Another Favorite Poem

Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant

by Billy Collins

 

I am glad I resisted the temptation,

if it was a temptation

when I was young,

to write a poem about an old man

eating alone at a corner table in a Chinese restaurant.

I would have gotten it all wrong

thinking: the poor bastard, not a friend in the world

and with only a book for a companion.

He’ll probably pay the bill out of a change purse.

So glad I waited all these decades

to record how hot and sour the hot and sour

soup is here at Chang’s this afternoon


and how cold the Chinese beer in a frosted glass.

And my book — José Saramago’s Blindness

as it turns out — is so absorbing that I look up

from its escalating horrors only

when I am stunned by one of his gleaming sentences.

And I should mention the light

that falls through the big windows this time of day

italicizing everything it touches—

the plates and teapots, the immaculate tablecloths,

as well as the soft brown hair of the waitress

in the white blouse and short black skirt,

the one who is smiling now as she bears a cup of rice

and shredded beef with garlic

to my favorite table in the corner.

Judge Not

I didn’t see him when he got on the plane but I smelled him — that rank, decidedly unpleasant smell of the unwashed. Once the doors were closed and the air conditioning kicked in, the smell pervaded the cabin like an almost-visible miasma. He sat 2 or 3 rows up, so I couldn’t see him, but from his conversation with his seatmate he sounded nice, well educated — so why couldn’t he have bathed and spared us all? For most of the hour, I tried not to breathe, every breath an unpleasant reminder of the one person on board who had no concern for the rest of us, sharing close quarters as we were. As we neared Norfolk, I heard him say, “I’m sorry I smell so bad. If I can smell myself, I know it’s awful. But I’ve been travelling 36 hours now, on my way home from Afghanistan.”

Hope

A friend recently sustained a significant injury to her leg and is now experiencing all that goes with being less than “hale and hearty.” She now finds herself essentially confined to home, unable to drive, unable to do many of the chores of daily living without help, unable to go where she wants when she wants; in short, her life has been decidedly altered. With rehab, she is getting stronger but has been told that it will be a year before she is back to her previous status. She finds it frustrating, aggravating, and discouraging, as we all would. But for her, there is light at the end of the tunnel. She can see herself making progress, if not as quickly as she would like. She knows that life will slowly return to normal, that she will be able to get back to doing what she loves. God willing. More and more, I am tempted to add “God willing” to every expression because none of us really knows from day to day what will happen. But that’s an aside. What it prompts is thoughts of my nursing home residents, of the fact that for most of them, there won’t be improvement, there won’t be getting back to what they love, there won’t be gradually more and more independence, but gradually less and less. They are already confined, not to a house but to a small shared room. They have already had to give up most of their possessions, their community, and the daily chores that offer a sense of purpose. And I wonder: how do we hang on to hope when it seems there is none, at least none that looks like the hope we want? It isn’t a question any of us want to face but it is perhaps the existential question. Because we are so often seduced into thinking that our value rests in what we accomplish or what we achieve, when Jesus was clear: “Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!” (Luke 24:24) It is a challenge. There don’t seem to be any easy answers. Yet this morning I woke up with a hymn running through my head: “All my hope on God is founded…” Do you suppose it was the voice of God singing the answer?

Of Hands and Hearts

Watching a football game the other day (not really watching but doing needlework while my husband watched) I was struck by behavior of people during the National Anthem. Some were looking around as though they were just waiting for it to be over. Some sang along, some had tears in their eyes, and as many put a hand over the heart as it was played. And I got to thinking about how what we do with our bodies reflects how we feel in our souls. And more than that, how what we do with our bodies affects how we feel in our souls. Being incarnate has its consequences.

Because we do much the same thing in church, adopting different postures at different points in the service, standing to sing, standing or kneeling to pray, kneeling to confess. We fold our hands for prayer and hold our hands out to receive communion. We hold the Gospel book high, so all can see it, announcing in the gesture good news brought to the poor. We have all sorts of gestures but many have become routine, so that we fail to notice what it is we are doing and why, and why that is important.

