Category Archives: Life

2014 in review

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Thanks to all of you who visited Views from the Edge in 2014: about 20,000 visits from 126 countries.

Here’s an excerpt from WordPress’s year end report:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. Views from the Edge was viewed about 20,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Steve and I thank each of you who visited, and we are grateful to WordPress for its great hosting for the likes of us. Happy New Year and best wishes in 2015.

Gordon

Verse for New Year’s Day 2015

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ghost kites

ghost kites

 

Old Year, New Year: Old Kite, New Kite

A large blue Delta from Oregon
with two wide trailing tails
mice-eaten, torn by storms,
but still flying. The line knotted,
re-tied after “Hands up, don’t shoot”
and “I can’t breath” and cops killed.

ISIS and drones, beheadings and bombs,
spying on all, torture for some,
my country bought by corporations,
yet Vivaldi still sung, crops harvested,
children born and hugged and taught.
Last year’s kite crashed many times.

A large red Delta for Christmas
with a new line, new tails.
So far blue skies and a steady breeze,
but storms are predicted, injustices
multiply like mice, discord does not die.
This year’s kite, too, is fragile, vulnerable.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, January 1, 1015

Happy New Year Under the Boardwalk

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“Under the boardwalk” came the New Year’s Eve reply from the guy at Union Station in NYC 52 years ago. He was responding to two 19 year-0ld college students who’d taken the bus from Philadelphia to experience Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

“Hey, buddy!  Happy New Year!” they’d yelled to the inebriated man staggering though Union Station’s main floor.

“Hey,” he’d yelled back. “Happy New Year!” looking up at us. “Where ya from?”

“Philadelphia. How about you?”

“Under the boardwalk,” he said. “Come visit sometime.”

“Where?” we asked, both laughing.  “What boardwalk?”

“Atlantic City,” he said.

We made the visit to Atlantic City but never saw him again.

Age has a way of maturing us, if we’re lucky. We come to realize that any one of us could be the man who lived under the boardwalk. Lots of people do. Happy New Year, bother, and thanks for the kind invitation.”

Verse – Almost 2015

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On the Seventh Day of Christmas
It was New Year’s Eve:
Fifty Drunkards drinking,
Forty Fatsos feasting,
Thirty Flighty Females flirting,
Twenty Macho Males maneuvering,
Ten Cute Couples kissing
And Kathy Griffin and
Anderson Cooper
ki-i-bitz-i-ing on TV.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Dec. 30, 2014

Editor’s Note: Sometimes Steve’s a little over the edge, even for Views from the Edge. But we publish him because we love him, and because we’ll be his overnight guests in a few days. Never look a gift horse in the mouth!

Poem # 38 – Loneliness

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O the loneliness and the fear
I feel when I go into the wilderness
Where the jackals and the wolves
Howl for my soul.

Out there, I’m alone. Only God,
And even Him I’m not so sure of.
Why the wilderness? There there is
No running from fear, pain, myself.

Naked and alone I must look
At myself. A grain of sand in a
Hostile world, trying to be so important
But only hanging on to the rock
Who gave me birth.

emptychair– Dale Hartwig (1940-2012) loved the wilderness. He went to his cabin in northern Michigan whenever he could.  Poem #38 was written during advanced Parkinson’s from his room at the Care Center in Grand Rapids, MI. Dale was one of seven classmates who gather annually for reflection and the renewal of friendship. Since Dale’s death, there are six. An empty chair preserves Dale’s seat in the circle.

God as Policeman or Lover

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Sebastian Moore, OSB

Sebastian Moore, OSB

In the eyes of Views from the Edge, the  late Dom Sebastian Moore, O.S.B. (12.17.1917 – 02.21-2014) of Downside Abbey, England, is one of our time’s more interesting thinkers.

Steeped in the psychology of Carl Jung, the spiritual discipline of the Benedictine Order, the theology of Bernard Lonergan, S.J., and the mimetic theory of Rene Girard, his eyes were penetrating, his vision both deep and far-reaching. During a long life os spiritual searching, he wrote in his book The Inner Loneliness:

[O]nce you see the self as naturally self-centered, you deny that the self wants God above all things, and you degrade God from being the fulfiller, the lover, into being the policeman. Paul’s conversion, through the stunning vision of Jesus he had on the road to Damascus, was from God the policeman to God the lover.

[The Inner Loneliness, Crossroads Press, 1982, p.49]

We met briefly in 1971 at a meeting of campus ministers in Milwaukee. He was chaplain at Marquette University at the same time I served as campus minister at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Gathered at the Episcopal Campus Ministry Center at UW-Milwaukee, I wondered who this strange monk was who seemed to observe everyone very closely without saying more than a word or two. I’m not sure I even knew his name. I just knew he was unusual.

Twenty-six years later, during a period of personal and professional turmoil, a therapist mentioned the name Sebastian Moore. I purchased The Crucified Jesus Is No Stranger and saw his picture on the jacket. His perspective left me in awe and anchors me still. I’ve been knocked off my horse on the way to way to Damascus. Every real conversion is the turning from God the policeman to God the Lover.

Poem #76 – The Prairie

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The prairie at night is dotted with light
Of farms where people live and love,
Fight and hate, and celebrate.

Now and again the lights congregate
Like happy peasant women
Singing their songs, dancing their dances.
And I am not so alone.

– Dale Hartwig (1940-2012), looking out the window from his room at the Care Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan where Parkinson’s Disease had left him alone.

Joseph the Widower – Christmas Eve

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Steve’s poems and verses often capture something very large in a few short lines. His “In the Stable” manages to keep the earthly and the heavenly together: an iconic smile at the end offered to a grief-stricken Joseph in the shame-filled, smelly stable. We publish “In the Stable” again for those of you who, like Steve’s Joseph, are dealing at the same time with grief and hope on Christmas Eve:

The shame that old man Joseph felt
in taking Mary to the barn
was mainly that, of course, it smelt:
it reeked with sheep shit, donkey dung,
and cattle plops. The widower
knew wives who whelped were never clean
themselves until the midwives pour
the well water over their loins
and legs, wash front and back. His first
young wife had died in giving birth
to their third child. He shook his fist
at heaven as she lay in filth
and breathed no more. Sweet Mary mild
step-mother, virgin, pushed and smiled…

– Verse by Steve Shoemaker; introduction by Gordon.

CLICK “Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols” to hear today’s live BBC broadcast (10:00 a.m. EST) from King’s College, Cambridge England.  Merry Christmas to all our readers.

Limerick 453

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If you see a REAL angel, you duck;
You know you’ve just run out of luck.
But those on TV,
It’s easy to see,
Make you feel like you just have to
…..buy lingerie.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Dec. 18, 2014

NOTE: Steve seems to be into angels again today as he was with “Victoria’s Secret Angels” last week. He also seems to be re-making himself after the example of our friend Dale, whose poems and verses were mostly untitled.  There’s still competition. Dale’s were listed in numerical order, as in the previous post on Views from the Edge post “Poem #5”. Steve’s limerick is #453!

 

Pope Francis on Spiritual Alzheimer’s

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Click HERE for Pope Francis’s December 22, 2014 message. God bless Pope Francis! Let all the people – and the Curia – say “Amen!”