Praise the man

Who tucks you under

And lifts you up

And holds you:

Praise the breadth of his hands

And the length of his reach

And the width of his thighs.

Praise the way he considers

And ponders

Differently than you do.

Praise the stubble, and the strength

And the ease in which

He reads a map.

Praise the palm that leads

The small of your back

To bend somewhere new.

Praise the voice that rumbles and bellows

And whispers and sings

And speaks snare drum and dog.

Praise the power of his step

The great strides

The energy he rides.

 

Praise the sounds and the snores and

The weight of him,

The warmth and the curl in the bed.

Praise the dungeon master and designer

And the tiny statues

And the Peloton.

Praise the storyteller and the spinner,

The fire starter

And the stoker.

Praise the beard of him,

The ties of him,

The way he grills the steak.

Praise the absurdity

Of stooge and pun

And dad joke.

Praise the boy in him,

The runes and the trees

And the ill-timed loon call.

Praise the fixer

And tinkerer

And tuner.

Praise the silence of him,

The one who sees far more

Than he says.

Praise the work of him,

The airports and phone calls and

Willow pruning.

Praise him who isn’t you;

Praise him who doesn’t know the way it feels to be a woman

Who has his own way of being in the world.

Praise the man

Who loves the woman,

this foreign body full of words and hairpin turns.

Praise the man who loves her.

Praise the man

She loves.

All that cellular energy looking closely has me exhausted. Honestly could have slept ‘til noon or 4 – sinking toward nothing, peated and mossy and dark. Wrapped in black and mulishly sliding toward the day I’m reluctant to wake and see where I am; in the thick and the grey of it, in the fog of it, in the endless stratus and stretch that I can’t seem to lift my head above.

Maybe I’ll start with vanilla, and nutmeg, and butter, to remember the sweet clarity of the now. The smell of coffee! The tactile presence of the dog! Steam, and soap, and scrub! But a walk dampens any effort; the dead lilacs, the goose shit, the green thick clog of algae on the pond. I’m dragged back under where love is flat and mute.

 

Flat, and mute, and faithless. I become spiritually numb when left too long to my own complicated thoughts, when left to study all the objects in my way. I tend to think of spirituality as an outward orientation — toward something greater than all this grey matter, just on the other side of that bank of endless cloud. But does that mean something would have to change out there, to usher faith back home – like, the sky opens, and the sun illuminates the geraniums?

When it doesn’t change, then what? What is the pathway outward, beyond the grey matter, beyond the bank? Am I doomed to constant circumstance?

Faith can help, but what about this goose-shitted day? Because while faith is not situational, it does require some action. It’s like going to the gym – motivation arrives once you begin – not before. And whatever that path is up and out, whatever will start that conversation, it starts under your goose-shitted feet. Overtime, we build little structures, like bridges, to find our way; A potter’s wheel, church, a hike in the woods; to find our way out, we can always return to the pathways of creation. Overtime, faith has empirical evidence. We’ve found illumination before – the sun always returns.

But still, left too long under the weight of my own heavy thoughts, left too long under the gloom of a shitty spring, I’m paralyzed. And in passivity, I lose all sense of direction. I lose all my senses. I doubt the return, and I curse the circumstance.  And any conversation I have ends in a plea without promise; a prayer without faith. Spirituality, vitality, creativity is somewhere other than here – where geese only fly and clouds are cumulous.

In a fog, I can’t even see my feet, never mind find the structures I once built. But I’m reminded of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer said before he died in prison, “Before God, and without God, we stand with God” – and while he used a capital G, I quite agree.  When vanilla and butter don’t lift you, ask what will. And ask again, and again, and again. The question invites the answer to reveal itself; and beneath your feet, in the mulish grey of the day, faith finds a way.