Years ago, as a freshman in college, I was studying philosophy. I came upon this phrase: “I think, therefore I am”. Soon thereafter I dropped out of this study of Western philosophy because I felt poisoned by it. Back then, I couldn’t explain what this poisonous quality was. I just felt it very strongly. Now, years later, I am beginning to catch sight of this poisonous source. For years my reasoning dominated my life. I was disconnected from my heart. There was still a thread, thank goodness, but tangled, distorted, and ruled by anger. My father used to say, in anger and impatience, “use your head”. What was, and still is to some degree, missing was my heart. Now I better understand the Chinese, and as well from many cultures, belief that the heart/mind function is one and the same, creating a wholeness of being. I-deas are abundant and often delusional unless grounded in one’s heart. With a rich wholeness of heart/mind there is only this moment, a deep pause from the haunts of past and future. “I am, therefore, I can think” more clearly, sanely, and be less delusional. Welcome home, dear heart/mind. 🏮
Thanks for sharing David. If I may be so bold, I write a very short piece about the very thing you are bringing up here last week on my Substack. Do have a look if you feel so called. Yes, we absolutely suffer from too much ‘head’ in this culture, we need it but it doesn’t always serve us well.
I relate to this from the perspective of having been told ‘you think too much’ which usually followed an earnest and heartfelt attempt at communication.
In the autumn of my life, I've been thinking a lot about the roots of words like "enjoy," "delight," & "in love." When I think of those for whom I feel "love," they are the ones whom I "enjoy" - with whom I am "in joy" when in their presence.
When I was little, my parents often read me poetry at bedtime. The way going to sleep was framed by these poems, I’ve been realizing lately, affected me deeply. The poetry made me think of sleep as a magical voyage of which I was captain on which I could collect sustenance and sweetness. The line that stands out is from Wynken, Blynken and Nod by Eugene Fields: "Where are you going, and what do you wish?” The moon was speaking to the little sailors and so were the stars. The poem told me I could go on a journey of imagination alone and return safely with treasures. The lilt of the language was part of the sense of sailing away on gentle waves to a place that was different from prose-laden daytime. Honestly, I never understood children who didn’t want to go to bed. My bedtime parents almost seemed like different people — suddenly understanding, encouraging and tender. In this way, I took off the costume of my daytime life and slipped, not just into my pajamas, but into my own skin.
What a lovely share! So, then, that begs the question or questions: Does someone still read poetry to you (or you to yourself) at bedtime? And do you have children of your own that you read poetry to? I resonate with being a kinder, gentler me at bedtime with my kids. It was always the sweestest time of day. XO
The poetic bedtime experience is deeply internalized. I sometimes ask for a dream and think of gathering stars in my nets of silver and gold, as the little sailors did. My husband & I have a phrase we say every night that is what his mother said to him. I sang to my little ones. That’s what they liked.
I resonate with this Trish and Danielle. I wasn't read to as a child but I read to my children and now my grandchildren. It is a joy. A time of slowing down. Of presence and engagement. My partner and I also still read to each other. Quotes we love, our poetry... and that is a very kind and gentle way of seeing into and being with each other. Thank you for sharing your story Trish.
My kids, one in particular, LOVED storytime at bedtime. Such a sweet time with your kids. And I love, love, love that you and your partner read to each other!! That is so romantic and lovely!!! Yes!
In search of lullabies to sing for our new granddaughter, I rediscovered Donovan's version of Wynken, Blynken and Nod. His unusual chord progressions are so challenging but what an enchanting guide to the land of dreams! Thank you for bringing your wonderful memories into the sharing circle, Trish.
I have been on my own healing journey and it’s entailed a lot of suffering as I remember. But I’m becoming a more whole version of Me and I’m grateful for that. Dickinson’s line I read in high school- “Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul,” never meant much to Me- it just seemed like an odd metaphor. I’ve grown into a deep appreciation for her image because I am learning that it’s that relentless hope perched in us all that helps us to carry on and keep taking the next step toward our freedom; even if it means hurting to heal. There is hope embedded somewhere deep within that things will get better . . . and it might look different than expected, but they often do.
