Good morning…
When I walk and talk with one dear friend, she often notices stray worms inching aimlessly across the surface of the sidewalk. Gently, consistently she picks up every lost worm she sees, placing each in the familiarity of the soil beneath the soft green grass.
“I know you love caring for stray worms,” I wrote her last week. “Here is a poem for you by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.”
******
On a day when the world is weighty,
dark and dense with need,
I want to be the earthworm
that gives itself over to tunneling,
its every movement an act
of bringing spaciousness.
And when minutes feel crushed by urgency,
I want to meet the world wormlike,
which is to say grounded,
consistent, even slow.
No matter how desperate the situation,
the worm does not tunnel faster
nor burrow more.
It knows it can take decades
to build fine soil.
To whatever is compacted,
the worm offers its good worm work,
quietly bringing porosity
to what is trodden, compressed.
So often, in my rush to repair,
I end up exhausted.
Let my gift to the world be
my constancy, a devotion to openness,
my willingness to be with what is.
Let my gift to myself be patience
as I tend what is dense and dark.
******
“I love this poem,” she replied. “The call to openness, willingness, patience…needed words 🌟🙏🏻💜.”
Revisiting the words, I mull over the quirky poem myself.
When I aimlessly scooch across the hard surface of things, I exhaust myself. Much like my friend who cares for wayward worms, I yearn for God to pick me up, to return me to soft soil of my true self. Instinctively drawn to tunneling, I deepen down with God, giving spaciousness to the dense and dark, being patiently “with” whatever is.
Don’t imagine, dear friends, that God’s timetable is the same as ours; as the psalm says, for with the Lord, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day (2 Peter 3:8, VOICE).
…Sue…
