Beloveds,

Do you ever feel prickly and bloomy all at the same time?

Sometimes, poetry (like this, shared at a recent meeting) helps:

For When People Ask
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I want a word that means
okay and not okay,
a word that means
devastated and stunned with joy.
I want the word that says
I feel it all, all at once.
The heart is not like a songbird
singing only one note at a time,
more like a Tuvan throat singer
able to sing both a drone
and simultaneously
two or three harmonics high above it—
a sound, the Tuvans say,
that gives the impression
of wind swirling among rocks.
The heart understands the swirl,
how the churning of opposite feelings
weaves through us like an insistent breeze,
leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,
blesses us with paradox
so we might walk more openly
into this world so rife with devastation,
this world so ripe with joy.

Yours in okay, not okay, and the swirling of our hearts,

Rev. Denise

RevDenise@gnuuc.org

P.S. That’s the cactus growing beside our parking lot, at the bottom of the hill, yesterday. (There are a few more buds. I wonder what will happen by Sunday…)

May 28, 2025