Cleaning (poem) by Camille T. Dungy

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 ( (poem) by Barbara Crooker

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 (poem) by Pablo Neruda

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 (poem) by Susan Stewart

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.

Poem - We Don’t Know When We Were Opened (Or, The Origin of the Universe) - Morgan Parker

after Mickalene Thomas

A sip of liquor from a creek. Saturday syndicated
Good Times, bare legs, colors draped like
an afterthought. We bright enough to blind you.
Dear anyone, dear high-heel metronome, white
noise, hush us, shhhhh, hush us. We’re artisinal
crafts, rare gems, bed of leafy bush you call
us      superfood. Jeweled lips, we’re rich
We’re everyone. We have ideas and vaginas,
history and clothes and a mother. Portrait-ready
American blues. Palm trees and back issues
of JET, pink lotion, gin on ice, zebras, fig lipstick.
One day we learned to migrate. One day we studied
Mamma making her face. Bright new brown, scent of Nana
and cinnamon. Shadows of husbands and vineyards,
records curated to our allure, incense, unconcern.
Champagne is how the Xanax goes down, royal blue
reigning. We’re begging anyone not to forget
we’re turned on with control. We better homes and gardens.
We real grown. We garden of soiled panties.
We low hum of satisfaction. We is is is is is is is is
touch, touch, shine, a little taste. You’re gonna
give us the love we need.

Leaning into Conflict

At the risk of going a bit down the road of making a colorblind racist argument, I'm thinking more and more about how the crux of the ongoing issues around race centers around our lack of skill dealing with and successfully navigating through and negotiating conflict.

I remember when I was interviewing for a scholarship before beginning college, and someone asked me if I had hope that men and women would ever resolve their differences. I remember saying that it's a miracle that any of us can relate to anyone else, and gender differences just complicate things further. 30 years later, I would just add that race, class, urban/rural, liberal/conservative, democrat/republican, formally educated/life educated, and on and on add to the complexity and potential for miscommunication, misunderstanding, false assumptions, implicit bias, discrimination, prejudice and on and on.

A common trope is to say the life skill that should be taught from kindergarten up. Taking turns? Check. Saying sorry when you make a mistake? Check. But what about examining why you make mistakes more often when someone seems different from you? Not so much. Maybe Sesame Street? But only in a "we're all different, and that's ok!" kind of way. Not "You're different from me, and my first instinct is fear, but I need to lean into that and realize I just have something to learn - and you have something to each me!" And please, lord, teach us early and often how to work through conflict using nonviolent communication: "When you [observable behavior], I felt [real emotion, not a phrase beginning with "that"]. In the future, I would prefer [action the person can take or not take]."

I made the off-hand comment to a friend that no one likes conflict. We all avoid it. And that's clearly not true. The worst bullies among us LOVE picking fights. And every Karen among us thinks she has every right to make anyone else feel uncomfortable if she's got any want, need, or complaint. But most of us are in the not-so-sweet spot between the poles of "I have every right to ask for anything I want/need" (i.e. entitled arrogance / arrogant entitlement) and "I have no right to ask for anything I want or need" (i.e. no self esteem / underfunctioning / invisibility).And we're terrified to say anything out loud lest we be asking too much. Am I worth it? What if they say no? Is the request worth the conflict?  

Instead of this win/lose polarity, we need healthy boundaries and ... ugh ... balance. Like the new thing people use as ground rule at meetings: Take space / Make space (the adjustment to replace the less inclusive "Move up / move back"). This comes with 2 acronyms to think about:

• W.A.I.T. = Why Am I Talking? 
• S.P.E.A.K. = Share Perspectives / Engage Another Knowledge-base

There are 3 stickies on my desk that I stare at all day long:

• What does it mean to undo harm?
• What would being silent exacerbate?
• Diversity does not equal racial justice

What would my life be like if I asked myself (and everyone else did the same) these questions in every interaction when we notice difference (and we should continually be learning to notice difference more) interfering with our communication and/or relationships? 

Cancel Culture vs. Accountability + Forgiveness

Watched Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar talk with Katie Couric about their new book: You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey.

Amber said she feels no compunction to teach white people why what they just said is hurtful and ignorant. Lacey, as an HR representative and one of the only people of color in her company and in Omaha, takes responsibility for teaching the history lesson, when she can.

