Airshow!

It is a little disconcerting, having your peaceful hour of reading broken by a quartet of warplanes. There must be an airshow, but they keep circling overhead and I am glad to be able to assume that their intentions are friendly...

Here's a sarcastic ditty:

Other worlds, other wisdom,
Other wiles's woes,
False justice from another time--
Is that the way it goes?
A giddy cry for blood, let bones
Be broken, every one!
It's not enough to see it through,
It must be overdone.

And a poem written at Doubleshot...my first real visit there since moving back. It was so nice to see familiar faces:

Returning home, or home again at heart,
Remembering long hours and long days,
Of friends well-met, reluctance to depart--
But overall content in deepest ways.
And even ever-altered circumstance
Cannot erase a mind's full memory--
Time's skill at theft confirmed, he has no chance
Of taking off with my biography.

A truth assured, as morning's proof will show,
For I observe a still continuum--
Dust swept, resettled; faces aged but known;
"These things remain"--whatever change has come.

Some thoughts on love

 Every now and then I wonder why I wrote more poetry (and whiny songs, you should hear them sometime!) about Daniel before we started dating/got married. I'm pretty sure it's because I was terrified of writing sappy loveydovey stuff...although I don't consider myself to be that kind of person. So maybe I was afraid I'd try to write that kind o' stuff and then make myself gag because it'd be so awful? Anyhow, somewhere from that came this, which doesn't end up being about writing romantic poetry after all--at least not much:

The love compelling poetry

Is love the mystery.

Not love-in-bliss or love sublime,

But love in verity.

In other words, accompanied

By love’s fair share of tears,

An ocean’s worth of ups and downs,

Hope breaking, hard, on fear.

What man could write of paradise

Without a sense of earth

Or shadow-strung mortality,

The gifting of his birth?

Young love is half-tormented,

Beauty threatens to deceive—

And what a wealth of verse these doubts

Have caused young minds to weave!

Old love sits by the fireside

In health and sickness both,

Content, at ease, but even so,

Old lovers cannot boast

Of one eternal glory day,

The end of troubled times—

They’re just as wed to earthly ills

As lovers in their prime.

What causes love to come and go

Or finally remain—

But never without sacrifice,

And never free from pain?

The poets may think love a god—

Capricious, cruel, blind.

And so love is a God, but not

Of that distressing kind.

True Love—beyond the world’s bounds

Is constant, holy,wise,

Stares straight into our faithless hearts,

With bright, unblinking eyes.

We bring to that most perfect Love

The only love we can—

A love of pain as well as joy,

The selfish love of man.

And yet, we’re never turned away,

Poor fools, nor condemned,

However late we come to love,

However far we’ve been.

Returning now, from heaven’s court

To our small earthly home,

I’ve vowed to love my husband’s self

As dearly as my own.

And this my heart could never do

If not for True Love’s grace,

Who takes my failure, makes it his,

And never hides his face.

Wishing, and Hoping, and Baking, and Sewing...

Homestar Runner Felties!

Random Creatures

Careful...Feltie Eels May Bite!

Join me in gluttonous revelry: go to http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2013/01/19/homemade-little-debbie-oatmeal-creme-pies/  and follow the instructions. These may be my favorite cookies ever!!

 I listened to a Tim Keller sermon this morning (in reality, it was more like three...because I kept getting in the middle of felties and couldn't stop!) on prayer. He said something like, "God answers yes to the prayers we would have asked if we knew everything He does." The poem following is a response to that. (And yes, I do know that wishing on stars is not the same as praying.)

Star Light, Star Bright

Wishing on a dying star

Will not negate your dream—

The aged are the wisest ones,

Though younger stars may gleam

More brilliantly, they shine a light

That neither knows nor cares

What burdens their petitioners

Bring with them with their prayers.

They hear a wish for romance, or

A pony, or a child

And yawn, “It’s just the same-old-thing!

The hopes of men are mild!”

But older stars, in wisdom,

Know the need behind desire,

And even repetitious wishes

Flame their half-spent fire.

“Star light, star bright, I wish I might…”

The dying star grows still,

And listens in solemnity,

However small the will

Approaching its attention is

Or foolish the request,

For dying stars are kindly and

Will only give their best.

The heart behind the asking mind

Is immaterial,

And that is what the wise star seeks

To fill when it fulfills

The  blind and infantile cries

Betraying man's true need:

A love transcending space and time,

A love of gift, not greed;

To know this love, respond in kind,

And be, from wishing, freed.

