Poem - In Winter - Michael Ryan

At four o’clock it’s dark.
Today, looking out through dusk
at three gray women in stretch slacks
chatting in front of the post office,
their steps left and right and back
like some quick folk dance of kindness,
I remembered the winter we spent
crying in each other’s laps.
What could you be thinking at this moment?
How lovely and strange the gangly spines
of trees against a thickening sky
as you drive from the library
humming off-key? Or are you smiling
at an idea met in a book
the way you smiled with your whole body
the first night we talked?
I was so sure my love of you was perfect,
and the light today
reminded me of the winter you drove home
each day in the dark at four o’clock
and would come into my study to kiss me
despite mistake after mistake after mistake.

Quote - from a poem by Jane Kenyon

"If it's darkness
we're having, let it be extravagant."

from "Taking Down the Tree"

Poem - Your Luck Is About To Change - Susan Elizabeth Howe

(A fortune cookie)

Ominous inscrutable Chinese news
to get just before Christmas,
considering my reasonable health,
marriage spicy as moo-goo-gai-pan,
career running like a not-too-old Chevrolet.
Not bad, considering what can go wrong:
the bony finger of Uncle Sam
might point out my husband,
my own national guard,
and set him in Afghanistan;
my boss could take a personal interest;
the pain in my left knee could spread to my right.
Still, as the old year tips into the new,
I insist on the infant hope, gooing and kicking
his legs in the air. I won't give in
to the dark, the sub-zero weather, the fog,
or even the neighbors' Nativity.
Their four-year-old has arranged
his whole legion of dinosaurs
so they, too, worship the child,
joining the cow and sheep. Or else,
ultimate mortals, they've come to eat
ox and camel, Mary and Joseph,
then savor the newborn babe.

Poem - Lines for Winter - Mark Strand

for Ros Krauss

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

Video: Reading by Mary Louise-Parker

Read the day after Christmas while listening to "May I Suggest" - a song with words and music by Susan Werner

"May I suggest that this is the best part of your life."

Sermon on joy - Rev. Katie Templin Culbert

 

12/12/20021

Be with yourself in your feelings. Empathy for yourself. Mindful feeling. Experience the moment. Be here with now. If we are here. Being awake to the present is a conduit for joy. Cultivate and express joy.

Sympathetic joy. Delight in others' joy. 

Elephant and 3 men. Not wrong. Perspective is right. But incomplete. 

Thinking of Ross Gay's quote...

Rini Death Self paintings

The more perspectives we have, the more it all makes sense - the wide view. Interdependence. Not despair and independence

Vimeo video

Opening to joy...

 Sermon by the Rev. Angela Herrera on 12/5/2021

• The man and the tigers and the strawberries
• The study in 2020 of happiness among different ages
• Woman seeing Jupiter

Vimeo video

Me: 

• Joe vs. Volcano: "some things take care of themselves. They're not your job; maybe they're not even your business."
• Kristen in college, after taking anti-depressants, noticing the breeze for the first time, de-centering herself and her pain, able to experience the world, open for the first time to joy
• Me in college, feeling depressed and suicidal but noticing the sunset one evening and realizing my feelings are beside the point. My job is to be here to witness and worship the world. 
• Alice Walker, pisses god off when you walk by the color purple and don't notice.
• Mary Oliver quote - standing still, noticing the world, and being astonished.

Tocaya = name twin

“Eres mi tocayo“

 Michaela/Mikayla/Michayla/Mikaela/Mikayla

Michelle

The space between what happens and you respond

Brene Brown Dare to Lead podcast with Dr. Susan David on the Danger of Toxic Positivity, Part 2

Between what's happened and my response is a space. Emotions rush in to fill the gap, but you can stay present, use your emotions as a signpost for your values, and choose how you show up here in your values.

How do I want to show up here in my values?

“The Stubborn Gifts of Breath and Life” by the Rev. Maureen Killoran

"You must praise the mutilated world...."
—Adam Zagajewski, trans. Clare Cavanagh

    It felt like being on the moon, walking on Mount St. Helens. Just a few years previous, that mountain had blown her top, destroying human and animal life, flattening vegetation and buildings for miles, and sharing its ash with the world. As we stepped from our car, we felt that ash drift like talcum around our ankles, rise in the air, enter with our breath. Other than occasional blacked memories of trees, all was grey, grey as far you could see.
    Silence seized us for the longest time as we stood there, two irrelevant humans and this huge, mutilated world. Only gradually did our eyes slow and our hearts focus. Only gradually did we begin to see what was really before us.
    How had we overlooked the fireweed, that perennial volunteer, its brilliant buds proclaiming, “Hey, world, we’re back!” What blocked us from celebrating the eager insect conversations around us? It was right there before us, and we nearly walked away. Overwhelmed by the devastation, we almost missed the tiny pond, its surface literally dancing with more tadpoles than I had ever seen.
    We do this, you see – we ensnare ourselves with the magnitude of what the poet called the mutilated world. We get busy, and troubled, and frightened, and then, incongruously, it’s time for Thanksgiving. I, at least, need this season to remind myself to be grateful for intermittent beauty and the stubborn gifts of breath and life. I—maybe you too? —need this season, even if just quietly to say, “praise be.”

Indecision

 What am I good at? What do I want to do? What don't I want to do?

I'm at the juncture where I could do multiple things, but in some ways, the possibilities start to narrow as you get more years of experience doing something. 

I'm nervous about being used, being manipulated, being taken advantage of. And for all those things, I think I can be saavy and ultimately can be ready to walk away. 

I'm nervous about being the last man standing on a crumbling hill. But there's also the possibility to build something good, if I can fill in the holes that -- admittedly -- are yawning chasms right now.

But I believe in this work. And I love it. And I'm well suited to it. And I'm the heart and soul of it, and if I walk away, it most assuredly WILL crumble, even if rebuilt with a different vision -- maybe better -- later.

The politics is ugly and getting worse. But my team is getting better. I'm getting better. And it's an endlessly interesting puzzle. 

And did I mention that my work and my heart and soul have fused? For better and worse. 

So when do you walk away? And into what? And is it just my fear of what I don't know and haven't experienced that is overpowering my instinct that I'm being misused? Perhaps.

Or maybe there's nothing better that suits me. 

This space is so uncomfortable, full of fear and uncertainty and mistrust of myself. It's hard to see myself right now. I don't feel grounded, and I don't trust anything I know. Everything I think I'm good at doesn't seem to serve me fully when I need it most. But isn't that always true? Some challenges are bigger than your skills. 

And talk about first world problems! Wah, I got offered the promotion I wanted, but not quite in the way I wanted. And maybe my work situation isn't exactly what I want it to be! Poor me! I've gotten lots of good validation from people around me who I do respect and trust when I made the decision to walk away. Will they respect me less when I stay?

Or ... I Keep Trying

 Just when you think you're out... they pull you back in.

They offered me the promotion I wanted and assured me I had support. Maybe I do, maybe I don't. But in the meantime, I get paid what I'm worth and have a chance to continue building what I was trying to build. 

