Poem Friday

And you thought I'd forgot! Nope, at least for this week I'm committed to Poem Fridays.
This is a poem by Wendell Berry, a great American author...and my favorite author. I have never read anyone that captures and articulates my feelings as well as Wendell Berry, and in my opinion he is the most relevant living voice we (the present world) could be listening to. This poem is from his book Sabbaths 2006. Read it out loud.

VII

O saints, if I am even eligible for this prayer,
though less than worthy of this dear desire,
and if your prayers have influence in Heaven,
let my place there be lower than your own.
I know how you longed, here where you lived
as exiles, for the presence of the essential
Being and Maker and Knower of all things.
But because of my unruliness, or some erring
virtue in me never rightly schooled,
some error clear and dear, my life
has not taught me your desire for flight:
dismattered, pure, and free. I long
instead for the Heaven of creatures, of seasons,
of day and night. Heaven enough for me
would be this world as I know it, but redeemed
of our abuse of it and one another. It would be
the Heaven of knowing again. There is no marrying
in Heaven, and I submit; even so, I would like
to know my wife again, both of us young again,
and I remembering always how I loved her
when she was old. I would like to know
my children again, all my family, all my dear ones,
to see, to hear, to hold, more carefully
than before, to study them lingeringly as one
studies old verses, committing them to heart
forever. I would like again to know my friends,
my old companions, men and women, horses
and dogs, in all the ages of our lives, here
in this place that I have watched over all my life
in all its moods and seasons, never enough.
I will be leaving how many beauties overlooked?
A painful Heaven this would be, for I would know
by it how far I have fallen short. I have not
paid enough attention, I have not been grateful
enough. And yet this pain would be the measure
of my love. In eternity's once and now, pain would
place me surely in the Heaven of my earthly love.

Retiring

Today is my last day at work. Did you know I blog at work? Well, if you're my future employer...no, I don't blog at work...blogs are for self-important post-college, pre-true-adulthood twenty-somethings.
Well, I'm super excited to not work here anymore. Of all the jobs I've had, this one seems the farthest from what "work" was supposed to be many millenia ago before we men-types were sent out to the east of Eden. The job that most closely resembled that old forgotten type of work was probably mixing and blending smoothies all those years...but still a pretty major stretch.
Anyway, we pack the moving truck tomorrow and abandon our roots here in Gainesvegas for a couple of years. I'm pretty sad about that part. I somewhat inadvertently think of myself as a leader, and so its hard for me to think of what Moe's Thursday will be like after we leave. And where will everyone watch The Office and 30 Rock...and is it fair for us to bring Bananagrams (TM) with us? Its not that I think I'm more important than other people...but who will fill the enormous void of terrible jokes and talking too much?
Here is what I'm pumped about, though:
My social circle consisting of Valerie, Carver and I,
Learning medicine,
Experiencing life outside of the colorful, lawless swamp,
Being an hour from mountains,
Living in a house again,
Finding hills to skateboard down.

OK, I have work to do. I'll see you later!

You should look at these photos

Energy Independence

Begging your pardon

OK, sorry about my last post. It may have been a little harsh...especially depending on YOUR opinion of immigration. I still stand by my opinion, though.
"...but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison."

Opine and a poem

People rant and rave about immigration. Granted, I don't live in Arizona. Maybe the immigrants there are really hostile or something, but the ones here sure aren't. I wonder if those who rant and rave about immigration eat tomatoes or blueberries, or are descendants of American Indians. And if you do eat tomatoes and blueberries, are you really willing to pick them yourself...and not as a pastime on a Saturday but for entire days, making $10 an hour? Come to think of it, I bet 100% of Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants are more American than almost every American you know. A bunch of European descendants eating American food picked by American people and complaining about it. We all need to get our story straight if we're gonna cry "capitalism" and "closed borders" in the same breath. That don't jive.

False Documents
Nicole Walker

They ran the numbers twice for you
giving you the benefit of the doubt
but you knew the computer at the other
end of the officer’s PDA would not find
your brown number in its little black index.
You drove exactly one mile per hour below the speed
limit. You buckled your baby into his car seat according
to instructions. You signaled for exactly three seconds
before you turned left. You wanted to hide the Subway wrappers,
the empty box of Orbitz gum. Evidence of Big Macs.
You wanted to drink the Mountain Dew before it turned toxic
in the hot Phoenix sun as you asked, doesn’t this green
sludge make me American enough? But you didn’t
move because you knew the officer would have taken
that for gun-finding or drug-hiding or some other supposed
Mexican sport. You with your hands at ten and two
wondered how long the bus ride the officer would take you
on would last and whether they would provide any water.
You wondered, as the officer put hand to holster,
how dangerous it would be to down that Mountain
Dew then and there, in the wide-open American air.

Diaspora

As a caveat, this post will not capture what I am feeling/thinking to a sufficient extent.

We're moving from Gainesville on Saturday. I moved here about this time, 9 years ago for school. Looking back, there is no way I could have written or hoped for a richer life than the one I'm moving from Gainesville with. This place, and our deep, broad, rich, and diverse community here has been like the roots upon roots in a forest might be upon soil, or vice versa. If anything I've learned over the last 9 years sticks out the clearest, it is community. Filial community can be, and has been for me, one of the most wonderful and sacred things in my life. If God is restoring everything to himself through Christ, and I know he is, and if that restoration means humanity will resemble anything close to the community I have had in Gainesville, we have no idea how deep and rich and good that restoration will be.
Wendell Berry, my favorite author, writes a lot about place. All of the valuable things in our life are intimately dependent on and crucially supportive of place. It is so hard for me to leave Gainesville. Not because of the Gators, or the weather, or living on campus, but because it has been the setting and home I have had while going from an 18 year old, lacking wisdom, assurance, community, etc. to who I am now, which I think is as different as can be.
I hope we are moving back here in two years. I hope Dan and Natalie are still here...or willing to also move back. I hope John Brantley's replacement is incredible, and that Jeremy Foley is still our AD. I hope Ron Kuykendal is still our priest. I hope Moe's still has the Big Moo.
Well, I just took a break to do something else, and am no longer feeling as emo about leaving. Anyway, thanks for reading. See you soon. Thanks for being a part of the rich, deep, and good that is my life.

Poem Friday

I've decided to adopt a routine for my blog, at least for Fridays...or at least this Friday. I'll write it in my planner for next Friday, and see if it becomes habit. Anyway, the following poem was written for Obama's inauguration, and when I heard it read that day I really loved it, and still do. The poet does an incredible job of ascribing worth to the things that make up the days of people like you and me, who may not see worth in our day to day 100% of the time. My favorite line is "the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables." What a picture of a family making it, whether they feel like they are making it or not. Well, I hope you like it too.

Praise Song for the Day
by Elizabeth Alexander


A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other's
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what's on the other side.

I know there's something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.