Diane Morrow

All Shall be Well?

Posted by Diane Morrow on July 17, 2012 in Blog, Healing Grief, Healing Poetry

For some reason a couple weeks ago, I found myself looking for the quote by Julian of Norwich about all being well. I found this: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well which T.S. Eliot then included in the fourth quartet of his Four Quartets: And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well And I also found, unexpectedly, this song, which I quite like, by a young man by the name of Gabe Dixon. The song is called, “All Will Be Well.” ____________________________________________________________________ The photo at the top of this post is from Wikipedia. Julian of Norwich was a Christian mystic in the fourteenth century who is described as an anchoress. I had to look up the term and discovered it’s the female form of the term anchorite and refers to a kind of Christian hermit who devotes their life to prayer. Anchoresses lived in simple cells or anchorholds built against the walls of a church. The photo is of one such cell or anchorhold. She lived during a time of plagues. It’s possible (history about her is sketchy) that she could have become an anchoress after losing her husband and/or children. Or it’s speculated she may have become an anchoress to become quarantined. In any case, it does place her famous quote in an interesting context. Plagues were spreading and encroaching all around her and she was writing that all shall be well. Denial? Insanity? Radical...

Figuring Out the Good Part

Posted by Diane Morrow on July 10, 2012 in Blog

Talking to Grief by Denise Levertov

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 18, 2012 in Blog, Healing Poetry

The title for the chapter, “Making a Place for Grief,” was inspired by and begins with an excerpt from “Talking to Grief” by Denise Levertov: You long for your real place to be readied before winter comes. You need your name, your collar and tag. You need the right to warn off intruders, to consider my house your own and me your person and yourself my own dog. I think there’s a kind of brilliance in this poem, that resonates with so much that I understand about imagery and the way it can help us move through the more difficult passages of our lives. This notion here of imagining grief as a dog. And then taking that next step–speaking to him or her directly. Offering to make her a real place. A home. The chapter begins with her poem and ends then with what seems to me a kind of mirror image: this excerpt from Rumi’s poem, The Guest House, that has become, I suppose, a kind of theme song here: This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. This is a kind of goal I’m setting for myself this summer–to become, as much as I’m able, a guest house in this way. To welcome what arrives. I remember the poem sometimes when I’m sweeping my steps and patio in the morning. I remember the way a thought or an emotion–or a wave of emotion–or a person–a snatch of conversation–the line of a poem–or a song–any one of these could come and sweep us clean–prepare us for the next thing. May your summer be a guest house in the best possible way–or perhaps a broom–preparing you for the next thing. ____________________________________________________ Graphic is from Visual...

When I Am Asked by Lisel Mueller

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 11, 2012 in Blog, Healing Grief, Healing Poetry

I’m not at all sure that June is the right time for grief. But I’m in the process of revising my book, and that’s what I’ve been working on these last couple weeks. It’s interesting. I’ve tended, for a variety of reasons, to look at grief more in November—that’s when I tend to hear and feel most the voices of grief—and to feel a resonance between those voices and the waning light. Now, in a sense, I feel as if I’ve been looking at grief out of season. We’ve also had an especially mild summer so far, with cool, fresh mornings, the windows open, the kind of air that makes me want to be out of doors, walking, and out working in the yard and garden. I’ve been finding a rhythm of writing and then working outside. I’ve cleared and swept the patio and some of the flower beds. I’ve transplanted purple salvia—and dug up an enormous fern for a pot on the patio. I’ve gotten water back into the birdbath and the birds have been coming for drinks. A hummingbird has found the purple salvia. The voices of grief in a new place—a greener, flowering place—with a hummingbird. There’s a poem by Lisel Mueller that speaks to this contrast—the contrast of grief and summer. It begins this way: When I am asked how I began writing poems, I talk about the indifference of nature. It was soon after my mother died, a brilliant June day, everything blooming. I sat on a gray stone bench in a lovingly planted garden, but the day lilies were as deaf as the ears of drunken sleepers and the roses curved inward. Nothing was black or broken and not a leaf fell and the sun blared endless commercials for summer holidays. I can see this—I can see how summer could seem indifferent to difficult feelings and difficult experiences. In her case this itself becomes a catalyst for writing. The poem continues: I sat on a gray stone bench ringed with the ingenue faces of pink and white impatiens and placed my grief in the mouth of language, the only thing that would grieve with me. Placing grief in the mouth of language. This seems important—and wonderful. I can also see how these kind of days—these cool, fresh mornings—could have the potential to offer a kind of balm for grief—as if one were allowing the voice of grief to emerge for a time in a new location—a kind of healing place. With the possibility of finding language there too—in the cool, wet green of summer mornings. ___________________________________ Photo from my patio...

The Buddha’s Last Instruction by Mary Oliver

Posted by Diane Morrow on May 15, 2012 in Blog, Healing Poetry, Month 13

During a bittersweet week of graduations, watching a whole flock of students move on, my heart full with their moving, I keep coming back to this poem. Now, only this morning, does it occur to me that the poem describes a kind of graduation speech–a person, in this case Siddhartha Gautama, trying to condense what he learned into a few words. The poem begins this way: “Make of yourself a light,” said the Buddha, before he died. 5 words. Make of yourself a light. The speaker of Mary Oliver’s poem connects this instruction to the rising of the sun itself. I think of this every morning as the east begins to tear off its many clouds of darkness, to send up the first signal—a white fan streaked with pink and violet, even green. I find myself, this morning, the sun already risen, connecting the Buddha’s instructions to tangible light outside my windows, light glowing in the green leaves, and, beyond these trees, I feel the instructions connected to what I see in my mind–a gaggle of students in graduation robes–the light I have seen shine from and among them these last three years that I’ve been with them. The confidence I feel that they will carry this light forward. The sense I have–something a little more than hope–that this extension and expansion of light does not diminish me–their leaving–but somehow extends and expands all of us. A sense I used to have years back when patients graduated from seeing me. A sense I’ve felt at different moments as my own children grow up and away. He might have said anything, Mary Oliver writes. What he said were those 5 words: Make of yourself a light. The speaker of the poem watches and feels the sun blaze over the hills and it’s as if she feels the words themselves in that light I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value. As if following this instruction could matter? As if following it could make a difference? He could have said anything. he raised his head. He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd. The poem ends on that last line, the pause before the last instructions. And I love that Oliver considers that the crowd was frightened. Transitions always seem to hold that kernel of fear–change is occurring. Nothing’s going to be exactly the way it was before. In this case, a person they loved and looked toward was leaving. What would he tell them? What could he tell them? They must have held their breaths, waiting. And then, after he finally spoke, the words must have echoed inside their heads–and hearts–for the rest of their lives. Oliver, I suspect, intends the words to echo for us as well, at least for a time. She’s constructed her poem, it seems, with that intent. She doesn’t repeat the instructions at the end of the poem. It’s the dropped beat that we inevitably must fill. He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd. A pause. And then he spoke. _______________________________________ See also: A piece on November Angels by Jane Hirshfield...

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