And if I stay for 3 more years, that's the next step in the retirement plan, which would be fantastic. 

I'm excited to try to staff up and shape what we do and how we do it, carve out a place of support in a bigger bureaucracy that can be toxic and political. But also leaves freedom to fill voids left when people get busy and focus mostly on appearances.

Changes

 After 10 years, I decided tonight to change jobs. 

What I do is a big part - perhaps too big a part - of who I am. So this change is monumental. And I'm sad and angry and grieving. But it's also like getting out of a bad relationship. You can't want it more than you're wanted. Your love does not make up for them not loving you. 

And I will miss my team. And the plans I tried to put in place. I can't quite see how any of it will come to fruition now. Not that I'm all important. Just that I was the last strand of glue holding it all together. And now that I can see that I cannot keep holding on, I see how futile my holding on was. One person is not a system, much less a system that's workable, effective, or sustainable. 

There will be other big efforts and things to build and grow and nurture and contribute to. 

And I'm excited to have a partner at work again. The new job - if it pans out like it's shaping up to look - will still be a little bit of everything I love. The difference will be that I'm valued. And not asked to do it all with no tools or resources or leadership or backing. 

And part of me is wanting it all to crumble when I leave so that maybe they'll see and regret how they treated me. But that's not going to happen, since none of what I built was what they wanted. 

I feel the worst about leaving good people behind without cover or leadership or a plan. They'll be put to work, doing something, and I hope it's what they like doing or that they find other things. Everyone is hiring right now. It's bonkers. So many good jobs out there. 

And to the public who thought I only wanted the worst? Good luck with the next one in my shoes. I hope you go more gently on them. 

My hope is that I can take time between now and Christmas to just be home, focus on myself, exercise and listen to Brene Brown and do an inventory of what I want, what I'm good at, what I'd like to work on, what I need. And next. And enjoy my family. And rest. And grieve. And nurture a new seed of hope to plant in my next opportunity. May I grow stronger roots and broader branches. May I catch more sunlight and breathe more deeply. 

Leadership

I've been consuming Brene Brown podcasts, my new favorite source for soul searching epiphanies, but also just daily life hacks about how to be a better person, live my story, set boundaries, and lead others by showing up in the ways that reinforce the culture of vulnerability, trust, and accountability. 

In the past few days, I've listened to the Dare to Lead interviews with Jim Collins, Charles Duhigg, and Doug Conant. They all talk about habits as the discipline to live your values every day and hold yourself accountable. Jim Collins seems to go overboard with this by tracking his time into 3 buckets -- creativity/curiosity/learning, teaching, and other things that need to get done -- and setting the goal to spend 1,000 hours in each rolling 365 day period on creativity/curiosity/learning. Charles Duhigg says that habits = discipline and commitment but also that they are a short-cut to flow. Our brains rely on heuristics to be able to focus on what's novel and important. The more we can develop practices around what's meaningful, the easier it is to access deeper thinking and focus. I feel that's true, even if I'm not sure I've experienced that much, at least recently. 

It's been true of writing for me. I know the times in my life when I was writing more every day, I wrote better more easily and wrote better -- deeper thoughts, easier process. It's the difference between when you're learning a new sport and have to think about every move versus when you're good enough that you stop thinking about HOW to play and just play. Much more enjoyable, easier, and definitely more successful.  

One thing that has bothered me about these conversations is that race has only glancingly been mentioned. I feel like race is a big part of the conversation when people of color are being interviewed, but when white people are interviewed -- even when concepts seem so ripe and like such opportunities for applying them to racial equity moments -- Brene doesn't go there. I'm not sure if she just isn't seeing it, thinking about it, or ... It feels colorblind racist to me. Like she's primed to think about race with POC, but clearly white people are just talking to everyone, and it's universally applicable! Frustrating. I think it would be fun for Brene to have a Leslie Jones version of the podcast, where she can just Mystery Science Theater 3000 the conversation and translate everything they're saying from a race lens. 

Charles Duhigg went there a little, and seemed to say that he can see his white privilege because he grew up in Albuquerque's South Valley (!) and that his wish is that everyone can experience that same sense of limitless potential. Hmmm. Little cringy. I wonder how that would land for POC listeners. 

Doug Conant talked about firing 300 of the top 350 leaders at Campbell Soup when he took over as CEO, and Brene didn't press him on why that was needed. They couldn't be trained? And now this guy is a leadership trainer? And it never came up that maybe there was a missed opportunity there? Or at least .. some irony given what he does (for free) now?

I wish Brene would debrief the conversations a little, like Dax Shepherd and Monica Padman do on Armchair Expert. I feel like she might see some of these holes / opportunities when she has a bit more distance, and I'd love to hear what she THINKS after and about these interviews. Maybe with her sister Barrett and Tarana Burke? YES.

All the ones I've listened to lately have definitely been really good back-and-forth conversations, and they've inspired me to think about who I want to be as a leader, how I want to show up, how I spend my days compared to what I say I value.

"Everybody's written on habits. Well, that's part of the process. Life is not epiphany-driven. We're all looking for the epiphany... 'I just need an epiphany a big idea, and I'm going to break through.' Life is a grind, and we've got to find a way to thrive in the grind of it all. It's all about progressive improvement, continuous improvement, doing a little better today than we did yesterday with a little more intentionality. And I have found that you can actually build your leadership muscle and get unstuck in small ways over time in a way that can be immediately more fulfilling." - Doug Conant

I don't really know how I show up as a leader. My team only seems barely functioning, and my senior leaders left, so ... maybe not good. But I think one of my strengths is mentoring people to keep developing in their careers, which means, people outgrow their positions and look for bigger opportunities elsewhere.

I don't feel I have the power to protect my folks or shield them from the unrelenting pressures and political monkeying that has us jerked around and buried under too many urgent have-tos. Maybe that's more of why people leave. 

Do I spend my time on what I value? Days ago I was questioning my weekly check-ins with each of my direct reports. It's 30 minutes weekly that's in my calendar in case they want/need my time, and it's up to them whether we meet or skip it so they can "keep rolling." More often than not, we meet. And sometimes it's for an hour. We talk about tasks, I have time to give more context or answer questions, and often we focus on professional development goals and opportunities. But it does mean that 1/2 my day every week is given over to others' priorities. But it's an investment in my people, and I do value that! Maybe I should ask everyone.

And this promotion! The not knowing is so hard. I feel like I'm interviewing every day. And how to do you say no to things or admit you're over your head and drowning when they're deciding whether to give you more responsibilities???

Impossible situation. 

And part of me is DARING them to not promote me. See how fast I'm out the door and let all these plates fall. And maybe that would be a good thing. Maybe even the best thing. Let someone else take ownership. Maybe they will have solutions that I can't see and wouldn't be open to even if I did. That's hard. Because I still feel like I'm the best at what I do. 

But what should I be better at?

 

Facesoul - Grow (song)

 Haunting...

Fear - quote

 Boots Cooper (as told by Molly Ivans): 

"There are some things that will scare you so bad, you'll hurt yourself."

