This morning, March appeared to be moving out like a lion rather than a lamb. As I sat drinking my coffee before heading up to my room for a day of distance learning, my greatest joy was watching my nearly seven-year-old son running around outside gathering the fallen branches and collecting any toy debris blowing across the yard. Even more wonderful, he blew about the yard in his inside-out t-shirt and pants. YES, you read that correctly: inside-out pants! I still don’t know how he kept them up.
Over the past few days as I’ve read many wonderful posts on Visionary Poems and My Pastoral Ponderings along with my daily serving of Mary Oliver from her book Devotions, I’ve longed to return to thedeepeningground to share what’s been blowing about my heart. But it’s the end of a marking period and I have “miles to go before I sleep,” to quote Robert Frost, except, for me, it’s stacks of papers. All that’s piled up over the past few weeks must be processed by Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. No time for creative imaginings…
But seeing Theodore outside this morning and just taking the time to look at the billowing sky, I found myself grateful for a heart able to see the art of where I am. And that brought me back to one of the songs I used to perform with my two eldest sons. Here, then, is the song, The Art, in audio and lyric form. May God give us all hearts to see (and savor) the art of where we are rather than fall victim to the temptation to see the grass as greener by the siren’s side.
The Art
Vincent H. Anastasi – 2014
Muddy fingers paint the windowpanes;
patchwork patterns of the carpet stains
Laundry landscapes in their darks and whites
fill the canvas of the well-lived life
Earthenware for our food and drink,
the composition of a kitchen sink
This drywall plaster and pinewood studs
are the architecture of the world I love
Give us hearts to see the art of where we are!
Give us hearts to see the art of where we are!
Turn our eyes from green mirages
and all these counterfeit collages;
Give us hearts to see the art of where we are!
Same eight hours for the same five days,
beats the regular rhythm of our daily trades
The bookend journeys of a day’s commute
draw us on to the coda of our common tune
Give us hearts to see the art of where we are!
Give us hearts to see the art of where we are!
Turn our eyes from green mirages
and all these counterfeit collages;
Give us hearts to see the art of where we are!
These syncopations of the lives we share
jazz up the strains of each doleful air
Though another song boasts a siren’s kiss,
it’s a finale flat when compared with this
the deepening ground 