sh'asani eisha, sh'hechianu

Hebrew for: Thank you, God, for having made me a woman.

I've never wanted to be a boy and certainly not a man. I have female friends who wanted to be boys so they could play the sports that they were prohibited to play before Title 9 (that tells you a bit about my age). I was athletic as a child, but enjoyed field hockey, gymnastics, kickball, hiking, tennis, and was always the first picked in PE for square dancing. Later, when I became enamored with modern dance, that "sport," and the cross-training around it, consumed me. If I had been a boy, I would have had an even greater challenge convincing my parents that I wanted to major in dance in college and make a career out of dance. Sh'asani eisha, sh'hechianu.

I've had other female friends who have been fascinated by male genitalia. Not me! Such a sensitive piece of paraphernalia to be carrying on the outside of our bodies, I can imagine the pain of getting hit or the humiliation when sexual urges are so blatantly revealed for all to see. Even the ability to urinate standing up never interested me. I’m not sure why, because in many situations it is more convenient and hygienic to pee standing. Maybe my lack of interest is because I used to be so disgusted by my brothers’ distance contests, or the perpetual poor aim of many men, or maybe it was just because I was made a woman and I am biologically content with God’s design. Now, the Urinelle, a urination funnel for women, gives us the option to avoid unsanitary sitting conditions as well as save our shoes and bad knees from the squatting option. Therefore, I have options if I should change my mind.

I used to think the allure of the male lure was due to the power that society attributed to those who tucked away such an organ. Women didn’t really want the appendage, but wanted the benefits that came with. I believed that until I heard about “packing.” Last night, I went to a karaoke bar and watched two female-to-male transvestites, accessorized right down to the crotch. One was dressed in a Sean Penn kind-of-way, the other in a Broke Back Mountain look, both with facial hair and well defined forearms. One is quite renowned in the bar scene, but was no more convincing to me than the images of Steves and Maryannes in Tipping the Velvet (great book by the way). The other had me convinced until she was “outted” by the DJ. So there are women who really do want to cup their crotch with purpose and Michael Jackson bravado, women who may really want a (and here I resist my usual jargon for male genitalia)… between their legs. Thank you God, for having made me a woman!

Today, I attended my first Argentinean Tango lesson. This class is taught at a dance studio that advertises “Out Dancing,” ballroom dance lessons and parties for the GLBT community. Although most of the men in the class were gay, the traditional male/female coupling was arranged; the men were leaders, the women followers. I rotated into the arms of an attractive, silver-haired, self-professed gay man who told me he usually follows. We were taught a tricky weight change step that the “man” initiates. The idea is to guide your partner into a rhythm of parallel steps and then, when you are ready, subtly shift your leading weight to the opposite foot while your partner stays with “her” weight on the foot you led her to. Then, surreptitiously, the leader steps diagonally on the opposing foot and the couple is now dancing with opposites. When first learning something like this, the mind is quite busy, rocking back and forth in a methodical rhythm until the leader feels ready to try this little dancin’ game. Ginger Rogers use to say that female ballroom dancers have to be better than males because they dance backwards and in heals, but today, I had the easy job, I just had to listen to cues from my partner and we all know that listening to subtle cues is a female skill that comes quite natural. Thank God, I was made a woman. Sh'asani eisha, sh'hechianu.

I'm Not There

Witness the Day

Grapefruit fresh, the day
begins. Thirty killed somewhere
in Nairobi, but

that was yesterday
and I only hear the rain,
like a distant flame

diluting daily
news. I catch whiffs of charcoal,
last night’s burnt chicken

But how can I witness
when I’m not there?

I Am From

A friend was seeking writing prompts for the month of January. I gave her the following: Into what community were you born and how were you received, and by whom? I am looking into some family history, particularly my great grandmother Mamie Pearce King who was a Baptist missionary on an Arapaho Indian reservation. This poem came as a result of reading a poem in her scrapbook titled "Women of God" by E. Rinehart *. The poem was written at the turn of the century. The photo is Mamie Pearce King about 1912 after typhoid fever.

I was born into a circle of writers:
Virginia, Sappho, Emily…
through a dream, they welcomed me,
called me to pick up the pen.