A Logical Conclusion

Long ago, yet not so long as spite,
An eagle lost a salmon in mid-flight.
Fish plummeting, bird sputtering chagrin--
Which creature had it worse, feather or fin?
The fish, you say, life forfeit--and for naught,
His flesh reduced, undignified, to rot.
At very least he could have served the use
Of nourishing young fledglings in their roost.
And yet, I say, the eagle bears the brunt--
A nest of spoiled chicks, a wasted hunt.
Four greedy eaglets eager to complain
And now, the eagle sighs, it looks like rain.
 These arguments reviewed, I much prefer
 To be myself, and neither fish nor bird.

Grumpy Old Men

I love you, Gardner's Books--13 books for just $15! (I traded in some books so had store credit).

The books that taught me not to judge a book by its cover.

See below-but look! i bought a couple stools for our table! We can have dinner guests!: 

Yesterday, Daniel and I had a great day (book shopping) that devolved into a frustrating day. I won't go into detail, but it involved bank dishonesty (in on case) and bank stupidity (in the case of my new debit card being shipped to Wichita and consequently stolen.) I know people are dealing with far worse crises than this, but...still, it was a day of trial. To end the night on a more positive note, we had a Grumpy Old Man Feast, which involved 1)gin and tonic and 2) tinned oysters, extra sharp white cheddar, saltines, and a covering of cthulu sauce (ok fine, Cholula sauce). It was delicious, and I highly recommend this remedy to anyone else ending a day of headache.

Recipe recommendation #2: try adding at least 1 T brandy and 1 tsp. cinnamon to a chocolate chip cookie recipe--so good! 

Today's poem, a reflection on silence vs. busyness.

Prayer for the Restless

In silence, is it worrying or rest
That comes to either plague a high-strung mind
Or further soothe a soul without distress?
In silence--do you lose or do you find?

In busyness or constant clamoring
Do you imagine meaning found or praise
The gods of Wit and Time for yammering
And hurrying the ending of your days?

In silence, do you seek to break your fast
Of movement that first moment it occurs,
Relieved those darker thoughts that you have cast
In corners may remain there undisturbed?

May you know peace, in crowd or solitude,
In work or leisure. This I pray for you.

Thoughts on Boston

First, you should read this:
http://theerstwhilephilistine.com/2013/04/16/a-letter-to-my-son/

Here is my offering:


You who were ready, breathing black and white,
To bid your condemnation and attack,
For reasons yet unknown--but never right:
Who outlasts God? Who saw him speak the night
Into existence--or create the light?

You who were bold, dared think your rotting stack
Of wrongs perceived outweighed the mercy seat,
Or feared, perhaps, the Judge had met defeat
So you must wear his robes, and justice mete;
You who despaired, then grasped at Heaven's power,
Who never numbered hairs nor clothed the flower--
Sparrows fell, you didn't see. He saw,
And mourned as He mourns now. You dared play God?

And yet, you're image-bearing, as were they
Whose lives you deemed your right to take away.
This common grace, incomprehensible,
Clings tighter than a limpet to a hull
And you can never more become a beast
Than Father, Holy Ghost, or Great High Priest.
So tremble you--and all who seek to hurt--
Forgetting Love, who never will desert
His ransomed children or still-wayward ones.
Creation groans. His day will quickly come.

Two: Can Be As Bad As One

A Choir of Felties!

Enjoying some company and delicious (delicious delicious) baked goods from Antoinette Baking Co.!

Does anyone want to donate some kitchen chairs to the Rittler apartment? Seriously--I had probably 3 dreams when we moved in about chair-hunting (last night I moved on to book-buying, whew), and now I'm writing melancholy poetry about empty chairs (when we don't have any to fill in the first place!). Oh Garage Sale Season, where art thou??
The tragedy about not having chairs for our table is not that I'm getting tired of sitting on our television--it's that it's hard to invite people over to a nice dinner if you're all going to be sharing a couch! Sitting in a line on a sofa just can't be as conducive to conversation as sitting around a table (plus it means you have to put drinks on the floor, maximizes the risk of spilling or burning, etc etc.). Sigh...

Any-whoozle, here is a poem not entirely based on reading Madeleine L'Engle--but she does talk about large family dinners and how she and her husband always found themselves with extra children and adults for meals--or even for extended periods of time. They were a very community-minded, loving family and...if I weren't so darned shy and afraid of awkwardness, we would be, too! (Ha.)

Empty chairs--but two--a quiet table
Not of peace, but wanting company.
Still, it's just two--and we two are unable
To always be perfect community.

