Heart, Soul

Wisdom of Grief Heart

Posted on by stephen t berg / 6 Comments

 

When I asked, you said,
it’s like a full sun flooding your morning
and all at once it’s the middle of the night,

it’s like you’re pulled down
by the weight of your own hair,

it’s like your body goes alien,
and the sky’s from a wrong planet,
and there’s a blizzard, it’s personal,
you survive it, but it’s difficult to talk about,

it’s like walking on the edge of a star-abandoned canyon
and with each step, the temptation to leap,

it’s like you’re chum flung into open water,
you’re a clutch of waxwings slamming into windows.

And to neutralize
the vinegar of my own helplessness, I say,
guide me to the boundaries
and let me carry the dry grinding burden
of your savage desert,
(but I have no power),

and I say, then
let me bless you
as a Kyoto monk blesses,
by turning and painting for you a rose-grey sky,
and Kanji, from a stand of wind-bent trees
on a horizon of glowing mist,
giving you your new names:

Mountain of Light,
Wisdom of Grief Heart,
Sound of Water Over Obsidian
Bright Wren of the Night Watch,
Dawn Wolf Sun Warrior,
Sea of Knowing Sorrow,
Essence of Ocean,
Glories of Rain,
Sweet Spirit from Long Gaze,
Song of the Crocus,
Saint Moon of the Full Soul,
Shaman of the Shining Healers.

 

Spirituality

Where Holy Meets Human

Posted on by stephen t berg / 8 Comments

Ever since becoming a Benedictine Oblate, 20 years ago last month, I’ve been reading the Psalms daily. It’s what’s done. Too often I look up after my reading and realize not a word has registered. All feels false, remarkably remote.

Recently I’ve come across the writing and poetry of Joy Ladin. Her book, Psalms, are full of poems that rage, wrangle, sparkle, flare. You don’t need a deference to that biblical text by the same name, to appreciate this penetrating exploration of  human/divine geography.

Written through a trans queer Jewish lens, these are deeply personal poems that make resonating universal connections. For me, they’ve reignited those ancient Hebrew poems.

The following, is a “found poem,” from her introduction to that book; and it’s my simple thank you to this poet.

 

Here in the lightning-shot space,
where holy meets human,
where time splits, shatters and rages
like rapids,
I wait.

I wait
in envy of those old mad poets,
their “Deliver me” fluency,
their “O Lord” intimacy.

I wait in whirlwinds of love and pain,
now hunting, now hunted,
recoiling in confusion,
crushed by versions of heaven.

And I languish,
my feral soul barely breathing.

I ached to create a corollary
to that psalmist space;
design a trap — as narrow as my life —
a single unfurnished room
where God had no choice
but to face me:

me and God, choosing weapons, squaring off
in the bitter flux of human existence
and the hollow rumours of loving
transformational presence.

And I wrote.
Hopeless, desperate, lonely.
Angry at this vacant, vacationing God.

And as I rose to holster
my fledging psalms,
there, sitting silent at the centre of the room,
was God.
And God said, “I’ve been waiting a long time.”

 

Ritual

Inner Work – The Wondrous Anatomy of You

Posted on by stephen t berg / 14 Comments

 

The bonfire has burned down to coals,
hot and bright enough to light up the faces
around the cinder block fire ring.
Now the buried stories come:
webs of misunderstanding,
slights that buzz like wasps,
pitfalls of disappointments,
the razor wire of regrets,
and the deep hammering hurts,
almost unsayable, but for the safety here
in this circle.
Release it all.
Those that promised to do, but didn’t,
those that promised to stay, then left,
even those that split you in half,
made you an adversary of your own body,
turned your evenings into enemies.
Release it all: the bindle bag, the rat sack,
cracked clay and sucking muck of it all.
Press it into this stale marshmallow
and pitch it into the coals,
watch it blacken, burst to burning,
then snake out, metastasize,
grow monstrously hollow,
before collapsing and turning to ash —
a grey white nothing.

Now, place your hand on the bone-cage of your heart,
a small gesture of tenderness for the wondrous anatomy of you,
another step toward your forgiving and forgiven,
that is to say, your free and natural state.

And breath and hum and rise.
And because symbols and rituals matter,
repeat when necessary.

 

Sickness / Health

Survival is Also a Symptom — A Mayo Clinic Poem

Posted on by stephen t berg / 38 Comments

Daily, in Rochester, they stream into the Mayo Clinic. You can find every countenance here: confident to cataleptic, radiant to rictal; from stoic fortitude to baleful gloom; eyes, wet with hope or wide in desperation.

The motels and hotels, filled with polite impatience, seekers looking to shed their suffering.

And now we’re home. For my son there remains a hard road of recovery, duration unknown; but a fix was found, a cure, a surgical procedure so new that it’s been performed on only a handful of people worldwide. It boggles.

And it shifts something in you — being there, for what turned into a month of quietly managed panic, compounded by cross-border pandemic travel — flights, in the fullest sense.

All illness is uniquely experienced, yet all are bound by this universal drive, this will, this force that wants life, wants you to live.


Now a certain woman was sick and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse. When she had heard of Jesus she pushed through the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, If I may but touch his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the illness fled; and she felt in her body that she was healed.   -Mark 5:25-29

 

Monolithic clinic of sickness-conquering science.
Gleaming machines calibrated for resurrection,
drugs named after gods,
procedures peer-reviewed and published by archangels,
inspiring the kind of hope reserved for Adam.

And there is hope, and there is healing.
And there’s a shop here with all kinds of wigs and hats.
And there are pharmacies near as any Starbucks.
And there’s a chapel to suit any faith but unbelief.

And there’s a 16-year-old blond girl
wrenched out of her chair by spasms,
the most beautiful hair you’ve seen,
tangled and caught in the wheels
as she makes impossible angles with her limbs,
her attendant calling for a bit of help — please.

And there’s the rest, with traveling companions,
like me, waiting, with my second-youngest,
trying to flag down help along these vaulted pedways.
Willing to go anywhere, willing to pay anything.
Willing to sit in any chapel and pray away every unbelief:
         Dear Lord, may these tears turn to wine.

So lacking any hem to touch
I move toward You through language,
but I fear my language moves You away.
Nevertheless, I’ve read of Your famed mercy,
so let it rain, as it’s your fault, is it not? 
that survival, like self-love,
is also symptom
begging for diagnosis.