Hooked on the Slow fix

Existential Breakfast and the rewilding of a disillusioned soul...

Just a reminder, I am not AI, sometimes I am barely HI, but these words-warts and all-are crafted by hand.

TTV image of new daffodil sprouts taken this spring using and old brownie camera and a cell phone camera. (©Susan Mulder 2024)

How many times have I come here to write leaving nothing behind but a title to populate my drafts list? More and more I am spending less and less time online, in social spaces, checking my email…choosing instead to scribble away in my journal, talk to the birds, seek out the faces of ones I love in person or on facetime-even zoom (gasp)-I’ll take whatever I can when I can. I have spent whole days lately lost in the idea of prayer, of seeking and discerning whether or not I should apply for a sacred writing cohort at the local seminary—today I have discerned not, yesterday I discerned yes, the day before it was no then yes. I don’t know. The deadline quickly approaches and the best I can do is pray. Which is the best I can do for most things. About the only thing I can be sure of is my determination to slow down consumption of all the things. Social media, endless news resources, streaming anything, binge watching…I think I have reached a sort of tipping point, a neo-luddite-ism longing for more of less.

I don’t want to know less, or feel less-in fact the opposite is what I am after. I want to want less, to pry the fingers of desire off my psyche. To scrape influence off, right down to the bone of simplicity, and reconnect with desire of a more basic ilk. So many of the prayers I make, of late, feel like lament. Perhaps it is all lament, these prayers, this crooked thing called desire that pulls and tugs for our attention. We see what we don’t have, what we long to be, silently wailing and moaning what we aren’t, fomenting a disheartened comparison of self against curated other. What if some days we are meant to sit with a pounding head, and aching, aging bones, blurred vision and a tired soul to eat a simple roll (why, oh why does it have to be gluten free) ((see, desire?)) with plain butter and strawberry preserves from 2022?

Is it so wrong to sit wearing an old sweatshirt over a ratty nightgown, feet dirtied from walking the morning garden while the dew is still fresh, the light still dim, to whisper thank you. Is it still prayer to touch each leaf and bud and think of a new little one in a hospital somewhere with bright lights and beeping machines, or of a friend in pain with a new diagnosis? Can prayer feel like allowing my heart to search out the God pulse in newly sprouted nasturtium stems, to anoint the morning-and my forehead-with dew gathered in Colocasia Esculenta leaves. Should I look away from the Passion Flower vine, whose name is too modest, because it gives me pause to consider what real passion is?

There is grass sprouting to seed in the Hosta border that polite society would tsk and shake their head at, but I see that sway of inflorescence-with a single mayfly drifting in tandem- and find an invitation to peace there. Not so for the disgruntled hummingbird with it’s “chchchchchchch” chiding me as he, or she, streaks an aggressive fly by to let me know I’ve let the feeder go dry. “Check the other one” I say out loud. “My coffee’s gone cold and I must pray” my closing statement.

I wonder, does the red headed wood pecker pray with his beak as he searches out insects? Is his laughter proof of his gratitude? Are bowing leaves, and rosebuds, and iris, and ferns, and birdsong, and cicada, and lily, and wind, and rocksong, and grass, and bear scat, and deer, and pesky chipmunk all part of a wild percussive symphony of glory? One that plays in spite of our interfering, our un-learning of all the lessons there, our incessant need for progress, our desire for more, and more, of different, or of the same? I can’t answer that. I can only, in this moment, listen to the old crow call, feel cool air on my skin, lick the last of the jam from a finger, and allow God to read the pages of my heart trusting, as he runs his fingers along the words, he is able to find hope amongst the ache, belief amid the rubble, then breathe His answers on the wind.

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I normally share poetry on The Writist, the paid subscriber stack where I share my creative endeavors. Today I thought I’d share one here, fresh off the pencil-rough around the edges, but mostly whole. It’s called Deconstructing an Orchid , what it’s about I’ll leave you to decide…

It is a violence, necessary,
A salvation of sorts,
When I take the sharpened blade,
Excising root, after root
Blackened with rot,
Reeking of decay.

Severing all but a few 
Plump green shoots
Snaking out from the body,
Staying mindful,
Not to damage the eyes,
The precious eyes, so this once beautiful thing,
May see what comes next.

When I upend its arca praetoria 
Packed tightly with musty
Soil, fouled by too much of a good thing,
And not enough of what was needed,
It crumbles in fits
And starts, then altogether in a fetid
Heap, there in the basin, layed bare, 
the emptied bits and pieces, once rich,
Now rotted, an embarrassment of neglect to be borne away, 
                  --returned to ground, banished.

There is a great care needed, 
To wash,
To prepare, 
Both vessel and stem,
To nurture and repair,
                  --Find the right soil
To wait.

Will the eyes remain healthy?
Roots regrow?
Nodes flesh out with promise?
With so much lost,
In the losing,
Will life be found?

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Until the next existential breakfast (-maybe this sub should be renamed this?)

Enjoy your June,

Susan