Vocation haiku

We get stuck on the word vocation. We all have one at least. All vocation, all vocations, arise from community. All vocations are holy, wholly lived in community. Sometimes it is a community of two, often more. We are all helping one another discern vocation all the time. Sometimes we see it.

Vocation: we all

Have one at least but really

Several… if we look.

Discernment

Wow.   Two college visits, one day after another.  One so right, and the other signed, sealed and delivered oh so wrong.  Rarely has discernment been so easy.

How does one visit

Go oh so right, the other

Oh so very wrong?

Hobby

Sometimes even an interview is involved, during which I discover Not this one, either.  What an odd hobby. Still I wonder whether the right thing is out there somewhere, or in here somewhere.  It seems the jobs I apply for now are getting closer.  It seems the conversations I am having are getting closer... to something.  Still.  What an odd hobby.

My hobby these days

Is applying for jobs I

Surely will not get.

More wise counsel

Okay.  I will stay home today.  Not that I want to (mind you) but I will stay home, drink hot things, gallons of water.  maybe leave the house tomorrow.

I remember praying

For just enough snow

So a friend

Would have to stay home

Not make an unwise decision.

I recruited friends

To pray with me.

They did.

There was enough snow

To stop traffic

Everywhere,

Just enough snow

For my friend

To stay home.

Today every time I consider

Leaving the house,

My right nostril

Opens like a spigot.

I get it.

Just because the calendar says

I can drive,

There is more wise counsel.

It suggests:

A nap,

Gallons of water,

Microwaved

Chicken soup.

Maybe driving

Tomorrow.

WWJD

Today is one of those days.  What would Jesus do?  I have little idea.  Today seems to be a day to sift and sort and possibly walk to the library.  The house is still in disarray.  Kicking over tables, one of the few examples we have of external anger on Jesus* part, does not seem like a productive option.  What would Jesus do?

What would Jesus do?

All too often

I have no idea.

Most times

I come at the question

From the negative.

Would Jesus do this?

Or this?

Or this?

I come at the question

From a string of answers:

Not this,

Nor this.

No,

Not even this.

If Jesus was really pissed

Would he be entitled

To a temper tantrum?

Was kicking over that table

Of moneychangers

In the temple

An example

I might be justified

To copy?

Which piece of the Man

Is justified

Today?

Do I look for tables

To kick over?

Do I walk away,

Away,

And away.

Stay home

And tend to the cat.

Pray for the client

Who didn*t show

Last night

In the rain.

Wonder at the conversations

I had

Instead of the scheduled ones.

What would Jesus do?

What did Jesus do?

What will Jesus do?

Discovery

This is indeed a week of discovery.  I have spent quite a while adapting to blurry vision.  All the eye specialists were puzzled.  The retina guy knew it was my optic nerve.  The optic nerve guy knew it was my retina.  It gets worse in bright light, when I am overheated, or under stress.  It seems I was not naming it correctly.  It seems double vision is corrected these days with prisms.  Wild.  I am now waiting for my new glasses.  Will they be perfect?  Most likely not.  But I will take and celebrate improvement.  Like Columbus, I find myself on new shores.  

This is a week of discovery.

What I named as blurry vision

Is really two of the same image,

Up and to the right.

My retinas and optic nerves

Test clear.

My brain is

What it is.

This week

I found a holistic

Ophthalmologist.

He discovered

My blur is double vision,

My left eye sees

Way up and slightly

To the right.

When I practice seeing

With one eye

Or the other,

There is no blur.

I have new glasses on order

With prisms.

New discoveries are made

All the time.

I feel like Christopher Columbus.

He thought he had reached India,

Only to discover

It was someplace

Entirely new.

Quitting

Two more conversations this morning helping people sift things and encouraging the bold step to quit.  It is not something that fits on a resume.   This is probably why I may never be hired, most anywhere.  Yes, it is most likely suited to a position on the edge of things.  

I am good at helping people

Quit.

There is no such slot

On a resume.

I suppose it is a kind

Of discernment.

Still

Discernment is so often named

In the positive direction.

No.

I help people quit things,

Hold hands

Give a shove

Create spaces

So God can work

In a more positive direction:

Find new space

For the woman

who coordinated coffee hour

For twenty five years;

The treasurer who could*t balance

Her own checkbook

To save her life;

I am good at seeing

Negative spin.

I know somehow

When things

Need to change.

I hold hands,

Give a shove,

Create space so God can work

However God

Will work.

This is often not

What employers

Want to see.

Different things

I am sitting at my volunteer counseling place.  Client number 1 cancelled.  I wait for client number 2.  I was driven here by my beloved.  I will walk the streets of Wheaton and Glen Ellyn when I am done here, probably my clients will be among those with whom I walk.  Still learning as I go.

Once again

I pay attention

To different things.

I walk,

See the people who walk

With me.

I discover

Renewed vision,

Realize the blur

Of fluorescent lights.

I notice the comfort

Of indirect daylight.

