Monday Morning Musing

When I was a parish pastor I used to send my parishioners an email as the week began; I called it Monday Morning Musing because who doesn't love some good alliteration? Most of the content of those musings was not original to me, but shared, because poets and thinkers and theologians and scholars and authors and artists have gifted so much beauty to the world it felt good to say "oh, look what I found....this beauty....I want to share it with you."

I haven't done this in awhile, in part because I now serve an academic community where sharing the work of others isn't highly valued so much as forming one's own work is. But I miss being a parish pastor, as much as I enjoy my current work, and I miss the people of the parish and that lovely complex relationship that is pastor and people.

I am not prone to self promotion, which is, I think, how blogs and websites and these things grow, but I'm going to try to pick this Monday practice back up, if for no other reason than to remind myself that the world is full of so much glory.

For this day, then, a portion of a longer luminous poem by David Whyte called "What I Must Tell Myself" from the collection The House of Belonging.

Life turns like a slow river

and suddenly you are there

at the edge of the water

with all the rest

and the fire carries the

feast and the laughter

and in the darkness

away from the fire

the unspoken griefs

that still

make togetherness

but then

just as suddenly

it has become a fireless

friendless

night again

and you find yourself alone

and you must speak to the stars

or the rain-filled clouds

or anything at hand

to find your place.