Hello and happy Sunday to this wonderful group. Thank you, Pádraig. Isn't it delightful that every single week there is someone in the comments who says, what kismet, I was just thinking about this. Today that person is me.
Pádraig, that image of the past as a living Creature with claws is so apt a phrase for what I’m exploring, because for two years I sat on my yoga mat every morning and turned toward exactly that beast, thanking ancestors I couldn't yet picture, compelled by the recognition that I didn't come from a void. Resilience, creativity, perseverence, I had finally realized that none of it was self-invented. After two years of that daily practice, I found my birth mother. The ancestors, apparently, were waiting for me to say good morning first. Now the stories she and our family tell are soil I am actively growing in, feeding a large work I am deeply immersed in right now.
Yes to the waiting, to the holding of substance even without the knowledge of it. Yes to the soil, Lisa Marie! How I love that you have stories and soil. Feeding and being fed. Yes yes yes.
Thanks, Lisa Marie for sharing your quest. And congratulations on finding your birth mother. May all the courage it took to get this far be multiplied by joy and insights. How lucky we are to be fed by Padraig’s prompts and this community.
It can be overwhelming, sometimes, to reflect on all the negative weight of history, and the cycles of war, oppression and domination that seem to recur with depressing regularity. But then I read something written by another human centuries ago and I am reminded that there is so much more that connects us than divides us and that what I’m going through today was experienced by someone else in another time and place.
For example, I came across a phrase from Plato’s Symposium recently, where he talks about the feeling of meeting a soulmate. He describes the experience as one of “… an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy” and it just felt so real and true and beautiful, even two thousand years later.
I also love this perspective from James Baldwin on history and time and the importance of remembering those who have gone before us:
“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”
Never encountered that Baldwin quote before. “….we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us.”🔥 Thanks Anne!
You're very welcome, Orna! I hadn't read much of his writing at all until very recently but everything I come across is a gem. This line of his from a letter he wrote a friend in 1957 has become my mantra: "The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it..."
As I read the Baldwin quote I feel resonance in “For nothing is fixed”. I do believe that earth is also/and a largely I un-acknowledged ancestor. The earth’s history includes us in its stories like a long fireside chat.
I think it works both ways, Margaret! It's a bit like that revolving sense of time and space that many indigenous peoples (and quantum physics!) perceive life to unfold within...
There is a collection of texts at University College Cork known as the Trotula, containing some of the earliest written accounts of midwifery, women's health and cosmetics from medieval world. Maybe some of these texts were written by a woman called Trota of Salerno. I would love to see the manuscripts for myself and to visit Salerno. Had she lived in Scotland would she have been burnt? Who gets to write things down, whose knowledge is preserved, and whose is lost? And why?
Who stands on the shoulders of the crone who stands on the shoulders of
the hag?
Who, in turn, stands on the shoulders of the harpy and the scold?
From their mouths and the mouths of all women before and to come is
I recently discovered one of my ancestors was hung as a witch near Stonehaven, Scotland. (It may have been a haven for stones, but not for her.) From the wilder reaches of Turtle Island, I feel lucky to have escaped that fate — and wonder what it could have been like if my family had stayed. I'd be writing you in Doric (Scots) I suppose and still know the esoteric recipes for dyeing fabric with lichens, mushrooms, and field weeds in a steaming caldron.
What a piece of knowledge to discover. I saw a quote somewhere that said they didn’t burn witches, they burned women. One of the prior comments, a person quoted Baldwin that seems very apt here “ we are the only witnesses they have”. I hope she rest in peace.
"… they didn't burn witches, they burned women." Thank you for passing on that observation, Elaine. One can only wonder ~ why? What sickness drove them to it? There are no witches — only the fear of women.
Thank you. These are the last lines in a play that explores the notion that a Trotula character returns to her native Scotland having learnt medicine in Europe.
Beautiful, Carolyn! I actually did my undergraduate degree in UCC but didn't know about the Trotula manuscripts so I must check them out the next time I'm down. Re women as storytellers, I picked up this book last week in a local secondhand bookstore...
Carolyn, this is solid truth! "From their mouths and the mouths of all women before and to come is The Word. Infinite wisdom" I hope you get to visit Salerno soonest!
Indeed, Carolyn, I’d love to see this play. Salerno is the port town just about an hour east of my father’s dad’s family of origin, in a little town called Padula. It’s in the mountains. Now I’ll have to visit Salerno if I go back! Try to find some history of mid-wifery. Thank you for this amazingly rich discussion.
