Poetry Blog: "A Work Day in Hard Times"

Friday, May 1, 2015  — time for a little rest

I posted this poem one year of Fridays ago, May 2, 2014.  Bet I am not the only one tired; and glad to see Friday.   A weekend after even campus parking lots get a rest from the press and hustle of student traffic.

I love Tagore, never seem to grow tired of what his poems work in my heart and body and mind.

Read him aloud and breathe a little.  Blessings for this weekend.

john sj

Today’s Post 

I ask for a moment’s indulgence to sit by thy side,
The works that I have in hand
I will finish afterwards.
Away from the sight of thy face
my heart knows no rest nor respite,
and my work becomes an endless toil
in a shoreless sea of toil.

Now is the time to sit quiet,
face to face with thee
and to sing dedication of life
in this silent and overflowing leisure.

Tagore 5

Daffodils at Sunrise – April 1, 2010

p.s.       After Wednesday’s post, one of the list’s readers wrote a cautionary note about spawning run fishing, a wisdom learned from his family of walleye fishermen.  Posted with a tip of my hat to enrich the depth of the original post from Wednesday.

As a Lake Erie walleye fisherman most my life, I don’t believe in fishing for them until at least the middle of May. Let them spawn and get back in the lake then start fishing for them. My uncle Fran, who fishes walleye on Erie every season, hears from guys who go to Sandusky, Toledo, Detroit, and talk about fishermen taking more than they’re allowed and foul hooking them. Maybe if Detroiters and Windsorians stopped the fishing in April there would be more in June, July, for those on the lakes …

Nathan

On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 8:41 AM, john staudenmaier sj <staudejm@udmercy.edu> wrote:

Wednesday April 29

“April and May mark the start of the walleye spawn. An estimated 10 million walleye (sander vitreus, if you know your dead languages) migrate from Lake Erie in search of the shallow rocky bed common along the shipping channel of the Detroit River. Here, these tasty fish lay their eggs.   The spring run draws thousands of fishermen, or anglers, to the 24-nautical mile straight.”   Crain’s Detroit News, April 29

Wednesday April 29

“April and May mark the start of the walleye spawn. An estimated 10 million walleye (sander vitreus, if you know your dead languages) migrate from Lake Erie in search of the shallow rocky bed common along the shipping channel of the Detroit River. Here, these tasty fish lay their eggs.   The spring run draws thousands of fishermen, or anglers, to the 24-nautical mile straight.”   Crain’s Detroit News, April 29

All around us, here in the middle of Detroit, lives abound and follow rhythms older than Detroit’s 312 years, waiting to add drama and texture to the press of our duties and strategies.  Fisher men and women know about the vast spring Walleye spawn; good news about the river that it hosts these millions, a sign of water health.

Today’s poet, Mary Oliver, knows that other startling living beings will send us a blessing if we pause to notice.

Read out loud if you can, pause here and there.

Have a good day.

john sj

Today’s Post  The Lark

And I have seen,
At dawn,
The lark
Spin out of the long grass

And into the pink air—
Its wings,
Which are neither wide
Nor overstrong,

Fluttering—
The pectorals
Ploughing and flashing
For nothing but altitude—

And the song
Bursting
All the while
From the red throat.

And then he descends,
And is sorry.
His little head hangs,
And he pants for breath

For a few moments
Among the hoops of the grass,
Which are crisp and dry,
Where most of his living is done—

And then something summons him again
And up he goes,
His shoulders working,
His whole body almost collapsing and floating

To the edges of the world.
We are reconciled, I think,
To too much.
Better to be a bird, like this one—

An ornament of the eternal.
As he came down once, to the nest of the grass,
“Squander the day, but save the soul,”
I heard him say.

in  What Do We Know (2002)

Mary Oliver  September 1935 –

Monday April 27 – “Never Yet Been Spoken”

The last exam days for Term 2, a week for bringing 15-week-long tasks to completion, for student goodbyes to campuses, some heading off to Commencement and its powerful goodbyes.  These past several days, too, a group of students and faculty were led by University Ministry to an immersion trip in El Salvador, and another group headed off to inner city Baltimore, and still a third drove off campus c. 4:00 am in a university van heading to Fr. Cavanagh’s and Professor Mary Lou Casper’s annual hiking retreat in Shenandoah National Park.  I can remember one of those groups stopping by my Southwest Philadelphia Jesuit house while I lived there doing PhD work at The University of Pennsylvania, and that was in the late 1970s.  No surprise that the Appalachian hiking retreat has embedded itself in UDM spring rituals.