I was born of Nancy, variant of Ann,
Hebrew for Grace, a wife, a daughter, a duty
Nancy, marked by devotion to man.
I was born of a woman, intent.

I was born to a circle of grandmothers,
Grace, Mary, Mamie, and Carol Joy.
Born of a virtue, a virgin, a missionary, and a song,
how sweet the sound traversing years, calling me, calling me.

I was born from Women of God, in mission fields,
circuit riders, sisters, lighthouse
keepers of the Word, stars of the sea,
Mary May, ever enduring, Mamie, she.

Mother may I, too, be called,
be merry, brisk and blithe, defined
as mirthful in the sun of righteousness, 

shining away from secrecy and shame.


Women of God, of uncertain origin,
mothers of mine, calling me.
Be swift to go, the doors are open wide.
The times are full of promise, so

follow the flow of the tide
sail out on the deep, broad seas
let your heart be brave, mothers sing to me
A mighty work is waiting.*

I was born of divine women, adored
virtuous, star women, original women
women derived, I am a woman wishing
light, song, joie de vivre, a woman wishing

fearless response to her call, I am
a woman intent on wishing you,
a woman, a new definition,
wishing you, a woman, a new name.

How shall I call you?

Seasonal Surprises

Advent

An on your tiptoes anticipation,
does it come from within
like a giggle brewing
until suddenly you realize
your endorphins hit a high
and you smile, spontaneously,
at nothing?

Or is the thrill, the unexpected happiness
something you put on with intent
like a polar fleece wrap?
You heave yourself off the couch,
away from the television
and your second glass of wine
(It's a Wonderful Life)
to say, "I'm cold. I want to be warm.
It's nearly Christmas and I want
wonder and awe and newborn
light amid the gray and early night."
So it didn't snow like Storm Watch 2007
predicted, so I'm still single, and we're still
at war. But, peace is still
a possibility. So is this when
you put on your cheery red vest
with purpose and resolve, saying,
"I am ready. What's next?"

Advent

There is a voice in the wilderness
calling
her name
she-who-lives-in-darkness
calling
as the full moon wanes
over crashing waves
falling into wilderness
at the cape of disappointment
calling
at the horizon
where the lost stay lost
until they find themselves
within each other
calling in the silence
amidst a cacophony
of uncharted waters
receive the silence
first language of God
listen
to your wilderness
and begin

Veteran’s Day Immunity

Another Portland rain taps
my morning window pane.
I wake before the alarm
to a stormy wind that overthrows
patio furniture and launches
it across the street like a battlefield
in opposition to my denial.
I’m not ready for winter.
But rain happens, leaves fall, ready or not.T
his story is getting old
with its old beginnings ~
entrances into endings.
I drag myself out of bed,
and shuffle to the cold kitchen
for a habit of coffee, Portland pleasure.
In the Oregonian,
bad news from distant places
is demoted to back pages,
following the cheery red, white and blue
mattress sale ads.
I light a candle, put on Vivaldi,
read a poem and a prayer
then get ready for work,
grateful for free parking.

How is it I have survived
this deathly rain so long?

sermonette

I mini sermon I was asked to write for a service on Sabbath:

I was asked to say a few words about what Sabbath means for me. Sabbath, the seventh day, a day for rest and renewal. I used to think a Sabbath was like a vacation, a break from work, until I took a sabbatical, a type of Sabbath, and realized that entering into the space of Sabbath, sabbatical is anything but a vacation. The writer and intuitive, Caroline Myss said, “[During Sabbath,] more than relaxation and de-stressing, we are seeking a genuine encounter with the power of Grace.” (Mystics Without Monasteries, Unity Magazine, Nov/Dec 2007, page 16).

True, Sabbath is a time of slowing down, being quiet, but it is an active rest. In order for an encounter with God to occur, we must clear our space and time of distractions, busyness, absolve our perceptual field of any imposition of rigid structure and knowing, because Sabbath is not about how much we know, it’s about whether or not we can endure listening in the silence. We have to let go of our need for control, our fear of nothingness, fear of pain. We have to let go of the security of the known, comfortable habits of our day, long enough to hear the still silent voice of God. For many of us, this is an effort; surrender control, that’s really hard work, risky business. It demands a level of faith that our finely constructed and controlled worlds will not fall apart in the process of seeking a genuine relationship with God, the Source.

