Oppression

 Last Friday, I received a check to pay me for 8 years of work that I did but was paid less than a man working at the same level. The check was for a considerable sum. When the receptionist told me the amount, I was floored - thankful but then murderously angry. How dare they underpay me for so long and only pay up when forced by a class action lawsuit (with really good lawyers)?

And then I went back to work, back to overtime, back to caring more than anyone else and pushing others to work and care more, too. 

Ten minutes ago, I was listening to the We Can Do Hard Things podcast with Tricia Hersey about how rest can libertate us from the grind culture by giving us space to imagine a different world and as an act of defiance against the systems - capitalism, white supremacy, and misogyny - that would turn us into cogs or robots or underpaid workers by separating our minds from our bodies. Rest does the opposite. Rest is when the body heals, learns, and generates new ideas. When thoughts get coded into cells. 

Tricia asks in the podcast - are you perpetuating grind culture? Are you pushing others? Demanding and setting inhumane expectations? Trying to live up to an ideal of perfection that you didn't dream?

Yes, yes, yes, yes. 

This all compounded with the expectations of a kiddo birthday and Christmas and creating holiday wonder and cheer and memories. Now with cash to spend for presents. 

And all I want to do is work. Use my brain in a subject I know. And then eat. Watch a movie. 

What does rest look like for me? A run on the weekend. Yoga - in person! - for the first time in YEARS last Sunday. Poetry with friends. (Although even that is turned into a to-do to prepare for reading at Sunday Chatter in the New Year). 

How do I do this? What do I do? My Christmas cookie list is 12 recipes, entered into a spreadsheet so I can sum the eggs. (Really?!? Really. Shakes head at self.)

I think I need a new tapping meditation. 

Forehead: I am complete and a full human being, worthy just as I am.

Right cheek: I deserve rest; I look forward to my dreams.

Left cheek: What I bring is enough; it does not have to be all I am or all I can do.

Chin: When my body meets my mind, I am liberated; I am myself; I am whole.

Chest: Honoring others' boundaries supports the world I want to live in; some things can wait or not happen at all. 

Become a lighthouse (poem) by John Roedel

after you survive
your storm
you simply must try to
become a lighthouse

my love,
your scars are
meant to burn so bright
that they will help a person
lost at sea find the shore
every wound you carry
has a 1000 watt bulb inside of it
that preaches the gospel of the coming dawn
one burst of daybreak at a time

my love,
it's the circle
of survival
you have endured
to help others endure

you have outlasted the dark
to become a disciple of light

this is your calling now
~ to plant your feet
in the same shore
you washed up on
~ to insult the darkness
by vowing to stand against
~ to save as many others who
are lost amid the storm
and - of course,
~ to ignite

my love,
it’s time
ignite
ignite
ignite

Speed (poem) - Lynn Ungar

One thing you might love
is the way all things move,
the varied pulse that drives
beings to grow. The moss
creeps forward season by season,
but lichen takes what you and I
know as generations to make
its mark upon the rock.
The bark of the cedar expands
at the rate of millimeters per year.
Mountains move much more slowly,
although a mound of rubble
at the foot of a moraine
might have crashed down
in a single catastrophic moment.
The wings of the hornet
beat too fast for you to see,
and it will magically appear
where you least want it.
Why do you imagine that you
should be moving any faster
or slower than your personal beat?
Listen. Breathe. Move graciously
as salt water touching sand.

Driving Meditation

 [Tapping forehead] I am smart and can bring value if I stay present.

[Tapping right cheekbone] I can stay present and accept what's here for me.

[Tapping left cheekbone] I can stay connected to others and offer what I have to give.

[Tapping chin] I can stay grounded and trust myself to know what to do next.

[Tapping sternum] I am grateful for all I have, and I can be generous to others.

Searching

 I crumpled into tears at Sunday Chatter last week. V.B. Price was doing the spoken word portion. He read his Christmas poems for this year. They were based on a quote by William James:

"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."

This is, of course, making the very large assumption that otherwise, a wise person is noticing all the other important factors that should NOT be overlooked but rather meditated on, distilled, integrated, decided, etc.

After hearing Barrett's wisdom, which he shared so generously and unguardedly, I fell into existential angst. I am so confused by my life. I do not know what to overlook, and lately, I'm so tired that I'm overlooking EVERYTHING just to try to be peaceful.

