Poetry Blog: "A Work Day in Hard Times"

Monday – January 11 — A Treasure . . . “buy the field”

People tell each other stories about what they see, and hear, and touch.  People listen to stories.   This ancient rhythm weaves humans together over and over.   We tell each other how we understand the wide world and little worlds.   At universities we talk about “research.”  In my faith tradition we tell each other what we perceive in words from scripture.   Telling and listening help make the world go round.   The passage of time sifts words, sorting out the not very good from the good and the very good.  But in a lifetime of listening you can notice a few sayings so compelling that they hold their shape as clear and unforgettable for decades.

Many people whom I know are keeping vigil today as Gerry Stockhausen labors with his dying in an Omaha hospital room kept company by some of the close women and men of his life.   Once I heard Gerry preach a game-changer homily.   I write how I remember what he said then as a way of keeping vigil this morning with my soul friend in that Omaha room.

Today’s Post – a treasure in a field

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which someone has found; s/he hides it again, goes off happy, sells everything s/he owns and buys the field.”  Matthew 13:44

Gerry Stock (as I remember what he said that day)

The saying tells of a treasure and a field.  Parables are not long, they reveal their meaning when you pay attention to the words.   This parable does not say, “S/he dug up the treasure, cleaned off the dirt, and carried the treasure away.”  If you want the treasure you have to take the whole field, everything in it, what you treasure and what you wish was not part of the deal.  It’s that way when you fall in love and decide to commit to each other: “For better, for worse”; good days and bad days; tenderness and fights; patience and impatience; grief and joy.  It’s that way, too, when you decide to take on a new job or move to a new city, or commit yourself to a process of reconciliation that invests you more deeply in some real and earthy person or place.”

This is how I remember what Stock said one day some years back.  I’ve not been the same since.

Have a blest day 1 of the university 2nd work week and the 1st week of classes.

john sj

p.s. Teri Kult texted me this morning at 7:23 describing Gerry’s night.

“Quiet night, very peaceful, it is all in God’s hands.”

p.p.s.    One of GM Hopkins poems came to mind thinking of Stock this morning.

  “The Windhover:  To Christ our Lord”

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in
his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy!  then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl
and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,–the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valor and act, oh, air, pride, plume here
Buckle!  And the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it:  shéer plốd makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, a my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

Gerard Manley Hopkins  28 July 1844 – 8 June, 1889

Friday January 8 — “I fell from the ice castle of myself”

When a planned program draws c. 50 faculty, staff and administrators during the January UDM Colleagues Day, and no one wants to leave after the hour allotted, so that 1 hour opens out to 1 hour and 40 minutes, a mutual conversation happened that worked.  I had to leave at 1 hour/20 minutes and grieved missing the beautiful human energy alive in the room.  The university’s Undergraduate Retention Committee (Chair: Mary-Catherine Harrison; Moderator: Kathleen Walker) designed the time and built free ranging conversation with a pre-survey that invited short responses to these questions: “When have I felt welcome at UDM?” or “When have I felt unwelcome at UDM?”   The committee sorted the responses and read them one by one to the room full of people.  The effect was remarkable:  scripted voices read survey responses clustered by topic.  The rest of us listened.

When all the survey responses had been performed by one or another of the 9 presenters, the facilitator opened the rest of the time to all of us as a single group.   Compelling eloquence over and over:  direct, candid celebrations and lamentations spoken in close-to-the-ground language.  I doubt any of us missed our collective message — that every person’s welcome anoints someone else’s soul and every person’s micro aggression, thoughtless or malicious, leaves wounds.  I was not alone in leaving chastened and encouraged.   We felt, perhaps, like we were teaching one another what makes the world go round, what restores courage and creativity, what surprises us either with the power of welcome or of venom, what wounds us or nourishes us.

No wonder the session went long.

Today’s poet Richard Wehrman writes of falling out of a tightly contained place into   .  .  .    into birth.   But not only the miraculous vulnerability of our first birth; in the poem the birth process happens everywhere:  for every micro-aggression, perhaps, a micro-welcome waits for us.

Retention Committee, you nailed our conversation yesterday and opened all of us who came into a new place.   We are in your debt.

Have a great weekend,

john st sj

Today’s Post #    Richard Wehrman:   “When I Fell into the World”

When I fell into the world, it was
as into my mother’s arms, it was into
the holding of warmth, the blue-green water,
it was into the beings who blinked
back at me amazed, as I was by them.
I fell from separateness, I fell from constriction.
I fell from the ice castle of myself, through
the rushing darkness, past screams,
past fear.  I did not float up, I fell down,
and it was the world that waited
as I was stripped bare, as I tumbled out
of my self—faster and faster through blue
clouds and white, into the unknown arms
of joyfulness, toward the beings unnumbered
who opened their hearts in love.