I also have a great great grandfather who survived An Gorta Mor. He was one of 3 of a family of 15 who lived. He and his wife, also a survivor raised my grandmother (in the tradition of the west of Ireland, she was given to them to keep them company.) This man who I never met but experienced through the living memory of my grandmother takes up a lot of space in my cultural memory (trustworthy? maybe) and my imagination. According to my grandmother he wanted to believe that the Irish were one of the lost tribes of Israel. She was raised with great respect and reverence for Jewish people (which may or may not be Irish.) He was a Catholic in Glasgow with a good job. He worked as a railroad conductor which means he had the respect of his protestant colleagues. He ran guns during the Easter Uprising and when the Macs came through the Irish ghettos of Scotland, my grandmother was sent to hide in the coal bin with the guns. His name was Tomas Dunleavy (pronounced Dunshlavy.) He spoke Irish. He saved money so my grandmother could travel 2nd class on the ship to America. He could read and write. He did not touch doorknobs; my grandmother and his wife had to open all the doors so he could walk through them. He was one of 3 survivors of starvation and related diseases of a family of 15 (survivors: dad, sister Rosemary [ran off with a Traveler boy to Minnesota] and Tomas.) I repeat this because this was presented to us a nod to his importance in the household. But now I think I understand that this was an expression of PTSD. He was addicted to laundanum.
For my grandmother, he was a symbol of respectability and success in a world in which surviving was the only mode. Today, I think about Tomas with curiousity. What he was asked to live with and through. I imagine an older man, bearded, sitting by a fire with his wife and his granddaughter, speaking Irish in a whisper.
Thank you Jo. I'm often conflicted about sharing this kind of family/cultural history as there are some who would see this as disloyalty but more and more I think it's important to remember through a new lens.
What a story and so vividly told – I have just finished reading Maggie O’Farrell‘s book Land. I think you would love it, Sarah, if you are a novel reader?
I turn to Jesus of Nazareth — the Jewish teacher who lived from about 4–6 BCE to 30–33 CE. New Testament scholar, Marcus Borg, draws what he calls four broad brushstrokes which capture the essential features of Jesus’ life and work. According to Borg, these are four complementary dimensions of who Jesus was:
1. Spirit Person
* Jesus was deeply rooted in direct experience of God.
* Prayer, contemplation, and an intimate relationship with God (“Abba”) were central to his life.
* His authority came not merely from religious tradition but from spiritual experience.
2. Wisdom Teacher
* Jesus taught a transformative way of seeing reality through parables, sayings, and vivid images.
* Like other wisdom teachers, he challenged conventional assumptions and invited people into a new understanding of life and God.
3. Social Prophet
* Jesus criticized unjust social, political, and religious systems.
* He emphasized compassion, justice, and inclusion over ritual purity and religious legalism.
* In this role, he stands in the tradition of Israel’s prophets.
4. Movement Founder
* Jesus gathered followers and initiated a renewal movement within Judaism.
* His movement welcomed those often excluded from society—women, the poor, the sick, and other marginalized people.
* After his death, this movement eventually developed into Christianity.
One of my parents was adopted. There's a blank space for "father's name" on the certificate. The claws of 1950s shame, rejection and mysterious identity reach forwards, into a still current fear of being unloved or unlovable which has lasted into their late 70s now. I wish it was different.
The weight of adoption and of our systems of shaming, how little we still regard that wound of not knowing. I wish it were different for your parent too, Gyda.
I now turn to my father who possibly “art” in heaven. I always wanted him to teach me how to be a human, a man, a father. Evidence is he was not an exemplar of any of these. But he inadvertently did teach me how NOT to be any of these. A lesson is a lesson. How to be and how not to be. That is the question. How to treat others and yourself and how not to. Via Positiva or Via Negativa is not always a choice. The art of living travels both. Happy impending Father’s Day.
I love the idea of a specific person we might turn to, some way to discover an ancestor or kindred spirit who becomes personal to us. I have no such person. I look forward to reading about all of yours.
I cling, sometimes too desperately, to the belief that though we might not all be remembered as Shakespeare or Francis of Assisi are, still, what we have been and done with the borrowed atoms and molecules of our conscious (and unconscious) journey has mattered. Not just for future generations, but for the whole grand, messy, futile, beautiful evolution of this existence we are blessed to participate in.
Actually, it is easy to imagine my parents and grandparents rolling their eyes at that!
Sean, Now that I am older, I find myself wondering if I will leave behind any legacy worthy of having spent time in this body on earth at this time. Then, I remember the Jewish Midrash wisdom that went something like this: "When I die, God will not ask me why I wasn't more like Moses, but only why I struggled to fully embrace the wonder of living as ______ (fill in the blank with your name).
For some reason this reminded me of the book, Lincoln in The Bardo by George Saunders, which provides a searing look into how people cling, or don't, to how they will be remembered. The "whole grand, messy, futile, beautiful evolution of this existence... " indeed.
And this came back to mind: Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. I still have a paperback stashed somewhere in my collection. Very topical today again!
Sean and Grace and others: your thoughtful comments made me think of this recent article in the Atlantic on the wonder of being humans, “The Ordinary Miracle of Existing.” Sharing a gift link that I hope you can access -
Thank you, Karen. I love the article you gifted us. The luckiest thing, the greatest gift I’ve ever been given is just to be me. Why do I make it so difficult to live that out? You are a gift to me today. Thank you.