I do not understand who I am, what my gifts to the world should be, what I know, what I don't know, how to act, how to show up, how to support others. It's as though I am living in reverse, since when I was younger, I knew all these things with a vengeance... or thought I did. Maybe it's better to have a little uncertainty to keep one humble. But I am well beyond that into just spinning. 

I have had several long conversations with friends lately, remarkable because they are the exception to my rather insular, homebound life. 

• With my very oldest of friends, who has been my friend since we were both 2, I could see my life as a mother and a woman. How 47 is a turning inward kind of year. Yet still middle age enough to be plenty angsty. 
• With my college friend, I could see my life through my college-age eyes. He asked me what I do for fun. Ummm.... no good answer. Enter crises here.
• With my poet friend, I could see my writer self, ignored, discounted, and underfed. She probably has things to say if we were brave enough to face some hard truths or have enough rationalizations ready for all that we admit we should be doing but ... can't (for good reasons!).
• With my neighbor friend, who was my friend when I was 8 through college and then again now, I see my reader self - not the one who knows anything but the one who reads because I don't know nearly enough. 

All of these parts of me are more interesting to me than my mother self (perhaps because things are rutted) or my wife self (who is mellowing but not all that engaged) or my work self (who has recently been trounced by political winds). 

And is it the failure of my mothering and my working that have led me to question myself? Or have I paid attention only to those most important aspects, to the exclusion of all the other parts of me that I actually like more? 

I think COVID let me hide from friendships in not-good ways. I think I'm more isolated at work now that my work-wife is no longer there. And Terra seems far away, too. 

I've lost my gear. Lost the thread. Lost. 

I'm not sure what to do next. 

Grounding (meditation) by Jess Reynolds

On my worst days, it is gravity I am most grateful for: the way the earth pulls at me from her core, yearns for me, keeps me pressed tightly against her surface. When my own core is hollowed out, when I have no more mass than a leaf dead on the branch, still this is enough for the earth to find me. She reaches for what little I have and says, stay.

Every meditation I have ever done begins by asking me to ground myself. This is not so much an action as it is inaction. Surrender. A voluntary abandonment of my own edges and tidy packaging.

Sit with me now. Press the soles of your feet back into the ground you sprang from. Feel the weight of your body and know that it is glorious. You are born of soil and sun, and all the heaviness of the earth is a call to you. The earth is reaching for you. Reach back. Reach back.

Why am I here?

 

Because I signed up. 

Because I sign up.

Because I need help and support living well, finding meaning. 

Because I find meaning here.

Because I find myself here.

Because I search. 

Because it's lonely to search and not have answers.

Because I like the way I show up here. 

Because I have skills that can be of service.

Because I believe in spaces that support searching and holding answers lightly and sharing them tentatively, as you share poems, as though they may be of use, and if they are, what gifts. 

Brave

I've been listening to a lot of We Can Do Hard Things podcast with Glennon Doyle. And re-reading Untamed. 

I think I just haven't been brave lately. I haven't taken the risk to show up as myself in the house, closing myself down, closing myself off, closing. 

I sense that if I let myself have fun - oriented toward my own joy, let myself rest while at home, there would be more of me here, more laughter, more love. More connection. 

When I think of what I'd like to fill my life with, I think of meditation, yoga, dancing, reading, and writing. Maybe cooking occasionally. Maybe. All that could be done if there were less tv, less work, less cleaning, honestly. 

I can be here for myself. I can show up with my family. I can love outward and inward at the same time.

Not OK

I'm feeling itchy and unsatisfied and panicked. Maybe I am unhappy. Maybe I don't know how to be happy. Maybe I only show up as myself at work. Who are my children seeing? They do not seem happy, but maybe that's just because they don't see anyone showing them how. 

What do I do for fun, a long-ago friend asked over lunch when we ran into each other randomly after years. I don't have fun. I clean my house, read books, listen to podcasts, do puzzles. I've never been a "go place, do things" kind of person, but my world seems increasingly small and intimate and ... how is this different from COVID?

I listened to Glennon Doyle's podcast for the first time the other day, and I spent some time tonight dipping back into her books, and it was like catching glimpses of myself in dark rooms as I walked through someone else's house. Oh shit. I think I have to start saying the hard, brave things to my husband instead of just disappearing. I think I have to do that to show my kids how to do that. 

