Tag: poetry

The Company We Keep

“We shall be known by the company we keep
By the ones who circle round to tend these fires.
We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap
The seeds of change alive from deep within the earth.”
–MaMuse

At a small Christmas concert I attended in December, the lead soprano faltered for a moment during her solo. After a few suspended beats, the rest of the sopranos swooped in to sing her part until she could steady herself and continue. It was barely noticeable.

__________

During my church’s Christmas Eve service, we lit candles, passing tiny flames one to the other until the sanctuary was filled. I’ve always appreciated this ritual for how it spreads so much light from one small flame, but a friend said they saw it more as a reminder that if your flame goes out, there are many others there to keep lighting your way.

__________

In his poem, “Love Poems to Our Friends,” Joseph Fasano asks, “Where are the poems for those who know us?/Not for star-crossed loves,/for agonies of longing,/but ones who go with us/the whole road./…the ones who stand/by our shoulder at the funeral/and lead us back to the land of the living/and put our favorite record on the player/and go away, and come back,/always come back,/with bread and wine/and one word, one word: stay.” 

__________

When I was in a bad way this spring and hospitalized for a several days, two friends came to visit me. One was wearing a riotous, happy blouse with a flower print and they both brought such alive, vibrant energy to a confined, bleak environment. When I told her how much I loved her shirt, she said, “It’s my way of bringing you flowers since I couldn’t bring the real thing.”

__________

A beautiful friend gave me a set of antique silverware when I moved into my apartment in April. It’s so intricate and detailed with tiny flowers and minute scrolls, and the pieces feel so good to hold. It means that each time I do the tedious task of washing dishes, I’m reminded that I am loved.

__________

I’ve been working for a while now on a writing project that explores the Catholic “Acts of Mercy” in what I hope is a new way. In Catholicism, the Acts of Mercy are charitable acts for helping people in need. I’ve been semi obsessed with them for about fifteen years. There are seven corporal acts of mercy and they are things like, “feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, and sheltering the homeless.” And then there are the seven spiritual acts of mercy which are things like, “counseling the doubtful, instructing the ignorant, and bearing wrongs patiently.” Acts or works of mercy are all about doing good, being good.

My reimagining of the acts of mercy is that opportunities to extend mercy are actually reciprocal experiences; that it is not enough to value ourselves by what we “give” to or “do” for others. Doing good is not an us/them dynamic; it is not about better/worse, healthy/sick, whole/broken. That receiving, although it feels uncomfortable sometimes, honors the giver, and opens us to our shared humanity, our shared brokenness. And our shared longings for wholeness.

In the end, we are all trying to get back into the garden. To get back to paradise. To return to the experience of union with whatever Divine Source makes us feel sheltered, loved, held. There are acts of mercy every day. We are all always giving and always receiving.

Welcome to, “The Mercy Journals.” A project fifteen years in the making.

Love Poems to Our Friends
by Jospeh Fasano

Where are the poems for those who know us?

Not for star-crossed loves,
for agonies of longing,
but words for those who go with us
the whole road.

How would they start, I wonder
You let me crash
when I was new to ruin.
You came to me   
though visiting hours were over.
You held me when my loves
were done, were flames.

Yes, we will lose a few
in the changes.
But these are the ones
who save us:
not the charmers,
not the comets of wild passion,
not the ups-and-downs of love’s unlucky hungers,

but the ones who stand
by our shoulder at the funeral
and lead us back to the land of the living
and put our favorite record on the player
and go away, and come back,
always come back,

with bread and wine
and one word, one word: stay. 

To learn more about Joseph Fasano, click here.

To hear the delightful band MaMuse sing, “We Shall Be Known,” click here.

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“Blest be the God of love”*

The three best things that happened to me yesterday happened before 6:30am: 1) a line in a poem that wouldn’t come right seemed like it would; 2) I thought of a way to return to a writing project that I keep abandoning; and 3) my 4-year old son walked into the kitchen in his penguin pajamas with his armload of sleeping paraphenalia and said, “Hello there, my friend.”

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The Dangers of Self-Care

Last night I was on a panel about self-care, talking about therapeutic writing.  Luckily two other smart, insightful people with useful things to say were on the panel too, because the idea of self-care seems like a big load of nonsense to me. I like the idea of being kind to ourselves, but take a good look around folks, and ask yourselves if what we could all stand is a tad more self-regulation.