And I wondered, why don’t we put our hand over our heart at the recitation of the Creed? Because the truth is, we are embodied creatures. We are, as has been said, “spiritual beings having a human experience.” And that human experience means we encounter the world, each other, and God in very physical ways and we respond in very physical ways. So perhaps the challenge for us this week is to notice what it is that we are doing in our bodies. Does what we do reflect how we feel? And what might we do physically, to bring body and soul together, to make our living an authentic reflection of who we are? Perhaps we might start with a hand over our heart.

Paying Attention

A friend posted a question on Facebook the other day that certainly brought me up short, and so I pass it on to you: “What if, when you woke up this morning, the only things you had were the things that you thanked God for yesterday?” I figure I’d be out in the cold with my husband and the residents and staff of the nursing home!

 

And so I began to wonder what it is that keeps us from being consciously grateful. To be realistic, we can only pay attention to so many things at one time in order to get anything done, but why isn’t our focus on gratitude? Not that inane “attitude of gratitude” idea but a deliberate noticing of all we are blessed with.

 

I remember reading about the Lost Boys of Sudan and how when they were in the refugee camps, they received only one meal a day. But then, when they came to this country and several of them shared an apartment, they pooled their resources for food and continued to eat just one meal a day, all together around the table. One meal a day to remind them of where they had been and how far they had come, together. One meal a day, to remind them that shared blessings are multiplied blessings. One meal a day to remind them of all the people who haven’t even one meal a day.

 

Perhaps our own decision to be more consciously grateful might begin with the supper table, all together and all attentive to the blessings that are ours, aware of how fortunate we are to be able to gather just so. So that when we get up the next morning, we have with us the things that really matter.

Of Trees and Loss

Our yard man came yesterday to trim the trees so there would be more sunlight in the back yard. The yard used to have too much light; now there is too much shade and my daylilies don’t bloom and the grass doesn’t grow. Rod and I couldn’t be there but we trust this man; he’s always done just what we have hoped for and kept our place looking decent.
Then I came home, looked out the kitchen window and saw my beloved crepe myrtle butchered. It used to have the most beautiful trunk, gracefully arching up, like heaven-reaching arms; just made my heart glad to see it. Now it’s just a wounded tree. And I felt like crying for the tree and the loss of its beauty. Perhaps it was just the grief of work getting to me – seems I’ve spent the week watching those I’ve come to love sink into sadness.
And then I sat down to watch the evening news. And saw the people of Hatteras come back to nothing — their homes washed away by the hurricane, all the dear things of life gone. And the people of Texas, so many of them who have lost everything to wildfires. Irreplaceable things that tie us to memories and people and times that have touched us and made us glad. Which makes a single tree rather a selfish grief. And then it seems, too, that all of it — all of the loss — is but another way of calling us to reach heavenward, from whence of our help, our life, our joy, always and only comes.

Voices

Because my latest book club selection wasn’t available at the library in print, I brought it home on CD and have been listening to it as I drive to and from work every day. I thought it was a great idea but the voice of the reader is so distracting that I can’t really enjoy the story. As I listen I find myself thinking her inflection is all wrong, emphasis placed where it shouldn’t be, her voice rising into a question where there is no question…A story being read should be better than the text alone, but in this case it isn’t because the voice of this stranger is poor substitute for the voices I imagine when I read it myself.

Which got me thinking about voices and got me listening to the ones around me every day —how much those voices either draw us in, inviting dialogue, creating a place where we are welcome, simply making the connection with each other that says, “We’re all in this together and isn’t that a good thing?” Or in contrast, those voices that, regardless of what they say, sound angry or resentful or irritable. We know those voices and they send us fleeing.

And I’ve been wondering what it means that so much of our communication nowadays happens via email or text or tweet or whatever —communication without voice. And then I came across this by Montgomery Fate, author of Cabin Fever, on being tempted to get a Blackberry:

My problem is that I both fear and need one. I need one to help get organized and caught up. Like most people, my life sometimes slips into sprawl mode — unchecked growth in too many directions: work, marriage, three kids in three schools, committees, church, friends, neighbors, and on and on. I don’t handle this well. The e-mails and texts telling me where to be and what to do and how to vote sometimes pile up into a mountain of information I don’t know how to climb. I’m not sure why. Maybe because nowhere in all those thousands of words is the gentle anchor of the human voice.

