I do not understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.
—Anne Lamott
With every cell, I listened
to her familiar voice,
her thoughtful silences,
her precision with verbs,
and though we spoke
of showerheads and
grocery shopping,
elections, underbellies and
standing beneath the moon,
we spoke only of grace, every
sentence somehow stitched
with the most stripped-down
kind of praise, the kind
that doesn’t sparkle,
doesn’t sing, doesn’t
shimmy, doesn’t offer
sweet perfume, the kind
of praise that is so naked,
so plain, so bare
there is nothing at all
between us and the
sheer magnificent truth
that we are here.
I long to name such aliveness,
at once composed
and uncontainable,
but it slips my attempts—
it’s like trying to fit a dress
on a sunbeam.
But I felt it, how
as we spoke I went
from being stone
to being sky. Oh glory,
with my everything,
I felt it.
Posts Tagged ‘praise’
Talking with Andrea
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aliveness, friendship, grace, language, praise on March 5, 2024| 12 Comments »
Another Reason to Marvel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged color, flower, praise, tulip, universe, wonder on May 6, 2023| 6 Comments »
The average color of the universe
is not blue, as they thought, but beige—
or so they say after studying
two hundred thousand galaxies—
a fact that makes me stand longer today
beside this tulip as it shamelessly splays
its statistically unlikely yellow and red,
a living manual for possibility—
in all of deep space,
the chance to show up in this garden.
Dark Praise
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, dark, praise on December 4, 2022| 16 Comments »
In each of us thrives an inner world
that does not love the light.
An inner world of womb and breath,
the most essential dark
where blood moves and lungs expand,
where neurons fire and cells divide,
where the heart pulses and muscles build,
where all words form, where all thoughts nest,
the secret world of humanness—
the dark we are, the dark we need,
this secret dark we cannot see.
For all its wounds, its rest,
its miraculous repair,
I praise this living dark
we carry everywhere.
Three Unlikelihoods
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haikuling, praise on March 26, 2022| 6 Comments »
crushed by rusted weight
stalled by my own brokenness—
still this urge to praise
*
despite cosmic odds
that tend toward vacuum and void,
this pale flower, these buds
*
even in cold darkness
hear the growing rush of snowmelt—
somewhere it is warm
Concurrent
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, nature, praise, snow, wound on December 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »
On a morning
when the snow
falls and drapes
everything in shine,
it is not that I don’t
feel the wounds—
raw and throbbing—
it’s just that it’s
so beautiful,
this tender world,
that I want
to praise it
forever.
The Snow People, Three Days Later
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged praise, snow, snowmen on November 30, 2020| 2 Comments »
Their hats are cockamamie.
One has lost its carrot nose.
Stone buttons and eyes
have long since succumbed
to gravity. But there is
something yet dignified
about the snow people in the yard,
their knobby stick arms raised
as if, in their declining state,
there’s still so much to praise.
Rather to Praise What Is Still, But
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ferocity, praise, self awareness, wind on November 18, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Today when the wind
wrests branches from trees,
cartwheels the watering can
snatches my peace,
I search in me
for a way to praise it,
praise a force strong enough
to rip trees from the earth,
push a ship cross the sea,
and shred what I think I know.
There is in me
a vehement storm
that I have tamed
for fifty years.
Is it any wonder
the wind makes me nervous—
not that I don’t know
how to relate to it,
but oh, because
I do.
The Real Story
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged angel, despair, praise on November 11, 2020| 4 Comments »
Just as I threw my arms up in despair,
it was as if two angels
swooped in beneath them
and held them in place,
kept my arms raised high
so that anyone walking by
might have thought I was praising
the day, praising the air,
praising the clean blue sky,
kept my arms raised until I, too,
was fooled into thinking
I am here to honor
the immeasurable blue,
here to open, to feel the heart
beat wild inside the chest.
Long ago the angels left,
still I am here, hands raised.
*
*
ha! Friends, I just noticed that an anagram for despair is praised.
Morning After
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged election, miracle, praise on November 8, 2020| 6 Comments »
Again the chance to praise
the same room, the same floor,
the same view, the same tea,
the same image in the same mirror,
which today is startlingly not the same.
Again the chance to find the miracle
in the leaves that fall, the miracle
in the morning sun, the miracle
in the willows beside the pond.
Again, the chance to fall in love
with the same sky, the same field,
the same dirt, the same broken world.
Again, the chance to show up
with these same tired arms
and put them to work,
the same work as yesterday,
which is to learn to lift up,
to heal, to carry, to build,
to be in the world, to praise
the same room, the same floor,
the same view, the same tea.
Stubborn Praise
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged futility, praise on February 7, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Praise the futility of song.
—Ruth Schwartz, Versions of Ghalib: Ghazal 1,
And so today I praise
the mango that molders,
how sweet it is the moment just before
it is gone. I praise the shovel
for its valiant attempt
to make a clearing
even as snow continues
to fall. Praise the fire,
though it always goes out
when left untended.
Praise how easily I forget the lessons
I learned yesterday,
how this allows me to learn them again.
Praise the body that rises
and runs, though it knows
it will tire and ache. Praise
the innocent clock
which only does what it
was made to do. And praise
this longing to praise—
how it has never built
a single house nor fed a mouth
nor loaded a train,
but oh, the joy,
the aliveness in praising.