The Rev. Angela Herrera asks us: 

"What might be possible if fear wasn't in the driver's seat?"

Poem - Sweeping Up Dust - Philip Hughes-Luing

Everything becomes dust eventually
blows away, even our own, constantly
adrift, traveling over continents
rendering sunsets with colors to inspire
others to feel awe, others who
may or may not talk about us, much
if at all, but who will watch sunset
will feel our fading fire, and connect

Video - Weapon of Choice by Fatboy Slim - Spike Jonze & Christopher Walken

 This is possibly the best thing ever. Why did I not see this before????

Poem - Fannie Lou Hamer by Kamilah Aisha Moon

“I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired!” 

She sat across the desk from me, squirming. 

It was stifling. My suite runs hot 

but most days it is bearable. 

This student has turned in nothing, 

rarely comes to class. When she does, 

her eyes bore into me with a disdain 

born long before either of us. 

 She doesn’t trust anything I say. 

She can’t respect my station, 

the words coming out of these lips, 

this face. My breathing 

is an affront. It’s me, she says. 

I never was this student’s professor— 

her immediate reaction 

seeing me at the smart board. 

But I have a calling to complete 

& she has to finish college, 

return to a town where 

she doesn’t have to look at, 

listen to or respect anyone 

like me—forever tall, large 

& brown in her dagger eyes, 

though it’s clear she looks down 

on me. She can return— 

if not to her hometown, another 

enclave, so many others, where 

she can brush a dog’s golden coat, 

be vegan & call herself 

a good person. 

Are you having difficulty with your other classes? 

No. 

 Go, I say, tenderly. 

Loaded as a cop’s gun, 

she blurts point-blank 

that she’s afraid of me. Twice. 

My soft syllables rattle something 

planted deep, 

so I tell her to go where 

she'd feel more comfortable 

as if she were my niece or 

godchild, even wish her 

a good day. 

If she stays, the ways 

this could backfire! 

 Where is my Kevlar shield 

from her shame? 

There’s no way to tell 

when these breasts will evoke 

solace or terror. I hate 

that she surprises me, that I lull 

myself to think her ilk 

is gone despite knowing 

so much more, and better. 

I can’t proselytize my worth 

all semester, exhaust us 

for the greater good. 

I can’t let her make me 

a monster to myself— 

I’m running out of time & pity 

the extent of her impoverished 

heart. She’s from New 

England, 

I’m from the Mid-South. 

Far from elderly, someone 

just raised her like this 

with love. 

I have essays to grade 

but words warp 

on the white page, dart 

just out of reach. I blink 

two hours away, find it hard 

to lift my legs, my voice, 

my head precious to my parents 

now being held 

in my own hands. 

How did they survive 

so much worse, the millions 

with all of their scars! 

What would these rivers be 

without their weeping, 

these streets without 

their faith & sweat? 

Fannie Lou Hamer 

thundered what they felt, 

we feel, into DNC microphones 

on black and white TV 

years before I was a notion. 

She doesn’t know who 

Fannie Lou Hamer is, 

and never has to.

Wagogo - ABQ songs

• South
• East, reprise
• Water Birds (from album All the Time)

In the Company of Women - January Gill O'Neil (poem)

Make me laugh over coffee, 

make it a double, make it frothy 

so it seethes in our delight. 

Make my cup overflow 

with your small happiness. 

I want to hoot and snort and cackle and chuckle. 

Let your laughter fill me like a bell. 

Let me listen to your ringing and singing 

as Billie Holiday croons above our heads. 

Sorry, the blues are nowhere to be found. 

Not tonight. Not here. 

No makeup. No tears. 

Only contours. Only curves. 

Each sip takes back a pound, 

each dry-roasted swirl takes our soul. 

Can I have a refill, just one more? 

Let the bitterness sink to the bottom of our lives.
Let us take this joy to go.

Sermon - The. Rev Bob LaVallee

 What do I need to let go to have more room for love?

Poem - Pluto Shits on the Universe - Fatimah Asghar

On February 7, 1979, Pluto crossed over Neptune’s orbit and became the eighth planet from the sun for twenty years. A study in 1988 determined that Pluto’s path of orbit could never be accurately predicted. Labeled as “chaotic,” Pluto was later discredited from planet status in 2006.

Today, I broke your solar system. Oops.
My bad. Your graph said I was supposed
to make a nice little loop around the sun.

Naw.

I chaos like a motherfucker. Ain’t no one can
chart me. All the other planets, they think
I’m annoying. They think I’m an escaped
moon, running free.

Fuck your moon. Fuck your solar system.
Fuck your time. Your year? Your year ain’t
shit but a day to me. I could spend your
whole year turning the winds in my bed. Thinking
about rings and how Jupiter should just pussy
on up and marry me by now. Your day?

That’s an asswipe. A sniffle. Your whole day
is barely the start of my sunset.

My name means hell, bitch. I am hell, bitch. All the cold
you have yet to feel. Chaos like a motherfucker.
And you tried to order me. Called me ninth.
Somewhere in the mess of graphs and math and compass
you tried to make me follow rules. Rules? Fuck your
rules. Neptune, that bitch slow. And I deserve all the sun
I can get, and all the blue-gold sky I want around me.

It is February 7th, 1979 and my skin is more
copper than any sky will ever be. More metal.
Neptune is bitch-sobbing in my rearview,
and I got my running shoes on and all this sky that’s all mine.

Fuck your order. Fuck your time. I realigned the cosmos.
I chaosed all the hell you have yet to feel. Now all your kids
in the classrooms, they confused. All their clocks:
wrong. They don’t even know what the fuck to do.
They gotta memorize new songs and shit. And the other
planets, I fucked their orbits. I shook the sky. Chaos like
a motherfucker.

It is February 7th, 1979. The sky is blue-gold:
the freedom of possibility.

Today, I broke your solar system. Oops. My bad.

Intent vs. Impact

I've done enough racial equity trainings now that I've fully embraced the difference between intent and impact and accepted the responsibility for my impact on others.

I was recently in a meeting where these came up, and someone pushed back on the idea of owning your impact, saying, essentially, not my fault if you're a snowflake and got your little baby feelings hurt. 

In the moment, I was floored and didn't even know where to begin explaining a whole paradigm of power dynamics in a system of oppression that argues for accountability for intent and impact and how you analyze/react to others' behaviors. It's only when all actors take responsibility for their parts in a situation that you can break the cycle of oppression, victimhood, and complicity. (Arguably the three parts in Karpman's co-dependent triangle of conflict.) As with most things, "yes, and" is the answer here. Yes, a person must take responsibility for their response and their feelings, AND when you hurt someone, even unintentionally, you say sorry. 

Robin DiAngelo (?) described this dynamic with the analogy that if you step on someone's foot and they say ouch, you don't say: "But I didn't mean to." You say, "I'm sorry I hurt you." (My kids are learning this one... slowly!)

I'll take this analogy a bit further, which is to say, all things being equal, the person who is stepped on should speak up to say "ouch." But if the person stepping on your foot is your boss, or a policeman, or the president of the United States, or you're a person from a non-dominant group and they're in the dominant group, there are reasons you might not feel free to speak up. There are power dynamics in play. 