I take things

In stages,

Read accounts of those

Whose challenges

Are so much more

Than mine,

Those who walk

All the time,

Those who see

The corners of things,

Have to extrapolate

The rest.

Once again I see

Different things.

They remind me of things

I did not learn as fully

Before.

Almost time for church

Maybe I*ll get to more than a haiku today, maybe not.  We slept through the middle service, and the other two have 10:30 nursery duty.  I stayed home.  I love the lessons for today.  How could I not love Samuel*s call in the middle of the night?  Then there*s Psalm 139, God discerning every single part of every single one of us?  What*s not to love?

Almost time for church,

God discerns me in my chair,

Next week in the pew.

Appointment

Awhile ago now, my spiritual director told me that the dreams and awarenesses I had at night would begin coming during waking hours.  Well, they have.  What he didn*t tell me was that I would continue getting them at night.  Today I make the appointments for the repeat MRI and the June neurologist visit.  I have other appointments to keep as well.  

It seems everyone and everything does.

All night I dreamed of God.

He spoke to everyone.

Everyone listened in her own way,

In his own way.

No person

Was left alone.

No one

Was left outside the words.

In my dream the plants were greener

Even the stones

Paid attention.

In my dream the homeless man

On the street corner,

The one I have passed many times,

Even he

Had made an appointment

With God,

So he could hear specifically

What God had in mind.

He said God wished to speak with him

At 10 PM.

He said he would keep

The appointment.

All night

God

Everyone

Everything.

I woke up and knew

I had an appointment to keep.

So I am.

Listening for life

We went to a concert last night.  As you can tell, it was a mixed experience.  We learned again there is more than one way to view mortality and the life we have.  The main performer even sang one song which named Jesus Christ, but it was not as if he knew him.  It continues interesting to me that when life is sung, it is easy to hear and name it.  I wish the concert had Kim Richey at the end as well. 

We loved the woman

Who opened.

She was winsome and unassuming.

She had us at hello and goodbye.

The main act came on stage,

The one we were there

To see.

He opened with a song

We hope never to hear again.

Next to me my love tensed.

We did not hold hands.

The song was endless.

Still we listened

For the human underlay. 

In the end

The song we came to hear

He did not write,

He struggled to remember it

At the encore.

As we listened for the human underlay,

He sang songs of mortality

But not mortality rich in life.

He sang

Endless glasses of white wine

With his mother.

We liked the line about the new baby.

One line about the new baby.

In the end we were there

For the woman who had us at hello

And goodbye.

She sang life.

It was not hard

To hear

At all.

Free Rides

Yes, another driving metaphor.  I guess there are themes :)   I began this thinking about how difficult it is to ask for rides, and how in some ways I*d just as soon stay at home than ask for a ride.  But there are people who have offered rides free and clear and I know it is free and clear of any tolls which show up on the bill later.   Often they are folk who have been through similar things and know what it means not to drive for awhile, or for more than awhile.  As I wrote, I remembered Pastor Davis, sent back into my life in January, recognizing me from across the parking lot at Staples in Bolingbrook.  God-sent.  I knew he was God-sent.  And he is reminder today of things given free and clear, God in the midst.

It seems free rides

Are often anything but free.

They extract a toll even

When no money is involved.

They are like the automatic tickers

On the tollroads,

Noticed when the credit card expires,

The I-Pass account has run low.

There is a tollbooth collector

At Boughton and 355.

He pastors a congregation

For free.

He used to wave me on through

When he could,

Always asked about family.

When he said God bless you

He meant it.

I use I-Pass now.

No pastor in the tollbooth for me.

I rarely even pass Boughton and 355.

When I bought IKEA furniture for the office

In January,

I found him in the parking lot

At  Staples,

Waving, shouting

I thought it was you

It had to be you.

God bless you!

He works on the tollway,

Pastors a congregation for free.

He knows free rides.

He still knows how to give rides

Free and clear.

Way Open

The internship which I have struggled and strained and spent so much energy on... will happen... when it should.  It will even be at the place I knew was a fit from the beginning.  I liked them, they liked me.  The program was wonderful and solid and will give me the experience I need.  But the timing wasn*t right... simply wasn*t right.  I tried to finagle it.  No.  I am Very Good at Making Things Work.  Still no.  It seems this fall is Right.  Really?  Really?   Yes.  I*m glad I was not Sarah waiting for that baby, Abraham waiting for the promised succession of heirs.  Really?  Really?  Yes.

After what seems an eternity

Everything settles into place.

The original discernment last September

Was for September coming:

Not January,

Not June,

No amount of wrangling, interviewing,

Emailing, fingerprinting,

Made it different.

February found me in the new office

Listening through the door

to small children sing

The wheels on the bus go round and round.

It seems

I will have the summer to garden

The summer to drive

The summer to breathe.

Probably there are summer plans

I know nothing about.

There is a dandelion in my window well

The first of the dandelion season.

The Quakers say Way Open

The path when things fall

Together,

Doors open easily.

The wheels on the bus go round and round.