Maybe then I can stop eating to feel good and feel special and loved and cared for. Maybe then I can lose the extra weight and feel good about my body, feel sexy and alive again.

Glennon talked about yoga, and I suddenly remembered how much I loved going to yoga. Loved feeling my body feel strong. Not so much with the perfectionism, but even listening to when my body said "Not today!" was good practice. Being kind. Letting "enough" be enough. 

I'm the last one in the house that isn't in therapy, and I think that's where I'm headed. But why can't we turn to each other instead? Training, maybe. Degrees in this shit. Insight and patience and perspective. Yes, all of that. 

Maybe I want yoga instead. Who wants to spend more time in their unhappy head?

Mediation to Reduce Bias and Increase Compassion

 

Jose Maresma

Gear Up for Fitness

1. Emotional Awareness

2. Decentering from Negative Thought Patterns

3. Loving Kindness

4. Mindful Media Consumption

5. Mindful Listening and Speech

We Hold Hope Close (poem) - Theresa Soto

In this community, we hold hope close. We don’t
always know what comes next, but that cannot dissuade us.
We don’t always know just what to do, but that will not mean
that we are lost in the wilderness. We rely on the certainty
beneath, the foundation of our values and ethics. We
are the people who return to love like a North Star and to
the truth that we are greater together than we are alone.
Our hope does not live in some glimmer of an indistinct future.
Rather, we know the way to the world of which we dream,
and by covenant and the movement forward of one right action
and the next, we know that one day we will arrive at home.

Making Peace (poem) - Denise Levertov

 

A voice from the dark called out,

             ‘The poets must give us

imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar

imagination of disaster. Peace, not only

the absence of war.’

                                   But peace, like a poem,

is not there ahead of itself,

can’t be imagined before it is made,

can’t be known except

in the words of its making,

grammar of justice,

syntax of mutual aid.

                                       A feeling towards it,

dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have

until we begin to utter its metaphors,

learning them as we speak.

                                              A line of peace might appear

if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,

revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,

questioned our needs, allowed

long pauses . . .

                        A cadence of peace might balance its weight

on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,

an energy field more intense than war,

might pulse then,

stanza by stanza into the world,

each act of living

one of its words, each word

a vibration of light—facets

of the forming crystal.

Call to Worship (prayer) - the Rev. Bob LaVallee

I know that you wish the work was done
And you, with everyone you have ever loved,
were on a distant shore, safe and unafraid.

But remember this, tired as you are:
You are not alone.
Here and here and here also
There are others weeping and rising and gathering their courage.

You belong to them and they to you.

"For One Who Holds Power" - A Leadership Prayer - John O'Donahue

May the gift of leadership awaken in you as a vocation,
Keep you mindful of the providence that calls you to serve.
As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings,
May your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills.

When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance,

May your imagination continue to evoke horizons.
When thirst burns in times of drought,
May you be blessed to find the wells.
May you have the wisdom to read time clearly
And know when the seed of change will flourish.

In your heart may there be a sanctuary
For the stillness where clarity is born.
May your work be infused with passion and creativity
And have the wisdom to balance compassion and challenge.

May your soul find the graciousness
To rise above the fester of small mediocrities.
May your power never become a shell
Wherein your heart would silently atrophy.
May you welcome your own vulnerability
As the ground where healing and truth join.

May integrity of soul be your first ideal.
The source that will guide and bless your work.

from his book, To Bless the Space Between Us

Steadied By Each Other (prayer) - Soul Matters

Pulled in many directions by the demands of our days,
we light this chalice to remind us of the still point deep inside.
Made unsteady by the winds of unpredictable paths,
we light this chalice to remember the shelter of each other.
Longing for lights that lead us back to our truest selves,
we light this chalice to illuminate the faces of friends and sacred companions,
recalling once again that we find our way through the willingness
to take each other’s hand.

With Love As My Guide (prayer) - Cindy Terlazzo (adapted)

Amidst the swirl of life’s challenges, fears, and even moments of crisis,
[We] make time to gaze at the night sky to see the vastness there,
And to remember that this moment in time is but a flicker—
Not an inconsequential flicker—
For what [we] do and think now does matter.
[Our] work, though, is to let the debris of this world pass by
While [we] anchor [ourselves] to what [we] know is true:

Love, Kindness, Compassion.

