Sandra Heska King

daring to open doors

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Awakening (Making Manifest: Week One)

May 8, 2014 By Sandra Heska King

Making Manifest Awakening

(Baltimore Oriole – Male)

 

Here I am.

How did I get to this place at this moment? How did I end up sitting at this cracked pine table at 5 a.m. on a May morning in 2014?

Did I choose this place?

Or did it choose me?

Did I choose to work through Dave Harrity’s Making Manifest: On Faith, Creativity, and the Kingdom at Hand?

Or did the book choose me?

Think of all the things that emerged in your experience that led you to this room–all the love and tragedy you’ve lived. Gain and loss. Peace and chaos. All of it so real and present here.

Think of all the people that once occupied this space, their lives . . .

You’re part of a history that you can never know . . .

This ground is holy . . .

The history of the present is burning all around you . . .

from Day 3, Making Manifest…

The Keurig sputters its final drips of coffee where it sits on the Hoosier cabinet that’s had a long family history. Above the kitchen sink to my right hangs a sign, like an oversized license plate, that reads, “Forestdell Farms, since 1854.” I’ve always wondered why the farm’s name is spelled with only one “R” when my husband’s grandfather spelled his with two–Forrest.

I’m in this place because my parents married and birthed me. They bought primitive log cabins nearly 200 miles away from where I sit–on a lake, on U.S. 27, the same road I’m gazing at out the window at this moment.

I’m in this place because I went to a nursing school instead of a university. And because afterwards I moved to Ann Arbor and eventually worked in a doctor’s office–where I met my husband who was a pharmaceutical representative at that time. Who’d grown up on a dairy farm.

In this place.

I’m in this place because after several moves out of state, several heartaches and joys, we returned to Michigan in a move that seemed God-ordained and God-orchestrated when we “redeemed” my husband’s childhood home, the one his parents had sold years before.

How did that happen? It wasn’t even for sale.

The house is quiet except for the flow of water in the cat’s fountain, the hum of the refrigerator, the tinkle of dog tags, and claws clicking on vinyl.

The small of my back hurts, and I hunch over like a cat, stretch it, sigh as I remind myself of my age and how I’ll one day be history. I remember that Mother’s Day is coming up, and I have not had a mother for two-and-a-half years. She was only 20 years older than I am when she died from a brain tumor.

I don’t want to die from a brain tumor.

I don’t want to die within 20 years.

I glance outside, past the bell that used to hang at the centennial house across the road–the house that’s dying. Past the birdbath and the basketball net. I “see” my inlaws’ Tow-Low trailer and the green John Deere tractor and remember how I sat in this same place 43 years ago (this month!) when Dennis brought me home for the first time, and his mother served me lunch.

In this place.

I gaze out the same windows she did.

I miss my mother-in-law.

The sign above the kitchen sink reminds me how I’m part of a history I can never know except, of course, for the stories. Yet I’ve become part of that history.

Tell about a time you felt a vivid sense of awe–when you were speechless, frozen, or dumbstruck. Remember, dig deep. And don’t necessarily go for the first thing that pops up.

From Day 4, Making Manifest . . .

The first things that pop up are the time I saw our daughter for the first time and when our adoption caseworker told me they had a baby for us, already pre-named with the only (and secret) name we’d chosen.

But then there’s an oriole with polished feathers that shimmer in the sun. He’s eating jelly from our new feeder…

“With our words,” Harrity tells us, “we bring realities into being, we track our history, we polish our present, and we carve out the direction of our future; we renew, awaken, and build toward redemption.”

“Practices of words are practices of being . . . ”

“Being is where we enter. Creating is an open door.”

Here I am.

Opening a door.

(Baltimore Oriole - Female)

(Baltimore Oriole – Female)

On Day 7, Harrity asked us to create a 10-line poem titled “Awakening,” created from words and phrases that stand out from the week’s writing.

Awakening

I remember the way you used to speak to me

in those grape jelly days by the hem of the woods

while we hunkered down in a green fern fort

or floated in a rowboat amid a horseshoe’d lake.

Still.

Then you wrapped me with a soul-safe sense of simplicity,

but now? Now I am distracted and dis-tracked by many things,

shredding  a bit around the edges like an oriole-nibbled orange half.

But here I am, awake in this one silent moment.

Speak to me the way you used to.

poppy

 

Now it’s your turn. If you’re journeying through Making Manifest this month, feel free to link up a post below. If not, maybe you’d like to share your day 7 poem in the comments.

And here’s a question for everyone: What do you like or dislike about poetry? Why? What experiences have shaped this opinion?