This article is luminous, thanks for sharing it here, Karen. "Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck we will ever experience.” Is there anything truer?
I guess I take an existential approach to that question if what we did mattered. It mattered to you and those that you interacted with. Who gets remembered and who is soon forgotten? We make of life what we could in most cases.
I was placed in the bronx shelter for children in second grade. One night many years ago wrapped in sadness and thinking of resilience i wrote down this memory.
I love thinking about the past as a beast. It is a beast—a huge one—growing bigger every moment! The image that comes to me, in this moment, is of flying over the U.S.—I cannot look out over the millions of acres of farmland and urban development without imagining how it used to be before industrialization, before European colonization, before humans. There is something in my heart that can easily conjure this deep, wild past and remember it as though it was still a part of me, my history, my past. I’ve read recently that people are more prone to crying when they are on an airplane—I’m prone to crying all the time, but I love that we know this about people and flying and this vision does, often, choke me up.
I know the past is more than loss. And I know it is more than the illusion Whitman sometimes helps me see it as. I do turn to my ancestors, every day. Ones I never met, but who I can feel. And when I feel them, there is no other way to understand it than they are also feeling me. It makes me wonder about the beast I am, and the way I am destined to live, eventually, in the past for those who live on beyond me… Thinking about this beast, with claws and teeth, but also blood and maybe a womb and milk, too…Mama past, mama beast...
There is the sense that “they are also feeling me” — the beautiful thought that thought itself, although made of nothingness is a thread that binds us all. Intuition — incorporeal — unreality is home to me.
Jo, your crying on planes brought the Overview Effect rushing to me, the expansion of seeing that astronauts describe when they see Earth whole and small and fragile all at once. You're doing that from 10,000 meters, looking down at the farmland and conjuring the wild beneath it. You are such a talent. I know I say it all the time, but you bring out the fangirl in me. This reflection, with its melancholy and its pathos, and that final image, mama beast with milk and a womb, completely reframes Pádraig's creature into something that also nourishes. You've made the beast female. What a delicious turn.
This past year I have been thinking about my Dad a lot. He died when I was 24, and he was 50. As I approach 50, I am faced with all the complexity that he was. I see his face when I look in the mirror. For some reason, I am drawn to places he liked to go, out of the way places where he wouldn't run into people. He didn't like people. I don't have the same disdain for most of the things he didn’t like, as the list was very long. However, I find myself wondering about him. I feel at times that the Creature of the past is part spectre and part me if that makes any sense. It feels mind bending sometimes.
I'm currently working on a manuscript concerning my great-grandmother, a Methodist circuit preachers wife in mid 1800s. It is a memoir infused - fictional diary of hers, where I also include essays of how my life as a pastor's wife intersected with hers. It has been a wholly healing process.
I recently discovered the musical "Suffs" & am rediscovering "Ragtime" - finding the characters' struggles & the questions raised by both works so powerful & contemporary to the challenges currently facing our nation & its hopes. There is nothing new under the sun; may the moral arc of the universe again bend toward justice. I also recognize that much of the Hebrew Bible was written to people in exile living under empire; in some ways, how like our own circumstances - yet there is always the message of caring for the community & a promise of eventual justice & restoration. May we be faithful to that promise.
I love “Suffs!” And it shows the women’s suffrage movement in all its flaws (sending Black women to the back of the march) and glory (damn they practiced persistence! And Chutzpah).
The women who settled the prairies in the middle of the North American continent toiled so hard under strenuous conditions - extreme cold and heat and winds that can blow for days. There is an old sepia-toned photo of a woman pumping water by hand as the wind blows he hair straight back from her face that is lodged in my mind. So much hard physical labor by hand to feed your family with little; one could not be tired and order out food…if you didn’t work, people could expire. Or giving birth without help, and then having to get up and care for an infant, yourself, and others.
And this other part of the history of the taking of that “settled” land by force and deceit from the Indigenous people who were on the land and part of the land before settlement.
I wrestle with questions of connection to this place of my birth, also the place for birth of others who came before me and have come after me. Can we all share in belonging to this place?
I also think of those women. Immigrants, pioneers, farmers, cooks, seamstresses, endless workers. One of my grandmothers had 17 children. She was still alive when I was young, but I never had a real conversation with her. I wrote this poem to my grandmothers, my ancestors. What they could teach me!
This is so resonating with my new found love and exploration of Celtic Spirituality. I bet they did know the moon better than we did, and many other natural things beside. I love the line “breasts and belly sagged by hard use” !! It is making me feel better about my own sagging breasts and belly! Whatever phase of life we are in, there is always the moon.
Kathryn, that is a beautiful poem. I never think or wonder back that far, and your poem encourages me to do so, to wonder back so far that people knew the intricacies of moon shadows.
