Watercolor

I drag this line, that line across the boundaries
of shape emerging from the brushstroke of learning
to be open, and awakened, and new.
Sharp, dark edge - I want definition, for once,
a harsh divide, a beginning and end,
somewhere to stand and assert, "I know what I am."

But color doesn't move like that, he says,
only the thought patterns of the mental plane,
or the unnatural paths people have carved
into the sides of perfect hills,
or anything we suppose we can control.

At times, I see the world as a contrast between
the linear vision of all the ideas humanity has collected
in the vast, expansive plane of consciousness
that, nevertheless, has its limits,

and all we can never understand, hidden between
lines that never travel in any unwinding way,
but flow in and out of Being and Nothingness
and lead us to a path that pulls us farther and farther
away from our Selves, into the heart of Everything.

In this way, each movement is a poem.
Each hue is a song.
Each dip into water
becomes a drink of release.
Each touch of brush to paper
asks less and less of me,
and more and more of something greater.
Maybe the colors of my heart will always bleed
into everything, will always seep outward
to touch the edges, will absorb
the rainbow of the immensity
I artlessly embrace.

Perhaps this is how we learn
to dance in liminal space.
This is how one might, without trying,
find veridian green in a sunset
and magenta in her heart.
This is how, within and without,
the Dark makes the Light.

At Home

This article was written in May 2011. Although I no longer work at CrossRoads Ministry, I am still connected to the work facilitated there. I am also still connected to my friends at St. Vincent de Paul.


I stand in a line of huddled bodies, taking in sights and smells that have become familiar. I catch the eye of a stranger or two and smile – “How are you?” I ask. “Hello.” The chatter of friends murmurs amidst the clang of pots and pans from the kitchen. I scan the rafters, the stained glass windows, the tables with vases of bright flowers. We fall silent and remove our hats as a prayer is offered, blessing the food we are about to share, and declare “Amen!” together as the line begins to slowly file along. Those who have come to eat – old and young people of all shapes and colors and creeds – resume their talk and make their way through the lunch bar. I find an ease in this space. I am at St. Vincent de Paul’s Open Hand Kitchen. Here, once again, I know I will find good food that nourishes me and good friends who enrich my spirit. Here, I will break bread with strangers and friends…and, more often than not, I will break open my heart in profound ways. Here, I will discover people who are on a journey, who I can connect with and learn from. Here, I find wondrous paradox in the faces and stories of those I meet. Here, I have found a home.

I remember when I first came to eat lunch here at the Open Hand Kitchen, when I felt apprehensive and unsure walking into a soup kitchen to eat a meal with strangers. Such apprehensions are now far, far gone. I search the tables for an empty seat, shouldering my backpack and carrying a tray loaded with lunch. As I settle into a seat across from a new face, it feels like second nature to strike up a conversation, always of mundane beginnings – “Hi, I’m Mandy. How is your day? My, it sure is cold!” – that oftentimes flows to remarkable revelations.

It was on a retreat at CrossRoads Minstry, an outreach of St. William church, that I was first invited to spend time with the folks at St. Vincent de Paul. As a sophomore in high school, the thought of knowingly entering into the company of someone who might be homeless was foreign, and the idea of initiating a conversation with that person went against every notion of “common sense,” caution and culture. It was acceptable to volunteer, serving food to those lining up for a meal; my Catholic upbringing invited such “compassion.” Didn’t Jesus say to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty? At the time, I was more than secure with charity. I didn’t mind reaching out with plastic-gloved hands and a ladle, comforted by the barrier between me and “them,” sharing a smile, passing a tray and moving on to the next person in line. But walking down the street, I avoided the eyes of people who might ask me for some spare change. My life connected to theirs only to the extent that I was present to serve them. Otherwise, I would rather be safe than sorry. If I offered an opening, who knew what might be at risk.

What I found the summer of 2004 opened my eyes wide and shattered my selfish complacency. In a few short days of playing, laughing, sharing and loving, my life was utterly transformed. In the men at St. Vincent de Paul, I found true friends. I found vibrant human beings with complex stories, with families and hopes and struggles and fears. I met people who opened their lives and welcomed me when I felt most isolated and afraid. I found companions who cared about my life, who felt gifted by my mere presence, with whom I loved to spend time. The veil of dissimilarity slowly lifted, and instead of feeling anxious, I grew more excited each day as I walked up the steps to the metal cafeteria doors. I looked forward to seeing my friends again, people who the world labeled “homeless,” but who I now saw as much, much more. As I hugged Ricky and laughed with Russell, I finally understood how self-centered I had been to exclude these precious people from my life, and how desperately I needed them. In trying to live a safe and careful life, I had in fact been leading one of great harm, both to myself and others. These men revealed the deep, divine truth: that I was the one who was hungry for community and thirsty for connection, and they were the ones serving me. While it is holy, necessary work to attend to the needs of others, I had been missing the root: We are profoundly connected.  They didn’t need me to serve them lunch and then forget their faces; it wouldn’t help to pass them some money and move on; their lives would not be helped by my shallow, distant pity. These friends needed me to care, really care for them. And I needed to look into their eyes and see my self reflected in their being. I needed to wade in the depths of their stories to behold the God-light blazing at the core of their hearts. I needed to hear their songs of pain, of friendship, of failure, of love, because they are the same songs I am singing. I needed them to remind me that my life could so easily reflect theirs on the surface, and that although they look dissimilar, our life-threads are woven into the same tapestry, overlapping to form an image incomplete without one another.

If we take some time to discover it, our paths as human beings intersect in profound and remarkable ways. Mother Theresa said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” These magnificent men reminded me what we all so desperately need, and humbly showed me, in precious moments of care, how a world of peace can look.