As a performer, I know that place of surrender to the luminous ineffable, that place of transcendence into the Cloud of Unknowing. It’s the point in a song or dance when I’m not thinking about technique, the notes or steps; I’m not thinking about my next line, or the mistake I made in rehearsal; I am not thinking. I am purely in the moment, trusting that I am one with the movement, the gesture, the sound -- and the song sings me. This is the place of Grace; this is my Sabbath; this is my prayer. I’ve only reached this state of surrender a few times in the dance. How did I get there? Through daily devotion, discipline and practice. I trained my tool, the body, up to six hours a day, 6 days a week in order to get closer to the absolute, that collaborative conversation between grace, gravity and God.

As a poet, when the Spirit travels through me I know I have to lean back and let it; I have to trust that the writer’s craft will be there, as a part of me, without me manipulating the process. I must discipline myself to write every day in order to reach that occasional encounter with Spirit, with mystic mystery. I must empty myself of preconceived notions and perceptions, suspend all judgments, dissolve the boundaries of ego and fear, and be willing to tolerate uncertainty and a sense of insecurity. Hard work! I must have the patience to wait for the truth to reveal itself in an image, a word, an unexpected combination of thoughts.

I try to do this every day, but I don’t make a living writing poetry and if the poem hasn’t birthed itself in the hour before work that I’ve allotted for Sabbath, well what can I do? Sometimes I take the poem to work with me and I feel really guilty even if God does trump my place of employment. Sometimes I try to stay in that open state of listening, breathe the breath of Sabbath throughout the day and marry what I hear and see and feel in the office or on the bus with the light wisp of words from the morning. Sometimes I don’t return to the poem for days, weeks, even years, but every day I continue to devote myself to an opening of my heart and mind. I open wide, putting aside both the objective facts and subjective filters to listen to the Word of God. This is my purpose. This is my Sabbath. This is my prayer.

My place of Sabbath can look like inactive rest, even laziness, but actually, the devotion, discipline and practice of surrender into the silent mystery is a type of effortless work that, if I can reach an encounter with the vast power of Grace, is more renewing and life giving than any vacation I’ve ever had. I wish to leave you with a thought about Sabbath time from Rev. Eleanor Fleming. “Time in the silence is sacred. We must learn to place it ahead of everything else in our lives until it becomes such a part of our functioning that it has more authority over our thinking, our words, and our actions than the outer voices of the world.” (Rev. Eleanor Fleming, Unity Book Preview: Sacred Secrets, Unity Magazine, Nov/Dec 2007, pg 19.)

Fall

Lamentation

If you insist, God, that I stay alive
then what consolation? Don’t I too deserve more
than a couple hours of joy?

Entitlement is a nasty word.
I know too much about grief
and the ache in an old dancer’s hips.

Shivers of midnight light on downy quilts
no longer convince me that Beauty
makes these years of strain worthwhile.

I know the pain of surrender to gravity;
release to a hard, cold earth as the only way
to bliss. Beauty hurts,

so like an autumn leaf trembling
on the tip of an oak branch, I suspend
in quiet gold until it is my time to fall

and become nothing again.

From Vermont I feel Burma

Across Oceans of Compassion

Vermont maple syrup
flows bitter sweet through my pen
as silent monks fall.

Autumn orange stands
tall, still, with Myanmar roots.
Breathe my violence in

Breathe in maple’s gifts
of O2 and fluid veins.
The leaf touches me.

CO2 released ~
Winter comes early this year.
We know what to do.

Depression isn't about feeling sorry for myself

Depression

1.
My other mind
the one that I'm out of
sometimes
plays tricks on me
scribbling catastrophe
and conspiracy
in every fold of gray matter
until I can't fight It anymore
and I begin to believe
the unreasonable.

2.In this home,
not my home
resides the bear,
who is I, but not me
filled with stone-cold
polar resentment.
Fiercely caged in
an infrastructural landscape.
Is it the bars
or the space between
that lodges me,
a paws length away
from freedom?

