My participation in the current Two River’s Learning Room, based on the book ‘The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom’, by Christine Valters Paintner has compelled me to revisit some of my favourite poems. One such poem is ‘The Gate’ by Marie Howe from her book ‘What the Living Do’, a collection of poems about the death of her beloved brother whose dying would teach her how to live.
The Gate
I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world
would be the space my brother’s body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man
but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,
rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.
This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I’d say What?
And he’d say, This – holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.
Her brother’s THIS reminds me of our practice of the Sacrament of the Ordinary – seeing the luminous in the mundane – a simple cheese and mustard sandwich; the blanket of snow in my yard patterned with shadows from the low-lying late afternoon sun; the exhaust from my furnace that rises and dissipates in the frozen air outside my window reminding me that our life is but a breath.
While I have not had a sibling who passed away, my father’s illness this fall underscored for me that all of life is spiritual and interconnected–the room that held my father’s intubated, comatose body became a sacred space – our very breath, past and present, life and death all held in the great mystery. In the face of uncertainty everything became heightened for me, as though seeing the world beyond surface appearances.
We have just celebrated Epiphany: the discovery of the Christ-child whose birth enables us to see the divine revealed and present in each moment, and whose death became a gate of sorts for us to experience life in fullness. I want to live each day as a gift, in awe and wonder at simply being alive, to be fully present and open to all this life has to offer in this world and beyond. Fried egg and avocado toast anyone? (Dan Veldhuis)