Poetry and Sermons.. Hallelujah!

Happy! Happy! Happy!   I have a great lead for all of my friends that love great poems and love their capacity to get to the heart of a truthful message.

           Today I read a sermon from Castine, Maine. If you know me you know that Castine is my all time favorite American small town. This morning I was just taking a little dip into reading something from a good Episcopal Church in a wonderful coastal town when I stumbled on a great link for poetry. The priest I met via the magic of the web is named Melissa Skelton.  After she served the church in Maine… she flipped the map of the US over horizontally and landed in a new parish of 260 members in Seattle.  Why am I happy? Well, I found that not only does she write incredible sermons — she ends each one with a poem.   Link to the sermons

I loved all the poems and anyone taking my classes the last five years will have encountered all but two of them. How kind and thorough of Mother Melissa to give us her sermon notes. She also has a list of the poems linked up to the sermons.  This is so rare and wonderful.  This site can be a great summer resource for your lectio contemplation.  

I can’t book a flight to meet Melissa in person but I bet some day I will attend her church and ask for that cup of coffee so she can tell me how she found poetry. If you read her bio— you will know why I say this.. Look at her professional and academic history!  She is wonderfullycrazy to take on loving people and writing cool sermons. Add to that the fact that she digs out poems to compliment her well crafted sermons!  You see the beauty that she does this WHILE she could be spending her days as an executive of a major corporation!  She is my kinda gal.  

  For Poems:     Here is the link

For Bio of her life:  Here is the link

Please let me know what you think,  Nita

Content from the Library Lecture

 The Poems are Here .. but in this case, Listen to the Audio   (You only experience half of the depth by reading these poems)

Poems By Kay Ryan  (from all of her collections) & What is Art? (from the Practitioner’s Point of View) 1) Can’t get to the bottom of it. You never exhaust it. 2) You apply everything else that happens in your life to it.   It enriches you. 3) You keep wanting to come back coming back to it.
1. The Jam Jar Lifeboat The jam jar lifeboat, invented in 1831 by a man named Bateman, who insisted it was unsinkable, sank the first time it was tested.       —Ripley’s Believe It or Not! It was quixotic to think the cold gray North Atlantic might be survived in a jam jar boat. It is not enough that one of something can be made to float with its lid sealed tight. One rat might survive one night on a single treadmill bottle but even that would be a battle. Bateman always hated how small truths extrapolated so poorly. He came up with really good small ones almost hourly.	2. The Walking Stick Insect of South America often loses an antenna or leg—but always grows a new appendage. Often nature makes a mistake and a new antenna grows where the leg was lost.        —Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Eventually the most accident-prone or war-weary walking sticks are entirely reduced to antennae with which they pick their way sensitively, appalled by everything’s intensity.
3. Age As some people age they kinden. The apertures of their eyes widen. I do not think they weaken; I think something weak strengthens until they are more and more it, like letting in heaven. But other people are mussels or clams, frightened. Steam or knife blades mean open. They hear heaven, they think boiled or broken.	4. Relief We know it is close to something lofty. Simply getting over being sick or finding lost property has in it the leap, the purge, the quick humility of witnessing a birth — how love seeps up and retakes the earth. There is a dreamy wading feeling to your walk inside the current of restored riches, clocks set back, disasters averted.
5. Cheshire It’s not the cat, It’s the smile that lasts, toothy and ruthless. It’s facts like this we like to resist – how our parts may lack allegiance to the whole; how the bonds may be more casual than we know; how much of us might banish and how well some separate part might manage.	6.  Crown Too much rain loosens trees. In the hills giant oaks fall upon their knees. You can touch parts you have no right to— places only birds should fly to.
7. Why We Must Struggle If we have not struggled as hard as we can at our strongest how will we sense the shape of our losses or know what sustains us longest or name what change costs us, saying how strange it is that one sector of the self can step in for another in trouble. how loss activates a latent double, how we can feed as upon nectar upon need?	8. The Best of It However carved up or pared down we get, we keep on making the best of it as though it doesn’t matter that our acre’s down to a square foot. As though our garden could be one bean and we’d rejoice if it flourishes, as though one bean could nourish us.

Topic: "AND" and Persona

Great Easter Poem

CONTENT FOR MONDAY NIGHT & WED. MORNING
Listen to Marie Howe discuss PERSONA

We are going to discuss the important topic of personhood on Monday night and Wed. at Julie’s this week.  

Go to this link to hear the audio. 

In Greek drama actors often wore masks. The question of persona can be enriched by knowing the Latin origin of the word. The first half of the work is  ‘per’  and it means “through” and ‘sona’ means “sound.”  It is as if the sound that best prompts the reader to feel empathy for the protagonist of a poem is brought through a mask or a veil of personaliity.

Many debates have been made about the best voice to write from in poems and short stories. The debate centers around the question of whether or not it is helpful to assume the voice of another person when you do creative writing.  What is helpful or unhelpful about first person perspective?

         Often by subtracting the feel of the identity of the hand that is writing the poem — the author can provide a fresh approach to the topic or introduce the emotions of the central character with more clarity. It may be that descriptions of the setting and geography of the work are voiced differently from an outsider’s vantage point. This can give the poem emhanced power to communicate directly to the heart of the reader.

