poem for the great of heart

maybe
you are afraid to be mighty

maybe 

there is ease in the smallness

in the pang of the

overlooking

the dismissal

that touches like a blanket

of embarrassment 

worn thin 

with sparest spots of

wholeness at the edges

too old to remove a gray cast

earned from years of
holding tightly

these expectations 

of casual disregard

for your heart of hearts

even so, though, 

warm from the dryer

a familiar discomfort

still contains comfort

the blank gaze

the closed mouth

the turned head

*****************

but, oh, my friend

oh, my friend

you are mighty

you are you are you are

you are mighty

The Struggle

It took some time to tear myself away from this painting at The Met. I came upon it unexpectedly, lost on my way to a different exhibit. First of all, it's massive, six by nearly nine feet. The size, combined with the energy of action and light all directed towards Samson's body, his face turned away, keeps the viewer focused on the physical intensity of his struggle , muscles taut, limbs pushing back against his captors. The fierceness of his fight is sorrowful, the shorn head signalling this is the one he does not win. If you know the story, you know Samson's hubris brought him to this place. He was born with a promise and anointed by God but used his strength and position to profit himself and take what he wanted. 

Samson Captured by the Philistines, Guercino 

This painting kept coming to mind while reading about the role of ego in our spiritual lives. We can all be Samson, reaching for the next justification to make us right with ourselves while keeping away from the Rightness we are not willing to surrender to.

To distract himself from facing his wrongness, man seeks out the very things that made him wrong in the first place: self-love and sensual pleasure. Gratifying himself in this way, he feels "right" again -- but only temporarily. Actually, he has only become more wrong, so that now he needs even greater distractions, and even greater shocks, to make him feel that he is right. In this way he progresses further along the path of self-destruction, trying to overcome his predicament by its very cause.

Our ego seeks any reassurance that, in fact, we are all right, that we did not make a mistake, and that we are God after all. Our conscious selves may not admit that this is happening, but that is the actual underlying aim of our ego-life: to find anything that will enable us to forget our true selves and our hideous condition, and will make us feel, if only for a brief moment of ecstasy, that we are God, that we are in control, on top of things, and sufficient unto ourselves. Such is the principal behind man's constant desire to escape into the sensual pleasures of food, sex, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, entertainment, etc.; his desire for "love," popularity, recognition, glory, power, group status, acceptance, and admiration for his physical appearance; and his desire to puff himself up through hatred, judgement, and condemnation of others.

Hieromonk Damascene

Me and the Bean

my coffee tastes like
rubber tires,
forest fires,
and tar on hot summer roads
the best part of waking up
is its acrid answer
to the minor discomforts
I envision for each day
such as:
waking up,
getting up,
and all the attending indignities
of going forth into the world

Idleness

Biblical tradition says that absence of work - idleness - was the condition of the first man's blessedness before his fall. The love of idleness remained the same in fallen man, but the curse still weighs on man, and not only because we must win our bread in the sweat off our face, but because our moral qualities are such that we are unable to be idle and at peace. A secret voice tells us that we should feel guilty for being idle. If man could find a condition in which, while idle, he felt he was being useful and fulfilling his duty, he would have found one side of primordial blessedness. 

Tolstoy, War and Peace

To Be of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Marge Piercy

Harvest Time Mowers, Grigory Myasoedov 1873