“To walk the perimeter of truth for understanding”. Isn’t this all we are doing, and maybe the best we can hope for? Amid all the shouting, accusations, and demanding of rights and wrongs, the best solutions seem to always come from those willing to walk together (with or without chocolate) toward a better understanding of some deeper truth.
I love this poem for so many reasons! What I’d really love would be to read the whole thing aloud together with people, letting the language rock us gently through our own broken hearts. For me, the whole book is a balm for my soul, highlighting hurts in the way that they become a soft spot to land and illuminating choices for love going forward. Thanks for sharing!
I have often thought of how problematic the word “dominion” is in the King James version of Genesis. That God gave the humans dominion over the land and the animals. And the way this has informed so much destruction, when another reading, a more generous and true one in my opinion, would be responsibility. To care for the land and the animals. And this poem is making me think beyond that to a shared, equal existence, which feels the most true. All holy beings. So many lines are so resonant and beautiful but the line, “by listening we will know who we are,” keeps echoing in my mind. How little listening there is right now. How necessary.
Hearing the poem and its expression is a felt experience. Harjo evokes embodied wisdom, senses, ancestry, interdependence, kinship. And at the heart of it all, a grief that needs to be felt. When all of this is pushed away, our capacity for resolution is so diminished. Even to walk, to taste chocolate creates a possibility! What a stunning episode. Thank you all - to be shared widely ❤️
I remember reading this poem several years ago and, while i instantly loved it, i also felt like I had found a lost treasure, one which I wished I had found years earlier. For it seemed to chart many lessons I had learned the hard way and lay before me even more that I had yet to learn. I did a lot of conflict resolution work from the mid-80s through the 90s. Much of it was in the context of violent struggles between powerful actors and even now, decades later, I cannot speak about much of it. I stumbled into this work initially because I had a reputation as a very good facilitator which is actually pretty thin credentials. But I had a knack for finding myself in the midst of conflict and being able to serve the moment as requested by others. My first, somewhat formal introduction to conflict resolution occurred when I was invited to facilitate a session between some townspeople and the representatives of a language school where I had just spent six weeks learning spanish. I was told my broken spanish was adequate and more fool than not, I accepted. Long story short: it went well and no one got hurt. When I walked into the meeting room, the place was packed with young and old, men and women, farmers and mechanics. And half the people were armed with extremely large weapons. Asking people to disarm was a non-starter as we were in a war zone. I barely remember after so many years how I managed to get the various sides talking. I made fun of myself ... a LOT. And that helped. And I half-suspected that someone knew that a fool who was new to the language was what the group needed - if they were laughing at me... well... as i said: no one got hurt. But, suffice to say, regardless of my almost decade of experience facilitating various kinds of education and community organizing work, I barely knew what I was doing. After that almost literal trial-by-fire introduction, I quickly learned some of the more formal approaches to conflict resolution and, while I have never advertised my capacities nor sought income from such work, the work found me. I have a deep respect for conflict and have noticed that most people are very conflict averse (it's kind of hard-wired into English Canadian culture; less so in French Canadian culture and i am mixed French and English and raised in French Canada and I am not conflict averse). For over ten years i've been a single-parent. My son is indigenous by his mom and it's been a huge priority for me to keep him connected to indigenous culture. It's been tough. So, reading Joy Harjo's poem feels, I suppose, rather bittersweet. I've not looked at this poem for several years and feel like it's landed before me once again as if my ancestors are saying: "Pay Attention!" And I will. Rereading it this morning, I can say with full confidence, that it is the single most important work i've ever read about conflict resolution as well as living grounded on this earth. So, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. And I can't wait to read what others are saying (but i got a class to prep - so will look forward to settling into reading more this evening - I am always so moved by so much of what everyone writes).
For me, the twist that allowed this poem to enter my life was Harjo's line about brushing her hair at the sink. I felt like it honored the ways we live in the particular moments of our lives as well as in the extensive NOW of the stars, the land and the ancestors preceding and following us. I listened on my morning walk and she let me and the particular trees I encountered be part of the poem too.
I love this poem. It makes me want to ask this question as frequently as possible: what will the land remember about each conflict it has witnessed/experienced that neither 'side' will? Are there only two sides? Perhaps not, given that the land is both the third & the container (alongside the deer, turtle, crane, and spirits). Thank you for sharing, Pádraig. :)
Joy Harjo’s poetry excerpts here mention walking metaphorically. Padraig, your friend’s anecdote of the two sharing the chocolate shows how walking can be helpful in a literal way between people when they can take time together.
