Soul Mountain Retreat #4

This morning I was sitting on the porch reading Walden when Marilyn knocked on the glass door and invited me to go with her to church. The sun had come out through the clouds and the blossoms were tentatively opening to the warmth. Yes, I'd love to go to church.

We drove to the First Congregational Church in Old Lyme, where a woman stopped us on the stairs. "It was so good at nine I had to come and hear it again," she said of the sermon we were about to hear.

But first a word about the ambiance. The town was in full blossom--magnificent magnolias in full magenta-lavender bloom, sunny forsythia abundant and golden, the lawns fresh and green--all amidst quaint New England houses. The weather wasn't anything like the winter photo of the church I found on the website and pasted here. (Next time I'll take my camera.) Imagine the church with a white blossoming cherry tree in front of it and birdsong in the balmy air.

Inside the church was painted white with gold trim and had old-fashioned pews: a typical nineteenth century New England Congregational Church with a lavish fresh bouquet of white flowers on the altar. The mostly female, mostly gray-haired choir sang beautifully. And the organ accompanied familiar hymns--"God of Grace and God of Glory" and "I Love to Tell the Story." The prayers were soulful and intelligent, expressing gratitude for the spring weather and sorrow at violence here and around the world. Usually I prefer Emily Dickinson's garden services, with a "boblink for a chorister," but this morning the service was worth being indoors for. Senior pastor David C. Good gave a rousing and passionate sermon on the Virginia Tech shootings, using a text from Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood." His reading of the excerpt made me want to hear him read Wordsworth aloud forever. Here are the first two stanzas of Wordsworth's Ode:

I

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

II

The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

Of course, the glory that "hath past away" became, in Good's sermon, a description of the beautiful and talented young people, the professors, and even the killer himself, who were shot in this twisted display of violence and mental illness--for if each one of us is a manifestation of the creator's love, even the young man and his fearfully shaken family are included. He also mentioned that on the day of the shooting nine American soldiers were killed in Iraq. That they, too, were a glory that hath passed away from the earth. And the Iraqis, too, I thought--all those innocent civilians that didn't wish for this war--I'm sure many others did, too.

When I teach Wordsworth's Ode, I explain that the poet feels that a "glory hath past away . . . from the earth" because he senses he has lost the direct connection with the power of nature he felt in childhood. As we age and are shaped by the human world, we grow cataracts, as it were, over our senses and our souls. So it is not just in tragedy, but in the living of life itself, that this glory passes away. Such tragedies at the shooting at Virginia Tech shock us into feeling briefly, but afterwards we become even more numbed, more removed. Reverend Good mentioned that his memories of Appalachia as a young man doing service there would now be forever wedded to these images of tragedy. But he did not simply offer a lament. Rather he asked whether churches, who have nobly collaborated to create memorials and funerals for this and many other violent events in recent times, should be content with this function, in which they have become all too adept. He exhorted the church to:

1) Support universal health and mental health care, so that the mentally ill among us might have treatment.
2) Support the banning of handguns, assault weapons, semi-automatic and automatic guns.
3) Actively influence the shaping of culture by providing an imaginative vision of what society can be, rather than allowing our children and ourselves to be scripted by violent fantasies in everything from movies to video games, by the polarization of the issues on which the media describes. Yes, fantasy does matter, he asserted. The killer in Blacksburg had rehearsed his demented fantasy many times, using a "me against them" form of thinking. This kind of thinking underlies the "us against them" thinking all too prevalent in our sports, in our news, in our media, in the rhetoric about the war. He mentioned that words are powerful, and that the words of Jesus are--can be, if Christians are worthy custodians of them--more powerful than guns. The church's mission is to live the legacy of those words, embody the imaginative power into the world to transform it.

At the end of the sermon the congregation gave him a hearty round of applause, which is not something, Marilyn told me, they usually do. His words are so right, yet the situation seems so hopeless. But to have someone continually articulate the "right things" that must be done is at least an encouragement. If David C. Good were running for President, I’d vote for him. I noticed the church has a website and posts the sermons, so I’ll look forward to reading it again.

When we came back to Soul Mountain, I read through the Sunday Times and pored over an article on Boy Soldiers in Africa--over 300,000 now--and another on the weakening of the influence of the US Saudi connection with Prince Bandar. Wrapped up together with the sermon, these thought found their form in a poem I've been working on: "Why We Fear the Self" that uses a rap rhythm to question the ways in which our complicity with violence is fueled by our fears of facing and being our true selves.

Soul Mountain Retreat #3

Economy (with a nod to Thoreau)

In my rush to leave home I forgot the cash I'd meant to bring with me to Soul Mountain. Besides a credit card and a slender checkbook with just a few checks left in it, I had only a few dollars stuffed into the side of my purse. Or so I thought. But after two days of settling in and unpacking at my leisure, cleaning out my pockets and my purse, I've found 39 dollars and a large fist full of change. What might have seemed meager before is riches now. The wealth I carried here and didn't even know it!

