Month: February 2023

Feet

Rita Sommers-FlanaganLeave a comment

My feet are propped comfortably in front of me. Morning light plays over the intricate curves and delicate runs of bone, cartilage, joints, digits, nails, veins, and varying hues of smooth, innocent skin. From this angle, the lumps and bumps don’t show. I’m caught in the magic of backlit flesh, sad that it is such a transient reality.

“Ah, don’t cry,” the Artist says, but it’s obvious she’s gratified by my reaction. Art is about emotion and recognition. It solves problems by simplifying and causes problems by revealing. At this moment, my feet are perfect. They don’t belong to me.

Perfection dwells in the twinkling of the eye, not the tally of a lifetime. It never lasts, but it leaves telltale signs: a smear of sacrificial blood wiped away, a cruel thought left unexpressed, a knowing glance, a long, hard day. Perfection is when traffic stops both directions to let a single ray of sunlight reach a dark place.

“God,” I say, pulling my achy feet back under me, reclaiming their imperfections. “These feet remind me of you. You’re both getting less reliable. Why did you choose evolution and entropy for design motifs?”

“I love entropy!” God declares with no hint of apology. “Random loss, chaos, the gradual decline into disorder; these spawn the next iterations of myself. You can’t expect me to convert everything into predictable mechanical work. Sometimes, thermal energy must stay put so there’s room for wonder.”

“Oh, that’s so you, God. Cold. Self-absorbed. Molecular. Can’t you stop for a minute and sympathize? Even if decline is fodder for the future, even if transition is the ground source of wonder, it’s still tough.”

“Well, it’s just as tough being eternal and waiting around,” God retorts. “But that’s not the point. Of course, it’s hard. The challenge is to grow softer and wiser. In the short run, denial makes things easier. But never better. Be brave.”

“Fine,” I say with a dismissive wave. I’ve heard it all before. I get up and put on my favorite red socks. They will help me venture into a mundane day. “I suppose you expect me to be grateful for things like warm socks and a working automobile.”

“Of course, I do,” God says with a self-satisfied smile. “And mind if I ride along? I need to check some inventories.”

“Not at all,” I say. “But bundle up. It’s wicked cold out there.”

Between Firmaments

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament…And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Post hoc weather report: For two days in a row the wind didn’t blow. When this happens and there’s sun, I tend to forget about adversity. There’s nothing to lean into or ward off or hide from. I lose focus and get dangerously, gloriously expansive. I know this about myself so on the first windless day, I remained mindful, took a walk and hung up laundry.

But the second day was too much. I dragged everything out at once and balanced it between brilliant sky and deep waters, the firmaments of heaven and hell. I sang along with Bob Marley, beat on the blue barrels, and danced from possibility to possibility, arm in arm with an adolescent God. It’s often God’s fault when I get ecstatic and reckless like that.

We opened cans of paint, glued odd-shaped scraps of wood together, and redid the driftwood bouquet, adding antique marbles and sparkly broken glass I’d swept up after the wind slammed the garage door a couple years ago. The door had been double-paned, but on impact, the inner pane shattered into light aqua beads. I knew they’d be perfect for something. And the door still works. In fact, the remaining pane mirrored God slinking by, a black dog with a stick. Eternally hopeful.

I threw the stick a few times but then asked God to help me take some selfies near the old typewriter that sits among my outdoor sculptures on a massive stump that looks dead but isn’t. Every spring, I remove the hopeful shoots. I don’t want a tree there.

We did the selfies and examined our hands. So many angles, so many ways to see what could be. We briefly reviewed the reasons for self-restraint and then shelved them near my collection of dull saw blades and dented mailboxes. We were giddy from the fumes of liquid nails and high gloss varnish.

The elasticity of our joy stretched into the evening and when it was time to call it a day, we did. We called it the second day and rested.

But the earth wobbled in the night, and the vicious wind is back. I have awakened to stinging dust. Swirling ash. Things old and broken have lost the sheen of potential. I’m tempted to start a fire to rid myself of these burdens, but I can’t. With this much wind, it could burn the whole world down.

