Tag: beauty

After the Storm

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

After the Storm

we walked with the weight of wonder

and surveyed what was left behind by the raging surge of surf, the mad sea

the aftermath and aftershocks rocked us

left us with survivor’s guilt as we exhaled deep the post-adrenalin rush of watching &

waiting is a passive active verb

records were broken, hearts too, I try not to ask why, but I do

the beauty washed up on the beach, a by-product of broken records and mega-winds

is beauty nonetheless,

trust and hope and smallness swirl in the outer bands of me, waiting for the second once 

in a lifetime megastorm of nature’s making

make a colossal mess of my emotions but I cannot complain

the eye wall of my heart says I survived and am here to walk the beach

beat to a pulp and redesigned, everything newly formed like Genesis one

beautiful, maybe more so, though battered

creation recreates and draws another line in the sand

storm metaphors march on while the meteorologists Monday morning quarterback

the healers heal, the givers give, the hopers hope, and another one or two or more are on

the way

I whisper my questions so no one can hear

Now is not a good time

to be asking questions

Now is a good time

to be living with hope

I tell myself

to wait, until after the storms

to wait under the weight of glory

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homebound: From Mersea To Maplehurst With Love, March 9

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 1 Comment

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Christie and I are homebound. I, a writer of poetry and prose, am bound to Mersea, a simple white Victorian, nestled in the historic district of a southern shrimping village. She is bound to Maplehurst, a red-brick farmhouse build by Pennsylvania Quakers in 1880. We are both writers, wives, and mothers, but nearly twenty years and hundreds of miles lie between us.

This season, as winter turns toward spring and Lent leans toward Easter, Christie and I are writing letters, she beneath the hemlocks and maples and I beneath the pines and pecans. We reflect together on our homebound journeys. We will explore the bonds of love and faithfulness that tie us, and not always easily, to these particular places and to the people sheltered within them.

Please join us for an epistolary exploration of love, loss and restoration.

Welcome to my third letter in the series. To read Christie’s previous letters and more of her beautiful words go to her web site, found here. To read all the letters in the Homebound Collection, visit the tab at the top of my home page, entitled The Homebound Letters.

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March 9, 2017

(From home after being away)

Dear Christie:

The brown leather sofa in the parlor is holding me with a familiar leather scented embrace. A cool night has left the house chilled, but I am warmed by both blanket and puppy. What an apt name my husband has given our sweet English Cocker whose name is Sweet. She chooses to stay by my side as I write, apparently my absence was noticed as she leans in especially close this sunny morning. Perhaps she missed me, as I missed all things familiar, all things home.

Christie, as you know I accompanied my friend to Boston for a trip to Mass General Hospital. We left on a Tuesday, returned on a Wednesday and I am back to my beloved writing on a Thursday. I am viewing home now with the lens of leaving. Leaving and returning bring many gifts, one is a newly framed perspective. I like the frame. It focuses me, like the European silver with a bit of patina that I chose to frame my son’s portrait here at Mersea.

Perhaps leaving reawakens all the senses and plants tiny seeds from the experiences within us. What seeds have I brought back which I will need to tend to and water? How will I grow because of where I have gone?

I imagine we are all being renewed daily. During this Lenten season perhaps I am more keenly aware of renewal. It feels more present and sacred this year. I long for it more deeply, and am even slowly chasing after it. Somehow I feel we are beginning to meet, change and I. She is gentle. And she is patient and willing to wait for me even as I must wait on the minute radish seeds in our garden to grow into edible radishes. I must wait for the natural process of seeds transforming into bulbous red radishes.

But it is worth the wait. For I will slice the radish thinly, place it on a thick slice of grain toast with avocado, arugula and fried egg like the one I sampled in Boston. And it will be good. A simple good that comes along as gift. Why is it that I want to slice the radish thinly so that it becomes translucent, nearly transparent? Are we called too to be transparent like the cut radish?

When I was in Boston, I tried to make it my temporary home. To be rooted there for but a blink. Graciously Boston gave good gifts. The signs along Charles Street provided a curated display of simple art. Each one, uniquely designed and hung with care outside of the shops spoke to pride of place. I walked at a snail’s pace along the bumpy and worn brick sidewalk, looking up and studying the design of each shop keeper’s home.

Rich conversation was a by product of this long journey for a bittersweet visit. The seventh floor of Mass General held both sorrow and joy. During one of our talks, my wise friend reminded me that joy and sorrow can and do coexist. We can celebrate the miracle, slivers and slices and servings of joy even while grief, sorrow and sadness are present. What mystery there is in celebrating what they each bring.

Flying looks like a metaphor for our lives. The experience felt new as I hadn’t flown in a long forever. I have lost my wanderlust. Maybe I have found other things to replace it and it is not therefore a true loss. My desire to go faraway anymore has been mostly snuffed out.

But this was an invitation to go. I wonder about all I would have missed if I had said no. What a place of honor to travel as a companion and co-traveler with my beloved friend on her journey. I call her teacher too. We have much to learn from each other about loss, love and restoration. Christie, oh how I am enjoying your letters! And you too are teaching me about important things.

On this micro-journey, as in life, we experienced delay, turbulence and frustration. But there was joy too in seeing the unparalleled aesthetic beauty of the clouds. Their shape, color and mysterious movements, viewed from a plane window are spectacular. Childlike wonder sat with me. I thought I knew how to press into looking up at the clouds from my earthbound, rooted place. But glimpsing the cotton white masses moving against an azure blue backdrop at eye level reminded me there are new ways to see everything.

