Companionship

Scalding tea, sleepy eyes, but a little peace right now, to pick a poem.

Yet, now, my terror of a kitten, a golden furball named Hobbes, has chosen this moment to perk up and begin playing with the electrical cords behind my desk.

Into another room he goes, heat more water for the tea has cooled while trying to distract him from the cords. While I wait for the water to boil, here is a poem from The Illuminated Rumi translations and commentary by Coleman Barks:

Sometimes I forget completely
What companionship is.

(And Hobbes is a beautiful companion quite often, but he is a baby, only three months in this world and infinitely curious and ever chewing what catches his interest.)

Unconscious and insane
I spill sad energy
everywhere. My story
gets told in various ways:
a romance, a dirty joke,
a war, a vacancy.
Divide up my forgetfulness
to any number,
it will go around.

These dark suggestions
that I follow,
are they part
of some plan?

Friends,
be careful.
don't
come near me
out of curiosity,
or sympathy.

Everyone has the dark, sad side. Even Thomas Merton, mystic and trappist monk, considered by some to be a spiritual master, a writer of books and articles on life and contemplation, action and the need for peace wrote about his.

I just finished reading Striving Towards Being The letters of Thomas Merton and Czeslaw Milosz.

Sitting in Starbucks two days ago as I poured through these letters from forty years ago - and I find them relevant to all of today's issues of living - I realized I am on some different path, reading a book that had not been checked out of the library in years.

Who would read such a book? I plead guilty.

It began because I submitted a proposal for a presentation to the Thomas Merton Society. I had an idea of what Merton wrote about, but now I find I am fascinated by his thoughts and am reading his books much as a person drinks water, not just as a means to an end. It is, perhaps, a need.

I want to understand this man who others believe is a mystic. He was a man who felt the experience of God is what is important, not ideas or theories or dogma about God.

I believe this too, and I believe I have experienced - I have felt God and known God through dreams, mainly. But it is when I glimpse God in others, when I see love and beauty within another human being, that is such a wonderful feelings.

The dreams are beautiful, yes, and I hold them to me, vowing never to forget. But we don't live in dreams, do we? Well, we do, but that is another topic, too complex to go into.

Sometimes
I forget completely
what companionship is.

My poor husband has fallen asleep on the couch. Companionship is waking him up, taking him to bed and holding him as he falls back into slumber. Companionship is not treating each other like objects, but like presences who are precious.

Hobbes is purring on my lap. He just wanted to be held.

The water was very hot, the last half cup of tea is still lovely.

Good night and may you have sweet dreams.