JOY COMES FROM CREATING

During the last two weeks, I’ve attended a couple of conferences: one on the ministry of daily work, and one on our emotional and spiritual response to money.  While the presenters had a lot more faith in the market than I do, I learned—or re-learned—some things that are making me think.

            One is how important it is to have creative work, whether that is in your job or in family life or in an avocation that brings joy.  In fact, I don’t think you can have joy without immersing oneself in creating and in creation.   Creating—at least for me—brings me in contact with both the unlimited nature of human and natural gifts, and the struggle to bring those gifts into being as a fragile, complicated being.

            Another is how much our current economic system and our adoration of money saps the human spirit.  In part, because it takes the joy of creating out of people’s lives—especially the materially poor—and turns everything into a commodity.  Commoditization kills communion, because it takes compassion out of everyday life.

            And finally, I have learned again that creation often takes place in the context of struggle.  I doubt that anyone has a “perfect job” where there is no drudgery, conflict or futility.  My father was a barber for nearly three decades, and I know there were times of physical pain as well as emotional loneliness and spiritual struggle.  But he made our family a living, and especially as he grew older, he made of his conversation and welcoming spirit a place of hospitality for those who came through the doors of his shop.

            I’m thinking about saints on this All Hallows Eve, and Walter Hansel was one of them.  Here is a poem set in his shop, which explores the tension and love in our relationship (It was originally published in Turtle Quarterly, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize).

QUITTING TIME

I sweep up the hair that lies like pigeon’s feathers

on my father’s shop floor: Callahan’s red

mixed with the dark Slavinskys and Knauers and Ryshavys,

and one blonde Swede who must have snuck

in just before five.  His candied fleece shimmers

on top of the pile.  Dad double counts the till

and snaps caps back onto brown bottles of tonic

and grunts with the weight of the day. And all the men,

who sat in the chair while he plied their heads

with scissors and razors and combs, the men

from the plant, still aching from cutting hogs

and steers into bite size pieces, the men

who smoke Camel Straights and hit their kids

because God says it’s good for them and because

their hands were tied behind their backs

by fathers whose tongues were stolen from them

when they crossed the sea, all of them have

trailed off into the twilight like fog,

leaving their hair to sparkle under my broom

as my Father and I work in silence, and in hope of wings.

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be creative.

Patrick

ECLIPSED BY BEAUTY

Like a lot of people, I got up early to watch the total lunar eclipse today.  I saw the beginning from the bedroom window, and stood outside our house to see the advance of the shadow over the lesser light that governs the night.  The moon was setting as it was being eclipsed, and so I went to the park a few blocks away. 

There were a few other visitors whose voices I heard, or whose silhouettes I saw in the early dawn.  A man walking his dog. A couple in the front seat of their pickup, doing something.  Voices of a family leaving their house down the block.  A couple of birds.

It was a cool fall morning with lots of dew, and I am still recovering from hip surgery, so I didn’t sit down. But standing in one place made me feel cold and achy.  So I walked up and down a little on the edges of the park, keeping my eye on the moon, which changed shape and color with each minute, it seemed.

It struck me that I was walking on the very body that was causing the wonderful show in the skies.  I was moving on the earth whose movement made the shadow across the moon’s face, and revealed a beauty in our nighttime companion that we rarely see.  The last time I remember watching a total lunar eclipse was in 1982, at Camp Koinonia in upstate New York.  I was on crutches that night, and also had another body watching with me.  Here’s a poem I wrote about that night years later:

FULL ECLIPSE AT KOINONIA

I crutched out to Jubilee Meadow,

flashlight in my teeth, skin of light

bouncing off the low and high bush blueberries.

The dew was liquor thick

on the grass.  The mud, solemn.

I found my perch upon the wooden planks

where the campers did their silly skits.

I sat and waited for the moon to die.

That summer, gypsy moths had devoured

ash, maple, shag bark hickory

from Eldred to Liberty, leaving the forest

and its bright air stripped as for a scourging.

Trees forgot how to bend in the breeze.

Birds lost their bearings.  Even the long rains

and the raspy invasions of midges and bats

could not cleanse the sky of its desolation.

My foot sang in its temple of dirtied plaster.

That night, as the moon hunted above,

and the destroyer began to carve the shadow

into its bruised face, an animal rustled

a few yards down the path. My light found

its black and white form crouching

in the middle of my way home.

Her tail, a shadowed leaf

swaying in the wind, her head

bowed upwards, as if to catch

the light of heaven in its hour of need.

“Who are we, and how are we together”

is what the ancients asked, the children mock,

and now, sitting, I pondered, in the realm of skunk.

My companion didn’t seem to mind

the rending of the sky queen, nor my body

resting on the same earth

that was causing all the heavenly commotion.

(It was, after all, this planet we rode together

that was eating away the moon’s visage.)

And so, we sat together in the night,

until all that was left of the lunar countenance

was its halo, and the sky seemed to screech

with stars.  It began to chill, and I wondered

how I would hop and peg my way

around my sylvan friend, and back to bed.

I shined my beam upon her

and saw that she had gone.

Perhaps she became bored with her guest,

or tired of the celestial show we shared.

It’s probably true of skunks as much as a man on sticks

that seeing the moon come crawling back lacks the terror

and greed of seeing it eaten bit by heavenly bit.

Something else has power over us now.

Oh, the beauty of this early morning, when all created things were moving, and all creatures were held together in peace.  The beauty of this world, though beset with violence and hunger and injustice, calls out for our love.

Be beauty.  Be justice.

Patrick