The other person should be compassionate enough that if someone winces when they pass by, they might ask, "Did something just happen?" or "Are you ok?" opening the door for the other person to say, "Yes, you just stepped on me" and giving the other person the opportunity to say, "I'm so sorry I stepped on you!"  

Courage, Compassion, Connection - rinse and repeat.

So what are some resources that can help explain?

• Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility
• Transcript of talk: "Think Impact, Not Intent" 
• Intent vs. Impact: A Formula for Better Communication
• But I didn't mean it! Why it's so hard to prioritize impacts over intents - Scientific American
• "If you say something and you make someone feel seriously uncomfortable, it’s now on you to give serious consideration to why that person might feel that way. That’s how empathy and being a nice human being works."

Chinese proverb - "Might be good, might be bad; we'll see!"

 The Rev. Christine Robinson has shared the story with our congregation on multiple occasions of a Chinese farmer who experiences a series of events that seemed like bad luck when they happened but turned out to be fortuitous when the next "bad thing" happened. 

• Sai Weng Lost His Horse

I like this article that describes both the personal lesson about mindfulness and curiosity and also the leadership lesson of not wasting energy worrying about what's not within your circle of influence. 

• Leadership lessons from a Chinese farmer

Sermon - The Rev. Angela Herrera - 9/19/2021

 Spiritual values that are the antidote of perfectionism:

• Courage
• Compassion
• Connection

Poem - A Gift - Denise Levertov

Just when you seem to yourself 

nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.

Transition - Sermon on 7/18/2021

 Sermon on transition from the Rev. Angela Herrera on 7/18/2021:

PDF

Image of the process:

Universalist Unitarians Today

From question box sermon on 8/28/2021:

What would UUs be called if we chose a new name to reflect our beliefs now?

"We choose" (rhymes with UUs, rhymes with Jews, rhymes with we/yous)

Resilience - The Rev. Christine Robinson sermon 8/22/2021

 

PDF

Video:

Poem - For the New Year, 1981 - Denise Levertov

I have a small grain of hope—
one small crystal that gleams
clear colors out of transparency.

I need more.

I break off a fragment
to send you.

Please take
this grain of a grain of hope
so that mine won’t shrink.

Please share your fragment
so that yours will grow.

Only so, by division,
will hope increase,

like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower
unless you distribute
the clustered roots, unlikely source—
clumsy and earth-covered—
of grace.

Poet recommendations

 How the Word Is Passed - Clint Smith

pg. 28

• Robert Hayden - ballads to remember the Middle Passage
• Gwendolyn Brooks - children on the South Side of Chicago
• Audre Lourde
• Sonia Sanchez

Your thoughts are not facts.

" Sometimes it's good; sometimes it's bad. We'll see." - The Rev. Christine Robinson

Poem - At Blackwater - Mary Oliver

 

For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.
And live

your life.

Tapping medicine meditation

Instructions:

1. Rub hands to move the energy.
2. Take diaphragmatic breath.
3. Shake out hands to release pooled energy.
4. Close eyes. Soft smile. 
5. Tap the following areas in order, cycling through twice with the mantra and a breath at each place.

• Top of the head

• First time: I release my inner critic.
• Second time: I release guilt and embarrassment.

• Inside eyebrow

• First time: I allow myself to feel connected to my intuition.
• Second time: I allow myself to feel accepted.

• Outside of the eye – close to eye socket on the bone.

• First time: I release sadness and frustration.
• Second time: I release any uncertainty and confusion.

• Under the eye on cheekbone (stomach meridian)

• First time: I allow myself to feel inner peace and healing.
• Second time: I allow myself to feel confidence.

• Under nose. (One hand)

• a. First time: I release anger and resentment.
• b. Second time: I release stress and any feeling of being stuck.

• Under mouth. (One hand)

• First time: I allow myself to feel compassion for myself.
• Second time: I allow myself to feel calm and at ease.

• Below collarbone – kidney

• First time: I release worry and anxiety.
• Second time: I release any insecurity and hopelessness.

• Side of chest (by bra straps, using hands like flippers)

• First time: I allow myself to feel safe now.
• Second time: I allow myself to feel compassion for others.

1. Hands at heart.
2. Release tongue to floor of mouth. Invites other parts to release, too.
3. Diaphragm breathing.
4. Smile.

Poem - To have without holding - Marge Piercy

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can’t do it, you say it’s killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.

Marge Piercy, "To have without holding" from The Moon is Always Female. Copyright © 1980 by Marge Piercy. 

From Poetry Foundation Collection: It’s Complicated: Love poems that offer a realistic take on relationships today.

Poem - In the Middle - Barbara Crooker

In the Middle
of a life that's as complicated as everyone else's,
struggling for balance, juggling time.
The mantle clock that was my grandfather's
has stopped at 9:20; we haven't had time
to get it repaired. The brass pendulum is still,
the chimes don't ring. One day you look out the window,
green summer, the next, and the leaves have already fallen,
and a grey sky lowers the horizon. Our children almost grown,
our parents gone, it happened so fast. Each day, we must learn
again how to love, between morning's quick coffee
and evening's slow return. Steam from a pot of soup rises,
mixing with the yeasty smell of baking bread. Our bodies
twine, and the big black dog pushes his great head between;
his tail is a metronome, 3/4 time. We'll never get there,
Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging
us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,
sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh
of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up
in love, running out of time.

Learning Lots about Confidence - Podcast with Amy Poehler

 On Confidence

- Learning Lots with Brie Larson and Jessie Ennis

Amy Poehler:

• Remember it's about habit, not character. Gives you space to try again, make a different choice, have a different outcome. Unlearning is the word. If you treat it like habit and not character, then you don't also get to beat yourself up when you didn't hit a bullseye. If you have a moment when you didn't advocate for yourself or sold yourself short, so what? You didn't spend the whole day saying, I'm such a piece of shit. It's a habit. Practice it. I did it again! Huh. Oh well. Try it again.
• What serves you?
• We can always call cut, take a break, do a second take. It's not all or nothing. 
• Be as gentle with yourself as you are to other people.
• The most talented people are the easiest to work with because they're not coming from a fear-based place.
• Don't cry, sexy.
• "I really like failing and succeeding with people. Look what we created or destroyed together."
• It always come back to, I just didn't commit - to the person, to the project...
• Improving and just dying on stage... If you are dying and someone stays with you, you love them forever. We're in this together. If they leave you, desert you, you'll never forget it. The way they act when the ship goes down tells you everything about them.
• You can tell people how they should see you. Whether or not you feel it is its own journey. Watch the words you say about yourself, and then the ones in your head. People are waiting for you to tell them who you are. So just tell them you're good at it. 
• This happens to us women all the time - we're asked a question that's a little too personal - I ask, "What made you ask that?" It buys you a little time and makes them think about why they are wanting to spend that precious time with you asking that.
• A little managing your adrenaline, a little manifestation, a little I deserve to be here, which is always half the battle in all things.
• You can shine your brightest around real people, they bask in the glow of it, they don't ask you to turn it down. Real friends do that. They don't think your fireworks are too close. They love it and watch them and support you.

