the way to milk and honey
poetry corner with Linda Hogan
This year, I’m finding myself returning again and again to the word “deepening.” Deepening friendships, deepening my divinity school engagement, deepening my marriage, deepening my attention. This week it snowed in Nashville – hours and hours of big, cold flakes – and I found myself drawn back into the depth of poetry. Poems demand my fixation, my patience, my attention more than just about anything else.
So this week, I’d like to share one of the poems that feels richest to me right now.
If you have an extra minute, sit with the poem on your own before you read the rest. Sit with your gut instincts, your interpretations, your confusions, your delight. Sit with the words and phrases that stand out to you, that tug on your spirit. There is no One Right Way to interpret poetry, so your instincts are more valuable and more intimate and more true than anything I could possibly have to say. Whatever the Big Loving Thing is drawing to the surface for you today – that’s gold, baby.
And if you’re like, NOPE all good, head empty, just give me your thoughts – then give it a quick read and carry on, soldier.
The Way In | Linda Hogan
Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body.
Sometimes the way in is a song.
But there are three ways in the world: dangerous, wounding,
and beauty.
To enter stone, be water.
To rise through hard earth, be plant
desiring sunlight, believing in water.
To enter fire, be dry.
To enter life, be food.
There are a thousand pieces of this poem we could wade through together. Linda Hogan, as I read her, is wrestling with the balance of a beautiful life – a life of milk and honey, a life that is both nourishing and sweet, a life that both feeds and delights.
A beautiful life is a dance of becoming and unbecoming.
Sometimes there are seasons for us to assert, express, change the world around us – solid and persistent, like water softening river rocks.
Sometimes there are seasons for us to surrender, to allow, to change entirely into fire (like this story from the Desert Fathers).
Sometimes, sometimes.
It makes me think about all of the sometimes, sometimes in our own lives – especially our spiritual lives.
I was talking to someone I love this week about truth and rules and legalism and the Bible and he said, “wisdom is a higher calling” –
In the journey towards milk and honey, legalism looks only to the Bible for guidance and goodness.
Wisdom looks sometimes to holy texts, sometimes to intuition, sometimes to your own connection to God, sometimes to your own whole and holy life.
Wisdom is more complicated and more beautiful – it’s a higher calling.
It reminds me of the Rumi poem A Great Wagon –
“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. There are hundreds of pathways to the sacred. There are hundreds of roads to milk and honey.
Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body.
Sometimes the way is in a song.
Sometimes the way is in ancient and sacred texts.
Sometimes the way is at a table with people you love, laughing until you cry, realizing that you are gloriously alive.
Sometimes the way is in your car, listening to a song you remember from the radio when you were 9, remembering how long and tender this life is.
Sometimes the way is reading poetry on the couch, finally slowing down enough to remembering yourself.
Sometimes the way is in a church.
Sometimes it isn’t.
May you find your way to milk and honey in a hundred different ways.
Linda Hogan (no, not that Linda Hogan) is an extraordinary Chickasaw novelist, poet, and environmentalist. You can find more of her work here if you’re into it.
If church is not it for you, but you crave the weekly ritual of gathering and settling into the fabric of humanity, the sweet and lovely Frankie Simmons facilitates the Church of Bread and Roses on her Instagram live every Sunday at 8:30pm Central. I tuned in the other week and it was just…. deep breaths and pep talks and everything good and holy.
Food is sacred and I don’t even have to tell you why because you already know. This roasted honey nut squash and chickpeas with hot honey has become a staple in our house - herby and hot, plus the cool tanginess of the vinegar and the yogurt is JUST. We made it this week during the wintry weather and it was perfect.