Prayer for Living Water

At a Vermont roadside spring, water is routed via pipe

to a "granite bowl that must once have served as a watering trough for horses."

Continue reading about Vermont's roadside springs at "Roadside Springs Eternal: But Can You Drink the Water?" by Jon Vara
(scroll down for article)

A few years ago my friend Martha led a small group spiritual experience exploring "Living Water." She set up a small bubbling fountain in a large bowl on the table where we gathered, with rocks and more. Like me, she thrives with tangible "prompts" for prayer and reflection. One of our first activities was to each write our own prayer asking for living water, a prayer to use regularly in our individual prayer times during the few weeks we were meeting. Used to praying with it, when our month or so of meetings ended, I chose to continue praying what I had written when I say "Midday Prayer" from A New Zealand Prayer Book. (Given my problems with linear time, I use "midday" very loosely.)

Because we raised sheep when I was growing up, I find it natural even now to think in terms of sheep and Shepherd when I pray. (And, yes, the lambs did appear to play "Shepherd of the Mountain" on their mothers' backs.) You might prefer images such as musicians and Conductor, swimmers and Lifeguard, subjects and Queen, or quarks and Source for your own prayers.

Easing into asking for living water...

Jesus, brother, guide:       lead me.       

I am your sheep who wanders when the others rest,  and wants to rest when it is time to move on. You gave me your living water in baptism and it has flowed through me.

But now I am an old ewe, too often too sure of her own wisdom, too drained by lambs who have needed me or played Shepherd of the Mountain on my back, too toughened by thickets of thorns and the snapping teeth of reality, to want the work, the changes, the uncertainty, the engagement that your living water within me might involve. 

I wish you would just let me be, but I don’t want to be still lying here, seeing your back in the distance, when the stream swells and rises, the dark woolly clouds descend.

Be gentle with me please.Would you carry me a bit?

Do you have any “Good Shepherd” prayers you use? 

Or prayers you say simply because of when or where you first used, or composed, them?

Looking to Sea

Voices by the Shores     

Jesus! Look at them!

They are dirty, their teeth disgusting.

Look at them! Jesus!

That dress could feed my family for a month.

The man who sits silently turns his head.

Still they shout.

They are dirty. They stink.

They are black. No, they are white.

No, they are Latin American.

Yes, they are Middle Eastern.

They are not ours.

Not us! Jesus, we don’t know how,

it’s your problem.

Wait, not our hands!

September 2015

First Prayers Learned by Heart -- Part 2

The prayer I remember learning after "Jesus, tender shepherd, hear me," is "God is good," the table grace. I think I learned it in kindergarten, but maybe I learned it from my mother. Or maybe I learned it from Romper Room, which was, perhaps, the 1950s equivalent of Mr. Rogers.

In any case, we said it in kindergarten. We were only there for half a day, but we had a snack. Every day we each had one of those little milk cartons, and some crackers. (I hated milk. After the day I threw up as soon as I finished my carton, my teacher didn't make me drink it anymore.) But before we ate & drank, we folded our hands, bowed our heads, and said together,

"God is great, God is good,

Let us thank him for our food.

Amen."

It was a prayer that, in that day, place & age, we could all say -- Baptist, Lutheran, Mennonite, Quaker, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Jewish, Episcopalian. I don't remember having any Muslim classmates. For atheists, I imagine God was still like Santa Claus: a story that little children were allowed to enjoy. 

And we still had a few years to go before we decided G-d should not be limited to maleness. At that point, those of us who lived on farms knew that a cow was a girl cow or a boy cow and a bull was only a boy cow; a ewe was a girl sheep and a ram was a boy sheep; and I knew that a bitch was only a girl dog, but a dog was a girl dog or a boy dog, and how to tell the difference. Some of us might have known that a boy horse who couldn't make babies was a gelding, a boy horse who could be a daddy was a stallion, and a girl horse was a mare. That was enough to sort out for a few years. 

As a child, I enjoyed having a being who looked after us all and that we could all thank for the gifts in our life. And it didn't matter to us that we worshiped in different settings (or didn't worship). On the negative side, maybe it reduced thanking God to some part of our civic life or part of having good manners. But I think it was also part of learning to be thankful for life, and of sensing that something bigger than our community made us equal to each other.

Once I knew the words, saying grace at the dinner table became my job. Except on Sundays. But that's a story for another time. 

Meanwhile, do you have any prayers for meals you learned as a child (or later) in your faith tradition? You are welcome to share them in the comments!

"...I Am..." (and landays links)

At the end of our first session of our first day at Beyond Walls, a writers' conference at Kenyon College, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat gave our small group an assignment. She offered three writing prompts. We could pick one and write something we might want to post on our blogs. Unfortunately, I had just been stricken with a bad case of writer's block. Couldn't think of anything to say about any of the prompts.