Check out this first-person memoir of pioneer Lois Boblett. I've given away so many copies of this since women's voices from those times are mostly vanished, and found it very moving to learn my path has crossed hers in many places. Even more, she was just a sort of curious wanderer, not a narrow-focused homesteader or conquerer. She was younger and stronger than her husband but uncomplainingly wandered most of N. America in a fractious time without having much of an agenda. It makes me wonder how many others did the same, but what history left us is mostly colonialist tropes, not the larger sweep of human engagement with this continent.
More than one ancestor of mine was a member of the clergy. The first to arrive came in 1717 after his studies in Edinburgh, and was ordained into the ministry in Oxford, Massachusetts in 1721, where he served as pastor for 40 year. More than a century later, the daughter of the great-great grandfather mentioned in this poem was married to a Methodist preacher. They had met when both were workers in the textile mills of Yorkshire, but he felt called to spread the Nonconformist gospel and emigrated first to Canada, then to the United States. When I hold the trophy cup that I inherited, I ponder the power that organized religion has imposed on our country, both positive and negative, and also its more personal legacy in my life. Still so much to explore but poetry can be a stepping stone.
GARLAND FROM A GARDEN OF THE PAST
If a bouquet is the reward for all the hard work,
what I hold in my hands is the pick of the garden.
Flowers in full bloom softly gleam like dew drops
of sunlight, caught on petals flanked by foliage.
My fingers can trace their bas relief flourishes,
perhaps adding tarnish but with no fear of thorns.
The calligraphy engraved on this silver bouquet
declares it a trophy awarded to a Yorkshire gardener.
It was a father’s parting gift, the keepsake his daughter
chose to carry with her upon emigration to America.
The green thumb of my great-great grandfather
did not pass to me, but at least I have the cup.
Flowers die when cut and brought inside; I am
now the last of his line but the roots still live.
I can only hope the poetry seeds I try to plant
will ever thrive as well as that ancestral garden.
A few people have mentioned Jesus, ines raised evangelical Christian but rebelled against the way the fellow Christians around me blatantly worked against his teachings and tried to rationalise them away to me as a teenager.
These days he remains the model of non-violence and kindness I would aspire to as I despair of what I see in the world.
I was thinking something similar. In some ways, Jesus is the historical person who came to mind in the question, but I have mixed feelings. As I read the Gospels, I sometimes see Jesus creating an us vs. them dynamic that I see causes lots of harm in the world. I see Jesus being unnessarily blunt and mean, although I could be misunderstanding the cultural context in which he lived. But on the other hand, I see someone who includes those who are outsiders, who offers life-changing parables such as the Good Samaritan. Jesus definitely was a complex person and I'd like to understand all sides of him better.
Hello and happy Sunday to this wonderful group. Thank you, Pádraig. Isn't it delightful that every single week there is someone in the comments who says, what kismet, I was just thinking about this. Today that person is me.
Pádraig, that image of the past as a living Creature with claws is so apt a phrase for what I’m exploring, because for two years I sat on my yoga mat every morning and turned toward exactly that beast, thanking ancestors I couldn't yet picture, compelled by the recognition that I didn't come from a void. Resilience, creativity, perseverence, I had finally realized that none of it was self-invented. After two years of that daily practice, I found my birth mother. The ancestors, apparently, were waiting for me to say good morning first. Now the stories she and our family tell are soil I am actively growing in, feeding a large work I am deeply immersed in right now.
Yes to the waiting, to the holding of substance even without the knowledge of it. Yes to the soil, Lisa Marie! How I love that you have stories and soil. Feeding and being fed. Yes yes yes.
Jo, Feeding and being fed, I adore that. Agree wholeheartedly to the yes, yes, yes!
Thanks, Lisa Marie for sharing your quest. And congratulations on finding your birth mother. May all the courage it took to get this far be multiplied by joy and insights. How lucky we are to be fed by Padraig’s prompts and this community.
Patty, thank you. It’s true, Pádraig and this community are both so nourishing!
Amazing story!
It can be overwhelming, sometimes, to reflect on all the negative weight of history, and the cycles of war, oppression and domination that seem to recur with depressing regularity. But then I read something written by another human centuries ago and I am reminded that there is so much more that connects us than divides us and that what I’m going through today was experienced by someone else in another time and place.
For example, I came across a phrase from Plato’s Symposium recently, where he talks about the feeling of meeting a soulmate. He describes the experience as one of “… an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy” and it just felt so real and true and beautiful, even two thousand years later.
I also love this perspective from James Baldwin on history and time and the importance of remembering those who have gone before us:
“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”
Baldwin! Damn, his writing is always on fire. Thank you so much for sharing this quote. I’m yoinking it for my collection.
Yoink away, Jo!!
As am I!
Thank you for the words 'nothing is fixed.....the earth is always shifting....'
Never encountered that Baldwin quote before. “….we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us.”🔥 Thanks Anne!
