{"id":1690,"date":"2016-01-08T00:00:57","date_gmt":"2016-01-08T05:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=1690"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:48:01","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:48:01","slug":"jan-8-you-belong-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2016\/01\/08\/jan-8-you-belong-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Jan 8 — “You Belong Here”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday January 8\u00a0—\u00a0\u201cI fell from the ice castle of myself”<\/strong><\/p>\n

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. \u00a0I had to leave at 1 hour\/20 minutes and grieved missing the beautiful human energy alive in the room.\u00a0 The university\u2019s Undergraduate Retention Committee\u00a0(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:\u00a0\u201cWhen have I felt welcome at UDM?\u201d or \u201cWhen have I felt unwelcome at UDM?\u201d \u00a0 The committee sorted the responses and read them one by one to the room full of people. \u00a0The effect was remarkable: \u00a0scripted voices read survey responses clustered by topic. \u00a0The rest of us listened.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0 Compelling eloquence over and over: \u00a0direct, candid celebrations and lamentations spoken in close-to-the-ground language. \u00a0I doubt any of us missed our collective message — that every person\u2019s welcome anoints someone else\u2019s soul and every person\u2019s micro aggression, thoughtless or malicious, leaves wounds. \u00a0I was not alone in leaving chastened and encouraged. \u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

No wonder the session went long.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s poet Richard Wehrman writes of falling out of a tightly contained place into \u00a0 . \u00a0. \u00a0. \u00a0 \u00a0into birth. \u00a0 But not only the miraculous vulnerability of our first birth; in the poem the birth process happens everywhere: \u00a0for every micro-aggression, perhaps, a micro-welcome waits for us.<\/p>\n

Retention Committee, you nailed our conversation yesterday and opened all of us who came into a new place. \u00a0 We are in your debt.<\/p>\n

Have a great weekend,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

john st sj<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Post # \u00a0 \u00a0Richard Wehrman: \u00a0 \u201cWhen I Fell into the World”<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"upside-down\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I fell into the world, it was
\nas into my mother\u2019s arms, it was into
\nthe holding of warmth, the blue-green water,
\nit was into the beings who blinked
\nback at me amazed, as I was by them.
\nI fell from separateness, I fell from constriction.
\nI fell from the ice castle of myself, through
\nthe rushing darkness, past screams,
\npast fear. \u00a0I did not float up, I fell down,
\nand it was the world that waited
\nas I was stripped bare, as I tumbled out
\nof my self\u2014faster and faster through blue
\nclouds and white, into the unknown arms
\nof joyfulness, toward the beings unnumbered
\nwho opened their hearts in love.<\/p>\n

\"Wehrman\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I Fell into the World\u201d by\u00a0Richard Wehrman.<\/a><\/p>\n

Art credit:\u00a0Image<\/a>\u00a0by unknown photographer.
\nPosted by Phyllis Cole-Dai on Jan 10, 2015 12:00 am<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday January 8\u00a0—\u00a0\u201cI 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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1693,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions\/1693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}