The Divine Comedy that is Life! (An Update)

I need to re-read Dante's Divine Comedy. It's about a dude who, in his mid-life, is dragging, wants out, and descends into the pits of hell, right? He's accompanied by a poet. He goes down, in order to go up. Journey takes place over Good Friday to Easter Sunday. It all seems really appropriate right now.

***

Good and sweet-loving-God! After a while, we just have to really laugh - don't you think?

The absurdity of it all! Whew.

Here's me in my own Mid-life, right? I make a plan. Try my best. Work hard. Work hard some more. Work harder. And then see what happens. I'm trying not to feel like a little ridiculous hampster, loving her wheel. Hmmm.....

No. Just loosely holding all of the information, all the desire that is mine, that seems to be somehow here with God's nodding approval: "Yes, Melissa, Love, Want, Try, Make some change; Work for greater good. Scurry and giggle, but please: Let me handle it. I've got the outcomes!"

Okay, God.

That's what I'm saying. Over and over again. "Okay, God. Okay. It's yours! Thank you!"

***

All that as way of introduction to this recent news in my life:

1. I'm not going to graduate school next month, as I planned.

2. My house has not yet sold.

3. This book proposal has not been accepted at the co-authors' publisher - who encouraged, invited the collaborative submission.

4. I have been classified by Kelly Temporary Services as an Intermediate typer. I also passed my spelling and grammar tests today. And on both Word and Excel, I'm considered a "beginner."

5. Jesse Garcia called and wants to have coffee. It's been six years.

And God is good.

And I laugh.

What are my options? What are any of our options in facing disappointments? In receiving news that so radically departs from our present hopes and dreams?

After a while, it just really really gets funny, if not super-duper-depressing. I had my mother-of-a-depression last week. Actually, truth be told, I would venture to say most of May has been hazy sorrow looming around my head and heart....How much uncertainty can a person deal with? How much hard work and effort can a person expend and then be met with less-than-satisfactory responses, results?

After sort of stepping over the miserable perceptions of failure I have of myself, I ask for new eyes. Well, honestly, I ask to lay down and be in the sorrow for a while. I ask to be okay in the sorrow, really. Because if there is anything I'm learning, it's that climbing into the pain, heading deep into it, is the most courageous way I know to transform it!

Heading down into the suffering, the struggle, I am softened by it; I experience the most potent form of grace and reconciliation. I learn about true compassion for myself, and for all other suffering humanity; I learn about the capacity of my own heart to love.

Parker Palmer and Pema Chodron and Thich Naht Hahn and Sr. Rafael and James Finley and Richard Rohr and Candlin Dobbs and Eckhardt Tolle are teaching me this. And their teachers are Buddha and Jesus and Thomas Merton. So I feel pretty good about getting these lessons.

But back to the comedy. The stepping into and through the depressing information and awaiting the grace that is the other side; that is the present moment. Yes. That is joy. That is now; not avoiding or invading it: just being in it. (Parker Palmer talks about this a lot.) Embracing the "it" in its fullness. That's where I'm at this week. Especially as I'm encountering my fellow-journeyers in their own challenging times....

My girl Angelica*, who is a dancer, and whose body holds so much of her identity: has been seriously injured. All she wants to do is dance and create and transform and teach through this wordless form of wonder and truth in motion. And instead: She's in a brace with torn shoulder muscles and looking at 6 months before she might heal. Six months before she might dance again with her entire body.

And there's Brady*. My dear guy Brady. Who bought a four-plex in North Minneapolis as a way to create not only affordable housing, but invite communal transformation and thriving through sustained and inspired living space. Yea, my guy bought a spot for some of my former students to live - who all just want to make change. He just wants to make change. Brady with these beautiful artists and activists in solidarity. He just wants to help build God's kingdom and collaborate in hope and renewal for this woe-joy-ridden part of the the Twin Cities. My friend even left his job, after 24 years, in order to tend to this dream. But he realizes now, that he's not a property manager, that that's NOT his gift, and could end up costing him his entire life savings to get out of the deal and start anew. What?

