RESTING IN THE GRACE OF THE WORLD

A Collective Poem built by the West Hills Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Portland, Oregon

Thanksgiving 2023

Autumn is upon us … and the world sparkles.
Leaves turn and twist and fall. Brick and moss hold
each other softly and a songbird prays a litany of the day.
Let the warmth of the sun heal us wherever we are broken.

This is the sun’s birthday; the birthday of life, of love, of wings:
now the ears of my ears awake and the eyes of my eyes are opened.
Now that you know that anything could happen, what hands will you hold?
Whose heart will beat inside you?

We laugh, we cry, we live we die. Dancing along in the madness,
we can sing for a long, long time. Hold life like a face between
your palms … not just life, but your life, your very temporary life …
and say, yes, I will love you. Come into the peace of wild things.

I like to proclaim my gratitude before I even get out of bed.
Giving has many faces and they are rich who own the day.
Begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be
cumbered with your old nonsense. What can the
weatherman tell me that I don’t already know?

From you I receive, to you I give, together we share
and from this we live. You gave me blue and I gave you
yellow, together we made simple green. Together we made
something greater from the difference … the hum of hello,
a door flung open, a heart held open to another, a nod of
I see you. You are not alone.

But why do we want the future to know more about us, to learn
from our lives? With nimbleness of tongue, learn the children’s
language. This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
Keep your heart open to us. Delight in exploration & discovery.
Another layer. Keep warm in oven. The world you want may not be
the world you know.

There is wind and rain and so I sweep the leaves again.
Autumn is within us and darkness descends in the afternoon

renewed by the drizzle, the showers, and the downpour.
Anything could happen; things that never happened before.
Come into the presence of still water.

Along which secret aqueduct, oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life that I have never drunk? In the deep cup
of the hour of silence, what did you notice? What did you hear?
The uproar of mice in the empty house, the clam, clamped down,
or the bat on the wind, in the dark? The up-swing, the down-pour,
life outside your own story?

The gods are shaking us from our sleep where last night I dreamt
(Bendita ilusión) I had a beehive here inside my heart and the golden
bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures.

Come to your life like a warrior. Take a breath. Ignore the news.
Plant the bulbs. Anything can happen. Lift this new glimpse that you found,
carry into evening all that you want from most this amazing day.

 

This collective (Cento) poem was assembled by Sulima Malzin with contributions from many of those present at the November 26 th interactive service, Poetry of Gratitude & Giving. “Resting in the Grace of the World” uses phrases and lines selected from poems by Rabbi Harold Kushner, Joyce Sutphen, e e cummings, Ellen Bass, Julia Fehrenbacher, Alberto Rios, Mary Oliver, Mark Nepo, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Stafford, Wendell Berry, Antonio Machado, Norma Edythe Heyser, Cleone Hawkinson, Sulima Malzin, Barbara Joy Flitcroft, Wade McJacobs & Carol Imani