Tasting Life

Life often feels good. Life sometimes also feels bad. Sometimes it's bland. Sometimes it's delicious. Slowing down helps us notice and honor--maybe even welcome--whatever life feels or tastes like.

I love this Jean Janzen poem. It supports my own bias--to grow in openness and skill to taste life to the full.

---

Wild Grapes  --Jean Janzen

Grandfather, dying in November,
asked for wild grapes from
a distant creek. He remembered them,
sweet under the leaves, sent Peter,
his eldest, on horseback.
Through the window the light,
golden as broth, filled his bedside cups,
and the dusty air shimmered.

I have known others who, at the end,
crushed the flesh of nectarine against
the dry palate, or swallowed bits
of cake, eyes brimming.

What to drink in remembrance
of each morning that offered itself
with open arms? What food
for the moments we whispered
into its brightness?

Grandfather, the last pain-filled days,
dreamed cures. He who loved God,
who would go to him, but who also
loved this world, filled as it is
with such indescribable beauty that
you have to eat it.

Pilgrimage and Presence

There's a wonderful old prayer, formatted below as a poem:

O God of peace, you

have taught us

that in returning

and rest

we shall be saved,

in quietness

and confidence

shall be our strength.

By the might

of your Spirit

lift us,

we pray,

into your presence,

where we may be still

and know

that you are God.

If you haven't already, take an unhurried moment to read, to move with these words at a pace where you neither get ahead of them or fall behind. 

If you find a word or phrase unhelpful do your best to translate them into something that’s truer for you. 

What else might you change to make this prayer a prayer that describes what takes you into Presence? 

I can imagine God might want to make changes too (though we can never be really sure what changes those might be)!

I experience this as a wonderful prayer. Almost every time I pray it, it functions for me like an incantation--like Gandalf chanting "Speak Friend And Open," at the Gates of Moria. If I slow down and move with these words, literally at the pace of comprehension, doors open, and I am present for Presence.

Lots of people used to invest lots of time and effort in order to come into Presence. People made pilgrimages to holy places. 'Holy Place' is how 'Sanctuary' translates. The thing that sanctifies a place is Presence. 

Read this snippet from an R S Thomas poem:

In cities that
   have outgrown their promise people
   are becoming pilgrims
   again, if not to this place,
   then to the recreation of it
   in their own spirits. 

We live at a time when people are becoming pilgrims to holy places in their own spirits. This doesn't mean we don't also find Presence in traditional sacred places. It's a both/and thing for many of us, though for some, for one reason and another, it's often necessary to make new paths.  Both old and new pilgrim paths move people toward Presence. And both take people into community and adventure. 

And both involve inspiration, effort and grace. But neither guarantees Presence—though it's very rare when Presence is not experienced on the way to and within the holy places of pilgrimage. 

Just slowing down and 'entering' the prayer at the beginning of this post is a kind of pilgrimage. The 'returning' describes a path we take and take and take. No guarantee of Presence. And yet....

And yet...it is on journeys like this, short or long, where we find the quieting and the stilling and the knowing that something in us is always longing for.