How about my chica Janie*? Janie who just loves and adores children. Loves them. Has no biological babes of her own, but devotes her life to loving and tending to those around her. God-mom is Janie, through and through. She exudes joy and love and a heart that knows no bounds where love calls her. And this week? This week, her relationship with two of these Godchildren was severed - because their father disapproves of the fact that Janie has been involved romantically with a man of different skin tone. And it's sort of like, "Really? Really? Janie cannot hang out with your children because her heart allows her to love a person with different pigmentation?"

Ack! To me: it's all wretched and cruel and sort of like woeful injustice!

But what's a person to do? Scream? Kick? Curse out the ignorance and unfairness of circumstances? Wallow and steep in rage? And what's that going to do? Whew. Perpetuate the woe? Please. Why be part of perpetuating the woe?

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating for the dismissal of emotion or anger -or love for that matter. But just a conscious examination and identification of what it is, where it comes from, and then a loving, tender and intentional choice about what to do with the feelings.

How to be in the emotion, and then step into the grace of transforming the circumstances......

We have choices. I have a choice in the matter. And for the better part of a year now, since it seemed that my life and hard work was handed back to me with a "Sorry, try again" sign, I've been trying to slow myself down long enough to really see what my choices are. And how I intentionally want to choose to live on this earth. I don't want to live angry. I don't want to live depressed. I don't want to live constantly disappointed. But rather: as a love force that is calm and capable of encompassing and navigating all that is really hard and messy and even horrible. I want to weather these things, be present to them -and be present with others - as they weather and wade and choose to continue living and breathing and dreaming and loving and creating.

In and through it all, I want to celebrate and be of gratitude and joy.

Yes.

So right now: this is what I'm doing. I'm saying "Thank you" for everything. I took a year off from my work as teacher and community activist and artist, and I cleaned houses. I cleaned my own house: both literally and figuratively. I got rid of a lot of junk and excess that is simply not necessary. I did this for others on a daily basis, and in the actions, found myself doing something powerful and healing within my own body.... And then: in my own home! Simplifying my space, cleaning and clearing and working to live in essentials, well: what a gift!

And while I've not earned a lot of money, I have something much more precious than anyone could really put a dollar amount on: my health, my happiness, my life!

I have the knowledge, too, that I can travel through some rocky emotional terrain and be just fine. I say, "Thank you."

What else? I spent some time tending to love to this past year. Loving myself, and being in love with a person who I have felt overwhelmingly invited to love by God as romantic life partner. And while that has not all turned out as I wanted it to, according to my time line and plans. I say, "Thank you" for it.

I also spent a lot of physical energy and emotional muscle preparing my house for sale, in order to finance this next phase of my life. And while it hasn't sold, I'm thankful that I could do it.

Other big thank you's: Are for all the opportunities that present themselves daily. I am saying, "thank you" for these sweet fellows that are showing up left and right and expressing interest in hanging out with me. Thank you for Usry and Jesse and Rich and Joe and Uche. I'm saying "thank you" for the nuns. Thank you for the faithful, artistic, intelligent women and men in my life, and the invitations to serve and be in meaningful dialogue. Thanks for the opportunity to paint a group home in North Minneapolis, alongside the formerly incarcerated young men transitioning back into society. Thank you for the opportunity to host an Arts Professor from Ghana. Thank you for the invitation to sit with smart women at the Sisters of St. Joseph Center and talk about being agents of peaceful transformation. Thank you for the opportunity to dialogue on race and issues of diversity and equity with folks from the Peace Foundation. Thank you for the opportunity to dance and celebrate Jah! in the Reggae community. Thank you for the opportunity to re-create and re-envision and be as transparent as possible in walking this path.

It's all good!

***

Now: I'm ready for Dante's journey to Heaven. I'm ready for the Easter Day in the Divine Comedy. I'm ready for my own Beatrice to show up and accompany me. Who's to say she isn't already here? Who's to say that Heaven isn't right now!?! Yes!

Incidentally, my Free Will Astrology horoscope this week announces that I'm in the "House of Resurrection." I laugh and say, "Amen! Thank you!"

Humbly, happily, in peace and love,

Melissa

*Names changed.

A Reflection on "What We Want," What I want...

Thank you to the Writer's Almanac, and poet Linda Pastan for this poem.

What We Want

by Linda Pastan

What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names—
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there.

"What We Want," by Linda Pastan, from Carnival Evening. © W.W. Norton. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Response.

