Poetry Blog: "A Work Day in Hard Times"

Wednesday March 18           The task of beauty

Pretty classy day’s weather it looks like.  High pressure, winds about of the West Northwest, zero pollen predicted, lots of spring songbirds.  Counter-intuitive beauty.

“Counter-Intuitive”:  I happened to hear four adult stories of fatigue and anger and grief yesterday afternoon and evening.  That’s not counting the bravery of 12 year old Deonté Whitehead who jumped in front of three strangers threatening with a drawn knife to rob his mom as they got out of the car to head inside their house.

“Responding that she had none [no money], the three became angry and started using profanity, which spurred Deonté into action. Police said when one person produced a knife, Deonté jumped in front of his mother. That person “started flinging it,” the seventh-grader said, so he put his arm out.  The boy said he was “scared for a minute,” but his mother said: “I don’t think he was. He wanted to help his mom. … At that time it was just more adrenaline — trying to protect his mom.”  Deonté took some stitches.  Neighbor Charlene Broaden “said she was surprised to hear about a stabbing on her street.  As bad as (the neighborhood) looks, it’s getting better,” she said “They’re knocking down the burned-out homes.”  Jim Grenwick, president of the Cornerstone Village Community Association, said: “The young man is heroic. He did the right thing,” Grenwick said. “He didn’t need instruction to try to protect his mom and that’s a good thing.”  Detroit News

Good news and hard news.  It’s easy to get worn down.   Sheer beauty can look inadequate for the task repairing violent damage, like the stiches in Deonté’s arm and the worries about neighborhood crime.  But I doubt it.  Beauty does not deceive when it catches our attention. Its work is reminding us that deep down, under the exhausting burdens of our adult commitments, lives a wellspring of sacred grace.

Rabindinath Tagore saw his share of the world’s wounds.  Many of his poems are like today’s post, realism and wonder seamlessly intertwined.   Have a good day.

john st sj

Today’s Post from Gitanjali

Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not.
Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own.
Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger.

I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter;
I forget that there abides the old in the new,
and that there also thou abidest.

Through birth and death, in this world or in others,
wherever thou leadest me it is thou, the same,
the one companion of my endless life
who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar.

When one knows thee, then alien there is none,
then no door is shut.
Oh, grant me my prayer
that I may never lose the bliss of the touch of the one
in the play of the many.

Tagore Gitanjali #63

tulips are coming soon

Monday  March 16  –  “. . .  did Yes get born right then and did you weep?

Paying attention has a lot to do with noticing which places in my world invite me to stop and wait for mutuality.  Which places to notice and wait for and which to overlook, without contempt, just making necessary choices; you can’t make everything important.

{Years ago a student, having trouble with the weekly quiz, stopped in the office to ask for advice about how to prepare.  I asked him how he prepared now:  “I read each reading, I highlight . . . “   Then he showed me a reading he had prepared; almost every word was highlighted . . .  .“I think I can help you,” I said, next time, don’t highlight anything in the first paragraph. Then stop and think until you can decide which one word to highlight.  Highlight it.   Then begin the next paragraph.”}

Where to stop and where not to?  — inside joy;  inside fear;  inside grief; inside laughter?  I’ve come to think of attentiveness as the heart of prayer.  Today’s poet, Nancy Shaffer, is new to me.   She writes well about attention here.

Best to read out loud, with pauses; perhaps after “seeking one lost sock?” or “planting radish seeds”;  lots of places to pause.

Have a blest week.

john sj

p.s.      Maybe the snowdrops in our back yard will start to show off by mid-week, some more warm days with a little rain added  (“snowdrop”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galanthus).

If you get close to where they grow up in the grass you can see lots of them just getting started on their spring.  Even, last evening, one very tiny white beginning of a flower.

Today’s Post:    “Calling” 

When you heard that voice and
knew finally it called for you
and what it was saying—where
were you? Were you in the shower,
wet and soapy, or chopping cabbage
late for dinner? Were you planting radish
seeds or seeking one lost sock? Maybe
wiping handprints off a window
or coaxing words into a sentence.
Or coming upon a hyacinth or one last No.
Where were you when you heard that ancient
voice, and did Yes get born right then
and did you weep? Had it called you since
before you even were, and when you
knew that, did your joy escape all holding?
Where were you when you heard that
calling voice, and how, in that moment,
did you mark it? How, ever after,
are you changed?