You're very welcome, Orna! I hadn't read much of his writing at all until very recently but everything I come across is a gem. This line of his from a letter he wrote a friend in 1957 has become my mantra: "The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it..."
As I read the Baldwin quote I feel resonance in “For nothing is fixed”. I do believe that earth is also/and a largely I un-acknowledged ancestor. The earth’s history includes us in its stories like a long fireside chat.
Love that, Margaret!
Hi Anne. The more I thought about this the more I think I got it wrong! I think it is actually us who are the ancestors of the earth!
I think it works both ways, Margaret! It's a bit like that revolving sense of time and space that many indigenous peoples (and quantum physics!) perceive life to unfold within...
Anne, both quotes are delicious. Where is that Baldwin quote from? Oops, never mind, I see you've cited below!
Thank you for this. In which book of Baldwin’s can I find this?
Glad you liked it, Ellen. It's from his 1964 essay "Nothing Personal".
There is a collection of texts at University College Cork known as the Trotula, containing some of the earliest written accounts of midwifery, women's health and cosmetics from medieval world. Maybe some of these texts were written by a woman called Trota of Salerno. I would love to see the manuscripts for myself and to visit Salerno. Had she lived in Scotland would she have been burnt? Who gets to write things down, whose knowledge is preserved, and whose is lost? And why?
Who stands on the shoulders of the crone who stands on the shoulders of
the hag?
Who, in turn, stands on the shoulders of the harpy and the scold?
From their mouths and the mouths of all women before and to come is
The Word. Infinite wisdom.
I recently discovered one of my ancestors was hung as a witch near Stonehaven, Scotland. (It may have been a haven for stones, but not for her.) From the wilder reaches of Turtle Island, I feel lucky to have escaped that fate — and wonder what it could have been like if my family had stayed. I'd be writing you in Doric (Scots) I suppose and still know the esoteric recipes for dyeing fabric with lichens, mushrooms, and field weeds in a steaming caldron.
And I’m in the lowlands so I wid nae mak oot yer Doric -?this being the place of llalans:Scots speech - much closer to northern Irish.
Ahh … I've so much tae learn!
What a piece of knowledge to discover. I saw a quote somewhere that said they didn’t burn witches, they burned women. One of the prior comments, a person quoted Baldwin that seems very apt here “ we are the only witnesses they have”. I hope she rest in peace.
"… they didn't burn witches, they burned women." Thank you for passing on that observation, Elaine. One can only wonder ~ why? What sickness drove them to it? There are no witches — only the fear of women.
"Who gets to write things down” - this gave me chills
Thank you. These are the last lines in a play that explores the notion that a Trotula character returns to her native Scotland having learnt medicine in Europe.
Beautiful, Carolyn! I actually did my undergraduate degree in UCC but didn't know about the Trotula manuscripts so I must check them out the next time I'm down. Re women as storytellers, I picked up this book last week in a local secondhand bookstore...
https://www.elizabethlesser.org/cassandraspeaks
Carolyn, this is solid truth! "From their mouths and the mouths of all women before and to come is The Word. Infinite wisdom" I hope you get to visit Salerno soonest!
Last lines of a play of mine - I’m
Hoping Solerno trip Could be tax deductible! 😂
Heh! Also, that’s a play I’d pay good money to see!
Indeed, Carolyn, I’d love to see this play. Salerno is the port town just about an hour east of my father’s dad’s family of origin, in a little town called Padula. It’s in the mountains. Now I’ll have to visit Salerno if I go back! Try to find some history of mid-wifery. Thank you for this amazingly rich discussion.
I also have a great great grandfather who survived An Gorta Mor. He was one of 3 of a family of 15 who lived. He and his wife, also a survivor raised my grandmother (in the tradition of the west of Ireland, she was given to them to keep them company.) This man who I never met but experienced through the living memory of my grandmother takes up a lot of space in my cultural memory (trustworthy? maybe) and my imagination. According to my grandmother he wanted to believe that the Irish were one of the lost tribes of Israel. She was raised with great respect and reverence for Jewish people (which may or may not be Irish.) He was a Catholic in Glasgow with a good job. He worked as a railroad conductor which means he had the respect of his protestant colleagues. He ran guns during the Easter Uprising and when the Macs came through the Irish ghettos of Scotland, my grandmother was sent to hide in the coal bin with the guns. His name was Tomas Dunleavy (pronounced Dunshlavy.) He spoke Irish. He saved money so my grandmother could travel 2nd class on the ship to America. He could read and write. He did not touch doorknobs; my grandmother and his wife had to open all the doors so he could walk through them. He was one of 3 survivors of starvation and related diseases of a family of 15 (survivors: dad, sister Rosemary [ran off with a Traveler boy to Minnesota] and Tomas.) I repeat this because this was presented to us a nod to his importance in the household. But now I think I understand that this was an expression of PTSD. He was addicted to laundanum.
