Two homely poems

As a teenager, I came across a poem that took my fancy. I found it written on a prayer card at the Bible bookshop in Frinton, when I worked there in the school holidays at a home for geriatric blind people with my friend Jan. Back then I did a lot of sewing, and when I got home I embroidered this onto linen:

Lord of the pots and pipkins,
Since I have no time to be
A saint by doing lovely things and vigiling with thee,
By watching in the twilight dawn  
Or storming heaven's gates,
Make me a saint by getting meals 
And washing up the plates.

Now the world is all different and we have Google, I've been able to discover that it has two more verses, was written by Klara Munkres, and that the words I had weren't quite right. It's here.

In fact, the version I originally had started "Lord of the pots and pitikins", but pitikins aren't an actual thing. The only use of the word is the archaic oath, "Od's pitikins", which is a contraction of "God's pitikins" and would have meant something like, "Oh for pity's sake!"

I was thinking about the poem recently, and how these days I do in fact have loads of time for vigiling with Thee and watching in the twilight dawn. Life has moved on. There was a patch in the middle when the art of multi-tasking became an urgent necessity, trying to write books and look after five children and get the groceries in and cook the meals and make sure the house was clean and the laundry done, while also finding time to write sermons and correspond with prisoners and generally help out at church — but those days are long gone. 

Now that everything has gone quiet and not a lot happens, I'm unsure if I do the vigiling and whatnot or I don't. I spend a lot of time thinking, and I constantly weigh up possibilities and practicalities in the light of faith and truth, trying to discern where the boundary line lies between what I want to do and what the Lord is asking of me. I talk to him. I try my best to listen to him. In all honesty I don't know I'm any the wiser most of the time, but he is patient with me and ever present.  

There was another poem, that I came across after my first child was born. It went like this:

Cooking and cleaning can wait 'til tomorrow,
For babies grow up, as we've learned to our sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs, dust go to sleep,
I'm rocking my baby,
And babies don't keep.

In my twenties I loved that poem, but I've done a whole lot of editing since then, and now the "quiet down cobwebs" annoys me, because cobwebs aren't loud, are they? And dust is already fast asleep. It never gets up and walks unless there's a violent gust of wind. Also, I appreciate that "sorrow" rhymes with "tomorrow" and that's why it's there, but I was never one of those mothers (though I met plenty) who enjoyed babies but went off them once they became ambulant, adventurous and able to express an opinion.

In fact, I found babies and small children rather frightening, because they are so uninhibited. I'd never spent time with people who screamed loud and long at the slightest thing and kept being sick, before I became a mother. I didn't find it easy, and I was scared of being left on my own with them. What I looked forward to more than anything was the time when they hadn't yet left home but were old enough to discuss faith and politics over supper. Ha! We hadn't quite reached that point when their father did the most surprising thing that ended up with us losing our home and our jobs and we were all scattered everywhere. I worked hard to get it all back together, but they were adults with lives of their own by the time I achieved it, so the bit I specially wanted never happened.

But today, for no reason I can identify, those poems came back to my mind, and I asked myself if I was sorry my children had grown up — no; if they'd stayed babies forever it would have implied some kind of serious brain condition — or if, now I have more free time, I do use it constructively in the Lord's service; not sure, but I doubt it.

I think often of the words of Jesus, "Will any one of you, who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep, say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down at table’? Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and gird yourself and serve me, till I eat and drink; and afterward you shall eat and drink’? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that is commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’" (Luke 17.7-10 RSV)

It sounds tiring and hard work. And then there's the parable of the talents, where he says: "His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your master.’" (Matthew 25.23 RSV)

Those words, "Well done, good and faithful servant" — oh, my goodness, how I would love to hear Jesus say that to me!

But then the story goes on: "He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather where I have not winnowed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.’" (Matthew 25.24-31 RSV)

And I am horribly conscious that, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours’, resonates with me all too well. I get tired and discouraged, I give up and want to leave, want to be left in peace.

"Do not grow weary in well-doing" (Galatians 6.9) the Bible says; but I certainly do. 

I've read carefully what the Bible says about heaven, too, and it sounds hard and crystalline, made up of minerals in one form or another, and they never turn the light off and the sun never goes down. But I love the dusk and the dawn, love the end of the day when it's time to go to bed, love the firelight and the candlelight and the starlight. And my favourite thing is conversation with the people I love. And I like the garden and the birds, the flowers and the moving light. Will that all be gone, in heaven?

Sometimes I feel marooned, here on earth. The way back isn't easy to find, and I can believe with no trouble at all that "Here we have no abiding city". But it what sense, once you weigh it all up, will we ever come home? Where is the place of rest, where you don't have to worry any more and things will just be all right? 

Thich Nhat Hanh says, "There is no way home; home is the way." 

I see what he means. Coming home to ourselves is a foundational skill of living; it's no good thinking in terms of destinations, we have to arrive where we are, be at peace with what is (whatever that might be).

Sometimes in the past when Jehovah's Witnesses have called at our home on a mission, and I've been unwary enough to open the door, they've asked me what I think will happen at the end of the world, what will happen to me after I die, and if I think I'll go to heaven. And I've always said to them that it's an unnecessary question; that if I live now with goodness and truth, with faith and integrity, then what happens after I die will take care of itself. The future is the natural consequence of the present.

Which I think is the thing I liked in those two poems — the one about rocking your baby and the one about finding meaning in mundane daily tasks. That's what I believe, really. Life is big and eternity impossible to conceptualise. I am smaller and less important and more mediocre than I thought I would be when I was younger. In one sense, what I am and can do is almost immaterial. But it's like that thing Martha Graham (the dancer) said, "There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost."

I suppose if God does really allocate a number to every single hair on your head, then nothing is lost or wasted, nothing is pointless. Being really present to it with love — the daily chores, the unseen tasks, mothering a little child with all the mopping of sick and tears it entails — is what matters in the end. And the chance to be part of this earth — with everything from oak moss to sunsets to chocolate eclairs to crochet — is something I wouldn't have missed.