Let’s say that an eleven year-old boy has been born into and raised in a pretty warm, secure family and has taken in a background sense or construct of a greater power, God, and some basic general maybe vague sense of goodness, truth, and beauty. He has a fairly autonomous and on-schedule, so to speak, strengthening of a sense of self. And, he has normal friends and he wants to have fun and mess around a bit, explore, taste, push some conventional limits. In a way of speaking, his “integral vision” informs his reality, though from a distance, maybe like constellations flickering fleetingly though grayscale and light awareness, hanging above and on the periphery of his usual interest and play-driven awareness. There, but why speak of it, why try to articulate it all – he may feel life is busy and full without words and conception re-describing it.

All that is to say that the nature and degree of “inform” may vary plenty, but why not speak of one’s life within “Embodied Practice”, anyway, though the informing be not flagrant nor methodically parsed. Hence, I post this in Embodied Practice.

I own embarrassingly that I have so much to say about myself, the upper hemisphere being my favorite and the left side of that my most favorite slice. Here, now, I’ll indulge myself only a little.

I have read a lot of fiction, a lot of crime and mystery novels, and a lot of authors. I sometimes can’t believe how many pretty good story-tellers and writers there are. There are some writers that really appeal to me, a few of whom I would call very good writers. It seems that I have an emotional-actional hook in me for the fearful and uncertain of some sorts and inner manageabilities. The internal darker shades and the existentially worrisome often pull me in, if written well. I used to like the journeys less discriminantly, but now I think that the quality has to be higher for me to endure the weight and to value the uncovering of the hidden sides of man and woman, in realistic and meaningful context.

Recently, I looked into the enneagram, again. I’d only peeked before, every decade or so, and I remember sometimes more intently than others thinking, ohh, I’m a six, a devil’s advocate (from the Helen Palmer book I’ve kept). I’ve usually forgotten the summary label for #6 and mostly retained a conclusion of a sense of the oppositional in me. This time, again, ohh, devil’s advocate.

(In other renditions, #6 would be loyalist – for some surprising reason, now I seem to prefer the more negative, pathologizing description of Palmer.) There are phobic types of reaction and counter-phobic. There are, as many of you know, ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ expressions of each of the nine central tendencies. And, though various patterns exist among the nine in surprisingly revealing ways, I think (at least for myself) we have some of all of them, yes – in the same way that I manifest all 15 of the astrological signs (wink).

For some reason, I want to hold this ebbing and flowing current of #6 in me, here now, and link this enneagramic current to my breath-constricting joy that I have just felt in reading one of my favorite novelists, James Lee Burke, a very good writer.

Whew, is his rendering of setting, exterior and interior, individual as the protagonist, Dave Robicheaux, and collective, living and dead, local to southern Louisiana and more distant serious! Melancholy. Despairing. Self-identity tumultuous. Glimmerings of the redemptive and of faces of nature’s force and beauty and apparent indifference to truth and untruth.

Psychologically speaking, I wouldn’t be surprised to consider that my predilection for stories of violence and what I’ve here mentioned already are indicative of my inner character structures and gravitation towards particular psycho-physical states. It may be that these states are like sea anchors that slow down both running aground onto even more frightening shores and slow down a sailing free. Stan Grof’s suggestions of links between our contemporary interiors and life expressions with the frightful images and tissue memories of our early lives, including pre and peri-natal, may speak to these tendencies. I appear to love these distressingly artful depictions by James Lee of baseness and terror on earth.

Lately, I have read a couple of novels that encompass the destruction of place and of lives in the New Orleans land fall of Hurricane Katrina. John Grisham wrote his usual smooth story of corporate abuse and self-perpetuating power tactics, and the abused one’s attempts to get satisfaction. He was steady in his unfolding of the story. The Appeal feels real. As backdrop to the story, he brought to awareness so much about the destruction of New Orleans, and Grisham evidently, in his life as a successful author, donated $1,000,000 to evacuee victims.