Brie Larson:

• "It lifts everyone up, it's infectious. If you are embodied in yourself, that type of leadership actually just makes everyone else feel it."
• Confidence is infectious. When you are living with joy, with freedom to know what your yeses and your no's are, that's that pure confidence that's not oppressive at all. It only brings about more. It might be that someone watches you at work, or watches you on tv and says, oh wow, that's how that works. I want to be more like that. Or there might be that there's a direct work environment, that by you being calm, steady, and in yourself, it leaves the room for someone else to be in the I don't know space or I do know space. After talking to Amy, an expert in confidence, I can see that there isn't an upside to dimming my light. 

Jessie Ennis:

• You use laughter as a form of support. You're so funny that you make everyone else feel like they want to find what's funny about this, too.
• I watched you in interviews reject questions that didn't serve you. When did you learn to set those boundaries?
• Amy said, we can't dim our lights for anyone . If your brightness is blinding to someone else, you shouldn't be dimming the light to make them more comfortable, you just need to shine the light on them bright enough so they feel the confidence, too.
• I value her voice, the way she uses her voice, the way she directs her talent.

Kids corner:

• Calvin, age 4 - confidence means brave. You need to be superhero. They have special powers. I have all of their super powers. 
• Story, age 11 - If you're yourself, you're saying all the right things. 
• Oona, age 4 3/4 - Confidence means you're really brave about something. [My stuffed animal] makes me calm and comfortable. [What about using a big grown up knife?] Only if my hand was on mommy or daddy's hand, if mommy or daddy was confident about me doing it. - I feel confident with their help. Super Oona comes out when someone needs help. Super Oona and Oona have the same scaredness and not scaredness. [What would you say when someone's not feeling confident?] Just be kind and loving and they'll want to play with you. 

Cleaning -- Camille T. Dungy (poem)

I learned regret at mother’s sink,
jarred tomatoes, river-mud brown,
a generation old, lumping
down the drain. Hating wasted space,
I had discarded what I could
not understand. I hadn’t known
a woman to fight drought or frost
for the promise of winter meals,
hadn’t known my great-grandmother,
or what it was to have them lose
the company of that woman
who, upon seeing her namesake,
child of her child, grown and gliding
into marriage, gifted the fruit
of her garden, a hard-won strike
against want. Opening the jar,
I knew nothing of the rotting
effect, the twisting grip of years
spent packing, of years spent moving
further each time from known comforts:
a grandmother’s garden, her rows
always neat, the harvest: bright wealth
mother hoarded. I understood
only the danger of a date
so old. Understanding clearly
what is fatal to the body,
I only understand too late
what can be fatal to the heart.

Hope Is Not a Bird, Emily, It's a Sewer Rat - Caitlin Seida (poem)

Hope is not the thing with feathers
That comes home to roost
When you need it most.

Hope is an ugly thing
With teeth and claws and
Patchy fur that's seen some shit.

It's what thrives in the discards
And survives in the ugliest parts of our world.
Able to find a way to go on
When nothing else can even find a way in.

It's the gritty, nasty little carrier of such diseases as
Optimism, persistence,
Perseverance and joy,
Transmissible as it drags its tail across your path
and
Bites you in the ass.

Hope is not some delicate, beautiful bird,
Emily.
It's a lowly little sewer rat
That snorts pesticides like they were
Lines of coke and still
Shows up on time to work the next day
Looking no worse for wear.

Listen, - Barbara Crooker (poem)

I want to tell you something. This morning
is bright after all the steady rain, and every iris,
peony, rose, opens its mouth, rejoicing. I want to say,
wake up, open your eyes, there’s a snow-covered road
ahead, a field of blankness, a sheet of paper, an empty screen.
Even the smallest insects are singing, vibrating their entire bodies,
tiny violins of longing and desire. We were made for song.
I can’t tell you what prayer is, but I can take the breath
of the meadow into my mouth, and I can release it for the leaves’
green need. I want to tell you your life is a blue coal, a slice
of orange in the mouth, cut hay in the nostrils. The cardinals’
red song dances in your blood. Look, every month the moon
blossoms into a peony, then shrinks to a sliver of garlic.
And then it blooms again.

Point D'alenon - Barbara Crooker (poem)

La dentelle des reines, the lace of queens,
and the queen of laces.
A veil made for Queen Elizabeth took 12,000 hours
and had 12,000,000 stitches.

I
In French, it is la dentelle, which has nothing to do with teeth. Yours would never
be featured in a glossy ad-crooked, the color of old ivory, but they're yours,
part of the body's sweet ruin. The same shade as the linen thread used to make
Point d Alenon in ten complicated stages, twenty hours to fabricate each inch.
This was the lace that enchanted Versailles. All those threads weaving, looping,
tracing a pattern which was sometimes hidden, often impossible to see clearly
until the end. Only a senior lace maker could blend the work of many hands
into a seamless whole that nothing could pull apart.

II
You and I have traveled many roads, like the one that led to the coast
of Brittany, where we ate oysters, drank cold white wine by the sea, then made
love at night with the window open. Another was dark and hung with trees;
we rode in separate lanes in the same car. Yet another led to the cherry
table, the whole family together, a turkey steaming brownly on its plate.
These roads twist and turn, part of a pattern we don't have the distance
to see. Every road we've taken, even the time apart, is part of our story.

III
Needle lace is the height of lacemaking. Every time you touch me, you add
another curve to the motif. The pattern, usually a rose, is designed on vellum,
reinforced with tissue. I've planted roses in every house we've lived, picked
off leaves with black spot, drowned beetles in a jar. A single bud blooms
on our kitchen table. The lace maker embroiders the flower's outline
with silken cord to add relief to the work. You edge my perennial borders
every April. Then the interior is filled in with a finer thread, a variety of stitches.
I seldom cook the same meal twice each season. Spring means salmon and sweet
peas; summer, tomatoes and basil; fall, roast pork with garlic and cauliflower;
winter, sausage and white beans with rosemary. A fine handkerchief medallion
takes three days work. A good marriage takes us to the end of our days.
To produce larger pieces, all the medallions are sewn together with a thread
so fine, it can only be detected by expert eyes. Stitch by stitch, our lives
have been joined now so intricately, only death will snip the final thread.
The invisible stitches interlock, and the pattern reveals itself,
roses flowering in endless summer, suspended in a fine white net.

All This Talk of Saving Souls by Linda M. Underwood from Exaltation (poem)

All this talk of saving souls.
Souls weren’t made to save,
like Sunday clothes that
give out at the seams.
They’re made for wear; they
come with lifetime guarantees.
Don’t save your soul.
Pour it out like rain on
cracked, parched earth.
Give your soul away, or
pass it like a candle flame.
Sing it out, or
laugh it up the wind.
Souls were made for hearing
breaking hearts, for puzzling dreams,
remembering August flowers,
forgetting hurts.
These men who talk of saving souls!
They have the look of bullies
who blow out candles before
you sing happy birthday,
and want the world to be
in alphabetical order.
I will spend my soul,
playing it out like sticky string
into the world,
so I can catch every
last thing I touch.