My favorite lines include:
what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises
our arms ache.
the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there.

I think of children, with curly hair, smirking lips, brown skin, twinkling eyes, who giggle and writhe when I see them. They are from my dreams. My arms know their weight. My body holds space for their conception. They are there, just the other side of the room; sometimes coming toward me, tugging on my jacket. They are as real as stars, as varigated leaves on the sugar maple outside my house, as oxygen I breathe. Burning, unfolding, going in and out of constant presence. My dreams, wants, deepest desires, they are. Yes.

And you? What do you want? What do you see with your eyes open and closed?

Happy Contemplating!
Melissa

On Fireflies, Tarantellas, Love, Letting go...Meditation on Today's Writer's Almanac Poem

Poem: ""Fireflies" by Richard Newman from Borrowed Towns. © Word Press. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Fireflies

Tonight my yard is full of fireflies—
a glitterfest of green, blinking by hundreds,
exactly like last year, when she and I
drove out into the Missouri countryside
to talk about our marriage. It was thick
with greenery. The air was hot and thick,
and we had decided to try and stay together,
though by first light she'd changed her mind again,
and, to be honest, our eleventh hour
hope and promise lacked the weight of truth.
We wandered off the rocky dirt road
over weeds and brambles, through branches
and spiderwebs, and pressed into a clearing,
and it was like a pocket in the darkness
that surrounded us-the misty night
backlit with thousands of glittering fireflies
bettering the stars. It was a mating dance,
and we gazed into a sputtering green sea
of desire-such irresistible beckoning.
Ours was, too-a death-dance of mating,
a slower, indecisive tarantella,
and she asked me never to write about this,
but I knew then that I had nothing to lose,
that at that moment there was nothing I wanted
more than to write about the fireflies.


***
To be ablaze in light. To illuminate fully in the dark. To steady yourself and fly directly toward love. To be captured, die contained....

I think about all these things reflecting on Richard Newman's poem. I recall being 7 or 8 and outside at our rural house in Norfolk, Nebraska. It's dark, and I'm with my brother Ben, maybe a cousin Kristi or Jeff. We have jars. We are searching, seeking these blazing and buzzing insects: creatures of air, wings, fire. We want to make lanterns. We want this light all for ourselves. All to ourselves.

And how is this like our journeys in love?
How much are we the fireflies? How much are we seeking that magic, mystery of possessing illumination?
What do our dances look like in falling in and out of love?

I know the poem extends beyond this image of fireflies. I love how Newman casts this evening with other creatures and aspects of landscape. The web, the bramble, the tarantualla, that green sea of desire, the death-dance of mating. Whew! He's not playing around with words and emotion and who we are moving in and out of love.

I'm happiest thinking of the light, the wings, the night, and the notion of having "nothing to lose."

Yes.

Happy contemplating,
Melissa

Post-Mass Reflection and Prayer

So Mark's Gospel reading today centers around this child possessed by a spirit, and the boy's father making a request of Jesus to drive it out. He says,

"Teacher, I have brought to you my son possessed by a mute spirit. Wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, grinds his teeth, and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive it out, but they were unable to do so."

In reflecting on this tonight with the Visitation Sisters, I was struck by this image of a foaming mouth. This gurgling unattractiveness, the rigidity of the body, and grinding teeth. When I hear that it is a "mute spirit" taken hold of the child, I think of how captive this boy must be. No words are uttered, only this fixed and foaming, unwell presence....

I'm taken so many places around the planet where foaming, frothy, unattractive, spaces of rigidity and unwellness seem to be:

Yes, this image of a boy foaming at the mouth is most unpleasant, but took me to so much of unpleasant foaming in the world....

The hunger in Somalia, in Haiti, in so many countries.... The violence in Johannesburg around immigrants from warring countries.... The scarred psyches of the Chinese citizens in the aftermath of the earthquake.... The craze and disruption in Zimbabwe since the "election"... The clinging and desire to control information and recovery in Burma.... The civil war still ravaging people in Iraq.... The mute voices of racism, abuse, dysfunction, hatred in our countries, in leadership, in our court systems... The terror right here in our own hearts and communities... So much foaming...

And Jesus says,

"this will only be healed by prayer."

