prelude: Ash Wednesday

I have apologized more times than one
    have paid my dues to the thistle and the thorn
and many times have I thought,
    this flame is enough!

have faced my own wickedness with something akin to despair
or, 
    infinitely more cowardly, 
        refused to face it

Yet I will fathom the depths of my aggression,
    my heartbreak and longing, my entitlement and greed

        and turn, turn

Turn to You  
Turn into your face, your gaze, your solid chest

Turn to cry, 'Change me!' 
'Leave me not alone!'

O you who pulled me from the pit,
who breathed,
and your breath dispersed my darkness:
    do not forget me
        and do not pass me by!

I recognize (though I hardly understand)
I am ashes and dust

But you come, 
you invite
your warmth, 
your eyes

Lord Jesus Christ, 
    I receive you 
        
into my twisted heart.

The Umatilla,

from Lake Creek Trail into North Fork Wilderness.
We found the wreck of a downed plane: deep indent in the ground,
rusting metal everywhere, eerie and overgrown.
The crash took place in the 40s--a World War II training exercise
took a turn for the worse.

This morning, we heard an elk bugling, loud and distant,
recalling the howler monkeys of Costa Rica,
the way you'd hear them hundreds of yards off, moving from tree to tree,
coming closer.

Well, yesterday was a year since I left Honduras,
and as for the south,
I both long for and release it.

In the Umatilla, I lose count of the firs I see tipping 30 inches in diameter,
the Western Larch and Blue Spruce (Engelmann's), and White and Lodgepole Pine.

I revel in the Indian Paintbrush and yellow alpine lupines
(I've only seen purple lupines before).
I lay in my ocean blue tent and easily shut my eyes at 8'o'clock.

My left forearm swells and my hamstrings ache,
but I praise the G-d of all these trees and ridges,
of wide silent spaces and wildflowers.

Yes, may the Prince and Maker of this greenness live near me forever.

dia del resurrección

Palouse Falls picnic

elk herd

mule deer

roasted beets & zucchini with feta

bread and wine

warm spring weather

making matzo balls for Passover

good friends

currently reading: Henri Nouwen

''Knowing G-d's heart as it has become flesh--a heart of flesh in Jesus--means consistently, radically, and very concretely to announce and reveal that G-d is love and only love, and that every time fear, isolation, or despair begins to invade the human soul, this is not something that comes from G-d. This sounds very simple and maybe even trite, but very few people know they are loved without conditions or limits.''

''Knowing the heart of Jesus and loving him are the same thing. The knowledge of Jesus' heart is a knowledge of the heart. And when we live in the world with that knowledge, we cannot do other than bring healing, reconciliation, new life, and hope wherever we go. The desire to be relevant and successful will gradually disappear, and our only desire will be to say with our whole being to our brothers and sisters of the human race, 'You are loved. There is no reason to be afraid.' ''

''Contemplative prayer deepens in us the knowledge that we are already free, that we have already found a place to dwell, that we already belong to G-d, even though everything and everyone around us keep suggesting the opposite.''

unfold your own myth / rumi

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his lost son
and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings
up a flowing prophet? Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
and opens a door to another world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and ther’s a cold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet
and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there’s a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins.
Suddenly he’s wealthy.

But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.

Start walking…Your legs will get heavy
and tired. Then comes a moment
of feeling the wings you’ve grown
lifting.

gratitude in paying attention

To the man sitting outside at Safeway, ready for the night, and all I offer is hot coffee and a pastry, and he is peeing now, on the side of the building, and though I have seen much more in my young years I am startled, and wish him a good evening, and he thanks me, it's going to be a long night, he says. And I drive my nice heated car home in the 30 degree weather to the apartment without enough windows but is nonetheless so well heated and with a huge sliding glass door and how could I ever be ungrateful when I have been given so much?

And to the kiddos at Blue Ridge, dirty fingernails and so many with permanent lice in their hair--who knew it is so expensive to remove? And many don't have their own washing machines and all the quarters it costs to kill the parasites, let alone scissors and glue and crayons at home, which is why they're always so worried when they don't finish art projects at school.

And to the leaves in piles on the sides of the streets, grace and more grace piling up, falling down.

To each day of sunshine in December, how hard winter is for me and yet full of its own particular beauty.

To American flags in churches (ask those questions honey, should they be there?--but with love for the bride and not malice in your heart).

To G, J, and J, mama of two cerebral palsy brothers I work with each morning. 'Dejelo mi esposo,' she told me when we met. They live at the YWCA, and she works at Burger King, saving money to rent a house with the four kids and her own mother.

And to dented cars when mine has none and tin can trailer hovels when I dream of (and expect!) a handmade home of wood and glass some day.

Oh, how entitled we are, when we deserve no thing.

