Poetry Thursday, owning our past and meaning your words

 You Still Dream

~Nikki Grimes

Here, poem meets prayer.

We are exceedingly comfortable

with posturing and self-defense

that masquerade as apology.

But what’s needed in this moment

is unmixed confession

of our nation’s sin,

deep and indefensible.

“Now I lay me down to sleep”

must make way for

something more muscular:

sack cloth and ashes,

prayer and fasting,

naked prostration.

Daniel understood

radical repentance begins

with this unvarnished profession:

You are righteous,

and we are not.

Please heal our nation.

Cleanse our stubborn hearts.

Show each of us what part to play.

Broken as Judah and Jerusalem,

we cry and come bending our will

toward the good

you dream for us still,

no matter our sin,

no matter what skin

we’re in.

Copyright © 2020 by Nikki Grimes. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 7, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Thursday, late but timely

For Black Children at the End of the World—and the Beginning

~Roger Reeves

You are in the black car burning beneath the highway

And rising above it—not as smoke

But what causes it to rise. Hey, Black Child,

You are the fire at the end of your elders’

Weeping, fire against the blur of horse, hoof,

Stick, stone, several plagues including time.

Chrysalis hanging on the bough of this night

And the burning world: Burn, Baby, burn.

Anvil and iron be thy name, yea though ye may

Walk among the harnessed heat and huntsmen

Who bear their masters’ hunger for paradise

In your rabbit-death, in the beheading of your ghost.

You are the healing snake in the heather

Bursting forth from your humps of sleep.

In the morning, your tongue moves along the earth

Naming hawk sky; rabbit run; your tongue,

Poison to the filthy democracy, to the gold-

Domed capitols where the ‘Guard in their grub-

Worm-colored uniforms cling to the blades of grass—

Worm on the leaf, worm in the dust, worm,

Worm made of rust: sing it with me,

Dragon of Insurmountable Beauty.

Black Child, laugh at the men with their hoofs

and borrowed muscle, their long and short guns,

The worm of their faces, their casket ass-

Embling of the afternoon, leftover leaves

From last year’s autumn scraping across their boots;

Laugh, laugh at their assassins on the roofs

(For the time of the assassin is also the time of hysterical laughter).

Black Child, you are the walking-on-of-water

Without the need of an approving master.

You are in a beautiful language.

You are what lies beyond this kingdom

And the next and the next and fire. Fire, Black Child.

Copyright © 2020 by Roger Reeves. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 16, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.

Grace, Part 2

In the early years of my schooling at a Catholic elementary school, I learned about Grace.

It was one of the most interesting and difficult to grasp concepts I remember learning.

I think if you asked each of the forty of us in that class what we took GRACE to mean, you would get forty different answers.

This is what I remember from those lessons: Grace is something that you want to collect - that you will bring with you from this world to the next. It is something only God can grant. Grace is not something you can buy or sell. [I guess I learned at a much later date about the buying of indulgences, note, this is quite different from Grace.]

There were ways that you could EARN Grace. I understood from what the teacher told us that Grace was earned by doing things selflessly; that you would never know when the Grace was granted, rather the heavenly tally was something God and St. Peter would know when you met them after death.

I am not sure that I was moved to try to earn Grace by that lesson. It seemed like one of those things that was so out of your control that you shouldn't worry about it. Besides how would you know if you had reached the correct level of selflessness? Wouldn't that just invalidate the action if you were worrying about whether or not your act was selfless.

By the way, I was probably seven when I was trying to assimilate this concept into my life.

I equated the concept of Grace with my dad who would literally give the shirt off his back if you needed it, even if you didn't ask for it. My dad never appears to stop and consider whether or not he should give. He certainly doesn't seem to worry about whether or not the act of giving is selfless.

In my mind, this meant that Grace was another one of those amorphous rules, like the Golden Rule, that you strove to achieve, but that was not something you could reach and then coast through. Rather it was like a heavenly measuring stick you needed to keep trying to reach. I don't remember fretting about it at all.

