthem of our day. If we can meet the outer uncertainty with an inner covenant of care, perhaps we can make what is necessary beautiful. Perhaps the washing of hands can become a modern sacrament, a holy ritual by which we hold ourselves and our global family in the deepest regard. Perhaps the slight bow of love and respect can replace the handshake as a holy ritual that will lessen our fear while sharing our love, so that we can bear the uncertainty together. As we practice caution and social distancing, let us not distance each other in our hearts. As we are forced to slow down and stop our busyness, let us feed more than our fear. Let us strengthen our inner resolve, both physically and spiritually, so we can meet the necessities of the day in hopes of making things more beautiful. For we all are being called to outlast the siren of fear until we can touch upon the reliable truths that reside beneath all fear. Like a strong net that softens the carriage of weight, the strength of our connections, even while physically apart, will soften the sharpness of the uncertainty inherent in times like this. In the Chinese language, the ideogram for crisis also means opportunity. And I believe that if we can share our fears and help each other not obey them, we will take the first step to making what is necessary beautiful. By practicing being all of who we are, we can strengthen the net of connection that is the human family. Like the rest of us, I can only try to navigate between caution and fear while maintaining our deeper connection. And in my own struggle to be more than my fear, I will affirm our strength of heart and commit to staying connected in our care. When larger than our fear, the kinship of being we all share endures.### ******************************************************* ******************************************************* ELOGOS is written by Deb Grant, Houston, Texas. Replies to ELOGOS are read only by Deb. Grant's Social Media: FACEBOOK pages: elogoswordfoodbydeb, debgrantjazzwater, personal page: facebook.com/jazzwater www.jazzwater.com and www.wordfoodbydeb.com and her Etsy shop: Jazzwater ******************************************************* In the whirlwind by debgrant
Bluster against the dark early morning windows. Wind chimes sound more like warning buoys clanging in this turbulence. I was reminded by a friend of Harvey-brain. The inability after a storm, or any crisis, to think clearly. Leaving milk on a counter that needs to in the fridge. Forgetting my zip code. This morning while I was washing my hands, I looked up and my face said to me, "What about me? The bluster of wind and foggy thinking brings pebbles of the past being tossed against my pane. Recollections of other voices that clang now with just a little hope to get through another day. Center to circumference a poem, a prayer that spoke of the way the whirlwind, the hurricane, our lives are thrown. Turbulence all around and an uneasy peace at the center. But a peace nonetheless. Another, Frost's invitation to choose a star.... "It asks a little of us here. It asks of us a certain height, So when at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame too far, We may choose something like a star To stay our minds on and be staid." Another, T.S. Eliot's conviction that love is "the stillpoint of the turning world." We have not been so tossed in a storm so together and so apart. Yet there is a center, a star, a stillpoint. If there weren't, I wouldn't bother to tell you. I would keep it to myself. But here I clang. We are in this together and love is impossible to hoard. ### The way I figure it. I am alive - not of my own doing - it is a gift. The coming in and going out happens. It is the stuff in between. The living of these days that matter, that can be influenced, savored, imbued with the flavors that we value. We can choose to live to ourselves, for ourselves or not. Today, I choose you. If you are reading this and feeling alone and want to reach out in a delightfully germ-free way, hit reply to this message. I will read it. I will take it to heart. I will respond.
On my facebook page, I started offering a question a day just for simple conversation - to use online are with your friends and family. Today's question is What has been your best purchase under $100.? Let me know if you want a question a day, I will email them to you via this ELOGOS list. It seems like the best use of the time.....the scriptures speak of redeeming the time.....I value you. I see you as best I can. You are not alone. God's Peace, Deb Three Ducks by debgrant
I once knew a man who hated the people who lived homeless in fragile community beneath the underpass. I couldn't budge him off his cliff before he jumped into a bunker away from concrete and those people. I failed at tempering his hatred, easing his fear, provoking compassion. I wondered when I thought I could cure hatred by charm or brillant logic or quoting sacred wisdom or influencing a heart with a wave of my words? I tossed a handful of oats to a duck last week. Yesterday the duck came back with two friends. I fed three ducks this morning. One beggar telling another beggar where to find food. The people of the underpass know how to do that. It is not an elegant or pretty compassion and may not even be compassion at all. Just survival. Like ducks. I think about the man hold up in his hatred. I wonder if he knows a duck that walks like him and talks like him. It was never me. I know that now. Now I throw a handful of food to three ducks. It feeds me more than it feeds them. I know that now. ### Gestures Matter by debgrant
When the world seems to be spinning out of control again, something there is about gestures. Small human gestures that nourishes, that feels like a cup of water. I know you know what I mean you have yours I have mine. The gestures are there to be seen if we are thirsty enough to see them. My view from a pew was of the backside of a couple. They stood separately for the most part until the Lord's Prayer when the woman reached her arm around the man and hung her finger on his back pocket like she had done it a thousand times. A text message in the middle of the day for no other reason than to say "I see you." A thank you note filled with splendor and tenderness, impossible to disregard. A cup of coffee by itself is a heavenly thing. A cup of coffee with a friend is communion. Gestures. Look for them. They are there. Gestures are something we can do to humanize the air around us. ### |
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