FIREWORKS AND STATUES
"Blessed be God who comforts us in all our trials (2 Corinthians 1:3, 4, Night Prayer, p1041, Liturgy of the Hours). Canada Day 2021 has come and gone. Thanks to the families in my Scarborough neighbourhood there were fireworks last night. From my balcony I saw several backyard twilight
fireworks displays. It was not the spectacular, professional Harbourfront displays of the past, it was a different kind of better.
Next. Last night I also discovered the Irish poet and philosopher David Whyte. How did I not know of him? The gift of God's timing. I was relieved and delighted to know that David Whyte struggled with an Irish statue too (like I struggled with a statue of a starving pregnant Irish woman at Harbourfront). Whyte kept returning to his statue until she revealed what she had to say to him in a poem. We'll see what happens for me by the end of this post. I will put a link for the David Whyte talk at the end of this post.
Continuing. According to Whyte, and I'm paraphrasing here, the poet's job is: "To stand in front of what they're looking at! To understand it. Then say something about it."
But LORD, I am too tired to make a new poem. I can't write the poem I would want to write to do my statue justice. I'm out of steam. It's beyond my strength and above my pay-grade to stand in front of the statue of that pregnant Irish woman until I understand. Until I can say something about it. I'm sorry.
Then I heard the Lord speak to my heart, "daughter, you don't need to re-invent the wheel--this ones already written in the Psalms. Go find it!" I will carry your Irish past .