This makes me think even more about the sermon Forgiveness by the Rev. Angela Herrera, which is worth watching (daily!) in its entirety.

The key points are transcribed (poorly) below:

5:05

To forgive is to let the debt go, is to release a claim you have against somebody. It is to say we are no longer bound to each other by what happened and by what remains unresolved. I release it. And in doing so, I release myself.

Sometimes people speak of forgiveness as a gift to the person who is being forgiven, and it certainly can be. It can be an underserved gift, which is to say, something that you could not be entitled to, the other person couldn’t do anything to be entitled to be forgiven.

Of course, If you revel in how undeserving the other person is, you’ve probably undone some of the goodness in that. But if you do it well, you can forgive somebody in such a way that doesn’t involve any sense superiority but leaves you that a burden has just been lifted from you – the burden of being angry. Where forgiving with a sense of condescension or superiority leaves you with a new negative way of thinking, forgiving freely is liberating and it helps us to be at peace and well in ourselves.

That feeling works even if the person never knows they have been forgiven…. It opens up more space in us for gratitude, love, awe, joy. Releasing our claims against the past allows us to become more present to now and to what goodness is still unfolding.

8:36

Hindu teaching – Bhagavad Gita 

“If you want to see the brave, look for those who return love for hatred; if you want to see the heroic, look to those who can forgive.”

 

12:32 – start with curiosity. Compassion questions.

Forgiveness does often begin with cultivating compassion in ourselves. Even Just a tiny bit….

Compassion might begin with a little curiosity. How did this person come to do what they did?

Have they been broken by something larger than themselves?

What does their behavior or their way of being cost them? Are they happy? Are they caught up in larger systems of oppression and violence? Do I have any personal experience with that kind of mindset? … Is it possible that on some terrible level, they are doing the best they can? …

It’s not actually necessary to believe that the person deserves to be forgiven. It’s more important to believe that you deserve to be free of anger, resentment, and the desire for revenge. …

Anne LaMott – 

"Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die."

13:55

Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. It does not require speaking to the other party… or being ok with what happened. Forgiveness doesn’t mean letting someone continue to do someone to harm. It’s not weakness. We can forgive and still find it best to end the relationship. Forgiveness does not mean liking or agreeing with bad or even evil behavior. It does not mean becoming friends from someone who would continue to hurt you… We can forgive and we still expect the offender to face reasonable consequences, whatever those might be.

15:00

To forgive is to say outloud or in our hearts: I’m not going to be angry anymore. It’s saying: even though what you’ve done is bad, and it would be perfectly acceptable. It’s too late to have a better past, it’s not too late to be present to what is and to experience liberation

When you forgive another person, you release the power their action has over you, the tension of that debt pulling on you is released, and you can get back to yourself, back to some peace because the chains between you and that other person have been broken or removed.

17:50

The message of our Universalist faith is that Every one of us is forgivable. Everyone is lovable.

It’s like our reading this morning from the poet Mary Oliver– I am so distant from the hope of myself.

…

18:28

Goodness and discernment are big things to fail at. Yet the trees stirring around her remind her that she came into the word to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine. My hope for each of you, for all of us, is that we’ll experience forgiveness however we need it. May you receive it and give it as often as needed, even an inch at a time. May it be so. Amen.

Poem - When I Am Among the Trees - Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Calling Out / Calling In

This week, the forces for white supremacy were besides themselves with indignant rage at cancel culture at work in eliminating the gender from Potato Head and the casual racism of Dr. Seuss.

The same week, I participated in a Lunch and Learn about Intercultural Communication where the instructor taught that if we ever faltered in how to handle microaggressions, we were to just think of them as sexual assault and handle them that way. The perpetrator was to be banished. The victim was to be believed and supported. End of story.

As a white person who freely admits that I have been steeped in and shaped by white supremacist culture, I know that I have been guilty of casual racism, implicit bias, subtle acts of exclusion, and unjustifiable ignorance. I acknowledge that I must work to stay awake, stay aware, learning and growing and listening. 

And I do not believe that microaggressions are only perpetrated by white people. If you accept intersectionality of power and oppression, you acknowledge that it's a one-up, one-down game in all directions and at all levels. 