Seven years later, I now work at CrossRoads Ministry and am privileged to bring retreat groups of high schoolers through the doors of the Open Hand Kitchen. I offer them the invitation I was offered those years ago: to have a conversation, and perhaps a radical conversion of heart. In these short visits throughout the year, I continue to find new friends and visit with old. I’ve met people who are urban and rural; those with Master’s degrees and those who only completed grade school; people who have owned restaurants and have driven trucks cross-country; those who fell on hard times and those who were born with mental illness; young people, old people, veterans, brothers, fathers, grandpas, professionals, students, addicts, musicians, extraverts, introverts, sports fans, men of faith…in short, I have met human beings. All come hungry to share a meal. Some stay for a while and move on to the next phase of their life journey; some continue to come back again and again. I keep coming back, too. In conversations with these homeless men, I know I will find refuge in our common struggles, needs, and dreams. In relationships with men who have no shelter to call their own, I find a safe haven for altering my life for the better. For me, St. Vincent de Paul offers sanctuary from a world that screams praises of division, of separateness, of self-centeredness, of complacency. These men are my teachers, and in each encounter, I learn a little more about what it means to love. They continue to make me kinder, more open, more compassionate, and ever more in awe of the profound responsibility we have to care deeply for one another.

As I look around the dining room, I see how a world of peace can be: a world much like this holy space, one in which even the most unlikely people sit at tables together, well-fed and cared-for, reminding each other of who we really are, and who we are meant to be. Here, I am at home.

The Wisdom of Trees

Old, lovely trees, how I long to climb the long, dark ladders of your branches to the sky!
Let me dangle from the tip of a twig, grasp the twisted bark, stand on a breeze, feel the heavenly pull.
How I would yearn to let go, and fall in an expansive second into the wondrous blue veil.
I could fall forever through an ocean of air to sparkling black wonder,
wrapped in the glittering firmament of stars.
I could feel the eternity of a moment, like waves in each palm of my hand.
I could see in all directions the touching ends of spacetime, curved like cosmic seashell.
I could ride the dark tide of matter that ever tends to always.
I could learn to breathe in emptiness, drink cold refreshment, eat the nourishment of light.

But I look again more closely, careful trees, and I see your extension in another dimension.
Plunging the depths of warm dark, your roots thrust down into soft soil and muted tones of solidity.
The hairs of your underground organs vibrate with the resonance of planet and potential.
You taste salt's fire, finger crystals' magic, soak in waters' memory, carve defined spaces in clay.
You touch the pulse of Earth with rough hands of kind gentility.
You mark the rhythm of aeons with displays of beauty and new rings of growth.
You know how to be still, and to hold the cosmos from a fixed, constant place.
You are perfectly filled by the richness of where you are.

Which way do you really reach, ancient ones?

I am suspended between terra firma and an ephemeral eternity.
I walk by, in awe of the wisdom of trees.
Grateful for gravity, I take another step, then another.

Dust and Light

This post was written a couple of months ago, but it fits my current mood perfectly.

Dust and Light
or November 12, 2012

Today, yellow and gray.

Yellow leaves floating down to stick to
Gray pavement wet with cold morning rain,
     gray as it falls and clouds the yellow sun.
Yellow lines bright on the road to work,
     yellow letters - HEINE BROTHERS COFFEE -
          gray warm soy mocha latte under foam.

Yellow: seeing my father yesterday, broken foot on the mend.
Gray: when he spoke of his fraternity brother, newly dead,
     killed by a suicide no one could have predicted.
Yellow and gray: imagining Dad singing
     "Rainy Days and Mondays" by the Carpenters
          on this kind of day.

Gray mood that settles over R when he's
     tired, stressed, overwhelmed, distant, so
          removed, unavailable, gone...but
Yellow light he shone this weekend, happy to
     see friends, happy to live life,
          happy to be with me.

Gray - the space between pure dark [matter] and pure
     light of suns the size of billions of Earths,
Yellow - light of suns the size of billions of Earths
     that touches the edge of pure dark.

Yellow and gray, the knowledge that
     this is perhaps my only life to live
     (although I doubt this more each day as I redefine each moment "I," "life" and "to live");
          this is a miniscule point in time at the
               dawn of humankind;
     this Earth, if we don't kill it first, will die
          from maybe a meteor or a galaxy collision or a
               supergiant Sun that grows and eats planets
                    and it will happen within a couple billion years;
     this world contains as much mystery as the entire cosmos
          and we know it is precious, and we don't remember.

But at some point in time, all our atoms will no longer be ours;
     they will be part of a beautiful supernova
          nestled in the galaxy created by Milky Way and Andromeda,
               and we will inevitably be perfectly what we strive for now:
                    ego-less, equal, perfect love,
                         suspended in a swirl of gray and yellow
                              dust and light.

This Body

In which body do I know you?
Is it the body of a thousand
lifetimes, the way I know you in every
color and form,
all particles and waves of your presence,
each scent that drifts from a distant
past and future
that rushes in the now?

Is it the body of feeling
like I have sung your song in the depths
of each ocean of pain
and ecstasy,
have touched the vibrating cords
of your extended arms that embrace,
the radiant beams of your heart?

Is it the solid body of nails
in skin, of heavy breath and the weight
of frozen light around the sun
in the center of my body
where your solid body meets
the limits of its entrance?

Is it the body of euphoric darkness,
the one from where we come, to where we return
with a primal cry, a release
of bliss, an exhale, then
silence?

Our limbs are tangled like they are all of
one body.