Struggling

 Today, life seems impossibly complicated. And hard. (Warning: whining ensues.)

While you would think that the awareness of good things happening in the world despite the tide of hate washing over the country from D.C. would buoy me, instead I feel overwhelmed with all that I seemingly don't have time for. 

There were a few weeks when I got to go to yoga Saturday and Sunday for double classes (read: "yoga retreat weekend!"), and that felt luxurious and expansive, as though I were already retired and living my best life. I felt centered and healthy and energetic.  

But I've remembered that I promised to help with a Religious Education curriculum for anti-racism at my UU church. So great! Yes, I say yes! (But also... there goes my yoga retreat.) So selfish. So Karen-ish! And yet, joy is also anti-racism, right? And we need to feel grounded and healthy and energetic to survive this tough time. I do. I know I will find a different kind of energy and health and groundedness contributing to my church community in this way. I know. And yet. Today, it feels sad. I feel sad. 

I got a newsletter from the city about all the events that I could volunteer to help support, one of them for Indigenous Heritage Celebration with Open Space. Yes! I want to say yes! I will help celebrate Indigenous Heritage! But it's this Saturday, and I have a date to puzzle with a good friend, which is grounding and nourishing and fun. 

Tonight, I could go to Vespers or play cards with good friends that I don't see very often.

This semester, I am teaching a class at UNM but want to spend my weekends playing instead of reading. 

I am gaining weight but want to eat candy corn like it's movie popcorn. 

I want to walk and run and yoga, but there's band concerts and sleep and work and class. 

Life is a lot. And I'm not sure I am navigating it well, for myself, for my community, or for the world. 

And maybe this is chemicals talking, and nothing is as bad or hard as it feels. And that's annoying, too. 

Maple Seeds (poem) by Lynn Ungar

Most of the leaves are gone
from the maple. Other years
it's glowed with color but in drought
the leaves just turned brown
and dropped. Sometimes you just
can't afford that kind of gaudy joy.
But now there are seeds
by the tens of thousands,
the sidewalk heaped in
little brown wings, flocks
of seed angels come to earth.
I know I'll be grumbling
as I pull sprout after sprout
when the rains come. But for now
let me be a witness that letting go
is not the same as giving up,
that we could forego glamor
for the sake of the next generation,
that creation is the first principle,
to which we all belong.

10/18/2022

Turtle (poem) by Kay Ryan

Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,
she can ill afford the chances she must take
in rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
her track is graceless, like dragging
a packing case places, and almost any slope
defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,
she's often stuck up to the axle on her way
to something edible. With everything optimal,
she skirts the ditch which would convert
her shell into a serving dish. She lives
below luck-level, never imagining some lottery
will change her load of pottery to wings.
Her only levity is patience,
the sport of truly chastened things.

Winter Morning (poem) by James Crews

When I can no longer say thank you
for this new day and the waking into it,
for the cold scrape of the kitchen chair
and the ticking of the space heater glowing
orange as it warms the floor near my feet,
I know it is because I’ve been fooled again
by the selfish, unruly man who lives in me
and believes he deserves only safety
and comfort. But if I pause as I do now,
and watch the streetlights outside winking
off one by one like old men closing their
cloudy eyes, if I listen to my tired neighbors
slamming car doors hard against the morning
and see the steaming coffee in their mugs
kissing their chapped lips as they sip and
exhale each of their worries white into
the icy air around their faces—then I can
remember this one life is a gift each of us
was handed and told to open: Untie the bow
and tear off the paper, look inside
and be grateful for whatever you find
even if it is only the scent of a tangerine
that lingers on the fingers long after
you’ve finished eating it.

UUABQ Poetry Service: When You Need a Poem

 7/12/2025

Part 1: Be Where You Are

Once poetry has entered your soul, it will always have a place there. Poetry didn’t find a way into my heart in college, though I was a writing and literature major. It was here, right here, as a worship leader in this church, giving voice to beautiful readings handed to me, that poetry started to make its mark. 

There’s nothing like the right poem in the right moment. Today we’d like to share some poems that are friends to us, that call us back to ourselves, or into community, or give us strength to act. 

We’ll start with a few poems that remind us to pay attention, not to the cacophony of the outside world with its politics and emails and endless smartphone distractions, but to what is right in front of you. Or even more intimately, what lives inside of you: That “still, small voice” that can be so hard to hear.

Our first poem may be my very favorite of all time, since Angela chose it for our first Blue December service: Visitation, by Mark Doty.

• Visitation by Mark Doty
• Choice by Lynn Ungar
• The Sound of Me by Kristin Satterlee

Part II: It's All Connected

Poets speak truth to power in hard times. Poets are often trusted voices in the revolution. The political poets that speak to me are those who remind us to keep current events in perspective, not to minimize them, but to remember humility as we decide on how to respond to atrocities. 

The next poems explore this response to unimaginable horror, starting with our place in the grand scheme of things -- our connection to the universe, our moment in time, and our place in the community of ourselves. 

• The Answer by Robinson Jeffers
• Singularity by Marie Howe
• In Any Event by Dorianne Laux

Part III: This Is Hard; You Can Do Hard Things

Suffering comes to each of us: There is no avoiding pain and anxiety, and grief is the price of love. 

So how do we walk through what seems unbearable? No one has the key to that, a one-size-fits all answer. But poetry can remind us that we are not alone; that we can find our way back to life, back to love, back to wholeness.

• The Thing Is by Ellen Bass
• What I Can Do by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Part IV: Building Community

Poets are organizers. They remind us of the collective power of community, of attention, of voice. When I am overwhelmed by all that is wrong, my favorite poets remind me of what’s important to do, step by step, how to reach out to others, how and why we link arms, how to carve out a new future with our love and the power of our laser vision.

• The Space Inside by Mikaela Renz-Whitmore
• Red Brocade by Naomi Shahib Nye
• The Way It Is by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
• Sorrow Is Not My Name by Ross Gay

In Love with the World (poem) by Mark Nepo

There is no end to love. We may tear ourselves away, or fall off the cliff we thought sacred, or return one day to find the home we dreamt of burning. But when the rain slows to a slant and the pavement turns cold, that place where I keep you and you and all of you—that place opens, like a fist no longer strong enough to stay closed. And the ache returns. Thank God. The sweet and sudden ache that lets me know I am alive.

The rain keeps misting my face. What majesty of cells assembles around this luminous presence that moves around as me? How is it I’m still here? Each thing touched, each breath, each glint of light, each pain in my gut is cause for praise. I pray to keep falling in love with everyone I meet, with every child’s eye, with every fallen being getting up. Like a worm cut in two, the heart only grows another heart. When the cut in my mind heals, I grow another mind. Birds migrate and caribou circle the cold top of the world.

Perhaps we migrate between love and suffering, making our wounded-joyous cries: alone, then together, alone, then together. Oh praise the soul’s migration. I fall. I get up. I run from you. I look for you. I am again in love with the world.

One Big Beautiful Bill

 Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.):

“Republicans would have us believe that the person most likely to steal from you is a Black person in a hoodie or an immigrant with tattoos.

This is to distract from the fact that at least here, tonight, the people stealing from Americans are not folks with tattoos and hoodies. It’s people wearing suits and ties and congressional pins sitting in this Capitol right now, not in some random alley wrapped in darkness but in the United States Congress wrapped in the flag. 

It is disgusting, and we will never forget this.”