Apophatic

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

This morning, it is my intention to ask for Nothing. Admittedly, I’m not entirely sincere. Someday, maybe. Deep in my soul, I suspect the greatest gift of all is Nothing, but Something is far easier.

Consciously or not, every living being begs, demands, or fights for something: Continued life. Sustenance. Shelter. Justice. Revenge. The right lover. Riches, recognition, health, a big win. And when the lost coin is found, the cancer recedes, there is rejoicing, and God is declared good.

But when the earth quakes or the bomb drops, the rivers flood or starvation takes another child, I see it is better to ask for Nothing. What do we say to the team that didn’t win? To the one not found? To the destitute scrambling for crumbs falling from the tables of the enormously wealthy? To the planet shrugging us off with great loss and pain?

“Are you asking me?” God’s steamy voice rises majestic from the compost pile where microbes are hard at work. Like a startled deer, I run for the hills. God runs alongside, tossing shiny bits of wisdom behind us so I can find my way back when the panic subsides.

At the summit, I collapse on lichen covered sandstone. There is nowhere left to run. The view is spectacular. God has spread itself across the face of the dying earth. Eternal, resilient, generous. I point out the gully where I hope to be buried. God laughs.

“All creation is a churning tomb,” the formless God says. “From whence you will reappear.”

“Are you Nothing or Everything?” I lay back and stare straight up, deflecting from the image of my resurrection as nutrients and organic matter.

“Yes,” answers the Sky. “And so are you.”

I shake my head but God is adamant. “You’re the performance and the applause, achievement and failure, pride and shame. You’re the darkness sacrificed to define light, and you’re the light that leaps into darkness, knowing it will not survive.”

“Sucked in by a black hole?” I ask. “Gone forever?”

God smiles. “Something like that. But not quite. You understand that I’m the place where light goes to rest, right?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t really understand that.”

I pull what’s left of myself together, move toward the day, and instead of Nothing, I ask for very little as I settle into the Unsettled Place of the Holy Dialectic. It isn’t all that comfortable, but I prefer it to the self-righteous mirage of certainty cloaking the willfully deluded, the terrified, and the cruel.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” God says. “Suits us just fine for now.”

When Pigs Fly

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“Shhhh,” I hold my finger to my lips. God raises an eyebrow, settles into the easy chair, and waits in accommodating quietude.

I cross my legs under me. Even though my back hurts, I hold absolutely still and watch the intricate frost formations on the windows melt. Minutes pass. Centuries pass. Finally, God blinks.

“If it’s all the same to you,” she whispers, “I think I’ll move along.”

“No, wait! There’s herbal tea brewing. I just needed a few moments of…”

But she’s gone. And was never here. I’ll drink both cups of tea myself, feed the fire, and ice my back. Maybe I overdid it chopping kindling yesterday. Or it could be this lumpy sofa, my latest addition to our collection of almost perfect couches. I hate icing sore places but on occasion, it’s necessary.

Maybe I should have asked for a healing touch while she was here, I think sarcastically to myself.

And maybe someday your pigs will fly, God thinks back to me. I’m not sure whether to laugh or not.

God is an ever-present elixir, an infusion, a tincture, an essential oil. Ice and fire. She goes nowhere because she’s everywhere. But even in all her infinitude, she can be a little petty. A tad reactive. Over the eons of human consciousness, reported sightings of the holy suggest psychosis or at least terrible failures in judgment.

I imagine the pigs in flight. It’s no more outlandish than dinosaurs, evolved to birds, flying and diving and pecking at the pig food. The pigs get even. Until we moved the bird feeder to a tree, they would bump the pole to get seeds to fall so they could gobble them up. And if given the chance, any one of them would gobble a whole bird in a few quick chomps–on the run from the others if necessary. They aren’t much into sharing.

I understand that. Sharing is hard. Giving up, giving enough, giving away—all tough to do most of the time. An acute awareness of my shortcomings silences me. Evolving is a very slow process.

“It’s all about process and outcome,” God says in the audible hum of life in my head. “You are all greedy and afraid, but some mothers share. Even unto death.”

I stare at her, unsettled.

“And some eat their young,” I state flatly, almost sorry I’ve found my voice.

“Well, that’s the rub, isn’t it, sweetheart?” God says. “Is the tea still warm?”