Tag Archives: beauty

Poetry for the Meantime

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Alright, friends (this is the phrase with which I begin many of my classes nowadays) — this blog feels like a bit of a limbo space to me nowadays, so while I figure out what to do with it, I’m going to give you three poems: one from Emily Dickinson, one I scraped out during a Lenten exercise a few month ago, and then Psalm 19 from King David. I’ll just leave them here to be in conversation with each other for the moment.

From Dickinson:

The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease — and You — beside —

The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —

The Brain is just the weight of God —
For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —

From myself:

Emily claims the brain outstrips the sky
but these days the firmament looks large to me:
      Fields of cloud tuft—falling sediment—
      A pocked and glowing moon—
      Satellites laced with human noise—
      And beyond wheeling stars and crowned planets:
      Vast darknesses that lead to light—
      Powers-that-be waging broad-chested wars—
      Blood streaming cross universes, tie-dyeing heaven—
      The hand that holds it all—
By compare,
my own self within 
is small, mute.

And from scripture:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
    like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens
    and makes its circuit to the other;
    nothing is deprived of its warmth.

The law of the Lord is perfect,
    refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy,
    making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right,
    giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the Lord are radiant,
    giving light to the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is pure,
    enduring forever.
The decrees of the Lord are firm,
    and all of them are righteous.

They are more precious than gold,
    than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
    than honey from the honeycomb.
By them your servant is warned;
    in keeping them there is great reward.
But who can discern their own errors?
    Forgive my hidden faults.
Keep your servant also from willful sins;
    may they not rule over me.
Then I will be blameless,
    innocent of great transgression.

May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart
    be pleasing in your sight,
    Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

Old Age and the Point of Being

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Back in July, I started a part-time job in a nursing home across the bridge on the North Shore, up in West Vancouver. It’s a long-term care facility, which means that many if not most of the residents I interact with have dementia. Some of them are pretty mobile and cognizant, but some sit in the same spot all day in a hallway or by a TV, needing help to eat, to use the toilet, to move from wheelchair to bed and back again.

I spend a lot of time wiping off chipped polish with acetone and repainting nails in colors that make ladies feel like themselves, walking slow, bent folks down long corridors to and from precious COVID-time family visits. Sometimes I sit by someone and fill in a mandala with bright colored pencils or scoop ice cream while dozens of eager faces line up, eyes fastened to the tub of butterscotch. Sometimes I just crouch and hold a hand. I’ve never been so frequently snapped at or so frequently thanked without really deserving either.

Inglewood has over 200 residents and on the weekends when I work, alongside the medical care staff, there are usually only four or five recreation staff members like me around, so I spend a fair amount of time rushing from place to place. The residents watch as I pass them by. Some smile and wink at me, though they no longer have the cognitive capacity to learn and retain my name. Others sometimes call out as I go—thoughts many of us harbor anxiously in the back corners of our minds all our lives, but which have now become so central to them in these final years that they speak them aloud in desparation. Can you help me? This is such a long hallway. I need to go to the washroom. I live here? What should someone do who feels lost? Will I be okay? What’s next? Then when will I go home?

They’ve returned, some of them, to watching adult life from the sidelines, like children crouching at the top of the stairs when they’re supposed to be in bed, catching glimpses of what goes on in the party below through the slats in the railing, trying to make sense of what is happening and why they are no longer able to participate. Inside these people, of course, are decades’ worth of their memories and lives and skills and selves, which still flicker out of even the most confused in occasional bright flashes. One lady I walked back to her room in her closed unit spoke to me nonstop in Romanian, and kept hugging me and kissing me as if I were family. She gave hugs as if she’d given thousands and would never lose the talent.

It is easy and often sweet when talking about old age to draw upon these vulnerable, childlike images. In fact, the comparison with childhood is nearly unavoidable, because the similarities of need, fragility, and even innocence are so obvious. And to think like that helps us to care for our elders with gentleness and patience. But there is a glaring, uncomfortable difference between the old and young with which we must reckon. 

Neither the very old or the very young are “useful” or have anything of practical value to contribute to the world—they are, in fact, a drain on tangible resources and energy. However, our culture understands that children make this worth our while because they are bursting with potential—tomorrow, we hope, they will serve their community in great and glorious ways. But what about these toothless folks with ninety years to their name seated on blue incontinence pads in their wheelchairs? What’s the point of them? What work will they do? They have no potential. They’re all used up and many of them, painfully, know it.

This hard truth must be faced because none of it is theoretical. This is our parents, our grandparents, and one day it’s us.

A few weeks ago I brought a tiny old lady named Belva downstairs for a visit. We were a few minutes early and since this wasn’t her regular unit, I took her around for a little field trip. We went out into the back garden to see the bright flowers, which made her light up, and we returned more than once to the large cage of colorful, twittering birds just inside the main lounge. As she stared at them, she whispered to me, “Oh, this is a good place.” And it was a very good place indeed, I could see. It was a place which had no time for measuring the relative usefulness of Belva or of her birds or even of me, young and productive as I am. Her place contained only the beauty of the moment and the joy inherent in existence. She was awed by the birds, and then twice over, she was awed by the automatic door when I pressed the button, and applauded as it did its work. She said that it was “wonderful.”

The work of the aged, the point of them, is the same as the ultimate central point of all of us. They have been made, and now their work is merely to be. Humans were made not to produce, but to be, just as hands, I am increasingly beginning to think, were made for holding. Hands are useful and important in a myriad of other ways, certainly, but to be held is their highest calling.

Deepening Ruts

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Two years ago, for a full school year, I wrote a poem once a week, always on a Monday. Why I chose Monday, I don’t know, except perhaps for the fact that Mondays were the worst days for it, so I’d get the best poems, ‘cause I’d have a lot of feelings. The only rule was that the poems must be addressed to God. I stopped when summer came, and have written inconsistently since, so I only have a handful more, but so often I find myself going back and reading over those lines in that green moleskine, especially in the past few months. Many of them are sloppily constructed, and some of them don’t contain anything of value at all, but a handful of them are true. I managed somehow to wraps words around God’s gifts and hand them back. I read them now and I am reminded. I am reminded of my Lord’s steadfast faithfulness whenever I am lost, and lost, and lost again. Apparently we can bear witness of the truth not only to others, but to ourselves.

I have sometimes done the same thing with these blog entries, wandering back to re-read the things I learned three or four years before. Coming to understand the Gospel, Jesus’s good news for us, is not so much a series of revelations as a deepening of grooves, a learning of the same things over and over, only heavier and more each time.

And as I read over these last few entries, I think that in a roundabout way, I have been trying to talk about beauty. Of course I have always believed that God speaks to us through beauty. You’re supposed to believe that when you read and write for fun, and make other people read and write for a living. You’re supposed to believe that when you’re me. But only recently, I think, have I really begun to understand beauty as something that I am surrounded by, that will teach me about the God who made it, who delighted in it first, who called it good.

So, though it’s small, I will just tell you this: I have learned recently that beauty is the moon still hanging gossamer in the sky at seven-thirty in the morning while I drive to school, like a disk of stretched lace, mislaid in the thick blue.

And I believe that next time I come back to read this, I will have learned beauty just a little more.