A few weeks after returning home and getting over the writer's block, I remembered both the undone assignment and a poem I had worked on in April. The prompt that I thought of from the assignment was "Write 'ten things about me' that you would want your bloggers to know." The prompt I remembered working on was for Day 21 of the 2015 Poem a Day Challenge:

   "For today’s prompt, we’re dealing with our third “Two for Tuesday” prompt(s):

1. Write a “what you are” poem, or…
2. Write a “what you are not” poem."

I had worked on a "what I am" poem, and took my original inspiration
from the landays being composed by women in Afghanistan. (See below
for links to important articles about the landay today.) When I tracked down the draft of it in my computer, I could see that I had basically just nodded at the landays being written today. Still, it had provided a rough framework and inspiration to get something recorded in a computer file. It doesn't meet the criteria of 10 items, either. Maybe someday I'll rewrite it, maybe add a couple more items. Or... maybe I won't.

...I Am...

... no longer skinny; voluptuous

would be exceeding kind, earth mother might come to mind....

... not rich, having chosen a different path,

although I find I’ve even less for paying bills than I expected...

... not famous — my 15-second share

of fame mostly broke me of desiring it...

... not as wise as I used to think I was,

not even a dragonfly’s breath of what I thought...

... some days too much a needy flapping tongue

unable to sit still or to quiet itself...

... some times sitting quiet with the green frogs,

waiting for the red efts to immerse themselves...

... some days perhaps an ashtray

where the great I AM rests a stray tip of light like a tired firefly...

I am ... humbled by the landay form and those who compose it

I began by trying to use the form of the landays, which I had just read about. I still need to learn more about it. It’s a form Pashtun women use among themselves, a little like a haiku but with more social implications for the women, and perhaps more jarring.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/media/landays.html

An article (a wonderful long article, filled with photos) by Eliza Griswold with photographer Seamus Murphy

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/12/afghan-women/rubin-text/1
This article by Elizabeth Rubin, with photos by Lynsey Addario, talks a bit about landays and tells something of the lives of women who share them.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/06/beauty-and-subversion-in-the-secret-poems-of-afghan-women.html
Review of the book Griswold and Murphy made to show the poetry they discovered, apparently based on the Poetry article above (or vice versa). They make me realize how far I have to go to be worthy of writing a true landay. : "Eliza Griswold and Seamus Murphy have made a book that is necessary reading for anyone who has ever made assumptions from a distance about what a burka-wearing woman might be like, and for anyone who cannot fathom how poetry could get you killed. In other words, this book is a must-read for every U.S. citizen."

This Bowl

[For some of us with ADHD, our perception of time seems to be very different from what others experience. "This Bowl" is an attempt to describe that difference, based on what I discovered when my doctor prescribed another medicine for me. Unfortunately, I had some frightening side effects and was not able to continue taking it.]

This Bowl

this bowl of striped beads

clinging to each other rolled into each other's space:

this is my life

I try to pull some from the gob

place one in front ­­

the boy playing on our yellow porch,

an old woman talking to me about death ­­

but all roll as one, circle of circles, no beginning, no end

I feel you watching, waiting for answers ­­

no need to look at your perplexion,

between anger and some anguished desire to understand

I could tell you this is my life ­­

no eight, nine, ten, no j, k, l,

just a circled mash, no first no last

if you had a string and your own bowl of beads

one would lead

they would march onto the string

in your precious order a patient line

the past behind, the future ahead,

the boy on the yellow porch would slip on early

but the woman has not yet talked to you of dying

but always this is

my time

clinging to an eternal now this bowl of beads

The Elephant: ADHD

After a little time getting this blog started, I've decided I cannot ignore the large elephant that shows up in almost every room I spend time in. The elephant is Attention Deficit /Hyperactivity Disorder. Especially anything involving Executive Function. That includes things like remembering what I was just about to say or do, having some sense of how much time has passed while I am working on something or of how much time I need to get ready on time. And more. Planning, organizing, deciding… all those important ways of thinking and doing that most people take for granted. So, going forward, some of my posts will deal explicitly with topics related to struggling with ADHD.

Poetry Prompt -- Triversen from News

Twice a month I attend a poetry workshop at "River Arts." We take turns bringing in a prompt to share, and last week was my turn. Thought you might like to try the prompt!

 Two-Part Poetry Prompt for River Arts, August 4, 2015

First, prime the pump:

Part 1.  Getting some thoughts, feelings, ideas, vocabulary “perking”

A.   Think  quickly* of an event from the news in the last week or two that has had some impact on you, touched you in some way. Perhaps it involved you, touched someone or some place you know, prompted more thoughts or feelings than other news. It could be local, national, international, extra-terrestrial…

      Jot down 2 - 4 words which catch, or will remind you of, the connection or meaning of the event for you.

      *in other words, don’t ponder everything possible, just take one of the first few items that pop into your head.