Just thinking out loud about voices….

Simple Acts of Kindness

Last Wednesday, I took in to the nursing home all the toiletries you had so generously donated. It was clear that many of you had not only offered your collection of hotel things but had gone out and purchased items for these bags for homeless teens — thank you! So I took in the bags and bags of stuff, and set up an assembly line in the Activities Room. I was delighted to find that a number of our younger residents came to help. They often don’t participate because the room is usually filled with much older people, and the activities not really appealing I suppose, but they were pleased to be able to do something in the way of community service that would truly help someone else. So for an hour we bagged items. I think they could have gone on and on, they were having such a good time, but at the end of it all, we had 117 bags of everyday toiletries for Seton Youth Ministries to hand out. 

After work, I took the bags to the Seton headquarters. The director was thrilled to receive them and commented that our donations would go out that evening with their van. Thank you for extending yourself to people we will probably never meet. I often wonder if such simple acts of kindness don’t make the difference between a day of hopelessness and a day in which some hope still exists, in spite of hardship. And if you have other ideas for ways in which our residents can minister to others, I would be glad to hear of them! 

Then on Sunday, we took coffee and sweet rolls across the street to the folks in the park. What a warm reception we received! They were so tickled that we had thought of them. One man began to ask us for some money and the woman in the group really dressed him down for doing so: “These people have come to do something nice for us! You don’t ask them for money. That wouldn’t be right!” We left with blessings ringing on our ears and their promise that they would pray for us in the church. How humbling it is to receive blessing when you intend to give it.

 

Thank you, dear people of Christ and St. Luke’s for helping this deacon to live her diaconal ministry. “All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.”

Hungry People

Sunday was glorious! After the late service we held a picnic in the garden with hamburgers, hotdogs, lemonade and ice cream cones – it was delicious and the company too! What a grand chance just to visit with each other, to welcome new people and a new child from India,to celebrate this glorious country and to enjoy the glorious congregation that is Christ and St. Luke’s. After communion inside, it was another sort of communion, God every bit as present in that food as in the other. Reminded me of all the times Jesus shared food and drink with people — the wedding at Cana, the feeding of the 5000, the meals at Mary and Martha’s, the meals he ate with sinners, dinner at the Pharisee’s house, the Last Supper — of all the times in his life when eating together became the revelation of the Kingdom, where there is enough and more than enough, both of the physical food and the food that satisfies the soul.

And then I spied, on the other side of the garden wall, a scruffy homeless man slowly walking by. He was thin, bearded, with piercing eyes; he looked hungry. He glanced in at the party, paused for a moment and watched us having such a fine time together, and I wondered if his hunger was for a hamburger but maybe also for the community and communion we so easily enjoy. Before I could go invite him in, he was gone. I wonder if it was Jesus in disguise.

Invisible People

     I had a most interesting conversation with a parishioner after church last Sunday. I don’t remember how we got on the subject, but we were talking about “invisible people,” that is, the people who are overlooked, ignored, taken for granted, just not seen, in out lives. They are generally the people who do things for us but about whom we know very little. And this parishioner said that he has begun to engage the “invisible people” in his life, maybe because as an older person, he finds himself becoming one. And he talked about the fascinating things he’s learned about the people who wait on him in the restaurant, who do his dry cleaning, or bag his groceries. He’s gotten to know people from all over the world, with wonderful life stories, simply because he saw them as people of value. Did you know that many of the young people who work summer jobs in this area come to us from Russia, the Ukraine, the Czech Republic? What courage it must take to come halfway around the world, to a totally different county and culture and language! And what could we learn from them?

     It connected for me with all the people in the nursing home for whom “out of sight” is “out of mind.” How easy it is to leave the soul nurture to someone else, when we all simply long to be seen, heard and valued. And I do think it was one of the things about Jesus that made him so attractive, that made people want to be around him, his ability to really see people. And so, if we are to be “Christ-bearers” in our time, it seems like a good place to start might be with the “invisible people” in our lives.