An InLinkz Link-up


Also linking with Jennifer and Emily


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Filed Under: Blog, Making Manifest, poetry

Comments

  1. Lynn D. Morrissey says

    May 8, 2014 at 2:36 pm

    Oh Sandy! I’ve not read much of your writing, and this is simply breathtaking! You have awakened me this day to such beauty. Thank you!
    Lynn

    • Sandra Heska King says

      May 9, 2014 at 10:57 am

      Thank you so much, Lynn.

  2. Bruce Barone says

    May 8, 2014 at 3:45 pm

    Beautiful Post. Inspiring.

    I love poetry. I have loved poetry for as long as I can remember.

    The word. The words. The essence of what is.

    Here; from one month ago:

    Royal Fireworks

    I am now writing
    About yesterday. An angel
    High up in pine tree.

    Two doves in a tree.
    A woodpecker pecking.
    Geese flying overhead.

    Playing Frisbee with my dog.
    The way my dog knows when I
    Pick up my camera we are going outside.

    Learning story of Handel’s
    Music for the Royal Fireworks.
    The music providing a background

    For the Royal Fireworks the wooden building
    Caught fire. Over twelve thousand people
    Rushed to get away. Causing a tree-hour traffic jam

    Of carriages, after the main route
    Was closed due to the collapse
    Of the central arch of the newly built London Bridge.

    I listened to the Overture
    In the car on my way
    To my physical. Stopping once

    To photograph The Lower Mill Pond
    In Easthampton, Massachusetts
    Where I once lived.

    The nurse said we now ask
    Everyone two questions.
    Do you feel depressed?

    Have you recently fallen?
    No and no. And I said
    To her I remember being

    Depressed. Still so clear.
    I was waiting in the doctor’s office
    And I picked up an magazine and wept.

    When the doctor entered the room
    I help up the magazine, Newsweek
    I think, and on the cover a photo

    Two young women. One from Palestine
    And the other from Israel. They had
    Killed each other. And there

    In the doctor’s office I wept.
    I took medicine for a few years.
    Those feelings are gone.

    I told the doctor I had been feeling
    Light-headed and that my back hurt.
    He talked to be about the foot railing

    At bars. Made to help people
    Drink longer without hurting
    Their backs. He said I should

    Try using a foot stool when cooking
    Or cleaning the dishes. Raise one leg
    For a few minutes and the the other.

    I said to him it sounds
    Like a Seinfeld joke. And I was happy
    To hear my blood pressure was down.

    Back in the car heading home
    I heard to story of The Tam O’Shanter Overture
    By Sir Malcolm Arnold; based on a famous poem

    By Robert Burns depicting
    Tam O’Shanter drunk. Leaving the pub
    Tam rides home on his horse Meg.

    A storm is brewing. He sees
    the local haunted church lit up,
    witches and warlocks dancing.

    The devil playing the bagpipes.
    Tam is still drunk, still upon his horse,
    Just on the edge of the light watching.

    Amazed to see The witches are dancing
    As the music intensifies and seeing
    A witch in a short dress

    He shouts,`Weel done, cutty-sark!’
    (cutty-sark : “short shirt”).
    The lights go out, the music

    And dancing stops and many
    Of the creatures lunge after Tam,
    With the witches leading.

    Tam spurs Meg to turn and flee
    And drives the horse on towards the River Doon
    As the creatures dare not cross a running stream.

    The creatures give chase and the witches
    Come so close to catching Tam and Meg
    That they pull Meg’s tail off just as she reaches the bridge over the Doon.

    What a story.
    What a poem.
    What great music.

    Over dinner I tell Susan
    Both stories and we talk
    Later of framing art.

    • Sandra Heska King says

      May 9, 2014 at 11:02 am

      Wow ! There’s so much in this that captures me. I smiled that your dog knows you’re going out when you pick up your camera–not a leash.

      And I never knew that about foot rails at the bar. I’m going to try a stool in my kitchen, I think.

      You’ve framed a lot of art in these words, Bruce.

      • Bruce Barone says

        May 9, 2014 at 2:28 pm

        You made me smile.

  3. HisFireFly says

    May 8, 2014 at 4:40 pm

    I have had a lifelong relationship with words
    thought I had left poetry for fiction
    but it surfaced in my prose
    flexing its muscles
    now I just allow words to have their way
    and try to not label them

    • Sandra Heska King says

      May 9, 2014 at 11:15 am

      I love poetic prose. 🙂

      I picked up “If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things” by Jon McGregor for Lauren Winner’s workshop at LL a couple years ago. It’s a novel–not Christian. But filled with beautiful writing–“a prose poem of a novel” it says on the back cover. I haven’t read it. Just picked out a passage I loved for the workshop.

