Protected: “Flora” by Jane Beal

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Read Full Post »

Transfiguration: A Midwife’s Birth Poems by Jane Beal

Now available from Lulu Press,
JANE BEAL’s new poetry collection:

TRANSFIGURATION

“Jane’s perspective, from being an international midwife and a talented writer, gives rise to the absolutely beautiful poems contained in this little book. She incorporates sweetly the people she has served in her birth practice and travels. She also teaches us some midwifery along the way! Jane’s great faith in our Lord adds so much to this labor-of-love volume. I highly recommend this book. It should be in the possession of all midwives and mothers.”

Jan Tritten
Editor of Midwifery Today
Author of Birth Wisdom, Vol. 1 & 2

“Birth is sacred experience: a time when the formless takes form.  In Jane Beal’s new book, Transfiguration: A Midwife’s Birth Poems, we are taken through beautiful poetic form, closer to the spirit of birth. We feel both joy and grief. But who are we to question the ways of the spirit? As much as we try to understand birth, its mystery remains a miracle – and that is what draws us into Transfiguration.”

Cathy Daub
President of BirthWorks International
Author of Birthing in the Spirit

Read Full Post »

“Mockingbird in Love” by Jane Beal

“Mockingbird in Love“

by Jane Beal

now appears in Chantwood Magazine 2 (May 2016)

(page 43!)

Read Full Post »

“Angel-Swing” by Jane Beal

“Angel-Swing“

by Jane Beal

in now available in

Kikwetu: A Journal of East African Literature

Read Full Post »

“Sampson Bows his Head” by Jane Beal

My God, I am so tired.

But what was cut away from me
is growing back.

Give me strength in my blindness.

If I push down these pillars,
the roof will come down on my enemies.

O Lord, this is my last act of worship.

jb

Read Full Post »

“Light and Water” by Jane Beal

Light on the water, deep water,
shimmering on the surface –

and the light goes down
into the well of love.

Everything is illuminated.

The hidden treasures, the lost seashells,
the songs water-creatures sing,

the ripple effect of your skipping stone
sinking down to the sand.

Everything is illuminated.

Do you know what water-lilies
look like from underneath?

Do you know how to breathe
in deep places?

Everything is illuminated.

Touch the roots of flowers
that float on the water.

See what can be seen.
Hear me.

jb

Nymphaea alba

Read Full Post »

“Selkie Finds the Sea” by Jane Beal

“Selkie Finds the Sea“

is now available in the journal,

Journey of the Heart: Women’s Spiritual Poetry.

Read Full Post »

“Selkie Takes her Turn” by Jane Beal

“Selkie Takes her Turn“

by Jane Beal

now available at Forgotten

“Selkie” by Awreon

Read Full Post »

Some Thoughts about God and Desire: Part 3

Part of being human is wanting more than one thing at the same time. Sometimes the two things we want conflict with one another. Take eating and sleeping, for instance, our most basic bodily needs. Have you ever been so tired that all you wanted to do was sleep? So tired you could hardly get out of bed? But you were hungry, too?

As a midwife, this happens to me after a very long labor and birth. As an international traveler, it happens to me when the journey is long, and the jet-lag is severe. I usually force myself to get up, eat something small, and then go back to bed. Sleep at that time feels so good, and food tastes so good, too, because I am really hungry. There is a proverb that says, “To the hungry, even what is bitter tastes sweet.”

The conflict between eating and sleeping is easily resolved, just a simple matter of doing one first and then the other. It’s a matter of timing. One thing waits on another, and the desire for both is fulfilled. Delay is minimal, thank God, because we need both sleep and nourishment to live.

It’s important to understand the role of Time in the fulfillment of our desires, especially our deepest desires — the ones that go beyond eating and sleeping — the ones that are in the heart.

When Jesus was going to the Cross, he stopped to pray in a garden. He knew he was going to suffer, and he didn’t want to suffer the agony of torture and death. So he prayed to God, the Father, and he said:

“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

Jesus prayed, just as he had taught his disciples to pray, that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. He wanted two things at the same time, two things that were in conflict with one another: to avoid suffering and pain and, at the same time, to go through it in order to accomplish God’s will — the atonement for sin, the redemption of humanity, so that the whole world would be reconciled to God and experience salvation.

For those who put their trust in Jesus, maturing in faith means surrendering our conflicting desires — our desire to have two opposing things at the same time — to God’s will and God’s timing.

To desire God’s will above all other desires is to become like Jesus.

Look into this cup:
what do you see?
It’s the image of suffering
that saved you and me.