Tell us, please, all you can about that voice.
Teach us how to listen, how to hear.

Teach us all you can of saying Yes.

“Calling” by Nancy Shaffer. Text as published in Instructions in Joy: Meditations (Skinner House Books, 2002).

Friday March 13

“Next time
I’ll move like cautious sunlight, open
the door by fractions, eavesdrop
peacefully.”                            Denise Leverov

In these few days at the end of mid-week March, the Detroit Institute of Arts opens its exhibit, “Diego Rivera/Frida Kahlo In Detroit.”  It’s time, I’m thinking, to go down to the DIA and renew kinship with these tempestuous lovers and artists who lived the year of 1932-33 on Kirby and Woodward, right next to the museum.  Rivera and his team worked all year to transform precise mural geometry into the pulsing faces and colors that are the “Industry in Detroit” murals.  Kahlo, less famous then, tended a painter’s genius that would later shake the world of art.  They fought too, divorced once, married twice. “I love you more than my own skin,” Frida wrote once during their long dance of betrayals and outrage and astonishing renewals of intimacy, over and over.

The DIA created an earlier Diego Rivera exhibit, pairing his perception of Detroit industry with the more cerebral landscapes of Charles Sheeler (“The Rouge: The image of Industry in the Art of Charles Sheeler and Diego Rivera” DIA 1978).  It’s pretty thrilling to find Detroit’s world class museum returning to its most important painter with a fresh interpretation.   I’m going down Saturday to listen to Linda Bank Downs’ lecture: “Diego Rivera’s Wife/Frida Kahlo’s Husband: A Question of Popularity” at 2:00 pm.

Perhaps it’s anticipation of time with the exhibit, perhaps it’s this week’s unobtrusive melting of snow and ice by tiny stages.  No matter the reason, Denise Levertov’s poem about shy and delicate entries into private human mysteries seems like good counsel when the city invites the world to eavesdrop on these two genius painters and intense lovers.

Have a great weekend.  Weather.com says cloudy tomorrow, sunny on Sunday, warm both days.

Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses.

john sj

Aware
by Denise Levertov

When I opened the door
I found the vine leaves
speaking among themselves in abundant
whispers.
My presence made them
hush their green breath,
embarrassed, the way
humans stand up, buttoning their jackets,
acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if
the conversation had ended
just before you arrived.
I liked
the glimpse I had, though,
of their obscure
gestures. I liked the sound
of such private voices. Next time
I’ll move like cautious sunlight, open
the door by fractions, eavesdrop
peacefully.

“Aware” by Denise Levertov, from This Great Unknowing. © New Directions Publishing, 1999. Reprinted with permission.

Wednesday March 11 “Our dreams drink coffee with us”

Sometimes I get so busy that being behind on tasks distracts me from beauty.  That’s a shame.

Such a week this is proving to be.  One of the Jesuits I live with saw his first robin 3 days ago.  The snow plow piles shrink a little each day.  Weather.com says the morning is dancing with a high pressure system and bright sun 37º now 52º by 2:00.       Daylight savings time means the sun will set at 7:34.  Yes!!

Still we live with tasks and uncertainties, griefs and wounds.   Today, I found again this Joy Harjo poem, a reminder that the kitchen table serves our needs for food and work and mystical grace.

Blessings on the day.  Best to read the poem out loud, with some pauses.

john sj

Today’s Post  —  “Perhaps the World Ends Here”  

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children.

They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

“Perhaps the World Ends Here” from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Joy Harjo.
Copyright © 1994 by Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., www.wwnorton.com.

p.s.       Last night I emailed a friend at the University of Oklahoma, made noteworthy by President Boren’s strong response to frat brothers caught with a video clip of them singing a viciously racist song.  My friend emailed by a short, eloquent response to me this morning.  Worth sharing.

“Yes, it has been very stressful all the way around. I approve Pres. Boren’s actions although I can’t help but wonder whether the kids involved (who, despite their protests, really are racist) will ever personally acknowledge it and come to grips with it in a way that could produce change. Of course, all things are possible. And you have to set standards of behavior and make an environment that is safe for all. But so much of facing racism is not about intellectually understanding the reality of broad human equality (although that’s part of it), but about emotionally understanding it. And that kind of emotional understanding gets built through contact and community, something that’s so absent in segregated America.”

Monday March 9 – this post was mostly written Sunday morning around 9:30 while reading the Sunday papers.

