Poetry Blog: "A Work Day in Hard Times"

Monday August 11

“Cloudy skies this morning followed by thunderstorms during the afternoon. High around 75F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%.”   So Weather.com tells me at 7:35 am.  7:35 reminds me that I am up later than usual and the calendar tells me that I have an earlier than usual meeting to prep for.   Hustling this morning.   I looked around in the “Poems I love” folder and found Susan B Auld’s “Radishes”:  small children with their mom become grown ups and, some days, pause to taste the wonder of their childhood adventures.

I  hope you like the poem.
I  hope you pause at least 3 times today to taste some of the wonder in your life.
The child in the picture lives in Jordan,  so too the radishes.

Have a good day.

john sj

Today’s Post

“Radishes”

Pull up some radishes for dinner,
my mother said.
They grow next to the house under your bedroom window.

Afraid I’d pull up something other than a radish
I gathered a sister, a brother
and we knelt in the dirt
under the screened window

looking

at what we thought
to be a radish.

Its leaves so new   so green
our hands  so hesitant  so unsure

we reached and pulled

earth clung
to our fingers
to the fleshy roots
quivering in the sun

we pulled up radish after radish
handing them
a bouquet
to our mother.

She no longer cares for radishes.
My sister, brother and I tend our own gardens.

But I wish everyday
to kneel again
under that window

to feel new and green
hesitant and unsure.

“Radishes” by Susan B. Auld, from 2011 Poetry Challenge (editor unknown). © Highland Park Poetry, 2011.  

Art credit: “Would you like a radish?”, photograph by Jenny at A Taste of Travel, part of a series entitled “The Children of Jordan’s Al-Amir Village” (originally color).

Friday, the 8th of August

I don’t know where these two notes came from.   When did I come across Herman Melville’s note to Nathaniel Hawthorne?  Decades ago, that’s for sure, when I fell in love with the snap and candor in this snip of personal correspondence, written long hand.  A couple years back I paired them with a saying by John Forbes Nash.  How did they land in the same Word file?    Two 19th century broad range writers and a genius mathematician now in his late 80’s.  I must have thought they would recognize each other.  For a Friday at the end of a work week  both texts suggest that to-do lists take on deeper meaning because of affection.    The work we do satisfies when we  get something done competently.   Sometimes, though, the beauty in the work brings us to a halt and we can hear ourselves breathing.

I hope your weekend filled with beauty and wit, and mine too.

john sj

                        Today’s Post

I stand for the heart.

To the dogs with the head!

I had rather be a fool with a heart

Than Jupiter Olympus with his head.

The reason the mass of men fear God and at bottom dislike Him,

is because they rather distrust His heart

and fancy Him all brain

like a watch.

Melville to Hawthorne 1851

“Though I had success in my research both when I was mad and when I was not,

eventually I felt that my work would be better respected

if I thought and acted like a ‘normal’ person..”

– John Forbes Nash

p.s.       a meadow in Rocky Mountain National Park

Thursday August 7  –  Grieving

Making oatmeal and tea this morning I noticed more sadness in me than usual.    Several good friends have lost someone too young to lose;  others have been orphaned by keeping vigil with an older generation. Other wounds are lodged in the flesh of soul friends;  require imagination to notice and courage to tell those stories and to listen to the telling.

“Story telling and story listening are the works of love alive in the press of the day’s labors”:  the words seemed to come with the the oatmeal and the tea, like raisins.  For you too I hope.

Have a good day.

john sj

Today’s Post

My niece, Terri Breeden, writes flint-hard poems sometimes.  In “The Living” she grieves the loss of her grandmother who died at 102 and stretches to include her young son in the grieving.

      The Living

It's strange the things people say
after a death, crooked attempts
to comfort. Things like, "Oh,

well she was old. She had a long life."
or "She was ready to go.” One woman
even said, her hand resting on my shoulder

“Her death was easy; that
should make you happy."
Happy. Easy. Words I never

put together with death, words I still
can’t quite get my arms around
no matter my wingspan.

And I think, Oh, this stumbling
over language as if it were new,
despite a familiarity with time,

the exhaustion and experience
of years, despite consideration of death,
having greeted that recognizable face before.

