Tag: Legacy

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Rita Sommers-Flanagan4 Comments

The very greenly greens out my window should be making me happy. The realization that I cannot save the world should be a relief. The ways I am rich should bring me joy: my art supplies and new welder; a soulmate, nice neighbors, kindred spirits; drawers full of chocolate; the asparagus, birds, and well-gravelled roads. But no. I’m not happy. Not relieved. Not filled with joy. I’m surprised God even wants to share my peanut butter milk dark stout. But here she is, swirling the frothy brown around like a connoisseur.

“Sweet and musty,” she says, with an exaggerated French accent. “With une légère saveur de dirt.”

“Stop it,” I say. “You’re not funny. I’m in a very bad mood.”

“Really?” God asks. “Who would’ve guessed?”

I ignore the sarcasm. “The thing is, God, I’m not sure what I want anymore. I thought it was a blue couch and a book club. Silk pajamas. Clarity about what to give away and how to die. But the days roll on … tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace…”

“And here you are, strutting and fretting your hour on stage,” God interrupts, picking up on that profound riff Shakespeare wrote for his character, Macbeth, four centuries ago.

“Not strutting,” I protest. “But yeah, maybe fretting.”

God grins. “My favorite definition of fretting is to gnaw with teeth in the manner of a rodent.”

I don’t want to smile, but who can resist that image? God and I clink our glasses together and she says, “When you die, you’re gone. But what you did with your life stays. It’s fine if you leave some teeth marks here and there. I leave some myself occasionally.”

“I know,” I say. “I’ve got the bite marks to prove it.”

“Oh, those aren’t mine,” God says. “Look closer.”

Dental patterns are unique. I know very little about God’s dental features, but I’m familiar with my own. I examine my scars. It appears I’ve been gnawing on myself for years. I run to check nearby loved ones, and yes, I’ve gnawed on them, too. God reveals her tender underarm. Unbelievable. I’ve even gnawed on God.

“Sorry,” I mumble. “That’s not the legacy I was hoping for.” I grab some healing balm and rub it on God’s flesh. The bite marks fade. “I’m so sorry,” I repeat. I offer God my first born, my pajamas, my credit cards, and the book club. God laughs, helps me rub some balm into my own bite marks, and shakes her head.

“None of your stuff fits me,” she says. “But you’re on the right track. Carry on.”

For Paula

Rita Sommers-Flanagan18 Comments

This morning I awoke in the land of the living but someone I loved for decades did not. Her long life ended peacefully last night, and the world is emptier this morning. God wants me to edit that last line because it isn’t quite accurate from God’s perspective, but I’m not going to. From my perspective, one of the gentlest, most generous people I’ve ever known is gone, and the world is emptier. From God’s perspective, all things transform. Time is an elastic metaphor God uses to teach us about love. I don’t like today’s lesson. Love is costly and painful for linear beings.

The last time I saw her, with some hesitation, she let me hold her hand, birdlike bones covered in bruised, paper-thin skin. She recognized the warmth of my hand. That’s all. Most of her had already melted away. During that visit, God spent his time in the kitchen making chocolate cake. She and her roommates, the vacant people in their vacant chairs, still relished a bite of warm cake with a touch of ice cream.

But there comes a time when there is nothing left to relish. The curled body tightens into a perfect circle, and it is done. Finished. A life has been accomplished. The final grades are in. The eternal vacation of liquid soul has begun. But God objects again. He claims there is no beginning. No end. Only flow. And again, I refuse to edit. And I cry. And God cries.

This is the thing I like about God. He willingly gets linear and crawls right into the pain. He sobs, surrounds, and sits with me. He reminds me how many ways there are to die, and we marvel together that I have this day. This moment. That’s all.

The Mystery fractures into light. Photosynthesis begins. The Bread of Life is chocolate cake. The Living Waters of her endless kindness flow to the sea, and there the kindness shall flow again. There we shall all flow again. She loved walking on the beach, collecting sand dollars, remembering the clam digs. I wish we’d walked there more, but I’m grateful for the times we did. I see her knobby feet in the sand, her old-lady pants rolled to the knee, her face turned to the endless horizon. “Safe travels,” I whisper as the Mystery takes her away. I’m pretty sure I saw her wave.