That's my hope for these few weeks--to find the riches I've brought with me and didn't even know it. So far I've not been disappointed. This afternoon is the first time I've been able to sit down for an extended period of time to push beyond journaling in my writing, and already a sort of poem has broken through the matted leaves in my brain, years of bloom pressed down and composted for later . . .

Skunk Cabbage

At first a pair of leaves unfurls
one shaped like a tablespoon,
one a butter knife
of brightest green,
and as they take in light
they spread their girth and curl to face each other:
the tablespoon becomes a trowel in size,
the butter knife a tablespoon.

When they've grown tall as leaves of young romaine,
they spread again and this time curl apart
to make a space for new twins birthed
between them from the mother root:
another tablespoon of green,
another slender butter knife,
which in their turn
will curl again then spread,
admitting space for other shoots,
and so the family's large embrace enlarges
to make room for newest members
yet still preserves an outer layer that gives
it bulk and shape.

Beside this plant a dozen hundred others
spring up and birth
their inner leaves
before the trees have greened.
This emerald extravagance
beneath bare trunks and spindly branches
a marching band of green
in scattered rank and file
proclaims that spring
has taken root
despite the frequent rain and chill.

My first writing of this season--as cheap and gaudy as skunk cabbage, perhaps--but hey, something's poking up through the compost.

Soul Mountain Retreat #2

At the end of a chilly, rainy day--gathering in the harvest of things done, felt, seen tasted, touched, even smelled . . .

Scent of drenched soil rising through a mat of wintered-over leaves

Pale green lichens spotting rocks and trees

A white-tailed deer facing me sideways across the wet driveway, fringed with dripping newly budded leaves

The mechanical click of the battery-operated clock in the too-bright kitchen where I write

Perfume of deeply steeped rooibos tea on my tongue

(I finally figured out what rooibos reminds me of: sweet tobacco!)

At dusk, when the rain had dissipated into a fine mist, I took a walk out the driveway and turned left on the one-lane road that passes the house. I walked until I reached a vista of meadows and several grander but still tasteful wood-sided houses nestled back in the breast of hills. On either side the road is lined with low stone walls, probably of the kind Frost wrote about: stacks of large, odd-shaped fieldstone. The woods are full of rocks and boulders competing with each other to see who can wear more of the pale-green lichens that grow profusely here. It must be a damp spot. Skunk cabbage is sprouting wherever running water gathers into shallow pools. When I returned to the house I saw a full-sized female white-tailed deer staring at me from the edge of the woods, so still. It's a good thing deer are shy; an aggressive or even friendly deer would be a rather terrifying creature with its size and speed. I started back into the woods again, but when I saw another deer--or this same one again--I thought better of disturbing her habitat at dusk. So I came back into the house and wrote this down.

Soul Mountain Retreat #1

In my last post I mused on mothering and monasticism. Today I'm entering the adventure of planned solitude in community at Marilyn Nelson's Soul Mountain Retreat. I will mark each day of this retreat with a blog entry. For two-and-a-half weeks I'll be away from family and work in Goshen, Indiana and the constant chores of the house and the old cars and the weedy garden. This is the first time I've been away from the family for more than a week--ever. And I've been a mother and writer for 24 years.

At Soul Mountain--a spacious house on 6 acres of woods in Southern Connecticut that borders a nature preserve--I help with chores and cook for myself and have my own cozy bedroom with two beautiful views. The two other women here right now each go their own way, offering friendly advice and occasional brief conversation, but otherwise we are all engrossed in our writing and solitude. Harmonious parallel play. Writing, and the solitude and self-care and contemplation that go with it, are honored in this space. Writing is not a guilty pleasure here. It is what we do. That and eat and sleep and walk in the woods. My writing desk and laptop face the window that looks out over a long kidney-shaped pond with a spillway--Peanut Pond--and a wooded slope of the nature preserve beyond. It faces southwest, so I can watch the sun set every night beyond the computer screen to my left. During the day I can watch the clouds change the color of the water and tree shadows root themselves deeply into the pond's surface. For more information about Soul Mountain visit www.soulmountainretreat.com

Last night, in preparation for my departure for Soul Mountain, I never went to bed. I stayed up all night in my office at Goshen College, commenting on student papers, organizing files, cleaning off my two desks heaped with months of papers, sorting through stacks and stacks of papers in boxes, on the floor, under the desk. My impetus was to clean up my office for visiting poet Rhoda Janzen who will use it during my absence. Rhoda's a dear friend, and I will miss hosting her, but she was a great sport and urged me onto Soul Mountain. As a writer she knows how precious two plus weeks of solitude can be. So I am here.

