Take a load off, Annie
And you put the load right on me

One day I saw you sweeping up dust
Scrubbing away the stains on your wrist
A story spun on your stereo
Lined your eyes dark and heavy
It bit your lips and arched your brow
Stories crease the leather in your boots
Bleed from your knuckles every January
Hang on the walls of the room you rent
Fill chapters of books from your childhood shelf

I hear you hush them in the other room
Try to make them go to sleep
But they’re not tired, not like you

Take the load off, Annie
But leave a light on for me

___

“The Weight” is a 1968 folk rock song written by Canadian-American group The Band.
The line above, “Take a load off, Annie,” is adapted from the song’s chorus,
“Take a load off, Fanny/ Take a load for free/ Take a load off, Fanny / And you put the load right on me.”

a welcoming-home like never before | 9 January
an excerpt from life together at osprey point, in more ways than one | 19 April
white dust and a pipe organ that reminded me what beauty is | 22 May
a divinely-appointed flight from Houston | 28 May
coming back home | 28 July
lost luggage and the beauty of simplicity | 29 July
an emerald green sari, breaking heart, and dancing feet | 7 August
a new season, a new space | 14 August
pomegranate frozen yogurt, and other sweet things | 16 September

for the wonders of the world, from one baby’s eyelashes to the Taj Mahal
for things of beauty; the veins in his forearms and midnight peals of reckless laughter
for the joy and grief and work and love and traces of eternity in each fine day,
I am grateful.

I had seen the tearful ones
wide eyes and distended bellies
clutched against gaunt hips

She was crowned in black,
graced with a wrinkled frown;
sleeping trace of waking light

And I marveled
to hold something so light
and feel such weight of glory

A sprawl of steps, a stretch of pavement,
and the ragged edges of humanity
colour the space between myself and the mosque

A knot of three or four children flit alongside
brief, urgent steps marking time, sharp and shattered
barefoot remains of unclaimed existence

A tiny sea of cries, and from among them
a small hand reaches, presses against my hip
and remains there, as if a touch could heal

The hem of a sari brushes the street, the feet of Delhi
the hem of a soul comes unstitched, fibers drift
within a web of fractured light

Simple wonder, as Yokesh discovers a piece of discarded styrofoam beneath a bush and and bounds across the yard scattering synthetic snowflakes under the August sunset.

Simple solidarity, as one small girl takes care of another because she is old enough; because she has a comb and hair needs combing.

Simple delight, as the Eden-eyed girl from Semmandakuppam studies the printed portrait I’ve brought nine thousand miles to place in her hands.

Simple beauty, as eyes as bright as the sunshine in Bangalore meet mine; delicate features full of elegance in miniature.

Simple celebration, as we embrace spontanaeity and inborn rhythm for no reason besides surplus joy.

Simple giving, as Yokesh hands me coral roses, petaled relics of the sacred, gravelly earth beneath our feet.

They teach me that simplicity lends space to the spirit, clarity to the mind, peace to the heart, rest to the body, light to the eyes. They teach me that simplicity makes fragments into whole things. They teach me to leave my shoes behind and let the soul run barefoot. They teach me to look through a lens of eternity, a lens of gratitude, a lens of grace.

Endlessly, they teach me.

“Will you come back next year?”

At this point, I already sensed that I would be unable to stay away from this haven of love and simplicity for long. But I tried not to make unstable promises.

“I hope so. I’ll try hard.”

He shook his head emphatically.

“No. Not try. Must you will come back.”

(Heart pain, ii.)

About a month ago, I met an Indian woman who was preparing to make a trip back to her home country to see friends from thirty years ago. She had no more family to return to, and all that remained was pilgrimage for the sake of pilgrimage.

“It is painful to be in your homeland as a tourist,” she told me.

Is there anyone who cannot relate to that longing for home, for your true country, whether your place of birth or your place of rebirth? Her words faintly echoed a line from the song that played as my first flight to Mumbai left the runway: “If you feel just like a tourist in the city you were born/ Then it’s time to go.”

That time has come. The next flight to India leaves tomorrow evening. Pavi was right: must I will come back.

At last.

Instead, the shore led south. With a bucket of oysters
and little recollection of plans buried somewhere up north,
my vision cleared, pulse steadied at last in the arteries
of a bayou song in a Texas river in the Arabian sea.

And I might have racked it up to seasons, tides, and constellations
but found I couldn’t map the heavens, let alone the dust
Wasted ink, threw words adrift, because I thought at least
I could write my own tale, but it was shallow and long against short and deep

A bucket of oysters; little, grey. Grey like the corrugated sleeve
around a steaming cup of chai on a fresh cotton summer morning
Sugar and cream, a hammock, a porch, one fine day
a jaunt up the road, a few dollars, little oysters, but only oysters, I thought

Until one day the phone rang and it was true; you called
and I drove and we drove and we ironed it out over an hour of road
and a mile of sunset. We don’t drive this far merely for sugared coldness
but I’d drive this far for pearls in oysters, and something as sweet as you

A bucket of oysters, closed tight. Tight like a window seat inbound from Houston
from which I finally asked, over Sprite Zero, whether you were from there or here
and it didn’t matter because you were an instrument, divinely appointed
to hold a lantern to these bloodshot eyes and point to the road

