I Bet God

If He

let go of my hand, I would

weep so loudly,

I would petition with all my might, I would cause

so much trouble

that I bet God would come to His senses

and never do that

again.

Meister Eckhart

A Treat

Monet Refuses the Operation

Doctor, you say there are no halos
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Lisel Mueller

Found in the opening pages of Anne Lamott's, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.

Freedom...

Sometimes it is just so good to bike and bike and bike...

until my sweat runs clean.

I did that today, biking from home to the U of MN to have lunch with my husband. The kids are at Grandma's and Grandpa's till the weekend. So, I said good-bye to the dog and took off. Oh, how I need days like this every once-in-awhile... where I am free. I am free to stop and talk to a stranger, free to go to a new coffee shop someone mentioned to me... free.

It was lovely to eat at St. Martin's Table with Craig, again. That was actually the site of our first date. Then we biked over the Washington bridge ( and I remember biking with him that first day over that bridge). It feels so amazing to flow in the present in those memories and still be connected to that time and place. We were students then, but now he works there... and loves it. I felt like even though we now have three kids and a dog, we still fit in... we have not lost our youth... He really is lucky to be able to enjoy the college campus as his work place.

We saw our neighbor, who is a student there now, and she directed us to a new coffeeshop on frat. row. The "OX" frat was kicked out and their house has been turned into a WONDERFUL coffeeshop. It was so great to sit in a beautiful house on overstuffed, buttery soft leather chairs by a fireplace and sip GOOD coffee. It is the sort of house you would find in England, and it is beautiful! I am impressed and will go there as often as I can. I think the name of it was, "Bordertown Coffee". It was such a cozy, relaxing atmosphere that I could actually snuggle in a stare at the wood work and rest. It was great.

I can't wait to take my kids there... they will love it!

Jealous of a Pond

Jealous of a Pond

When God said, "My hands are yours," I saw that I could heal any

creature in this world;

I saw that the divine beauty in each heart

is the root of all time

and space.

I was once a sleeping ocean

and in a dream became

jealous of a

pond.

A penny can be eyed in the street

and a war can break out

over it amongst

the poor.

Until we know that God lives in us

and we can see Him

there,

a great poverty

we suffer.

Rabia of Basra (c.717-801)