poem

I adore Rebecca Reynold's poetry and writing at her blog "Thistle and Toad." She also writes for The Rabbit Room 
and The Story Warren. 

Her oldest went to college and as you know my youngest went to college. 
She has poetry oozing  and I imagine her brain to be full of images and words  every morning. 
Here is her latest poem and you must  listen here. 

I have listened about a dozen times. I love her voice and the way she knows how to say what the poem says.  Her heart is overflowing. My tears did. 

"Grace is Gossamer"

 

I used to whisper in my oldest son's ear at night,

"Love Jesus," and now I wish I hadn't done that

because it's a weighty thing to say;

it's too weighty.

 

It's the weight of a first born mother telling her firstborn son to worship, as if getting to know the Almighty were as simple to follow

as a recipe for chicken noodle soup.

 

Two teaspoons of unsalted butter.

Three stalks of chopped celery.

Two diced carrots.

Make them sweat, Son, before you add the broth.

 

It can't be done that way.

 

It's not that I'm a Calvinist, see,

but I've always done wrong by trying to make

my heart the Divinity chaser,

trying to make my love worth love,

trying to slap mud on rudimentary, homemade cathedrals woven from split reeds I found in the woods.

I stay a little bit nervous

about bears.

 

And I'm not sure where that happened,

maybe in some Baptist church way back, way back,

when some preacher was telling me that I might miss out on glory.

Or maybe keeping your foot on the accelerator is just a natural casualty of being a first born of a first born.

 

But no wonder my kind has always stood out in a field sulking

while some renegade kid comes home from a party

to a party --

because my kind digs holes, digs holes, digs holes

and expects heaven to come up wherever we plant it.

 

Sins of a parent go down three generations they say.

Trauma gets in the DNA and changes a person

inside out, and probably bad theology does the same.

 

Lord, forgive me, for I tried to push the same gravity on my children

that I carried inside myself

when Your yoke is easy

and Your burden is light.

 

Grace is gossamer,

sunlight caught in a spider's web,

it is lake water thrown from the tail of a carp,

and that is so hard for me to believe, no matter what you say.

 

I wish I had taken more deep breaths,

taken more cool baths.

just reveled,

just waited,

just watched glory before trying to make anything of it at all but wonder,

just whispered, "You are loved,

and Honey, that's the sweetest thing in all the world."