I had a classmate, though, who clearly spent much more time considering how to achieve Grace. Let's call her Melanie. I discovered Melanie's Grace quest by accident.

Our school, like many Catholic elementary schools, was on the grounds of a Catholic Church. We walked by it everyday. We played in its shadow at lunch and recess as its parking lot became our playground during school hours.

At this Catholic Church, like many others in the country, there is a morning mass every day. It starts at 8am and runs roughly thirty minutes. Though my dad's regular schedule when I was in school had him leaving the house by 7:30am, during Lent, I would often walk past the church parking lot in the morning and see his work truck, painted bright orange, parked there.

It turns out during Lent, my dad liked to go to morning mass every day. It is now his daily practice in retirement to go to mass every day. I started leaving for school as early as I could, and this was extremely challenging for me as I was almost always late for school. I wanted to spend a little more time with my dad, so my reasons for trying to make it to morning mass were anything but selfless.

I noticed, on those mornings that I arrived in time for mass, that Melanie was there. As I got one last hug from my dad [who we have to say is lovely and wonderful in so many ways, does not really do well will showing physical affection], I noted that Melanie was sitting in a pew outside the confessional.

It turns out during Lent you can also go to confession right after morning mass. Maybe not everyday, maybe only one day a week. I can't exactly remember. But on those days, I started to notice that Melanie would be late for school, but she never got in trouble. Being inquisitive and not employing filters, one day at lunch I asked Melanie about it.

Melanie was one of four classmates who came from an inordinately large family. The "large" families ranged from 8 to 12 children. And Melanie was number 10 of 12 in her family. Her mother prescribed to the healthy, earthy-crunchy lunches way before it was fashionable. So, there was Melanie with her perhaps homemade whole grain bread, thickly sliced, with peanut butter and jelly. I asked innocently why she was coming late to class sometimes.

She answered briefly, "I went to confession after mass." This is why I think it was every day during Lent because my response, probably read in my eyes widening, was astonishment and shock. Pretty sure my follow up question was, "What do you have to confess every day?"

She looked at me innocently and resolutely and said, "I'm collecting Grace."

We clearly had gotten different messages about earning Grace from the same lesson.

What does this have to do with Jamey? Sorry, it's getting long, you'll find out in part 3.

Grace, part 1

I have a friend at work, I'll call him Jamey, not short for James, just Jamey.

He is an original.

He seems to the outside observer to be slightly off. Actually, he just doesn't care what you think, and he is willing to be "ridiculous" in order to make you smile, make a point, or just entertain himself. He delights in your belief that he is ridiculous; and his very being challenges you to be some more authentic part of yourself that is associated with whimsy or joy or both.

Jamey loves to talk to strangers; rather, he loves to make strangers his friends. He knows the name of every person we pass in the halls at work from the maintenance crew to the vice presidents. Often, he knows the name of their family members and inquires about their latest trouble or triumph.

There is no one I have seen that doesn't meet Jamey with the greatest smile, head tilt or shoulder drop - the sure sign that someone has really seen you. He never addresses someone without truly wanting to make a connection.

He is the kind of person you meet and instantly know you have found one of your tribe.

But from the outside, we might look like the most unlikely of friends.

Over the year plus that I have known him, though, I have learned to see that he shows that whimsical side in a carefully choreographed, even though it may seem haphazard, way. He is not open and vulnerable with just anyone.

I told you, he is one of my tribe.

Jamey seldom rests, either sleeping or sitting still. He is almost always exhausted and subsisting on daily runs and breakfast biscuits from the same (unnamed here) fast food restaurant. I imagine him ordering at the drive-through, but also wonder if he doesn't know the name of all the workers and their family members, too.

You might also think he was textbook manic/depressive.

If you peel back the layers, though, there is more evidence for a soul struggling with dark and light than a brain misfiring despite its best attempts at "normal."

