Ceres and Poseidon: A Christmas Homily

On an afternoon of clear tranquility I sat by the windows to meditate on an ocean of jade-tinged iron. Through the panes streamed December sunlight, painting the cottage walls the color of a well-worn wedding band. A week of rain and wind had finally departed. Beach and boulders along the headland shone in ecstasy of greeting the sun. Peat smoldered on the hearth, filling the cottage with warmth and the soul with gratitude. Salt air filled the lungs on each slow breath. My empty belly growled as it dreamt of stout and oysters.

This hunger dream manifested itself in the flesh as a Christmas wish possessing an elegant simplicity. It is not greed, it is not selfishness, it is not gluttony. It is appetites to be satisfied by simple means, the result of harvest and craft. Hearing the growls, I wondered how far that simplicity could be extended into a life infused with meaning. Et comedent, ergo sum: “I eat, therefore I am”, is that valid meaning? It seems simple enough.

Hunger drives us all, almost strident in its voice when the days are on the cusp of winter. Cold twilight days combine with erstwhile Christmas spirit to amplify the pressure to desire more, want more, need more. The prevailing social matrix would have you believe that more, even excess, is the cure for hunger. Reductionism to the point where what you consume is made less important than continued consumption itself. Quantity over quality. More over enough, stupefaction over engagement.

The sea continued its stirring. Waves upon the sand brought me to stillness, their susurrus an irresistible entreaty to cease thinking, cease worrying, and be in this moment. I acquiesced.

Brothers and sisters and fellow humans, my belly dreamt of stout and oysters, avatars of the creative expression of field and sea. Each a simple want to be savored in its having, preferably in the company of love. In the quiet of the day, this moment of repose becomes the season of peace and contentment.

Laugh with a full belly. Love with full heart. May you too find your stout and oysters. Merry Christmas to all.

Ringing Bells

Mama knew my mind, would know this song
Mama knew my mind, would know this song
I muscle holler and a moan
I muscle holler and a moan
Black chords in the night

"You ever hear a new song, lyrics that sorta knock you out?" she said with a voice that purred even over the music and the traffic outside. Snow fell, light and jittery in the streetlight glow coming through the bar window. Someone laughed loud, there was coughing.

She was looking at me with eyes like emeralds and smoke. I managed not to jump at the sound of her voice. Jeans like paint, copper colored hair, boots sexy and dangerous-looking at the same time. The glass found its way to my suddenly dry mouth, hiding nervousness. Swallow. Pause. Answer.

"Once in a while. You?" I said. She smiled. It made me think of jaguars.

"Yes, I do. All the time. Even make them up, when the mood strikes." Smooth hands, coffee-colored, cradled a glass. She lifted it, sipped. White teeth, one slightly crooked behind lips just red enough. Some things are so beautiful you should burn your eyes out after you see them, because you never will again.

Daddy burnt the dirt, but the seed survived
Daddy burnt the dirt, but the seed survived
Holler and a moan
I muscle holler and a moan
Black chords in the night

The drink looked like a gin and tonic. That alone pleased me so much, I could not say why. Maybe it was just relief at not seeing another goddamn pink drink. I looked down at the bourbon I was nursing. It shimmered in the slightly nacreous bar light, honey and leather in a glass. I sipped again.

"So do you write songs?" I asked, not quite looking her in the eyes. Talk about distractions. My hands trembled slightly. Whiskey or nerves I could not tell.

"No, not really. I mean, I want to. I write a lot," she looked at me, then looked down at the bar, then over to the empty stage, "but a lot of things sound great at midnight that fall apart at lunch time, you know?"

I chuckled. Her admission energized me with confidence. A shot of that does a body good, knowing that Jesus will turn another year older before you can somehow make it home. Assuming you can find out where home could be. I turned on the bar stool, she didn't hear me sigh, and then I looked right in those pools of green. She had leaned in closer.

"What's your name, love?"

"Colleen. And you are...?" Blank mind. The music seemed to swell, drowning out my thoughts. How could I forget my own name. What was my name? Oh, Christ on a pogo stick, my name?

"Liam. It's Liam." I managed a smile. To my relief she smiled back. To my surprise, she started singing along with the jukebox.

