Special Post #2

Text: Mary Oliver’s Six Recognitions of the Lord: Stanza 5

“Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with

the fragrance of the fields and the

freshness of the oceans which you have

made, and help me to hear and to hold

in all-dearness those exacting and wonderful

words of our Lord Christ Jesus, saying:

Follow me.”

I speak to the Lord as if He were next to me sometimes and sometimes think it might feel weird at first; I know that He is there right next to me. He is not distant as some believe; He sees my every move and He knows my every thought. He sent His Holy Spirit to me when He left this earth and promises to come back and get me. I can’t wait for that day, it’s going to be so sweet when my Savior comes back to get me, what a wonderful thought. But until that day the Holy Spirit is here to comfort me and part of Mary Oliver’s text is a prayer to our comforter and our Lord. God fills us up in many different ways but through the expression of Him through creation Mary Oliver captures a glimpse of what that filling up of our soul looks like and feels like.

“Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with the fragrance of the fields and the freshness of the oceans which you have made...”

Oliver speaks about God and the relationship with Him so eloquently and paints a picture of us being filled up with His presence through the sightings of His creation. Look at the fields how they grow in glory of God providing water and nutrition for them to grow; they are worshiping His name as they grow. Look at the ocean as the waves move in praise to Him and how the ocean obeys Him when He speaks. Through these examples we see how creation praises God’s name, He is their creator and they all give Him glory because He is worthy of it all. In this section of the poem the author is asking the Lord to fill her up in more ways than one. She wants to “Hear and to hold in all dearness” the words of the Lord speaking to hear which I can identify so much with.

“…wonderful words of our Lord Christ Jesus, saying: Follow me.”

Jesus calls us to follow Him many times in the bible (especially in the books of the gospel where he talks about picking up our crosses and following Him) and through this He will fill us up like Oliver talks about in her poem.

When you first read this text you get the meaning of it and you can identify with it in a genuine way but then you go back and read it again and it means so much more. Oliver is asking the Holy Spirit to fill her up and she wants to follow God like He asks us too. When you read it again you can begin to envision the fields as they sway in the wind and you smell that wonderful fragrance of the Lord as He places His hand on the crop to make it grow. You read the line about the freshness of the oceans and you can see the oceans through your eyes and feel the waves bringing peace to your soul as you sit and watch them wash up on the shore. And then Oliver asks the Lord to help her hear and hold the words of Christ close because she doesn’t want to forget them. It is so easy for us to forget but she doesn’t want to ever forget the sweet words of our Lord which beckon us to follow Him. Once you read over this a couple times you see how she wants to keep that open connection between her and God and never lose it.

This text to me really reminds me of my relationship with God. Lately God has been redefining our relationship and making me fall madly and deeply in love with Him once again because sometimes I can get away from my first love, which is Him. God truly does capture my gaze when I realize how amazing He is and how much He loves me. Oliver’s whole poem ‘Six Recognitions of the Lord’ really spoke to me because it’s the words that I often try to find to describe the relationship between the Lord and I but sometimes I just can’t put it into words. The stanza that I chose really stuck out to me because it’s almost like a prayer that I always ask God for myself. I always am asking God to pour out His spirit on my life and over fill my cup so that I am totally content with Him and what He has for me. I want to have eyes that are always focused on Him above me and I want to be involved with Him every moment that I live. 2 Peter 1: 3-4 talks about God providing everything that I need forever and I love the fact that when I trust in Him and rely in Him for everything I know that He will never fail me.

Mary Oliver’s words spoke loudly to me and the more that I read them the louder they became. Even her other poems that we read in class spoke to me as well. The way she paints pictures with words is like nothing I’ve ever read. Her poems compliment the Bible so well when you think about it. She is speaking of what the scriptures are speaking of but they are in her own words. Actually in the beginning she confesses that she has a lot of fancy words but she doesn’t want those, she wants just her words to God and no fluff to go with them. I by no means am a poet but this is what I want when I speak to my savior. I want my words to be genuine as this poem sounds and I want God to hear nothing but my words, just my own words that are not fancy words but what I truly feel in my heart towards Him.

Pass

I am using my second pass for this post.