At times, two is one hundred. Full. Complete.
At others, two is negative or naught,
A "Welcome, friend!" withheld--that empty seat--
A lack of love and Love himself forgot.

I would be twenty, would be multiplied
Far out of self, cold fearfulness and pride,
Become a place of comort, joy, and rest
To both the asked and unexpected guest.

We're known by love: and Love is not afraid
To fill its home with friendships being made.

Continuation on a Theme of L'Engle

Greetings!
And salutations, of course.
To begin: if you are in love with David Tennant of Dr. Who-dom, need another romantic comedy in your life, or are simply craving the sound of a Scottish accent--I recommend The Decoy Bride. It is a film about a lousy author engaged to a famous and paparazzi-hating actress. To escape the unwanted press, they decide to get married on the remote Scottish Isle of Hegg--the setting of the author's best-known novel. As they say, "hilarity ensues"--along with plenty of sweetness and an elderly Scottish couple so in love I nearly cried. Totes adorbs! [Muhaha, I made you read that! Sorry. I'm an adult again.]

Here are two more sonnets responding to The Irrational Season. But first, here is the...strangest, most I-want-to-believe-this passage from her book (so far): From the chapter, "The Noes of God":

"I know a number of highly sensitive and intelligent people in my own communion who consider as a heresy my faith that God's loving concern for his creation will outlast all our willfulness and pride. No matter how many eons it takes, he will not rest until all of creation, including Satan, is reconciled to him, until there is no creature who cannot return his look of love with a joyful response of love....Some people feel it is heresy because it appears to deny freedom to refuse to love God. But this, it seems to me, denies God his freedom to go on loving us beyond all our willfullness and pride. If the Word of God is the light of the world, and this light cannot be put out, ultimately it will brighten all the dark corners of our hearts and we will be able to see, and seeing, will be given the grace to respond with love--and of our own free will....When the gates of hell are trampled down [as they were during the time between the cross and resurrection], they suddenly become the welcoming door to heaven."

I don't know if this is heresy or not, but...either way, Madeleine L'Engle clearly is a child of God. Thank goodness we are saved by grace and not by having our theological ducks in a row. I certainly don't.

Sin of Omission

The Negative is simple: simply stand,
Un-moving (-seeing, -loving), bothered not,
No more than breathing, by your fellow man
Who breathes belabored, sin-trapped, trouble-caught.
But you are Good, to stand there true as true,
No grime upon you, eyes pure piercing blue,
Courageous, never doubting where to go
(That's nowhere)--you're the paragon, the show.
This worm behind you (you  could barely hear
His "Sir, I'm thirsty!" whispered half in words
You never learned--excusing your austere
And statuesque denial that you heard)
Has fallen, finally. Now you dare to turn--
But you're in darkness, while his dying burns.

Out There

Write with curtains drawn, denying sun,
Distraction--ugliness Out There--
To hide indoors, the one and lonely one,
Breathe shallow, re-recirculated air.
Out There--too hot, too cold, just not "just right,"
In here--I can create a paradise
Of seventy degrees, midsummer's night
In deepest winter. Doesn't that sound nice?
Except: I need distraction, need extremes,
Need something Other I cannot control--
Like weather, friendship, weird, unbidden dreams
To draw me out of self and make me whole,
  Not holed-up, leeching on a finite mind,
  Protecting Comfort--only to go blind.

Toe Dipped in Water

Whoo! Back in Tulsa, with a non-9-to-5 schedule and no internet connection! (Okay, I am currently stealing a itsy-bitsy-bit of internet from someone--the point is, hulu is dead to me and therefore I will not be tempted to spend time watching instead of reading, writing, riding...) In sum, a perfect time to resurrect poor Peppermint Squeak!

Here is a poem written in response to the Lenten chapter in Madeleine L'Engle's The Irrational Season. After re-reading, in chronological order, her Austin and O'Keefe series, I couldn't get enough and had to "delve into" her nonfiction. Love, love, love. Anyone have any favorite L'Engle books they want to gush about in the comment section? Please, do!

Blessed-happy-are the ones like Christ,
Who walk through hell and live to love again,
Who clothe the naked-heaven in disguise-
Forget their sins before they'd be forgiven.
Blessed-happy-in rejection's wake,
With stinging cheeks, slapped twice and bearing scars,
Beholding those they love seduced away
By those they may not hate. Blessed they are...?
Defending truth, refusing to forsake
The One who saves--even as all seems lost,
As much may be, forever. Fear not. Take
Your blessing. Pleasure burns as dross,
But Joy endures mourning, overwhelms-
I know not how-the greatest boasts of hell.