The story that I want to introduce here is by Burke. He writes about the hurricane in astounding literature. He writes about the hurricane and windstorm-like turmoil that tumble souls, spirits, emotions, actions and interactions. And all the while there is a mystery-like story of bad and good deeds and a gorgeously and dangerously flawed detective in the New Iberia Parish sheriff’s department. I’ll try to type enough of the text for you to get a taste of the power and feeling evocation of his writing. The plot is good, as always. The human interiors are lush (of different meanings), jungle-like, heart of darkness-like. Accidentally and intentionally courageous fighting for principles that have been cobbled together through hard human trials carries for me Burke’s trade mark flavor. For some readers, I’m guessing that this is mostly depressing and too heavy. That sounds true, too.

So here are some chunks, not necessarily in the order that they appear in The Tin Roof Blowdown [Any mistakes are mine in transcription]:


    My worst dreams have always contained images of brown water and fields of elephant grass and the down draft of helicopter blades. The dreams are in color but they contain no sounds, not of drowned voices in the river or the explosions under the hooches in the village we burned or the thropping of the Jolly Green and the gunships coming low and flat across the canopy, like insects pasted against a molten sun.
    In the dream I lie on a poncho liner, dehydrated with blood expander, my upper thigh and side torn by wounds that could have been put there by wolves. I am convinced I will die unless I receive plasma back at the battalion aid. Next to me lies a Negro corporal, wearing only his trousers and boots, his skin coal black, his torso split open like a gaping red zipper from his armpit down to his groin, the damage to his body so grievous, traumatic, and terrible to see or touch he doesn’t understand what has happened to him.
    “I got the spins, Loot. How I look?” he says.
    “We’ve got the million-dollar ticket, Doo-doo. We’re Freedom Bird Bound, “ I reply.
    His face is crisscrossed with sweat, his mouth as glossy and bright as freshly applied lipstick when he tries to smile.
    The Jolly Green loads up and lifts off, with Doo-doo and twelve other wounded on board. I stare upward at its strange rectangular shape, its blades whirling against a lavender sky, and secretly I resent the fact that I and others are left behind to wait on the slick and the chance that serious numbers of NVA are coming through the grass. Then I witness the most bizarre and cruel and seemingly unfair event of my entire life.
    As the jolly Green climbs above the river and turns toward the China Sea, a solitary RPG streaks at a forty-five-degree angle from the canopy below and explodes inside the bay. The ship shudders once and cracks in half, its fuel tanks blooming into an enormous orange fireball. The wounded on board are coated with flame as they plummet downward toward the water.
    Their lives are taken incrementally – by flying shrapnel and bullets, by liquid flame on their skin, and by drowning in a river. In effect, they are forced to die three times. A medieval torturer could not have devised a more diabolic fate.
    When I awake from the dream, I have to sit for a long time on the side of the bed, my arms clenched across my chest, as though I have caught a chill or the malarial mosquito is once again having its way with my metabolism. I assure myself that the dream is only a dream, that if it were real I would have heard sounds and not simply seen images that are the stuff of history now and are not considered of interest by those who are determined to re-create them.
    I also tell myself that the past is a decaying memory and that I do not have to relive and empower it unless I choose to do so. As a recovering drunk, I know that I cannot allow myself the luxury of resenting my government for lying to a whole generation of young men and women who believed they were serving a noble cause. Nor can I resent those who treated us as oddities if not pariahs when we returned home.
    When I go back to sleep, I once again tell myself  I will never again have to witness the wide-scale suffering of innocent civilians, nor the betrayal and abandonment of our countrymen when they need us most.
    But that was before Katrina. That was before a storm of greater impact than the bomb blast that struck Hiroshima peeled the face off southern Louisiana. That was before one of the most beautiful cities in the Western Hemisphere was killed three times, and not just by the forces of nature. [This was the opening chapter.]