And if you accept that, then you must know that despite all our best efforts, mistakes and slip-ups and gaps in knowledge, skill, and grace are inevitable. And "punishment" for microaggressions is not just short-sighted but woefully inadequate for the ocean of water that we all have to carry to get from where we are to a world in which we resolve conflicts with peaceful resolution. What's peaceful about treating a microaggressor as a perpetrator of sexual assault? 

I am a Universalist Unitarian, and the first part of my faith history is a heretical belief - at the time but also now - that every human being is worthy of salvation. That we are all redeemable. As Ruby Sales put it in her interview with Kristen Tippet in the podcast On Being:

This whole business of demonization, I’ve been deeply concerned about it, because it does not locate the good in people. It gives up on people. And you see that most especially in the right and the left. I have been very concerned about the demonization that comes out of right-wing communities and also the demonization that I’ve heard on the left. And it comes from the same source of displaced whiteness. So I think that there is, at the heart of this business of finding something good in people and not giving up on anyone and not writing anyone’s obituary until they no longer have breath in their bodies, is very problematic today. And I have had deep problems with the anger, the vitriolic rage that has come out of the right and the left — and I never thought I would say this — and the only safe landing space seems to be in the middle. [laughs] And I think we should really think about that. I do believe that we’re witnessing something that we need to pay real attention to.

She entreats us to ask "Where does it hurt?" when people are acting poorly, acknowledging that bad choices are born of pain, hurting, feeling like no other option is available. She alludes to white grievance feeling like white culture is under attack, that to be white is to be racist, to be irredeemable, to be flawed, to be bad.

To say that white supremacy culture leads white people to walk around harming others by denying their own cultural centers is not to say that whiteness is bad. It is to say that white supremacy is bad. And that actions and words and inaction and silence that reinforces white supremacy is bad. The difference between guilt - I have done a bad thing - and shame - I am bad.

But to let go of shame is to let go of the excuse that because I cannot shed whiteness, I have no way of doing better. And those who support and defend white centered culture want no part of any path that would hold them to doing better.

But the admonition that anyone who perpetrates a microaggression is akin to a rapist also narrows the paths toward reconciliation. Where is the island big enough for all the misfit toys? Hint: It's all the continents of the world.

And so if we say that all people are made up of intersectional identities, and each is connected to cultures, we must also say that because we are constantly communicating across cultures, miscommunication is to be expected and mistakes large and small will be commonplace. And therefore our work to be in right relationship, in Beloved Community of acceptance and celebration, must be the work of openness to learning and affirming and repair and reconciliation when harm occurs. 

(Is my feeling of urgency to get to learning skills of conflict resolution and reconciliation and repair a way of skipping past the acknowledgment of the need to learn and do better? Or, rather, is it side-stepping the instinct to not do better until I "learn enough" - a trap of inaction because there is an never-ending amount to learn?)

I want a "how to have hard conversations when you've screwed up" course. Or a "how to call in when someone's screwed up" workshop. I want more models of mama love - the image of a wolf nipping at her cubs when they get out of line but mostly letting them learn their own lessons through play with their littermates. 

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg gets at this new culture where mistake and repair is normalized and de-stigmatized when she offers this language, with a laugh, in an recent podcast with author Ijeoma Oluo, "You could just say: I did a racism, didn't I?" and then use the Jewish tradition of atonement as a model for how to get back into right relationship. 

Rabbi Ruttenberg responds to Amy Cooper's sorry-not-sorry apology after calling the police on a black man when she broke the law:

She will not own that she DID a racism -- she could not possibly have DONE a racism, because that means she IS racist. ... Rather than, for example, saying something like, "I did something that was racist and I commit to educating myself to better understand why what I did was so harmful and to make better choices in the future." Something that would involve owning harm, working to change, and, I might add, offering amends of some sort to Christian Cooper. ... I don't believe that people cannot learn and grow and choose different actions. But that work demands taking full responsibility for the harm caused -- including amends and a real apology to the harmed parties -- and taking steps to become different (which could involve things like therapy, education, etc.) 

Rather than acknowledging, eg, that we all live in a white supremacist society and that it takes a lot of work to fight the messages that we have all internalized.

I would offer that a full apology to the person harmed is Plan A. But I'm remembering a sermon on forgiveness by the Rev. Angela Herrera in which an apology is perhaps more necessary to oneself. A moment of reflection and reckoning and re-orientation to be in right relationship with one's own values and a re-commitment to do better (and do what doing better will require, including therapy, education, etc.). Forgiveness involves 2 people but only requires 1 to act. 

