Tag Archives: Meaning

The Gravity of Grief

Artist Concept of a Supermassive Black Hole, NASA/JPL-Caltech. Public Domain under NASA policy

Tragic events expose the fragility of the worlds we inhabit.
Undoing the meaning of the words that we speak and hear.
The gravity of the grief is so powerful that nothing escapes it.

There are no beautiful words that can undo betrayal.
Letters litter the lawn as they lose their creative power.
Words are worthless when the unspeakable occurs.
Tragedy transforms treasured truths into discarded trash.
Narratives go nowhere. Sacred stories are suddenly suspended.
Poetry enters a precarious pause. Its rhymes and rhythms undone.

Someday the words will regain their meaning for the wounded one.
When the gravity of grief is not so great. But not yet.
First the fragile pieces must be gathered, their world recreated.

Only time can transform the truths tragedy trashed.
Patient presence with survivor of the unspeakable
May once again allow words their worth in the world.
Narratives may find their new way. Sacredness seen in stories.
Poetry and prose relate reality in rhyme and rhythm.
Beauty beyond the brokenness of betrayal as new words emerge.

Meaning and Metrics

William Blake, The Ancient of Days: The Division of Light and Darkness (1794)

William Blake, The Ancient of Days: The Division of Light and Darkness (1794)

We often act if the only things that matter are the things that we can measure
Equating quantifiability with quality and metrics for meaning
In a scientific world we like to measure and enumerate
Statistically straining our lives into sets of data to be examined
Living for our curricula vita rather than the unmeasurable moments of meaning
And perhaps someday we will describe the mathematics of love and passion
But lives that are lived seek the meaning that defies the metrics
We live not for numbers but for stories, for feelings and values
Our impact is felt in the quality of connections we cultivate
Rather than the quantity of work we manufacture
Numbers have their necessity and their place in our world
And metrics cannot give us the meaning that our lives seek

Neil White, 2015

The Puzzle Master: A Poem

Apophysis by Sheri Lynn Meyer (1footonthedawn in deviantart.com)

Apophysis by Sheri Lynn Meyer (1footonthedawn in deviantart.com)

Hawkish eyes darting quickly through the layers of color and shapes

Making sense of each riddle in turn, seeing the pattern in the parts

Problems become joined into solutions and chaos begins to be shaped into order

Heart and hand, eye and mind, vision and patience all work in concert

At the joining of things once pulled apart

And upon the workbench of possibility shapes begin to emerge

What will the message in the medium be?

The puzzle master sees the picture in his mind

Only he knows how one piece might fit within the whole of the body

But with one piece missing the puzzle is not complete

Each piece is precious, sacred, worth holding onto

And so the puzzle master sits at the workbench, the creation unfinished

A labor of love out of the broken pieces of life

A puzzle, a challenge, a riddle

Out of brokenness, wholeness

Out of pieces the picture

Out of diversity some mystical unity

Without the puzzle master’s perspective it is merely jagged edges

A cacophony of color

More problems than solutions

More questions than answers

More pieces than places

And yet in the patience and vision of the puzzle master

It is the beloved masterpiece that he has poured his life into

And until all are again one

Until all the jagged edges form a smooth surface

Until the wounds of time are healed

The labor of love continues

Composed by Neil White, 2013

For my son’s 14th Birthday

purple rose 01 by picsofflowers.blogspot.com