The heavy bells, the heavy bells,the heavy bells
The heavy bells are tolling out a tune
The heavy bells, the heavy bells
Oh, God, I felt that metal move
You’re gonna wake up, you’re gonna wake up,
You’re gonna wake up, find the heavy bells
Toll their tune for you too

She had closed her eyes, tilting back her head to expose the loveliest neck I had ever seen. She sang, slightly off key with a throatiness that took my breath away. I gasped, staring. She opened her eyes, looked at me, smiling at my obvious lack of composure. To my shock, she reached out with one hand and took mine into it.

Her hand was warm, silky. The bar tilted in my vision. I squeezed her hand. She leaned in, enveloping me in a faint Tanqueray cloud. Her lips brushed my ear, and I heard her whisper "Merry Christmas, Liam. Merry Christmas." Across the street at Saints Patrick and James, the bells rang. Gazing back at her, dizzy to the point of near blackout, I grinned and answered.

"Merry Christmas, Colleen. I love you."

---

Italicized paragraphs are from a new favorite, "Heavy Bells", by J. Roddy Walston & the Business. Yeah, it rocks.

Sunday Meditation #12: Christmas Threads and Contradictions

An odd run-up to this, my forty-seventh Christmas on Earth.  Alone in my house two days ago, chuckling at my own weirdness as I stood in bar of sunlight, a copy of A Year With Thomas Merton in my hands, and the supercharged chant of Rollins' Band "Shine" shaking the walls a little as I read.  How this came to be I cannot recall.  I do know that at the time, it made perfect sense.

I have been reading the Merton book since June, which is the month in which I acquired it.  The short daily meditations I mostly read at the pace of one a day, in sync with the calendar.  Time and circumstance conspired to disturb the symmetry of that schedule.  Lately I have the habit of neglecting the book for days at a time, then catch up in a concentrated burst of reading when I have time.  So it was this time.

"In The End, Grace Alone" the title of Merton's meditation.  Henry Rollins exhorts me to "Shine" as I read it.  I lean against the door frame and grin.  This time the apparent cognitive dissonance of the ideas before my mind does not bother me.  Merton writes of his frustration with being an intellectual in a land of "businessmen and squares", while Rollins practically boots me in the ass to be a hero.  It is to laugh, and I do.

Truly it does not bother me, these two ends of the tug rope.  I've lived with the bifurcation of my interior life for so long it seems normal.  I feel like a warrior-poet, except I cannot squarely identify my foe or my muse.  I very often, in the words of Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame), "obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul".  These exhortations I have trouble explaining to myself, much less to others.

Yet I listen.  I savor.  I worry them with the teeth of my mind.  Somewhere on there exists my destination.

The season and in particular, this day, always place me in this frame of mind.  A season of merriment and good will towards humankind marred by either too much belief or not enough.  By some lights it isn't enough that you be kindly disposed to those around you, you must be Christian and you have to believe.  Never mind all the ironies involved in the chauvinistic demands for "keeping Christ in Christmas" when Christmas itself was taken over from a pagan holiday and has been further hijacked by a consumer-driven, free market (arguably) capitalistic and money-driven culture.  No wonder this time of year produces so much anxiety in so many.

There seems to be little real peace, and true love.  For better or worse, Christmas as a season and a holiday has been dilated too much by the demands of an open society for the 'at-large' return to a ritual acknowledgment of the birth of Jesus Christ.  To do so would be to ignore entire segments of our society, and would not be allowed by the money machines of consumer capitalism because it would cut down on the profit pool.  From what I see in the news, it is either about mass consumption or religious narrow-mindedness.  Hardly anyone speaks of peace, at least, not in a pure sense.

For myself, I want peace of mind.  I want the simple joy to be found in caring for those around you and in the communion with life in the universe.  I do not want to be wrapped up in questions of salvation versus damnation, belief versus non-belief, extravagant consumption in the face of need.  The former question misses the point of personal faith, and the latter question is one that exists independently of any holiday.  Neither is a question to be solved if this is supposed to be a matter of peace and love.

Thomas Merton and Henry Rollins: the yin and yang of my Christmas season.  They both speak to me, in different tongues.  The thinker and the warrior tell me to seek inner peace, but I will have to fight for it.  This makes me laugh. Salvation and consumption both seem to me to be missing the main point: that we should exist in love and seek peace in ourselves so that we may know it with others.

