enough (again)

Enough!
I can no longer watch the news.
Reporting catastrophe
And catastrophe to come.

My heart is worn out
With borrowed distress
And requisite panic
And inevitable dissolution

And the ones who claim to save me
Only send me further into the abyss
Feeding me fear and guilt
And hopelessness

The monster has come out of the closet
And seated itself beside me on the sofa
It is picking its teeth,
Having fed itself upon my soul

The powers that be
Seem all too powerful ...
But are they?
The whisper of that very question
Brings a breath of hope.

When I think that I must save it all –
Democracy, my nation, my community
And, of course, my privileged place within it
My arms are much too small.

But when I remember
That my friends are here beside me, still
Their presence holds my heart
And their eyes speak tender affection.

They remind me that the furor around me
Cannot steal my capacity
To share beauty and laughter and love
Or even to share comfort and grief

And it is
Enough.

Image by Jeremy Brooks retrieved from Flickr per cc 2.0

To fix … or to bless

morning 2.jpg

Too often I start my day
With a list of things to do …
Or to do better.

I wake to ‘the first day
Of the rest of my life,’
And immediately try to remake it
In the shadow of yesterday’s errors.

I thrum my soul
With guilt or regret
For what was done poorly
Or not done at all.

I look to the future
But the windows are coated
With a film
Of leftover shoulds.

Guilt, you know,
Is really a poor motivator,
Though it is often the whip
Of first resort.

What if,
Instead of trying to fix,
I could learn to bless?

What if I could learn
To focus on the beauty,
Rather than the flaws?

What if I could wake
With a heart that is grateful
And hopeful
And full of blessing?

Now, there’s an idea.
Maybe I should fix that flaw …
Maybe I should add ‘gratitude’
To my list of things to do better.

AAAUGH! Another should!
But it makes me chuckle
And that might just be enough
To break the spell.

Satan is the Hebrew word
For ‘the accuser.’
True for me.

Today, at least,
I leave his curse behind.
And enter this day
With the blessing of beauty.

And I am grateful.

morning.jpg

[photo is by James Walsh per cc 2.0]

On Giving up Guilt for Lent

hands clasped in prayerTwo weeks into Lent and I’m still wondering what to give up.
I’m feeling kind of bad about that.
Maybe, I should just give up guilt for Lent.

Not, of course, that I’ve never done wrong.
Not even that I’m free of wrong right now.
But that the focus on what is wrong with me
Is a bottomless bog. Continue reading