SABBATH POEMS 2008 I

in

After the bitter nights
and the gray, cold days
comes a bright afternoon.
I go into the creek valley
and there are the horses, the black
and the white, lying in the warm
shine on a bed of dry hay.
They lie side by side,
identically posed as a painter
might imagine them:
heads up, ears and eyes
alert. They are beautiful in the light
and in the warmth happy. Such
harmonies are rare. This is
not the way the world
is. It is a possibility
nonetheless deeply seeded
within the world. It is
the way the world is sometimes.

Wendell Berry

METANOIA

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"Metanoia" comes from two Greek words: meta, meaning "above," and nous, meaning "mind." Metanoia invites us to move above our normal instincts, into a bigger mind, into a mind that rises above the proclivity for self-interest and self-protection that so frequently triggers feelings of bitterness, negativity, and lack of empathy inside us. Meta-noia invites us to meet all situations, however unfair they may seem, with understanding and an empathic heart!

Moreover, metanoia stands in contrast to paranoia. In essence, metanoia is "nonparanoia," so Jesus's opening words in the Synoptic Gospels might be better rendered: "Be un-paranoid and believe that it is good news. Live in trust!" In With Open Hands, a small but deeply insightful book, Henri Nouwen perfectly describes the difference between metanoia and paranoia. He suggests that there are two fundamental postures with which we can go through life. We can, he says, go through life in the posture of paranoia.

The posture of paranoia is symbolized by a closed fist, a protective stance, habitual suspicion and distrust. Paranoia makes us feel that we forever need to protect ourselves from unfairness, that others will hurt us if we show any vulnerability, and that we need to assert our strength and talents to impress others. Paranoia quickly turns warmth into cold. understanding into suspicion, and generosity into self-protection.

The posture of metanoia, on the other hand, is seen in Jesus on the cross: he is exposed and vulnerable, his arms spread in a gesture of embrace, and his hands open, with nails through them. That is the antithesis of paranoia, in which our inner doors of warmth, empathy, and trust spontaneously slam shut whenever we perceive a threat. Metanoia—the metamind, the bigger heart—never closes those doors.

Some of the early church fathers suggested that all of us have two minds and two hearts. For them, each of us has a big mind and a big heart. That's the saint in us, the image and likeness of God inside us, the warm, generative, and empathic part of us. All of us harbor a true greatness within. But within each of us is also a petty mind and a petty heart. That's the narcissistic part of us, the wounded part, the paranoid part that turns self-protective and immediately begins to close the doors of warmth and trust whenever we appear threatened. Such is our inner complexity.

Ronald Rolhesier

HOW TO LISTEN

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I’m not asking you
to come down here
and clean out the muddy
corners of my life.

I’m asking you 
to be a forest
where mud and leaves,
shadows and light,
growth and decay
all have their unquestioned
belonging.

I’m asking you 
to be an ocean,
where even great storms
don’t trouble the depths
and each tear is welcomed
as a homecoming.

I’m asking you
to be as spacious 
as the vast darkness
behind the sky,
which will never be afraid
of what I do
or don’t choose.

I’m not asking you
to hold me together.
I’m asking you
to open so wide
there’s room for all the ways
I come apart.

James A. Pearson

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

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When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

HELLO, I SAY

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Neither I nor the poets I love found the keys to the kingdom of prayer and we cannot force God to stumble over us where we sit. But I know that it’s a good idea to sit anyway. So every morning I sit, I kneel, waiting, making friends with the habit of listening, hoping that I’m being listened to.

There, I greet God in my own disorder. I say hello to my chaos, my unmade decisions, my unmade bed, my desire and my trouble. I say hello to distraction and privilege, I greet the day and I greet my beloved and bewildering Jesus.

I recognize and greet my burdens, my luck, my controlled and uncontrollable story. I greet my untold stories, my unfolding story, my unloved body, my own love, my own body. I greet the things I think will happen and I say hello to everything I do not know about the day. I greet my own small world and I hope that I can meet the bigger world that day.

I greet my story and hope that I can forget my story during the day, and hope that I can hear some stories, and greet some surprising stories during the long day ahead. I greet God, and I greet the God who is more God than the God I greet.

Hello to you all, I say, as the sun rises above the chimneys of North Belfast.

Hello.

Padraig O'Tuama