As I meditate on my roots this Christmas, I feel I am closer to casting aside the distractions and noise of this world, and getting much closer to love and to peace.  This is my wish for us all.

I Know You Want One

Winter Poetry Slam: Patuxent River Meditation #7

I sigh, Luna smiles,
Ice mumbles among the rocks.
Laughter, awaiting dawn.

Every Light My Love

"Pine or fir?" following her eyes
Then she looked at me to say
"Pick the one you like" and smiled
So fir it was, on top of the car

Rode home with windows open,
Just a bit with cords stretched taut
While she sang doggerel, softly,
sanding down the edges of my soul

Electric jewels strung across green tips
Porcelain doll hands carefully place an orb,
as if she were hanging up my heart;
She likes it, pronounces it "Pretty",

and I pronounce it Love.

Nollaig Shona Daoibh!

Happy Christmas, one and all! -

from Irish Gumbo

Big Blue Marble: Happy Christmas!

PEACE BE UPON YOU

Zero To Sixty in Sixty Days

Today was a workday, kind of like the other workdays (which are stringing too close together) that have made me want to stand on my desk and just start hollering. Like the guy from ‘300’, except maybe not as buff. Just stand on my desk and ROAR.

(Them) This is madness!
(Me) No, this..is..GUMBO! (Kicks in computer screen, dives out window)

Okay, that is what I wanted to do. What I actually did was sit in my chair, grind my teeth and convince myself I could stick it out until 5:00. This has become increasingly hard for me as of late. I have always had a knack for bullshit, can spin it pretty good when I set my mind to it. A quote from some movie I saw years ago sprang to mind: “Never bullshit a bullshitter!” This was the predicament I found myself in. I know very well when I am not being honest with myself, and this was one of those times. I also find it easy to speak the truth that I know, when I know it. I was talking to myself, like one of those guys I’ve seen pushing shopping carts in downtown Baltimore. Do you know how weird it feels to be arguing with yourself, two voices, one out of each side of the mouth? One saying “It’s not so bad” and the other saying “Clock punching for someone else’s dreams grows tiresome”. I imagined it to be a running dialogue between Stuart Smalley and Dieter from Sprockets.

So it was that when I left work, I was all prepared to come home, stuff some groceries down my neck and then pound out a profanity-laced screed about being oppressed by the Man and overwhelmed by ennui not giving a shit. I was going to follow all this with a serious bout of plopping my butt down on the couch to watch something, anything, on TV.

That was the plan. I had forgotten that tonight was PAYNIGHT, which meant grabbing dinner out after depositing my hard earned slip-of-paper-that-isn’t-money-but-stands-in-for-money. As if I wasn’t in enough of a snit, the thought of having to turn around and head right back out the door, The Spouse and The Wee Lass in tow, just turned the screws a little bit tighter. I was feeling, what’s the word?, MISANTHROPIC to a very high degree. Fortunately for me, my daughter had other ideas for Gumbo the Grump. I bundled her in her car seat and we set off in search of pizza. The car hadn’t gone thirty feet when I heard this loud squeal of delight from the back seat:

“Let’s look for Christmas lights! Will we see Christmas lights, Mommy?”
“Probably, sweetie.”
“YAYYY! Look, Daddy, it’s a reindeer!”

One of our neighbors has a wicker deer on their front lawn, the kind strung with lights and a motorized head that bobs slowly up and down. It was dark already, and the white lights had the whole house front awash in the glow. Wee Lass was so enthusiastic I felt myself starting to crack. On the way to the pizza joint, and on the way back, she was eagerly looking out the window, calling out decorations and lights when we could see them on passing houses. In the face of such unself-conscious delight, I felt the hatin’ just drain out of me. I was still plenty tired, but not nearly as wound up. I felt like a human being instead of a clock spring.

I was mildly surprised to realize that this is my sixtieth post in sixty days. I was going to write a screed tonight, as I mentioned. Good for me and for you, dear reader, that I had the Wee Lass to hit the reset button. She brought me back on center and made it possible for me to ENJOY writing tonight. It felt good to reach a milestone on a positive note.

60 in 60 days. Whew. I had no idea it was in me. Thanks so much to everyone who has laid eyes on my creative overflow. Between the Wee Lass and your interest, I have been inspired and encouraged to keep at it. Something cool is just down the road, and I appreciate the help in getting me to it!