In Harjo’s poem, the land BELONGS to no man but we can walk it together. We can make claims to it, but we can only honor such claims through justice. And justice is not static either. Each generation must revisit justice and strive to keep it in balance.
Harjo places the speaker in a hotel, a stopping place where she is able to achieve a necessary level of self care (brushing hair, for example) but from which she will ultimately move along and away from. There is gratefulness in finding momentary peace but not even home is always static.
She speaks of the power of poetry by comparing it to a panther poised in its powerful stance. We know it is ready to pounce and feel it too. The holiness of poetic language is her morning star. She realizes poetry’s ability to affect positive change.
Padraig, thank you for your own soothing eloquence and truth-seeking words. You are the first person I ever remember using “imagination” in such a positive and powerful way. Bless the one who saw one of your life’s gifts glowing strongly in the you that was going through your 20s.
So delighted that you chose Joy for this first episode. As an old Irish Lakota it is good to see a Turtle Island woman poet laureate featured here. Aho 🙏🏽♥️
I am beginning to feel what this series is doing and will provide for me. To approach the urgent politics of our times through poetry like this is entirely refreshing. As a Jew, a Zionist, a Pacifist and Clergy, these first 2 poems raise many questions close to my bones...
Judaism teaches that we own nothing, least of all our children of whom we are temporary custodians. Temporary is the operative word. Then how can we possibly think we own land, the ground beneath us? We do protect our children like precious possessions and we do own property. So we forget the deeper paradox of ownership, that we aim to own through exchange our whole lives but in fact we own nothing and we are owed nothing. No one is entitled. All is earned through justice and justice means nothing if not sacred responsibility
Native Americans were not owners, they were original custodians. Their respectful, grounded relationship with the land was stolen from them even as their generational homes were also well established.
The history of the State of Israel and the Arab/Palestinian past is filled with these paradoxes and complexities
We own nothing really but our ambition to own and be owed something is a transactional myth perpetrated by the panther within us.
If only Israelis and Gazans can explore together what it means to BELONG to a land they are both connected to and what the land means intimately and
nutritionally for all who dwell there rather than hold fast to rightness about owed and owned territory. Its this panther like need to have lines drawn, take sides, puff up right positions that lead to
I never thought about the meaning of ‘ground rules’ until now either. This book had been on my list of books to read for a few years - this is the prod I need to go and buy it.
Wow, wonderful. Unfortunately, my own response to conflict can be summarized by two words from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "Run away!" For the scene in the movie, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92gP2J0CUjc
Oh my goodness, Pádraig. I’ve been living with this poem and your insight about it all day. It is teaching me a lot.
Another way to imagine conflict is as an invitation to work on something. That’s what Joy’s words are suggesting to me. Conflict brings its own energy and she encourages us to turn that energy towards resolution. Take that energy on a walk. Move with it.
I read the rest of the poem and discovered the beautiful resolution in Part 6:
“When we made it back home …
We gave thanks for the story, for all parts of the story
because it was by the light of those challenges we knew
ourselves—
We asked for forgiveness.
We laid down our burdens next to each other.”
I’m so in awe of Joy Harjo’s generous, wise spirit. She is a Lodestar. Thank you for inviting her into this unbound poetic space you curate. 🙏🏼
What I focus on is the interwoven nature of our histories and the need to be accountable and responsible to them. In laying out a pathway of conflict resolution and reading through the entirety of Joy Harjo's poem, I think about where does one even start when equal footing has never been the case? When deep harm and trauma has been caused and never accounted for and then communities are required to move forward with conflict resolution, and usually the most vulnerable or marginalized bare the brunt of the labor, what does that make conflict resolution? The interwoven history of Indigenous communities through continual settler colonialism flows through Harjo's work, as she details the broken treaties and the continual violence set against Indigenous people. So, those are just some thoughts, and they are thoughts with continued relevance now in understanding conflict resolution.
“To walk the perimeter of truth for understanding”. Isn’t this all we are doing, and maybe the best we can hope for? Amid all the shouting, accusations, and demanding of rights and wrongs, the best solutions seem to always come from those willing to walk together (with or without chocolate) toward a better understanding of some deeper truth.
