MEANWHILE
It is January. We are secure in our now.
Historical events in the “meanwhile.”
1791 – Franz Joseph Haydn first heard Handel’s oratorio, The Messiah, which influenced him in his own oratorio, The Creation. (Franz was not done yet.)
1843 – Robert Wagner premiered his opera, The Flying Dutchman.
1896 – Puccini premiered his opera, La Boheme.
1759 – Robert Burns was born in Scotland.
1963 – Robert Frost died in Boston
1915 – Thomas Merton was born
1971 – Astronauts blasted off for the moon.
2015 – The Reverend Doctor Claude Stewart died on a North Carolina mountain as the sun broke through clouds.
These are all “Meanwhile” events. Meanwhile composers, writers, scientists and priests continued to inspire. None of them, not even Frost who died, were done yet. Doctor Claude is not done yet. I am here writing about him.
There are times when grief puts words in my mouth. This is one of those times. What I learned from my friend, Claude, is that every person is worthy of attention and love. Claude had clarity of vision, a listening heart, and compassion.
When angels walk near us we recognize their gifts to the world. They drop in and slide off. Claude was a cowboy angel. He drove an old pick up truck, kept goats and dogs, and wore cowboy shirts under his cassock.
William Stafford has a poem about the sweetness of the Now.
A Valley Like This
Sometimes you look at an empty valley like this,
and suddenly the air is filled with snow.
That is the way the whole world happened –
there was nothing, and then . . .
But maybe some time you will look out and even
the mountains are gone, the world become nothing
again. What can a person do to help
bring back the world?
We have to watch it and then look at each other.
Together we hold it close and carefully
save it, like a bubble that can disappear
if we don’t watch out.
Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world.
Hold out your hands to it. When mornings and evenings
roll along, watch how they open and close, now they
invite you to the long party that your life is.
by William Stafford
Next Lisel Mueller writes about her mother’s death in a poem titled When I am Asked.
When I am Asked
When I am asked
how I began writing poems,
I talk about the indifference of nature.
It was soon after my mother died,
a brilliant June day,
everything blooming.
I sat on a gray stone bench
in a lovingly planted garden,
but the day lilies were as deaf
as the ears of drunken sleepers
and the roses curved inward.
Nothing was black or broken
and not a leaf fell
and the sun blared endless commercials
for summer holidays.
I sat on a gray stone bench
‘ringed with the ingenue faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only that that would grieve with me.
This poem gives me courage to write about personal griefs. This poem helps me put grief on the page.
I want to give Wendell Berry his say. This poem reminds me of Claude. He and Wendell would have been great friends.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
I don’t deserve the privilege of setting a title for this writing from Ecclesiastes, but I am gonna’ do it!
MEANWHILE
The Season of Now
To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under the sun:
A time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance . . .
a time to embrace and a time to
refrain from embracing;
a time to lose and a time to seek . . .
a time to rend and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.
In memory of the Rev. Dr. Claude Stewart, interim pastor at Calvary Episcopal Church, Fletcher, NC.
With gratitude for being in your presence, Carol Pearce Bjorlie