It is easy to forget, tangled
in words of comfort,
that the dead

are dead; they do not feel
the pain of departing,
do not need to be consoled.

It is those who are left
who know the burden of sad and hard,
bowed low beneath the weight of loss.

My son will never know her. He will never
understand why when he glares, shoulders
angled back and jaw thrust out

stubborn like her, belligerent and
ready for a fight, I, a fighter too,
can only cry and hold him close.

Terri Breeden

Wednesday August 6 — “Hurry”

Yesterday our Fitness Center looked alive and fresh with the energies of c 375 teachers and administrators from the Schools of the Archdiocese.   I stopped by late in the morning;  they weren’t in Fitness then, just some of UDM’s host team prepping for lunch.  The teachers were out on campus in learning sessions.  They had already heard UDM’s announcement of education grants for grads from diocesan schools, a new collaboration for us and a smart one.

What mostly got me thinking, though, was what it means when teachers come to learn.  Who teaches teachers?

Lots of people.  For starts, teachers share research with each other.    That happened on campus yesterday, fresh ideas on offer to mix in one’s  skill set.   Professionals teach each other too, when they take time to trade stories and care for each other, again like yesterday.

Most of all,  students teach teachers.  They bring us the news about changes in the world, the creative news and the hard news.   Students bring us their energy and their wounds, and strong teachers spend a lot of energy, day after day after day, paying attention to precisely how students surprise them, spend teaching time laughing in delight and absorbing grief and violence.   Strong teachers learn all the time.   That’s what yesterday was about.

All this reminded me of a very cool poem by Marie Howe, given to me by one of UDM’s teachers back in early summer.   Doing ordinary chores, a mom’s  daughter teaches her while they shop.   Every time I read “Hurry” I smile inside, probably smile outside too.  Try reading it out loud.

Have a blest day.

john st sj

Today’s Post:  from The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2008)

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.
Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?
Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,
Honey I’m sorry I keep saying Hurry—
you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.
And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

p.s.  To Listen to the author read the poem click the play button below:

Tuesday August 5  – “a doorway into silence”

Pulses of intense rain when I woke, without a lot of wind.  And more to come says weather.com,   Perhaps a soaker without broken trees, a summer day (“Scattered thunderstorms this morning, then mainly cloudy during the afternoon with thunderstorms likely. High 79F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%”).   Dazzling summer days — crisp dry air, breezy and not too hot, showing flowers and shades of green brought by trees and shrubs and grasses — they refresh my soul.  So do rainy summer days when I pay attention and even, ugh, sticky days with heavy pollen.

Mary Oliver invites the reader to find words to say the spectacular and the ordinary, the winsome and the frayed. The principle behind the work day posts is to open a space about 2 minutes long in which someone’s words remind us of stillness waiting to be noticed.

Have a good day.     Beauty lives deep down.

john st sj

Today’s Post:  Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Mary Oliver

p.s.       Kathy Lilla Cox, one of our grads and now a professor of theology, sent me pictures from Assisi this summer: “Three friars sang the songs, which were teaching tools for the early Fransciscans.  One played the violin, a second the guitar, and Friar Alessandro, who sang (beautiful rich voice), played the instrument in the pictures.  After the concert, several of us went to talk with Alessandro.  Friar Alessandro said he saw the instrument in a painting and it sparked his imagination.”

Kathy chose the camera perspective.  I like her choose of bare feet, near the instrument, in Franciscan sandals.

Monday August 4  –  start-up time

Rabindranath Tagore’s Poem # 1 from Gitanjali will probably be familiar to readers of this list.  Today it appears  for the third time.  No surprise perhaps because I love it as a blessing looking out into the future.

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.

Tagore, Gitanjali # 1

Blessings for August

john st sj

p.s.  Medicine Bundle

A Lakota soul-friend family, Don and Paulette Montileaux & their children, invite me to dinner each year when I spend some days on Pine Ridge.    Don had read my May 22 post a few days before we gathered.  After dinner he gave me a medicine bundle, one of the gifts offered-for-sale in places where his reputation  generates a market that helps support the more serious labor of his painting.   “Why don’t you find a small rock when you pray at  your place in the badlands and another small rock when you pray on the shore of Lake Michigan and let the bundle remind you of both sacred places?”   So I did.  I took a pic this morning.  The stone on the left with a little sage I found where I pray in the Badlands.  The stone on the right I found near the shore of Lake Michigan about 3:15 am on July 30 while heading home to Motown.   I’ll be keeping this prayer bundle as a reminder.

