I read a couple of great quotes by Deena Metzger recently. Deena is a poet, novelist, storyteller, healer and medicine woman, who lives with her animal companions in Topanga, California. She wrote "Poetry is beauty and ugliness side by side", and "Who do we have to become to find the forms and sacred language with which to meet these times?"
This resonates deeply with me, as I walk through a world of dualities: the most beautiful scenery in the world outside my door while bombs fall and people live in terror across this same planet; a heart that shrinks from violence and discord, requiring peace for my well-being, bombarded by ugly, divisive rhetoric and the frightening rise of fascism across the globe. How do we grapple with carrying all this; how do we keep our balance?
Metzger insists, "I must choose beauty." I must, too. I cannot manage without it. Thankfully, it is in abundance all around me - around us all, when we take time to notice.
This is when reading and writing poetry can sing to our spirits. It charts our passage through troubled times, remembers to watch for the beauty, and, at the very least, bears witness to what we have no power to change.
Mary Oliver, in her poem "Singapore", combines the duality beautifully. She says "A person wants to stand in a happy place in a poem," and "A poem should always have birds in it". Yet she also lifts up the woman scrubbing an ashtray in an airport washroom and helps us see the bigger picture in a way that lifts the heart. She is a Master at this.
Our challenge this week is to somehow see both dark and light, in any way or situation that speaks to you, and find the balance. How do you manage to hold onto beauty, light, and hope in a world that often feels unjust and cruel?
Some amazing words from these two women, to help you on your way:
In Singapore, in the airport, A darkness was ripped from my eyes. In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open. A woman knelt there, washing something in the white bowl. Disgust argued in my stomach and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket. A poem should always have birds in it. Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings. Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees. A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain rising and falling. A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem. When the woman turned I could not answer her face. Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and neither could win. She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this? Everybody needs a job. Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem. But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor, which is dull enough. She is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big as hubcaps, with a blue rag. Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing. She does not work slowly, nor quickly, like a river. Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird. I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life. And I want her to rise up from the crust and the slop and fly down to the river. This probably won’t happen. But maybe it will. If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it? Of course, it isn’t. Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only the light that can shine out of a life. I mean the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth, The way her smile was only for my sake; I mean the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.
~Mary Oliver
We are in danger.
There is time only to work slowly,
There is no time not to love.
from: Looking for the Faces of God, Deena Metzger
Lies the rift and the increasing separation,
As the plates of one mind slip away
From the plates of another mind.
I do not question which way I am to go,
But call to my heart to act on the decision made
To follow the soul
Or I will be split apart too,
As so many are,
Between violence
And Beauty.
The violent demands of our everyday life
And the strange beauty of Spirit afar.
I must choose Beauty
No matter the cost in this life.
I must choose and leap
Across the widening valley;
We cannot rest between.
Leap!
Ah Beauty! Receive me in your open arms.