What I am against in particular about the marketing of “self-care” is that it always seems to involve flowers and bathing in candlelight.  The message is that, done properly, “self-care” is supposed to magically make you happier, calmer, more comfortable, and most importantly, a better person.

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To Live in This World

for Gabe at the start of his season

 

When he was about 7, Gabe said to me, in his odd, precise way, “Well, you aren’t often wrong.” He wouldn’t say that now. Just shy of 9, he’s seen many things go wrong. Yet there is a growing sense that some important things are being set right. Being made new, made whole. Leaves are falling, but there is also a harvest coming.

GabeGPP1

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God Is a Street Fighter. With Sharp Elbows.

Poetry, like God, does not dwell in the periphery of life. And like God, poetry is “a street-fighter, with sharp elbows” (David Whyte). Both poetry and a relationship with something greater than yourself demand awareness. And awareness is essential to staying alive.

90WoundednessSo when I ask, “When was God present in your life today?” it is an unsentimental question. I am asking you when you felt the shared woundedness of being alive and the rawness of connection, without which, we don’t have a chance.

Was it when you got into a cab, and the driver, a woman you know, said, “I apologize for being late. I lost my son. I mean, he died. I mean, he was shot and killed. Two weeks ago. And I just, you know, can’t wrap it around my head yet. So just bear with me.” Was it then, when you prayed for something–anything–to come in and fill the space around such a precious, agonizing, searing expression of human experience?

Was it in the persistent kindness of a friend, someone whose insistence on reaching you finally made it through your self-absorption and woke you up, again, to the awareness that our most disastrous fuck-ups and heartbreaking struggles are also the openings that allow us to be on the receiving end of extraordinary kindness?

Was it when you confessed some huge, complicated, emotionally overblown nonsense that had taken up residence in your head, and the friend who was listening looked directly at you and said, “Girl, that is some sick-ass shit you’re doing to yourself. Just stop it.”

wounded heart

When did God show up and make it possible for you to stay here, right here, today, awake and aware? And where do you need help with this? Is it in the phone call to a sick friend you’re afraid to make? Is it in all the small things that, when combined, make your state of mind become a state of mindlessness?

Ask for help. Ask for courage. Ask boldly, as a “child of the king.” Help comes, breathing space into the impossibly tight corners, the frozen lungs. And in your own inhaling and exhaling, you will help someone else remember to breathe.

Enough

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life/
We have refused
Again and again
Until now.

Until now.

by David Whtye

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Extravagant Promises

In what Alcoholics Anonymous folks call “The Big Book (1945),” there is a lovely passage about how life changes in recovery. These changes are referred to by AAs as “the promises.” One of the promises is that “we will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.” You really don’t need to be an alcoholic to get a leg up on this.

Of “the promises,” The Big Book says, “Are these extravagant promises? We think not.” The purpose of this statement is to reassure people in recovery that recovery itself is not extravagant, i.e., not beyond the bounds of reason or of what is deserved. That it is possible.

But recovery is in fact extravagant, in the very best sense of the word. In the same sense that Sacha Scoblic uses the word “lush” to describe her sobriety (her pun very much intended). Any life not deadened by apathy or constrained by fear is lush, luscious, extravagant.

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Dining with David Whyte, Part 3

paint the Hall orange

 I was cleaning out my office the other day, and I found a copy of a 2004-2005 University of Illinois publication called “The March to the Arch.”  2004-2005 was a huge year for men’s basketball at the University of Illinois, and this publication chronicled the team’s amazing year, which I only knew about because even though I was here at the time, my dad and my friend Ann told me about it.   But really, it was a big huge deal; it was the 100th season of men’s basketball at UIUC, and the team made it to the NCAA National Championship, where they lost to the University of North Carolina 75–70.  They ended the season with an overall record of 37–2, tying the NCAA record for most wins in a season, and a conference record of 15-1.  

