Nobody Was Meant to Do This Alone

So many hard things have been happening around me lately, some in my own life, some in others’, and then awful traumas like the Boston Marathon explosions. Several of my friends were there, luckily all are safe.

At work, one of my colleagues recently lost her young daughter to diabetes. Another friend just told me this story last week–one of her friends was in the McDonald’s drive through and she happened to look back and notice that the young woman behind her had her head down on the steering wheel and was crying. My friend’s friend paid for the young woman’s meals, just as small act of kindness. Well, the young woman followed her and asked why she had helped in such a way. As the two women were talking, the young mother started crying and confessed that she was in such distress, and suffering so much emotionally, that she had planned to bring the Happy Meals home to her young kids, go up to her bedroom and kill herself.

After talking more, the friend convinced to please get some help, and to even allow her to come over and help her get herself together and at least provide some respite for her and the kids.

Yes, this is a really bleak story. But one with a thankfully positive ending. And yes, things like this are happening around us, as we drive to work, as we sit in the next office to someone, as we say “thank you” to the check-out person at the grocery store.

When I saw my colleague who lost her daughter, it happened to be in the grocery store, and we just held each other for a few minutes. “You were such a good mother to her,” I said. “I still can believe she’s gone,” she said. And we both agreed that it is only the support of other people that gets us through times that hurt more than we could have ever imagined.

Please consider doing something kind for someone today, if you don’t do that type of thing already. It helps them but it helps you too, because it reminds you that you have that capacity to step outside of yourself, even if just for a moment. Be kind. Thank God.

My new Writing Coach blog is now at this address: http://leslieannecrowley.wordpress.com. I posted a new poem yesterday!

From John Wesley (June 17, 1703March 2, 1791), an 18th-century Anglican clergyman and
Christian theologian:

“Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all
the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all
the people you can. As long as ever you can.”

Just in Case You’re in Vienna, Maine…

My dear friend Colleen Crowley has been lending me her wonderful cabin here in Vienna, Maine while I get ready for what my new life is going to look like and it’s fabulous! No electricity or running water, but HUGE windows, the comfiest bed with flannel sheets and a down comforter, and a Coleman stove. Okay, and I have to tell you about the composting toilet. It is the coolest thing ever, doesn’t smell a bit, and uses NO water. Everyone should have one. Really.

I’ve fallen in love with candles and all of the (Virgin) Mary artwork that Colleen has all over the cabin. I want this print  called “The Annunciation” by Henry Ossawa Tanner SO MUCH. I look at it every morning and at the other lovely Mary images and artifacts that imbue this exquisite little place.

I’ll have more pictures to share when I return, but just wanted to say that in return for Colleen’s kindness in letting me stay in her cabin, I will be doing a free writing workshop at the Dr. Shaw Library in Vienna, Maine this Sunday, March 24 from 3:30-5:30 so if you’re in the area, come on by. The librarians are super nice and the theme is going to be Self-Compassion. Mostly though, we’re just going to talk about writing, journaling, poetry, and how amazing it all is.

Love to all of you, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of the kind wishes. They mean the world and more. I love you all too.

The Endless Surprise of Kindnesses

For my exquisitely kind family and friends

Perhaps this is true of all poems–perhaps when you read a truly brilliant poem you realize that you didn’t truly get it before. Or, more likely, good poems are like life–they reveal more the more that you experience. After all, it was Freud who said, “Wherever I have been, a poet has been there before me.”

I’ve used this poem–”Kindness”– by Naomi Shihab Nye before, but I understand it so differently now. Perhaps it’s a gift of compassion to myself that, instead of feeling stupid and thinking, “How could I not really get it before?” I let myself experience it more fully. For I believe with all my heart that poetry gives you all that the human heart and psyche can truly give, and the more open you are, the more you can take it. Sometimes, when that openness comes from being broken apart, love and light have more room to enter.

The truth is, I didn’t know until recently what the first lines of this poem really meant: “Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.”  I had no idea what she was talking about. People who’ve lost loved ones surely did; not me. I do now.

But I also didn’t know what the poet meant by her closing lines:

“Then it is only kindness
that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.”

But I do now. I do now. Thank you to everyone who has been so kind to me in the past few weeks.

Below is the full poem. With a heart full of gratitude.

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the
Indian in a white poncho lies dead
by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night
with plans and the simple breath
that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness
as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness
that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye

News from lesliesrajek.com

Just a few short tidbits, friends: I’ve been using my Writing Coaching site as a place to branch out and post some of my own poetry and other original work. Feel free to drop by if you’re interested. And if you’re curious about working with a Writing Coach, I have one new client spot open for the month of March. I hope it’s you!

The Best Intentions: Your Thoughts?

Below is a beautiful and poignant poem from Jane Hirschfield about the very human tendency, even longing one might say, to ensure that what we love will never leave us. When you read the poem you’ll see that the natural world–flowers, rivers–even one’s own body, quietly refuses to agree to the human need for permanency. It is only other people who say, “Yes,” to the plea to “stay always,” and the rest of the poem has already made it clear that such a promise is just a wish, a hope, and ultimately impossible.

Like all truly good poems, this one tells the truth. Though I also find myself asking about that very human tendency to say, “Yes, I will be here always,” even when we know it isn’t really true. Because my sense is that sometimes, even though I don’t know how, it is true, or at least, it’s worth saying for the very real comfort that it offers. Yes, in the end we are always alone. No, we can’t make life stand still. But, we can very gratefully accept the imperfect, life-giving, and completely necessary gifts that other limited human beings offer us.  And we can believe in their infinite goodness. Perhaps we actually have no other alternatives.

What do you think?

The Promise

Stay, I said

to the cut flowers.

They bowed

their heads lower.

Stay, I said to the spider,

who fled.

Stay, leaf.

It reddened,

embarrassed for me and itself.

Stay, I said to my body.

It sat as a dog does,

obedient for a moment,

soon starting to tremble.

Stay, to the earth

of riverine valley meadows,

of fossiled escarpments,

of limestone and sandstone.

It looked back

with a changing expression, in silence.

Stay, I said to my loves.

Each answered,

Always.

by Jane Hirschfield,  Come, Thief, Alfred A. Knopf, 2011

A February Greeting from the Garden

Visit lesliesrajek.com if you need a little green in your current winter landscape.

Send Yourself a Valentine (at least it’ll be something you want)

Visit lesliesrajek.com for the chance to give yourself a February Valentine, or, to test drive a spiritual practice of writing for Lent. I promise, It’ll be worth it!