The Boys Next Door

Mr. Klemper: No, no I'm sorry. I. . . lost control. Jesus, Barry, I didn't mean to . . . Im sorry, I . . .
Barry: (Whimpering.) No, Dad. Please Dad. Don't hit me. . . Please. . .
Mr. Klepmer: (Paralyzed.) It was. . . It was an accident, Barry. I didn't mean to. I just. . . you know. . . lost control. I'm sorry. Jesus. . .

This scene wrecked my world as I read it. I am a psychology major so reading this play I see the dysfunction in each of the boy's lives and I see their psychological problems and how it affects their world. I have interacted with parents that had children with disabilities like this and they are exhausted a lot of the times because of how much work it really is to care for a child that has disabilities like these boys have. There are many statistics that talk about how parents get frustrated, not with their children, but more so the situation of having a child with a mental handicap. There are support groups that have been started to help parents get through these times when they feel helpless to their children and like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I can only imagine how a parent feels when they discover that their baby is going to be mentally handicap and what it's going to take to raise that child. There have been many situations, basically all of them, where the parents fear what will happen with their child after they, themselves, pass. Who will take care of them? Will they adjust to me being gone? Will they even understand it?! It's scary being a parent of a child like this.

In high school I was in a program where I had a buddy that I hung out with and just invested time into to brighten their world a little. The little boy I got paired up with was named Jarrett and he had just turned eight years old. He had cerebral palsy and was in a wheel chair. His eyes could not fully read a page because one eye would read half the book and the other would wonder the rest of the book. He was at about a second or third grade level where he was actually supposed to be in fourth grade. He didn't talk that well but at the same time he had a vibrant personality. His mother told me that even despite his physical handicaps and his mental handicaps he was sharp in other areas. If she took him shopping and she read her list to him in the beginning, he would remember everything that she needed. At the end she would make sure they got everything and if they forgot anything Jarrett knew exactly what they forgot. But at the same time as I listened to her tell me the story of how they got to this place, my heart ached for her because they had been through so much. She had to give him all his baths and feed him all his meals. And you could hear the fear for the future underneath it all. This must have been how Barry's dad felt. He feared the future and possibly he felt as though he had failed his son. This may have been where his anger was coming from and he was just placing it in the wrong place. Its heart wrenching to hear stories like this but it is the reality of having a mentally handicap person in your family. They teach you a lot about life but there are so many other worries as well...

Polk Art Museum

I went to the Polk Museum of Art for this assignment, and I stayed there for at least 40 minutes. I actually stayed there longer and if I had had time I would have liked to stay even longer than I did. I had forgotten how much I actually do love museums and going and getting lost in the midst of the history, art, or whatever it is. I live about an hour away from Washington D.C. where there are museums that you could visit for a month and still feel like you missed something so I’ve acquired a liking for museums. Though I didn’t realize how valuable going to a museum and partaking in all of it actually is. As I was walking around the museum I just kept thinking to myself, here I am in the midst of all this history and art that I didn’t even really know existed right around the corner from my school. It’s culture that we can be exposed to but yet we don’t take the chance to look it up or take the time to go visit it and get lost in all of it for an afternoon. I love looking at art and having it provoke emotion in me as I look at it and dissect what it is and what it represents. This happened to me many times today and I was filled with many different emotions. I was happy looking at some pictures, sad looking at others, and wondrous looking at others. There was one from the student gallery that stuck out to me and it was the I will make you hurt piece of art by Maranda Roudabush. She had taken a face of metal and sown a piece of the face back to the rest of the face with metal wiring, it had nails in it, and just looked mangled. As I looked at it closer there was writing on half of the face talking about feeling the pain of their flesh tearing apart and it was just heart wrenching to read. I wondered about the artist that did this and if she ever really felt this pain and if she did I wanted to sit and listen to her story. I want to understand her pain and from looking at her art work that’s what it did a little for me. This is what I love about going to art museums, you almost step into the artists world by standing in silence and figuring out their art work. My favorite though, had to be the hall upstairs of the “A camera’s – eye view: Our Material World: A Global Family Portrait.” This hall put things into perspective more than I’ve ever had them put into perspective for me. It told stories of families around the world and their living conditions, their family interactions, their hopes for the future, and what they valued most. I’ve never had so much culture contained in one small space like that and it evoked so much emotion in me. It evoked motion to be both thankful for what I have; and emotion to move and do something. Give away what I have and bless others by meeting their needs… so much emotion in just one small hall way, so much as to change a life almost.