Thank you for your post Lanie, for bringing ED's unwavering, singing, feathered thing into my morning. That poem has also been long perched in my soul-- it's one of the few that I know every word by heart. 10 or so years ago I read a statement by Pema Chodren that stopped me cold. Something like, "You must let go of hope, as it is just the other side of fear."
I revere PC, and felt devastated. How could I let go of the feathered thing "that sings the tune without the words and never stops at all"? That sense of hope within me, within everything, was all that kept me going after the the unimaginable loss of my son's death.
It took me a long time, but with my heart and head and soul I came to a felt understanding of hope that allows me to hold both Emily's poem and Pema's warning. I must accept what is, and not hope for different outcomes. At the same time, I must listen to the song of the feathered thing perched in the soul of the universe: all is well, all will be well, all manner of things are well. Even if I don't understand how that is so.
Thank you Kathryn and Lanie, your thoughtful exchange on hope brought to mind one of my own favorite quotes from Vaclav Havel: "Hope is a state of mind not of the world. Hope, in this deep powerful and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good." The older I get the less invested I feel in success (I'm not going to be around to see the longer term outcomes anyway) and the more it feels essential to throw my body into the struggle on the side of what feels right.
Thank you Lanie and Kathryn for bringing the song of the feathered thing perched in the soul of the universe and the mystic saying all will be well. Both have resided deep in my wounded soul as I, too, sought healing. And I too have believed without understanding.
And yet, perhaps a fresh look may help keep our hearts open what our minds cannot grok…
Fourteenth Century mystic Julian of Norwich offers a radical optimism amidst the ravages of the plague. 'All will be well, and all will be well and all manner of things will be well”.
This declaration that “all manner of thing shall be well” does not eliminate misfortune, sickness or death. It is pointing to what all the respected wise ones say about the ability to find peace, and even joy, in the eye of the storm — to come to trust that there is something that transcends chaos and impermanence.
Together we deepen this mysterious truth that lies beneath our collective minds, a wellspring of well being to be shared for the good of the whole.
Dearest Kathryn, I don't have the right words to speak over you in this particular situation because I have not experienced the same thing you have in the same way you have. But I am very thankful and humbled that you have shared something so deeply vulnerable with this group in the hopes of offering just the right words to someone else inasmuch as you probably want and need to be held yourself. Thank you!! I know I don't know you or what happened exactly, but, as a mother, I feel you and I hold you. XO
Kathryn, thank you. You named it for me, what I was feeling but couldn’t quite say. Something keeps us going when all goes dark. It’s unexplainable - and I do think it’s that thing perched in our souls. That hope. And yea, it’s not a hope for different outcomes. For me, I think it is a hope that light will somehow shine again. Thanks for your tender response. It brought good tears.
Thank you for sharing, Kathryn. I am so so sorry about the death of your son. Your reflections resonate and remind me of an essay by Joan Halifax on “wise hope.” I wonder if you’re familiar?
I really appreciate this comment, Lanie. I have a similar story, and your thoughts help me see that hope (which I never thought I had much of) has been there all along.
With every step I take into my favorite season, life slows and becomes autumnal, allowing us to pay more attention to the little mandalas of grief at our feet.
🍂 And sometimes the leaves fallen, like our legacies and longings, spell out phrases for us. As if perfectly and perceptibly placed to catch our consciousness.
Can consciousness be caught or even captured, or is it a through line no matter where we stride? Like the board games I played as a child, Shoots & Ladders or Paris Metro, is all of this reliant on the the roll of the dice? 🎲
The word so woven into a contemporary phrase that plays with my mind these days: INDEMNITY. She finds her echo these days in discussions around Generative AI and arbitration, but I am called to know her origin.
Indemnity, she sounds like a mythological siren wooing the looks of today’s Titans as they scale our post modern Mount Olympus. 🗻
Its Latin origin is INDEMNIS: “free from loss, unhurt.” That return to root reminds me to reframe the phraseology. So, now when I hear the reverb of the percussive blast of a phrase like “unlimited indemnity” I feel the tension. I ask myself, “How can one ever be free from loss, and unhurt unlimited?”
