Corner Trinity

At 4:34 this morning, I sat at my desk wondering what my mind and my heart would agree to produce for the day. Neither my mind nor my heart answered. There was a tedious silence. But, I thought, I will offer a few more minutes to the pair, and then it happened. I looked at my not uncluttered desk, over at the corner near the file folders, and there it was. Just what I had been waiting for. A thought desiring to be developed.

This adventure of writing poems began as a diversion. I was onboard a U.S. Navy ship in the middle of an ocean on a calm, placid day with no immediate responsibilities. For reasons I don’t remember, I picked up a pen and jotted down a simple poem. Something about missing home or “thinking of you” lines. And I enjoyed doing that so much that the next day, in a similarly quiet moment, I put more words on paper and found the same feeling of satisfaction. And so it began. That was in the mid-1980s. That was a few years ago. Over the years the number of three-ring binders has increased and the pleasure has never vanished. So to the present moment.

The three objects living together on the corner of my desk are a candle, a ceramic figure of a woman holding a bowl up to the sky and a glass container filled with writing instruments. The candle is the vehicle of Light, the conveyor of a glow that grows into brightness. The figure of the woman and her bowl is the act of reaching up as an empty vessel to be filled with the gift of thought or insight. There is a small candle in her bowl, perhaps waiting for the fire of heaven to create even more light. The prayer guide draped around her bowl is a late addition to the trio. The final piece of the corner trinity is the collection of pens and markers, my necessary instruments for the creation of word stories.

Light as prayerful gift expressed through words from common, ordinary pens. I am deeply grateful for the personal pleasure of creating and organizing words on a page. I know the Source. We collaborate each morning, as in the special gift of this day: light, a prayer, and a pen. You see, now I have something to write about.