{"id":1870,"date":"2016-05-09T00:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-05-09T04:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=1870"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:47:44","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:47:44","slug":"may-9-joy-harjo-in-1968","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2016\/05\/09\/may-9-joy-harjo-in-1968\/","title":{"rendered":"May 9 – Joy Harjo in 1968"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday May 9 \u00a0 Joy Harjo\u2019s birthday,<\/p>\n

Every year on May 9,\u00a0I remember how we met in 1968, both of us a lot younger then, not knowing then that a long friendship was beginning. \u00a0 For one semester this young teacher and this watchful teenager worked together. \u00a0The amazing Director of The Institute of American Indian Arts, Lloyd Kiva New, had asked me to tutor Joy, \u00a0a promising young woman who wasn\u2019t helped much by the standard IAIA English classes. \u00a0 During those days, hindsight says we worked to find pathways to where her voice lived. \u00a0We lived moments of wonder. \u00a0 Then the term ended,\u00a0we said goodbye as teachers and students do, and disappeared from each other for twenty years. \u00a0But did not forget, it turns out. \u00a0When we met again in 1987, we found that our memories were alive and waiting for us.<\/p>\n

Readers of this list probably already know which of Joy Harjo\u2019s poems I would choose for her birthday. \u00a0I\u2019ve posted \u201cGrace\u201d several times and never grow tired of reading it. \u00a0 During Holy Week, 2014, reading \u201cGrace\u201d brought me back to one of my earliest teaching moments five years before Joy and I met in Santa Fe.<\/p>\n

Best to read \u201cGrace\u201d out loud, with pauses.<\/p>\n

Have a blest week,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

john st sj<\/p>\n

April 14, 2014\u00a0\u00a0 “The Servant Song\u201d \u00a0(Isaiah 42: 1-4)<\/p>\n

“Here is my servant whom I uphold
\nmy chosen one with whom I am pleased<\/p>\n

A bruised reed he shall not break,
\nand a smoldering wick he shall not quench
\nuntil he establishes justice on the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

I began learning to teach, a 24 year old kid, at Holy Rosary Mission on Pine Ridge in South Dakota. \u00a0My life daunted me pretty much every day. So much I didn\u2019t know about teaching, or about Lakota culture, or about the violence of Western culture as it dismembered Lakota culture over a century and a half. One of my jobs in that 7-day-week boarding school was to take care of the K-8 boys from their various bed times until they left the dormitory for school the next morning, c. 110 boys ages 5 to 14 in double and triple deck bunk beds. I took the K-4th graders up an hour before the older boys, got them ready for bed, tended scrapes they had acquired through the day, and told them a story once they were in bed. As they fell asleep, I walked among the bunk beds. I understood that some of these beautiful children would not make it into a durable adulthood; and some would, no knowing which. It broke my heart to see them sleeping in a safe place within an unsafe world. During those nights these 2 lines from Isaiah befriended me.<\/p>\n

“A bruised reed he shall not break,
\na smoldering wick he shall not quench.”<\/p>\n

I began to imagine that The Servant of God about whom Isaiah spoke would not be frightened off by violence in the world. It\u2019s one reason why I love Joy Harjo\u2019s poem about the coming of spring after a terrible winter in a racist prairie town. \u00a0I repeat it today because \u201cGrace\u201d reminds me of “The Servant Song.”<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Post \u00a0– \u00a0\u201cGrace<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose and lost it anyway
\nin the cursed country of the fox. We still talk about that winter, how the cold froze
\nimaginary buffalo on the stuffed horizon of snowbanks.<\/p>\n

The haunting voices of the starved and mutilated broke fences, crashed our thermostat
\ndreams, and we couldn\u2019t stand it one more time.<\/p>\n

So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory, walked through cheap apartment
\nwalls, skated through fields of ghosts into a town that never wanted us,
\nin the epic search for grace.<\/p>\n

Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned our way through a
\nseason of false midnights.<\/p>\n

We had to swallow that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey.<\/p>\n

And one morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us with
\ncoffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway 80, we found grace.<\/p>\n

I could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white buffalo escaped from<\/p>\n

memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise of balance.<\/p>\n

We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring was lean and hungry with the
\nhope of children and corn.<\/p>\n

I would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked into the spring thaw.<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t; the next season was worse.<\/p>\n

You went home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and I went south.<\/p>\n

And, Wind, I am still crazy.<\/p>\n

I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it.<\/p>\n

\"JoyHarjo-CrazyBrave\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday May 9 \u00a0 Joy Harjo\u2019s birthday, Every year on May 9,\u00a0I remember how we met in 1968, both of us a lot younger then, not knowing then that a long friendship was beginning. \u00a0 For one semester this young … 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\/1870"}],"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=1870"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1873,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870\/revisions\/1873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}