On Saturday, I learned that Rochelle Riley will speak on campus at 7:00 pm on Thursday, March 12 (hosted by UDM’s African American Studies Program and Women and Gender Studies): “[Black] Women as Public Intellectuals”. I emailed Dr. Terri Laws, who directs the African American Studies Program, asking her to count my email as an rsvp. I love reading Riley’s Detroit Free Press columns.

Sunday morning I read her column, along with two other long articles, all of which began on the front page above the fold. All three covered the shooting of Judge Terrence Berg on his back doorstep. Two young men wanted to get into the house; the judge refused; one of the young men shot him in the leg; they ran away. Then Anita, Berg’s wife, got busy getting help for her husband. This happened in our neighborhood, the University District neighborhood, the Jesuit Gesu Parish and U of D Jesuit High School a mile away. Rochelle Riley’s column frames the two longer articles. Anita decided not to chase the two young men as they ran away (she’s done it before), just hurled an obscenity after them and began taking care of her husband. Neighbors came out of their houses and converged at the Berg’s. Coming to help.

Ms. Riley embodies the soul of this poetry list, a work day in a hard time. She gets it about the way violence and kindness are contiguous here. I’ll be proud to listen to her Thursday here on campus. Right now, on Sunday morning at 10:29, I’m heading across the street to the Gesu church to be part of the worship and the singing in that place that welcomes its city and its stories.

****** ****** ****** ****** ****** ****** ****** ****** ****** ****** ****** ******

Now it’s Monday morning. Yesterday, reading the newspaper coverage and worshiping with the Gesu congregation reminded me of why living right here these past 34 years distills sheer beauty in my life. I’ll be there Thursday evening in Engineering 220. Her column, Today’s Post, is not a poem but you may find a few lines that help to read out loud, with pauses.

Have a blest week. 52º & sun yesterday, snow begins to melt. Sweet.

john sj

Today’s Post – “In Detroit We’ve Got Hate on the Run”
By Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press Columnist
March 8, 2015

When one of the first things Anita Sevier did — in the hours after her husband was shot in a robbery attempt — was tell the world “Don’t blame Detroit,” I wanted to stand with her.

News of the shooting spread quickly. Judge Terrence Berg was hailed as a hero for standing up to thugs. And he is. But there’s another hero, no matter what she says in protest.

“Instead of being angry,” Sevier said to Detroiters and to the world, “be part of the solution for the hopeless teens and children of Detroit. We don’t want this to be a reason to hate.”

Hate is an unwelcome resident of Detroit.

It moves around indiscriminately instead of living in one place where we can keep an eye on it. Its cousins — apathy and anger — turn up anywhere, unwanted and often unprovoked.

But here’s the thing: Hate has ruled for a long time. Detroit has let it, lived with it, let it run rampant over the city.

But things are changing in Detroit.

Hate is not the city’s only resident. Hate is getting a run for its money, thanks to people moving in and people like Judge Berg and Anita Sevier not moving out over 26 years.

There are many more Detroit residents like the Berg family, families descended from families who have loved this city for decades. They are the ones who fight for a better Detroit from the inside — and most are welcoming help from wherever it comes. There are Detroiters, former and future, around the world who remember the great city they once knew or envision the great city they want.

That city has got to tell Hate it isn’t welcome anymore. That city has to get rid of apathy and demand that every person stand up and be heard.

Some say that Mayor Mike Duggan’s biggest challenge is creating dense, safe, stable neighborhoods that new residents will flock to.

Some, including me, say that effective, safe schools for Detroit children deserve the most attention.

But truly, if we’re honest, we all know the real obstacle to what Detroit is and what it can be: Crime.

Crime affects neighborhoods. Crime affects schools. Crime affects children. Crime affects families.

Crime threatens the city’s renaissance.

We don’t need more studies to explain why there is so much crime. Part of the answer is a lack of jobs. Unemployment is more than a number — it has faces and ages. Where there is frustration and need, there is crime.

But what Anita Sevier said, even before her husband headed into surgery, was that it’s not Detroit’s fault. Not the entire city.

If we have to attach blame, then blame the proliferation of guns so easy to get that a child can shoot himself with one. More than two years after a former student shot up a Newtown, Conn., school and killed 20 children, we are still cowards about demanding strict gun laws.