    The barred cell has no windows and smells of the disinfectant that has been used to scrub all its steel and concrete surfaces. The two men locked inside have taken off their shirts and shoes and are doing pushups with their feet propped on a wood bench. Their arms and plated chests are blue with Gothic-letter tats. Their armpits are shaved, their lats as hard-looking as the sides of coopered barrels, tapered into twenty-eight inch waists and stomachs that are flat from the sternum to the groin. With each pushup, a network of tendons blooms against the tautness of their skin. They have the hands of bricklayers or men who scrub swimming pools clean with muriatic acid or cut and fashion stone in subfreezing weather.
    The power in their bodies makes you think of a tightly wound steel spring, aching for release, waiting for the slightest of external triggers.
    One of them stops his exercise routine, sits on the bench, and breathes in and out through his nose, indifferent to the fact that Helen and I are only two feet from him, watching him as we would an animal in a zoo. . .
    “Yeah, mistakes like that can happen,” I reply. "But here’s the deal Chula. We’ve got a hurricane blowing in and we don’t have time for bullshit from out-of-town guys who haven’t paid any local dues. See, Louisiana is not a state, it’s a Third World country. That means we really get pissed off when outsiders come in and think they can wipe their feet on us. You guys are mainline, so I won’t try to take you over the hurdles. Stacking time at Angola can be a real bitch, particularly if we decide to send you up with a bad jacket. If you want to take the bounce for Herman Stanga, be our guest. But you either get out in front of this or we’ll crush your cookie bag.”
    The man who has been touching his toes stops and faces me.     “Watch this, man,” he says.
    He leaps against the wall with one foot and does a complete somersault, in a wink returning to an upright position. “What do you think of that? Learned it in El Sal from the guys who killed my whole family and took turns raping me before they sold me to a carnival. Come on, man, tell me what you think about that.”
    “To be honest, I think you should have stayed with the carnival,” I reply. . .


    Hurricanes do not lend themselves to description, no more than do the pyrotechnics of a B-52 raid at ground zero. I have seen the survivors of the latter. Their grief is of a kind you never want to witness. They weep and make mewing sounds.         Any words they speak are usually unintelligible. I have always suspected they have joined a group the Bible refers to as Heaven’s prisoners., anointed in a fashion most of us would resist even if we recognized God’s finger reaching out to touch our brow.
    A category 5 hurricane carries an explosive force several times greater than that of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. But unlike a man-made weapon of mass destruction, a hurricane creates an environment that preempts our natural laws. Early on the air turns a chemical green and contains a density that you can hold in your palm. The lightning and thunder arrive like predictable friends, then fade into the ether and seem to become little more than a summer squall. Rain rings chain the swells between the whitecaps and the wind smells of salt spray and hard-packed sand that has warmed under the sun. You wonder if all of the preparedness and alarm hasn’t been much ado about nothing.
    Then the tide seems to shrink from the land, as though a giant drainhole has formed in the center of the Gulf. Palm trees straighten in the stillness, their fronds suddenly lifeless. You swallow to stop the popping in your ears, with the same sense of impotence you might experience aboard a plane that is dramatically losing altitude.  To the south, a long black hump begins to gather itself on the earth's rim, swelling out of the water like an enormous whale, extending itself all across the horizon. You cannot believe what you are watching. The black hump is now rushing toward the coastline, gaining momentum and size, increasing in velocity so rapidly that its own crest is absorbed by the wave before it can crash to the surface in front of it. It’s called a tidal surge. Its force can turn a levee system into serpentine lines of black sand or level a city, particularly when the city has no natural barriers. The barrier islands off the Louisiana coast have long ago eroded or been dredged up and heaped on barges and sold for shale parking lots. The petrochemical companies have cut roughly ten thousand miles of channels through the wetlands, allowing saline intrusion to poison and kill freshwater marsh areas from the Plaquemines Parish to Sabine Pass. The levee along the Mississippi River shotgun hundreds of tons of mud over the edge of the continental shelf, preventing it from flowing westward along the coastline, where it is needed the most. Louisiana’s wetlands continue to disappear at a rate of forty-seven square miles a year.
    It’s 1:00 a.m. and I can hear the wind in the oaks and the pecan trees. The ventilated shutters on our house are latched, vibrating slightly against the jambs. The only sign of a weather disturbance is a flicker of lightning in the clouds or a sudden gust of rain that patterns our tin roof with pine needles. Two hours to the east of us the people of New Orleans who have not evacuated are watching their city ripped off the face of the earth. Why is one group spared and one group not? I don’t have an answer. But I am determined that two newly arrived members of our community will not enjoy the safety of our jail, at least on their terms, while decent people are drowned in their homes.
    I call the night jailer and tell him to separate the two MS-13 members.
    “What if they ax me why?” he says.
    “Tell them we have a policy against homosexuals sharing the same cell in Iberia Parish,” I reply. . .