There's No Place Like Home

I'm currently teaching poetry once a week to fifth graders who were affected by the immigration ICE Raids in our town. Tomorrow's topic is home. What is it? Where do we find it? How can we define it wherever we are? Many of these children and/or their families face deportation in the next few months. They are, for sure afraid and the message I want to leave with them is by Rumi: “Fear is the cheapest room in the house – I’d like to see you in better living conditions.”

I started thinking about metaphors for home, my own writing about home. Here are two examples:

Single Person Dwelling

I am many roomed
and every year there are fewer corners,
less closets, softer lighting, and ceilings that vault and vault.
Songs whisper through my walls:
cotton lullabies that rock me to sleep,
velvet green ballads, safe in their loneliness, and sometimes
the floors quake with a Barbra Streisand sing-along.

Laughter surrounds my walls
like tree frogs in the garden. Someday, soon, I will open
the back door and those leggy frogs will spring into the kitchen,
fill the sink and we will all croak and chuckle contagiously.
But for now I am content in knowing they are just outside the window.

A formal entrance, the front door, opens to an orderly white.
Exacting angle of an ottoman and precise tilt
of the picture frames may cause you to pause and ask,
“Unapproachable? Cool? Elegant, but stiff?”
Do not hesitate.
Do not pause. Please, come in.
Turn my rooms upside down.
Leave your garden footprints on the China Silk carpet.

Yes, the toothpaste is neatly rolled from the bottom up.
Yes, spices and books are alphabetized, magazines fanned
on the coffee table, and socks color-coded in their drawer.
But, poems fly across rooms in random chaotic scribbles.
Furniture is shoved aside when the need to dance arrives.
Passions stack up for the weekend
when a mere word like “mellifluous” can extend the day
into a ‘never get out of my bathrobe’ flurry,
a tigerlily tangle, an elegant mess.

Orchids bloom in steamy bathrooms, but die on precious shelves.
Can you smell the wet carnations, vanilla, violets, and bread?
Do you notice the ladybug on the light switch -- in my many rooms?

In my many rooms there is moonlight that slides in
through partially opened blinds; moonlight like memory
that lays in blue-white streams over elbows, wrists, and fingertips—
moonlight like memory that cannot be held.

On Writing

"The goal of writing is to keep a beleaguered line of understanding which has movement from breaking down and becoming a hole into which we sink decoratively to rest."

~ William Carlos Williams

Where Does the Poetry Come From?

On a Sunday morning

after coffee in bed

and a book

and a word like mellifluous

tickles my ears and tongue.

I do not know this word,

this mystery,

so I explore the dictionary

then think of honey

and remember

those Bit-O-Honey candy bars

that we kids bought with dimes

from the general store at Balsam Lake.

I remember

those northern lakes

many years later

when I went skinny-dipping with a lover

I think of bitter honey

and I write it down.

Honey

Mellifluous memories
harden like taffy candy
Cracked on the sidewalk
Bit ‘o Honey
Shattered bit ‘o love

Tongue the edge
hot lick saliva
Seal you back
soften in my belly hold
Barely

Lurid butter-yellow pieces
trapped in paper folds
Wrapper cracks
and barely holds

I long for the wholeness
that never was
But you were bought, already
already
broken

Reflection onf Thich Nhat Hanh and Negative Seeds

Between My Neighbors and Me

I begin with me,
my garden, my internal landscape.
It's all I can do
with these autumn leaves
that bluster over neighboring fences and walls,
leaves of anger, resentment, jealousy, and fear.
Walls that raise more walls,
fences that separate us
from our humanity.

It's all I can do
to try, keep trying every day,
every way I know how
to blow those rotting
leaves away
in this season before death.
And yet,
damned if those leaves
don't just drift right back,
silently in the night,
to my side of the fence,
while I sleep,
not trying so hard,
not trying at all to resist the wall
or rake away the leaves.