If we have to attach blame, blame the thugs raised for prison rather than college, who live to shoot rather than live to succeed. Some could have been saved, if their parents had tried and if they themselves had used school for an education rather than day care until they could drop out.

Two thugs attacked a judge outside his house. They didn’t steal anything, not a wallet, not a car.

And most importantly, they didn’t steal the spirit of a longtime Detroit resident who, in the middle of despair, had the presence to ask people to rise above the destructive emotions that have held Detroit back.

Hate the thugs, if you must. But not the city.

Ronald Belle, 70, a retired city of Detroit worker returns home after walking his dog on Oak Drive in Detroit on Saturday, March 7, 2015.
(Photo: Romain Blanquart Detroit Free Press)

Friday, March 6, 2015 – “These few words are enough.”

I posted David Whyte’s, “Enough,” on January 21, but something about the words caught my attention this morning: as a splendid sun rose over Parking Lot D at 7:01, not quite half way from its December solstice rising point over the corner of Calihan Hall and the June equinox when the sun will bedevil east bound drivers on all Detroit’s east-west surveyed mile roads. When that day comes, assuming a sunrise like today’s, it will drive some of us nuts for a few minutes. But it’s worth it. And all the work that we turn to on this early March day, here in clean-rinsed sunrise, or somewhere in harder weather, whether we enter the day with spring in our step or carrying burdens that we cannot ignore. Here in Detroit, in battered Boston, around the world, people set their shoulders to the day’s demands.

Cold outside here too, under the sun. By noon it will be cold and windy . . . still winter, no? “It’s worth it,” says the wind; we mean to say that too as we catch each other’s eyes hurrying to get our work done. David Whyte’s short poem makes a good breathing space for people in a hurry.

Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses. Weekend blessings too.

john sj

Today’s Post: “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

Wednesday,  March 4  — mid-winter contemplation

The McNichols Campus is pretty quiet, covered with old snow, waiting for a first peep of grass, let alone buds on tree branches and flowers stretching out from the earth.

Here, in this time of keeping vigil with the slow turning of the season toward spring, are words that Ignatio Ellecuria, sj spoke in 1982 while he received an honorary degree from  Santa Clara University.   Best to read them like a poem and imagine listening as he spoke them out loud 7 years before he was assassinated by the Salvadoran military in 1989.

It’s Spring Break on the McNichols campus, a good time to pause and contemplate what it is we try to do here in Motown all year long.

Have a blest day.

john sj

Today’s post  –  

“The university should be present intellectually where it is needed:
     to provide science for those without science;
     to provide skills for those without skills;
     to be a voice for those without voices;
     to give intellectual support for those
          who do not possess the academic qualifications to make their rights legitimate.”

Ignatio Ellacuría, SJ  (1930-1989,  martyr and university leader)

Friday February 27  –  “You just have to do the right thing,”   Retired Nurse, Deborah Hughes (April 2014)

“Yes, thus says the Lord
creator of the heavens,
who is God,
who formed the earth and made it,
who set it firm,
created it no chaos,
but a place to be lived in.”                  Isaiah 45: 18

           N.B., For the last school day of Black History Month, I returned to last April 2nd’s story about healing and anger and courage that riveted Detroit and its Metro area last year.   St. Ignatius teaches the prayer of “Repetition,” returning in memory to “some more important places” to find deeper understanding. (Sp. Exercises Par 118).

Thursday  April 8, 2014

A Boston friend sent this James Martin, sj prayer to stop the snow.  Lots of pictures along with J’s wit.

back with a real post tomorrow as usual

john sj

You’ve probably seen this already, but just in case…..

Roz

Father James Martin, S.J., has come up with the perfect prayer for Boston and every other city that wants the snow to stop.

Facebook: FrJamesMartin

Chestnut Hill, Mass., courtesy of John Wronski, SJ / Facebook: FrJamesMartin

Martin is a Jesuit priest, author, and editor of the national Catholic magazine America. He published the prayer on his Facebook page and gave permission for it to be reprinted on BuzzFeed.

“Almighty God, who made the green grass on the Fenway, the blue waters of Dorchester Bay, and the tan sands on the Cape, we have a simple prayer: Enough with the snow already.”

Getty Images Kayana Szymczak

“Whatever mysterious point you’re making about endurance, or patience, or your own awesome power, we get it.”

AP Michael Dwyer

“We’ve endured, we’re plenty patient, and we get that you can do the snow thing.”