For my grandmother, he was a symbol of respectability and success in a world in which surviving was the only mode. Today, I think about Tomas with curiousity. What he was asked to live with and through. I imagine an older man, bearded, sitting by a fire with his wife and his granddaughter, speaking Irish in a whisper.
The doorknobs! Amazing.
Thank you, Sarah, I was so pulled in to your writing here and could have stayed with you for much more…
Thank you Jo. I'm often conflicted about sharing this kind of family/cultural history as there are some who would see this as disloyalty but more and more I think it's important to remember through a new lens.
What a story and so vividly told – I have just finished reading Maggie O’Farrell‘s book Land. I think you would love it, Sarah, if you are a novel reader?
I am and I will look for it!
Sarah, this is lovely writing. I, too, am now intrigued by Tomas.
Thank you. A pivotal figure in my life who I never had a hope of meeting.
Sarah, what a beautiful, nuanced tribute not only to the power of survival but to a life that contributed so much.
Thank you. I'm here for the small stories.
I turn to Jesus of Nazareth — the Jewish teacher who lived from about 4–6 BCE to 30–33 CE. New Testament scholar, Marcus Borg, draws what he calls four broad brushstrokes which capture the essential features of Jesus’ life and work. According to Borg, these are four complementary dimensions of who Jesus was:
1. Spirit Person
* Jesus was deeply rooted in direct experience of God.
* Prayer, contemplation, and an intimate relationship with God (“Abba”) were central to his life.
* His authority came not merely from religious tradition but from spiritual experience.
2. Wisdom Teacher
* Jesus taught a transformative way of seeing reality through parables, sayings, and vivid images.
* Like other wisdom teachers, he challenged conventional assumptions and invited people into a new understanding of life and God.
3. Social Prophet
* Jesus criticized unjust social, political, and religious systems.
* He emphasized compassion, justice, and inclusion over ritual purity and religious legalism.
* In this role, he stands in the tradition of Israel’s prophets.
4. Movement Founder
* Jesus gathered followers and initiated a renewal movement within Judaism.
* His movement welcomed those often excluded from society—women, the poor, the sick, and other marginalized people.
* After his death, this movement eventually developed into Christianity.
I resonate with this person.
Michael, thank you for sharing this way of regarding Jesus.
One of my parents was adopted. There's a blank space for "father's name" on the certificate. The claws of 1950s shame, rejection and mysterious identity reach forwards, into a still current fear of being unloved or unlovable which has lasted into their late 70s now. I wish it was different.
The weight of adoption and of our systems of shaming, how little we still regard that wound of not knowing. I wish it were different for your parent too, Gyda.
I now turn to my father who possibly “art” in heaven. I always wanted him to teach me how to be a human, a man, a father. Evidence is he was not an exemplar of any of these. But he inadvertently did teach me how NOT to be any of these. A lesson is a lesson. How to be and how not to be. That is the question. How to treat others and yourself and how not to. Via Positiva or Via Negativa is not always a choice. The art of living travels both. Happy impending Father’s Day.
-Dwight Lee Wolter
Dwight, it seems that hard lessons were imparted to you; I much appreciate how you are able to regard them now.
Thank you, Karen, for taking the time and mindfulness to craft your brief but powerful and affirming message.
You have a way with words and a wisdom on the way you see things. Thank you, Dwight!
Thank you, Michael.
I love the idea of a specific person we might turn to, some way to discover an ancestor or kindred spirit who becomes personal to us. I have no such person. I look forward to reading about all of yours.
I cling, sometimes too desperately, to the belief that though we might not all be remembered as Shakespeare or Francis of Assisi are, still, what we have been and done with the borrowed atoms and molecules of our conscious (and unconscious) journey has mattered. Not just for future generations, but for the whole grand, messy, futile, beautiful evolution of this existence we are blessed to participate in.
Actually, it is easy to imagine my parents and grandparents rolling their eyes at that!
Sean, Now that I am older, I find myself wondering if I will leave behind any legacy worthy of having spent time in this body on earth at this time. Then, I remember the Jewish Midrash wisdom that went something like this: "When I die, God will not ask me why I wasn't more like Moses, but only why I struggled to fully embrace the wonder of living as ______ (fill in the blank with your name).
Grace, thank you for sharing that wisdom question. It really is causing me to ponder how I think of myself and others.
Thank you, Grace. Wise words indeed. So much time trying to live in other people’s skin.
Oh that’s good. I will ponder.
For some reason this reminded me of the book, Lincoln in The Bardo by George Saunders, which provides a searing look into how people cling, or don't, to how they will be remembered. The "whole grand, messy, futile, beautiful evolution of this existence... " indeed.
And this came back to mind: Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. I still have a paperback stashed somewhere in my collection. Very topical today again!