Legacy

Rita Sommers-Flanagan20 Comments

Reportedly one symptom of Covid 19 is the loss of taste, which in rare cases could be a blessing. The worst thing I’ve ever tasted was a stink bug hidden in a bowl of fresh raspberries. Stink bugs emit a foul odor when disturbed, but they taste far more foul when bitten.

I doubt God has ever bitten a stink bug. I imagine the worst thing God has ever tasted is hatred. Even a little bit of hatred can ruin the whole savory stew of a creation born of love. I spat that stink bug out, brushed my teeth, and gargled, but the taste lingered. I shudder to think what we’re doing to God right now. But maybe it’s God’s own fault. The stink bug was entirely accidental. We’re not. There’s nothing accidental about us.

Some of you may wonder about the motivation, sanity, and content of this blog…as have I. Right now, you are reading my 200th post. Just over five years ago, I had a chance encounter with cancer. Facing imminent mortality yanked my consciousness around. Disbelief and indignation got all tangled up with gratitude, terror, and determination. My connections to the Great Beyond, the God of Bigness, Littleness, Cosmos, Critters, Creative Urgency, and Salvation expanded like stretchy strands of spider web, tenacious as dry rot eating through brick; God, the ever-branching tentacles; me, the crumbling brick.

I’ve gotten to know my bothersome Co-Author fairly well because I live by a river, and it’s quiet sometimes–quiet enough to hear the continual cracking of God’s fractured heart and green enough to witness the courageous mending wrought by the small yellow flowers as they befriend their fate.

Every day, I try to follow suit and befriend my fate. Bark peels off the fallen tree into my hands, and even this has become more beautiful than I can bear. I lay the best pieces on the water and send them downstream to people I do not know and cannot name; gay, black, beaten, homeless…the hungry and the dead.

No one comes back to tell us anything about legacies or regrets, but I am convinced everything matters a little. Like attending. Showing up. But to really show up, to take it all in, I have to pry myself open to touch and see, listen…and yes, to smell and taste. Even after the stink bug incident, some days I bravely sniff the breeze and roll the taste of God around in my mouth. No matter how fresh or putrid, bitter or sweet, I try to savor. Some days, God bravely does the same with me.

I wish each ferocious moment of connection would be enough, but that’s not how it works. Thus, I ponder and write. Thank you for reading these blogs and for prying yourselves as open as you dare. Openings create legacies, fleeting and fine-boned, as all legacies should be. For that, I am grateful.

Your Brewing Legacy

Rita Sommers-Flanagan4 Comments

IMG_7296 (2)

From the label on my beer bottle comes this declaration: Intense characterful and bold, Guinness extra stout is the pure expression of our brewing legacy…this stout is a testament…I’m sitting with a Fragment of God (all I can handle with the morning news blathering in the background). I look at The Fragment and say, “And you, Holy Fragment? What’s the intense characterful pure expression of your brewing legacy?”

An eyebrow brow goes up, a half-smile forms.

“My brewing legacy? Stray dogs. Old friends. Branches awaiting spring, moving gracefully in my breath. Rich soil, oozing with transformation, black crows telling each other jokes. Snow, sky, birth, death, salt water, rain water, living water, drinking water, drowning water. The night of sleep you just had, the day you have before you. Thoughts and bodies, fears and fantasies, sex and sadness, solemn vows and frivolous skirts that sway and lift in the updraft of soft round hips. Sweat. Bones. Fools. Frogs. Paths to nowhere. Emus, armadillos, chowder, candlelight. Truth. Humility. Laughter.”

The Fragment is pleased with itself. “More?” it asks.

I lay my head down on the ugly dining table I recently bought. The edges are sharp, and it wobbles. It needs a lot of work. I no longer know if it’s worth the effort. This is my intense characterful pure expression of my brewing legacy: I cannot discern between that which should be rescued and reintegrated, that which has useful component parts, and that which should be allowed the dignity of disintegration. Too many things come home with me. And we sit together awaiting insight. Awaiting magic. Awaiting wisdom or the right shade of green.

Yesterday, I met a woman in an abandoned parking lot and bought her used brown curtains. They have little beads across the top. She had bright eyes, creamy skin, and an easy spirit. I am glad to remember her and have these curtains hanging where I can see them. They don’t match anything perfectly, but then what does? There’s something suspect about a perfect match.

The Fragment nods. “Like us,” it said. “We aren’t a perfect match.” It has assembled itself into a full, creative expression of life and has forgiven me again. I didn’t even ask.