I Saw a Bird Fly Away (Dar Williams)

SONG: I Saw a Bird Fly Away by Dar Williams

BOOK: Bird Signs: Guidance and Wisdom from Our Feathered Friends (Book & Cards) by G.G. Carbone (Author), Mary Ruzicka (Illustrator)

POEM: Spirit of Place: Great Blue Heron by William Stafford

Out of their loneliness for each other

two reeds, or maybe two shadows, lurch

forward and become suddenly a life

lifted from dawn or the rain. It is

the wilderness come back again, a lagoon

with our city reflected in its eye.

We live by faith in such presences.

It is a test for us, that thin

but real, undulating figure that promises,

"If you keep faith I will exist

at the edge, where your vision joins

the sunlight and the rain: heads in the light,

feet that go down in the mud where the truth is."

(on a plaque in Portland's City Hall, for Portland's city bird)

QUOTE: "I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven." ~ Emily Dickinson

Traveling Again (Dar Williams)

Your Horoscope for JULY 24, 2007

Today, SUSAN, you may appear to be blocked on all sides. Beloved projects may be put on hold; mix-ups at work might have you worrying about your job; romantic matters also seem to be stalled. It's times like this when you need to get away from it all and try to recoup your energies and get your thoughts together. Get in the car and take a short trip out of town, preferably by yourself.

How f*cking funny - I was planning to do just that... :-)

Leaving in an hour for the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival (see previous post) - back late Monday, July 30!

SONG: Traveling Again by Dar Williams

BOOK: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott

POEM: The Clause by C. K. Williams

This entity I call my mind, this hive of restlessness,

this wedge of want my mind calls self,

this self which doubts so much and which keeps reaching,

keeps referring, keeps aspiring, longing, towards some state

from which ambiguity would be banished, uncertainty expunged;

this implement my mind and self imagine they might make together,

which would have everything accessible to it,

all our doings and undoings all at once before it,

so it would have at last the right to bless, or blame,

for without everything before you, all at once, how bless, how blame?

this capacity imagination, self and mind conceive might be the "soul,"

which would be able to regard such matters as creation and

destruction,

origin and extinction, of species, peoples, even families, even mine,

of equal consequence, and might finally solve the quandary

of this thing of being, and this other thing of not;

these layers, these divisions, these meanings or the lack thereof,

these fissures and abysses beside which I stumble, over which I reel:

is the place, the space, they constitute,

which I never satisfactorily experience but from which the fear

I might be torn away appalls me, me, or what might most be me?

Even mine, I say, as if I might ever believe such a thing;

bless and blame, I say, as though I could ever not.

This ramshackle, this unwieldy, this jerry-built assemblage,

this unfelt always felt disarray: is this the sum of me,

is this where I'm meant to end, exactly where I started out?

QUOTE: "One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." ~ Andre Gide

Three Little Birds (Bob Marley)

I subscribed to The Sun literary magazine for almost a decade - last year we were going through some financial difficulties and I vowed to cut some things out of the budget that were "non-necessities". I thought I could sacrifice a few of my subscriptions - I was wrong. As I was going through some back issues this past Sunday, I came across the poem I use here... and it took my breath away - what I absolutely love is that its jumping-off place is Emily Dickinson's verse, first published in 1891, a few years after her death. I might not have known that if I didn't wear a bracelet on which is etched the first two lines of her poem - the beauty of Bursk's follow-up, over 100 years later, is that he never once writes the word "hope" but the intent is clear... and you can bet I'll be re-subscribing first thing tomorrow!

“Remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy . . . but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

SONG: Three Little Birds by Bob Marley

BOOK: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

POEM: The Thing with Feathers by Chris Bursk

It's the first thing you hear in the morning,

the last you hear at night.

In the woods, in the swamps,

in the old steeple, in the ruined eaves,

over the wreckage of a car

your mother drove straight into a wall.

The bird won't stop singing.

It is perched in the ashes of a house that burned to the

ground.

Wherever you move, it's one hop

ahead of you. Tireless

as a creek, it's a tune that will not allow itself

to be forgotten. It keeps building

and leaving its nest, all chatter, all expectation,

water singing to itself

in the shadows as well as in the sunlight.

That insufferable optimist.

No matter how many doors you slam,

curses you shout, rocks you throw,

it pipes up louder than ever

on this very branch of this very tree outside your house

---as if stones must be your way of applauding.

It was singing the morning you got fired,

the day you brought grief to the person

you most wanted to protect,

the evening when the great cause you'd pledged yourself to

failed. It sang

while your father was writing his suicide note,

the night your dear friend told you he was HIV-positive,

the night you could find nothing remaining

to believe in, when all you wanted

was to be left alone. It sings in places so dark

you can't see into them.

It's out there singing now.

QUOTE: "Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark." ~ Rabindranath Tagore

The Mountain (Dave Carter)

I promised Dave Carter today, and here is one of many from his brilliant repertoire - Dave left this earth entirely too early, and I'll go into further detail in July (this coming one, impossible to believe, marking the fifth year since his death)...

My mom was in the hospital overnight for observation, as her illness while visiting us segued to bronchitis which turned into pneumonia - all's well now... but this song choice seemed fitting for a thank-goodness-it-had-a-happy-ending Sunday (one foot in ice, one in fire indeed)...

SONG: The Mountain by Dave Carter

BOOK: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott

POEM: The House of Belonging ~ David Whyte

I awoke this morning in the gold light
turning this way and that
thinking for a moment it was one day like any other.

But the veil had gone from my darkened heart and I thought
it must have been the quiet candlelight that filled my room,
it must have been the first easy rhythm with which I breathed myself to sleep,
it must have been the prayer I said speaking to the otherness of the night.

And I thought this is the good day you could meet your love,
this is the black day someone close to you could die.
This is the day you realize how easily the thread is broken
between this world and the next
and I found myself sitting up in the quiet pathway of light,
the tawny close-grained cedar burning round me like fire
and all the angels of this housely heaven ascending
through the first roof of light the sun has made.

This is the bright home in which I live,
this is where I ask my friends to come,
this is where I want to love all the things
it has taken me so long to learn to love.
This is the temple of my adult aloneness
and I belong to that aloneness as I belong to my life.

There is no house like the house of belonging.

QUOTE: "Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is, in the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, for in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace." ~ Frederick Buechner