People outside looking in…walking the perimeter, living on the edges, life at the margins…
I love this poem for so many reasons! What I’d really love would be to read the whole thing aloud together with people, letting the language rock us gently through our own broken hearts. For me, the whole book is a balm for my soul, highlighting hurts in the way that they become a soft spot to land and illuminating choices for love going forward. Thanks for sharing!
I have often thought of how problematic the word “dominion” is in the King James version of Genesis. That God gave the humans dominion over the land and the animals. And the way this has informed so much destruction, when another reading, a more generous and true one in my opinion, would be responsibility. To care for the land and the animals. And this poem is making me think beyond that to a shared, equal existence, which feels the most true. All holy beings. So many lines are so resonant and beautiful but the line, “by listening we will know who we are,” keeps echoing in my mind. How little listening there is right now. How necessary.
Hearing the poem and its expression is a felt experience. Harjo evokes embodied wisdom, senses, ancestry, interdependence, kinship. And at the heart of it all, a grief that needs to be felt. When all of this is pushed away, our capacity for resolution is so diminished. Even to walk, to taste chocolate creates a possibility! What a stunning episode. Thank you all - to be shared widely ❤️
I remember reading this poem several years ago and, while i instantly loved it, i also felt like I had found a lost treasure, one which I wished I had found years earlier. For it seemed to chart many lessons I had learned the hard way and lay before me even more that I had yet to learn. I did a lot of conflict resolution work from the mid-80s through the 90s. Much of it was in the context of violent struggles between powerful actors and even now, decades later, I cannot speak about much of it. I stumbled into this work initially because I had a reputation as a very good facilitator which is actually pretty thin credentials. But I had a knack for finding myself in the midst of conflict and being able to serve the moment as requested by others. My first, somewhat formal introduction to conflict resolution occurred when I was invited to facilitate a session between some townspeople and the representatives of a language school where I had just spent six weeks learning spanish. I was told my broken spanish was adequate and more fool than not, I accepted. Long story short: it went well and no one got hurt. When I walked into the meeting room, the place was packed with young and old, men and women, farmers and mechanics. And half the people were armed with extremely large weapons. Asking people to disarm was a non-starter as we were in a war zone. I barely remember after so many years how I managed to get the various sides talking. I made fun of myself ... a LOT. And that helped. And I half-suspected that someone knew that a fool who was new to the language was what the group needed - if they were laughing at me... well... as i said: no one got hurt. But, suffice to say, regardless of my almost decade of experience facilitating various kinds of education and community organizing work, I barely knew what I was doing. After that almost literal trial-by-fire introduction, I quickly learned some of the more formal approaches to conflict resolution and, while I have never advertised my capacities nor sought income from such work, the work found me. I have a deep respect for conflict and have noticed that most people are very conflict averse (it's kind of hard-wired into English Canadian culture; less so in French Canadian culture and i am mixed French and English and raised in French Canada and I am not conflict averse). For over ten years i've been a single-parent. My son is indigenous by his mom and it's been a huge priority for me to keep him connected to indigenous culture. It's been tough. So, reading Joy Harjo's poem feels, I suppose, rather bittersweet. I've not looked at this poem for several years and feel like it's landed before me once again as if my ancestors are saying: "Pay Attention!" And I will. Rereading it this morning, I can say with full confidence, that it is the single most important work i've ever read about conflict resolution as well as living grounded on this earth. So, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. And I can't wait to read what others are saying (but i got a class to prep - so will look forward to settling into reading more this evening - I am always so moved by so much of what everyone writes).
For me, the twist that allowed this poem to enter my life was Harjo's line about brushing her hair at the sink. I felt like it honored the ways we live in the particular moments of our lives as well as in the extensive NOW of the stars, the land and the ancestors preceding and following us. I listened on my morning walk and she let me and the particular trees I encountered be part of the poem too.
I love this poem. It makes me want to ask this question as frequently as possible: what will the land remember about each conflict it has witnessed/experienced that neither 'side' will? Are there only two sides? Perhaps not, given that the land is both the third & the container (alongside the deer, turtle, crane, and spirits). Thank you for sharing, Pádraig. :)
"The panther is a poem of fire green eyes" stopped me in my tracks this morning.
