the heaped ashes of the night turned into leaves again

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I love mornings in this house.

And these words: "This also is Thou; neither is this Thou." (St. Ephrem)

And this: "How can I live now with my heart open to the things that memory will call lovely?"

[in my kitchen, these days of living alone]
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we are always in medias res

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From Karl Rahner: "Flesh means that person who is on the one hand the frailty, the threatenedness, the inexplicableness, the weakness, the obscurity of this individual, concrete, specific entity, and who at the same time knows this and is afraid.”

Also, this lecture from Professor Samuelson, which I return to again and again. Especially, this: the difference between seeking transformation and seeking escape. And this question: what is your feast?

And these poems.

[photograph from the Basilica of Saint Francis, Assisi, Italy]

for grace

A few things, recently:

Jessica Ingram's Road Through Midnight: A Civil Rights Memorial at CDS. Such a beautiful, haunting exhibit. I still cannot believe I get to work at this place that I love so much.

Elephant Micah + Joan Shelley at Dear Hearts a few weeks back.

Today I tasted a sweetness long forgotten, something I have not known since those days of fierce independence, when I was in step with my own longings, attentive to the world, patient with myself. It is what I have been praying for, wanting back, feeling as if I had perhaps lost forever amidst these months and years of saying for grace, for grace, for grace.

And these words, from that summer of forgetting long ago:

Walk

Some things are solved by walking
in the night alone, striped by light

in the corridors of unknowing, you walk
down the street, past the rosemary hedge,

the wet hydrangeas that eat your shadow,
your shadow like a cookie that the sun

cut out of you—sun-stalker, you say
to the blue mouths: but then there is

the ping-pong moon, the warts of the
weeping willow, the uprooted crack

waiting to fault you for lack of confidence:

this is the world of Walla Walla,
of couching black blistered beetles—

don’t even try to run,
the only way is to walk.

[honeywell pentax, 35mm film, balancing rock, nc; words from seattle]

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pace e bene

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"Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places." 

(Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities)

Some photographs from that first day to myself in Rome: the Pantheon, Giolliti, Piazza Navona, wine and bruschetta in Campo Dei Fiori, San Luigi dei Francesi (Caravaggio's The Calling of Saint Matthew), Sant'Agostino (Caravaggio's Madonna di Loreto), sitting on the steps of the Capitoline Museum, etc. Those first few impressions from wandering into a new city are always somehow unique and wonderful.

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we think of you when we look at him

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Around Italy recently: the streets of Orvieto, San Damiano (the convent of the Poor Clares), the Duomo in Orvieto, the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi (where Giotto's frescoes of the Life of St. Francis are located, as well as St. Francis' grave), Eremo delle Carceri (Saint Francis' hermitage), and Monte Subasio (the slope where Francis first retreated).

"Be praised, my Lord, for all your creation
and especially for our Brother Sun,
who brings us the day and the light;
he is strong and shines magnificently.
O Lord, we think of you when we look at him.

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon 

and the stars; in the heavens.

You have made them 

bright, precious and beautiful.

Be praised, my Lord,
for our Brothers Wind and Air
and every kind of weather
by which you, Lord,
uphold life in all your creatures."

(St. Francis, The Canticle of Creation)

not to grasp

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This is the convent in Orvieto that I have the privilege of staying in this month. It seems like a dream living in such a beautiful space and walking past this little guy every day, and all I can think to say is that I am grateful.

A few other things:

Agnes Martin at the Tate.

Italy has changed my perspective on eggplant. Sliced thinly, grilled, and topped with balsamic, fresh mozzarella, and basil—few things are better.

Also, these words from Father Martin, which I scribbled down awhile back, and which are necessary words today as I meet with certain disappointments:

"We are not to grasp at that which we desire, rather to extend open hands, the palms turned upwards in prayer."
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why we must struggle

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"If we have not struggled
as hard as we can
at our strongest
how will we sense
the shape of our losses
or know what sustains
us longest or name
what change costs us,
saying how strange
it is that one sector
of the self can step in
for another in trouble,
how loss activates
a latent double how
we can feed
as upon nectar,
upon need?"

(Kay Ryan, Say Uncle: Poems)

Found this poem torn from a book and taped on a retro orange fridge the other day, and have been thinking about it ever since. This, especially: to name what change costs us. 

Also: missing my old room back in Durham, and looking forward to creating new spaces there soon.

[honeywell pentax, 35mm]

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