to care and not to care

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks
Our peace in His will.

-T.S. Eliot

It is easy to care
when I have something to give.
It is easy to not
when I don't know where they live.
I can sit very still
when my hands are held tight
I can lay down in peace
when I know I've done right.

But it's not and I don't and I can't:
Teach me.

Teach me to have nothing
to offer but you
Teach me to let people
do what they do
Teach me to sit, to just sit
and not move
Teach me until I have
nothing to prove -

even among these rocks.

my little gidding

This morning I read a part
of Eliot's Little Gidding;
this evening I played it out
with a feisty two-year-old.
Fear and fire
and a fight about toothpaste;
then the weightless terror
of falling
from the height of
who I thought I was,
watching some lady with
my face tear sopping
wet pajamas off a
small screaming child.
But now this grace:
what is terror but fear
and fear the beginning
of wisdom.
At the foot of the cross
in a rocking chair,
he slips his hand in mine.
The weight of his
body curled in my lap
holds me here,
a welcome heaviness.
I need this heavy love
that gives a fight
to bring an end
which is always a beginning.