This morning I think about gratitude, attending, noticing. These things all imply a posture that leans forward, that bends towards. At the same time I am cultivating an attitude of receiving rather than taking and that implies pulling back, resting, lowering. Just trying to walk through life this week has turned into a workout. How far can I lean into something before it becomes a chase? How far do I pull back before I become absent?
This is Wednesday of Holy Week. The week starts with shouts of joy, and ends with shouts of hate. It starts with a triumphal entry and ends in a disgracing execution. How quickly things turn around completely.
Contradiction floats over everything right now. Perhaps this is always true. I wrote the poem below during a sermon one Sunday. The Bible uses metaphors and symbols to explain concepts, but sometimes the ancient agricultural symbols can get lost on a modern urban audience. This particular Sunday the sermon explained threshing, the removal of chaff, the papery and insubstantial husk, from grain. All that's important is in the grain. During threshing the seeds were shaken or beaten so as to loosen the husks, then tossed into the air. The wind carried away the chaff, the grain was caught and saved. You can imagine what we were meant to glean from the sermon. However, I found I identified more closely with chaff than grain.
I Am Chaff
I am chaff
A flibberty-gibbet
Whim-minded
Wind guided
Insubstantial
As I tumble in the eddies,
I am dancing on God’s warm sigh.
Joy.
—Michelle Winter
Perhaps stepping forward and stepping back can become dancing. Perhaps shouting emotionally can become singing. Perhaps contradiction can become poetry.