#jeanne lohmann

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

David John Lotto

* * * * *

Praise What Comes

...At the end there may be no answers and only a few very simple questions: did I love, finish my task in the world? Learn at least one of the many names of God? At the intersections, the boundaries where one life began and another ended, the jumping-off places between fear and possibility, at the ragged edges of pain, did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?

~ Jeanne Lohmann from "Praise What Comes" in THE LIGHT OF INVISIBLE BODIES

[Thanks to Friends of Silence]

[anincantationofstories]

Day ends, and before sleep when the sky dies down, consider your altered state: has this day changed you? Are the corners sharper or rounded off? Did you live with death? Make decisions that quieted? Find one clear word that fit? At the sun’s midpoint did you notice a pitch of absence, bewilderment that invites the possible? What did you learn from things you dropped and picked up and dropped again? Did you set a straw parallel to the river, let the flow carry you downstream?

Questions Before Dark by Jeanne Lohmann

[exceptindreams]

Reminders | Jeanne Lohmann

“Reminders” Jeanne Lohmann

You said you’d pick up cheese at Lucca’s in the Mission, came home with fresh-cut Sonoma Jack, aged Swiss, that delicious creamy goat cheese we spread on bagels at breakfast.

Let’s go again, both of us, to San Francisco, buy a loaf of Boudin’s sourdough rye, pack a basket of bread and cheese, fruit, a bottle of red wine, and head for the park. We can feast on wet gray fog, our old happiness breaking through like sunshine.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Eat-In car, early drive-in restaurant, Los Angeles, 1935 John Gutmann

* * * *

From Here Jeanne Lohmann for all that has been, thanks for all that shall be, yes - Dag Hammerskjold, Markings No one who looks back is fit, the gospel says, for the kingdom. Renouncing my small hope of getting in, disqualified by all that turns me round in thanks for grace or chance that led me here, I can't see where's the harm. So far I've not been changed to salt and am no pillar in the road, so far the winter breaks to sounds of streams ahead. The past is iron and roses, health and sickness as in a marriage vow. I'm pledged to all that was, and to this moment's breath, the next.

[alive on all channels]

[arosejoy]

Praise What Comes by Jeanne Lohmann

 via an email from Tom this morning

surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven't deserved of days and solitude, your body's immoderate good health that lets you work in many kinds of weather. Praise talk with just about anyone. And quiet intervals, books that are your food and your hunger; nightfall and walks before sleep. Praising these for practice, perhaps you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs you never intended. At the end there may be no answers and only a few very simple questions: did I love, finish my task in the world? Learn at least one of the many names of God? At the intersections, the boundaries where one life began and another ended, the jumping-off places between fear and possibility, at the ragged edges of pain, did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?

[dk-thrive]

Poetry swings my arms when I walk, spills around me in specific details, insights.

The statement on poetry from one of Jeanne Lohmann’s diaries (circa 1978 and beyond):

What is the spiritual practice of poetry? I think we fool ourselves with such divisions, separations. Practice is practice is practice, and requires us whole, body and breath that animates…vocal chords and song, imagination and word, story and story-teller.

Making use of poetry, adopting the habit of poetry, I write and revise, perform poems…learn how. Practicing poetry: I’m open to invitations from anywhere. I create my own rhythms, plod when I must, fly when I can. Maintaining the habit, I work to forego the habitual, the trite and easy.

Learning poems for my life, they save me over and over. Poetry swings my arms when I walk, spills around me in specific details, insights. Word-music shaping answers to questions I didn’t know how to ask, teaching me to re-think answers I thought I had: how to honor the awkward, the homely, and the broken.

~ Poet Jeanne Lohmann talks with Peter Menkin on work and life

[dk-thrive]

The wonderful side of faith is the gold in the throat metaphor

The wonderful side of faith is the gold in the throat metaphor, is the gold in the throat metaphor being able to hear that music. The music in the throat is being able to give words to praise. I feel that is about God that there is a voice that is a gift of the muse. Poetry is in this instance the poetry of praise.

As I grow older there is more of this kind, poetry of thanksgiving--a praise.

~ Jeanne Lohmann talks with Peter Menkin on work and life

[dk-thrive]

where nothing is finished or broken and nothing asks to be fixed.

is whatever comes along, practice always here while we

keep on shore, all the time saying we want to get wet.

But the river has ways of sound and light, ripples

and waves that tell us: don’t be so serious, rumble in

where nothing is finished or broken and nothing asks to be fixed.

~ Jeanne Lohmann, “Riverwalk” from The Light of Invisible Bodies: Poems. © Daniel & Daniel Publishing, 2003