It's the walls, really
that must come down,
the fences between us,
that divide us.
It's not the leaves of emotion
that spread seeds of negativity.
It is the walls
that must come down
so we can gather all those leaves,
the leaves that make us
who we are,
into one bountiful pile.
Then and only then
can we leap, weep
and laugh together
beneath our shared oak tree.


-Wendy Thompson, 9/15/2007

September 11 and six years of still breathing

Today I decided to fast in memory of 9/11 and also to support the forgiveness of debt. I've also been studying Thich Nhat Hahn's practices and Buddhist breathing practice of breathing in the negative and out the positive.

I inhale
debts of the world.
How can we owe anyone anything?
I exhale the generosity of God, who has
given all.

One of Hahn's Gathas I've chosen for the week is:
"Waking up this morning, I smile.
Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.
I vow to live fully in each moment
and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion."

It is so hard for me to do this, both wake up smiling and live fully in the moment. I am such a planner and spend much time in memories, and my depression makes waking difficult.

Know I
am breathing in
reluctant wakefulness
of morning. Know I
am breathing
out dreams.

Know I
am breathing in
latte's chicory scent
I am breathing out today's
long fast.

Staying present and noticing on the drive to work is difficult and actually dangerous:

I lean
softly into the curve
of highway 405. I am easy
easy like Sunday morning that plays on FM103.
Drive time.

An organic
produce truck rumbles overhead.
I am present and aware of the barreling
Swift Movers and police sirens coming from behind
my exit.

I am
nearly cut off because
I drifted into memories of MayDay
and turning away from my intended 6th Avenue
destination, work;

and instead
turned onto North Burnside
to meet my lover for kisses.
How do I stay present between the past
and future?

Breathe in ~
purpose in the office.
Yet, work isn't all there is.
So I breathe out freedom to just be
simply me.

The power of poetry: Poet Sharon Olds Declines White House Invitation

This is an open letter from the poet Sharon Olds to Laura Bush decliningthe invitation to read and speak at the the National Book Festival in Washington, DC.Sharon Olds is one of the most widely read and critically acclaimed poets living in America today. Read to the end of the letter to experience her restrained, chilling eloquence.
"Dear Mrs. Bush,
I am writing to let you know why I am not able to accept your kind invitation to give a presentation at the National Book Festival on September 24, or to attend your dinner at the Library of Congress or the breakfast at the White House.In one way, it's a very appealing invitation. The idea of speaking at a festival attended by 85,000 people is inspiring! The possibility of finding new readers is exciting for a poet in personal terms, and in terms of the desire that poetry serve its constituents--all of us who need the pleasure,and the inner and outer news, it delivers. And the concept of a communityof readers and writers has long been dear to my heart. As a professor of creative writing in the graduate school of a major university, I have had the chance to be a part of some magnificent outreach writing workshops in which our students have become teachers. Over the years, they have taught in a variety of settings: a women's prison, several New York City public high schools, an oncology ward for children. Our initial program, at a 900-bed state hospital for the severely physically challenged, has been running now for twenty years, creating along the way lasting friendships between young MFA candidates and their students--long-term residents at the hospital who, in their humor, courage and wisdom,become our teachers.When you have witnessed someone non-speaking and almost non-moving spellout, with a toe, on a big plastic alphabet chart, letter by letter, his new poem, you have experienced, close up, the passion and essentialness of writing.When you have held up a small cardboard alphabet card for a writer who is completely non-speaking and non-moving (except for the eyes), and pointed first to the A, then the B, then C, then D, until you get to the first letter of the first word of the first line of the poem she has been composing in her head all week, and she lifts her eyes when that letter is touched to say yes, you feel with a fresh immediacy the human drive for creation, self-expression, accuracy, honesty and wit--and the importance of writing, which celebrates the value of each person's unique story and song. So the prospect of a festival of books seemed wonderful to me. I thought of the opportunity to talk about how to start up an outreach program. I thought of the chance to sell some books, sign some books and meet some of the citizens of Washington, DC. I thought that I could try to find a way, even as your guest, with respect, to speak about my deep feeling that we should not have invaded Iraq, and to declare my belief that the wish to invade another culture and another country--with the resultant loss of life and limb for our brave soldiers, and for the noncombatants in their home terrain--did not come out of our democracy but was instead a decision made "at the top" and forced on the people by distorted language, and by untruths. I hoped to express the fear that we have begun to live in the shadows of tyranny and religious chauvinism--the opposites of the liberty, tolerance and diversity our nation aspires to. I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness - as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing--against this undeclared and devastating war. But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration. What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us. So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.
Sincerely,SHARON OLDS"

