A Poem: “Creation”

This morning I woke up at Ferncliff, a beautiful gathering space just west of Little Rock, Arkansas.  In a few hours, retreat participants will arrive and we will spend a weekend together, exploring where we are from, where we are now, where we would like to go, and how best to get there. And, of course, building community.

One of the good things about leading retreats is that I have to hear again these things I’m challenging others to wrestle with, including the idea that ‘we are the ones we have been waiting for,’ as someone wiser than me once said.

I was searching for the right poem to begin our time together, then it occurred to me that I knew what kind of poem I was looking for and what I wanted it to say. Funny that I spent more time after that still looking for such a poem rather than just writing it down. Finally the light cartoon bulb clicked on above my head, though, and I realized that this poem might be mine to write.

So here is that poem, in all of its raw, unedited, be-careful-with-the-baby’s-head newness…

 

Creation

Don’t speak to me of creation as though it is something that happened long ago.
It is happening now.

That blade of grass that I bent and crushed with the sole of my shoe
(not even noticing the damage I did in my elsewhere-thinking absent plodding)?
It is changed now.
Not just a blade, but a broken blade.
A new thing.

And two weeks ago?
It was dirt, and rain cloud, and sunlight
yet to arrive from across the vast distance of space.

Now it is a blade of grass.
A broken blade.
Struggling to heal.
A new thing.

This morning, I saw an decades-old picture of a baby
Wrapped tightly in a blanket
Just home from a hospital.
The blanket had blue stripes and pink stripes,
and a rough softness, gripping tightly to itself
I held a blanket like that one
Only a few years ago.
Wrapped tightly around
A new thing.

This space between us, this relationship.
It shifts and changes in a moment
With a glance.
A pause.
A word.
A new thing.

And only recently, we did not know each other at all.
Now this relationship.
This fragile knowing and belonging.
Struggling to heal.
A new thing.

Who is to say that this moment is not a part of creation?
Or this one?
Or the one about to arrive, across the vast distance of time?

The matter, and the mattering; both are up to us.

What shall we create?

 

 

There are more retreats on the horizon. If you would like to join me and Gareth Higgins for eight days in Ireland in May, there is still room, or if you would like to come to Montreat, in the mountains of North Carolina, in August, we are just beginning registration for that one. Here is more information. If you would like to join us, you will be warmly welcomed.

David