And the reflection part includes Ruby Sales' question: Where is it hurting? What made you say or do or think or act or not say or not do or not think? (Seeing the water in which you swim. Reasserting your values. Re-orientation. Re-commitment.)

And the larger question of how to be in relationship with others, to be in community? It's a longer timeframe and more than 1:1 interactions. We should not only be focused on the success or failure of individual interactions and the quality of apology and atonement for 1 microaggression. The microaggressor may not be the right person to help heal the harm they caused, which is not to say that they shouldn't apologize, but rather to say that we all have a role in repair. That many hands make light work. That some harm can only be healed in community and over generations in the progress we make in dismantling systems of oppression. Which is not to let anyone off the hook for the responsibility to learn more so that we can individually do better, or to learn better how to apologize and repair/atone when we don't always do better. 

This is both/and. Individual interactions and the long arc of justice. The resilience of a tree, turning to grow in a new direction when the light is blocked from one side, as poet Jane Hirschfield writes in the poem "Optimism." Or, as Ruby Sales said, cultivating and embracing the love borne of redemptive anger ... that moves you to transformation and human up-building." (And fortifies you to hold others to account for their missteps.)

I'm thinking here of the usefulness of the wave/particle metaphor - that light acts both as a wave and a particle, depending on how you set up your equipment to study it. Our interactions are this way - a lesson at the level of 1:1 interactions as individual particles and on systemic levels when we look at interactions among intercultural communities and across generations. Both are true. Both are useful depending on the level you're working on. (Ah, William James, you so-and-so, teaching us that what's useful is what's true! I see you!)

"We are incomplete without knowing each other." Ruby Sales says. And because of our intersectional identities, there is an infinite web of cultures to know.

"Our job is to take care of one another. To fight for a world where everyone is safe, is free, is whole. All of us. In this together. That's it. That's the work. Don't ever forget it." - Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

Song - "It’s Only Love" by Crys Matthews

 

Words & Music by Crys Matthews

https://crysmatthews.com

Used by permission

Poem - Savior Machine - Tracy K. Smith

I spent two years not looking
Into the mirror in his office.
Talking, instead, into my hands
Or a pillow in my lap. Glancing up
Occasionally to let out a laugh.
Gradually it felt like a date with a friend,
Which meant it was time to end.

Two years later, I saw him walking
Up Jay Street into the sun. No jacket,
His face a little chapped from wind.
He looked like an ordinary man carrying
Shirts home from the laundry, smiling
About something his daughter had said
Earlier that morning. Back before

You existed to me, you were a theory.
Now I know everything: the words you hate.
Where you itch at night. In our hallway,
There are five photos of your dead wife.
This is what we mean by sharing a life. Still,
From time to time, I think of him watching me
From over the top of his glasses, or eating candy

From a jar. I remember thanking him each time
The session was done. But mostly what I see
Is a human hand reaching down to lift
A pebble from my tongue.

Prayer for 2/28/2021 - The Rev. Bob LaVallee

 
In this time of transition from anger, despair, and loneliness to one of hope and possibility, we pause to consider the ways that we have been hurt in the past year, the ways we were injured by witnessing things that we know to be wrong. As we consider what we have lost, may we acknowledge our wounds and take the time needed to heal. May we honor that process of becoming whole again, and from that return to our commitments to build a world of love and kindness.

May we pause to notice the ways that the world is beautiful. May we breathe in the possibilities of life and growth and laughter.

We give thanks for the gifts that we receive, large and small. Let us not consider whether we deserve them or not but simply bask in the grace of being here, being on earth, being together. 

Poem & Prayer: "There are lots of ways to stay alive" by Rev. Theresa Soto

There are lots of ways to stay alive.
You can wear soft clothes and focus on brushing your teeth and hydrating.
You can ask yourself what you need and not be mad when you don’t have an answer, only a shrug. You can breathe in.
And then, with care, you can also breathe out.
Taking the thing one single breath at a time.

You can give yourself a chance. Remember not only your mistakes, but also all the ways that you matter. From eyelash to shoelace, you matter. You matter when you are sad, when the world is heavy like wet laundry, dragging from your arms. You matter when you are angry and you use your teeth like welded prison bars to keep the words that might cause harm from escaping past your lips.

