(Looking back on last week's happiness - I remember once having a conversation with Chrispy and Prisca about how it is easier to write about/make art out of sadness but I don't know - I love writing about happiness but never feel my words quite do happy moments justice, like the medieval inexpressability topos)
The first proper poem I remember writing was called 'Not hungry is not the same as full', which was about the difference between getting by and loving and living and feeling satisfied. 'I can't tell if you're not hungry/or just not full' I wrote. Last weekend I felt utterly full, and spent time with people who left me full and who seemed full (to me) meeting me as well.
Saturday
I started the morning by going on a prayer walk with Liv - it was a cold morning but crisp and clear. We walked to praising, praying for each other and the people in our lives, for Cambridge and for people to come to know God. Liv is so wise and so full of faith and is such a living encouragement. After that I cycled straight down to run with Jacob, towards Grantchester and back this morning and faster than usual
I came across this beautiful poem:
by Mary Oliver
Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives --
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?
Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!
No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?
Well, there is time left --
fields everywhere invite you into them.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!
To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!
To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened
in the night
To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.
Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe
I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.
For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!
A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.
Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?
And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.
That was then, which hasn't ended yet.
Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.
I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.
and had a fun rehearsal with the Sussex Pistols before doing good work in the library, and got home feeling slightly deflated and tired, but Jacob came over with lentil pasta and we sat, warm and content. I needed a cuddle, and so did he, and who doesn't emerge from a cuddle feeling loved and more-whole?
(Absolutely insufficient words but.)
Sunday - Jacob's birthday!
After yesterday morning's walk, I knew when I saw the sun through my window that I needed to get out for a quick walk this morning too. I had about 15 minutes, so I took a back route to the park and playground near my house. When I got there it was empty, the puddles were frozen over, and the seat of the playground zipline was white frosted. That didn't stop me from wiping the frost off, climbing up the launch pad, sitting down and leaning back and flying down low over the ground. Three times. And then I climbed a hill, did a cartwheel, and clambered over a rock wall, before walking back home, with the firm decision in my heart to never ever lose the will to play.
Jacob came over a couple minutes after I'd got back, and we made peanut butter and chocolate granola (I think we've got the recipe firmly perfected, because this is the second time we've made it and it's been absolutely heavenly both times) and nice cream for his birthday breakfast, and did yoga while it was in the oven, then ate it sitting next to him and feeling so thankful that he was born, and went through 20 years of life and somehow loves me.
We went to church, listened to a sermon by a man who works in Burundi who talked about trusting and having faith in God's promises, keeping obedient to his commandments, and taking risks for him just as Abraham did. We sang 'You Never Let Go' which reminded me of singing it with Gloria back at home. After that we had lunch with his Mum and sister - they're so good at including me and making me feel welcome. I came back home for a bit before evensong, and just lay on my bed reading (had the strange realisation a couple days later that time like that on my degree is so precious - I get to read fiction books and poetry for my education, things that I'd spend my leisure hours on happily anyway!)
After evensong, at formal, I let Jacob go in first, then asked Hannah to follow, so I had some time to talk to the hall staff about a little surprise, letting them know who he was. The entire thing almost went terribly and funnily wrong when first one of the waiters came and whispered inconspicuously in my ear that the surprise was all ready (bless him, I think he was just as excited as I was but didn't realise Jacob was right opposite me!) and later when another waitress came up to asked me 'which one is he again?' but thankfully Hannah was able to distract him, so that when it was time for dessert everything was ready. And then I was served a fruit salad, and had a momentary stomach twist - had they forgotten somehow?? - but then it was taken away, and in its place was a chocolate brownie with an orange sorbet and on Jacob's plate they'd written Happy Birthday and oh his face, he was so surprised, and I felt suddenly happy and worried and embarrassed and joyful and full of laughter all at once. I'd been imaging how he'd react all week, and I found it so hard to keep it a secret since I was so excited about it and usually he's one of the people I share my excitement about stuff with.
(A couple days later we were talking about mixed emotions/what makes you cry. Feeling a combination of things, like happy-sad, happy-scared, angry-sad, seem to be more tear inducing then their straight emotion constituents - although if there is ever a purely straight emotion is a whole other question!)
Then the bar, where I met Hannah (another Hannah!) and her boyfriend who are so friendly and warm, and then back to his room to open my present. I was anxious-excited, and rested my head on his shoulder for reassurance. I'd made a book of unphotographable moments, filled with little 'snapshots' of some of the smallest and yet really beautiful moments we've shared together (and a sprinkling of just plain funny ones that it would be a pity to forget!) As usual, he had exactly the right words to lift my rough effort and make it something special - 'longing put into form' - presents. perhaps, are an inseparable combination of giver and receiver.
I've started listening to John Piper's 'Solid Joys' daily, usually at breakfast or before bed. I can't remember which day this was, but he says so well what I'm trying to convey:
Every good and perfect moment this week was a gift of grace from Christ, a gift that leaves in its wake the fullness of joy among and between people who love Him.
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