Thursday May 22 —> July 30

1)         Part One:  May 22:   “Remember sun screen” —   Pine Ridge, SD is about 3400 ft above sea level,  sun shines more directly here than in Motown at 300 ft elevation.   In most years, about a week after commencement and Eastern Market Flower days, I pack for a week on the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation.  It sits in western South Dakota; you can see the profile of The Black Hills 70 miles off to the north and west;  you can stand still near wild Badland formations, created mostly by wind.  Improbably with desert-like terrain,  you can also stand still to listen to meadowlarks, and frogs, in marshy water holes 100 yards across.   It’s because I lived here a long time that this particular beauty melts my soul and refreshes my spirit.

So do conversations with soul friends of 40 years or more.  I come to Pine Ridge to renew the origins of my adulthood in this place of beauty and laughter and grief.  It slows my steps and my breathing.  And reminds me that the normal work year has ended and summer has begun.  There’s  still plenty of work time but the pace is different.   For you too, I hope.

2)         Part Two: July 30:    About 3:00 am on July 30 I will pull off highway 35 in Upper Michigan at Fox Point Park.  The park is mostly beach and shore grass and pines, 30 miles north of my home town, Marinette Wisconsin.  I will have said goodbye to my sister Mary and eased into a long drive around the top of Lake Michigan, the first 4 hours in pre-dawn stillness.   No one is there at Fox Point at 3:00 am.  I walk to the beach, and breath a little.   I pray the Lakota Prayer of the Six Directions, a very small human next to this vast lake of my childhood.   I’ll drive around the north shore, into the sunrise, then over the Mac Bridge and head south toward Detroit and home.    The prayer in the dark of night and all this water opens me to stillness.   It marks the end of summer and a turn toward a new work year.

This is pretty autobiographical for a workday post.  I write this way today by way of announcing that the work day poetry list will take a summer break too, offering me time for gardening, baseball, and nordic trac and for reading some poetry.

See you Monday August 4. Work day posts will begin for the coming year.

Have a blest summer.

john sj

p.s.       a recording of the song of the Western Meadowlark

Fog Basin, Dakota Badlands

Lake Michigan western shore

Saturday  May 17  15,000 trees on the east side

A UofD grad Mike Nagy  (1988 Electrical Engineering) was visiting  his old college neighborhood and we drove over to the East Side looking for the blocks where the (John) Hantz tree farm was taking shape with the labors of c. 1000 volunteers working the 20 acre farm (check Belvidere and Geothe, south of Mack and east of Van Dyke).   I had tried to find it a couple weeks ago when my sister was in town but did not succeed.  Today with gps help we found the gathering of volunteers, some media coverage,  and lots of trees on block after block.

Still another surprise in the rebirth of our city.

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140517/METRO01/305170036/Tree-planting-brings-sense-community-once-desolate-area

Have a good Sunday.   May the Tigers keep winning!

john sj

one of the thousand vols

May 16th, 2014

On May 6th, I asked members of the listserv to share how they feel and express gratitude. I have compiled the responses (all of them thoughtful and moving reflections) below.

And, since I am a Victorianist and poetry professor at a Jesuit university, this is one of my favorite praise poems, by Victorian Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.

13. Pied Beauty

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; 5
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: 10
Praise him.

Mary Tobacco:

I feel gratitude mixed with awe sometimes. I am thankful that the women in my life taught me about love, God, prayer, and faith. I express my gratitude by giving things away. I have always really loved playing basketball and have always felt thankful to have such a gift in my life so when I started winning jackets as a young player I gave them away. I still do.

Mark Benvenuto:

It reminded me that one of the exercises I use is something I picked up down south, when I was one of the rare Catholics in the land of the much more expressive Baptists.

