Sometimes you meet one of those people along the way who somehow seem to be, what we might call, truly alive. When I first met Earl Laman I knew that I’d met such person and that our friendship was going to change my life. His is the sort of soul to let you know that “every fifth breath… (is) created beneath the surging seas.” He beckons us to recapture our sense of wonder and to witness with tender honesty the realities of our lives of mutual care. May his words bless again and open our eyes.
~hosted by Randy Smit and Rhonda Edgington
Just a few few years ago a too frequent exclamation about most anything was “Awesome!” (These days it’s “Perfect!) Well, everything is awesome! Whatever you can put your index finger or your mind’s attention on IS awesome! Even though we usually take most everything in view for granted or as just there for us. But I love it when “no wonder” breaks open into ripe awareness of the deeper reality about “some thing or other”. So I loved it one day when the Creation and the Spirit seemed to geyser up an initial phrase that flowed out in several directions- thus this poetic expression:
Show me a thing that is not a wonder
and I will be all the more amazed!
the breath I just took, ripe with oxygen,
from whence did it come?
invisible micro-creatures, ocean bound,
are major contributors
in fact, every fifth breathe I take to live
was created beneath the surging seas
that tomato there, puffed up in its fullness,
its shimmering redness stretched shiny,
promises succulence raw or heat processed
as did its innumerable predecessors.
and yet, enmeshed in its goodness,
lie the seeds of endless generations
and those atoms we’ve never seen, which
make up the solidity of our bodily existence,
nevertheless, are minute solar systems
perpetually faithful to their unmasked mass,
and yet, if they would be collapsed to their nuclei,
we’d all be reduced to the size of a pin
or those unseen millions of cells, balled together,
securely socketed in the front of our heads,
somehow ganged together they transmit scenes
of our miniscule-to-monstrous world
to our inner Imax theater screens
and form innumerable photo albums
and the date there on today’s squared-off calendar
contains an exacting number of minutes
which will march in step and then be forever gone
as have the minutes of all days previous
and yet no day from the Big Bang onward
has ever been the same- or ever will be
Look also at your automoble- of 3,000 parts
assembled to maximize the ancient wheel,
each part an evolvement from earth’s raw materials,
reshaped, reordered, recreated, retooled,
having passed through multitudes of inventive minds
and untold numbers of crafting and laborng hands
so we can steer our way through the obligations,
pleasures and unknowns of our futures
Well, I’d better stop wondering aloud now
lest I create the longest poem in history;
while unsure whether my grandchildren will be awed
by the remotes and ipods they hold in their hands,
I say again- show me a thing that is not a wonder
and, yes, I will be all the more amazed!
~by Earl Laman
When, as a small kid in Depression days, my aging grandfather broke a leg and was cared for by my mother in a hospital bed in our dining room for seven months, I was introduced to caretaking- resentfully. Now after a lifetime of witnessing, interacting, and engaging in various kinds of caretaking of others, it calls for deep love and is often heroic. Demanding caretaking may geyser into a prayer such as the following:
A CARETAKER’S PRAYER~by Earl Laman
Please Excuse
my nighttime rantings
when I needed to be letting go
of the string of fears
that rise from days
that require
that I be
more than I can be
in lieu of days
that are strained with pain
that is more than mine
that love demands
that I want to fulfill
and so need to breathe
in the spirit of peace and love
that goes beyond understanding
which seems to come
not by withdrawing
but by wrestling with angels
dressed in whatever
deceptive or illustrious garb
comes down the path
of each day.