The Light in this wine,
never ages or fades,
but lives as a sign,
beautiful in eternity.

jb

Read Full Post »

“Invitation” by Jane Beal

Do you feel unknown?
I want to know you.
Do you feel unloved?
I love you,
and I want to love you more.

I won’t kick down the door.
I’ll ask for the key.
If you leave the door open,
I can come in
where you are.

I have a flame
cupped in-between my two hands,
and it is bright,
and very warm.
It’s only fire.

Don’t be afraid.

See? When I open my fingers,
the shadows play
on the walls,
and we remember
what it is like to be children.

I want to share
my light with you.
I want your hands
to be warm.
My heart says

yes to your heart,
yes to a mystery,
yes to your songs,
yes to your eyes,
yes to whatever may come.

jb

Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs. The early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength, and each one appears before God in Zion.

Psalm 84: 5-7

Read Full Post »

Lines from “Oda a Las Cosas” / “Ode to Things” by Pablo Neruda

Oh río
irrevocable
de las cosas,
no se dirá
que sólo
amé
los peces,
o las plantas de selva y de pradera,
que no sólo
amé
lo que salta, sube, sobrevive, suspira.
No es verdad:
muchas cosas
me lo dijeron todo.
No sólo me tocaron
o las tocó mi mano,
sino que acompañaron
de tal modo
mi existencia
que conmigo existentes
que vivieron conmigo media vida
y morirán conmigo media muerte.

Pablo Neruda
Odas a las Cosas /
Odes to Common Things

(O irrevocable
river
of things,
no one will say
that I loved
only
the fish,
or the plants of the rainforest and the field,
that I only
loved
that which leaps, rises, survives, sighs.
It’s not true:
many things
tell me it all.
Not only did they touch me,
or my hand touch them,
but they accompanied
my existence
in such a way
that they lived with me
and they were, for me, so alive
that they lived with me half my life
and they will die with me half my death.)

trans. Jane Beal

“Mockingbird”

by Jane Beal

Read Full Post »

“bridge” by Jane Beal

something, heart in, struggling
to out get
if

eyes yours, were mine,
this see

mercyme

over
bridge over
water

sailing, dream, fear, memory
when

heartkiss

neversomeday, whytry, singing
show you, show me
flip

neverknow
what i mean

please

jb

Read Full Post »

“Reveal the Stars” by Jane Beal

The clocks have all been set back.

We play with counting hours —

flipping the hourglass,

watching the salt sink

from heaven to earth.

All this time — I can’t

hold it in my hands,

even though my hands are open

and longing for

fulfillment.

If you even whispered,

near my ear,

I would hear your words

echoing in my heart,

but why now, silence?

Time opens so slowly,

like a flower, but not

one caught on time-lapse film,

not so that we would notice

a bud become a bloom.

So much more than what we see,

so much more than what we hear:

one touch, a thousand years,

another touch, a whole day,

a third and a fourth, eternity.

My prayers are minutes.

My prayers are songs.

I wish like a woman standing

beside a well, watching

pennies disappear in the water.

First, my face is reflected there,

then yours. It is afternoon.

The bees are making honey.

The birds are singing in the trees.

Night will reveal the stars.

Jane Beal

Read Full Post »

“Moving Away” by Jane Beal

“Moving Away“

now available in

 Convergence – Fall 2015 Issue

Dreaming of New Heights

by Joan Carroll Kudin

Read Full Post »

“A Time for Everything” by Jane Beal

He invited plans.
Hers were wild.
He watched her move a pot.
She watched him.

He came into her private garden
and stood surrounded by candlelight,
and when she came down from her bath,
she had no idea what he was doing there.

His father, he said, told him we were meant
for Eden, and ever since the Fall,
we have been trying to re-make
the perfect garden.

“Is this your Eden?” he asked her.
My search for it, she said.
He touched the flowers with such gentleness.
Later, she knelt in the same place where he had stood.

She might be digging
when the wind would blow,
and the ghost of her lost child
would run by, laughing.

She sat with him another day and said,
You will tell me if I am mad,
and he said, “You are not mad.”
You do not know me completely yet, she replied.

There came a night when
they stood in one another’s presence,
dressed in white, like a wedding,
and then undressing, completely vulnerable.

Both of them had seen betrayal,
and so much pain and loss,
and yet they opened their hearts –
they opened their bodies to the future.

The king will come into his garden,
the water will flow over the rocks,
the seashells will glisten and shine,
and the music will play, it will play –

a song of hope and desire,
a song for being reborn,
for there is a time for everything,
a season for every matter under heaven.