We cannot...ever. For, as we are re-minded in today’s Word for the Day on grateful.org by Greta Crosby:
“Loss makes artists of us all as we weave new patterns in the fabric of our lives.”
Without loss, we cannot weave. No, we will not let the Siren INDEMNIS take our threads 🧵 away, tempting us with promises of the “unhurt.” For that is no way to live. It’s from the hurt we find our words.
And that’s why no robots’ 🤖 words will ever reach the apex of expression and connection, because they are but 1s and 0s and prisoners of algorithm, with unlimited unhurt. And those patterns generated by the unhurt machines will never lead us to look down and find our footing among the fallen. That’s reserved for the keening, grieving, autumnal Achilles in all of us. 🏹
Beautiful; thank you! I am touched simply that you used the Word of the Day on Grateful.org because it deeply touched me this morning when I read it, as it is so true!!
The term “food desert” is a term that has been in use a number of years to describe an area where a person must travel some distance to find healthful and affordable food. It seemed to work well, as commonly shared images of deserts include people walking and walking without seeing much but sand and/or walking in the heat seeking water sources that are far apart. But in working on a food terms primer, I discovered that people living in an area labeled a “food desert” didn’t name that themselves, didn’t ask for that description to be put upon them, and are stuck with a deficit-based description of the place they live. Also people who know desert locales intimately know that there is more than meets a quick look over, with quiet, subtle beauty and sources of sustenance for the creatures living there. So I tend not to use the term much any more, even though describing an area may need doing so with a few more words.
Hi Karen, thank you for your beautiful - and powerful - meditation on "food desert." I never thought of it as a description of a deficit, as an insufficiency created by outsiders, but there you are: reframe.
The beauty (I come from and live in a mid-sized city with a bad reputation) of those streets that people walk to find food, find services, find community reminds me of our former mayor's campaign, based on a line from the poet and rapper Tupac Shakur: Roses from Concrete. There's a beauty in straggling to survive and becoming, strikingly, a rose despite the odds. Or perhaps because of them (concrete nourishing). It makes me think of our community spaces in the south of town and how they, too, are roses in concrete that nurture those tiny little saplings and full-grown roses who get love and affirmation, nourishment, from the full-grown roses.
Anyway, thank you for your reframe. I appreciate how you describe the bigger picture of "food deserts" and include the creatures who actually live, survive, and thrive there.
Yes, years ago I was deeply affected, in both my international and local work, by my introduction to the Asset Based Community Development approach before it was a well known idea. I think it was in a workbook by someone named Mc Kinley? It turned everything around for me, this permission to name the strengths and resources I had been noticing. Somehow, I'd absorbed the idea that people who were professionally focused on helping (if that's what we were actually doing) under resourced communities were only allowed to focus on all the problems and deficits.
What is that thing that has changed me... Is it growing up? (No.) Is it growing old? (Not by itself). Is it growing inward? Yes, maybe that is closer to the answer.
Over the arc of my life, I have often wondered how to deal with the phrase/idea/(maybe myth in the big sense) that the world is broken. We certainly see that brokenness in our relationship to the planet, to each other, across tribes and economic systems.
As a person who came 'of age' in the 70's I too believed that our purpose was to bring whatever degree of healing to the world was possible. I spent much of my public life/career attempting to do that through providing access to healthcare or helping educate young people who would help provide health services. But almost all of that was out of a sense of obligation and grit. Yes, and maybe guilt too.
It was exhausting.
As the years have passed, I've come to see the brokenness in the world, in our systems, and in myself with more compassion. I do not excuse or condone the brokenness and I am still as irascible on that point as ever. But I am less likely to spend energy on assigning blame to the brokenness that we own.
Having been broken repeatedly over the course of my life and in particular and personal ways in the recent past, I've come to reflect upon the phrase, "Life will break you." The question - the art of life - is the nature of and response to that breaking. Life will either break you down or break you open. I am more consistently choosing to be broken open - to new possibilities, to greater compassion, to more reframing and to a wider tent and a more inclusive table.
