THANKSGIVING

Thanksgiving time once again, and I am grateful for so many things in my life! For my art journal, I was thinking of things other than the "usual" list, and came up with things like:
sunshine
friends
good books
beauty and art
music
trees
flowers
cinnamon rolls
wisdom
peace
All these things contribute to, and enrich my life in so many wonderful ways; the cinnamon rolls contributing to making my world "larger." Years ago, a very good friend of mine wrote this poem that I continue to love, and read each Thanksgiving. I would like to share it. She wrote one every Thanksgiving, and this was her poem for 1998. She is now gone, but her poems and spirit live on in me.

THANKSGIVING, 1998
I fold my hands
I bow my head
Over my plate,
my daily bread
That God from whom
each blessing flows
Put there beneath my appreciative nose
And then I close my roving eyes
And thank Him for each day's
routine or rare surprise
I offer up a grateful prayer
For all His nurture, loving care
For family, and sharing friends
For helping me meet the
stretched-apart "ends."
For Church
and fellow pilgrims on the way
With whom to speak and think and pray
I thank Him for the shadows
and the colors
Of the tapestry of living;
Sight and sound, kaleidoscopic
reasons for Thanksgiving
But most of all, I thank Him
all other things apart
For the gift throughout my
lengthening life
Of a year 'round grateful heart.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!

I am enjoying creating an Art Joural, and this is one of my entries. I will post additonal ones soon. This is a very fun activity, and I am including some of my poetry, and some of my favorite sayings....Stay tuned. Also, I am doing book reviews for the Internet Art Joural at Escapeintolife.com I have just submitted my latest one; check it out under Writers, and then scroll down to my picture.

ART JOURNAL

Click on 2009 (60) in colume on left to see others

I am very excited about my new project: ART JOURNALING. A friend suggested that I try this as I love both writing and art. Here are some of my first attempts as I fill up my first Art Journal. I am using a lot of my poems, and finding art work to illustrate them. I also include some famous poems, and pithy thoughts. I am having lots of fun with it! Here are a few samples.

It has been too long since my last post; that is for sure. But, have you ever had the universe collide in your life, in such a way, that you did not see it coming; did not deserve it, and basically were blindsided and thrown under the bus without cause. Well, I believe this happens sometimes in life, and it happened to me several weeks ago. And, without going into details, I have had to spend an exasperating amount of time trying to unravel a difficult situation. So, my energy has been elsewhere, but hopefully this will be resolved this week, and I can, once again, go on with my life with the demonstrated integrity I have always had. Sometimes, other people in life, who know absolutly nothing about you, try to define you, and you find yourself having to defend yourself to people who do not have the honesty, integrity or professionalism that you have. And suddenly you are in a royal battle with "the know-nothings" and you don't even know how you got there, just that perhaps someone needed a scapegoat or someone to blame...and you were in their sights. Anyway, safice it to say that I am still sleeping at night, can hold my head high, and have had the courage to speak up and speak out about something that was and is clearly wrong. I know that anyone reading this may be curious for details, but I shall not be able to share them here. What I can share is a poem that my sister, Maureen Conlan wrote years ago about Courage which applied then and applies today. Thank you Maureen.

WOMAN OF COURAGE 4-5-92

You who have courage for others,
be courageous for your own life.
You who birth babies and bury parents,
have courage to embrace your own joy.
Look inside---
You are already courageous
Think of the times you were crushed by sadness
thought you could not live
And then rose to comfort others.
You who listen to your friends' most awful
secrets and love them no matter what
Find courage to love the dark cornors
of your own heart.
Think of the times you felt unloved, shamed,
humiliated; soul and body battered
And yet, got up the next morning,
Put one foot in front of the other
and marched into a new day.
I sing for your courage
It is nothing this poem can confer
You have it already; a legacy from
every moment of your life
And the lives of those before you
that has led to this one
Think of the courage it has taken to live
with your lonliness
Consider small acts of courage
when you were in physical pain and you went to work
or cooked dinner for your family.
Times you were so afraid you were sick to your stomach
and still you did what had to be done.
The simple courage
to live as a woman in this world.
Think of the heroic times....daring to battle
an angry god
What courage it has taken to unravel the early lies,
to speak the first secrets
trap them in a shoebox in a closet
And when they escape, as they do once in awhile
have courage to face them again and again and again.

I celebrate your courage.
Use it to rescue the radiance
at the center of your heart,
Waiting so patiently for you to shine forth.

One of my favorite web sites is: The Writers Almanac at newsletter@americanpublicmedia.org You can listen to Garrison Keillor read a poem each day, and also hear other pieces of literary news like what great literary writer and philosopher was the only person to decline the Nobel Prize in literature. (Check out the site to find the answer if interested!) Today, October 22, 2009, the author of the featured poem is Louis Jenkins who titles his poem, "The Speaker." I liked it so well that I would like to share it here on my BLOG.

