Earth's the place for love

Since moving to Upstate New York, Robert Frost's imagery and characters have become quite real. Hikes with Laura and Rudy and Bruce and Kent taught me their respect for these woods and revealed to me how these woods had shaped them.

It's winter now, and the birches' thin straight white trunks are scattered among new forest and new snow. Couple this with Misha’s continuing pregnancy - the greatest of the new promises of new beginnings in our life recently - and this morning I remembered, "Earth’s the right place for love." I like the end of Birches:


So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

The new beginnings offered to Misha and I are a relief from the webs of weary considerations we have spun for months. We aren’t entirely sure what God has in mind for us, though for the first time we can see time past and time future converging in the new present available to us. I’m scared, but excited to once again climb up a snow-white trunk toward heaven. Eliot lamented men of his age "will not lay down the Cross because they will never assume it" (Choruses from The Rock). I'm scared, but willing to assume the cross and let it shape me.

I was among the few, Gavin another, who advocated "Omle" nights in the house: late night poetry readings lubricated with beer or cheap wine. Birches was one of my frequent contributions; on these nights we shared our dreams and hopes and fears and desires. I have always wanted to remain a swinger of birches, dancing that delicate (incarnational) balance between heaven and earth.

Spirit, may I be found worthy of the calling you have placed upon me. Spirit, may the faith and conviction you nurture within me draw me toward you even as I am rooted on Earth. Show me your ways, and teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my savior and my hope is in you all day long.