Crickets (poem) - Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

When they sing
it is a kind of love,
a pure-toned,
full-bodied ringing
born of friction.
You could say
it’s just a wingstroke
that makes a pulse of sound
that joins with all
the other pulses
to form a river of music,
and you would be right.
But there are many ways
to face the dark.
One is to hide.
One is to prowl.
One is to bring
the bright music
of your body
and offer it
to the night.

Last Night As I Was Sleeping (poem) by Antonio Machado; translated by Robert Bly

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una fontana fluía
dentro de mi corazón.
Dí: ¿por qué acequia escondida,
agua, vienes hasta mí,
manantial de nueva vida
en donde nunca bebí?

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una colmena tenía
dentro de mi corazón;
y las doradas abejas
iban fabricando en él,
con las amarguras viejas,
blanca cera y dulce miel.

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que un ardiente sol lucía
dentro de mi corazón.
Era ardiente porque daba
calores de rojo hogar,
y era sol porque alumbraba
y porque hacía llorar.

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que era Dios lo que tenía
dentro de mi corazón.



Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old bitternesses.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

Quote - Forest Church - Sin

 Something like: 

"Sin is anything that divides us from our better selves, estranges us from our neighbors, or severs us from the ground of being."

Chicago Elegy - An Abortion Poem

 January 2000

I.

Brown grows between my legs --

I am no longer a mother.

Self can be constructed    deconstructed --

I can create and destroy.

Chicago makes magic        blue and fluid like michigan's lake

                                            black and red like that day

                                                              like that hole

                                                              like that blood not my blood

                                                                            blood no longer my blood

                                                                            blood no longer blood

Until the day I no longer bleed.

I am still bleeding.

II.

White catches brown -- 

I am free.

Time can be taken    given -- 

What they took I am given.

Chicago gives life on a day white covers streets like sheets

                                                                            like ice packs

            takes life in a wash of sweat

                                a swirl of brown and red

            takes a life not my life

            gives life no longer my life

Until the day I move on.

I am not moving.

III.

Blood red moon over gold -- 

I am an aunt    not a mother.

Being separate I am alone    not alone -- 

Distance and time makes me free.

Chicago fills the spirit with gold moon fire

                                            (gold light ripples on black)

            empties the body of unrecognized souls

                                            (blood red moon over gold -- 

                                                    we are free

                                                    you are me

                                                                 not me

                                                    you will never be

                                                                                me

                                                                   never be without me

                                                    you can never be free)

        ensconces the self among bodies    friends

        carries in the winds the sounds of home

        lifts my spirit wrapped in wind 

        and takes me home

               carries me home

               plunges me home in the dark, cold waters where it all began

                                                                                   where all life began

                                                                                   where everything begins

Until the day it begins for me.

It has already begun.

                                            

"Shelter in Place" (poem) by Kim Stafford

Long before the pandemic, the trees
knew how to guard one place with
roots and shade. Moss found
how to hug a stone for life.
Every stream works out how
to move in place, staying home
even as it flows generously
outward, sending bounty far.
Now is our time to practice–
singing from balconies, sending
words of comfort by any courier,
hoarding lonesome generosity
to shine in all directions like stars.

"About Standing (in Kinship)" (poem) by Kimberly Blaeser

We all have the same little bones in our foot
twenty-six with funny names like navicular.
Together they build something strong—
our foot arch a pyramid holding us up.
The bones don’t get casts when they break.
We tape them—one phalange to its neighbor for support.
(Other things like sorrow work that way, too—
find healing in the leaning, the closeness.)
Our feet have one quarter of all the bones in our body.
Maybe we should give more honor to feet
and to all those tiny but blessed cogs in the world—
communities, the forgotten architecture of friendship.

"Declaration of Inter-dependence" (poem) by Richard Blanco

Such has been the patient sufferance...

We’re a mother’s bread, instant potatoes, milk at a checkout line; her three children pleading for bubble gum and their father. We’re the three minutes she steals to page a tabloid, needing to believe even stars’ lives are as joyful and bruised.

Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury...

We’re her second job serving an executive in a shark-grey suit absorbed in his Fortune magazine at a sidewalk café. We’re the shadow of skyscrapers like giant chess pieces in a game he bet his family on, and lost. We’re the lost. We’re a father who can’t mine a life anymore in a town where too much, too little has happened, for too long.