Joy Harjo’s poetry excerpts here mention walking metaphorically. Padraig, your friend’s anecdote of the two sharing the chocolate shows how walking can be helpful in a literal way between people when they can take time together.
In Harjo’s poem, the land BELONGS to no man but we can walk it together. We can make claims to it, but we can only honor such claims through justice. And justice is not static either. Each generation must revisit justice and strive to keep it in balance.
Harjo places the speaker in a hotel, a stopping place where she is able to achieve a necessary level of self care (brushing hair, for example) but from which she will ultimately move along and away from. There is gratefulness in finding momentary peace but not even home is always static.
She speaks of the power of poetry by comparing it to a panther poised in its powerful stance. We know it is ready to pounce and feel it too. The holiness of poetic language is her morning star. She realizes poetry’s ability to affect positive change.
Padraig, thank you for your own soothing eloquence and truth-seeking words. You are the first person I ever remember using “imagination” in such a positive and powerful way. Bless the one who saw one of your life’s gifts glowing strongly in the you that was going through your 20s.
So delighted that you chose Joy for this first episode. As an old Irish Lakota it is good to see a Turtle Island woman poet laureate featured here. Aho 🙏🏽♥️
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/joy-harjo
I am beginning to feel what this series is doing and will provide for me. To approach the urgent politics of our times through poetry like this is entirely refreshing. As a Jew, a Zionist, a Pacifist and Clergy, these first 2 poems raise many questions close to my bones...
Judaism teaches that we own nothing, least of all our children of whom we are temporary custodians. Temporary is the operative word. Then how can we possibly think we own land, the ground beneath us? We do protect our children like precious possessions and we do own property. So we forget the deeper paradox of ownership, that we aim to own through exchange our whole lives but in fact we own nothing and we are owed nothing. No one is entitled. All is earned through justice and justice means nothing if not sacred responsibility
Native Americans were not owners, they were original custodians. Their respectful, grounded relationship with the land was stolen from them even as their generational homes were also well established.
The history of the State of Israel and the Arab/Palestinian past is filled with these paradoxes and complexities
We own nothing really but our ambition to own and be owed something is a transactional myth perpetrated by the panther within us.
If only Israelis and Gazans can explore together what it means to BELONG to a land they are both connected to and what the land means intimately and
nutritionally for all who dwell there rather than hold fast to rightness about owed and owned territory. Its this panther like need to have lines drawn, take sides, puff up right positions that lead to
war.....If only.....
I never thought about the meaning of ‘ground rules’ until now either. This book had been on my list of books to read for a few years - this is the prod I need to go and buy it.
Wow, wonderful. Unfortunately, my own response to conflict can be summarized by two words from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "Run away!" For the scene in the movie, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92gP2J0CUjc
But don't watch if you can't stand the sight of blood, or object to violence in films.
Do not parade, pleased with yourself.
You must speak in the language of justice.
This. If we all could just do this.
Oh my goodness, Pádraig. I’ve been living with this poem and your insight about it all day. It is teaching me a lot.
Another way to imagine conflict is as an invitation to work on something. That’s what Joy’s words are suggesting to me. Conflict brings its own energy and she encourages us to turn that energy towards resolution. Take that energy on a walk. Move with it.
I read the rest of the poem and discovered the beautiful resolution in Part 6:
“When we made it back home …
We gave thanks for the story, for all parts of the story
because it was by the light of those challenges we knew
ourselves—
We asked for forgiveness.
We laid down our burdens next to each other.”
I’m so in awe of Joy Harjo’s generous, wise spirit. She is a Lodestar. Thank you for inviting her into this unbound poetic space you curate. 🙏🏼
What I focus on is the interwoven nature of our histories and the need to be accountable and responsible to them. In laying out a pathway of conflict resolution and reading through the entirety of Joy Harjo's poem, I think about where does one even start when equal footing has never been the case? When deep harm and trauma has been caused and never accounted for and then communities are required to move forward with conflict resolution, and usually the most vulnerable or marginalized bare the brunt of the labor, what does that make conflict resolution? The interwoven history of Indigenous communities through continual settler colonialism flows through Harjo's work, as she details the broken treaties and the continual violence set against Indigenous people. So, those are just some thoughts, and they are thoughts with continued relevance now in understanding conflict resolution.