the light does come . . .

the light does come. this is a reminder. this is a note to tuck away for the days when the shadows occlude the sun.

we all live among darkness sometimes. sometimes for spells that stretch on for so long we’re sure we’ll run out of oxygen. but we muscle on anyways. because what other choice do we have? even in the darkest times, there are tiny shards that fall on our path. the kindness of someone we didn’t realize was paying attention. the encounter that puffs just enough hope back into our hearts. the wholly unexpected solace of finding ourselves shoulder to shoulder with someone who knows something about the steepness of the incline we’re climbing.

we all find ourselves in chapters so impossibly hard we’ve no choice but to tap into playbooks we’ve not yet scanned. we revert to those fine few things that just might steady us: we remember to breathe; we stand under the sunshine just long enough to plump a few shrunken cells; we giggle aloud at the ridiculous humor that never fails to creep its way in. even in ICUs. and funeral homes.

truth is: ours is a choreography of shadow and peekaboo sunlight. we bank on it. wars end. babies are born. laughter comes. so does the dawn. even the night is speckled with stars.

i’m here to say that after an almost unbearable few weeks, weeks that had me teetering, all but certain this might be the time my heart called it quits, the load is lighter again. my mama is chipper. my mama is finding her way, carving her path, skittering hither and yon, all on her new red convertible. (the name we’ve given her little red rollator, the latest iteration of spiffy walker, with wheels and brakes and a little compartment for stashing your assorted sundries.)

we’ve pulled through. none of us too worse for the wear.

my mama’s return to her lifelong indomitable state of being happens to coincide with the end of my jam-packed calendar of book talks. and after a summer of searching for answers to questions of cancer, i finally found someone who knows my cancer inside and out. and who laid out a scenario i can live with.

feels to me like someone’s rung the school’s-out-for-summer bell, and i might wiggle a jig all the way home.

because this week held one of my favorite feast day — all saints — and because i love looking for saints in places where no one might think to look, i found myself swooned by this blessed sonnet, “a last beatitude,” from malcolm guite, an anglican priest and poet who’s been said to resemble a hobbit, what with his predilection for waistcoats and long-necked pipes (from which he blows smoke rings), and whose tonsorial tastes tend toward the bushiest of beards, and long locks to go with it.

herewith, “a last beatitude” by malcolm guite . . .

And blessèd are the ones we overlook;

The faithful servers on the coffee rota,

The ones who hold no candle, bell or book

But keep the books and tally up the quota,

The gentle souls who come to 'do the flowers',

The quiet ones who organise the fete,

Church sitters who give up their weekday hours,

Doorkeepers who may open heaven’s gate.

God knows the depths that often go unspoken

Amongst the shy, the quiet, and the kind,

Or the slow healing of a heart long broken

Placing each flower so for a year’s mind.

Invisible on earth, without a voice,

In heaven their angels glory and rejoice.

and one last bit of poetry, as autumn, the season of awe is upon us, these lines from rilke’s poem “Onto a Vast Plain”: 

Summer was like your house: you know
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.

and, lastly, before i skitter off, this line from the thirteenth-century mystic and monastic mechtild of magdeburg:

When simplicity of heart dwells in the wisdom of the mind, 

Much holiness results in a person’s soul.

what, pray tell, carries you through your darkest hours?