      The first words:

      If you listen, you can hear it.
      The city, it sings.
      If you stand quietly, at the foot of a garden, in the middle
      of a street, on the roof of a house.
      It’s clearest at night, when the sound cuts more sharply
      across the surface of things, when the song reaches out to
      a place inside you.
      It’s a wordless song, for the most, but it’s a song all the
      same, and nobody hearing it could doubt what it sings.
      And the song sings the loudest when you pick out each
      note.

  4. Kel Rohlf says

    May 8, 2014 at 7:06 pm

    It is a joy to read these words Sandra in this place…your musings and your poem…thanks for hosting us a place to feast on words and share our writings, our musings…place for making manifest!

    • Sandra Heska King says

      May 9, 2014 at 11:17 am

      Thanks for coming on this journey, Kel. I think it’s going to change all of us.

  5. Dea says

    May 8, 2014 at 7:16 pm

    Posting my Awakening poem on a double-dog dare… 🙂 penned by a “poetry chicken.” Loved your poem, Sandy. Thankful you took your buddies up on their double-dog dare. The dare is spreading the love…

    Awakening

    The spade unearths, cuts.
    There is no healing
    without first the wound,
    no gain
    without first the coming into being,
    no end
    without first beginning.
    Tilled,
    I am the soil,
    I am the seed.
    Cover me,
    until I awaken.

    • Sandra Heska King says

      May 9, 2014 at 11:19 am

      This is absolutely stunning, Miss Poetry Chicken. Every line.
      And that last line? Just oh.

  6. Lynn D. Morrissey says

    May 8, 2014 at 8:53 pm

    I wrote this for my friend who has cancer to awaken him to hope. I purposely employed lots of lyric rhyme (which may sound over the top a bit), because it is his favorite kind of poetry.

    Hope Come Down on a Late-Winter Monday in Des Peres Park

    by Lynn D. Morrissey

    Sitting on this metal curve of bench,
    at a bend in the slate-gray lake,
    I’m suddenly awake—aware that a soundless wind
    ruffles liquescence into layered scallops,
    like feathers of a dove’s breeze-borne wing.

    As I pray for my friend L.D.’s well-being,
    I sense that Holy Spirit, Himself, a dove,
    hovers above the water with ease,
    singing on a fresh exhale of love His notes of power
    and healing hope.

    It’s not time to grope for answers to mysteries,
    rhymes, reasons, and why’s,
    to dissect seasons of life and strife for logical explanations,
    to wrestle with calculations and the wherefores of disease,
    but to look to the glorious skies, reflected in the
    wind-blown lake, to implore Heaven’s help for our sake,
    to know beyond shadows and doubts,
    that ofttimes the Dove mysteriously comes down
    unexpectedly
    to stir the waters we’re incapable of moving,
    to prove His palpable presence with exultation,
    brushing us with His wing—
    a holy kiss of elation,
    an embrace of expectation—
    to help us know that
    soundless things are audible,
    unseen things are visible,
    and miracles are undeniable.

    • Sandra Heska King says

      May 9, 2014 at 11:23 am

      Oh Lynn. I read this aloud several times. It’s so beautiful. And those last three lines… lingering there. Thank you so much for sharing it!

      • Lynn D. Morrissey says

        May 14, 2014 at 2:14 pm

        Sandy, I had not seen your comment. Thanks for your generosity. I have just learned that my friend is declining with a brain tumor and is mostly in bed now and confused. I am heartbroken, yet still not giving up hope and praying for his miracle! Your words mean a lot to me, especially in light of why I wrote this poem. Thank you!
        Lynn

        • Sandra Heska King says

          May 14, 2014 at 10:51 pm

          I assume it’s malignant? I. hate. brain cancer. I know you’re a blessing to your friend. Praying and hoping with you.

          • Lynn D. Morrissey says

            May 14, 2014 at 11:22 pm

            Yes, the same tumor as your mom. Now I know why you hate brain cancer. I am so terribly sorry about your mother. I just read what you wrote about her on today’s post, in response to me. I’m so very sorry, Sandy.
            My friend collapsed in January 2013, and this was discovered. He has been fighting so valliantly. HIs story is amazing, and he has come to the Lord. Please email me @ words@brick.net (only if you have the time), and I will tell you a bit more.
            Thanks for your compassion.
            Lynn

  7. Sharon @ Faith Hope & Cherrytea says

    May 9, 2014 at 2:40 am

    picturesque, Sandy – loved it!
    and all these responses =) soooo fun – what a blessing and encouragement to creative exploration!
    ty for initiating and hosting ;))

    • Sandra Heska King says

      May 9, 2014 at 11:24 am

      Isn’t this fun, fun, fun? I feel myself stretching, stretching…

  8. Lane says

    May 9, 2014 at 11:19 am

    Day 7

    I want
    my life
    to be a
    poem
    of
    colors vibrant
    flowers on
    spring’s cusp.
    Hope like a
    rainbow
    in misty
    waterfall.