Jamey loves music, especially of the stringed variety, preferably guitar. He makes them. And then he gifts them. They are art through and through.

He likes to give his gifts as anonymously as possible. I rationalize that it is because he wants to remove his presence from the gift. He wants the gift to be pure gift, not generosity, but purity of freedom. That's not quite right, but I need more words for gift than I can recall at the moment.

If you probed Jamey, and he were feeling particularly open and willing to be vulnerable, he would admit that he gifts the guitars in a spiritual way; that he thinks the guitar is finding its way to the soul that needs it, for whatever reason. I might say the guitar is Jamey's spirit animal; and I would say that his guitars are alive.

Jamey often speaks through music in his life outside of work. And Jamey's work outside of business hours is his life. He is that extremely rare person who is inordinately good at his work, yet that work does not dominate his mind or soul.

Our work is not creative work, though Jamey's title is "author" - an apt title though the work he does is anything but cathartically creative. It might be covertly creative as he tries to weave bureaucratic language into as authentic a portrait of a people as possible. But it is relentlessly bureaucratic, the definition of boring. So, Jamey build guitars, breathes life into inanimate pieces of wood, and sometimes plastic, weaves strings into these newly animated appendages and then hands that life/spirit to someone who needs it.

In his other work, the work outside of work hours and not in our building, he ministers to the dying.

I drew the picture of the work work and the guitar work so you could see the contrast - and begin to capture the meaning of giving life in all aspects of Jamey's toiling.

Others have said to me that Jamey's sometimes depressive mood comes from his work with the dying. They say it in an accusatory tone, one that makes you see that they think he brings it on himself.

I think it is just another generous, humble life giving act that is at the base of his being.

These acts, done without need for recognition or recompense, bestow on us that ineffable nourishment I will call here Grace.

caffeinated

Since December, I have been trying to decaffeinate.

That is to say, I was traveling for much of December, and coffee the way I like it might not always be available. So, since I detest being beholden to the god of caffeine, I thought, this is the perfect time to step down, step away from coffee.

I have this long term goal of having energy and being awake without stimulants. That implies being rested and healthy and, to some extent, happy.  These are all goals I have out there in the ether, the first of which I have the most control over, the other two, perhaps only tangentially. [Though those chose to be happy believers would disagree.]

It should also be noted that at the time, I was also up to more than two cups a day almost every day.

For some, that would not be much.

In fact, I drink dark roast coffee which has the least amount of caffeine of coffee.

However, I also have an incredible predilection to addictive behavior - from both the emotional and physical perspective. My body easily slides into need of coffee, sugar, carbs, chocolate. It never decides to *love* protein, though I do enjoy good tasting food. I rarely crave anything healthy in that way of needing caffeine.

And, I don't care for the taste of coffee. I never have.

But I am addicted to the awake feeling that surges through my body when I drink it -- and worse, I love to drink it when it is full of cream and sugar. That was the other *secret* reason for wanting to give it up. 

In a vain attempt to give up sugar, I keep trying to move towards tea with and without caffeine. I am able to drink most of my teas with only milk and no sugar.

Tea, it turns out for me, is not the answer. Rather the teas I like all have way more caffeine than the coffee I drink.

I remain, therefore, semi-caffeinated. I take days off on the weekend to test my resistance. So far, I am not winning, but still in the game.

Poetry Thursday, actually Quote Thursday - still working on this virtue

Difficult times have helped me 
to understand better than before, 
how infinitely rich and beautiful 
life is in every way, and 
that so many things that 
one goes worrying about 
are of no importance whatsoever.

~Isak Dinesen


I get to spend time with my nephew this weekend. It is bittersweet. I cannot be with him and not think of his mother. This trip we will be celebrating the milestone of finishing middle school. These milestone events are the hardest. Though we do our best to be substitute moms while still being aunts, as sisters our hearts break into a million pieces that she is not here to witness her baby's accomplishments.