I often find myself quoting the late Ram Dass who said, "In the end, we are just walking each other home."
May we own our own brokenness - and that of the world - and may we greet both with compassion.
Jim, Your post resonates with me, in the way the concept of "falling upward" does. Richard Rhor writes about how perceived endings can be reframed as new stages, full of promise and wisdom.
"Life will either break you down or break you open. I am more consistently choosing to be broken open - to new possibilities, to greater compassion, to more reframing and to a wider tent and a more inclusive table." Jim this is so beautifully said. This is to live with a courageous heart. It is such a vulnerable thing to be willing to be broken open. I feel this so viscerally right now. To live in the tension of being hurt and still be open to loving, accepting, and forgiving is a very uncomfortable place to be. Yet I know that I need to in order to live life to the fullest. Thanks for sharing.
Jim, Thank you for your lovely and heartfelt response. I love that you choose to be broken open. I do, too. It is the only way a seed can sprout into new life, by breaking open. So you are choosing new life, new beginnings and renewals by choosing to be broken, even though it feels like you are choosing something that could be perceived as negative by many, you are choosing the positive. I pray more choose to be broken open.
Thank you again, Padraig. I love that Joy Harjo poem! Always grateful to be reminded of it. An experience of reframing:
My middle child, brilliant and lovely was never easy, always a source of joy and a challenge. From the cranky infant, she grew to be the angry anarchist punk rocker by junior high. She did well enough in school despite refusing homework “on principle” and leaving class for protests downtown and finished college on time even with a semester away on a social justice fellowship. During all this, our home was loud with arguments and a good deal of our being called out by her for our colonialism (we had lived and worked in public health in Africa), our racism, our capitalism, our apathy, and all the failings of our limited privileged whiteness. After college, she lived with us or near us for a couple years and the calling out diminished. I took a course on the Enneagram, and learned about the 9 personality types. I was confused for a long while about my own type, but I was very confident of hers, the Rebel, number 8. All that challenging authority, the world’s and ours, her passionate engagement in justice and certainty of her beliefs. Easy. One afternoon we sat chatting when she had dropped by to visit and I mentioned how much I was enjoying the course, taught by the wife of her former ultimate Frisbee coach. I asked if she knew about the enneagram and of course she did. Being the overbearing mother, I told her how I was sure she must by type 8. She looked a little confused. “All my friends tell me I am a 2”. A 2? The Giver, over sharing, giving more than you have to give. And suddenly, in that moment, the past was reframed, shifted. All that loud calling out, the arguments about the way the world was and the way it should be - that was her giving us her attention on how to do and be better. She was offering a gift of her understanding of the world and she wanted us to share it. She didn’t yell at us because she hated us, she was angry because she loved us and wanted us to do better. We still don’t always agree but seeing this rebel child as a loving giver was the true gift.
Wow! A powerful reframing of an extraordinary daughter and mother! Thank you for sharing your story. I am deeply moved and reflective. Almost teary. Thank you.
I was introduced to the Enneagram forty years ago. I read at least 3 books on it, some more than once. Thanks for reminding me of that transformative resource that has helped me understand myself better.
“I am the holy being of my mother's prayer and my father’s song” —Norman Patrick Brown, Dineh Poet and Speaker
I stumble and am humbled over these words, sacred to the Dineh, I understand.
Yet, to me almost a mystery.
I never knew my mother to pray tho’ I sat next to her in Congregational church in my younger years. My Mary Jane’s and white gloves part of the memory.
What was my father’s song? I wish I knew. Looking back, he must have had inherited the music of generations of farm people on the Isle of Man. I visited there and can tell you that land was sacred earth for his and now my peoples.
We are holy beings. If one, then all. That is the way it is written in our prayers we speak within and our songs we sing to one another.
“There was no "I" or "you."
There was us; there was "we."
There we were as if we were the music.”
— Joy Harjo
We are reminded, this is about getting to know one another.
