Intention. I have been thinking about intention over the last weeks. How to live intentionally, kindly, sanely, in the midst of all that is churning in every direction in our country and the world. I have been trying to come to some inner understanding of how it is best for me to be aware of what is going on without giving in to despair and fear with the uncertainty that grips us.The word intention keeps coming to my mind as if placed there by an outer force and I have decided to pay attention to it. 

Mulling over this word, intention, I was reminded of the author and poet Ross Gay who wrote a book of essays called The Book of Delights. One year on his birthday he decided that he would write a short essay every day for the next year about something that delighted him during the day. He is a writing professor and set this intention for himself amongst all the other writing and teaching that must have filled his life. Krista Tippett has interviewed him and he talks about how the intention he set…to watch for and experience delights…seemed to actually give rise to even greater delights. Sounds like a pretty good thing to me. He has since published another book, The Book of More Delights. It seems that delight must breed delight!

During April which is National Poetry Month, I set an intention to write a poem a day. I stayed pretty loyal to the daily practice though some days I wrote only a haiku. Still a poem, right? And though none of the poems were good, what I found was that the intention had me thinking more poetically. I would notice something…a flower or the smile on someone’s face…and short, descriptive phrases would pop into my mind, a snippet of a poem. It brought a kind of gentle lilt to my day and made my mood lighter.

A true poet, Molly Fisk, wrote this lovely reminder entitled ‘Against Panic’:
You recall those times, I know you do, when the sun
lifted its weight over a small rise to warm your face,
when a parched day finally broke open, real rain,
sluicing down the sidewalk, rattling city maples
and you so sure the end was here, life a house of cards
tipped over, falling, hope’s last breath extinguished
in a bitter wind. Oh, friend, search your memory again –
beauty and relief are still there, only sleeping.

Reading her words and Ross Gay’s reflections on delight have instilled in me the intention to pay more attention to those experiences of gentleness and beauty that are the gift of every day. As I did one morning this past week when I sat at my local coffee shop and watched the sunlight pour into the window illuminating the lovingly planted flowers that were waking up again and directing their faces toward the new day. What lessons were they holding out to me?

There is much in our world over which we have little control. We do what we can…contribute, have conversation, contact those in office, learn as much as we can, make our voices heard, vote, and, if you are praying person, pray. I do not want to give myself to the intention of despair. Instead I want wake every day and set an intention to search for what brings beauty and relief to a fractured, hurting world. Perhaps if we all search our memories we can wake that spirit of hope together.