Religion: Holy Now

Peter Mayer: Holy Now

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Sundown this evening marked the end of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement; twenty years ago, or even five, the day would have had me in temple, naming my sins alongside the community in a language I can speak but cannot understand, hoping that G-d would find my repentance sincere enough to inscribe me in the book of life for yet another year.

But the older I get, the more my belief system drifts away from the conservative Judaism of my birth, and towards that of the Unitarian Universalists - a humanistic practice with no common creed among its followers save that of the ongoing search, the sacredness of community itself, and the urgency of social justice. And where most religions tell us where and how to pray, the UU sense of ritual is fluid enough to allow us to celebrate in whatever way best befits our mood, our needs, and our sense of the universe and our place in it.

And so, today, I found myself home, preparing a feature for Cover Lay Down about the ways in which I have come to use blogging itself as a mechanism for writing myself into the world, by year and by day.

And so, perhaps, it is fitting to find myself finishing up here, posting the song which most clearly speaks to that growing sense of the sublime in the mundane.

Because Minnesota singer-songwriter Peter Mayer's Holy Now serves as a sort of personalized UU hymn, one which reflects my own drift from Judaism even as it describes the move many lapsed Catholics have made from their own churches to the shared table where we worship through song and story each Sunday. In lyric and tone, it reminds us that returning reverence to the totality of creation need not imply a creator, but it sure does demand mindfulness in everything.

On my best days, I aspire to his vision.

May every day of your life bring atonement and prayer, joy and solace, no matter what you believe. For there is none of us so lost that we cannot find ourself again. Happy Yom Kippur, everyone.

Songs From Poems: Now Touch The Air Softly

Peter Mayer: Now Touch The Air Softly

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[purchase poem]

Even to a cynical heart like mine, it seems appropriate to post this on Valentine’s Day.

Now touch the air softly, step gently, one, two ...
I'll love you 'til roses are robin's egg blue;
I'll love you 'til gravel is eaten for bread,
And lemons are orange, and lavender's red.

“Now Touch The Air Softly” (more formally known as “A Pavane for the Nursery”) is a popular wedding poem by William Jay Smith, the USA’ 19^th Poet Laureate. He was born in 1918 in Winnfield, Louisiana, and in his very long career has written for adults and children. I do not lay claim to great affection for poetry, but Smith’s style appeals to me, especially for its clarity.

Now touch the air softly, swing gently the broom.
I'll love you 'til windows are all of a room;
And the table is laid, And the table is bare,
And the ceiling reposes on bottomless air.

Smith has explained his style: “I believe that poetry should communicate: it is, by its very nature, complex, but its complexity should not prevent its making an immediate impact on the reader.” So when his poems dish out alliterations, I find that greatly preferable to impenetrable metaphor.

“Now Touch The Air Softly” has its fair share of metaphor, but its lucidity surely has helped its elevation to the canon of wedding poetry. Who’d preserve a dry eye as they survey the happy couple eagerly setting out on their mutual commitment with these words providing the dramatic, impassioned soundtrack:

I'll love you 'til heaven rips the stars from his coat,
And the moon rows away in a glass-bottomed boat;
And Orion steps down like a river below,
And earth is ablaze, and oceans aglow.

So it’s all the more unromantic to learn that Smith, who at almost 93 is still alive, ended his marital career with fellow poet Barbara Howe not in death doing them part, but in the legal construct of divorce.

“Great poetry,” according to Smith, “must have its own distinctive music; it must resound with the music of the human psyche.” And if the human psyche requires aid in that, folk singer Peter Mayer in 1999 put Smith’s poem to music – and most enchantingly so. Mayer, from Minnesota, has released nine albums independently and built up a fair following, but has yet to achieve a breakthrough. Read his brief bio and reviews of his work at www.petermayer.net/bio/.

So touch the air softly, and swing the broom high.
We will dust the grey mountains, and sweep the blue sky:
And I'll love you as long as the furrow the plough,
As however is ever, and ever is now.

(Photo from cape-town-weddings.com)