This exchange was forwarded to the original sender by the famed American opera singer, Marilyn Horne, who had also turned down a similar invitation some time ago, as follows:"Brava! I did not write a letter when I was asked a few yrs. ago to sing for the Christmas Tree lighting at the White House. I refused, but did not go public about it. I just could not be seen as supporting this regime. It was the first term, too......." MARILYN HORNE

Why I Write

Kim Stafford writes, "Life is a universe of fragments yearning for coherence." And this is why I write, for synthesis, wholeness. I write to understand the fragments of my sadness, like individual cello notes longing for both the harmony and dissonance that create a concerto. I write because there is dew on the Canna and I miss you ~ yet I'm not really supposed to miss you and I don't understand. I write to make sense of why some people irritate more than delight me. I write to try to make sense of a senseless war, of hostile treatment of others, of differences in beliefs and the need to be right. I write from wonder.

Paint peels off the summer deck. What does it remind me of, teach me to re-member? Antique gray pushes through a fresh coat of green ~ indentations of the past converge with now in a message ~ a message of what? Planks of pine are filled with woody knots, whirls of trapped grains pooled together to create curves of intrigue, or are they bumps in an otherwise straight and narrow road. What layers of old are ready to peel from me this day, this weekend, this minute, starting yesterday? Paint chips, morning stillness, crimson honeysuckle and hummingbird busyness, blackberries in an orange bowl. And ease. I wonder.

These associations, oblique to cliche, can transform me if I choose to notice. If I listen to the universe outside of me, the large and the small of it, maybe I will begin to make sense of what churns within. Maybe I will begin to create my own whole constellation of random stars, asters from dis-asters, lucidity from these fragments of light. And wonder.

Garden Beds on 54th Street

Garden Beds on 54th Street

No more garden to tend with winter tears.
Pink lady iris will bloom without me.
It was not you who made me cry, my dear,

but rather the dark soil on my boots, too many years
weeding through bleeding hearts and rambling sweet peas 
No more garden to tend with winter tears.

Did you know that trillium plucked will not, for seven years, appear?
You never promised me or arranged a single guarantee.
It was not you who made me cry, my dear.

I was just a tourist through your beds, that was clear,
planting impatiens, a hapless rose, yearning for intimacy,
but no more a garden to tend with winter tears.

Elusive blend of petals and rain, lilies and Shakespeare,
we were both gardeners then, a laconic iris of discovery,
and this made me cry, my dear,

that like sundials in the shade, I fear
our wisp of time has gone to seed.
No more a garden to tend with winter tears.
It was not you, really, who made me cry, my dear.

Prize winning poem

This poem won a prize in the Willamette Writer's Kay Snow contest:

Flow on River
(with homage to Whitman)

Once I was
naked
on a rocky river bank
flesh on granite
tender curves
a lone drape and flow
over rugged stone
at ease
and at ebb with the ebb-tide

Once I was
stoic
baking in a summer sun
squinting
at the world
and wondering
why I stayed
at water’s edge
while fine spokes of light
glanced like
shimmering gems
off the Klickitat
Flow on, crested and scalloped-edged waves
flow on

Once you told me
you like to read the obituaries --
“Not ‘like’ as in it brings me pleasure
to read them,” you said,
happy to be alive and 50,
“but take this one for example:
23 years old, gone…
makes you think,
don’t you think?
What if you only
had 23 years, or five
or just a 3-hour river run?”

Makes you think,
don’t you think,
about the choice
to flaunt away the day,
just receive the summer sky.