A history of repeated injuries and usurpations…

We’re the grit of his main street’s blacked-out windows and spray-painted truths. Or a street lined with Royal palms—home to a Peace Corps couple who now collect art and winter in Aruba. We’re their dinner-party-talk of wines and picket signs once wielded, retirement accounts and draft cards once burned. We’re their knowing it’s time to do more than read the New York Times, buy fair-trade coffee and grass-fed beef.

In every stage of oppressions we have petitioned for redress…

We’re the canned corn of a farmer who plows into his couch as worn as his back by the end of the day. We’re watching news having everything, nothing to do with the field dust in his eyes or his son nested in the ache of his arms. We’re his son. And a black son who drove too fast or too slow, talked too much or too little, moved too quickly, but not quick enough for a bullet. We’re our dead, our blood-stained blackboards, dance floors, church pulpits.

We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor…

We’re the living who light vigil candles and the cop who didn’t shoot. We’re the inmate with his volunteer teacher diagraming sentences, the Buddhist alongside the stockbroker serving soup at a shelter. We’re the grandfather taking a selfie with his grandson and his husband, the widow’s fifty cents in the collection plate and the golfer’s ten-thousand-dollar pledge for a cure.

We hold these truths to be self-evident…

We’re them. They’re you. You’re me. We’re us: a handshake, a smile good morning on the bus, a door held open, a seat we give up on the subway. We tend restrooms or sell art, make huevos rancheros or herbed salmon, run for mayor or restock shelves, work a backhoe or write poems. We’re a poem in progress.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people…

to fulfill the promise of being one people, necessary to abolish any government that becomes destructive of these ends, necessary to dissolve the political bans that keep us from speaking to each other, necessary to avow our interdependence, to look straight into each other’s eyes the way we behold the moon, and declare to one another: I see you. I see you. I see you. 

As published in Split This Rock 

"What Does a Hummingbird Do When It Rains?" (poem) by Janet M. Ruth

I had always imagined
a hummingbird huddled
    beneath a broad leaf
        or a stout branch
cringing from soaking rain drops

    until today

during a calm steady 

    Navajo “female rain”
rufous hummingbird perches
ocotillo stalk tip
    bursts with tiny green leaves
        celebrating monsoon

he fans his tail
    blurs his wings but stays perched
dips his bill
    preens breast feathers
helicopters vertically
    a foot above the branch
returns
    repeats the exercise
raindrops glitter on fiery plumage

hummingbird takes a shower
    that’s what he does

Two poems named "Water" by Michelle Otero

Water

We tell the children tales
of thunderstorms. Each May we drop
rose petals into trickling acequia, invoke
San Ysidro for good harvest, good rain
pray these petals seed clouds. We remember
summers of fire, haze over mesa, sunset behind a scrim
of smoke, torches in the Jemez, torches in the Sangres
kindling night roads from Santa Fe to Santo Domingo.

What if it never rains again?

What if
    it never rains
        again?

Water

This is New Mexico. Here
life walks in circles. In drought, we
the people look to the skies,
put a hand to the ground.
In drought, we
the people
are water.

“With or Without Candlelight” (poem) by John Marsh

If you are going to meditate by candlelight,
do not hurry to light the candle.
The glow may concentrate your energies, but it will 

    cost you
the contours of the room.

If you walk the night forest by flashlight,
the electric beam may reveal details on your path,
but you will lose everything
outside your concentrated ray.
All that your light does not expose will become alien.
The sounds of animals will frighten you.

Shut off the beam, and you will travel the night forest
as one who belongs.

Let us praise things dark and beautiful:

The quiet of closed eyelids
The childhood of chocolate
The respectability of newsprint
The suddenness of a bat’s wing
The invitation of brewing coffee
The persistence of tar
The gentleness of nutmeg
The temptation of a cave.

If you are going to meditate by candlelight,
do not hurry to light the candle.

"The Word" (poem) by Tony Hoagland

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between "green thread"
and "broccoli," you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."

Resting on the page, the word
is beautiful. It touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent from someplace distant
as this morning—to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing

that also needs accomplishing.
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue,

but today you get a telegram
from the heart in exile,
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

—to any one among them
who can find the time
to sit out in the sun and listen.

"Small Kindnesses" (poem) by Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

"The Thing Is" (poem) by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

"Rabbit" (poem) by Heather Swan

After a long numbness, I wake
and suddenly I’m noticing everything,
all of it piercing me with its beautiful,
radical trust: the carpenter bee tonguing
the needles of echinacea believing
in their sweetness, the exuberance
of an orange day lily unfolding itself
at the edge of the street, and the way
the moss knows the stone, and the stone
accepts its trespass, and the way the dog
on his leash turns to see if I’m holding on,
certain I know where to go. And the way
the baby rabbit - whose trembling ears
are the most delicate cups - trusts me,
because I pried the same dogs’ jaws
off his hips, and then allows me to feed him
clover when his back legs no longer work,
forcing me to think about forgiveness
and those I need to forgive, and to hope
I am forgiven, and just maybe
I can forgive myself. This unstoppable,
excruciating tenderness everywhere inviting
us, always inviting. And then later, the firefly
illuminating the lantern of its body,
like us, each time we laugh.

"A Good Story" (poem) by Ada Limón

Some days--dishes piled in the sink, books littering the coffee table--

are harder than others. Today, my head is packed with cockroaches,

dizziness and everywhere it hurts. Venom in the jaw, behind the eyes,

between the blades. Still, the dog is snoring on my right, the cat, on my left.

Outisde, all those redbuds are just getting good. I tell a friend, The body

is so body. And she nods. I used to like the darkest stories, the bleak

snippets someone would toss out about just how bad it could get.

My stepfather told me a story about when he lived on the streets as a kid,

how he'd, some nights, sleep under the grill at a fast food restaurant until both he and his buddy got fired. I used to like that story for some reason,

something in me that believed in overcoming. Bur right now all I want 

is a story about human kindness, the way once when I couldn't stop

crying because I was fifteen and heartbroken, he came in and made

me eat a small pizza he'd cut up into tiny bites until the tears stopped.

Maybe I was just hungry, I said. And he nodded, holding out the last piece.

"The End" (poem) by Lynn Ungar

Perhaps you’ve held this image in your head since you were young –
the meteor blazing towards earth,
the seismic shock of impact,
a lethal rain of molten rock falling from the sky,
followed by months or years of dusk and winter.

Dinosaurs – gone.
Lush jungles – gone.
Teaming seas – empty.
Billions of years of evolution wiped from the earth.

Only, of course, not.
After all, a paltry 65 million years later,
here we are.

I don’t know what kind of small and scuttling creatures found a way to make it through.
Nor do I know how.
All I know is that there was an explosion of new life the likes of which the world has never seen.

Evolution is the predicate of death.
The sentence is not complete.

The end of the world as you know it is not the end of the world.

"What Matters" by Terri Kirby Erickson (poem)

The present has arrived
and you are in it. Your heart
is pumping. Your breath moves

in and out of your lungs without
anyone's help or permission.
Let go of everything else. Let

your life, handed to you through
no effort of your own, be all
the proof you need. You are loved.

Ross Gay - Forward to poetry collection "How to Love the World"

I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about witness, about how witness is itself a kind of poetics, or poesis, which means making. By which I mean I have been wondering about how we make the world in our witnessing of it. Or maybe I have come to understand, to believe, how we witness makes our world. This is why attending to what we love, what we are astonished by, what flummoxes us with beauty, is such crucial work. Such rigorous work. Likewise, studying how we care, and are cared for, how we tend and are tended to, how we give and are given, is such necessary work. It makes the world. Witnessing how we are loved and how we love makes the world.

"In Any Event" by Dorianne Laux (poem)

If we are fractured
we are fractured
like stars
bred to shine
in every direction,
through any dimension,
billions of years
since and hence.

I shall not lament
the human, not yet.
There is something
more to come, our hearts
a gold mine
not yet plumbed,
an uncharted sea.

Nothing is gone forever.
If we came from dust
and will return to dust
then we can find our way
into anything.

What we are capable of
is not yet known,
and I praise us now,
in advance.

UUABQ Poetry Service 6/26/2022

Video


Heather Swan - "Rabbit"

Two poems named "Water" by Michelle Otero

"The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass

"With or Without Candlelight" by John Marsh

"The Word" by Tony Hoagland

Ada Limón - "A Good Story"

"Small Kindnesses" by Danusha Laméris

GA 2022 - Portland - Day 3

 

The Rev. Susan Grey @ rally on the day SCOTUS trashed Roe v. Wade:

"I am furious. I am filled with holy fury at the way our lives and our rights are being taken away. Women's rights, transpeople's lives and healthcare, BIPOC communities lives and freedom - we are in this struggle in solidarity. There are more of us than there are of them, and we will win. 

There is a holy spirit in us. A spirit of courage and power that knows that liberation is only possible when we are free - when every single one of us is free. We cannot be divided in this movement by identity. We have to fight on all the issues, because the system of fascist, authoritarianism, Christo-ethno-nationalism is coming for us all. And we're not going to take it. We will not be silent. We will not give up our rights. We will disobey the law. We will protect each other. 

Reproductive justice is health care. It is a fundamental right. It is about liberation. It is about bodily autonomy. Are you ready to fight for one another? We are in this struggle together, my siblings. And the spirit of love and the spirit of justice and the spirit known by so many names is with us in this struggle. We will not be silent. We will fight for every single one of us. And we will win. And we will not stop fighting until we win. Can I get an amen?"

Accountability, Justice, and Wholeness: UU Theologies of Liberation

Rev. Sofia Betancourt

"Religion pushes us past ignorance to love hard enough to do better."

"There is something at our core so unshakeable that our dignity cannot be taken away."

"How does what you believe drive your understanding to make justice in the world?"

I believe in multiple truths and the arc of universe toward justice. This makes me work toward justice of journey for multiple communities, and any answer that's held out as unassailable is probably to be questioned.

Collective salvation - to be saved together. Collective liberation - I cannot be free until all are free.

I cannot be whole (not the opposite of broken. Broken is fully human) -- resonant, complete self and presence and promise in the world. 

Accountability toward justice to find our way toward wholeness. (Grace that does not need to be earned. Intrinsically whole yet work to do in this lifetime to ...)

"Dignity and worth require communal lamentation and repair." Can't skip ahead to wholeness, even though it is a promise of our faith. 

"We have to tell the truth about the harms that we have caused and GRIEVE about it."

Without repair, we cannot build toward equity. Without equity, we cannot build toward wholeness. 

Collective wholeness... calls us to the work of spiritual practice. Calls us to lament. Let me be a conduit for making amends. In the service of our greater wholeness.

"What helps you hold the promise of wholeness when days are difficult?"

"Just because we have inherent worth doesn't mean we're always manifesting that worth."

"Wholeness - living as fully as possible into the fullness / promise of what it is to be human. Inherent worth should be so big that it's hard to conceive of."

"I don't mean perfection. Living into a full promise. Not possible alone. That's why UUs still gather in community."

"Covenant without consequences is not covenant. You can come back when you do the work of repair. We must be able to say no in UU spaces - with love - based on our principles. We will be here when you are ready to do the work. But we will not wallow in harm until then. You can always come home, but you gotta come right."

Building Resilience Through Mindfulness in Communication

• Dandy Prinsloo
• Daniel Romero

Dr. Dan Siegel

GA 2022 - Portland - Day 2

 Article II Commission

Shared values

What are the actions we are called to do as a result of these values?

"Because I value ________, I covenant to ___________"

Dandelion (Dandy) Prinsloo

"Accountability, we love her! Obligation, we love her!"

Rev. Mykal Slack

"[It's important to have] some clear understanding about accountability when harm is done. Covenant doesn't mean much if we're not willing to have those hard conversations... how to name harm, what to do about it when harm is done - when it's ok, and when it's good to say 'enough is enough'. It matters that we're willing, in the context of something as powerful as covenant, to say, 'Actually, that cannot be. That cannot happen anymore. If you continue to do THAT, this is not the space for you.' 

We have to be willing to say those hard things in the context of something as valuable as covenant. And being able to communicate that? That is all a part of leading in community where covenant is present. Helping everyone understand the value of those things and help people move through those things in meaningful ways in a way that offers care and in a way that is clear. 

Any commitments we make to each other - have to be relational and not individualistic, they have to be robust, and not reluctant. It's important that they are transformational and not static, empowering and not stale. And the only way for that to happen is if it is a living, breathing agreement that shifts and moves as we need to move, and as we get clear about what it means to move in concert with one another."

Dr. Élias Ortega

"Our religious faith is a covenantal faith. It is a faith where we come as we are but not necessarily remain the same. This journey is a journey of transformation, of new being."

Neuroscience and Ethics

 

"The practice of love begins with acceptance."

Mirror neurons. Are our brains wired for empathy?

1. Brain activity observed in insula.  Body budget. Non-linear, ancestral workings. How well someone can read their own bodies and have feeling responses. Variability measured. We don't have mirror neurons for others' neurons. We interpret and rely on our stories. Early stories about survival of the fittest was tied to male-dominated scientists. Now that women are biologists, too, more research on nurturing and collective care, compassion. 

2. Need more cross-disciplinary work. Biased toward any reduction that says one part of the brain is thinking / doing communal attunement. Emotions are not separate from rational brain / thinking. Brain is a connected symphony (not 3 parts).

Book recommendation:

• How Emotions Happen - Lisa Feldman Barrett

Poem - My Heart is Moved by All I Cannot Save - Adrienne Rich

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed

I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,

with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.

#463, Singing the Living Tradition

Original source:  Dream of a Common Language (1978)

Songs - Dr. Thomas Rideout

 Youtube channnel for UUA

River

Building Bridges

Where You Go, I Will Go

General Assembly - Portland - 2022 - Day 1

 Attending virtually. 

President's Report, General Assembly 2022

So far, great quote by the Rev. Susan Grey (and UUA President): 

Joy feels like love and moves like freedom.

"The rise of authoritarianism, fascism and white Christian ethno nationalism is a reality in our country, and elsewhere. Unitarian Universalists have always been positioned to play crucial roles in the struggle for expanding freedom, equity and democracy. ....

We are in a liminal time, letting go of what has been, in that middle space in between, as we reach for what is next and create it together. Who will we be? How are we called? How is love calling us? 

What I witnessed in the midst of struggle and uncertainty is a fiery flame of vitality. This courage growing in us, this spiritual renewal in depth growing from our theological foundations. This practice of leaning into partnership and interdependence like never before. 

We are building a road together and singing songs, songs that are both new but echo the songs of those who came before us, leaving a road for us to follow. 

For five years now I have said it is no time for a casual faith and it is no time to go it alone. Now is the time to realize that we were made for this moment, that we are the people we have been waiting for. 

Now is the time to take more seriously the life saving ministry of our religious communities and our religious education ministry. To invest boldly and generously in our own congregations as a strong foundation for people to heal, to grow and to resist. To lean into covenant and collaboration across our congregations, to help all of our congregations thrive. To practice deeper solidarity and partnership with directly impacted communities for liberation and to create more joy, to create more joy and celebration, knowing that this is a source of power, of resilience and of the imagination that we all need, that our world needs. 

We were meant for joy. We were meant for joy, and joy feels like love and it moves like freedom. We were made for this moment. We are the people we have been waiting for. May we be, may we be the people that we are called to be."
 

Video

Session on Covenant & Repair on Thursday, 6/23:

• Tyler Coles, Richmond, VA
• Rev. Sara Dendy-Green

(Nuance and clarity)

All covenants should have "return" clauses - how to return to covenant when we "act out of pocket"

Reconciliation is not always possible, and certainly not always "now"

Octavia Butler - "God is change, and we will change with her."

"There are other places we can go to be mean to each other; church ain't it!"

 

Interlocking. Impact and shape one another. Centered are our values - give shape to covenant, mission, imagination (replacing "able-ist" language).

What does the beloved community ("kin-dom of heaven") feel like? sound like? taste like? smell like? 

Expectations with how we intend to be with one another. (Implicit covenants can be in conflict with our stated imaginations.)

 "Remember to find joy in the becoming."

[Thinking about Prez address - challenges for next year - policy overhaul, 8th principle work, campus master plan, covenant/mission redo]

Songs recommended:

• Come, Come, Whoever You Are by "Unfolding"
• Spirit of Life
• Blue Boat Home
• Fire of Commitment
• We'll Build a Land
• We Shall Be Known

 

How do we repair when WE broke it?

Conflict and harm are different things...

There is a lineage of harm that's passed down.

Books recommended:

• The Third Side: Why We Fight and How We Can Stop by William Ury
• Unlocking the Power of Covenant