Someone in a cadet prayer group taught us to remember “A.C.T.S.” each day: adoration – acknowledge the greatness of God when compared to yourself; confession – ask forgiveness for your sins; thanksgiving – for all that you have, be it physical, mental, or spiritual; and solicitation – ask the Lord for what you want and need.

I have used it for decades now because it is so easy to remember. And yes, the ‘thanksgiving’ portion has changed a lot over that span of time, but has become quite a list of gratitude items. From thanks for the end of a great semester, back through the years to thanks at getting the job here after the post-doc, back to the thanks as the worries of grad school were overcome, back even to thanks at being alive at the end of another day stationed right up on a now-vanished Soviet border, watching them watching us. ACTS still works well.

Maureen Anthony:

It may be over-used, but I truly find happiness in wanting what I already have. That is the key to happiness.

Sister Sarah Foster:

One of my favorites is a simple song I learned several years ago:

May we always remember where we come from.
May we see the whole in every part.
May God’s Blessings pour down on everyone
And love shine from our hearts.

Ann Greene:

The children’s service in my church uses this rubric: prayers of thanking and prayers of asking. It’s pretty amazing the sense of gratitude expressed by kids in the prayers of thanking.

Judith Hetsler-Parr:

Recommended an incredible TED Talk on the topic of gratitude:
http://www.ted.com/talks/louie_schwartzberg_nature_beauty_gratitude

Jean Gash:

I do not get out of bed in the morning until I think about the things and people in my life that I am blessed with. By the time I greet the day happiness is mine.

Mary Burke (a longtime friend of John Staudenmaier):

Gratitude is a commitment before it is a feeling.

John Staudenmaier:

A saying that helps me: “Gratitude is a commitment before it is a feeling”

A prayer
Give me a grateful heart to live from
Attentive to savor the blessings received
Playful to expect your surprises
Trusting, to commit myself to Your commitment to me.

A principle
Ignatius suggests that every day I consider the inner “movements” of that day but that before I consider, I begin with gratitude for my life as it is now (not as it may become in my future).

Karl Ericson:

Gratitude is the antidote to my fear that I’ll never have enough, that I’ll never get my way, that I’ll be overlooked, or taken advantage of. Gratitude is essential in my daily work to step outside of my ego, my self-centered delusions & recognize that I’m provided for, cared for, valued, and that in this moment I am whole!

Lori Glenn:

I am sharing how I find gratitude, happiness and joy about the work I do with student nurses.
My approach is based on being a midwife, which translates to being a professor in many unexpected parallels. At each phase of development I reflect back as to how far they have come and anticipate the joy the student/mother will experience in the end. We as midwives and professors guide this development by allowing it to occur, but providing the right tools to support them and the knowledge to make it meaningful. We are there when it is hard and they feel vulnerable, and we step back when they begin to soar on their own.

Here are the parallels of being a midwife and professor:

For the developing nurse and the gestating mother:
The time frame is similar–about a year
Student nurse: 13 1/2 months for the new nurse
Mother: 12 months for gestation and postpartum adjustment to parenthood
In the beginning, both
are scared and excited.
ask a lot of questions.
are full of self-doubt.
suffer with low levels of confidence.
are afraid of the process of school/pregnancy they are seeking.
In the middle, as both become accustomed to the demands of the program/pregnancy they
are more comfortable, at ease and calm.
seek their own answers to questions.
become more confident.
have far less fear.
begin taking in the role of nurse/mother.
Towards the end, with increased demands, requiring significant adaptation they both
are impatient for completion.
suffer with mental and physical discomforts.
have a return of fear, for the new role and responsibilities of nurse/mother.
And with the finale, either taking the NCLEX to become an RN, or laboring to become the mother, they
have great pain.
work extremely hard .
have immeasurable joy.

The Second Degree Option Accelerated Nursing program in which I teach is demanding. Students are not only put through a rigorous curriculum with very high expectations, but they also have a lot at stake financially and personally. It is at times difficult to find joy and happiness among all the angst, even though I know the demands we place them barely prepares them for the work of nursing.

Constantly reminding myself that their development will result in great joy in both successfully passing NCLEX and taking on the work of nursing brings me satisfaction and happiness in the work. Seeing them at Transitions Ceremony and Commencement is gratifying, and being notified of successful NCLEX scores and job securement provides me with the opportunity to share their joy.