Let's pray for that kind of prayer. That kind of healing. Let's ask for the wisdom and ways free from all that inhabits us in unwell ways. Let's pray for that which dispels the silent terrors; pray for freedom from all that takes hold of us, that ravages us to the ground, that freezes us with its possession.

May fullness be known. Liberation. Healing. New Life. Now.

Peace,
Melissa

Jesus and Cinderella: A couple poems of Magic, Mystery, Emotion

In the Catholic Church, we are in Ordinary Time. My days as a Catholic, as contemplative, feel anything but ordinary. What follows are a couple poems born from the wonderings, wanderings of my own heart, spirit, doubt, deep faith.

Perhaps they might speak to you?

Love, In the fullness of now,
Melissa


Jesus and Cinderella
By Melissa Borgmann

There's no fairy tale.
Even the resurrection sucked.
Seriously.
People standing around wondering.
"Uhh, what gives?"
The doubt is a kill joy. Suckage, my friend. Suckage.
So get over any princess and prince and kissing and magical endings where light shines and birds dance and things twinkle.
There's no marriage.
There's no life that we see after death.
Just this rolled open emptiness and mice lurking around thinking perhaps they were in attendance at something cool.
These furry, low-to-the-ground, tailed creatures: are hallucinating vermin.
We all are.
Jesus and Cinderella are silly and cruel jokes.



Climbing into Christ’s Wounds
By Melissa Borgmann

He is so large when I see him across the room.
Tall, brownish, handsome.
Open arms. I love these open arms. They are always extended. Palms up, ready.
We are in Brazil.
He is statuesque, looming, omnipresent, benevolent, asking me to climb up and in.
I feel shy at times.
Like He may not want me.
But He doesn't blink.
Come.
I step closer and He remains.
I grab hold.
No toppling. He can bear my weight.
And then I'm there.
Inside of his palms, He lets me wiggle and writhe and roll over.
And I feel safe.
I am little, a child. In my grandfather's lap. Only in this other fellow's hands.
And then inside.
I am sinking into His wounds.
They are open, too.
Even there, I am safe.
I recognize some kind of one-ness.
These are not another's ouchies.
They are mine.
They are the world's.
Brazil aches. I ache. Johannesburg aches. St. Paul aches. McClellan aches. Fort Benning aches. Tripoli aches. China aches. Burma weeps. He weeps. I writhe, He writhes. Somalia hungers. He hungers. Obama persists. He persists. Bush descends. He descends. Clinton steps, He steps. She shouts with joy, He shouts with joy.

And the benefits of these wounds?
We all can find them. Locate them on our own exteriors, interiors.
Battling, bleeding, beat up, we are.

Inside the palm, at least I know unification.
I am held.
He lives.
Amen.

"Your Inner Fish" a Bit on Neil Shubin's Book

Greetings!

Has anyone caught an interview with this paleontologist, Neil Shubin?
I was listening to him this past week on Minnesota Public Radio, as he discussed his work digging around in the Arctic Circle, collecting fossils of fish evolving with fingers and necks. It's freaking fascinating stuff!

I love it, as a woman who reveres science, and so deeply enjoys the
literal and figurative applications to my human and spiritual self.

Literally: If we all evolved from fish, what must our lung capacities
be?

Figuratively: What abilities to dive deeply, and immerse ourselves in
oceanic atmospheres do we possess?
How are our inner fishes really great for sustaining us in these
turbulent, and ever-changing waters of life?

Here's a passage from the Newsweek article that cracks me up with
info and Shubin's humor:

"Your Inner Fish," Shubin explains how a range of medical conditions, from hiccups to heart disease, are the byproducts of our clunky evolution. "The extraordinary disconnect between our past and our human present means that our bodies fall apart in certain predictable ways," he says. "Our circulatory systems are a good example. They were designed for activity, but we now have the lifestyles of spuds."

Here's the link to the Newsweek article. Check it out if you have time!

http://www.newsweek.com/id/96399

xoxo,
Melissa

Political Stuff: Chuck Hagel and Barack Obama

The following is excerpted from our Borgmann Family-List-serve. It was written following a broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio of Kerri Miller interviewing Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska. Ms. Miller framed her conversation with this idea that Hagel could be Barrack's running mate, should Obama get the endorsement.