Sometimes I feel like I'm cheating on my kids in Honduras by falling in love with these kids here. But the gifts we are given are not exclusive to each other. By receiving one, you don't negate the others. And oh, I have been given a thousand, thousand gifts.

more on gratitude: to walk unafraid

why it's hard to imagine ever not working with kids

At recess today, Amber, in kindergarten, standing high up in the center of a four-way see-saw of sorts: ''Amber, should you be standing up there?''
''Don't worry,'' she tells me, pointing to lavender Crocs, ''these shoes are really sticky.''

Sirgio, who I've taken to calling Sirge (like Surge, that soda from the 90s), is one of the smallest first graders, but wears clothes that are way too big on him--huge tee-shirts, super long shorts, even those Wolverine brown hikers--he looks like a little gansta. A couple weeks ago, I was saying something to him in Spanish, and he looked at me and said in English, totally deadpan, ''I'm half-Indian.'' It was hard not to laugh. ''Be that as it may, this is still a Spanish period, and you do have a Spanish name.''

On school picture day Tuesday, Xitlalli, who looked very cute with her hair all done, got so nervous she couldn't stop crying and actually threw up.

DeMarco led the meses del año song with an A-B pattern of alternate winking eyes. Awesome.

When we were talked about what things we try our best in today, Avarie, smart but rather high-maintenance, said flatly, ''nothing.'' A couple weeks ago she fell apart, crying (sans tears) and declaring, ''my nose hurts right here,'' as she touched the skin between her upper lip and nose with the end of her finger.

Dylan, with the white-blonde bull cut, skinny wrists, and black-framed glasses, always comes to school wearing different types of head-gear: baseball cap, cowboy hat, and, when it was raining, an umbrella hat. Recently we were walking outside to the bus when Teacher Mario pointed out his pants were unbuttoned and unzipped under his huge brown jacket. ''Dylan,'' I stopped him, ''please zip up your pants.'' He insisted he could not button them, which left me the awkward job of doing it myself in the middle of the bus lines, fingers splayed like spiders so as not to touch any part of him. Ridiculous!

Then there's Diego, 7 in May but in first grade. He doesn't necessarily fit right into the public school protocol (he was in Montesorri for the past two years), but his personality, dryness, questions: I want a son just like him. Summer birthday and a little old for the grade included.

And I almost forgot! Today, some of the third graders were asking about a picture of a man's hand with leprosy. ''What is that?'' they wondered. ''It looks like Voldemort's hand.'' I briefed them on the skin disease, how it's very rare now compared to in the past. ''Oh yeah,'' a couple of them knowingly replied, ''My grandpa has that. His feet look just like that.''

So the days include a lot of me madly scribbling new Spanish words into my red notebook, high-fiving third grade boys, teaching fifth grade math lessons, first grade reading, and recess playground moderation. It's amazing the authority any person over four feet tall has out there, and the stream of reports they receive. ''Teacher, teacher, Dakota kicked Zaden.'' ''Okay Francisco, thank you for informing me. If Zaden or Dakota has a problem, they can come tell me.''

In other news, I just signed up for a Women's Carpentry: Wood Refinishing class. !Qué emocionante!

to open like a hinge, like a wing

...to listen to the enormous waterfalls of the sun

being home

opening 18 birdhouses and examining nests, cleaning them out for spring
wren, violet green or tree swallow, blue bird? you can tell from the material,
or abandoned left-over eggs

tastes of rich, full-bodied coffee,
satsumas, eggnog and pomegranates
staining fingers scarlet
oh! and those two pies i made from scratch:
one with a large squash from the garden, the other with apples from the orchard

you are inhaling hard, bracing breaths, now
you've been out hiking and walking through the cold
and the fiery sky's setting sun stuns you,
the mist shrouding ponderosa pines and douglas firs of your favorite green-gold
you are lucky, though here in a not uncommon sort of way, to spot a great-horned owl

we are witnesses of the first enduring snow-fall
for so long forgotten in the extravagance of summer,
we turn again to receive Sister Winter

blow on, santa anas

mix and mingle with the cold north wind
blow on my garden [that its spices may flow out]
melting my transatlantic heart

swoop, swoop low, brother owl
come, come near, Sky Spirit

this is my body: grass & goosebumps & moonlight
these are my eyelids: heavy with stars
this white wheat, soft as a lamb on my fingertips

oh, take my hand, pull me into the fields
oh, take my hand, lay me open under the night

J & A

there's something about coffee on the roof in the morning
about laughter and back rubs well into the night
about conversations while sunbathing in urban parks
& drinking wine straight out of the bottle

there's something about best friend-sisters,
& oh, i'm so grateful(l) for their visit to my city.

paper hanger / mewithoutYou

If you're still looking for a blanket
Sweetie, I'm sorry, I'm no sort of fabric
But if you need a tailor
Then take your torn shirt, and stumble up my stairs
And mumble your pitiful prayers
And in your tangled night's sleep, our midnight needles go to work
Until all comfort and fear flows in one river
Down on the shelf by the mirror where you see yourself whole
And it makes you shiver