In cleaning the office, I found several boxes of files I had abandoned when Mother died two years ago during May Term while I was teaching Native American Lit. I never finished my filing for that course, nor for the courses I had taught the previous semester while she way dying, and I was at her place every day and in and out of doctors' offices and the emergency room with her. Two years' of stuff had accumulated over these unsorted piles. I read in Buddha, Zen, Toa, Tantra by Osho that "mind is the accumulation of incomplete thoughts." Well, one could certainly have said that about my office. Yes, there are still piles, but small manageable ones I can finally deal with when I get home. Yes, still there is the accumulation of incomplete thoughts. But the pressure is much less. I'm beginning to break through the iceberg of grief and move forward in a more graceful way embodying my life.

Somehow the sorting and cleaning and working through energized me enough to keep my going till 3:45 a.m. when I drove home to take a shower, throw some things in a suitcase and go with Lizzie to the airport to catch a 6am flight.

Lizzie, bless her soul, had gotten up at three to come over to the house and drive me in a drenching downpour to South Bend Airport, 50 minutes away. When I pulled up in the driveway from my night marathon in the office she was making me scrambled eggs. I hustled to take a shower and throw together a few things for the trip. We loaded up her slow old Honda Accord, Jeanie, who is filled with almost as much debris as my office was. Her mothering and baby paraphernalia is stashed over the dried flowers and empty juice bottles and audiotapes of her student days. In the midst of leaving I was panicked that I couldn't find my cell phone, so I rushed back into the house and took Julia's phone and charger so I could call home. Such wonderful daughters I have. Lizzie's steady, calm company on the way was like a quiet music. She looked so sweet and determined in her new glasses, the street lamps casting a dim glow on her face. When she dropped me off I was so tired I could barely manage getting the luggage out of the car. One more minute dawdling and I would have missed the plane.

One the ride from Chicago to Harford I sat by a young mother from Italy and her four-month-old daughter Alethea. The two of them made beautiful harmony and nursed openly and happily in the plane. (Curses on that stewardess who had a woman thrown off a plane last year for nursing a baby.) She reminded me of Lizzie driving home from the airport to her 9-month-old daughter Willow. Someday these babies will be driving their mothers somewhere, their mothers who were once so young and in tune with their daughter's bodies and rhythms.

Of course, when I got to Hartford, there was my cell phone in the backpack. It had flown with me the entire time in the overhead baggage compartment, and I had never even turned it off in flight.

Coming Back as a Mother

When Katagiri Roshi asked Natalie Goldberg what she'd like to come back as in her next life, she playfully answered "a clump of white flowers."
"No, that's too simple," he replied.
"What would you come back as?" she asked him.
"A monk. I would always come back as a monk."
At least that's how I remember the conversation as I was "re-listening" to Long Quiet Highway on audiotape driving on one of my many mind-numbing errands as a mother. On those long, lonely hauls to pick up someone or other from from wherever they may be, I've taken to listening to Buddhist tapes or CDs, something soothing that stimulates calming interior monologue.
But when I asked myself this question, "What would you come back as?" I surprised myself by immediately answering, "I would come back as a mother."
Being a monk is a spiritual path, and I never craved solitude until I actually became a mother. The monk’s path has some appeal to me these days. Yet it's possible to find those jewel-like moments of solitude in the midst of a mother's life cycle. In fact, this week I am home alone in the house I share with my family--the first time ever in 27 years of marriage and 23 plus years of parenting. I have left home for a week, I have traveled alone, but to just stay home alone is another story. This week I’ll get to find out just what kind of an inhabitant I am—of my own space and my own body—when there aren’t a lot of others around stirring the pot.

I wonder whether it's possible to find jewel-like moments of mothering as a celibate monk. One could certainly find moments of surrogate mothering. But the tedious, wondrous, encompassing long haul, the eternal mothering, can only be lived. Perhaps a monastic vocation is similar in that it, too, can only be lived. My stolen monastic moments are pure metaphor. But the holiness I have found in walking the mother's path--including long stretches of self-suppressing, of letting others go first, of feeling anonymous and invisible in the eyes of the professional world—even though I also have a professional double-life as a college professor, of despair and joy creating the texture of the daily lived commitment--has its monastic elements, even as it has its polygamous ones--everyone piling into the bed for a snuggle, people clamoring for intimacy, people who want or need bodily attention only from you.
What is left of the giver, the one who finds in another's suffering her own usefulness (to paraphrase the words of Julia Kasdorf's wonderful poem, "What I learned from my mother") when she is left alone for a spell? Sometimes she finds out through tragedy, through enormous suffering of her own--forced separations, divorce, death, war, exile, accident--to find out otherwise is a gift. Especially on a sun-filled April morning, after a night of heavy rain, the world dew-fresh and last years’ chives sending up new shoots that I have time to gather and chop and sprinkle over the omelet I’ve made for myself, without having to make several others first. A life of such self-focus would become mundane, but a week of this will be as savory as the sprinkle of fresh chives on the omelet—chives that have decided to come back as chives--because they are especially tasty when they are the first fresh garden greens one has eaten in a good six months or more.