I would love to introduce you to the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian American who lives in Texas. If there was space I would use so many of her poems. Today, I share two. This is the season of returning to school and beginning school. Parents with cameras and hugs send their child through the doors for the first time. Nye captures this and gives to it a whole new dimension. The second poem The Day captures a whole other world, or more properly it captures our world. On the fly cover of You & Yours we read “She never shies from the challenge of trying to name the mysterious logic of childhood, or speak truth to power in the face of the horrors of war.” Give yourself a gift and search out her books of poetry from your local library. Pause and ponder her beautiful words.
What is Supposed to Happen
When you were small,
we watched you sleeping,
waves of breath
filling your chest.
Sometimes we hid behind
the wall of baby, soft cradle
of baby needs.
I loved carrying you between
my own body and the world.
Now you are sharpening pencils,
entering the forest of
lunch boxes, little desks.
People I never saw before
call out your name
and you wave.
This loss I feel,
this shrinking,
as your field of roses
grows and grows….
Now I understand history.
Now I understand my mother’s
ancient eyes.
“What is Supposed to Happen” by Naomi Shihab Nye from Red Suitcase. 1994
The Day
I missed the day
on which it was said
others should not have
certain weapons, but we could.
Not only could, but should,
and do.
I missed that day.
Was I sleeping?
I might have been digging
in the yard,
doing something small and slow
as usual.
Or maybe I wasn’t born yet.
What about all the other people
who aren’t born?
Who will tell them? Naomi Nye You & Yours 2005
Prayer:
Holy God, As night
turns to day, and day
turns to night, so the world moves onward,
not always forward, but onward, for sure.
As my days, first counted in weeks, then months,
then years and now counted in decades, and
still the mysteries and the wonders grow.
Holy God, amidst this growing, enable, my believing,
my praying, my living, my forgiving, my hoping and
my helping, to speak not in words but in action and in
my action may the unspoken hymn of praise speak
only of You, O Lord of mystery and wonder, majesty and
grace, love and light. Amen.
Prayers, Poems, and Christian Ponderings 
The busses started practicing in mid August here. Big deep yellow lumbering things that sometimes have to back up and try again to turn a sharp corner without jumping the curb. I like the start of school, and having been born and raised to live within the academic calendar, the New Year has started, and it will come to an end in May.
I love the metaphor of the classroom as a forest, the poet’s clever and accurate insight. I like both poems and the contrasts they represent. It’s also pleasant to think back to our own children’s school experiences and I’m chuckling to myself thinking about our youngest daughter’s comment on being awakened for the second day of kindergarten. As I interrupted her playing to tell her it was time to get ready for kindergarten she looked at me astonishingly and said, “But I went yesterday!”
Thank you for the introduction to the new poet, and for the reminder of sweet Septembers, then and now.
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