The quality of mercy is not strained,

Not Strained.

It falls gently

Like spring rains which bring forth

Sunny bright yellow dandelions.

Way Open.

Asymptote

Of course this has nothing to do with mathematics, except I think I have the curve part right.  And when we religious types talk about a WORD coming to us, usually it*s not something like asymptote.  But really, God can use anything and everything to teach us what we need to learn.  That*s the beauty of it all, really.  That*s the beauty.  When we pay attention, that*s the beauty.

When a word flies at one

In the middle of the night,

Has been pitched so hard

It hits one*s head

So as to

Wake one up:

It behooves one

To do something with it.

Here is my something.

Asymptote

I thank the God of computer dictionaries

In the middle of the night.

Asymptote:

It seems an imaginary mathematical curve

Which flies in from Infinity and Beyond,

Curves around and returns on a path

Beyond infinity

Equal to the one it took

To get here.

Purely imaginary, mind you.

Mathematicians would write a different poem.

Me?

I hear that preacher who knows that nothing has come together

But preaches anyway,

The person in the pew who is struck by a word

From the preacher*s mouth

An in-between word

Like

Moving on to the next point

That person knowing he is moving on now

She is moving on now

And oh so grateful

To the preacher

For uttering that in-between word

From the pulpit.

Asymptote.

Sometimes it behooves one to write

About the oddest things,

The curve ball thrown in from infinity

Whose destination is finally

Infinity.

It curves and returns

On the mirrored path

Out.

Asymptote

Now I know I am on

The other side of the curve.

Now I know

I am on

The mirrored path

Out to Infinity

And Beyond.

I am oh so grateful

to the Pitcher.

Each of us takes life at her own speed

As I sit with people, the truism that people do things when they*re ready to do them comes home again and again.  I have the privilege of talking about parables this Sunday.  One of the beauties of  a parable is that there is no one interpretation of them.  They have layers of interpretation.  Jesus* parables turn the world upside down and inside out.  They beg a nuanced understanding.  No matter where one is in life, whether one is going breakneck speed or slogging, there is room in a parable to enter and sift and reach an understanding, then do the same tomorrow, and find new understanding.  Each of us takes life at her own speed, his own speed.  The tortoise and the hare.  Sometimes we are blessed to see it.

Each of us takes life

At her own speed.

Such a simple thing to learn.

I had to slow

To see it.

Even now I sit sidelined

For numbers of slow days

Watch the sun*s slow illumination

Of the trees

The yard

The ducks

Even the mountain ash filled with cedar waxwings

This morning.

Sidelined

I watch things move

At their own speed:

The tortoise plods

The hare races

Until they are finally nothing

But dust

Yet more;

Each to his own speed

Her own speed

Both finally dust

And more.

The tortoise takes a slower time

To get there.

The hare thinks it is a race.

Both get there

Anyway.

Such a simple thing to learn.

In the end we are dust

Yet so much more than dust.

Loved and lovely dust

And really so much more,

No matter how long it takes

To get there.

We don*t get new visions every day

I am someone who is easily bored.  Really rather like the cat.  Sitting and figuring new ways for things to go together is a challenge.  Looking at all the pieces together and waiting for a pattern to emerge... is a challenge.  Again... like the cat.

Today there are no new things to do.  I wait for a phone call from a possible internship site.  I give thanks for all the things which have come together.  I listen to the cardinal who has chosen a particular tree to claim as his.  He proclaims it loudly.  Today I play with possibilities, and take out of my storehouse what is new and what is old, lay them all out on the living room floor, and dispatch the cat to the family room.

We don*t get new visions

Every day.

Some days

Like today

Are for remembering

The old ones.

It is even Scriptural.

Like the householder

We are to take all of them out,

The old and the new,

Lay them on the living room floor

So we can see it all together

Or at least as much as we have;

We are to hope the cat doesn*t mess it up

Sprawl in the middle on his back

He likes mess, you see,

Makes him feel at home.

We must entice the cat to another room

To find another mess

To call home.

Then, the cat dispatched,

We must consider the pieces together

The old with the new

Baste them into possibility

Consider them again.

New visions are not an everyday thing.

Some days require the entire living room floor

A new place for the cat to sleep.

April Fool*s Day: A beginning...

Hmmm... April Fool*s Day and Lent... a natural combination, when I think about it...

And a blog*s beginning

It is National Poetry Month,

So April is not the cruelest month.

Eliot and The Wasteland will never be chosen

For Day One,

If we have anything to say

About it.

Still I wonder which poet gets to represent

April Fool*s Day,

And who decides from amongst

The foolish lot?

I am a candidate for fool every day,

A representative for fool

Really just like everyone else.

Is today*s poem chosen from a jester*s hat

Multi-colored

With bells

Everyone in the mix?

Is there discernment in the choosing

Or is it willy-nilly

The wisdom of the world upside down

And inside out?

Whatever the poem today,

Will it show that God is always the one

In charge of the joy

Even in the middle

Of Lent?