Andrea Gibson has a poem called Daytime, Somewhere that she wrote for her little sister who was an addict for many years and in jail at the time. How she was considered a lost cause by so many. How being treated like a lost cause puts people in binary boxes of good and bad, ignores the truth of our collective humanity. In one section she writes,
But no one heals what they refuse to look at.
So when asked if I think you’re a good person I say, I don’t believe in good people. I believe in people who are committed to knowing their own wounds intimately.
Wow. That phrase pierced my heart immediately. The truth of it. The invitation that “good” has never been. What might the world be like if we all committed to knowing our wounds intimately?
"But no one heals what they refuse to look at." Wow, thank you, that is a new way to look at people that we find objectionable. What needs healing within them?
A friend suggested that when one is feeling despair about the harm we are doing to the planet (and all this while you are trying to do the ‘right’ things in your own life to cause less harm), that repeating “I love you, I’m sorry”, especially when outdoors, might be helpful in order to stay present, appreciate the beauty around you, and not sink into a dark, sad place. It helps.
Thank you for this, Pamela. As one who is moved to sadness all too often when it comes to the harm that we humans are doing to the planet, I will take this on as a practice to see if it helps to lift the dark sadness.
Thank you, Manuel, I appreciate your perspective here. The earth is likely much more resilient than I think it is. Still, so much damage in such a short time can't help matters.
I agree with you Lisa. Our madness in putting profits ahead of survival is, well, madness. We must stand for life and beauty, in the fullest sense of those terms, with compassion for ourselves and others.
Thank you Pamela for sharing this. I once read a study on the Hawaiian Hoʻoponopono prayer. A prayer 'to put to right.' I found a practice of this prayer that resonated for me and alongside, I love you, I'm sorry... there was also, I thank you. I turn to this prayer over and over again. I love you, I am sorry, I thank you. I find it calms my nervous system, allows me to move from othering to connection and find my ground. Thank you for bringing your experience to light.
A phrase i came across recently from EH Gombrich is ' theres no such thing as art , only artists' . I like that . I love art and try and create where I can . But Art has a mantle, a profile , a shape that society gives space to as a construct ..in a similar way that religion and faith operate. The construct becomes so often the idol and we forget that it is human beings that create it. Keeping it at the human level jeopardises its profile and its commercial and cultural power . Many will fear that as they are invested. Being an 'artist' is human , being .
Hello Pádraig and fellow sojourners. Here is my reflection on the query.
Poetry Unbound
My participation in this forum almost every Sunday is like looking through a kaleidoscope. Each of you provides a unique facet through which to perceive existence. Through reading and considering that multitude of perspectives I am able to pause and appreciate the moments that give texture to your lives— and now mine. Each thought and phrase that you share comes from a special place within you and brings a unique view of your reality that then becomes part of my reality.
I would love to understand your message, Patrick, but Google Translate was of no help. 😢
Each week I visit a coffee bar to see friends. The baristas are Afghans and one of them and I exchange greetings in Pashto. I offer Spanish greetings as well.
I seem to be reframing just about everything these days as I'm trained to be an HIV-AIDS educator for the Peace Corps in South Africa: white privilege, education, gender, power dynamics.....it's a sobering process, but one ( at the age of 75!) which really shakes up the bedrock of my assumptions. I'm grateful for the chance to be influenced, if not re-made.
On a past question regarding myths.... I wasn't told about specific myths, so much as saw them acted upon by my Irish grandfather and very Irish extended family. I seemed always to be aware of the famed Irish gregarious nature; the prowess at storytelling and the love of poetry and reading/writing. It was something in my DNA...and I was always very proud of the association. WSK
A dear friend and I collaborated on a curriculum for grief support and the sub title of that effort is
"re-membering, re-shaping, re-imagining". These words hold so much power to heal.
And in the support groups that I facilitated, one simple phrase we often repeated to each other was another way of waking up the heart to the truth. It was "we soften into strength". At least one message seems to me to be that we are not brave or courageous if we find a way to distract ourselves from feeling the truth that is ours to digest and navigate. Instead, we feel, express and grapple with every part of ourselves in the face of what has happened - unafraid to let it change us.
These few lines from Rainer Maria Rilke's poem- