Poem - To Build a Swing - Hafiz

You carry
All the ingredients
To turn your life into a nightmare --
Don’t mix them!

You have all the genius
To build a swing in your backyard
For God.

That sounds
Like a hell of a lot more fun.
Let’s start laughing, drawing blueprints,
Gathering our talented friends.

I will help you
With my divine lyre and drum.

Hafiz
Will sing a thousand words
You can take into your hands,
Like golden saws,
Sliver hammers,

Polished teakwood,
Strong silk rope.

You carry all the ingredients
To turn your existence into joy,
Mix them, mix
Them!

Week 1: Coronavirus Quarantine

We just finished our first week -- not even a whole week -- at home together social distancing to flatten the curve, lowering the infection rate of the coronavirus to stave off medical disaster from all of us falling ill at once.

Most things have been shut down now. Restaurants are mostly closed or only doing walk-up or delivery, if they are open at all.

Stores are still open, but some shelves are bare.

I've been out once for groceries. Eric has gone out most days to buy something or other that we need. He gets stir crazy. I am fine nesting and being very grateful at the moment not to need to go out.

The kids are doing well with a new normal of an arbitrary structure of a daily schedule and help from Caroline on Mondays and Wednesdays, some help from Brenna, and some steering from us on the other days.

We've kept up game night and screen days. We fell off the wagon a bit this Sunday and last, watching more tv than we would have otherwise, but both days we worked on puzzles as we watched, so that *almost* counts.

I'm growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of real information. I don't even know what they think the infection rate is here in NM or whether the moves we've taken are helping to flatten the curve.

I work in City govt., yet I know nothing and have heard nothing from leadership since Sarita's email ordering us back to work one more time for "more direction."

I'm still resentful that I was made to feel like I was overreacting when I asked that my team be sent to work from home after APS cancelled school. Yet all the things that I mentioned in my email will soon come to pass as the standard routine, I think.

And I feel stupid carrying that resentment when there's a bigger picture that's much more frightening and warrants our full attention: the potential for this to be months long and millions of deaths in the U.S., thousands of deaths here in Albuquerque.

But even that's not worth worrying about beyond staying home and washing hands and surfaces, since it's impossible to get info about what measures the govtments are taking to build fever centers or even wings in the hospitals so that staff isn't carrying the virus from floor to floor.

Heidi seems lonely. Mom seems ok. Shelle told me Katon had come home from Spain and is under quarantine for 14 days.

I feel so grateful for everyone I know being well, and for being able to work from home, and for kids who still like learning and who aren't tearing each other apart -- yet.

And for Beckett's therapist, who is still coming to the house 5 days a week -- for now.

Heading into week 2, I want to remember more times during the day to take a breath and feel grateful and meditate to bring me back to now. To here. To safety in the ever-present now. For this to be enough.

Song - All Will Be Well - Meg Barnhouse

Julian, you are holy, you are holding my hand. (x 2)

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

I said, "Julian, do you not know, do you not know about:

• sorrow
• pain
• hunger 
• shame?"

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

I said, "Julian, do you not know, do you not know about:

• loneliness
• disease
• cruelty?" 

I said "Julian, it's too much. It brought me to my knees."

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

She said, "No one does not know, does not know about:

• sorrow
• pain
• hunger 
• shame."

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

She said, "No one does not know, does not know about:

• loneliness
• disease
• cruelty. 

I know, it's too much. It brought me to my knees, where I heard:
'All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well.'"

I said, "Julian, you are holy, you are holding my hand. (x2)
And so, All will be well, all will be well; all manner of things will be well."

She said, "Babygirl, do you not know, do you not know about:

• tenderness 
• friends
• the Spirit?
• it's only love that never ends and so,

all will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

Song - We Shall All Be Known - Karisha Longaker (MaMuse)

Original by MaMuse:

Cover by Thrive East Bay

We shall be known by the company we keep
By the ones who circle round to tend these fires
We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap
The seeds of change, alive from deep within the earth
It is time now, it is time now that we thrive
It is time we lead ourselves into the well
It is time now, and what a time to be alive
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love

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

It is time now, it is time now that we thrive
It is time we lead ourselves into the well
It is time now, and what a time to be alive
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love

- Words and music by Karisha Longaker of MaMuse

Pandemic (poem) by Lynn Ungar

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
Promise this world your love--
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live. 

--Lynn Ungar 3/11/20

Living Charly

One of the most captivating and disturbing storylines to me is the backslide from some height of achievement. Remember the young adult book Flowers for Algernon, where Charly is a kid with a mental disability who takes some drug and becomes brilliant only to realize that the drug will unavoidably fail and leave him potentially worse off than before?

I fear my life is going to play out that story. I felt like an old soul as a kid. My family drama asked me to step up and take care of myself and my mother's emotions way too soon, and I felt valued and competent when I could do that. I spent the first 20 years of my life feeling confident and superior, together and driven and never second-guessing. Everything was black and white, and I was passionate about denouncing what I saw as wrong, unflinching in judgment about myself and everyone around me. In short, young. And terribly unwise and unkind, but feeling like I knew everything.

And so the last 20 years have been about learning to question myself and the easy first-reaction judgments. I've been reading Thinking Fast and Slow for the last 6 months. I can only read a few pages at a time, because it's an indictment of my youth and my continued first instincts. Our intuition is our System 1 brain in Daniel Kahneman's explanation of how our brains work, our feeling and judging brain that reasons with stories in which there is a hero and a villain (guess which one we all think we are?). That brain has built in shortcuts necessary for us to function minute by minute in a world of overwhelming stimuli that surrounds us. But those shortcuts have built-in errors, and if we don't slow down to question, to breathe, to zoom out of the myopia of our own first-person stories, then we literally don't see things correctly. Our System 2 brain can reason, considering multiple competing factors, but that brain is lazy and defers to System 1 unless pressed into service.

Which is all to say that I am facing a tough conversation with a member of my team on Monday, and I'm scared about how it will go. I have been picturing myself staying calm, centered, and curious. I've been re-reading Brene Brown's Dare to Lead. Clear is kind; unclear is unkind. The cave you fear hides the treasure you seek. So this conversation is a key to growth for me as a manager, as a leader, as an introvert tasked with connecting with a team every day.

And perhaps scariest of all, this is about what I can control and what I can't. I can't make someone like me, or improve performance, for that matter. I can't change the triangle dynamic of a dysfunctional reporting system for this unfortunate woman. I can't not be hurt and angry and feel powerless and disrespected when she cultivates the relationship with my boss's boss, who continually undermines and overlooks me. I can't control how this woman feels about me and my part in this mess. I can't control her interpretation of my actions or the assumptions she's making about me and my motives. I'm less nervous about that part. I can feel myself slowing down, breathing, staying grounded.

It's scarier to think about having this hard conversation and nothing changing. Either having to have it again or never getting to have it again and things going from bad to worse.

But I can only do what I can do. She is doing her best, and so am I. Perhaps we are not a good fit for each other. Maybe I haven't been brave. Maybe she feels ashamed that she can't do more and do better right now. Maybe all of that and more is true.

I'm guessing it comes down to me not valuing what she's contributing and her not feeling that her contribution is valued. There's a whole conversation about assumptions and goals that needs to happen and sounds really hard, and long, when what I am feeling is panic at how much there is to do in so little time.

And then there's the personal questioning of why I don't know more, feel more confident, when I used to live in that certainty and self-righteousness. And while I simultaneously understand that recognizing how much I don't know is wiser and kinder, I hate not trusting myself, not relying on my first instincts to be unerringly right and true and just.

And so middle age is arrived at.

I must remember: more love. My only job is to figure out how to best use people's strengths in the service of the bigger picture, how to support them in bringing their best. Brene Brown asks: "What does support look like?"

I hope I'm about to find out. Together.

Utterance of the Timeless Word (prayer) by Angela Herrera

You bring yourself before the sacred,
before the holy,
before what is ultimate and bigger than your lone life
bigger than your worries
bigger than your money problems
bigger than the fight you had with your sister and your aches and pains
bigger, even, than your whole being, your self who is

part of
and trapped within
and blessed with

a body that does what you want
and doesn’t do what you want
and wants all the wrong things
and wants all the right things... 

You stand at the edge of mystery,
at the edge of the deep,
with the light streaming at you,
and you can’t hide anything—not even from yourself,
when you stand there like that,
and then...what?

Maybe you call your pastor and say,

What is this?
What am I looking at?
What do I do?

And your pastor comes and stands at the edge with you
and looks over.
She can’t hide anything either, she thinks,
not even the fact that she doesn’t know the answer to your question,
and she wonders if you can tell. 

She thinks of all the generations who’ve come there before you
and cast words out ­toward the source of that light,
wanting to name it.
Somehow, she thinks to herself, the names stayed tethered to the aging world and got old
while the light remains timeless and burns without dimming.

Meanwhile,

the armful of worries you brought to the edge of mystery
have fluttered to your feet.
Unobscured by these, you shine back, light emanating unto light.
You, with your broken heart and your seeking,
you are the utterance of the timeless word.
The name of the Holy is pronounced
through your being.

To Sit in the Unknowing (prayer) by Katie Kandarian-Morris

By Katie Kandarian-Morris

O God of many names, the personal and mysterious,
We have come to a quiet time, an interior place,
a place for the deepening of spirit, the enrichment of soul.
We seek to know ourselves by knowing you.

Let us have the courage to sit in the unknowing,
To look for the answers even if they are to sit with our own questions,
To be willing to be authentic with ourselves,
To be ready to bring our face to the world.

Let us be willing to know others by welcoming their genuine features,
By welcoming them into the world,
By appreciating the beauty that comes from seeing wholeness and truth.

Let us sit in that quiet depth.

May it be so. AMEN and Blessed be.

Even This Is Enough (Prayer) - Vanessa Southern

So much undone.
So much to do.
So much to heal
in us and the world.
So much to acquire:
a meal
a healthy body—
a fit one—
a lover
a job
a better job
proof we have and are enough
just around the corner of now.

And up against it the reality of all that falls short and the limits of today.

We honor the limits:
If your body won’t do what it used to, for right now let it be enough.
If your mind won’t stop racing or can’t think of the word, let it be enough.
If you are here utterly alone and in despair, be all that here with us.
If today you cannot sing because your throat hurts or you don’t have the heart for music, be silent.
When the offering plate goes around if you don’t have money to give or the heart to give, let it pass.

The world won’t stop spinning on her axis if you don’t rise to all occasions today.
Love won’t cease to flow in your direction,
your heart won’t stop beating,
all hope won’t be lost.

You are part of the plan for this world’s salvation,
of that I have no doubt.
The world needs its oceans of people striving to be good
to carry us to the shores of hope and wash fear from the beach heads,
and cleanse all wounds so they can heal.
But oceans are big and I am sure there are parts that don’t feel up to the task of the whole some days.
Rest, if you must, then, like the swimmer lying on her back who floats,
or the hawk carried on cushions of air.
Rest in pews made to hold weary lives in space carved out for the doing of nothing much
but being.

Perhaps then you will feel in your bones,
in your weary heart,
the aching, healing sense that
this is enough—
even this.

That we are enough.
You are enough.
Enough.

For these and all the meditations of our hearts unspoken in this hour, I say, “Amen.”

The New Colossus (poem) by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"


November 2, 1883

Anti-racism - Ta-Nehisi Coates

“These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates. Between the World and Me.

Anti-racism - Toni Morrison

You don’t waste your energy fighting the fever; you must only fight the disease. And the disease is not racism. It is greed and the struggle for power.Toni Morrison

New Paths (poem)

Grateful for new paths that emerge
from dark woods

at the edge of my frustration
and the end of what I know to do to help you,

we take the first steps --
me ahead --

you, knowing less,
behind.

I hold your hand,
still small,

so steady
for one so easily overwhelmed.

-- for Beckett

Prayer for Family Appreciation

May you never lose the excitement of storytelling to a mom listening with love glistening in her eyes.

May this mom never lose the love and pride of listening to your joy in storytelling.

May the lessons we learn playing board games prepare us for a life of cooperation and shared goals.

May I let in love that surrounds me like sunshine.

May the order we create with hard work clear our minds and our lives for the rich messiness of loving.

Civic Plaza Fountain

I tell you not to run
but your joy streaks ahead

to the water
surging from concrete

to meet you
hands up

laughter cresting
between the two of you

in the summer sun
spring breeze

singing this cool May morning
into family legend.

The Way It Is (poem) by Lynn Ungar

One morning you might wake up
to realize that the knot in your stomach
had loosened itself and slipped away,
and that the pit of unfulfilled longing in your heart
had gradually, and without your really noticing,
been filled in—patched like a pothole, not quite
the same as it was, but good enough.


And in that moment it might occur to you
that your life, though not the way
you planned it, and maybe not even entirely
the way you wanted it, is nonetheless—
persistently, abundantly, miraculously—
exactly the way it is.

The Camels Speak (poem) by Lynn Ungar

Of course they never consulted us.
They were wise men, kings, star-readers,
and we merely transportation.
They simply loaded us with gifts
and turned us toward the star.
I ask you, what would a king know
of choosing presents for a child?
Had they ever even seen a baby
born to such simple folks,
so naked of pretension,
so open to the wind?
What would such a child care
for perfumes and gold? Far better
to have asked one born in the desert,
tested by wind and sand. We saw
what he would need: the gift
of perseverance, of continuing on the hard way,
making do with what there is,
living on what you have inside.
The gift of holding up under a burden,
of lifting another with grace, of kneeling
To accept the weight of what you must bear.
Our footsteps could have rocked him
with the rhythm of the road,
shown him comfort in a harsh land,
the dignity of continually moving forward.
But the wise men were not
wise enough to ask. They simply
left their trinkets and admired
the rustic view. Before you knew it
we were turned again toward home,
carrying men only half-willing
to be amazed. But never mind.
We saw the baby, felt him reach
for the bright tassels of our gear.
We desert amblers have our ways
of seeing what you chatterers must miss.
That child at heart knows something
about following a star. Our gifts are given.
Have no doubt. His life will bear
the print of who we are.

Ready - Rabbi Rachel Barenblat

"So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls wrapped in their cloaks upon their shoulders." —Exodus 12:34

You’ll need to travel light.
Take what you can carry: a book, a poem,
a battered tin cup, your child strapped
to your chest, clutching your necklace
in one hot possessive fist.

So the dough isn’t ready. So your heart
isn't ready. You haven’t said goodbye
to the places where you hid as a child,
to the friends who aren’t interested in the journey,
to the graves you’ve tended.

But if you wait until you feel fully ready
you may never take the leap at all
and Infinity is calling you forth
out of this birth canal
and into the future’s wide expanse.

Learn to improvise flat cakes without yeast.
Learn to read new alphabets.
Wear God like a cloak
and stride forth with confidence.
You won’t know where you’re going

but you have the words of our sages,
the songs of our mothers, the inspiration
wrapped in your kneading bowl. Trust
that what you carry will sustain you
and take the first step out the door.

The Fountain - Denise Levertov

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen

 
the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes

 
found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.
The woman of that place, shading her eyes,

frowned as she watched-but not because
she grudged the water,
only because she was waiting

to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.

The fountain is there among it’s scalloped
grey and green stones,
it is still there and always there

with it’s quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,

 
up and out through the rock.

Famous - Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,   
which knew it would inherit the earth   
before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   
watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   
is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   
more famous than the dress shoe,   
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   
who smile while crossing streets,   
sticky children in grocery lines,   
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   
but because it never forgot what it could do.

From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye. Copyright © 1995.