Jane Beal

A Little Chaos

(soundtrack by Peter Gregson)

Read Full Post »

Two New Poems by Jane Beal in The Poppy Road Review

“Pomona’s Garden”

“Echo Finds her Body”

by Jane Beal

Read Full Post »

Tenebrae by Geoffrey Hill

He was so tired that he was scarcely able to hear a note of the songs: he felt imprisoned in a cold region where his brain was numb and his spirit was isolated.

1

Requite this angel whose

flushed and thirsting face

stoops to the sacrifice

out of which it arose.

This is the lord Eros

of grief who pities

no one; it is

Lazarus with his sores.

2

And you, who with your soft but searching voice

drew me out of the sleep where I was lost,

who held me near your heart that I might rest

confiding in the darkness of your choice:

possessed by you I chose to have no choice,

fulfilled in you I sought no further quest.

You keep me, now, in dread that quenches trust,

in desolation where my sins rejoice.

As I am passionate so you with pain

turn my desire; as you seem passionless

so I recoil from all that I would gain,

wounding myself upon forgetfulness,

false ecstasies, which you in truth sustain

as you sustain each item of your cross.

3

Veni Redemptor, but not in our time.

Christus Resurgens, quite out of this world.

‘Ave’ we cry; the echoes are returned.

Amor Carnalis is our dwelling-place.

4

O light of light, supreme delight;

grace on our lips to our disgrace.

Time roosts on all such golden wrists;

our leanness is our luxury.

Our love is what we love to have;

our faith is in our festivals.

5

Stupefying images of grief-in-dream,

succubae to my natural grief of heart,

cling to me, then; you who will not desert

your love nor lose him in some blank of time.

You come with all the licence of her name

to tell me you are mine. But you are not

and she is not. Can my own breath be hurt

by breathless shadows groaning in their game?

It can. The best societies of hell

acknowledge this, aroused by what they know:

consummate rage recaptured there in full

as faithfulness demands it, blow for blow,

and rectitude that mimics its own fall

reeling with sensual abstinence and woe.

6

This is the ash-pit of the lily-fire,

this is the questioning at the long tables,

this is true marriage of the self-in-self,

this is a raging solitude of desire,

this is the chorus of obscene consent,

this is a single voice of purest praise.

7

He wounds with ecstasy. All

the wounds are his own.

He wears the martyr’s crown.

He is the Lord of Misrule.

He is the Master of the Leaping Figures,

the motley factions.

Revelling in auguries

he is the Weeper of the Valedictions.

8

Music survives, composing her own sphere,

Angel of Tones, Medusa, Queen of the Air,

and when we would accost her with real cries

silver on silver thrills itself to ice.

Geoffrey Hill

Read Full Post »

“If I Had Died Today” by Jane Beal

If I had died today,
that would have been it –
no more sunset skies,
no more birdwatching,
no more being

a midwife at the birth
of a beautiful baby,
no more writing
poems or stories or songs,
no more telling
the ones that I love
that I love them.

I get that.

If I had died today,
my last memories
would have been surprisingly good,
if fairly ordinary:

reading in the morning,
and praying (of course –
who doesn’t pray?),
walking, going to work,
talking with the teachers’ union rep,
joining the union,
hurrying through the grocery store –

and that’s one thing
I would have liked
to do differently:

Why was I rushing?
Why was it more important
for me to go first
instead of letting the other
woman go ahead?
I smiled apologetically
at her later, but still.

If I had died today,
I might have been comforted
by the knowledge that I
helped my students:

I wrote a letter of recommendation
for one who wants to serve
with Teach for America, and later,
sat talking with several of them,
one after another,
in conferences about their research papers,
helping them develop their ideas

about how history affects geography,
and what it means
to understand,
in a complex way,
cause and effect,
short-term and long-term:
the evil that people do,
the redemption that sometimes comes.

Really. That’s what we
were talking about.

If I had died today,
it could have happened
at least three different ways
because after teaching

I start my drive home
the usual way,
and I am in the left-hand turn lane
sitting at a red-light
getting ready to merge
onto I-80 East
when I hear sirens.

I look in my rear-view mirror,
and I see seven or eight cop cars
with their red lights whirring and flashing
coming up over the hill behind me
and down my way

so I flip on my right blinker
telling those around me
that, hey, remember, we’re supposed
to get over to the side of the road,
when the cops are coming,
but they all seem to be
weirdly frozen,
and I can’t go anywhere from here,
my light is red,
I can’t enter the intersection –

really, I can’t get away,
I’m a sitting duck,
which is awkward
when you’re human
(or even when you’re a duck).

