Poetry Blog: "A Work Day in Hard Times"

Government Is Shutting Down in Impasse

800,000 Face Furloughs; a Million More Are to Work Without Pay

         Hard times —  a Congress locked in venom and contempt for those with whom one must negotiate,  “partisan” is a common adjective for elected officials at the national level;   Detroit city caught in uncertainties about bankruptcy that stir mistrust and fear for the future;   UDM negotiating a McNichols faculty contract turned acrimonious and hurtful.

The Federal deadline arrive today.  A marker day for a Congress locked in venom and contempt for those with whom one must negotiate.

Today’s poem could be a blessing for people laid off this morning, or a blessing for all of us who come to UDM to work at the labors of education.

john st sj

The Manoeuvre

I saw the two starlings
coming in toward the wires
But at the last,
just before alighting, they

turned in the air together
and landed backwards!
that’s what got me —
to face into the wind’s teeth.

William Carlos Williams

Hard times —  a Congress locked in venom and contempt for those with whom one must negotiate,  “partisan” is a common adjective for elected officials at the national level;   Detroit city caught in uncertainties about bankruptcy that stir mistrust and fear for the future;   UDM negotiating a McNichols faculty contract turned acrimonious and hurtful.

Today’s poem

I met Joy Harjo, a Muscogee-Cherokee poet, when she was 16 and I was assigned to teach her in place of her Bureau of Indian Affairs English teacher.  I was at The Institute of American Indian Arts for half a year in 1968 teaching remedial reading.  Joy was brilliant and deeply insightful.  We are still close friends.

I think this is my favorite of her poems, “Grace.”   Blessings on your day.

john st sj

I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose and lost it anyway

in the cursed country of the fox.  We still talk about that winter, how the cold froze imaginary buffalo on the stuffed horizon of snowbanks.   The haunting voices of the starved and mutilated broke fences, crashed our thermostat dreams, and we couldn’t stand it one more time. So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory, walked through cheap apartment walls, skated through fields of ghosts into a town that never wanted us, in the epic search for grace.

Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned our way through a season of false midnights.  We had to swallow that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey. And one morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us with coffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway 80, we found grace.

I could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white buffalo escaped from memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise of balance. We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring was lean and hungry with the hope of children and corn.

I would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked into the spring thaw. We didn’t; the next season was worse. You went home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and I went south. And, Wind, I am still crazy. I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it.

Friday  September 27, 2013

Hard times —  a Congress locked in venom and contempt for those with whom one must negotiate,  “partisan” is a common adjective for elected officials at the national level;   Detroit city caught in uncertainties about bankruptcy that stir mistrust and fear for the future;   UDM negotiating a McNichols faculty contract turned acrimonious and hurtful.

Today’s prayer poem  Rabindranath Tagore  Poem # 1 Gitanjali

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.

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.

Thursday  September 26, 2013

Hard times —  a Congress locked in venom and contempt for those with whom one must negotiate,  “partisan” is a common adjective for elected officials at the national level;   Detroit city caught in uncertainties about bankruptcy that stir mistrust and fear for the future;   UDM negotiating a McNichols faculty contract turned acrimonious and hurtful.

Good morning,

john st sj

p.s.     Yesterday was the autumn equinox and since McNichols Road is a surveyor line east-west street, the sun rose right down the middle of the street.  And since

our large parking lot + the soccer and lacrosse field opens a large space of sky right next to McNichols, you can track the sun as it rises a little farther to the south each day.  Until the winter solstice (when the sun rises just about over the north-east corner of Calihan Hall),   Then sunrise begins to trek north a little bit each day until the height of summer.

Today’s poem

A little  faith will see you through.

What else will except faith in such a cynical corrupt time?

When the country goes temporarily to the dogs,

cats must learn to be circumspect,

walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith

that all this woofing is not the last word.

Even in a time of elephantine greed and vanity,

one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.

Lacking any other purpose in life,

it would be good enough to live for their sake.

Garrison Keillor

a work day in a hard time — from john st sj

Wednesday September 25, 2013

Hard times — a Congress locked in venom and contempt for those with whom one must negotiate, “partisan” is a common adjective for elected officials at the national level; Detroit city caught in uncertainties about bankruptcy that stir mistrust and fear for the future; UDM negotiating a McNichols faculty contract turned acrimonious and hurtful.

In easy times you don’t have to be so careful about your language, you will spontaneously find playful words, wise with kindness. In hard time it helpfs to pay attention to word choices. I decided to choose one prayer or poem each work day for a while. Unless I screw up that plan and forget one day or another.

Here is today’s word, sent with much respect and affection.

john st sj

 
It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
It is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
Of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying
That the kingdom lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capacities.
We cannot do everything,
And there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete
But it is a beginning, a step along the way,
An opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results,
But that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are the workers, not the master builder,
Ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Amen

Ken Untener, Bishop of Saginaw (deceased)