“When I Fell into the World” by Richard Wehrman.

Art credit: Image by unknown photographer.
Posted by Phyllis Cole-Dai on Jan 10, 2015 12:00 am

Wednesday, January 6 – “Sometimes if you move carefully”

These days, in US Roman Catholic practice, the Feast of Epiphany is celebrated on the first Sunday after New Year’s Day.  The logic is that more people can make it to the second great feast of the 12 days of Christmas on a weekend.  It’s a little confusing, perhaps, because of the popularity of the Twelve Days of Christmas song (e.g., “five gold rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and the partridge in a pear tree . . . ” etc.).  Count 12 from Dec 25 and you get January 6.  Today’s post offers a shout out to that older tradition.

“Epiphany”

1. “a Christian festival, observed on January 6, commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Magi;
2. sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/epiphany)

Universities aim at maintaining an Epiphany-friendly place where students and faculty and staff and administrators work to foster moments of insight nicely described in the second definition just above.  The work of learning, the challenges that faculty and staff encourage, should lead to moments of intuitive discovery that change someone’s thinking.  There may be no deeper joy than a moment when a student’s eyes light up and s/he “gets it!”  Such moments make the whole labor-intensive process of teaching and mentoring and learning worth the work.    Often it is those moments that students remember years after they have moved on in their lives.  From the Epiphany perspective, a university does its job when it is disruptive. That’s also what the story of the Magi says.  Three strangers turn up in the Jerusalem palace of Herod with a question from their strange land that so frightened the King that he erupted in violence which forced the little sacred family to flee in the night.

Real epiphany questions can do that; they challenge deep-down assumptions.  David Whyte, today’s poet, does not use the word “Epiphany” in this demanding and disturbing poem but to me he sounds like a very good teacher.   Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses.

Enjoy mid-week of week one of 2016.

john sj

Today’s Post – “Sometimes”   by David Whyte

Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest

breathing
like the ones
in the old stories

who could cross
a shimmering bed of dry leaves
without a sound,

you come
to a place
where the only task

is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests

conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and

to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,

questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,

questions
that have patiently
waited for you,

questions
that have no right
to go away.

~David Whyte from Everything is Waiting for You

Monday, January 4  – “just average changes”

Mary Ann Buckley, a soul friend of 40 years, wrote me on December 31 to introduce me to this lean and understated poem written by “a young Afro-American man in prison.”    A good way to begin 2016’s work year.   Here’s Mary Ann’s cover note.

“Hi, John. It was good to hear from you and thanks for the poems. Here’s one by a young Afro-American man in prison — from a web-site connected with an organization that teaches literacy to prisoners. I met the director of the organization in November when she was among those honored by the Library of Congress for their work to promote literacy. I was there because our school in the Dominican Republic was also honored, and it turned out that her mother was taught by our sisters [i.e., Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus]. She’s started sending me her blog which includes some poetry by the prisoners she helps.”

If you read the poem out you may notice that each line works best with a pause.  Short lines, short pauses create a cadence, which is the poet’s intent I think.

Happy New Year,  work day 1.

john sj

Today’s Post —  “Changing Ways”

No New Year’s resolution for me
No crying decree
No promises, just average changes
Less time stressing

More time working out
Less time talking
More time learning

Not so many haters
A few more friends
Not so much sadness
A little more happiness

Less weakness
More strength
Less Sleeping
More thinking

Change after all…is good
Change after all
Is all I know

By VB  ,  September 1, 2015

In  http://freemindsbookclub.org/changing-ways

Dawn after an early snowfall  Nov 22, 2015

Thursday

This has made for a fine Christmas Eve morning, astonishing sun fills our senses.   Wrestling with words to describe the story within this 1946 photo helps me taste Christmas wonder.  For you too, I hope.

John sj

Tuesday, December 23  —   “my little heart loses its limits in joy”

Advent ends today: three plus weeks of prophecy daring us to see the world, realistically,  as beautiful and beloved.   That dare can shake us when Advent’s antiphons compete with frightened and angry language as they surely do this year.   Let’s match the 7th O Antiphon from a thousand years ago with the first prayer-poem in Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali,  a song of praise from the first decades of the 20th century.    Please consider them both as an offering to each of this list’s c. 1900 reader.  Best to read out loud with some pauses.