When I am praying for the patience to continue to expect the best of students, I will miraculously receive an email or visit from a graduate who has become a professional, caring nurse. They express gratitude for the rigor of the program and advise us not to falter in this path. They also thank us for the attention we gave to their emotional needs. This is when I feel most grateful, for I know out their is a UDM graduate who will some day care for myself or a loved one when I am in need.

As far as gratitude being a midwife…this is not difficult to do! And this part of my life enhances gratitude for everything in my life.

My initial post:

The “new science” of happiness, it would seem, confirms many of the things we have known all along. Help other people. Don’t worry too much about the past. Be grateful.

Gratitude does not come to us naturally. One of the tasks of any parent is to cultivate gratitude in our children, to help them recognize the blessings they have been given.

Perhaps this is why saying grace before a meal is one of the oldest and most universal human rituals. In the Quaker tradition in which I was raised, grace is given in silence. Growing up we also said the traditional Moravian grace (a rhyming couplet): “Come Lord Jesus, our guest to be, and bless these gifts bestowed by thee.” I am afraid my brothers and I often recited it so quickly that it had little meaning beyond familiar sounds.

Now that I am a parent, my family has what we call “Gratitude Journal.” My four-year old calls names and we say what we are grateful for in our lives or our day. She always goes last: “I am grateful for everything in the whole entire world!”

One of my favorite examples of grace is from J. S. Woodsworth, a pioneer of social democracy in Canada:

“We are thankful for these and all the good things of life. We recognize that they are a part of our common heritage and come to us through the efforts of our brothers and sisters the world over. What we desire for ourselves, we wish for all. To this end, may we take our share in the world’s work and the world’s struggles.”

I would be grateful to hear how other people on this list feel and express gratitude. Please reply to me individually and I will collect responses to post on the listserv blog.

Mary-Catherine

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mary-Catherine Harrison, Ph.D.

Thursday  May 15  —  Nurse as Miracle Worker

The patient wounded in their narrow beds
Welcome me and smile as I go by
Down the long wooden buildings where they lie
Wan weary rows of helpless haggard heads —
Mysterious burning eyes that seem to gaze
From a great distance, gaze but do not know
Why they are glad to see me come and go.
Sometimes with feeble hands as in a daze
They beckon me, poor things that vaguely grope
Out of great darkness toward a distant light;
And from the unknown woman dressed in white
Seem in some strange way to gather hope —
They do not know that in this shadowed place
It is your light they see upon my face.

Mary Bordon  (Sometime during World War I?)

In today’s Writer’s Almanac, Garrison Keillor introduced me to Mary Bordan, a flamboyant millionaire heiress who, dissatisfied with the standard of care for wounded soldiers, used her money to create a mobile field hospital that moved along the hell-hole death traps called battle lines during World War One.  A messy, high profile life as an elegant Parisian Salon hostess, Keillor tells us that  “She is best remembered for The Forbidden Zone (1929), a memoir of her work as a nurse on the front lines.”    Flamboyant or not, Bordan recognized a nurse’s central grace:  to follow wounded and desparate people into the heart of their fears and pain, knowing that damaged people “seem in some strange way to gather hope”  from fearless, competent companionship.  This bold conviction continues to live at the heart of nursing education in the 21st century — “no good science, no competence   ;;;   no fearless tenderness, no miracle of healing.”

Perhaps Bordan’s poem caught my attention because, during a wonderful half-day retreat yesterday, as we talked about many UDM commitments, nursing caught our attention during one discussion.    A memorable quote from a CHP faculty member:  “I interviewed a young woman and asked her to tell me what nurses do.  She could not describe what nurses do.  I suggested, that if she wants to become a nurse she should first get a nurse’s aide job in a hospital for a while and then come back and tell me what she’s learned.” (well, almost a quote, not verbatim).  When we teach students to find the heart of the profession they study, any discipline, we open the world to them.  I am proud to work in a university with a great nursing school named after the Founder of the Sisters of Mercy, Catherine McAuley.

For UDM’s McAuley Health Center over on the East Side, see:  http://healthprofessions.udmercy.edu/mcauley-health-center/

Have a blest day

john sj