        Marie Howe struggled with many poems as she was writing a the to fill out a collection of observations about her brother. John died of an AIDS-related illness in 1989. She didn’t know how to find the voice — would it be hers or his to supply the central anchor for her poems? In this audio clip she discusses how she moved through the evaluation of her work and solved the dilemma.  She let’s you know the categories that she drew on to find the right voicing for the work.  This is a great help for us as new writers.  Here is the text for the poem that she reads in the audio:

The Gate

BY MARIE HOWE

I had no idea that the gate I would step through

to finally enter this world

would be the space my brother’s body made. He was

a little taller than me: a young man

but grown, himself by then,

done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold

and running water.

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.

And I’d say, What?
 

And he’d say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.

And I’d say, What?

And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.

“The Gate” from What the Living Do by Marie Howe. © 1997 by Marie Howe.

Here is another example of changing the voice. Frank Bidart wrote a poem as if he were his mother. His mother struggled with anorexia. He also wanted to explore what a clinical observation from her physician might sound like.. here is an excerpt.

Ellen West

(mother)

BY FRANK BIDART

I love sweets,— 

                      heaven 

would be dying on a bed of vanilla ice cream … 

But my true self   

is thin, all profile 

and effortless gestures, the sort of blond   

elegant girl whose 

                            body is the image of her soul. 

—My doctors tell me I must give up   

this ideal; 

                  but I 

WILL NOT … cannot. 

Only to my husband I’m not simply a “case.” 

But he is a fool. He married   

meat, and thought it was a wife. 

.            .            . 

Why am I a girl? 

I ask my doctors, and they tell me they   

don’t know, that it is just “given.” 

But it has such   

implications—; 

                      and sometimes,   

I even feel like a girl. 

.            .            . 

 (physician)

Now, at the beginning of Ellen’s thirty-second year, her physical condition has deteriorated still further. Her use of laxatives increases beyond measure. Every evening she takes sixty to seventy tablets of a laxative, with the result that she suffers tortured vomiting at night and violent diarrhea by day, often accompanied by a weakness of the heart. She has thinned down to a skeleton, and weighs only 92 pounds. 

______________

Part Two of our TOPIC will be “and” 

GO TO this Page for  an excerpt fom Rohr’s book about ‘and”

Father Richard Rohr writes with similar conviction to Marie Howe. He believes that love and empathy are resident within a person’s ability to hold in tension two opposing ideas— such as sinner and saint. The word “and” captures this human achievement. 

He believes a concept like “and” is the only chance the human race has for maturing in grace. It is the bedrock of empathy and forgiveness. In his book, The Naked Now, he writes of the way that concrete thinking is dangerous when it excludes the “and” in its cognition. We will look closely at “and” and probably take it far deeper than the Pepsi commercial that heralds the awesome wonder of ‘and.”  

See you then, Happy Easter!

.            .            . 

The Communion of Saints

A friend from Baltimore sent me a link to an article a few weeks ago… I was busy the day the one line e- mail arrived and I forgot about opening the article.  I found the note from Sarah today and, since I had a nice lazy hour to read it, I opened the web page. I met Walker’s words with a cry, a few laughs and the art of saying, “Me, too!” more than once. I have lost a church before. At the time I felt crazy. I doubted my everything six ways to Sunday. I doubted that anyone else felt much at all about it because we all sat like stoics as we tried to cobble together what we would do next. No one said much in the parking lot on the way to their cars like they did in the past. It was a zombie existence and it might have been so for many parishoners but I was too spaced out to know for sure.

 I felt unfit psychologically … why would it take months upon more months (dozens of months!)  for me to process the loss? Now, over a decade later, I know myself more thoroughly and I can see with compassion that the changes in my church affiliation probably did tap into a deep vein that runs blindly in me like the Colorado River in spring. The rift in my heart about being abandoned is turgid, brown roiling water that sweeps loose soil and heaving rocks under never to be seen again.

So.. no wonder I could relate to Jeanne Murray Walker’s article The Communion of Saints.   It gave me a great opening to Holy Week. What is the eucharist but hungry sinners coming to Produce Junction? When misery has shut us down why not pick up broccoli a stranger dropped and nestle it back in the cradle of their arms? Maybe passing a vegetable back to a hungry soul is as life giving as passing the peace.  Could be.  

Today I read some Spanish words.   A buen hambre no hay pan duro.  I found that the translation to English reads like this:

To good hunger there’s no hard bread.

Yes, that is what I learned from the church I lost and why I fear losing a church again.  When it happened to me the first time it produced so much appreciation of my state of hunger that I don’t call anything “hard bread” anymore. I know I am built for any food or biscuit that God decides to throw at my feet. It may sound like a low self image but, trust me, it is the exact opposite. It is the property of mercy (see prayer below) that sustains a life just as sun and rain thrill a farmer watching his seeds sprout.  

NO HARD BREAD:
During Lent my current church changes from a modern prayer to the ancient prayer of humble access:

We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy.

