weasels and geese 2: geese

Another lovely sharing from Team Leaders Circle (TLC) retreat.

I went to TLC last fall and went again this fall.  Both years, we have been greeted with special poems (and candy!) on our beds.  

This year there was a lovely poem by Mary Oliver, from her book Dream Work, called "Wild Geese."  

It reads:

You do not have to do good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

     love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - 

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Like the weasel story, this poem reminds us humans that we are animal.  If only we could remember that more often.  Listen to your body.  If only we didn't have to forget and remember to listen to our bodies and to follow our "single necessity."  

"You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."  

And again, back around to calling.  "...the world...calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things."  

We belong - we are a part of "the family of things."  

And I love the "harsh and exciting" call of the geese.  In recent years, I've learned of the Celtic representation of the Holy Spirit as Wild Goose.  

I find this a particularly lovely representation of the Holy Spirit.  A bit more concrete and less mysterious than wind or fire, but just as wild and unpredictable.  I like the honking, obnoxious nature of the goose too.  And goose poo? Gross.  But part of the way of things.  We all poop.  We are interconnected with the world.  

I had an encounter with geese last summer when I visited with my friends in Knoxville.  We went camping and floated the river - the Tennessee maybe?  I had never done this before.  We all had tubes and floated our way down a small piece of the river, careful to raise our rear ends over rocks, and bounce our feet off of rocky areas, avoiding getting stuck.  For a portion of river, I was "by myself" - apart from the rest of our group, but amid other river-goers.  And suddenly, a single line of geese flew really low and close to us overhead, in the opposite direction as we were floating.  It was breathtaking.  Later, another line of geese came swimming upstream in another single line.  

After that encounter, I found myself enraptured with geese.  I have an image of a V of geese, cut from an old calendar, in my room now.  Before, this was an image that seemed bland to me - just another nature image, with bland colors and bland content.  Now it's captivating.  Who are these geese?  

I am absolutely certain that an even closer encounter with a goose would leave me terrified and/or grossed out.  Similar to my fascination with chickens, one day having a coop of them, and my recent opportunity to "help" kill one (with the same friends from the river trip) - but terror at the thought of holding one - they have talons, beaks, wings - what about that could possibly make for safe holding? 

This is partly what gives the goose its allure and mystery for me too.  They are wild creatures.  They could do something crazy at any moment.  And they gracefully coordinate into beautiful formations when they fly.  How does the goose know to do these things?  It "let[s] the soft animal of [its] body love what it loves."

Another poem about "Wild Geese," by Wendell Berry from Collected Poems 1957-1982

Horseback on Sunday morning,

harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

Wendell uses the word "abandon" here.  Similar to Annie's (previous post - on "weasels") mention of the weasel's "single necessity," "abandon" is what calls the goose to its post in the V or single line formation, to its squawking, flapping.  It is wild.  Just as the weasel is wild.  

I like that Wendell calls this "the ancient faith" - to follow our calling with total abandon, and to remember that "what we need is here."  "We pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here."  The ancient faith doesn't call for escape, but for quiet, to tap back into what is already here, if we can be still enough and tap deep enough.

All lovely nuggets.  I'm glad to have been invited into deep listening at Team Leaders Circle.  

stay with me, remain here with me, watch and pray

This is a bit belated, but significant enough to share.

We had a Taize prayer service at L'Arche Harbor House the Thursday evening before Holy Week.  This was the second Taize service that I've experienced at L'Arche.  This time I managed to be roped into accompanying with the ensemble on the keyboard (my feeble piano skills such as they are these days).

The last song we sang was "Stay with me."  The words are:
Stay with me
Remain here with me
Watch and pray, watch and pray

These were Jesus' words (in the gospels of Matthew and Mark) to the disciples when he went to pray in Gethsemane before he was arrested and eventually crucified.  A very Lenten song.  He asks the disciples, especially a few of them, to stay up, to watch and pray.  The story is that they fall asleep multiple times, until finally he actually gets arrested.

As we had a time of silence to meditate at the end of the service, I found the words calling to me from L'Arche Harbor House.  "Stay with me, remain here with me, watch and pray.  Watch and pray."

A bit of recap of the past few months:  I spent a month at L'Arche Harbor House in Jacksonville, then a month away (at L'Arche Mobile, personal retreat in St. Augustine, and Nashville for United Methodist commissioning interviews), then came back for 2 1/2 more months in Jacksonville before moving in with our founding community at L'Arche Atlanta.

As I was settling into my new room in Greatfull House and getting ready to have my first "on" day - my first day to have core member "buddies" without shadowing another assistant - I found myself mourning the end of my phase of independence, of being ultimately only responsible for myself.

I felt whiny and selfish for not wanting to take on the responsibility I was due.  But as I continued to sit with these squirmy, resistant feelings, I realized that it was not just a resistance to responsibility.  Part of it was the stress of a new set of transitions happening again, all at once - a new room, new responsibilities, an assistant who I'd become friends with leaving the community upon my return (all of this planned, but still difficult), another assistant on vacation upon my return.  This all left me feeling a bit overwhelmed, yes.

To sum it up, the deeper reality was that I was simply weary of transition, of "not-yet-ness".  I realized I'd already been in "not yet" land for 3 1/2 months, and still had 2 1/2 more to go.  And those first 3 1/2 months were "on the go" months.  While staying "on the go" carries its own weariness, I had momentum propelling me forward from place to place.  I think I had expected this last 2 1/2 month stint to be the easiest, the smoothest - 1 place, 1 purpose.  However, the reality of it was more like violently hitting a wall than peacefully slowing down to a reasonable pace.  You mean I've been going-going in order to sit in one more "not yet" place for 2 1/2 more months?  Can I not just move to Atlanta now?  I want to dive in with what I've been preparing to dive into!

Once I identified and let myself feel the resentment, frustration, grief, the stifled and overwhelmed feelings, the weariness - I found myself more willing to respond to the invitation to wait, to be where I am, to receive this time as an even more formative gift than the last few, go-go months.

And then, as I heard the words of the Taize song, it occurred to me that I wasn't being invited to wait just for the sake of waiting (though this might be fruitful).  I was being called to be present to Jesus at L'Arche Harbor House.  Because Jesus is present here, he calls me to "stay...remain here...watch and pray."