Oyster

One haiku for my daughter. I wave pom poms on the side of the field. My oyster is here, in the backyard, on the street, in the office under the altar, cheerleading.

This world: her oyster

This whole world beckons her on

Me: one cheerleader

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.

Useful

Several interesting conversations this week.  My trainer asked me if I keep a daily journal of my medical symptoms.  I told her I blog... but the blog is way more than medical.  I found myself naming, to a fellow therapist, that part of my vocation has always been to apply for positions I knew would not consider me a viable candidate due to my gender and/or political position.  I have delighted in the interviews, and sometimes...rarely... but sometimes... I have been called.

This week I realized

Part of my vocation

Is to apply for positions

Which may never

Consider me a match.

Still

All the information,

All the experience

I have accumulated

Is useful

Somehow,

Has been useful

Somehow,

Will be useful

Somehow.

And somehow

I know this is true.

Do you keep a journal?

She asks.

I know she thinks particularly

About medical things.

Yes

I say

I blog.

Yet

Medical things are really only

A small piece

Of the whole.

Released

I began writing this for my friend, Matt Gunter, now bishop of Fond du Lac.  I was saddened when he left St. Barnabas because he was one of a very few colleagues who understood my call to be a mediator in this beloved Church of ours.  Now he has been released to be a bishop to the North and beyond.  And me?  I have been released to stay here.  

My friend has been released

To a wider audience.

It seems I have been released

As well,

Released to hear more

One thing at a time

An almost cloistered life

Hidden

In this blooming burgeoning world

Still

Not hidden quite.

I am a goldfinch

Among the dandelions

I pay attention to each

Yellow bloom

Move on to the next

I am released into life

Almost

A cloistered life

But still not hidden

Rather released

As much as my friend.

Oh so fine

Lunch this week with friends.  They asked questions I could not answer.  I am aware that I am in the midst of reclamation of things I had put aside for some time, and subtraction of things somehow extraneous.  Perhaps I have always been doing this.  Perhaps this is a piece of what it means to be human.  I rather like that thought.  Perhaps I have been doing what I was called to do all along.

Doors and windows wide open

The world intrudes

Cardinals

Dogs

Trains

The occasional airplane

Overhead

Distant cars from the Elgin-O’Hare:

It originates

In neither place.

Doors and windows open

The breeze blows through

Slightly chilly but oh

So fine.

I claim back

What I must,

Continue subtraction of all

With no internal sense

Or sensibility

Until what remains is clear

Then

Clearer still.

It blows through

Slightly chilly, yes,

But oh

So fine.