Are you ready, you ask,
to pass through a class III?
“You know, it’s okay
to back out,” you say
as a curious white goose
bobs effortlessly by
suspend here and everywhere

but then I go nowhere
so I know
it’s not okay
to stop short of the finish line
shy of sunset
it’s not okay
so I catch one last gaze
from your loving and thirsty eyes
and dig my paddle
in white water
drenching me
I follow you
into the V
into the splash
of canyon shadows
and fears
and mere seconds pass
soaked and grinning
the moment splendors me
then spits us out
from the river’s tongue,
alive

Seek justice, love, kindness, walk humbly

I just received a letter from my friend Char who has completed her first year of Buddhist retreat where she meditates all day in solitude. She says she would like to be in retreat for the rest of her life, but will continue only until 2010. I think, 2010, that is so far away, but really, it’s only three years from now. I don’t claim to understand what she does in retreat or why she is called to separate herself so fully from the world; maybe though, in my ignorance, she is not separating, but entering true intimacy, contributing love and healing to this wounded world in a dimension I only dip into for a few short scraps of time in my week.

Along with paragraphs of gratitude, Char sends photos of her new retreat space behind her house, a “mini-barn of enlightenment.” I want that space, that solitude, that clearness and quiet for myself, too. I want to step out of the busyness of my days, the dis-integration of this world where we resort to cruelty and killing in the name of freedom, independence, righteousness, democracy, and peace. We are fighting for peace! I am fighting for peace within me. Every inch of me is tugged by someone(s) in need and my compassion is spent. I long to be with one Mary Oliver poem all day, stare at an uncluttered pine paneled wall, be still, just be in quiet, simple grace. I am certain that is not an accurate description of Char’s days, but from my weary vantage point, I imagine her life in a diaphanous ease. My heart, mind and soul are jammed with horrific news of each day, crisis management, reaching, grasping longing for communion, opening my heart only to have it slashed and burned as a result of someone else’s fear of intimacy. Anger rises in me and I am desperate to turn that anger into change, into slashes of red paint for frescos of enlightenment; I am desperate to turn my anger into action toward justice, into slaps of a kayak paddle through the river, making waves, into fierce loving, fierce rightness, fierce loyalty, fierce prayer, but where do I begin? Iraq? The orphans in Darfur? The undocumented workers interned in Tacoma? The hideous repetition of our shadowed pasts? The liars, the cheats, the combusting egos, the abusers and users, the game players, the politicians, the Pharaoh in the White House, me? There are just too many notes in my life and I long for a singular bell tone, one focus. Of course, I know I must begin with me, the violence within me, the self-abuse, the avoidance, addictions, fears, cravings, ego-driven actions. Char’s practice, as I perceive it, is that beginning with self, reintegration of self so that we stop contributing to the off-centeredness that threatens to destroy us.

A friend told me that her overall impression of my blog postings was that there was an unquenchable longing, thirst, desire for intimacy. Her take is accurate. I am seeking intimacy, ultimately with the One Creator God. I do seek at-One-ment. But so much of my journey has been about a mediated experience of atonement, seeking intimacy with other mortal souls to reach an ultimate intimacy with God; I have neglected to sit for too long in intimacy with myself. Perhaps that is what is so attractive to me about Char’s practice and the photographs of her mediation space.

I trust that Char is performing invaluable work in her practice and I wish to do the same in mine. She asks me how my “word work” is going. I have neglected and avoided the word work, detoured through a superficial dating relationship that circled through a whole lot of nothing, exhausted myself with menial tasks at a less than challenging job, worried about money, only sang on Sundays, barely wrote, barely gave a nod to my higher purpose. (Okay, I know I am being a bit hard on myself, I am doing good work, have been doing good work, but it just doesn’t feel like enough right now.) Char reminds me to get back to my practice of centering myself, listening for the care-full words, being courageous in new ways of being, shedding my fear, and donning the sheer, gossamer poetry of truth.

Power of Words

As more of my poetry gets out in the world, as I enter the field of poetry/journal therapy, I must be conscious of a few things:

1) First do no harm
2) Say only what is necessary, kind, and true
3) What has the power to heal has the power to hurt
4) Words bear power in their lucidity and universality. Sometimes readers think that if they resonate with the words they are also resonating with the writer; they believe they know the writer and make assumptions of false intimacy. Beware. Be careful. Be care-filled.