Quote: Audre Lourde

 

"When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." - Audre Lorde

Ode to My Socks - Pablo Neruda (poem)

Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder’s hands,
two socks as soft
as rabbits.
I slipped my feet
into them
as though into
two
cases
knitted
with threads of
twilight
and goatskin.
Violent socks,
my feet were
two fish made
of wool,
two long sharks
sea-blue, shot
through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons:
my feet
were honored
in this way
by
these
heavenly
socks.
They were
so handsome
for the first time
my feet seemed to me
unacceptable
like two decrepit
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that woven
fire,
of those glowing
socks.

Nevertheless
I resisted
the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere
as schoolboys
keep
fireflies,
as learned men
collect
sacred texts,
I resisted
the mad impulse
to put them
into a golden
cage
and each day give them
birdseed
and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers
in the jungle who hand
over the very rare
green deer
to the spit
and eat it
with remorse,
I stretched out
my feet
and pulled on
the magnificent
socks
and then my shoes.

The moral
of my ode is this:
beauty is twice
beauty
and what is good is doubly
good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool
in winter.

Bring your broken hallelujah here - the Rev. Theresa Soto (poem and prayer)

Bring your broken hallelujah here.
Bring the large one that is beyond
repair. Bring the small one that’s
too soft to share. Bring your broken
Hallelujah here. I know that people
have told you that before you can give
you have to get yourself together. They
overstated the value of perfection by a
lot. Or they forgot. You are the gift.
We all bring some broken things, songs
and dreams, and long lost hopes. But
here, and together, we reach within.
As a community, we begin again. And
from the pieces we will build something new.
There is work that only you can do. We
wait for you.

Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man - Emmanuel Acho

 

Talking to policemen

"Proximity breeds care and distance breeds fear. And because there's not enough proximity, there's a lack of care or a lack of empathy and a heightened amount of fear.”

Talking to Joanna and Skip Gaines

Talking about "Reverse Racism"

Talking to a family with white parents and adopted black children

Source of Most Quotes / Echoes in My Life

 

Joe vs. the Volcano

"Some things take care of themselves. They're not your job; maybe they're not even your business.”

"Very interesting. As a luggage problem."

"I know he can get the job, but can he do the job?"

"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how big... thank you. Thank you for my life."

“Joe, nobody knows anything. We'll take this leap and we'll see. We'll jump and we'll see. That's life!”

“My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.”

Princess Bride

"As you wish"

"I'm not a witch; I'm your wife, but I'm not even sure I want to be that anymore after what you just said."

"Mahwaaj. Mahwaaj is what bwings us togevar today. Mahwaaj - dat bwessed awangement. Dat dweam wifin a dweam...."

Shell Seekers

The Holy Grail

"I'm not dead yet."

"It's just a flesh wound."

"Now go away or I will taunt you a second time."

Dan in Real Life

"Put it on my tab..."

The Jerk

"All I need is this lamp. All I need is this desk, this lamp, and this..."

Alone - Maya Angelou (poem)

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Apparition - Mark Doty (poem)

The old words are dying,
everyone forgets them,
pages falling into sleep and dust,

dust and sleep, burning so slowly
you wouldn’t even know there’s a fire.
Or that’s what I think half the time.

Then, at the bookstore, a young man reciting,
slight for fourteen, blonde, without irony
but not self-important either;

his loping East Texas vowels threaten
to escape the fence of pentameter,
his voice seems to have just arrived here,

but the old cadence inhabits anyway.
He makes the poem his own
even as he becomes a vessel

for its reluctance to disappear.
All right, maybe they perish,
but the boy has the look of someone

repeating a crucial instruction
that must be delivered, word for word,
as he learned it:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

Quote - The Rev. Marta Valentin

Excerpt:

Isn’t it amazing
how we crave to know an outcome
before its time
even as we accept
that we cannot know
how anything will go?

Self-Portrait as a Door - Donika Ross (poem)

All the birds die of blunt-force trauma —
of barn of wire of YIELD or SLOW
CHILDREN AT PLAY. You are a sign
are a plank are a raft are a felled oak.
You are a handle are a turn are a bit
of brass lovingly polished.
What birds what bugs what soft
hand come knocking. What echo
what empty what room in need 

of a picture a mirror a bit of paint 

on the wall. There is a hooked rug. 

There is a hard hand as you are 

hard pounding the door. There is the doormat

owl eye patched by a boot by a body

with a tree for a hand. What roosts 

what burrows what scrambles 

at the pound. There is a you 

on the other side, cold and white 

as the room, in need of a window 

or an eye. There is your hand 

on the door which is now the door 

pretending to be a thing that opens.

Advice to Myself - Louise Erdrich (poem)

Leave the dishes.

Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don’t patch the cup.
Don’t patch anything. Don’t mend. Buy safety pins.
Don’t even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll’s tiny shoes in pairs, don’t worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don’t even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don’t sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

We have a soul at times - Wislawa Szymborska (poem)

 

We have a soul at times.

No one’s got it non-stop, for keeps.

 

Day after day, year after year may pass without it.

 

Sometimes it will settle for awhile only in childhood’s fears and raptures.

Sometimes only in astonishment that we are old.

 

It rarely lends a hand in uphill tasks,

like moving furniture, or lifting luggage, or going miles in shoes that pinch.

 

It usually steps out whenever meat needs chopping or forms have to be filled.

 

For every thousand conversations it participates in one,

if even that, since it prefers silence.

 

Just when our body goes from ache to pain, it slips off-duty.

 

It’s picky: it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds;

our hustling for a dubious advantage and creaky machinations make it sick.

 

Joy and sorrow aren’t two different feelings for it.

It attends us only when the two are joined.

 

We can count on it when we’re sure of nothing

and curious about everything.

 

Among the material objects it favors clocks with pendulums

and mirrors, which keep on working even when no one is looking.

 

It won’t say where it comes from or when it’s taking off again,

though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

 

We need it, but apparently it needs us for some reason, too.

The Big Miss

Ok, I'll say it. Republicans are NOT just acting out of loyalty to one man. They are choosing a means to an end. Trump and Trumpism are the means. The big lie justifies "voter reform" bills that ensure voter disenfranchisement, removing tools of leverage and power for people of color and their allies, and ultimately shoring up white control of government.

They don't BELIEVE the big lie; they believe in its power to cover their actions and justify their egregious, anti-democratic, racist actions. Policies that will disproportionately and negatively impact communities of color are racist policies. This is a racist lie; racist strategy; and racist outcome. 

Let's not miss the big picture here. Loyalty only begins to explain it. Trump doesn't just happen to be racist. He's the chosen leader of racists.

