Angela Parlin

So Much Beauty in All This Chaos

31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts {Advice to Beginners}

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stories live beginWelcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 10.

This is a fitting poem for a Monday. For the most part, we’re all beginning something today, whether we’re ready for the week to begin–or not.

Are you ready?

Advice to Beginners

by Ellen Kort

Begin. Keep on beginning. Nibble on everything.

Take a hike. Teach yourself to whistle. Lie.

The older you get the more they’ll want your stories.

Make them up. Talk to stones. Short-out electric fences.

Swim with the sea turtle into the moon.

Learn how to die. Eat moonshine pie. Drink wild geranium tea.

Run naked in the rain.

Everything that happens will happen and none of us will be safe from it.

Pull up anchors. Sit close to the god of night.

Lie still in a stream and breathe water.

Climb to the top of the highest tree until you come to the branch

where the blue heron sleeps.

Eat poems for breakfast.

Wear them on your forehead.

Lick the mountain’s bare shoulder.

Measure the color of days around your mother’s death.

Put your hands over your face and listen to what they tell you.

///////////

I want to taste everything, to find the perfect flavor I never stop seeking.

I want to tour faraway palaces and stroll down each quaint foreign street.

I want to look into eyes and find surprises waiting around every corner.

I don’t want to make up stories. I want to live a giant story.

I don’t want to learn how to die. I want to be consumed with living.

But what does it mean to really live?

Maybe it begins with knowing what’s important, living what you value.

See people, right where they are. Eyes wide, heart open.

Maybe it means swimming with sea turtles into the moon,

Eating poems for breakfast and chasing buckets of adventure.

What would it look like for you to really live?

What I know is that I could chase big stories for decades.

I could miss the great story I’m writing and the one I’ve been written into.

I know I could make my life about what I want or what I think I need from it.

But then, I could also miss everything it means to really live.

The truth is, I remember the flavor I’m still pursuing.

I recall some part of the beauty I run miles for and fly across oceans hoping to see.

It’s an unseen whisper, right here and found in every elsewhere.

My eternal memory connects to an enduring future.

So I begin here, and keep on beginning. This is where I drop the anchor.

This is what it means for me to live.

I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free. Psalm 119:32

poetry writing prompts

Writing Prompt:

For you, what does it mean to really live?

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31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts {I Never}

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faith never see GodWelcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 9.

I hope you are enjoying a lovely Sunday. Today’s post (and all Sunday posts) will be short. Today it’s just a little poem with a big message from Emily Dickinson.

Do you have to see it to believe it?

 

I Never Saw a Moor

by Emily Dickinson

I never saw a moor,

I never saw the sea,

Yet I know how the heather looks,

And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God,

Nor visited in heaven,

Yet certain am I of the spot

As if the chart were given.

//////////

I didn’t see the ocean with my bare eyes until I was 19. You might guess, if you’ve been around these parts, that the ocean is one of my favorite things.

All that time, I knew it was somewhere out there, but I’d never felt its foam between my toes or its salt inside my mouth. I’d seen pictures. I’d seen it on TV, where I watched the waves fall into the shore.

But I didn’t know the salt would sting my legs after I shaved. Or that it would also heal my sunburn.

There are other things in life we know, whether we see them or not. A lot of things, if you think about it.

It takes a lot of faith to be human in this world.

Do you have to see it to believe it?

What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.

For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities–His eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Romans 1: 19-20

poetry writing prompts

Writing Prompt:

Write about something you didn’t need to see to believe.

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31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts {If I Had My Life to Live Over}

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live overWelcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 8.

Happy Saturday, friends. Is there anything better than a Saturday in October? {With the flood watch out there, it’s turned into a great day to relax indoors!} There’s just something about this time of year. And I haven’t even peeled apples and cooked up the first batch of Homemade Applesauce to mark the season yet. Surely I can make this happen today! (crossing my fingers) 🙂

Today’s poem has been part of my life a long time. When I was 17, a friend gave me an oversized greeting card with this poem written on the front. I’ve been reading it ever since, always with the hope that I’m growing into this type of person as the days roll by. It’s certainly not the way I began. Enjoy…

 

If I Had My Life to Live Over

by Nadine Stair

I’d dare to make more mistakes next time.

I’d relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip.

I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances.

I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans.

I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I’d have fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I’m one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day.

Oh, I’ve had my moments, and if I had it to do over again, I’d have more of them.

In fact, I’d try to have nothing else.

Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day.

I’ve been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute.

If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have.

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.

I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds.

I would pick more daisies.

///////////

If I had my childhood to live over, I’d dare to believe in myself.

I’d pick me, and it wouldn’t hold me down when someone else didn’t.

I’d believe the words of God more; they’d fuel my certainty.

I would stay on the swing longer and fear less and laugh with my whole body.

I would be less sensitive, or maybe I’d treat my sensitivity like a gift.

I would take a risk without thinking it all the way through.

Believe it or not, I would read more books.

I would forget myself like clockwork and love without reservation.