And there was joy in being, just being with a friend and meeting kind souls along the way, such as the world’s coolest Uber driver. The news was good in Boston and so we are full of rejoicing. Is this a preview of what is to come at Easter-time?  We are moving in that direction, the place of newness. I hope I am ready and that I am changed.

Today I will go to the tiny post office here in the village to mail some thank you notes. I wish I could box up and mail you a package of springtime. It would contain color and hope, buds and seeds, pieces of me and Mersea. My hope for you is that it will not delay, this true and fully fledged spring.

In time we will both celebrate its arrival. Spring will come for all of us. Newness and change are the sweetest of gifts. I hope I unfurl my clutched fists to receive it all. And to allow the gift of change in me.

Peace and grace to you,

Elizabeth
Mersea

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What Would You Have Said

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 3 Comments

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We were four. Perhaps you could say we were three against one. (It may be clearer in a moment how we came to be divided in our perspectives.  Before they shifted, again.) Two of us knew the sunset would occur at 6:12, because we had Googled it. A third one joined us. He was no wheel. He was more than welcome on this pilgrimage.

Moments matter. Minutes count. And when you are chasing descending beauty in the sky, and especially when you are chasing the sun as it tucks itself into bed, seconds count. If you blink or turn, the sky performs without you. Nature has no pause button. No rewind.

We didn’t have to go far to watch the sun set, bleed blazing reds and break-open spilling blood orange hues onto the salty creek. Like a dropped and broken egg from my bantam hen, we expected a color explosion to be poured out. A history of admiring the day’s often dramatic curtain closing gave us something we thought we could “count on.” Who among us doesn’t love a sunset.

Three of us walked quickly down the black asphalt road to attend the performance of our favorite star, planet sun. February had just turned brisk again, after she had casually flirted with the air of spring, turning her back on warmer nights. Our speed was due in part to the fact that we were cold and in part because we love the sky when it is drenched in drama. We didn’t want to miss the spectacle.

The sky was a dull and muted mauve this night. Drama had failed to show. As there are truly no bad days when one is walking, breathing, living fully alive, there are no bad sunsets. This one was simply restrained. The sky held nothing head-turning. The beauty was to be seen only by the ones who have eyes for wonder. Who truly know how to look beyond the obvious.

What would you have said? How would you respond to the wisest man among us? The fourth one. The one who just happened to join us, as we huddled up around the chill and swarming South Carolina gnats. The man who had pedaled by us moments earlier on his bike, racing to see the sunset. A sunset that was void of flash and blinding beauty. A close of day performance which was in fact, lovely in its simple majesty.

Our collective response was just short of shame. For we had not seen what he had so clearly seen. We compared the sky to the “night before’s sky.” And concluded it was less than fabulous.

But  he had seen the unique way the light spills before dark. He had witnessed residual pale pinks and royal grays colliding in a 6:18 sky. He saw the shadows and shades and reflections that we did not see. At first. Blind us needed artist him to guide us into the beauty.

At the edge of the creek that night, he delighted in the light. Savored real beauty. And shared his perspective with the three blind us.

I reset my lens. And I silently gave thanks for the man who saw the wonder of a muted sunset; one that came and left its mark on me. One that came as Google said. At precisely 6:12 in all its quiet glory.

And taught me again how to really see. What would you have said? I am still whispering a silent “thank you.” To both of them.

 

Hitting Close To Home: Touching The Tangible

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

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A small pottery container, made by a child, sits on the robin’s egg blue kitchen counter in my home. Mersea holds memories well. In it are shards and pieces, broken and ragged. A collection is held here in this pottery mug. Primitive, grey and made from clay the earth holds pieces of the earth.

We find the shards of broken porcelain from a hundred or more years ago when we dig in the soil. We touch the past and celebrate. We share the discovery. And we go dissecting, cutting into the ground for more clues of what went before. With each uncovering we shout hallelujah.

We are amateur archaeologists uncovering that which is nearly in plain sight. We walk all over the past. Trounce by the treasures that are one shade away from being in the light. The former things and the present things are co-mingled. A story is waiting in one small yard. A beautiful story lies under my feet.

I am hungry for the tangible. I want to touch what’s real. My soul longs for tactile connection. My senses are longing for smell, the taste and the touch of smooth and rugged. I want more dirt and less plastic. More real and less virtual. I want to be awakened to lovely. Reawakened to the lovely things.

I am hunting for the faded, in the fields of memory. My sights are set on tangible beauty. I walk to the garden and smell the basil and wonder if there is anything more magnificent. I hold a warm pink egg newly laid by my bantam hen, she needs a name, I’ll call her Louise, and I am lost in wonder.

The pileated woodpecker hammers like a piece of equipment laboring under the worn and wrinkled hands of a Brooklynite in Manhattan. He is determined, loud and a noisemaker. And yet he reminds me of the concrete work of this world. The natural world, one God created and set beautifully in motion.

As I dead-head my pansies, I see life and death sitting side by side. I read the story of a woman who failed to nurture them, and they are suffering at her hands. I remedy and restore and ask forgiveness as I have not stewarded well. Like the shards, they are broken and yet given a second chance at being beautiful.

All I need to know and learn is here. The stories are endless, filed in no particular order. Each one a lesson in life and love. The space is small, tiny when place juxtaposed next to everything else. And yet this microcosmic world is full. And worth a sacred journey into the unveiling.

I am on a hunt for stories in the soil of here. I am longing to discover what is lost under the soles of the busy.

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