Well, whatever.  The main thing I remember about that year is that diehard Illini fans really loved this team as a TEAM, that they exuded an incredible spirit when were on the court together.  The only reason I’m thinking about it now is because inside the booklet that I found in my office were two pieces of paper with autographs on them:  Dee Brown’s and Deron Williams’.  When I tell you that I could care less about basketball (or any other sport, really), it’s beyond understatement.  But for some reason, I felt caught up enough in the campus spirit to ask these two young men for their autographs one afternoon when Ann and I saw them standing outside the Illini Union.  Why?  Noooo clue (can you say “fairweather fan??”).

I don’t know why people do this with “famous” people: get autographs or other artifacts that somehow manage to obscure the fact that “famous people” are just human beings, and despite our adoration and/or devotion, we can’t really “get” anything from them.  Also, they are not more than us, nor are we less than them.  When I met David Whyte, it wasn’t as a famous person; I didn’t want to touch him, or to ask him to sign anything, or take a picture of myself with him.  I wanted to meet him as a human being, one who seemed possessed of a particular kind of wisdom that offered a way of looking at the world that was (and still is) deeply interesting to me.  I really, really wanted to talk with him.  And to my still enormous astonishment and gratitude, that’s just what I got to do.

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Dining with David Whyte, Part 2

It’s taken me a long time to get up the courage to write about this experience because I was afraid I would sound like a braggy name-dropper.  But maybe it’s that enough time has gone by, maybe I’ve eased up on myself, or maybe it’s reading about artists like Summer Pierre, who set 6 and 12-month creative goals for themselves, and have the self-permission to pursue them without getting in their own way.  I love this kind of humble confidence–the simple, fierce belief that you, and everyone else, have the right to do something other than what David Whyte calls waking up every day into the “great To Do list” of your life.  (Summer Pierre is AMAZING, BTW.  Must-reads on her web site: “100 Things,” and the story of how she gave birth to her son on the side of the highway in NYC).

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Dining with David Whyte, Part 1

Someone recently asked Barbara Walters who she thought would/could “replace” Oprah as the queen of talk TV.  Barbara put her own astute spin on her answer and said, “Lady Gaga.”  She wasn’t referring to Lady Gaga as a talk show personality, but rather as a charismatic figure who speaks directly to her fans (her “little monsters”) with a message of empowerment and courage:  “It is a different time but the same message: ‘I had to struggle, I couldn’t get there, look at me, I made it, and YOU CAN TOO.’  And both of these women, Lady Gaga at 25 and Oprah in her 50’s, both of them mean it.”

Oprah has always authentically aspired to motivate her viewers, listeners and readers to live their “best lives,” and Gaga does the same.  Whether you like her (or even care about her) or not, Lady Gaga is a cultural phenomenon to pay attention to, if for no other reason than the extraordinary popularity she experiences.  She is bizarre, real, savvy, and culturally attuned to the complex issue of 21st century identity.  She has said: “I am the excuse to explore your identity.  To be exactly who you are and to feel unafraid.  To not judge yourself, to not hate yourself.” 

If this message seems worn out or far removed for you, (e.g. if you had had enough of Oprah’s empowerment talk, or are thrown off by the image of Gaga wearing a raw steak on her head or clumping through an airport in 24″ Viktor & Rolf platforms), take a moment to reflect on how many negative thoughts you had about yourself since you woke up today: 3, 5, 10, 50?  Not hating yourself is not about being a TV talk show mega-star, or a theatrical, otherworldly musician; it’s about waking up in the morning and being your own best friend.  It’s about talking to yourself as you would to someone you loved.  Or, at the very least, being someone who, as Anne Lamott writes, is militantly on your own side.  We all need more practice at that.

This post is a story about the terror and the triumph of following your passion.

Continue reading “Dining with David Whyte, Part 1” →

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Wise Young Voices: The Best Mother’s Day Gifts

In my quest to become more domestic (more on this soon), I’ve been scouring “Ladies Home Journal” and “Women’s Day.”  In one of these magazines (or perhaps it was “Real Simple”), I read about one mother’s approach to Mother’s Day, and though she was pretty vague on the details, the bottom line was this: she asked each of her 9 (or 12 or 15) kids to write (or draw) a message to her.  The confusing part of the article was that sometimes the messages related to Mother’s Day and some to her birthday, but never mind.  Nothing about motherhood is perfect. 

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