I would speak too loudly and there would be nothing to make up for.

If I had your childhood to live over, I’d choose joy more days than I did.

I’d find life in dying to myself, and I’d do it more quickly.

I’d lay on the couch and watch movies with you, instead of picking up 10 more things.

I’d do most of the things I did before, but I’d speak more softly.

I’d think more positively. I wouldn’t get lost in the overwhelm.

We’d play more and eat more slowly and laugh more often.

I’d pick my battles more wisely. They’d be fewer and further between.

I’d take more trips with all of us, believing in the work it takes to get there.

I’d be the kind of person who throws candy and caution to the wind.

I’d take more pictures, and I’d be in them. I’d see more beauty.

///////////

Writing Prompt:

What would you dare to do differently, if you had your life to live over?

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31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts {Young Sea}

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poetry writing sea stillWelcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 7.

Young Sea

by Carl Sandburg

The sea is never still.

It pounds on the shore

Restless as a young heart,

Hunting.

The sea speaks

And only the stormy hearts

Know what it says:

It is the face of a rough mother speaking.

The sea is young.

One storm cleans all the hoar

And loosens the age of it.

I hear it laughing, reckless.

They love the sea,

Men who ride on it

And know they will die

Under the salt of it.

Let only the young come,

Says the sea.

Let them kiss my face

And hear me.

I am the last word

And I tell

Where storms and stars come from.

///////////

Standing at the seashore, I realize there are things I will never move past in this life.

I will always long to understand, and I never will.

I’m stunned because these liquid waves kept rolling in the whole time I was away.

Two hours up the road, I lived my day after day in another town, and they never stopped arriving at the shore. They charged the coastline like soldiers, circling day after night after day, continuous to fill hours and minutes and seconds.

It’s nothing short of miraculous.

Those waves carried on–energy passing through water, by gravitational pull, by the sun and the moon, by the wind and the Word. It didn’t matter where I was. What I was doing. Whether I was awake or asleep. I had no hand in it.

And that’s nothing short of beautiful.

Standing there, I remembered who keeps the whole big universe rolling. Because despite the above poem, it’s not actually the sea, who gets the last word.

“The Son {Jesus} is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being–sustaining all things by His powerful word.” Hebrews 1:3

He’s sustaining all things–even the wind and the sun and the moon and the gravity and the energy and me and these waves–by His powerful word.

The waves will move, until He tells them to stop. I can pretend to comprehend, but I don’t. It’s so far beyond me.

Standing there, I recognize how little I witness, only one small corner of this coastline. There’s more, so much more, though for a time, I observed only the beauty.

There’s always a flip side, another chaos that won’t resolve. What’s striking might also strike.

“They love the sea, Men who ride on it, And know they will die under the salt of it.”

I remember the terror of standing before the young sea, a Mama of fearless young people, locating and counting all day long. I could never rest then, not at the seashore where the dirty truth always lurked behind this great allure.

The smashing sea might also smash. I can hear it laughing, reckless.

 

poetry writing prompts

Writing Prompt:

The sea is never still. What keeps you from being still?

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31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts {Peace of Wild Things}

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return to the wild peaceWelcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 6.

We should all spend time outside each day. I don’t know about you, but I spend too many hours indoors.

As a remedy, I sometimes I work at the kitchen table near the propped-open door to the deck. Hearing the wind rustling through the trees and birds fighting over seeds at the feeder does something for my heart. It’s not all the way outside, but it’s close.

Long ago, I posted this poem, one of my favorites, on the bulletin board at my desk, the one I don’t actually work at very often. 🙂 Enjoy.

 

The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

///////////

I wonder if so often when I misplace my peace, if the answer is simply to spend more time outside.

I say I wonder, but I already know what kind of person I become when I spend extended minutes under the sky.

There I see the rest of the beauty, and it’s not that I forget the chaos of the day. It’s not that the challenges disappear or the discouragement dissipates.

Out there, I realize I can walk away for a bit and the whole thing doesn’t all fall down.

Ohhh, right–it wasn’t me holding everything together.

In the presence of still water or even angry waves, I remember I have no control over the things I fear. I remember Who does control all things–He Who is good and true and beautiful and eternal. Who is acquainted with all this growing old and wearing away and falling down and rising up again.

He Who endures forever and ever, Who is seen through all this worldly beauty.

The Lord is God, and He has made His light shine on us. Psalm 118:27

It takes a few minutes, but I confess the truth. I’ve been taxing my life again, imagining losses that haven’t even happened. Why do I continue to repeat this?

Once again, I return to the wild. I take a walk in the woods past the yard, thick with green and a melody of snapping sticks underfoot. I imagine snakes hiding out here like sharks in the ocean, hoping they’re at least as rare.

Somehow I’ve left the rest of the world behind me. I come into the peace of wild things, and their holy message sinks ever deeper to my core.

Like Berry, I rest in the grace of the world–and I’m free.

poetry writing prompts

Writing Prompt:

Name the forethoughts of grief with which you tend to tax your own life.

*Find this also at PurposefulFaith.com.

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