    For those who do not like to brood upon the possibility of simian ancestry in the human gene pool or who genuinely believe that societal virtue grows from a collective impulse in the human breast, the events of the next few days would offer their sensibilities poor comfort. Helen had been worried she would have to give up command of her department to either NOPD or state of federal authorities. That was the least of our problems. There was no higher command than ourselves. The command and communication system of NOPD had been destroyed by the storm. Four hundred to five hundred officers, roughly one third of the department, had bagged ass for higher ground. The command center NOPD had set up in a building off Canal Street had flooded. Much to their credit, the duty officers didn’t give up their positions and wandered in chest-deep water outside their building for two days. They had no food and no drinking water, and many were forced to relieve themselves in their clothes, their handheld radios held aloft to keep them dry.
    From a boat or any other elevated position, as far as the eye could see, New Orleans looked like a Caribbean city that had collapsed beneath the waves. The sun was merciless in the sky, the humidity like lines of ants crawling inside your clothes. . .
    The smell was like none I ever experienced. The water was chocolate-brown, the surface glistening with a blue-green sheen of oil and industrial chemicals. Raw feces and used toilet paper issue from broken sewer lines. The gray, throat-gagging odor of decomposition permeated not only the air but everything we touched. The bodies of dead animals, including deer, rolled in the wake of our rescue boats. And so did those of human beings, sometimes just a shoulder or an arm or the back of a head, suddenly surfacing, then sinking under the froth.
    They drowned in attics and on second floors of their houses. They drowned . . .
    If by chance you hear a tape of the 911 cell phone calls from those attics, walk away from it as quickly as possible, unless you are willing to live with voices that will come aborning in your sleep for the rest of your life. . .


    Molly was asleep when I got home, her face turned toward the wall, her hip rounded under the sheet. I lay my shirt and trousers across the back of the chair, but I didn’t get in bed.         Instead, I sat on the floor in my skivvies, inside a box of slatted moonlight, my spine against the bed frame. I sat there for a long time, but I cannot tell you exactly why. Outside, I could hear the drawbridge clanking at Burke Street and the droning of a deep-draft workboat laboring down the bayou.
    “What are you doing down there?” Molly said above me.
    “I didn’t want to wake you up.”
    I could hear her moving herself across the mattress so she could see me better. “You’re not going crazy on me, are you?”
    She meant it as a joke.
    “I have memories I can’t get rid of, no matter what I do,” I replied. “It’s like trying to self-exorcise a succubus. I don’t have your degree of spiritual conviction, Molly. I remember events that happened either yesterday or years ago, and I remember the bastards who caused them, and I want to go back in time and do them great injury. That’s not honest. I want to paint the wall with them.”
    She lay on her stomach, propped on her elbows, her head hanging down close to mine. “You can’t confide in me? You don’t think we’re a partnership in dealing with whatever problems come down the road? Is that where we are in our marriage?”
    She tapped a finger on my neck. “I asked you a question, trooper.”
    “I just put the screws to a black kid in Jeanerette. He’s a street puke and meth dealer and maybe a rapist. But you don’t rip out their spokes when their wheels are already broken.”
    Her face hovered over on the side of my vision. I could smell the shampoo in her hair. She put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. “You never deliberately hurt an innocent person in your life, Dave,” she said. “You take on other people’s suffering without their ever asking. Your virtue is your greatest weakness.”
    I turn my head and looked her in the face. Her mouth was pink, her skin shiny in the moonlight. She’d had her hair cut short so that it was thick and even on the ends where it hung down on her cheeks. One of her nightgown straps had pulled loose and I could see the spray of freckles on her shoulder. She walked her fingers through my hair. “Will you get off the floor, please?” she said.
    I lay down beside her and pulled her against me. I could feel her breath against my ear. Her hands pressed me hard in the small of my back. She hooked a thumb in the elastic of my underwear and began to work the fabric down on my hip. Then she gave it up and let me undress myself while she pulled off her panties and nightgown. I started to get on top of her, but she pushed me back and sat on my thighs, her arms propped by my shoulders. She stared down at me in a way that I didn’t understand. “I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to you, Dave. I never thought I would feel that way about a man. But I do about you,” she said.
    “Molly--” I began.
    “No, that’s the way it is. Anyone who tries to hurt you will have to kill me first.”
    She lowered her hand and pressed me inside her. When it was over, I placed my head against the dampness of her breast and could hear her heart beating as loud and full as a drum.