It's all premature speculation, this business of Senator Chuck Hagel and Barack Obama. But I do enjoy the notion of a ticket that fuses the parties.

I got into some trouble at the beginning of this season's primary campaigns with Frederico, (of Frederico and Fannie), a former political journalist from the Domican Republic. This is the house I would clean in every Wednesday, and where these two beautiful people would be running a day care in the basement. Frederico seemed fascinated with my political leanings and ideas, and would come up and ask me questions when I'd have Public Radio turned on.

"Who are you voting for?" He asked me point blank one day.

Rather than immediately respond, I gave him my honest question of contemplation:
"What would it look like if Obama and McCain would run together?"

This was in December, before Iowa. Whew. But it made Frederico mad.
"Do you want more war?! McCain will take this country into more war!" he said.

My whole point was about alignment across political lines, party affiliation. Actually, the opposite of war: a demonstration of a capacity to hold the tensions and complexities of this nation across black/white; yes/no; right/wrong/; privileged/poor; gay/ straight; republican/democrat divides. Please.

I'm ready for a really mature citizenry - and a transformed consciousness of the electorate - that allows for leadership to look and be different from what we've known in the past.

This speculation and questioning, is my attempt at leading through contemplation.

What do our imaginations allow and hope for?

Peace,
Melissa

A Prayer for a Time of Transition

When aren't we in transition? This is my question!

The following is a beautiful prayer written by Cindy Boggs and the Transition Team at the Church of St. Phillips, in North Minneapolis.

Our parish is awaiting a new priest to lead us. In the meantime, we wait, we pray, we celebrate who we are NOW - as Church, as family, as God's people, who have the greatest kind of leadership this earth has known in one called, "Christ."
Thank God for the Holy Spirit, that helps fuse our gifts and the Divine In-Dwelling, to know we are enough now, beloved now, as we live into this uncertain future - one held by God, by Love.

Yes!
Amen.
Melissa

A PRAYER FOR A TIME OF TRANSITION

Ever-living, ever-loving God,
We thank you for the gift of your love,
and for the joy of sharing that love with others,
in and through this faith community.
We thank you for the pastoral leaders
and dedicated parishioners
who have gone before us.
We know that it is because of their devoted prayer
and hard work over the past one-hundred years,
that we are able worship you here today
in this holy place, on this sacred ground.
We pray for courage and strength,
for energy and enthusiasm
to carry on your mission,
particularly during this time of waiting.
We ask you to fill us with hope
and to inspire us with trust.
Send us your Spirit, renew our hearts,
and enkindle in us the fire of your love.
Sustain us during this time of waiting and change.
Open our minds and ready our hearts
to receive and to warmly welcome a new pastor.
Whomever you are preparing to come to us,
bless him and keep him,
encourage him to respond soon,
and with a full and enthusiastic 'yes'!
God of all goodness,
giver of all that is good and holy,
we ask this through your Son Jesus Christ,
our Lord.
Amen.

Me and the Buddha: How many Paths to "Enlightenment"?

Good God, but I had a moment yesterday with this blessed Buddha statue that I have to share...

As part of my daily meditation practice, I pull out a tea light, strike a match, and place it squarely in the base of my Buddha. It's a devotional routine, that helps me move into an intentional space conducive to my own brand of Centering prayer/ Buddhist Meditation/ Medicine Wheel work.

Yesterday, I leaned over to kiss this statue's sweet cheeks, and my hair caught on fire.

I laugh out loud now, thinking,

"Another kind of enlightenment, eh?"

I'm thinking I'll be writing more about my encounters in meditation in coming days, as I'm naming for myself that this is the most important transformational work of my life. Listening to this conference, "Jesus and Buddha: Paths to Awakening - Finding the Four Noble Truths in the Heart of the Gospel" recorded at the Center for Contemplation and Action, in New Mexico, is also nudging me in this direction.

James Finley, a former Trappist Monk, who studied under the guidance of Thomas Merton, said today, "It's possible to be a devout Buddhist and Devout Christian." And that really rocked my world.

Ohhhhweee!

I like being given permission to be on fire in faith and love! It sort of just mirrors what I already am experiencing in this crazy life of mine.