A friend sent me this Rilke poem the other day; as I read it, I wondered that I’d not posted any of this mystical Austrian young man’s poems until now.  As you watch our students live through the end of the term and say some goodbyes that may prove only temporary, but may run deeper than that, you might find “I believe in all that has never yet been spoken” a help to imagine students at this moment of the year.

Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses.

Have a blest week.

john sj

Today’s Post – “I Believe in All That Has Never Yet Been Spoken”

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

Rainer Maria Rilke     1875-1926

Friday April 24 – “our desert began again to bloom”

Our guest editor for today is UDM trustee, Betsy Linehan, RSM.  Betsy turns our attention to a turning point in the Church, as the Vatican’s Apostolic Visitation of Women Religious in the United States comes to a close.

Have a good weekend.

john st sj

Today’s Post – Betsy Linehan, RSM

To my knowledge, Pope John Paul II never granted an audience to Sr. Theresa Kane.  As President of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in 1979, she greeted the Pope at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington.  In the most humble and respectful way possible, Theresa asked that all the ministries of the church be open to women.  Words – and even thoughts – like these were subsequently forbidden by John Paul and his Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

For the LCWR and all of us whom it represents to Rome, the following 36 years have been a long desert journey. (40 years is the biblical number, but 36 real-world years is close enough!)  Three years ago the CDF initiated an “investigation” of the LCWR in language that threatened a hostile takeover or outright abolition.  Political philosopher Hannah Arendt, writing about freedom, says that “Seen from the outside…the chances that tomorrow will be like yesterday are always overwhelming.”  Hope comes hard.

Last week some of us were astonished that our desert began again to bloom.  The CDF and the LCWR leadership issued a joint statement, remarkable as much for what it did not say as for what it did.  The concluding paragraph of the statement includes this summary: “The Commitment of LCWR leadership to its crucial role in service to the mission and membership of the Conference will continue to guide and strengthen LCWR’s witness to the great vocation of Religious Life, to its sure foundation in Christ, and to ecclesial communion.”

More remarkable still, for me the real story, was the invited private audience of the LCWR leaders with Pope Francis.  We don’t know what anyone said, but he made sure there was a photograph.

Photo source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/us/catholic-church-ends-takeover-of-leadership-conference-of-women-religious.html

Wednesday April 22 –  “When children have access to books their world expands.”  Mary-Catherine Harrison

Our guest editor for today is associate professor of English and Director of RX for Reading Detroit Mary-Catherine Harrison.  She calls attention to the celebration tomorrow afternoon of a birth.  In the Gesu School playground, just across McNichols from UDM’s campus, what looks like a large bird house or mailbox will be publicly welcomed into the neighborhood.  It carries books for young children rather than birds or letters.  This cooperation between UDM faculty and staff with children in Gesu School is as beautiful as the new book box.  Makes me proud that our Work Day list can be part of it.  If you can get there tomorrow, head across the street at 3:00 p.m.

Have a good day.

john st sj

Today’s Post –  Mary-Catherine Harrison

RX for Reading works to expand access to children’s books in Detroit and support families in reading with their children.  Over the 2014-2015 school year, they have distributed 5,000 new and gently used books to kids and community partners in the city, and UDM students have read with children at Emmanuel Head Start, Peggy’s Place Head Start, Bright Beginnings Childcare at COTS, and Gesu Elementary School. You can read more about their work at the RX for Reading website.  This post, “What Happens When College Students and Preschoolers Read Together?,” talks about the RX for Reading partnership between UDM undergraduates and the preschoolers at Emmanuel Head Start.

Tomorrow (4/23) at 3:00, University of Detroit Mercy will host a campus and community celebration to launch the new RX for Reading Detroit Little Free Library in the Gesu Community Green.  Supported by a UDM Mission Micro Grant, the Little Free Library was built by Emilie Wetherington, Director of UDM’s Student Success Center, and her husband Terry Wetherington.  RX for Reading Detroit will keep the library stocked with books to be enjoyed by all children in the neighborhood.  Members of the UDM community are invited to the “bookies and cookies” themed party, along with the kindergarten, 1^st, and 2^nd grades at Gesu Elementary School.  Gesu Community Green is across the street from UDM at McNichols and Oak Street.

As a literary critic, I have spent much of my career considering what literature does in the world, how it affects readers’ emotional states, our beliefs and behaviors, our commitments.

Since starting RX for Reading, I have thought even more about what reading offers.  Reading proficiently by the third grade is the single greatest predictor of high school graduation and a successful career.  In Michigan, only 19% of low-income children are reaching this benchmark.  Young people with low literacy skills are at greater risk of incarceration and poor health outcomes.  Their children and their children’s children are more likely to live in poverty.  Reading is opportunity.  Reading is the foundation of equality.