Blessings during these holy days.   See you in late December as we turn another year.

john sj

p.s.       Tagore died in the city of his birth, Calcutta, in 1941.  He vastly influenced poetry, sacred and secular, not only in India but around the world.  He is the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.  If you buy Gitanjali, a book of 100 short sacred poems, prepare yourself to only read one poem at a time so you can sit with it.  Here is # 1.   These poems have no titles, only numbers.

Today’s post –  Gitanjali # 1

Thou hast made me endless,  such is thy pleasure.
This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again,
and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales,
and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart
loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine.
Ages pass, and still thou pourest,
and still there is room to fill.

The 7th O Antiphon,  “O Emmanuel”

O Emmanuel!  ruler  and giver of our laws,
Hope of the people from across the whole world,
Come to save us
O Lord our God.

To listen to the Antiphon sung in Gregorian Chant

Tuesday  December 22  “I have found you in the story again”

Joy Harjo has written a new book this fall, “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.”   A young friend — living in immediate grief when one of his soul friends died suddenly, age 24, while out running — he,  one of a close group of young friends living this same loss  —  pointed me toward this new poem from one of my oldest soul friends.  “Fall Song,” is a new song alongside “O Antiphon 6:  O Rex Gentium,” one of the oldest writings that have appeared in the Work Day/Hard Time poetry list.  Joy Harjo and the anonymous medieval artist both touch vulnerable contact points that require tenderness to work their mysteries in a demanding world.

Best to read both poems out loud, with pauses.   Blessings this 22nd of December, the day when, in our northern hemisphere, daylight begins to tip a little bit longer after touching its deepest darkness yesterday.

Today’s Post –  Joy Harjo, “Fall Song”

It is a dark fall day.
The earth is slightly damp with rain.
I hear a jay.
The cry is blue.
I have found you in the story again.
Is there another word for ‘‘divine’’?
I need a song that will keep sky open in my mind.
If I think behind me, I might break.
If I think forward, I lose now.
Forever will be a day like this
Strung perfectly on the necklace of days.
Slightly overcast
Yellow leaves
Your jacket hanging in the hallway
Next to mine.

poem by Joy Harjo – Nov 13, 2015
The New York Times Magazine

Antiphon #6   “O Rex Gentium”

O Leader of many peoples,
O Leader desired by many peoples
O Corner Stone who holds such different peoples together
Come and save us human beings whom you formed out of the earth’s clay.

To listen to the Antiphon sung in Gregorian Chant

Dec 21 — Winter Solstice 5th O Antiphon “O Oriens”

At Detroit’s latitude we will have 9 hours and 3 minutes of daylight, 14 hours and 57 minutes of night time. Our shortest day. Today’s O Antiphon, “O Oriens” (“O Rising Sun”) tells us that the long-ago writers of these sung blessings for Advent’s last days lived in the northern hemisphere. Deeper & deeper into the days of diminishing light they sing to human longing for liberation and dawn. Tomorrow the day will be 3 minutes longer (I think that’s accurate), the dawn of the majestic march of sunrise back from it’s southern-most point of Oriens.

“O Dayspring
splendour of light and sun of justice:
Come and bring light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.”
These days are full of tenderness, of giving and hospitality, of forgiving old wounds, of allowing someone to forgive and welcome me when our connection had been wounded. Days, too, of longing for the healing of the world’s wounds, days of taking our places in the fatigue and longings of the whole human family.
Daring days of courage. “O Oriens” is quite a prayer.
Have a good day,

john sj

Dec 21 – 5th Antiphon O Oriens – O Dayspring

Today’s Post: “O Dayspring”
To listen to the Antiphon sung in Gregorian Chant

Sunday,  Antiphon # 4 –  O Key of David

I drove home on the Ohio turnpike from 3 days renewing c. 40 year friendships in Pittsburgh.    Its time to settle into the last 4 days of advent here on campus.

john sj

O Antiphon #4   O Clavis David – O Key of David

“O Key of David,
and scepter of the house of Israel,
you open and no one closes,
you close and no one opens

Come and lead us who sit bound with chains in the prison house,
sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.”

Today’s Post:  “O Key of David”

To listen to the Antiphon sung in Gregorian Chant

Saturday, December 19

O Antiphon #3   O Radix Jesse – O Root of Jesse

O Root of Jesse’s,
Who stands as sign to the peoples
in whose presence rulers close their mouths
to whom the Gentiles send their prayers
come to set us free, hurry.

Today’s Post:  “O Root of Jesse”

To listen to the Antiphon sung in Gregorian Chant