[A rough PI and bail bonds agent friend of Dave’s is looking in a hospital for a fugitive who ran Clete down in a car. He is in a hospital, and I’ll spare you most of the gruesome details.]
    The intensive care looked like a charnel house. . .
    Clete threaded his way between gurneys and tapped Bertrand Melancon on the shoulder with his flashlight. “Hello, asshole. Remember me? The last time you saw me it was through the front windshield of your car,” he said.
    “I know who you are. You work for them Jews at the bail bonds office, “ Bertrand said.
    “I also happen to be the guy you ran your car over.”
    “I don’t own a car. Say, you’re blocking my breeze, you mind?”
    Clete could feel his mouth drying out and tiny stitches beginning to pop loose inside his head. “How would you like to go the rest of the way out that window?”
    “Do what you gonna do, man.”
    For Clete, Bertrand Melancon seemed to personify what he hated most in the clientele he dealt with on a daily basis. They were raised by their grandmothers and didn’t have a clue who their fathers were. They got turned out in jail and thought of sexual roles in terms of prey or predator. They lied instinctively, even when there was no reason to. Trying to find a handle on them was impossible. They were inured to insult, indifferent to their own fate, and devoid of guilt or shame. What bothered Clete most about them was his belief that anyone in their background would probably turn out the same.


    Wednesday evening was exceptionally beautiful, as though the earth and the heavens had decided to join together and re-create South Louisiana the way it was before Katrina and Rita tore it apart. The sky was a hard blue, the evening star twinkled in the west, a big brown moon rising above the cane fields. The rains had turned the oaks a deeper green and had sent Bayou Teche over its banks, swirling along the edges of yards. You could smell barbecue fires in the park and the tannic odor of chrysanthemums and a clean, bright odor that perhaps signaled the coming of winter, but not in a bad way.         For no demonstrable reason, I felt a sense of peace, as though I had been invited to a war, but at the last moment had decided not to attend. . .
    They said good-bye and started out the door. Alafair [college-age daughter who has been irritated with Dave’s old fatherly ways, lately] snapped her fingers in the air. “I forgot my purse. I don’t have any money,” she said. "I was going to pick up dessert.”
    “Here,” I said. I took twenty dollars from my wallet and handed it to her. “I’ll put it on your tab.”
    “We won’t be late,” she said.
    “I’ll be up,” I replied, and gave her the thumbs-up sign, the one that I had always given her when she was little. . .


