Reteaching Loveliness

"The bud stands for all things, even those things that don't flower, for everything flowers from within, of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessary to re-teach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing."
Galway Kinnell

I’ve written about this poem before, not on my blog, in my book. Today as I typed this poem up for a girl friend who has recently been devastated by a stroke, I was reminded of what this poem meant to me in a time of my own devastation.

The Bible speaks about the reproach or shame of ones widowhood. Of course I never understood that until I became a widow. Most of us would think, why be ashamed, loosing a spouse had nothing to do with you. Nevertheless the shame still existed and all that I was seemed to be ripped from me in an instant, my identity as a wife and my sexuality as a woman. suddenly I was reduced to the new oddity of being a single woman in a married crowd.

At 36 I was thrown back to the awkward teen years, not knowing how to acclimate to old friends that suddenly saw me differently. Women guarded as if their husbands had become my prey. The solid ground I knew became soft and spongy. Nothing felt secure, as all reference points spun out of control by the amputation I experienced in loosing my lover, best friend and father to my children. I felt totally exposed and naked. Suddenly all beauty was gone. Nothing felt lovely inside or out. I was stripped of all loveliness.

Bill died on Good Friday and was buried the day after Easter. All things looked dead and dormant, like the town of Weedsport that we spent the night in on the way home for Bill’s funeral. Yet that wasn't the end of the story. It never is, because if a seed goes into the ground and dies it will spring up into new life. That is the hope that we have.

Slowly with time, glimmers of hope emerged in my life as love began to cloth me and transform my life, reteaching my heart its loveliness. There is no one or no thing that cannot be transformed by the power of love. That is why I am particularly passionate about calling women out of the dead-barren places where they have been stomped down, trampled over or forgotten their loveliness.