what are you grateful for today?

Today is a Zoom/Skype kind of day: local poet friends, Brooklyn family, L'Arche Ottawa. I am grateful for this new technology - and am making use of it as much as I can handle. I still need a great deal of silence and solitude each day, too. And while this is not true for many, it is clearly my "default" setting. Two poems really grabbed me this week: "It is Dark" by Christine Valters-Painter and "Hared Facts" by Hayden Saunier.

Do not rush to make meaning.
When you smile and say what purpose this all serves,
you deny grief a room inside you,
you turn from thousands who cross into the Great Night alone,
from mourners aching to press one last time against the warm flesh of their beloved,
from the wailing that echoes in the empty room.

When you cry out who caused this, I say pause, 
rest in the dark silence first
before you contort your words to fill the hollowed out cave,
remember the soil will one day receive you back too.
So sit where sense has vanished… and every drink tastes bitter despite our thirst.

When you wish to give a name to that which haunts us,
you refuse to sit with the woman who walks the hospital hallway,

Hears the beeping stop again and again,
with the man perched on a bridge over the rushing river.
Do not let your handful of light sting the eyes of those
who have bathed in darkness.

The rush to get back to "normal" is fools play: there IS no more normal and what will emerge on the other side of the plague will require discernment, heart and a willingness to resist the old guard in ways yet to be imagined. But it will come. Just last month many of us were saying that universal health care and a guaranteed wage were just fringe, leftist pipe dreams - and now they are an essential part of the air we breathe. Governors and mayors have stepped into the void of national leadership and are showing us what competency and compassion in action look like. And General Electric rank and file members are demanding that the company start producing ventilators. When the shift comes, it arrives like a thief in the night - and there is much, much more to come - so hold on and go deep.

The other poem, "Hard Facts," reinforces the fluidity of so much we once took for granted. Today, all bets are off, and while that can be alarming, it is also liberating.

Most everything we're taught
is wrong.

Especially fixed rules
about small engine

repair in adverse
marine conditions,

walking on ice,
and anything

to do with people.
Especially our own

strange selves.
And so the door

to the ordinary miracle
swings open.

Watching, listening, laughing and loving with my grandchildren this afternoon on Skype was holy ground. They who are miles and miles away - safe and warm in their Brooklyn brownstone with their wise and patient momma and poppa - will make pizza with poppa and watch Disney movies together. Life is moving faster than ever so I want to savor it and rejoice in its blessings. What are you grateful for today?