In peace, love, light,
Melissa

Night....into Day? A Reflection on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem

Poem: "Night" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Public Domain.

Night

Into the darkness and the hush of night
Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away,
And with it fade the phantoms of the day,
The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the
light.
The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight,
The unprofitable splendor and display,
The agitations, and the cares that prey
Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight.
The better life begins; the world no more
Molests us; all its records we erase
From the dull common-place book of our lives,
That like a palimpsest is written o'er
With trivial incidents of time and place,
And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.

Thank you Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, Garrison Keillor and the Writer's Almanac, for bringing this forward. I'm struck by sinking landscapes and fading phantoms, vanishing clamorous pursuits, splendor. Yes! I'm excited by this notion of the better life beginning, a cessation of things that molest our spirits our hearts. (How about that for a word, "molest"? Yikes!)
And this image of a palimpsest! That a sheath, a record could possess the mutual stories (truths?) of the past, with inscribed new tales, details over the top. Oh, the discovery of the original underneath is like this dawning of a new day. Sunrise! Light! Fresh eyes! Revived Spirits! Longfellow gives this poem the title of 'Night" - but the Hope rests in the imminent rising of what seems to have been hidden. Yes! The sun will appear. It just does. As will any written-over-record of truth. Behind clouds now, this light, this ideal radiance is: ready to emerge.

Are you ready?

Peace, Happy Contemplating!
Melissa

May Sarton's "Fruit of Loneliness"

Poem: "Fruit of Loneliness" by May Sarton, from Encounter in April. © Houghton Mifflin, 1937. Reprinted with permission. (buy now) Thank you Garrison Keillor and Writer's Almanac.

Fruit of Loneliness

Now for a little I have fed on loneliness
As on some strange fruit from a frost-touched vine—
Persimmon in its yellow comeliness,
Of pomegranate-juice color of wine,
The pucker-mouth crab apple, or late plum—
On fruit of loneliness have I been fed.
But now after short absence I am come
Back from felicity to the wine and bread.
For, being mortal, this luxurious heart
Would starve for you, my dear, I must admit,
If it were held another hour apart
From that food which alone can comfort it—
I am come home to you, for at the end
I find I cannot live without you, friend.

(1930)

Today's Poem: Meditation on "The Quarter" by Jim Harrison

From the Writer's Almanac. (Thank you Garrison Keillor and MPR.)

Poem: "The Quarter" by Jim Harrison. Used with permission of the poet.

The Quarter

Maybe the problem is that I got involved with the wrong crowd of gods when I was seven. At first they weren't harmful and only showed themselves as fish, birds, especially herons and loons, turtles, a bobcat and a small bear, but not deer and rabbits who only offered themselves as food. And maybe I spent too much time inside the water of lakes and rivers. Underwater seemed like the safest church I could go to. And sleeping
outside that young might have seeped too much dark into my brain and bones. It was not for me to ever recover. The other day I found a quarter in the driveway I lost at the Mecosta State Fair in 1947 and missed out on five rides including the Ferris wheel and the Tilt-A-Whirl. I sat in anger for hours in the bull barn mourning my lost quarter on which the entire tragic history
of earth is written. I looked up into the holes of the bulls' massive noses and at the brass rings puncturing their noses which allowed them to be led. It would have been an easier life if I had allowed a ring in my nose but so many years later I still find the spore of the gods here and there but never in the vicinity of quarters.

Point.
I notice....
Something of God. Something of money. Something about seeing The Divine in fish. Something about sorrow and anger and possibly experiencing dark-side-seepage by virtue of sleeping outdoors. Hmmmmm....The woe of not riding the ferris wheel. What losing his money stirred in him, emotion wise. Hmmmm.... And this business of being a bull lead by the nose?

Question.
I wonder....
Who are we in our faith?
Who am I in my relationship to money?
What do the rivers and fish teach us?
What does the poet want me to think?
Is the "wrong crowd of gods" really fish and birds in nature?
How could the "spore of gods" ever be found in the vicinity of a quarter?

Speculate.
I think....
Jim Harrison and I have a lot in common when it comes to where we find our church.
He invites us to contemplate being lead by the nose with him, a pierced ring that perhaps might get us to the "right" place.

What do you think?