Last year we watched her daughter graduate from college. I had my mom bring the small heart filled with my sister's ashes to the ceremony. We each took turns holding on to it during the ceremony. I cannot put into words the pain associated with just acknowledging that she is not here, that there are so many important events in the lives of her babies (and ours) that she did not get to witness.

So, this quote is especially timely today. There is no amount of worry that will bring her back or change the fact that she did not get to be here for this. It is beyond important to understand the richness and beauty of life. And the difficult time and the pain just has to be borne.

Rallying for Their Lives

[sometimes I put something in the draft folder and forget...]
I attended the March for Our Lives rally in Princeton this weekend.

Here are some of the pictures from the crowd.

I was late. After rising too early for a weekend, I had to go visit the vampires in anticipation of my yearly physical. I walked to and from the lab, racking up 3 miles before 9:30am. I was so tired, once home, I crawled back into bed to rest.

I was late. But I arrived in time to hear the last of the students giving their statements and rallying calls.

I wish I had heard them all.

They are our future ... and if these students represent the best of their generation, I am impressed.

I am hopeful.

I am grateful.

We need hope in our future right now, we need it more than anything else.

[after the rally, folks dropped their signs in front of the Panera, site of a shooting just the week before. The restaurant was closed "for remodeling" at the time. The signs were all gone the next morning, but I think this was an awesome impromptu message.]

The Boy

Life is eternal, 

and love is immortal, 

and death is only a horizon; 

and a horizon is nothing 

save the limit of our sight. 

~R.W. Raymond

I love this picture of The Boy.  Sometimes I think it is because I love this couple so much and their connection is palpable here.

When I used to see this picture on his mom's desk, I would think, they are soulmates.

I was sure they would get back together, have beautiful babies and be happy.

But then again, I was sure of so very many things that we will never see.

He has been close in mind lately, not just in the past few days, but especially this month.

Now when I look at this picture, it is the eyes, that look.  It tells you so much about this old soul.  There is a knowing about the trials and tribulations, the power of love, and the importance of connection.  There is compassion and world weariness and strength.  He was steady and wobbly at the same time, fearful and hopeful, ready to take on the world despite his reservations about well everything.

I see this picture and I think there is no way he is gone.  There he is, right there, forever that sweet, smart, relentlessly idealistic and pragmatic young man, my future governor or president. 

Some days I weep for the world because we lost that light, the one we so desperately needed.

Some days I weep for his mother who is trying so hard to learn how to be in a world without him.

Some days I weep for the children who don't get to grow up with father; he would have been the absolute best father in the world.

Some days I even weep for myself because there were so many more stories to tell, issues to discuss and adventures to have... and I try to be brave remembering his last text, the one he sent when he found out I was dealing with yet another loss, before he knew I would have to deal with his as well. 

Stay up.

Trying.

Rest well, sweet boy, but let your mom know you are okay.

Citizen Resistence in Signs

Poetry Thursday

Let no man pull 
you so low 
as to hate him.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Perspective and Gifts from the Universe

A friend 

is one 

that knows you 

as you are, 

understands where 

you have been, 

accepts what 

you have become, 

and still, 

gently allows 

you to grow.

~Elbert Hubbard
Philosopher, Author, Publisher

[I saw this posted, and mis-attributed to Wm Shakespeare, and had to investigate.  The author's life story, and the number of quotes of his that we use in daily life are amazing. ]  

I had the opportunity to meet Bruno, pictured above, on my short jaunt into Chicago in August.  His life is worthy of a children's book.  Maybe someday I will get around to that one.  His life, and his owners, brought me some perspective at a challenging time.  When I see his little face, I remember how important it is to not judge a book by its cover.  I remember the power of love and how unexpectedly it can come - or maybe that it can come in unexpected packages.

We rarely have control of the gifts the universe will bestow.  The best we can try to do is be receptive when they land on our doorstep.  And, of course, to be thankful.
I am thankful! Still working to incorporate into my life all the gifts I received on that trip to Chicago.

