remembering maya angelou

for a midwest-bred and Harlem-rehomed woman who read and day-drank and hoped and prayed and wrote her way to freedom in a wide open world, who refused to speak for six years and declared about it "there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you":

i know
as you knew
how a clipped wing
could sing
a dirge for dead

dreams
let freedom ring.

sister bird
with bosom sore
you're caged no more
your struggle's done
but you'll sing on
that holy trill
hope's ghostly chill

the sky,

at last,

your home.

sister bird
Love has come
through wasted fears
in desert years

Love's come through

for us.


in grateful hotdiggety memory of Maya Angelou, whose wings surely fit her well.
with hope that she now sings to the Lord a new song.

---

there's a darkness upon you that's flooded in light . . . it flies by day and it flies by night and I'm frightened by those that don't see it there was a dream and one day I could see it like a bird in a cage I broke in and demanded that somebody free it // The Avett Brothers

Little one

My dear little booboo:

You are making me long with all my heart to dance and play and sit and picnic and sing and nap with you beneath the shade of that Tree of Life––that long but hopeful shadow reaching from the New City back into our present New York City.

The day we received your diagnosis was no ordinary day. You see, it was not a random holiday filled with bunnies and eggs and chocolate––although, you do love all three (especially eggs). Baby, on Easter, eternity broke into history in the most wonderful of ways, beginning the end of all that is sad and scary about our schedules: every distress and disease, every way our disintegrating bodies don't live up to our hopes and plans... On this day, we are called to celebrate the beginning of the end of all that is WRONG on our calendars.

Be brave in light of the coming day, though it's the shadows now making that light stark. On that day, we will inhabit renewed, resurrection bodies in a renewed, restored creation. Be brave for all the vehicles of that grace, even the ones that look like needles and white coats.

And when you say, "I can't! Cuz... cuz... I'm a small girl!" like you like to say when you don't want to try, child, know that He can. And He has. Walked the valley of all those shadows.

I pray you would sleep well with Spirit-enabled song, even when pain and fear persist. I pray that Papa God would be near to you in your sleepy song:

Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so

Little ones to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong

Jesus loves me, this I know as He loved so long ago

Taking children on His knee saying, "Let them come to Me!"

Jesus loves me, He who died Heaven's gate to open wide!

He will wash away my sin, let His little child come in.

Yes, Jesus loves you. Yes, Jesus loves you! Yes, Jesus loves you. We hold unswervingly to this; this we know when other questions remain.

With hugs and hope,
E-E

we sleep because He loves

9. Resolved, to sleep nightly, trusting Papa God to run the universe, lying down as one who is kept in safety by the One who in His goodness daily renews the work of creation. God wore us out with His goodness today!

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. // GKC

sprequinox: sorrow and love mingling ahead these dark days

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
 Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
 Memory and desire, stirring
 Dull roots with spring rain.
 Winter kept us warm, covering
 Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
 A little life with dried tubers.
 Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
 With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
 And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
 And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

// from T.S. Eliot, "The Wasteland"

 heavy eyelids, heavy heart. heavy news, heavy knowing.
how do you hold it all in Your heart??
 reacquainting with Your HURRICANE face.

after grandpa's three days... and his hospitalization since...
how could you let him go hungry? how could you let her go ill?
now he wastes away...

oh, he was not supposed to go this way.

Lord oh Lord have mercy on us.

[For Christians to read and absorb good fiction is] important for a few reasons, not least of which is that it offers a rest of sorts from the information gathering of non-fiction. Good fiction isn’t for lazy readers but can offer a literary sabbath of sorts. Good fiction also broadcasts on a different frequency than non-fiction so it stretches the intellect and shapes the imagination of Christians in important, healthy ways. // Trevin Wax

from "Days in Autumn"

Whoever's homeless now, will build no shelter;
who lives alone will live indefinitely so,
waking up to read a little, draft long letters,
and, along the city's avenues,
fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.

// Rainer Maria Rilke

When "love your enemies and pray for those" sounds futile