Open Sea
I am still learning to read
what my life has carried.
In November 2007, I wrote a poem
I called “Free Diver,”
about a woman rising
from the depths of the sea.
Generational chains
rusted around my ankles
and arms
were unlocked
A voice spoke
No longer—
live in the depths
In the poem, the pressure has compressed
her eyes and lungs. As she surfaces,
she needs time to adjust her sight and breathing.
Another voice leads her up.
The poem closes,
“The Free Diver who came from air /
Leads me.”
I recognize the woman rising through the poem—
and the woman who needed
to write her into being.
She named what she felt before she understood it.
Years later, I returned to the piece
for Firefly Horizons,
keeping its bones
while bringing my present voice
into conversation with hers.
I could hear what she had reached for,
and what she could scarcely have known.
You can read “Free Diver” and its story there.
For years, I pictured a blueprint
I was meant to discover and fulfill.
Today, I experience my life as a relationship
with what is becoming.
God meets me within that living exchange.
Through what I choose,
what I attend to,
and how I respond,
I take part in that becoming.
Coming home to myself has given me ground
from which to change.
At seventy, I enrolled
in a two-year Print School.
There are materials to understand,
production decisions to make,
and homework.
The woman who once drove
to a flower shop
seeking work for her hands
is learning another way
to give beauty tangible form.
The Soul’s Anthology · Sea Glass
Tides of Grief
Each took form through encounters with grief,
beauty, and the lives entrusted to my attention.
The woman in the poem
comes to mind,
adjusting to the change in pressure.
Surfacing makes another life available to her.
She can breathe, look around,
and begin to discover what freedom asks.
Below her, the earth continues forming.
For Your Own Terrain
OPEN SEA
What We Carry Forward
Field Notes:
SEAFLOOR SPREADING
Along mid-ocean ridges,
tectonic plates move apart.
Magma rises,
cools,
and forms new oceanic crust.
As the plates continue moving,
newly formed seafloor
travels away from the ridge,
and more takes shape
where the plates separate.
Along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,
this continuing formation
has helped widen
the Atlantic Ocean
over millions of years.
Even in the depths,
the earth is making
new ground.
So are we.
Within a family
What travels through a family
takes form in daily encounters:
how a question is received,
how distress is answered,
how affection becomes known,
how a difference is met.
As we come to understand
what we have inherited,
we can participate
with greater intention
in what others receive from us.
We may pause
before answering,
give a need room
to be spoken,
return to a conversation
with a willingness
to repair.
Through repetition,
a chosen response
can become a dependable
part of a relationship.
The people who share our lives
come to know
what they can bring to us
and what they can expect
to find.
What we carry forward
reaches children,
partners, friends,
and those whose lives
meet ours for a season.
Our way of being
becomes part
of another person’s experience
of belonging.
What becomes possible
as you learn to inhabit your own life—
even with questions still unresolved?
—
What within you is reaching toward life
before you know what it could become—
and what might it mean
to attend to that reaching as divine presence?
—
What would you like others
to receive through the way you live—
and what daily practice
could begin to give it form?
A FURTHER BEARING
In 1977,
near the Galápagos Islands,
scientists exploring
an oceanic spreading ridge
discovered hydrothermal vents
surrounded by abundant life.
Seawater enters
cracks in the ocean crust,
is heated beneath the seafloor,
and returns
carrying dissolved chemicals.
Microorganisms use
chemical energy
to make food,
supporting communities
of tubeworms, clams,
and other creatures
beyond the reach of sunlight.
The earth’s continuing activity
helps create conditions
in which life can flourish.
Within our lives, too,
what takes form
through sustained attention
can become a source
of nourishment for others:
a story that gives
an experience language,
a work of art
that opens recognition,
a relationship
in which tenderness
finds welcome.
What is becoming within us
can help sustain
what is becoming
within another.
AN INVITATION
If you are ready,
borrow this pattern
for your own story.
Choose a landscape
that feels like yours.
Name its bedrock, its streams,
the place it cut deepest,
and where it opened.
Let the landscape
lend you its language.
Stay with a memory
for as long as you can attend to it.
Notice what emerges.
Leave room for what
you cannot yet name.
Begin where you feel steady.
Walk it with a trusted companion,
a counselor, or a circle
who can receive what you find.
Field Notes for
Your Own Terrain
a complimentary writing
companion (PDF)