The Speaker

The speaker points out that we don't really have much of a grasp of things, not only the big things, the important questions, but the small everyday things. How many steps up to your front door? What kind of tree grows in your backyard? What is the name of your district representative? What is your wife's shoe size? Can you tell me the color of your sweetheart's eyes? Do you remember where you parked the car? The evidence is overwhelming. Most of us never truly experience life. "We drift through life in a daydream, missing the true richness and joy life had to offer." When the speaker has finished we gather around to sing a few inspirational songs. You and I stand at the back of the group and hum along since we have forgotten most of the words.

Every year at this time, I cannot help but think of my best friend who is now gone. Over Halloween several years ago, I spent a week with Sara in the hospital as she went through a bone-morrow transplant. Her favorite holiday of the year was Halloween; this is one of the things I loved about her...she loved dressing up, being goofy, and laughing...often at herself. She made me laugh all the time. I love a phrase from John Updike that I lifted from one of his novels which says, "When an exhilarating personality dies, it is the live performance we remember, the unduplicated presence, the shimmer and sparkle, and poignance, perceived from however far back a seat in the audience." This is how I think about Sara, and am grateful that I had a front row seat in her life. I also like the quote by Jeanne Moreau on the death of his best friend, "It would be unbearable if memory didn't exist...I hear your laughter. I see you writing in your office, the smoke from your cigarette forcing you to blink. At will, I can spend hours with you." For me it is hearing Sara playing the piano, or the flute, or laughing. When we were at the hospital together, I wrote a poem about that time, and want to remember it here.

SCARY HALLOWEEN

Her stem cell transplant
Is on Halloween
An event she never expected
On her favorite day of the year

She dresses up anyway
As she does every year
In orange and black
With a mask
Not nearly as scary as the masks
Doctors are wearing
In the hospital

She laughs and jokes
With the nurses
To protect the frightened
Small child inside
And knits a lovely scarf
As her own harvested stem cells
Drip slowly into her veins
To give new life

She refuses to be sick
Until the end of the knitting row
Is finished
And then,
"I have to throw up,
But not until I finish this row," she says

And then she begins
The wrenching, heart-breaking sounds
Of heaving her insides up
And when she is spent
Goes on knitting to get the scarf
Done by Christmas
A scarf for her daughter

And then...
Life goes on
One minute at a time
Whether outside in sunshine
Or inside the gray walls
Of this city hospital
Sitting among
A community of patients
With sad, solemn faces
In the chemo room
Hot and stuffy
Life saving masks over their faces
And the human determination to live
The joy of Halloween
Lost on them

Here, hope is to be well by Thanksgiving
In order to give thanks
And to feel good enough for
Pumpkin Pie
And really....just not to die
Too soon, too early
Too much before their time

This is the second time
For my friend to do this
The last big effort
For life-saving energy
To pour through her veins
And take hold.

She knows what is ahead of her
And the thought makes her weak
With the memory
Of medicines that make you sick
Multi-colored ones
Like Halloween treats
And the energy that will
Drain from her body
Before the new cells begin to grow

This living hell
Even though tempory
Does not feel like temporty
It feels like a lifetime
Of misery
And it is hard to see
"the finished line."

But, she will go on
With the will to live
Second by second
Minute by minute
Hour by hour
Day by day
And week by week
Until it is done

And then
There will be new Halloweens
To celebrate
And to, once again
Dress up in costume
Not ever again
As scary as this Halloween.

Sara had several Halloweens to celebrate before her death, and I am grateful for that.

Have you ever spent the afternoon in a cemetery? This past Sunday afternoon, I did, and though it was unseasonable cold requiring hats, scarves and gloves, Mike and I took a journey into some of our richest historical past via the Evergreen Cemetery Discovery Walk. Every year for the last twenty-five years, experienced actors and actresses have dressed up in period costumes and throughout the cemetery, acted out snippets of living history. The program is called, "Voices of the Past" and this year featured Abraham Lincoln in honor of his 200th birthday. Rich, poor, famous and infamous are all buried here, and many grave sites held people who were once very closed to Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln got started in his law practice here in Bloomington, Illinois at the age of about 21 and traveled the 8th Judicial circuit which took about two months to complete. During this time, he met some of his most lasting friends; many buried here in the Evergreen Cemetery. Featured in this Discovery Walk was David Davis, lawyer & friend responsible for getting Lincoln elected to the presidency, and his wife Sara, another political friend, Jesse Fell, two civil war soldiers (one white and one black), and wife of John Loomis, Abraham Lincoln's life-long friend. Twelve characters in all rounded out the Walk and included Abraham Lincoln himself telling about some of his friends buried here. Over and over again, Lincoln was depicted as a kind and gentle man and that reminded me of my own father who was a lawyer and spent much of his life trying to better the lives of the less fortunate. They would have liked each other. The Discovery Walk through the cemetery was an eye-opener for me. I had no idea I was living amidst such profound history.