    I didn’t like Bertrand Melancon or, better said, I didn’t like the world he represented. But as I had to remind myself daily, many of the people I deal with did not get to choose the world in which they were born. Some try to escape it, some embrace it, most are overcome and buried by it. After his brother was shot, I think Bertrand tried to become the person he could have been if he’d had a better shake when he was a kid. But who knows? Like Clete says, going up or coming down, it’s only rock ‘n’ roll. Bertrand was able to perform a couple of noble deeds before he disappeared. That’s more than we expect from most men who started off life as he did.
    Sometimes at twilight, when Clete and I are out on the salt and we can look northward at the vast green-gray misty rim of the Louisiana coastline, I have a fantasy about Bertrand Melancon and my old friend Father Jude LeBlanc, whose only trepidation in his life was his fear that uncontrollable shaking in his hands would cause him to drop the chalice while he was giving communion.
    In my fantasy, I see Bertrand far out on the water, pulling on the oars, his arms pumped with his task, the ruined city of New Orleans becoming smaller and smaller in the distance, a great darkness spreading across the sky just after sunset. The blisters on his hands turn into wounds that stain the wood of the oars with his blood. As the wind rises and the water becomes even blacker, he sees hundreds if not thousands of lights swimming below the surface. Then he realizes the lights are not lights at all. They have the shape of broken Communion wafers and the luminosity that radiates from them lies in the very fact they have been rejected and broken. But in a way he cannot understand, Bertrand knows that somehow all of them are safe now, including himself, inside a pewter vessel that is as big as the hand of God. [The end.]

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Ambo Suno

After about four hours of transcription last night, I forgot to include one of my favorite paragraphs that I had earmarked for this introduction to James Lee Burke and The tin Roof Blowdown. Here 'tis:

If you have stacked a little time in the can, or beat your way across the country bucking bales and picking melons, or worked out of a Manpower Inc. day-labor office on skid row, you probably already know that human beings are infinitely complex and not subject to easy categorization. I’m always amazed at how the greatest complexity as well as personal courage is usually found in our most nondescript members. People who look as interesting as a mud wall have the personal histories of classical Greeks. I sometimes think that every person’s experience, if translated into flame, would be enough to melt the flesh from his bones. I guess the word I’m looking for is “empathy.” We find it in people who have none of the characteristics of light-bearers.

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Ambo Suno

I also am intrigued with the Enneagram, I do like Helen Palmer's depiction but I kind of favor Richard Rohr.  I behave as a "5", partially redeemed...still working at it.  I loved your storytelling, actually it is folks such as you that keep me participating in life.  For some reason I feel like being honest and the truth is I never thought I had much of a history that would be of any interest to anyone.  One of my favorite things to say is "who cares?".  The thing is, is that I do care.  My favorite books are those that make my head spin, somewhat poetic (as you just described) and somewhat confusing, causing you to ponder maybe a bigger picture.  I cry over broken hearts, broken dreams and broken selves.  This is probably why I can't get into stories unless I am alone, I find it difficult to allow myself into these characters lives with anyone who may see me react.  I keep this face that I show to everyone, it has no substance or very little depth.  Occassionally I can get inspired for sharing but I always tell myself how far I can go.  I always wondered how other people do it, how feelings and expressions can surface so immediately.  What gets me into trouble sometimes is that I don't always know when I am saying something that may cause a negative reaction...it usually takes me longer.  Some people call this callous, maybe it is but in my defense I never really understood those that may say that. 

I have not read any fiction lately, I think I would like to pick something up again now.  Thanks for sharing, it has been a pleasure!

aalferos - I'm quite new to the enneagram. I don't know Rohr. I just read a little about the "observer". Yeah.

Thanks about the story-telling, and I'm not quite sure of what you speak. I'm trusting that you don't think I wrote that piece about New Orleans that was James Lee Burke's.

"I cry over broken hearts, broken dreams and broken selves."
You might try James Lee Burke if you find yourself with time on your hands.

A while ago I read another author and book you might read - historically (pretend historically) set in Alaska, The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon. It may be heavy sledding through deep, wet snow with tired dogs, but I liked it enough. And in parts his use of language is extraordinary and his melancholy is as long as a winter night. Here is what one guy on Amazon says about him:
What can you say about a book like this? Not much without giving something away. It's audacious as can be believed. What's it about? Read the Publisher's Weekly blurb above. Or, better yet, don't.