The Peace of Wild Things - Wendell Berry (poem)

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

First Lesson - Philip Booth (poem)

Lie back daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man's float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

Thank You Prayer (poem)

Thankful

To be hammered thin

Seemingly brittle

But strong enough

To bridge the gaps

Between strengths

Shading a space

For rest

Let me tell you about my marvelous god - Susan Stewart (poem)

Let me tell you about my marvelous god, how he hides in the hexagons
of the bees, how the drought that wrings its leather hands
above the world is of his making, as well as the rain in the quiet minutes
that leave only thoughts of rain.
An atom is working and working, an atom is working in deepest
night, then bursting like the farthest star; it is far
smaller than a pinprick, far smaller than a zero and it has no
will, no will toward us.
This is why the heart has paced and paced,
will pace and pace across the field where yarrow
was and now is dust. A leaf catches
in a bone. The burrow’s shut by a tumbled clod
and the roots, upturned, are hot to the touch.
How my god is a feathered and whirling thing; you will singe your arm
when you pluck him from the air,
when you pluck him from that sky
where grieving swirls, and you will burn again
throwing him back.

Life is Beautiful - Dorianne Laux (poem)

 

        and remote, and useful,
if only to itself. Take the fly, angel
of the ordinary house, laying its bright
eggs on the trash, pressing each jewel out
delicately along a crust of buttered toast.
Bagged, the whole mess travels to the nearest
dump where other flies have gathered, singing
over stained newsprint and reeking
fruit. Rapt on air they execute an intricate
ballet above the clashing pirouettes
of heavy machinery. They hum with life.
While inside rumpled sacks pure white
maggots writhe and spiral from a rip,
a tear-shaped hole that drools and drips
a living froth onto the buried earth.
The warm days pass, gulls scree and pitch,
rats manage the crevices, feral cats abandon
their litters for a morsel of torn fur, stranded
dogs roam open fields, sniff the fragrant edges,
a tossed lacework of bones and shredded flesh.
And the maggots tumble at the center, ripening,
husks membrane-thin, embryos darkening
and shifting within, wings curled and wet,
the open air pungent and ready to receive them
in their fecund iridescence. And so, of our homely hosts,
a bag of jewels is born again into the world. Come, lost
children of the sun-drenched kitchen, your parents
soundly sleep along the windowsill, content,
wings at rest, nestled in against the warm glass.
Everywhere the good life oozes from the useless
waste we make when we create—our streets teem
with human young, rafts of pigeons streaming
over the squirrel-burdened trees. If there is
a purpose, maybe there are too many of us
to see it, though we can, from a distance,
hear the dull thrum of generation's industry,
feel its fleshly wheel churn the fire inside us, pushing
the world forward toward its ragged edge, rushing
like a swollen river into multitude and rank disorder.
Such abundance. We are gorged, engorging, and gorgeous.

Nikki Rosa - Nikki Giovanni (poem)

Childhood remembrances are always a drag

If you're Black
You always remember things like living in Woodlawn
With no inside toilet
And if you become famous or something
They never talk about how happy you were to have
Your mother
All to yourself and
How good the water felt when you got your bath
From one of those
Big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in
And somehow when you talk about home
It never gets across how much you
Understood their feelings
As the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
And even though you remember
Your biographers never understand
Your father's pain as he sells his stock
And another dream goes
And though you're poor it isn't poverty that
Concerns you
And though they fought a lot
It isn't your father's drinking that makes any difference
But only that everybody is together and you
And your sister have happy birthdays and very good
Christmases
And I really hope no white person ever has cause
To write about me
Because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they'll
Probably talk about my hard childhood
And never understand that
All the while I was quite happy

often brown feels like "but" - Vivek Shraya (poem)

conjunction

1. used to introduce something contrasting with what has already been mentioned

2. used to indicate the impossibility of anything other than what is being stated

3. used to introduce a response expressing a feeling such as surprise or anger

preposition

1. except; apart from; other than

adverb

1. no more than; only

noun

1. an argument against something; an objection

Help Me Prayer

Help me still the vertigo of my thoughts

Help me look up 

reset my altimeter

adjust my attitude indicator 

that I may know

rather than panic

about where I am relative to the bigger picture

Help me recognize changes and react with grace

enjoy banking to the left or right

before settling to center

oriented

once again

to the horizon's glow.

5 Types of Prayer

 The Rev. Bob LaVallee says there are only 5 prayers, which are also types of religious experiences:

• Wow
• Thanks
• I'm sorry
• Help me
• Help someone else

Remember to take a moment when we feel these things to give them space, a breath, to center ourselves in that feeling and branch out, reach out, send out to others, and connect with the "something more" of which we are a part but do not control.

Because being grounded does not mean being more in control, just more gracious and flexible and resilient and loving.

What do I need to be nourished?

 Sunshine or a scarf and a cat in my lap

Just enough chocolate

Time to work

Time to think

Voices from people of color who can forgive

Wise words with rhythm

An accent fingernail in blue

Team members who do work I don't even know about

The Power of Privilege - Tiffany Jana

 

Poem - won't you celebrate with me - Lucille Clifton

what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

More than words

 I believe 3 things are needed to sail through this to that, as Lucille Clifton wishes for us.

1) That we cultivate bold, just goals of equity in process and then ongoing equality in outcomes.

2) That we, at all levels, continually look for and root out the constraints and the causes of all the practices and institutions and systems that stand between us and the embracing and achieving of our shared goals.

3) That we individually do the work to build skills of valuing difference and negotiating conflict, unlearn implicit bias, root out prejudice, leverage privilege, cultivate compassion, and celebrate and share joy in community.

It is not enough to espouse our intentions. We know that impact is a better measure of justice. 

Strategic planning has taught us not just to find our vision but ask what stands in the way of that vision. If we all want justice, what is it that stops us from attaining it? 

On a macro scale, it's easier to point to the GOP's blatant racism in the policies that would disproportionately benefit white communities and undermine communities of color.

It's harder, on an individual scale, to find the barriers that keep me from having a diverse set of friends. Or why my beloved liberal faith, which professes the dignity of each individual and celebrates diversity as a source for life meaning and wisdom, is overwhelmingly white. 

And the answer, of course, is institutional racism scaffolding around white supremacy culture. And to achieve equality for all and diversity that we can celebrate? Dismantling systems of oppression in our church culture and in our personal interactions with those who are different from ourselves. 

And how to do that? To give up the privilege of comfort of white people as the norm. To accept the stress and the challenge and the adventure of being a traveler among other cultures - to learn from them, to interact with humility and curiosity and respect, to be very aware of the cultural identities that we bring into each interaction. To accept that diversity is to be the new norm, to give up the idea of the "universal experience" and instead be ok with the relativity of multiculturalism and intersectionality of identity. To learn how to see difference and not be afraid or offended. To experience offense and be brave enough and mature enough to say so in nonviolent terms. To ask for what you want in positive terms. (John Gottman's got this one nailed when it comes to the best relationships - anger is ok but say what HAPPENED that you didn't like and what you WANT TO HAPPEN instead, not criticizing or belittling or, in the case of a one community member to another, giving up on them altogether.)