There are many ways to stay alive.

You can come, heart wrapped in several layers of foil, mashed into a plastic box with an ill-fitting lid, to a place where people say your name like it is good news.

You can fight your way toward freedom.

I recommend that you decline the option of struggling by yourself. The point is to get your life. There was this wise ruler who said once that by ourselves we are unprotected, but two people together can face the worst: [the failure, the heartbreak, the upending of worlds we hold in our hearts, and the secret shame that we will shed like the skin of a smooth snake, though it will take some time.] And with three people, you being one of them, you may find that eventually, all will be well.

Poem - "When the world was ten years old he fell deep in love with Egypt" - Patricia Lockwood

Just as he fell in love with the dinosaurs,
just as he would fall in love with the moon—
no women in the world yet, he was only ten years old.
A ten-year-old is made of time,
the world had forever to learn about Egypt.
He entered encyclopedias and looted every fact of
them and when he had finished looting
there he broke into the Bible. He snuck
into his mother’s room and drew thick lines
around his eyes and those were the borders of Egypt.
He carefully wrote in stiff small birds,
he carefully wrote in coiled snakes,
he carefully wrote in flatfooted humans.
The ten-year-old world needed so much
privacy, he learned to draw the door-bolt
glyph and learned to make the sound
it made. I am an old white British man,
decided the ten-year-old world, I wear a round
lens on my right eye, the Day, and see only a blur
with my left eye, the Night. When the sun shone
on him it shone on Egypt, all the dark for a while
was the dark in the Pyramids, the left lung
of his body was the shape of Africa
and one single square breath in it Egypt.
They never found all the tombs, he knew.
Anyone might be buried in Egypt, thought the ten-year-old
world in love with it, I will send my wind down
into my valley, and my wind will uncover the doors
to the tombs, and I will go down myself inside them,
and shine light on all the faces, and light on the rooms
full of gold, and light on even the littlest pets, on the mice
and the beetles of the ten-year-old kings, and shine light
on even their littlest names.

Letter from the Porch - Wendi Moore Oneal

 

1:21 "I am manifesting protection..." Michaela Harrison

I am manifesting protection

There's a forcefield all around keeping me safe and whole

I am manifesting protection

There's a love inside that fortifies my soul

We are...

Ze is...

He is...

She is...

I am...

4:37 "By the water of Babylon..."

By the water of Babylon

Where we sat down

And where we wept

When we remember Zion

When they carried us away to captivity

And they required of us a song

How can we sing our holy songs

In a Strange land

So let the words the words of my mouth

And meditations of my heart

Be acceptable in thy sight

Oh v'ry

6:38 I am solid like a rock

I am solid like a rock

I am rooted like a tree

I am here

Standing tall

In my rightful place

9:00 "I sing to charge the air with my belief..."

10:40 "Let your little light shine, shine, shine"

Let your little light shine, shine, shine (x 2)

Because there may be somebody down in the valley trying to get home

So let your little light shine, shine, shine (x2)

13:34 I got a right to the tree of life (Call and response)

"Loude, Loude, I got a right, I got a right to the tree of life"

I done told you...

I got a right

I told you

I got a right

I told you

I got a right

I got a right to the tree of life

My mama said...

If they got...

When we got...

If we got...

The ground know...

Them birds say...

16:03 Amen

Amen

Freedom

18:50 "Spirituals come from times during enslavement. Freedom songs come from time after enslavement."

19:35 "Freedom over Me"

Oh Freedom

Oh Freedom

Oh Freedom over me

And before I'll be a slave

I'll be buried in my grave

And I'll fight for my right

To be free

21:41 We have been burned

We have been burned

Burned by the fire

And we are ashes

Ashes and smoke

But we will rise

Higher and higher

On the wings of compassion

Justice and hope

23:37 We are the children

We are the children

of the ones who would not die

We are the children

of the people who can fly

We are the children

of the ones who persevere

We are fearless

We are strong

And we're ready to carry on

Ira Glass quote - "all writing is mediocrity"

"The natural state of all writing is mediocrity. It's all tending toward mediocrity in the same way that all atoms are sort of dissipating out toward the expanse of the universe. Everything wants to be mediocre, so what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such a fucking act of will."

http://www.avclub.com/articles/ira-glass,13841/

November 5, 2003