Poetry Thursday

Live life 
as if 
everything 
is rigged 
in your favor.
~ Rumi

Poetry Thursday, Rumi ... again

The garden 
of love 
is green 
without 
limit and 
yields 
many 
fruits 
other than sorrow 
or 
joy.






Love is 
beyond either condition: 
without 
     spring, 
without 
     autumn, 
it is always 
     fresh.
 ~ Rumi

Poetry Thursday ... what the world needs now...

Somewhere somebody 

must have some sense. 

Men must see that 

force begets force, 

hate begets hate, 

toughness begets toughness. 

And it is all 

a descending spiral, 

ultimately ending 

in destruction 

for all and everybody. 

Somebody must have 

sense enough and 

morality enough 

to cut off 

the chain of hate and 

the chain of evil 

in the universe. 

And you do that by love.

 
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr 

– “Loving Your Enemies Speech”

 Nov. 7, 1957

[emphasis added]

Poetry Thursday

Your task 
is not 
to seek 
for love, 
 
















but merely 
to seek 
and find 
all the barriers 
 








within yourself 
that you 
have built 
against it.
~ Rumi

Emotional independence?

Someone asked me the other day, after I tried to explain where I am in my life right now, how I was still upright.

It didn't really sink in for a bit.

This sign is on one side of the track & the yellow line ...

It wasn't a criticism.

I get so much of that from myself and others, it is hard not to expect anyone's reaction to be that.

She was saying ... goodness, you have so much going on.

I looked at her and didn't know what to say.


I don't remember, in fact, what I said.

But, I remember what she said next, "You look great!"

She is not a friend, well, maybe she is now... but I had just met her in person for the first time and we were about five minutes into our conversation.

...is on the other side; the train runs between. It's the thought that counts?

I forget to give myself credit... too often.

Things are not as I would like them to be... they certainly aren't as I have planned (and planned b, c, d, e, f, and g).

And they haven't been for quite some time.

I forget how long it's been since I have had my own place, short-term and long-term goals that reflect what I desire, or even the vaguest notion of what I desire.

This hurts... large tears roll down my cheeks as I type this.

But, I am upright.  And even though I may not feel like I look great.  I am ok.

I am ok.

I feel overwhelmed every minute of the day with all that I need to get done, should get done, have promised to do... sitting alongside what I need or must do for myself.  These rarely coincide.

But, I am ok... I get up in the morning, I do what I can, sometimes that means that I just cry for a bit before I deal with the tasks at hand.

I don't know what I want next... it is not clear to me.

And so I haven't committed to a city, a job, a place... and that is not a super comfortable place to be.

I don't have a homebase...except my car right now.

But I think I am doing the right thing by taking my time in making all the daunting decisions ahead of me.

Another day ... we'll see what this one brings.

[These photos are scenes from that day when I had the conversation with my new-almost-friend in Solana Beach, CA]

poetry Thursday, choose love!

Don’t search for 
heaven and hell 
in the future. 
Both are now present. 
Whenever we manage 
to love without expectations, 
calculations, negotiations, 
we are indeed in heaven. 
Whenever we fight, hate, 
we are in hell.
~ Shams Tabrizi

Poetry Thursday

Wherever you stand,

be the Soul

of that place.

-Rumi

Poetry Thursday, Thanks Jack!

Jack Kornfield read this at Monday's dharma talk.  It was magnificent.  I had to share.  Enjoy - and do go listen to Ellen read it.  It seems long in writing, but you will wish it were longer.

Gate C22
(second link goes to Ellen reading this)
Ellen Bass (more from her here)

At gate C22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like he'd just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she'd been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it
again and again. We were all watching —
passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling
sunglasses. We couldn't look away. We could
taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,
as your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after — if she beat you or left you or
you're lonely now — you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you
as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,
all of us trying to slip into that woman's middle-aged body,
her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,
little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

broken hearted

...and praying for peace, compassion and healing.  These are the only anti-terror tools that I believe can make a difference in our violent world.