B. Thinking of the event, think of a word or phrase for each of these 7 senses. Try to think quickly, you don’t need to get “the best” word(s), just something to list.:

Touch:

Taste:

Hearing:

Smell:

Sight:

Proprioception* (sense of where your body or a part of it is in space, e.g. my arm is above my head, I am leaning forward):

Kinesthetic* (sense of your body or a part moving, e.g., I am pumping my fist up and down, I am slowly stepping backwards):

*These two words may be used differently in different fields, by different people -- just go with these definitions for this exercise.

Once you finish this section, “put it on the back burner” and continue with Part 2.

Part 2: The Triversen

“It’s a fun poetic form developed by William Carlos Williams (one of my favorite poets–able to write both the concise, “The Red Wheelbarrow,” and the epic, Paterson).” -- Robert Lee Brewer at http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/triversen-poetic-form Click on this link for the simple description of what a Triversen is, and for one Brewer wrote.

Lewis Turco originally published The Book of Forms in 1968; the fourth version (revised & expanded) came out in 2011. He is now putting some of his work online. On his site, http://lewisturco.typepad.com/poetics/2014/08/form-of-the-week-2-the-triversen.html , you will find a slightly fuller explanation of the triversen, as well as an example by Turco, and “The Artist,” a triversen by William Carlos Williams. (Note: This poem was published when the “Mr. T” of TV and WWF fame was still a toddler -- it’s about someone else.)

Summary: The “ideal” triversen contains 6 sentences (verses), each broken into 3 natural phrases. Those phrases each contain 1 to 4 stressed syllables.

Once you have the basic idea of the triversen form in your head, go back to Part 1 to look for inspiration for your triversen.

Enjoy!

The Space Between

Between ...

     leaving and arriving...

          being away and being home...

Between take-off and landing...

     good-bye and hello...

           the wave that knocks me down and the next foaming crest of water...

                 in my tradition, between burial and resurrection...



Sometimes we don't think of this space, or avoid noticing it.  I often cover it by reading, working on a crossword or Sudoku, or sleeping through it.

If I find it easy to ignore, either I am still wrapped up in thoughts of where I have been, or what will be next.

This is liminal time, where the ground falls away, . .  or rises to meet us... where life and death touch...

 

About a week ago I plunged into a space between -- and at moments thought I would be endlessly stuck in it. I was going home from "Beyond Walls," an amazing week of learning, writing, reading, praying, listening, talking, pondering and more held at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.

Actually, I slid into the space, gradually saying good-bye. I rode to the airport in a Kenyon van with 3 other BeyondWallsians and our Kenyon driver, endured the amazingly long lines for checking in with one of my BW compatriots, discovered another near my gate... then she boarded her flight and and my time at Beyond Walls 2015 ended. I sat waiting for the overdue plane, between our Kenyon experience and my home (which ended up being a much longer time then planned -- of course).


I decided that if "Beyond Walls" had to end,

                   I could at least enjoy the cloud views from the plane on the way home.

Between.

Accessibility Issues -- part 2

I'm working to get "alt tags" on the photos here, but sometimes it's hard to tell if they are working. At the moment, I'm using http://webaim.org/ to help me see where I need to edit my text or pictures to be usable by folks with vision issues. WebAIM provides a free "checker" at http://wave.webaim.org/ which scans a site for possible road blocks and provides information about them. Going forward, I'll use it to scan my new blogs and repair them. As time allows, I will also check my earlier posts for obstructive errors.

First prayer learned “by heart”?

What was the first prayer you learned “by heart”?

For me, as far as I can remember now, it was “Jesus, Tender Shepherd,” a bedtime prayer. My mother taught it to me,  telling me it was the prayer she said when she was growing up.

A flock of sheep in Wales

“Jesus, tender shepherd, hear me,

bless thy little lamb tonight

through the darkness be Thou near me.

keep me safe ‘til morning light.”

    -- written by Mary Lundie Duncan, the year before she died (1814-1840)

from http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/j/t/e/jtenders.htm

Michael the Archangelic, curled up to rest next to toy panda.

I assumed that this prayer my mother learned so long ago, which had been written even longer ago, would have pretty much disappeared by now, but I Googled it anyway. To my surprise, it still seems to be in use both as a song and as a bedtime prayer. For instance, it is played and sung simply in this YouTube video featuring pictures of sheep of different breeds, ages, and states of shearing.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxWCmozYrAQ

And in this “Jesus Tender Shepherd Hear Me” YouTube video, “Emily Button Russell shares a story of her son's favorite prayer.” About 88 when this was taped, Emily tells the story about her son learning the prayer and her response to his wanting to change one of the words, then sings it herself. I ended up checking out some other videos of her stories, just because I thought she was a fun, spunky woman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brypwtDT5Bs

Do you remember the first prayers you learned or who taught you? How you felt about the prayer or the way you were taught?

One thing that I find interesting, as I remember learning "Tender Shepherd," is that even though we always knelt to pray in church, my mother taught me to say it lying in my bed. Perhaps she thought bedtime would be easier if she got me into bed before the prayer than persuading me I really did have to go to bed after I said it. I did say this prayer, in bed, nightly, at least until some time in high school.