Sean and Grace and others: your thoughtful comments made me think of this recent article in the Atlantic on the wonder of being humans, “The Ordinary Miracle of Existing.” Sharing a gift link that I hope you can access -
https://www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2026/06/the-ordinary-miracle-of-existing/687351/?gift=5eKSR3U8u9N6ij7gq_c6KBV4Sz8ISeZB9NX1nR7EvmY&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Thank you, Karen. I love the article you gifted us. The luckiest thing, the greatest gift I’ve ever been given is just to be me. Why do I make it so difficult to live that out? You are a gift to me today. Thank you.
And likewise, your gift of sharing part of you with me. Thank you.
This article is luminous, thanks for sharing it here, Karen. "Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck we will ever experience.” Is there anything truer?
Thank you so much for sharing. I remember reading “Einstein’s Dreams.
I guess I take an existential approach to that question if what we did mattered. It mattered to you and those that you interacted with. Who gets remembered and who is soon forgotten? We make of life what we could in most cases.
I was placed in the bronx shelter for children in second grade. One night many years ago wrapped in sadness and thinking of resilience i wrote down this memory.
i had a foster brother whom i shared a room
in both second and third
grade
he'd make small drawings of angels
and tape them to the wall
by his bed
each night he'd kiss these drawings
so i asked, what are you
doing
and he said, i'm kissing my angels
goodnight
Oh my! What a beautful story. It makes me want to paint some of my angels.
I love thinking about the past as a beast. It is a beast—a huge one—growing bigger every moment! The image that comes to me, in this moment, is of flying over the U.S.—I cannot look out over the millions of acres of farmland and urban development without imagining how it used to be before industrialization, before European colonization, before humans. There is something in my heart that can easily conjure this deep, wild past and remember it as though it was still a part of me, my history, my past. I’ve read recently that people are more prone to crying when they are on an airplane—I’m prone to crying all the time, but I love that we know this about people and flying and this vision does, often, choke me up.
I know the past is more than loss. And I know it is more than the illusion Whitman sometimes helps me see it as. I do turn to my ancestors, every day. Ones I never met, but who I can feel. And when I feel them, there is no other way to understand it than they are also feeling me. It makes me wonder about the beast I am, and the way I am destined to live, eventually, in the past for those who live on beyond me… Thinking about this beast, with claws and teeth, but also blood and maybe a womb and milk, too…Mama past, mama beast...
There is the sense that “they are also feeling me” — the beautiful thought that thought itself, although made of nothingness is a thread that binds us all. Intuition — incorporeal — unreality is home to me.
Jo, your crying on planes brought the Overview Effect rushing to me, the expansion of seeing that astronauts describe when they see Earth whole and small and fragile all at once. You're doing that from 10,000 meters, looking down at the farmland and conjuring the wild beneath it. You are such a talent. I know I say it all the time, but you bring out the fangirl in me. This reflection, with its melancholy and its pathos, and that final image, mama beast with milk and a womb, completely reframes Pádraig's creature into something that also nourishes. You've made the beast female. What a delicious turn.
You inner fangirl is so nourishing to me :) Thanks for vibing, always
Moving and powerful! Thank you, Jo!
Isn’t it just!
This past year I have been thinking about my Dad a lot. He died when I was 24, and he was 50. As I approach 50, I am faced with all the complexity that he was. I see his face when I look in the mirror. For some reason, I am drawn to places he liked to go, out of the way places where he wouldn't run into people. He didn't like people. I don't have the same disdain for most of the things he didn’t like, as the list was very long. However, I find myself wondering about him. I feel at times that the Creature of the past is part spectre and part me if that makes any sense. It feels mind bending sometimes.
Makes perfect sense to me, Carlie
I’m with Jo, it makes perfect sense, and what a wonderful way to put it...
It seems a gossamer string —unseen spirit— tracing through thought and consciousness is holding us all together even though we feel alone.
I'm currently working on a manuscript concerning my great-grandmother, a Methodist circuit preachers wife in mid 1800s. It is a memoir infused - fictional diary of hers, where I also include essays of how my life as a pastor's wife intersected with hers. It has been a wholly healing process.
An exciting endeavor, Evelyn! Wishing you all the best with your manuscript.
That sounds fascinating, Evelyn. I wish you much inspiration as you forge ahead with the work.
I recently discovered the musical "Suffs" & am rediscovering "Ragtime" - finding the characters' struggles & the questions raised by both works so powerful & contemporary to the challenges currently facing our nation & its hopes. There is nothing new under the sun; may the moral arc of the universe again bend toward justice. I also recognize that much of the Hebrew Bible was written to people in exile living under empire; in some ways, how like our own circumstances - yet there is always the message of caring for the community & a promise of eventual justice & restoration. May we be faithful to that promise.
I love “Suffs!” And it shows the women’s suffrage movement in all its flaws (sending Black women to the back of the march) and glory (damn they practiced persistence! And Chutzpah).