This is the anti-racism that Ibram X. Kendi describes, as opposed to segregationist or assimilationist urges of the past. Again, easier for me to see at the national scale. Harder to see at the level of my church, my life, when I make decisions on what is "relaxing" and "refreshing" on a weekend. 

Although Kendi advocates "zero tolerance" on microagressions, my Unitarian Universalist faith means I cannot give up on someone - not that I have to embrace them or not hold them accountable - but following Ruby Sales, I cannot give up on anyone or write anyone’s obituary "until they no longer have breath in their bodies." 

"It’s almost like white people don’t believe that other white people are worthy of being redeemed." - Ruby Sales in On Being

Dr. Yaba Blay on Brene Brown's Unlocking Us talked about identity as three components, "the meeting of

• who you are, 
• who you believe yourself to be, and 
• who others tell you that you are."

I think we’re all trying to navigate that space to come to understand who we are. Because we can’t act like other people’s definitions of us or other people’s projections onto us don’t impact us. A lot of us are constantly massaging our identities to fit in a variety of spaces and places. And I think it’s healthy to do so. But I’m sure over the course of our lives, we’re constantly revisiting the question of, “Who am I?” That’s constantly changing based upon the experiences that we have, and for better or for worse, some of us might define ourselves according to our experiences, or some of us might try to meet an identity that is projected on to us.

 And the responsibility for our identity when it includes our street race, and perhaps how we land on others, even acknowledging, maybe especially acknowledging that implicit bias, stereotypes, and prejudice are real and present in almost every interaction, means that we must get better at being multicultural and intercultural to minimize the stress and associated negative health effects that come with it. 

The way Brene and Dr. Blay talk about codeswitching as stressful but unavoidable in the podcast link above is what I think white people need to accept. We are leaving/dismantling a world built for white comfort and instead building a world where we all must get more comfortable being uncomfortable, staying on our growing edge, growing our awareness and skill of using our bodies as antenna to notice when we or others have crossed a cultural line and offended or hurt someone, and getting much better - bolder - braver - more skillful - in asking for, hearing, and acting on feedback and then resolving conflict, repairing the relationship, and building trust again - one marble into the jar at a time (as Brene's daughter explained trust with her friends). Snowflakes? What a joke! This is the hardest work there is. Scorched earth is a white colonists solution to all conflict. Knitting? Weaving? Forgiving? Building community across difference? What fortitude! What wisdom! What maturity and dexterity and skill is needed!

And so I have dreams of anti-racism trainings that just drill offense, feedback, apology, repair. And eventually, you move to difference, (internal fear, deep breath, cultivating curiosity about an individual), laughter and/or questions, listening, stories, asking for what you want, discussing different values and needs, and brainstorming/working together on how to get everyone a little more of what they want and need. 

Poem - "blessing the boats" by Lucille Clifton

                                                (at St. Mary's)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back     may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

Poem - Affirmation of Hope - Loretta Williams

 

We, bearers of the dream, affirm that a new vision of hope is emerging.
We pledge to work for that community in which justice will be actively present.
We affirm that there is struggle yet ahead.
Yet we know that in the struggle is the hope for the future.
We affirm that we are co-creators of the future, not passive pawns.
And we stand united in affirmation of our hope and vision of a just and inclusive society.
We affirm the unity of all persons:
We affirm brotherhood and sisterhood that allows us to touch upon each other’s humanity.
We affirm a unity that opens our eyes, ears, and hearts to see the different but common forms of oppression, suffering, and pain.
Yet we are one in the image of God, and we celebrate our hopes for human unity.
Within ourselves and within the gathered community, we will discover the strength not to hide in indifference.
Affirming that hope, publicly expressed, energizes and enables us to move forward. Together we pledge action to transcend barriers — be they racial, political, economic, social, or religious.
We pledge to make our tomorrows become our todays.

Ross Gay - Delights Reading + Talk with Hanif Abdurraqib with Timestamps

 

(All from The Book of Delights)

4:20 "Weirdly Untitled" 

8:55 "The High Five from Strangers, Etc."

13:20 "The Marfa Lights"

14:45 "To Spread the Sweetness of Love" (Stevie Wonder in the airport)

17:45 "Ambiguous Signage Sometimes"

21:50 "Cocoa Baby"

25:20 Talk with Hanif Abdurraqib

Ross Gay - Poetry reading with timestamps

 

11:30 "To the Mistake" (Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude)

15:30 "That's Some Bambi Shit" (The Book of Delights)

16:55 "Tap, Tap in the Time of Trump" (The Book of Delights)

18:58 "Transplanting" (The Book of Delights)

23:40 "To the Mulberry Tree" (Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude)

28:37 "Just a Dream" (The Book of Delights)

33:23 (Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude)

Poem - Nessie Wants to Watch Herself Doing It - Patricia Lockwood

 Doing what, I don’t know, being alive. The green

of her is a scum on the surface, she would like
to look at herself. Should I have a memory?
she wonders. Of mother washing my frogskin
in muddy water? I do not have that memory.
My near-transparent frogskin? Mother washing
it with mud to keep it visible? I do not have that
memory, almost, almost. Warmblooded though
she knows for a fact, and spontaneously generated
from the sun on stone, and 100 vertebrae in every
wave of the lake, as 100 vertebrae in every wave
of her. All of her meat blue rare blue rare, a spot
on her neck that would drive her wild if anyone ever
touched it, and the tip of her tail ends with -ness and
-less. So far all she knows of the alphabet is signs
that say NO SWIMMING.
                      So far all she knows is her whereabouts.
Has great HATRED for the parochial, does the liver
of the lake. Would like to go to universe … al … ity?
She has heard there is a good one in Germany.
They stay up all night drinking some black sludge,
and grow long beards rather than look at them-
selves, and do thought experiments like: if I am not
in Scotland, does Scotland even exist? What do I look
like when no one is looking? She would listen to them
just as hard as she could with the mud-sucking holes
in her head – and they, she thinks, would listen back,
with their ears so regularly described as seashell.
The half of her that is underwater would like to be
under a desk, the head of her that is underwater
would like to be fully immersed.
                                                 I will be different there,
she thinks, with a powerful wake ahead of me.
When will the thinkers come for me. Visited only
here by believers. Is so deep-sea-sick of believers.
When will the thinkers come for me here, where
the green stretches out before me, and I am my own
front lawn. The green is a reflective green, a green
in the juicy shadows of leaves – a bosky even green –
a word I will learn to use, and use without self-
consciousness, when at last I go to Germany. I have
holed myself away here, sometimes I am not here
at all, and I feel like the nice clean hole in the leaf
                          and the magnifying glass above me.
She looks to the believers on the shore. A picture
                          it would last longer! shouts Nessie.
Does NOT believe photography can rise to the level
of art, no matter how much rain falls in it, as levels
of the lake they rose to art when Nessie dipped
her body in it. Nessie wants to watch herself doing
it. Doing what, I don’t know, being alive. The lake
bought one Nessie and brought her home. She almost
died of loneliness until it gave her a mirror. The lake
could be a mirror, thinks Nessie. Would be perfectly
                                                            still if I weren’t in it.