{"id":3570,"date":"2020-07-08T00:00:49","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T04:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/?p=3570"},"modified":"2020-07-08T10:59:52","modified_gmt":"2020-07-08T14:59:52","slug":"wednesday-july-8-joy-harjo-grace-isaiahs-song-of-the-servant-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2020\/07\/08\/wednesday-july-8-joy-harjo-grace-isaiahs-song-of-the-servant-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday, July 8, Joy Harjo “Grace” – Isaiah’s “Song of the Servant of God”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, \u00a0July 8, 2020<\/p>\n

I\u00a0began learning to teach as a 24-year-old kid at Holy Rosary Mission on Pine Ridge in South Dakota. \u00a0My life daunted me pretty much every day \u2013 so much I didn\u2019t know about teaching, or about Lakota culture, or about the violence of Western culture as it assaulted Lakota culture over a century and a half. One of my jobs in that 7-day-week boarding school was to take care of\u00a0c. 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\u00a0already knew about violence and probably would not make it into a durable adulthood \u2013 and others 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\u2019s \u201cSong of the Servant of God\u201d befriended me.<\/p>\n

\u201cA bruised reed he shall not break,
\na smoldering wick he shall not quench.\u201d<\/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 came to love Joy Harjo\u2019s poem about the coming of spring after a hard winter in a racist prairie town. \u00a0I repeat it today because \u201cGrace\u201d reminds me of \u201cThe Servant Song.\u201d \u00a0Perhaps also because very many people today must stretch so hard to let their imaginations be touched by tenderness and hope . . . in these wearing times.<\/p>\n

Best to read both Isaiah\u2019s song and Joy Harjo\u2019s \u201cGrace\u201d out loud, with pauses.<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

john sj<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Isaiah and Joy Harjo \u00a0– \u00a0two prophets of hope
\n<\/strong>Today\u2019s Post \u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 \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

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

Wednesday, \u00a0July 8, 2020 I\u00a0began learning to teach as a 24-year-old kid at Holy Rosary Mission on Pine Ridge in South Dakota. \u00a0My life daunted me pretty much every day \u2013 so much I didn\u2019t know about teaching, or about … 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\/3570"}],"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=3570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3571,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3570\/revisions\/3571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}