The women who settled the prairies in the middle of the North American continent toiled so hard under strenuous conditions - extreme cold and heat and winds that can blow for days. There is an old sepia-toned photo of a woman pumping water by hand as the wind blows he hair straight back from her face that is lodged in my mind. So much hard physical labor by hand to feed your family with little; one could not be tired and order out food…if you didn’t work, people could expire. Or giving birth without help, and then having to get up and care for an infant, yourself, and others.
And this other part of the history of the taking of that “settled” land by force and deceit from the Indigenous people who were on the land and part of the land before settlement.
I wrestle with questions of connection to this place of my birth, also the place for birth of others who came before me and have come after me. Can we all share in belonging to this place?
I also think of those women. Immigrants, pioneers, farmers, cooks, seamstresses, endless workers. One of my grandmothers had 17 children. She was still alive when I was young, but I never had a real conversation with her. I wrote this poem to my grandmothers, my ancestors. What they could teach me!
Phases
I wonder if my grandmothers knew the moon
better than me. I wonder how far back
I'd have to go to find the one entirely
attuned to all its moods, the one who knew
without a glance how wide the span of light
on any given night between the crisp edge
and the edge blurred by the moon shrugging
its shoulder away from the sun. I imagine
her: breasts and belly sagged by hard
use, but empty now, finished. I see
her walking out onto her porch, drying
her hands, or standing a little away
from the fire, holding her blanket
tightly around her shoulders, watching
a gibbous moon rise over the trees.
I wonder if she would recognize me.
This is so resonating with my new found love and exploration of Celtic Spirituality. I bet they did know the moon better than we did, and many other natural things beside. I love the line “breasts and belly sagged by hard use” !! It is making me feel better about my own sagging breasts and belly! Whatever phase of life we are in, there is always the moon.
Thank you Elizabeth. "Whatever phase of life we are in, there is always the moon." Love it!
Kathryn, that is a beautiful poem. I never think or wonder back that far, and your poem encourages me to do so, to wonder back so far that people knew the intricacies of moon shadows.
https://www.abebooks.com/9780982174074/Fair-Distance-Lois-Bobletts-Western-0982174071/plp
Check out this first-person memoir of pioneer Lois Boblett. I've given away so many copies of this since women's voices from those times are mostly vanished, and found it very moving to learn my path has crossed hers in many places. Even more, she was just a sort of curious wanderer, not a narrow-focused homesteader or conquerer. She was younger and stronger than her husband but uncomplainingly wandered most of N. America in a fractious time without having much of an agenda. It makes me wonder how many others did the same, but what history left us is mostly colonialist tropes, not the larger sweep of human engagement with this continent.
An important reflection and a great question you conclude with. Thanks, Karen!
Thank you for the recommendation! I appreciate that.
More than one ancestor of mine was a member of the clergy. The first to arrive came in 1717 after his studies in Edinburgh, and was ordained into the ministry in Oxford, Massachusetts in 1721, where he served as pastor for 40 year. More than a century later, the daughter of the great-great grandfather mentioned in this poem was married to a Methodist preacher. They had met when both were workers in the textile mills of Yorkshire, but he felt called to spread the Nonconformist gospel and emigrated first to Canada, then to the United States. When I hold the trophy cup that I inherited, I ponder the power that organized religion has imposed on our country, both positive and negative, and also its more personal legacy in my life. Still so much to explore but poetry can be a stepping stone.
GARLAND FROM A GARDEN OF THE PAST
If a bouquet is the reward for all the hard work,
what I hold in my hands is the pick of the garden.
Flowers in full bloom softly gleam like dew drops
of sunlight, caught on petals flanked by foliage.
My fingers can trace their bas relief flourishes,
perhaps adding tarnish but with no fear of thorns.
The calligraphy engraved on this silver bouquet
declares it a trophy awarded to a Yorkshire gardener.
It was a father’s parting gift, the keepsake his daughter
chose to carry with her upon emigration to America.
The green thumb of my great-great grandfather
did not pass to me, but at least I have the cup.
Flowers die when cut and brought inside; I am
now the last of his line but the roots still live.
I can only hope the poetry seeds I try to plant
will ever thrive as well as that ancestral garden.
Lovely Deborah, that last line is very touching.
A few people have mentioned Jesus, ines raised evangelical Christian but rebelled against the way the fellow Christians around me blatantly worked against his teachings and tried to rationalise them away to me as a teenager.
These days he remains the model of non-violence and kindness I would aspire to as I despair of what I see in the world.
I was thinking something similar. In some ways, Jesus is the historical person who came to mind in the question, but I have mixed feelings. As I read the Gospels, I sometimes see Jesus creating an us vs. them dynamic that I see causes lots of harm in the world. I see Jesus being unnessarily blunt and mean, although I could be misunderstanding the cultural context in which he lived. But on the other hand, I see someone who includes those who are outsiders, who offers life-changing parables such as the Good Samaritan. Jesus definitely was a complex person and I'd like to understand all sides of him better.