AP Michael Dwyer

“And we know that you know the old joke (since you know everything) about how if the Pilgrims landed in Florida first this part of the country would never have been settled, ha ha, but we love it here.”

AP Charles Krupa

“We love the spring, especially on Boston Common.”

Getty Images/iStockphoto SeanPavonePhoto

“We love the Fall, especially in the suburbs.”

Getty Images/iStockphoto/ coleong

“And we love the summer, especially on Cape Cod, on Cape Ann, and on the South Shore.”

Getty Images/iStockphoto/ coleong

“We love all those beautiful parts of your world.”

Getty Images/iStockphoto SeanPavonePhoto

“But we’ve had it with the snow.”

AP Michael Dwyer

“I mean, have you looked out my window?”

AP Elise Amendola

“So we’d like to ask you to stop sending us the snow.”

AP Steven Senne

“And, just to be clear, when we say snow we also mean freezing rain, sleet, black ice, any kind of flurries, and that new creation of yours, thundersnow.”

AP Steven Senne

“We promise we’ll be good during Lent, we’ll be kind to one another, and we won’t ask for another thing.”

AP Elise Amendola

“At least until the Red Sox start to play.”

commons.wikimedia.org / Flickr: jaredvincent / / Via Creative Commons

“Amen.”

AP Steven Senne

Here’s the prayer again in full:

Almighty God, who made the green grass on the Fenway, the blue waters of Dorchester Bay and the tan sands on the Cape, we have a simple prayer: Enough with the snow already.

Whatever mysterious point you’re making about endurance, or patience or your own awesome power, we get it: we’ve endured, we’re plenty patient and we get that you can do the snow thing.

And we know that you know the old joke (since you know everything) about how if the Pilgrims landed in Florida first this part of the country would never have been settled, ha ha, but we love it here.

We love the spring, especially on Boston Common. We love the Fall, especially in the suburbs. And we love the summer, especially on Cape Cod, on Cape Ann and on the South Shore.

We love all those beautiful parts of your world. But we’ve had it with the snow.

I mean, have you looked out my window? So we’d like to ask you to stop sending us the snow.

And, just to be clear, when we say snow we also mean freezing rain, sleet, black ice, any kind of flurries and that new creation of yours, thundersnow.

We promise we’ll be good during Lent, we’ll be kind to one another, and won’t ask for another thing, at least until the Red Sox start to play. Amen.

Via Facebook: FrJamesMartin

Wednesday, February 25 Boston’s Back Bay, April 20, 1983

Boston is my second city, after Motown. I’ve lived there 7 different times, whole years and half years, at MIT and Boston College. The city is dear to me, dear with familiar urban mazeways, (like where to get my car fixed, my hair cut, my teeth tended, when to avoid heavy traffic if you can manage it, how to plan contemplative times beside the sailboat basin of the Charles, whether to walk from my Jesuit house in the Back Bay over the Mass Ave or the Longfellow bridge. All those years have connected me with friends, soul friends who keep these sensual memories from drifting into nostalgia.

This monstrous hammering patch of winter is more real and sensual because of soul friends whose closeness helps me to imagine the city’s fatigue. Alas it’s nowhere near over, either. When the storms let up all those feet of snow still have to melt and all that water has to go somewhere.

Yesterday an idea for today’s post snuck up on me. I am posting a playful poem I wrote one April afternoon in 1983 after walking across the Mass Ave Bridge heading home after a work day at MIT. Is the poem whimsy, or a reminder, or a promise, or a blessing? Doesn’t matter. Blessings from Motown where the morning sun is kissing the top of the tall evergreen outside my west-facing window.

john sj

Today’s Post — Meeting at Rush Hour

A gust of wind
sent the metal street sign for Charlie’s Tavern
skittering fifteen feet up Newbury Street,
an unlikely sailboat
escaped, perhaps, from the Charles.

The clatter and improbability
set us both free.

She looked twenty two,
blond and lovely,
going the other way
and no doubt equally homeward bound.

In our sudden bemusement
at the sign’s startled venture
our eyes touched.

Then, the wonder.
We grinned.

Delight at our moment’s kinship
freed us from fear
from strategy and burden.
She flashed fire at me
and I, no doubt, at her.

A moment’s celebration quickly passed–
rare and winsom beauty,
breathed through two human forms
filling us with awe.

We went our ways with no word spoken,
both journeys blessed.

April 20, 1983