(And as capital lights gleamed beneath the aircraft, you prayed
and staggering light broke into the vessel. Should anyone ever inquire
whether I believe in coincidences, it would be a resounding no
but I do believe, and how, in what is ordained, what is written)

A bucket of oysters, thrown together. Thrown together as we were
for a moment or twenty-two, fragments of something different than we thought,
But good. Unquestionably good. If not a pearl, a pearlescent casualty of timing
Brevity was never my strength, but some say it’s a virtue

I count days that never pass, but when I stop counting there are so few left
and I find myself boxing up everything from camera batteries to treasured ragged edges
of places I’ve been and places I am. Some destined for the 213, others destined
for the southern tip of broken paradise, like I am in the morning

All these pearls, all these oysters. Night falls and I see that a pearl is not a pearl
in spite of the oyster, but because of it. Tomorrow, I will still be the latter, plain,
attempting to cultivate the former, glorious. The precious ordinary houses the precious unseen
and this bucket of oysters is heavy with the weight of pearls, the weight of grace.

Such as, love thy former friends. And thy future ones. Love thy past enemies. Love the burying of thine hatchets.

Love the least; the destitute, downtrodden, and discouraged. Should you be predisposed to love the least the most, learn to love the ones whose beauty, wit, and intelligence surpass your own. Learn to love common ground. Learn to find where your gifts fill gaps.

Love thy local demographics. Love thy immigrant, thy hipster, thy young professional, thy retiree. Love thy librarian, thy security guard, thy intern, thy barista, thy cop. Love thy readers of Dostoyevsky and thy readers of Twilight. Love thy historians of Bonhoeffer and thy historians of Bieber.

Love thy professors, accommodating and stringent alike. Love thy academic community and contribute prudently. Love thy roommate and love those who are not thy roommate but frequently inhabit thy room. Be hospitable to them. Love thy freshmen and thy alumni.

Love those who do not understand you, and those you fail to understand. Love those who think they know but have no idea. Love those you think you know all about. Love the fragile and the resilient alike. Love the untrustworthy, the inarticulate, the obstinate, the abrasive, and the overdramatic, and thank heaven for those who love you as such.

Love thy church, but love thy Church more. Love thy pastor and love thy congregation. Love those who leave thy church, and love when you leave thy church. Love those who love laws. Love those who understand life together and those who do not. Love thy cynics and thy visionaries. Love thy saint and thy sinner.

Love thy authority, love thy subordinate. Love those who can’t take the hint. Love those who won’t take your advice. Love those who preach to you and those who preach at you. Love those you call out and those who call you out. Love those who obey and those who rebel. Love those you fight for and those you oppose. Love those who forget years and miles and roots, even when you long to remind them. Love those who break your heart and those whose hearts you break. Love those who hold it against you. Love those who forgive your faults and those who do not.

Keep no score, but love those who do.

The answer is greater than my two hands and difficult to wrap up neatly. I call it extreme empathy, an inability to look away. A driving desire to fill gaps. Total investment in the belief that I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you. A lifestyle, not an isolated action. Still, so many words don’t unite structure with substance, and it lingers on my mind.

What is mercy?, I ask myself daily, and feel like a distant admirer: I know about you, but I don’t know who you are. Longing to plumb the depths, but still studying the surface. Perhaps the only way to truly understand the scope of any calling is to spend your life answering it. A journey best traveled not by map-making, but by road-walking.

Mercy visits the destitute in their distress and does not look down, but kneels down and looks eye-to-eye, soul-to-soul. Mercy speaks for the silent, comforts the weary, feeds the hungry, names the nameless, welcomes the searching. Mercy says, Even when you are lost to the world and beyond my reach to rescue, you are not lost to me and I will not look away without speaking on your behalf. Even when there is no reason or resolution for suffering, mercy is relentlessly, recklessly compassionate. If we are a body, then mercy is the muscle that opens the hand, a muscle through which exercise becomes habit, habit becomes reflex, and reflex becomes religion.

We may not comprehend the mysteries, but we can accomplish the ministry, for mercy is simply a call and response.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this:
to visit orphans and widows in their affliction,
and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
James 1:27

There’s only a moment to take in the panhandle panorama until someone’s chasing me through the sandy shallows. I shriek and run, but she is faster and I emerge laughing, dripping. Then it’s a mud fight until we all collapse waist-deep, grinning.

The late-afternoon sun settles on the surface, and the warm wind carries a dozen sighs of contentment. Hands buried in sand, hair dripping with river water, worries left on some other coast. The laziness gives way to another bout of wet-sand warfare. We dry out in the sunshine, tie our hair up, and prop our sunglasses on sun-touched noses.

It’s time to leave the bright current, but before I can make it back to the truck, I hear splashing steps from behind and try to escape, but my yelp drowns in the river one more time. We pile into the truck bed barefoot and ride home through the white dust.

Our collarbones are burnt red and my salt-soaked, windblown hair might never be the same, but it’s a beautiful kind of mess and we savor the joy. The Arabian horses canter across the ground to our left.  Texas sunshine pumps through our veins and the disarming warmth creates space for something beyond water and sunlight to stream across my soul.

Redemption calls.

Redemption comes in strange places, small spaces
Calling out the best of who we are.

- Sara Groves, “Add To The Beauty”