When children have access to books their world expands.  Literature functions as both a window and a mirror.  It allows us to see and understand lives different than our own; it reflects our own life in a way that makes us understand our experience more fully.

Literature takes us places. When we lose ourselves in a book, we are transported to those scenes; we experience events as if we were present for them and we imagine ourselves in the place of characters in that world.  Scholars call this phenomenon narrative transportation.  Emily Dickinson understood it well.

There is no Frigate like a Book (1286) – Emily Dickinson

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human Soul –

Emily Dickenson 1830 –  1886

RX for Reading Detroit—Raising Readers, One Book at a Time

Read more about our work:
http://rxreading.org/

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter:
https://www.facebook.com/rxreading
https://twitter.com/rxreading

Support Our Work Through Our Virtual Book Drive:
http://supporters.firstbook.org/goto/rxreading

Monday, April 20, “Prayer for Revolutionary Love”

A couple weeks back a close friend came for some prayer time in our house . . . stillness and presence.  On the second day we were talking and I had the intuition to loan her one of Denise Levertov’s great books of poetry, The Freeing of the Dust.  I looked all over my room’s book shelves and couldn’t find it. Must have forgotten to whom I’d loaned it.   Grrrr.  You can print a poem up off the web but somehow it’s not the same as loaning the book; which has carried grace for a good while in a sensual form of paper and print and alphabet.

So what does my friend do but venture out onto the web and find me a signed copy.  If the sensuality of print on paper matters, so does the ink from a pen held by the poet herself.  Today’s poem is one of my all-time favorites.  It has appeared on this list before.  Does today’s post celebrate the intimate power of “Prayer for Revolutionary Love” as enduring beauty,  or the web-care my friend took to bring the poet right here where I live and work and sleep?  Yes.

Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses.

Have a blest day, maybe tasting last night’s spring rain.

john sj

Today’s Post  –  The Freeing of the Dust  (1972)

Prayer for Revolutionary Love

That a woman not ask a man to leave meaningful work to follow her
That a man not ask a woman to leave meaningful work to follow him.

That no one try to put Eros in bondage
But that no one put a cudgel in the hands of Eros.

That our loyalty to one another and our loyalty to our work
not be set in false conflict.

That our love for each other give us love for each other’s work
That our love for each other’s work give us love for one another.

That our love for each other’s work give us love for one another.
That our love for each other give us love for each other’s work.

That our love for each other, if need be,
give way to absence.  And the unknown.

That we endure absence, if need be,
without losing our love for each other.
Without closing our doors to the unknown.

Denise Levertov

            1923 – 1997

Friday April 17  –  “ . . . until now.”

Busy days.  I will try not to miss the play of the sun on new grass while I scramble with tasks.  You too, I hope.

Have a lovely weekend.

john st sj

Today’s Post – David  Whyte – 1990

Enough
Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.

David Whyte, in Where Many Rivers Meet, 1990

p.s.       This amazing rescue team took form in UDM’s Dental School Waiting Room when a man collapsed and brought him back to life.  WDIV’s coverage is worth watching;  here’s Dean Aksu’s email giving some context.  WDIV follows.

Message from Dean Aksu:

As you have heard, the School of Dentistry had a medical emergency today in the patient waiting room. At about 9:30 a.m. this morning, a patient became non-responsive in the  waiting room while sitting in a waiting room chair.

Once students and faculty were alerted to the situation, several  faculty from Oral surgery including Dr. Ayman Madaway and Nurse Sue Jones responded to the scene and began to administer CPR and applied an Automatic Electronic Defibrillator to the patient.

Almost immediately, EMS was summoned and emergency resuscitation was begun. What made the event so notable was the obvious commitment of the faculty, students and oral surgery residents to persist and commit to administering CPR even after almost 30 minutes of resuscitation efforts.

The EMS crew arrived within 10 minutes of being called, however the crew dispatched to the UDM School of Dentistry was NOT certified or equipped for ADVANCED LIFE SUPPORT.

The decision was made to continue resuscitation efforts, the patient was intubated and an IV line was initiated to allow for the administration of epinephrine and other DRUGS.

After 7 attempts to defribulate and almost 30 -35 minutes of resuscitation effort with CPR and assisted breathing, the patient’s pulse and breathing were restored.  The patient was transported accompanied by Dr. Helena Perez to the DMC where the patient received a cardiac stent and is recovering.

The sheer commitment and tenacity of the first responders including Faculty, Students and Oral Surgery Residents is to be commended and is what attracted the attention of all those who saw this event. The patients in the waiting room applauded at the success of the team.

Please call me if you have any questions.

