Why I notice small things now
T.S. Eliot wrote in, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
…to express the accumulation of mundane moments that fill our lives and the gnawing fear that our best days are behind us.
My experience, standing at the entrance of this season of life, is more optimistic.
I took this picture to capture the morning sunlight illuminating the these simple, sacred objects in my kitchen window. Nowadays, I find myself looking for these moments.
I may begin measuring out my life in coffee spoons, but it because they are precious to me and I finally have time to savor them.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was a favorite poem when I lived in New York City in my early thirties. When I re-read the poem this morning, Eliot’s descriptions were places I knew from visits to all-night diners after a late night with friends. While there is nostalgia in my recollection, there is no longing for those days.
I am not equating age with diminished activity or as Eliot suggests, diminished dreams. Quite the contrary.
I believe this is the age when dreams are finally pursued with renewed vigor because they are seen with eyes of wizened by decades of experience.
My parents retired from traditional jobs and immediately left to live in the former Soviet Union in the early 1990’s when it was still rebuilding.
My parents dreamed of traveling the world, and in retirement they finally had the time. My father to see places he only knew from his lifelong subscription to the National Geographic magazine, my mother to teach children and renew her childhood dream of being a missionary in a foreign country.
I feel the same enthusiasm for this season and what it will hold. But my energies are not driven by geographic adventures, but by an internal journey, which I hope will produce more books.
But like my parents, I live every day each day with an understanding that my choices represent time withdrawn from a bank that accepts no deposits.
For myself, this realization is found in making time for an appreciation of the beauty in common things. And an acceptance of myself, finally, as I am rather than as I hope to be.
The other day I watched a short video of Mary Oliver reading her poem, Wild Geese, (that link will take you to the 2 minute video, it’s worth watching).
Here are the opening lines,
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
I like to imagine that in Wild Geese, Mary Oliver is providing us an invitation: If we did not feel this way before, perhaps now we can finally say, I am strong and beautiful and smart and kind and worthy of love and dreams I will pursue, just as I am. I believe that is a very good way to live this season of life.
What I’m reading now…
The Reed of God by Caryll Houselander When I first began reading this book, a few years ago, I tried to read it starting on page one and going forward, as I would with any other book.
What I discovered recently, is that I appreciate and learn more when I read this book in smaller bites, as if it was a devotional. Where I read a page or two at a time and meditate on what I’ve read.
Here’s a description from the publisher:
The Reed of God contains meditations on the humanity of Mary, Mother of God. British Catholic writer and artist Caryll Houselander lovingly explores Mary’s intimately human side.
Confronting the static, surreal “Madonna of the Christmas card,” Houselander provides instead an intuitive, warmly human, and approachable image of the Mother of God.
In the book’s four parts, Houselander explores key events of Mary’s life, including her fiat, finding Jesus in the Temple, and the Assumption, as well as the themes of fruitful emptiness and the eternal search for union with God.