Chabon is a genius and a madman, a wizard and a mensch. He's a wrecking crew, a culture-blender, and a rebbe packing heat. Who else would, or could, take Nick Charles and put him in Shalom Shachna's body? (Or maybe it's the other way around.) Equal parts Kabbalah and Ka-Bar, it's funny and gripping, and entertaining, and so heartbreaking, at times, it's hard to breathe.

In sum. I found it extraordinary - the concept, the language, the characters and the plot. It's not perfect, but it is simply one of the best novels I've read in a decade. Is that "helpful"? I doubt it. If I were you, I wouldn't want to know more. Spoilers are odious, irrelevant, and available elsewhere (note Kakutani's review in the Times). If you love Chandler, Hammett, Roth, and I.B. Singer, I suspect you will love this.

Put some Manischewitz in a lowball and sit by the electric fire and crack this book open.

And other reviews
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0007149832/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1


Oh, yeah - if you like chess, there's a big slice of chess culture within.

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Ambo Suno

Ambo Suno - Yes, I knew you were quoting a book but the first part with the boy is you right?  I just finished reading Grace and Grit, I loved it.  I also received two new books in the mail yesterday (Wilbur) so I think I am set for a couple of weeks.  The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon.  Sounds like something I will enjoy.  Yes, I do have a lot of time on my hands these days, not so much that I mind it yet.  I see you are from Southern CA, I lived there for 32 years, moved to Michigan last December.  Do you like poetry?  Here is one you might like:

My Soul is a Candle    (St. John of the Cross)

My soul is a candle that burned away the veil;
only the glorious duties of light I now have,

The sufferings I knew initiated me into God.
I am a holy confessor for men.

When I see their tears running across their cheeks
and falling into
His hands,

what can I say to their great sorrow
that I too have
known.

The soul is a candle that will burn away the darkness,
only the glorious duties of love we will have.

The sufferings I knew initiated me into God,
Only His glorious cares
I now have.

One more:

Laughter Came From Every Brick   (St. Teresa of Avila)

Just these two words He spoke
changed my life,

"Enjoy Me."

What a burden I thought I was to carry -
a crucifix, as did He,

Love once said to me, "I know a song,
would you like to hear it?"

And laughter came from every brick in the street
and from every pore
in the sky.

After a night of prayer, He
changed my life when
He sang,

"Enjoy Me."

 

Anne

Anne - I'm not so into poetry, usually, though I have gone through brief periods of interest. Occasionally a poem will surprise me and grab or touch me.

My larger connetion with poetry seems to be when someone is writing prose, such as James Lee Burke or others and I find myself moving to a subtle rhythm or tempo that seems inadvertent but affects me as I imagine poetry does. I feel a similar thing some times when I write and some kind of word play or dance seems to be going on incidentally. "Poetry" is one of those cultural expressions that I more often think I should be enjoying than I actually seem to be by the choices of reading and spending time that I make.

Of these two poems you post, I am more moved by the second and I think I may understand it better than the first. I am guessing that these touch you deeply, yes?

Yes, I see what you mean about my liking to recount or imagine 'aloud' some vignettes and anecdotes.

Yeah - what a change, SoCal to Michigan! Enjoy the brief summer, eh. ambo

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Ambo Suno

Ambo,  I do spend some time reading poetry.  What I find interesting about these two poems is more regarding the authors than the poems itself.  I found this book at Amazon "Love Poems from God" and it seemed to validate for me a God I was experiencing.  Within the Catholic tradition, I saw John and Theresa as being able to express things that I dared not say.  Each of them has a unique relationship with God, through their poetry they are able to express to me the ways in which they learned to respond.  I can't help but imagine how they must have interpreted that relationship.  That same relationship exists, but I know that more can be perceived the more we include and embrace all things that can and do relate.  I do wonder if others would be up for that exchange?  God is either Other or Impersonal (some circles), or maybe it is just some female characteristics of God that may be hard to perceive?  Anyway...still pondering that! 
I do know what you mean about prose, sometines that is exactly what I find most moving.  Life would get quite boring without those gifted individuals.

Anne