 It is a good hunger and it is a powerful hunger to name.  So, while I have my church with me for this (one day at a time)  I want  to capture every face and see every person in the pews around me. I know I have no power, whatsoever, to keep things status quo. Church never can stay at my comfort level.  This is unfortunate for me.. but I hear “it’s not about me” so I guess I will settle down about this.  But, while I am able to go,  I can hunger for God. I can see the face of Christ and the provision of Christ inside the gathering of ragamuffins that walk forward to take communion.   

What I understand from Jeanne Walker is that regularly walking toward food is a simple, albeit lovely, aspect of my humanity.  The better food for me is not at the supermarket or the produce place.. it is the bread and the wine of Christ’s atonement.   But, if, for some reason, that center aisle at church were blocked for me again, I would find my way to Reeds… a lean-to, makeshift vegetable stand on the Harpeth River in Franklin. I would carry my hunger past the slamming screen door and open that hunger up like a potato sack, musty and crumply with clods of dirt. I would show the void to the toothless lady at the register and she would nod and not say much about my familiar regrets and dirt.  Instead of talking she would let me hand-pick (out of the crates that arrived by truck just hours before), the best yellow, red, green or brown veggie she has. Ms. Reed would let me take in the honest grime and glory of a Tennessee harvest. She would let it weigh me down for the afternoon and lighten my load during our supper table.  
All of this is more than the mantra; “Live to eat. Eat to live.” The hunger I speak of is more noble than a meal alone with fine linen or an agri- science experiment at Monsanto.  It is the communion of saints--just enough to settle my hunger till meal time comes ‘round again. 

Topic: Resurrection and Green

Listen Here to the first poem “Fish” by Mary Oliver:

One Poem Gathers Both Ideas :

God’s Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

>

SEVERAL POEMS ABOUT RESURRECTION

Silver Star By William Stafford

To be a mountain you have to climb alone
and accept all that rain and snow. You have to look far away when evening comes.
If a forest grows, you care; you stand there leaning against
the wind, waiting for someone with faith enough
to ask you to move. Great stones will tumble
against each other and gouge your sides. A storm
will live somewhere in your canyons hoarding its lightning.

If you are lucky, people will give you a dignified
name and bring crowds to admire how sturdy you are,
how long you can hold still for the camera. And some time, they say, if you last long enough you will hear God’s voice will roll down from the sky and all your patience will be rewarded. The whole world will hear it: “Well done.”

from The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney

Human beings suffer,

they torture one another,

they get hurt and get hard.

No poem or play or song

can fully right a wrong

inflicted or endured.

The innocent in gaols

beat on their bars together.

A hunger-striker’s father

stands in the graveyard dumb.

The police widow in veils

faints at the funeral home.

History says, Don’t hope

on this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

the longed for tidal wave

of justice can rise up,

and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change

on the far side of revenge.

Believe that a further shore

is reachable from here.

Believe in miracles

and cures and healing wells.

Call the miracle self-healing:

The utter self-revealing

double-take of feeling.

If there’s fire on the mountain

Or lightning and storm

And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing

the outcry and the birth-cry

of new life at its term. ~ Seamus Heaney ~

WHAT THE DOG PERHAPS HEARS

Lisel Mueller

If an inaudible whistle

blown between our lips

can send him home to us,

then silence is perhaps

the sound of spiders breathing

and roots mining the earth;

it may be asparagus heaving,

headfirst, into the light

and the long brown sound

of cracked cups, when it happens.

We would like to ask the dog

if there is a continuous whir

because the child in the house

keeps growing, if the snake

really stretches full length

without a click and the sun

breaks through clouds without

a decibel of effort,

whether in autumn, when the trees

dry up their wells, there isn’t a shudder

too high for us to hear.

What is it like up there
above the shut-off level
of our simple ears?

For us there was no birth-cry,

the newborn bird is suddenly here,

the egg broken, the nest alive,
and we heard nothing when the world changed.

Poems on the topic of the color GREEN:

Between Walls

the back wings

of the

hospital where

nothing

will grow lie

cinders

In which shine

the broken

pieces of a green

bottle

William Carlos Williams

IN CHALK ROOMS by Aina Kraujiete

let all the walls

about me be green

like a whole harvest

of summer’s meadows

walls like light

sliding through green bottle- glass

walls like forest

moss- grown and damp

walls like mouldy

cheese on a knife

and walls like frogs

so cool and loud

walls with gentleness

like budding leaves

walls of juiciness

as of chopped turnip tops

walls in that tone

in which rain soaks moss

and yellowed like cabbage

butterflies abandoning cocoon

walls hard and green

corrugated wet

encompassing me

as have only woods and waters

but the world listens

to me as to a gnat’s song

though I suffer terrible

famine for greenness.

Translated by Inara Cedrins

WASTE

by Kay Ryan

Not even waste

is inviolate.

The day misspent,

the love misplaced,

has inside it

the seed of redemption.

Nothing is exempt

from resurrection.

It is tiresome

how the grass

re-ripens, greening

all along the punched

and mucked horizon

once the bison

have moved on,

leaning into hunger

and hard luck.