If I had died today …

That’s when the car
the cops are chasing
reaches my lane,
and when the driver can’t go forward,
because we’re in his way,
he decides to pull into
the lane of oncoming traffic
right next to me
in order to try to get on the freeway
and, to stop him, the cop in pursuit
slams into the back of his car.

Just slams him.

That car, dark with tinted windows,
does a 180 right next to me,
and suddenly stops,
just a few feet
from me,
but I’m not hit –
it’s a miracle.

If I had died today …

The cops jump out
with their guns pulled
and point them directly at the dark vehicle
angry and shouting,
“Get out of the car!
Get out of the car!”

as they come closer,
one cop in the lead,
his gun almost touching
the driver’s side window
and a German shepherd
is right behind him.

I’m watching this,
but I’m trying to get down in my own car,
trying to duck,
because I don’t want to be shot –
my God, I don’t want to be shot
by the cops or the driver in that car
who might come out
shooting, God knows, it happens –

If I had died today …

I can’t get very far down,
and I want the light to turn green,
and I think, maybe they’ve frozen
the lights, and I’m never going to be able
to get out of here –

and that’s when another cop
starts running toward the scene
from the opposite direction,
and he is holding his gun out
and pointing it straight at me,
straight into my driver’s side window 

and I hold up my hands to my face, palms out,
and I begin frantically waving at him
to say, no, don’t shoot, I’m not the suspect! 

And I wonder:
didn’t the dispatcher tell you
what the suspect’s car looks like?
I’m in a white Toyota Corolla!
It doesn’t look a thing like that dark car right next to me! 

Meanwhile, the other cops start shouting,
“Crossfire! Crossfire!”
to warn the cop that if he shoots,
he’s in danger
of injuring them.

And I am thinking to myself
that I don’t want to be shot,
and I don’t want to see any cops
accidentally shoot each other,
and I don’t actually want the cops
to shoot the driver in the car, either,
I don’t want to see that –

and I’m a midwife and a teacher,
and my purpose is to save life,
not to take it, and I don’t want to die,
not today, not right now,
because there are so many things
I still want to do before I die,
Jesus have mercy …

And the light turns green.

It turns green, and I think to myself,
I am under no obligation to stay here
and watch anyone get shot,
and I turn onto the freeway,
and I drive straight to the church
where I pray with the secretary
and call the police department
to tell them that I am a witness,
this is what I saw …

If I had died today,
that would have been it:
no more sunset skies,
no more birdwatching,
no more being –

I get that.

But I didn’t die today.
I lived.

Jane Beal
sanctuarypoet.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I lift my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD, the maker of the heaven and earth …
The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in
from this time forth  and forevermore.”

~ from Psalm 121

Read Full Post »

“Wisdom is a Wild Bird” by Jane Beal

Wisdom is a wild bird, once caged, now free.
Wisdom is an owl that sees in the dark. 

Wisdom is a dancing girl
who reads late at night. 

Wisdom is a runner,
fleet-of-foot on the sand.

Wisdom makes fear a servant
and takes counsel with Joy. 

Wisdom walks with God
and makes necessary sacrifices. 

Wisdom does not give up.

Wisdom builds with a hammer and chisel.
Wisdom waters and weeds, digs and dungs. 

Wisdom refines with fire
and sings with a clear voice.

Wisdom nurses the young
with milk from her own breast. 

Wisdom kisses the foreheads of her children—
and where her lips have touched them, 

a star shines out
forever.

Jane Beal

 PRIMARY COLORS: YELLOW

“We walk by faith and not by sight.”
2 Corinthians 5:7

“Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word.”
Romans 10:17

 

 

Read Full Post »

SPIRITUAL AVIARY for the Year by Jane Beal

SPIRITUAL AVIARY
for the Year

by Jane Beal

a collection of poems about birding and the spiritual life
in Uganda, California and the Philippine Islands

Read Full Post »

“Provision” and Other Poems by Jane Beal

Poems in Integrité

(pp. 66-68)

 

Read Full Post »

“Map Reading” by Jane Beal

“Map Reading“

by Jane Beal

in

The Flyover Country Review

Read Full Post »

Two Poems by Jane Beal

“Becoming Galatea”

and “La Guernica in Color”

now appear

in

The Muse: An International Journal of Poetry:

Jane Beal’s Poems (online)

Jane Beal’s Poems (in print)

Read Full Post »

“The End of Autumn” by Jane Beal

a tree half-dressed –

red leaves fallen on

a grey roof-top

jb

Benicia, CA

Read Full Post »