They look into my eyes an

d yet I can say nothing bac

k to them..

I have no words to offer…

I wish I could give them ha

lf of what I have but I know

that’s not all that they nee

d, they need more than what

I can give them. Maybe I co

uld give to someone who is

over there helping them al

ready? But who is over there

?

Maybe I am to go,

Maybe I’m the one to help,

Maybe I’m the change that

has to evoke it in others.

But where do I start??

By just looking at the

pictures I see what they

need, but I won’t ev

er fully know what th

ey need unless I meet

them face to face. Hear

their voices speak the

reality of their world.

Their life is so differ

ent from mine but

as I see them I fee

l like I can hear the

ir cries through the

pictures.. if only I c

ould move out of

this state of shock to

help where I could,

maybe then this hall

wouldn’t be so shock

ing…

Reading for Transformation

Reading has been sort of a struggle for me in all my years of schooling. I used to say that I would only read a book if it was really interesting because I thought that if it held my interest then it was worth my time. Since then I’ve been going through high school and college where reading is mandatory, if you don’t read then you miss out on the knowledge that you are accountable for learning. I’ve had to teach myself to read with enthusiasm and to read with the intentions of finding a purpose for reading the text. What can I get out of this text that I can apply to my life and use in some other ways than just the reason that I am reading it in this moment? Every time I read a different text I ask myself this question and focus on what I’m trying to get out of the text. This is what the article was talking about also. McAloon talked about using the technique of lectio divina like we were taught in class to exam different text that he read; even the text that he didn’t really get anything out of. There was an author that he really didn’t have much likeness for but through this process of reading and meditating on the words of the author he came to respect the author’s words and even referenced them in his essay that we read tonight.

In the essay McAloon quoted Schneiders saying, “a literary work clears a space, creates a world, into which the reader is invited.” I agree so much with this statement and I love how it puts everything into perspective with how literary work impacts the world. It does create a world in which the reader is invited in, no matter what the genre is or anything. Little kids books invite them in to discover and stretch their imagination. History books take us back in time. Every book has its invite into another creative world and it’s what brought books to life for me. The more inviting books were and the more open I was to the books themselves, the more I began to read. It’s been a lot of growing into reading more and more but I love reading now and wish I had more time to read actually!

Darkness, Questions, Poverty, and Spiritual Hope

Reading this essay was thought provoking for me. We are told in church a lot to keep our attitudes positive and to look up scripture that helps us remember God’s promises. In our walk with Christ though, we all know that there will be hard times. I think that there are many churches that are teaching the prosperity message weekly to get people to come to the church. They don’t talk about how as Christians we will be tested and ridiculed just as Jesus was. Sometimes its harder to be a Christian in the world we live in. I think I had myself fooled at the beginning of it all because I thought that everything was going to be flowers and daisy’s but darkness is something real in our lives. It is something we don’t like to always acknowledge but it’s a real part of life we must tend to.

Speaking on death in the family, my aunt was talking to me about that this week. She was born before the other children in my dad’s family but her mom put her up for adoption and she didn’t find our family till about three years ago. She was down visiting and I took her out for coffee and she began to discuss my grandmother and told me I needed to tell her some stories because unfortunately my grandmother died before my aunt got to meet her. So I began to remember the times with my grandmother that I could remember and began to tell her what my grandmother was like. But amongst all the light that my grandmother brought to my life, her death brought a lot of darkness to my world. She died when I was in seventh grade and I will never forget that day because I felt as though my world had come crashing down because she was such a big part of my world. This was a moment that I truly felt darkness in my world and I began to search for God to help me understand. I can really relate to what the essay is talking about because through this despair in my life, I began to find hope that I would see her in heaven one day.

Our lives will forever be without darkness at some point. We all will have times when darkness is a part of our lives but we all know the spiritual hope that God provides in times of need. I learn from every experience that I have with darkness, to abide more in Him so that when these times do come I can find that hope quicker each time.