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Gerund
I Love Gerunds!
The gerund of a verb is its –ing form. I love gerunds, because they speak of action not-yet-complete, or on its way to completion. They occupy the middle ground between ‘past’ and ‘future’ which corresponds to the between-ness of our lives in time. We mostly ‘are becoming,’ though clearly we ‘became’ at a particular point in time and someday will fully, finally ‘have become’.
The word ‘gerund’ comes from the Latin ‘to bear,’ or ‘to carry’ and is related to the word gestation, in which the young are carried, and to gesture, or one’s bearing and attitude in movement.
On the journey that is life, I sometimes can see the road ahead, and sometimes cannot. I never know, as I go forward, how long it extends, or what trials lie ahead. So, I can’t pace myself perfectly. I move forward at different rates (“first conserving, then spending”) according to my energy and understanding in each moment. As I get older, I realize I am in a ‘liminal zone,’ or transitional place between more clearly marked areas. I begin to see old things in new ways, remember long lost people, hesitate to say goodbye to loved ones, and feel oddly out of place and strange in this world as I move closer to the next.
The old Irish blessing – a wish for the road’s rising and ease – is echoed in my own yearning to “run in the path of God’s commands,” (Psalm 119:32) and in His promise to “make straight paths for my feet.” (Hebrews 12:13)
Notice that, amid all my gerunds at the end of the poem is the one fully accomplished certainty that I am carried. Whatever becoming and stumbling I do to meet the road, I live and move and have being in the Person who is calling me forward, accompanying me on the way.
GERUND
“May the road rise up to meet you.
May God go with you on the way”
The road has risen
in the past,
but now veers off
on its own course
around a bend
to terminate beyond
the point, where
all roads converge.
I am aware
they must go on,
becoming one,
where I see vision
giving way to faith.
But who can tell
how many miles,
blind turns and twists
of fate lie there
in wait,
or how to pace myself
to trace an unknown path?
Hesitating, alternating –
first conserving,
then spending
in profligate abandon.
Is it better to arrive
on ‘full’ or ‘empty’?
Traveling in the liminal zone,
and growing strange;
startling at familiarities;
perceiving long lost faces
in the passing cars;
flinching at approach,
but prolonging goodbyes;
changing course,
occasionally, wondering
when and how I’ll know
the trip is over;
yearning just to run;
imagining the rest;
standing, waiting, stumbling on;
continuing, carried, carrying,
to meet a rising road.
All the poems are now in one volume, and I’d love for you to have a copy! Click on the cover to buy it, and click here for the recordings of all the poems.
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