Mert
____________________________________________
Mert N. Aksu, DDS, JD, MHSA
Dean

WDIV Channel 4 Story:

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/staff-rescues-man-who-collapsed-in-dental-clinic/32392052?hc_location=ufi

Wednesday April 15 –  “for skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow”

Gerard Manley Hopkins, sj wrote this jewel of praise in 1877; it was only published in 1918, long after he died in 1889.   What is it like to write with such grace and not much expectation of recognition  . . . .  ?    Teachers do that over and over.   They write critiques of student’s work on the margins of lab reports, or assigned papers; they scold and encourage during office hours and on the sidewalk.  So do lots of the women and men who work at a university, in this place of learning.  Encouraging students, especially when coupled with candor, is one of the great deeds of employees at universities around the world.  Gratitude can go unnoticed for years, like this poem did.  And surprise can run deep when you hear intense respect years later.  The saying, “beauty is its own reward”?   Hopkins gets it.

Best to read the poem several times, out loud with pauses.  Maybe while glancing at the sky or the green grass.    It’s not summer yet but it sure is Spring.

Have a good day.

john st sj

Today’s Post,  “Pied Beauty”  Gerard Manley Hopkins, sj

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

G. M. Hopkins, sj   1844-1889

Monday, April 13 —  capricious weather and very early buds

Beginning a week’s work near the end of a term’s work  . . .  while the world turns bright all around us.   I spent the weekend in New England; they’ve had a colder spring than we; the trees are still winter naked and the land only begins to recover from all those piles of snow and ice.   A lovely surprise to come back home this morning to leaf-buds showing their colors and, driving in from Metro, seeing real live summer grass showing off here and there along I-94.   All this energy encourages  me to stop and taste some wonder.

Rabindranath Tagore, a master of sacred presence, writes in today’s post, that tastes of wonder and courage and beauty and tenderness compete with gloom and restless edginess.   Distractions lose connection with the deep down mystery.  “Trust the mystery,”  says Tagore, “even when trust feels out of reach.”

Have a blest week.

john sj

Today’s Post  —  Tagore  # 38, in Gitanjali

That I want Thee, only thee–let my heart repeat without end.
All desires that distract me, day and night,
are false and empty to the core.

As the night keeps hidden in its gloom the petition for light,
even thus in the depth of my unconsciousness rings the cry–
“I want thee, only thee.”

As the storm still seeks its end in peace when it strikes against
peace with all its might, even thus my rebellion strikes against thy love
and still its cry is–“I want thee, only thee.”

Tagore, Gitanjali n. 38

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913
Rabindranath Tagore

Friday April 10 – “ . . . only the terrible blessing of the journey.”

Catherine McAuley and Ignatius Loyola both took the journey seriously.  Perhaps more than seriously, . . .  as sacred and central.   “The journey makes the world our house,” wrote Ieronimo Nadal, sj, sent by Ignatius to mentor just-born little communities of the just-born Jesuit order.  Catherine trekked the wretched roads of Ireland finding, and founding, houses of Mercy.

Lynn Ungar writes about an older, deep understanding.  The journey of Passover, like that of UDM’s two founding spirits, trumps the safe and static.  At our best, we teach our students to love risks, to imagine the dangers of surprises, to exult in challenges.   This is the end of Passover Week and we are rounding the last bend into final exams at the university.  Both make a good time to remember the deep human longing to be disturbed by grace.

Have a good weekend.

john sj

Lynn Ungar: “Passover”

Posted by Phyllis Cole-Dai on Apr 03, 2015 12:00 am

Then you shall take some of the blood, and put it on the door posts and the lintels of the houses . . . and when I see the blood, I shall pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.

—Exodus 12:7 & 13

They thought they were safe
that spring night, when they daubed
the doorways with sacrificial blood.
To be sure, the angel of death
passed them over, but for what?
Forty years in the desert
without a home, without a bed,
following new laws to an unknown land.
Easier to have died in Egypt
or stayed there a slave, pretending
there was safety in the old familiar.

But the promise, from those first
naked days outside the garden,
is that there is no safety,
only the terrible blessing
of the journey. You were born
through a doorway marked in blood.
We are, all of us, passed over,
brushed in the night by terrible wings.

Ask that fierce presence,
whose imagination you hold.
God did not promise that we shall live,
but that we might, at last, glimpse the stars,
brilliant in the desert sky.

“Passover” by Lynn Ungar. Text as published in What We Share: Collected Meditations, Volume Two, edited by Patricia Frevert (Skinner House, 2001).

Art credit: “Stars over the Negev Desert,” photograph taken on June 7, 2007, by Matt O. From the caption: “much better in person.”