Haiku-ing Through Sadness

I had the privilege of kid-sitting Griffin the Nephew and Amelia the Niece on Thursday night. As part of our time together, we watched a couple of episodes of America’s Funniest Videos. We laughed super hard at the ones involving animals and babies, but we didn’t laugh so hard at the ones where people got hurt or where the camera person staged the whole scene. What we figured out was that the funniest moments tend to happen unplanned—like when Amelia told me that she would sleep in her parents’ king-size bed with me if I just had an off volume switch—or when she looked at a small group of fish and announced that they must be a home-school of fish—or like Sunday night when I was literally so sad that I could do nothing but lay in my bed, wrapped in my blanket, and…write…haiku. Yes. Haiku.

I struggle with goodbyes. Anyone who knows me knows this much. I’ve gotten better with goodbyes over the past few years. I’ve come to accept—more fully—that people come and go and that that is okay—even needed. Yet goodbyes are still hard—especially when they are said to a lot of people at once and/or to people I call friend and respect—and that has happened three times over the past three weeks.

On Sunday night, I told Mister Pastor Patrick and his beautiful wife Courtney goodbye. As part of their sending off, I worked with Rebecca the Great Children’s Minister to create a painting for them. On the back of the painting, as I was trying to write a nice little note to accompany Rebecca’s declaration that “Beca and Dee hate Texas” (which is where they are going), I found myself writing a haiku that went along with the day’s worship service, the last line of which expresses what Patrick wanted to say to the congregation and what I wanted to say to him and Courtney:

Faith. Hope. Love. Believe.
Simple words. Never more true.
I believe in you.

I suppose that a haiku tree sprouted in me with those words and kept growing last night when nothing else in me could move:

1.
Willow tree weeping
Rain falling softly off leaves
Body slumped to ground

2.
Faith hope love remain
The greatest of these is love
Love one another

3.
Paralyzed nothing
Lying prostrate on the ground
I am very sad

4. (modified form)
“Don’t be sad that it’s over—
Be glad it happened”
I think I’ll be both.

5.
So much to be done.
Work stares at me, calls my name.
Not now. Tomorrow.

6.
Ignore everything.
Lay in bed and write haiku.
Wish for a Genie.

7. (modified form)
People are leaving.
I feel real sadness.
Please don’t tell me I shouldn’t.

8.
My partner is gone.
I don’t know where to begin.
Without you? Blank space.

9.
My mom does not cry.
Except when profoundly moved.
You are quite special.

And then today:

10.
The morning after
A night of sleep didn’t bring you back
Equally as hard

11.
Hey Mister Pastor
You challenged me to be a
Better me. Thank you.

12. (Title: Mountain Lake)
Breathe in cool, crisp air
Lay back in peaceful waters
Tension fades away

Funny, huh? That rhythmic words are all I can find right now. I guess maybe it’s a way to find structure and order when so much feels like it’s falling apart?

This is a strange gift
Writing haiku through sadness
But I guess it works

Moonrise

I walked in the door from a meeting tonight only to have Bullet demand that I take him out for his nightly potty break.

Because I still had my shoes on and because it feels great outside, I decided to take the little guy for a full walk tonight.

Just as we were returning home, I realized that I’d forgotten to check the mail. When I turned around to walk back to the mailbox, I was struck by a brilliant orange moon peaking over the trees at the end of the street.

I said to myself, “Wow. That wasn’t there just a few minutes ago.”

Then I proceeded to stand at the bottom of my driveway and watch the most beautiful moonrise I had ever seen.

“That is so beautiful, God,” I kept saying. “And to think that I wouldn’t have seen it had I not turned back.”

Sometimes, I suppose, we need to move forward and not look back because the pictures that we see of Egypt are deceptively beautiful and can hold us back.

But sometimes, just maybe, it’s okay to look back. Because, sometimes, just maybe, looking back helps us see something beautiful that we didn’t know was there waiting to peak above the horizon.

The rabbit in the moon is very clear tonight.

Thank you, God, for its beauty. And thank you for the reminder of your presence tonight…and every night. Amen.

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Moonrise (by D.H. Lawrence)
And who has seen the moon, who has not seen
Her rise from out the chamber of the deep,
Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber
Of finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throw
Confession of delight upon the wave,
Littering the waves with her own superscription
Of bliss, till all her lambent beauty shakes towards us
Spread out and known at last, and we are sure
That beauty is a thing beyond the grave,
That perfect, bright experience never falls
To nothingness, and time will dim the moon
Sooner than our full consummation here
In this odd life will tarnish or pass away.

Introducing Oskaretta (and Lu and Iggy)

A few months before working on summer camp staff for the first time, my brother helped me purchase my first guitar. I figured that guitar playing would be a good skill to have. That first guitar was a simple Oscar Schmidt starter guitar, acoustic, darkish brown wood. His name was Oskar. My brother taught me my first basic chords on Oskar. I completed four years of summer missions and two years of teaching with Oskar. I recorded my first CD with Oskar and he took center stage on that CD cover. Then Oskar was stolen was from my classroom, and I was very sad.

…

A few weeks ago, I went to one of my student’s music recitals. She played piano. Her sister played guitar and violin (on different songs of course). I was very impressed by the recital and I was equally intrigued by the guitars that the music teacher had suggested for her students. After playing one of the guitars, I decided that it might be good to purchase one to keep in my classroom. In the process of searching for a very specific guitar, I stumbled upon a beautiful Oscar Schmidt guitar that I had to make myself not buy simply for nostalgic purposes.

…

Yesterday, I went to my favorite little local music store. After piddling around for a little while, talking to the store owner, and playing the two nicest guitars in the room, I looked up and saw another guitar that I thought was pretty. [Yes. I know. Pretty isn’t necessarily the most important thing about a guitar!] When I asked about the guitar, the owner said, “Oh. That’s nothing much. Just an Oscar Schmidt that someone traded in.” I said, “Really?! An Oscar Schmidt?! That was the first guitar I bought from you! And I was just looking at another Oscar Schmidt online. Can I play this one?!” So I played it. And almost immediately both the store owner and I knew that I was leaving the store with a new guitar.

She just fit.

Her name is Oskaretta, Oskar’s daughter. She used to belong to a Woodstock attending, Harley-Davidson riding, eclectic, brilliant Catholic missionary.

Now she belongs in my musical family…with an awesome coordinating strap and capo. [While pretty isn’t necessarily the most important thing about a guitar, it is important to properly accessorize once the guitar has spoken its desire to belong to a family.]

…

So I began with an Oscar Schmidt many years and now I’m back to the same. For now.

Funny how time brings things back around.

…

Oskaretta S. Deaton: I will do my best to take care of you and to continue your original owner’s work of sharing God’s love through music. Here’s to a new, unexpected partnership that I hope benefits us both. Amen.

Another Bullet Lesson

Bullet is snoring beside me.
I tried to take him home about 30 minutes ago.
9pm is his curfew.
Instead, he walked me down the driveway so that he could poop right in the middle of the concrete, then he turned around and marched straight to the door and waited for me to catch up.
Until I tried to take him home, he had been sleeping in the garage.
He was pitifully and poutingly waiting on my dad to come home.
He started his day on the porch doing the same. (See picture).
My dad won’t be home for another couple of days.
I am second best. I know it.
And sitting beside this little, fat, white creature who stinks of wet, shedding hair and farts, makes me itch.
I am allergic to him.
Yet I love him.
And I choose to spend time with him.
And I feel grateful that there are people and a God who love and choose to spend time with me when I am at my worst…or my best…or my most natural…and don’t think twice about it when I make them twitch.