    Instead
    broken
    shards,
    bolted
    lightening,
    dry-bone
    wilderness

    I’m
    not
    too fond
    of
    the
    current
    poem.

    • Sandra Heska King says

      May 9, 2014 at 11:36 am

      I’m so glad you posted this, Lane. So many others are in this wilderness of waiting, too–where beautiful poems are growing and sending roots deep in the dark.

  9. Carol J. Garvin says

    May 9, 2014 at 2:00 pm

    Awakening
    Stillness
    In this place
    In this moment
    Awakening
    Now

    Your whole post nourishes, Sandy. Thank you! You know I’m not fully participating in this, but after reading April’s post I went back to my own and re-ordered some of the words. When I ‘updated’ and checked the page I discovered the power of words. Some refused to be controlled. Made me laugh. 🙂

    • Sandra Heska King says

      May 17, 2014 at 12:42 pm

      I love this, Carol. Moment by moment…

  10. Martha Orlando says

    May 9, 2014 at 3:12 pm

    Both your post and poem blew me away . . . This is definitely a book I need to read.
    Blessings!

    • Sandra Heska King says

      May 17, 2014 at 12:44 pm

      Yes, you do. You’ll love it.

  11. Renee Ratcliffe says

    May 9, 2014 at 4:18 pm

    You have a beautiful site. Thankful I found it through #TellHisStory. I’m looking forward to lingering here more often! Thank you for sharing this – “Being is where we enter. Creating is an open door.”
    Gratefully,
    Renee

    • Sandra Heska King says

      May 17, 2014 at 12:46 pm

      So glad you’ve entered here, Renee. Sorry it’s taken me a few days to get back to welcome you.

  12. Shelly Miller says

    May 17, 2014 at 10:32 am

    I really wanted to join you in this series but I don’t have time unfortunately but I’m soaking in the good writing here by you and others in the comments. Love this Sandy!

    • Lynn D. Morrissey says

      May 17, 2014 at 12:19 pm

      Shelly, you always amaze me. How ever do you do all you do? Welcome back!
      Love
      Lynn
      PS All you write awakens me! =] Lov eyou!

    • Sandra Heska King says

      May 17, 2014 at 12:48 pm

      Hi there, sweet sister. I’d love to have had you join us, but I get that time thing. You know I do! xo

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A tale of two iguanas... I did not see the iguana A tale of two iguanas... I did not see the iguana in the background until I downloaded the photos. That, I believe, is the one that got caught in one of the openings in the neighbor's chain link fence. We tried in several (safe) ways to dislodge it without luck and could think of no other option but to leave it. Somehow it apparently dislodged itself. We also believe this is the pair that was getting into another neighbor's garden. We haven't seen either one since the last cold snap, so we are wondering if they survived. 
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Thinking some may have tumbled from their perches last night. Pretty sure it will be raining iguanas tonight since we are under a frost advisory. It's cold. And windy.
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Whether you work in an office, a retail store, a restaurant, or at home... Whether you work on roads or on power lines, or on high buildings...Whether you collect trash or preach sermons, or care for your kiddos. Whether you do art, or weave words, or take photos of a common gallinule AKA moorhen AKA swamp chicken--it's all shot through with poetry.
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Read more at https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/2023/01/10/its-poetry-at-work-day-2023/
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Everyone needs a little balance in life. And maybe Everyone needs a little balance in life. And maybe a beauty routine. And breakfast. Especially breakfast. I wonder if it consists of a few fire ants. I hope so. (Well, not mine. I'm having oatmeal with chia seeds. What are you having this morning?)
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"Though your destination is not yet clear You can "Though your destination is not yet clear You can trust the promise of this opening; Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning That is at one with your life's desire." ~John O'Donohue 
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A blessing for a new beginning in a new year. I'm sure he wrote it especially for me. At least I'm claiming it. Maybe it will speak to you, too.
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I've been in a long creative drought, so I started morning pages--again. This time I've got a bit of an accountability group through @refineretreat's Refinery--which I finally also joined this year. I'll turn 74 this month. I'm not ready to grow old while I age--though everything does seem to take longer while time goes by faster.
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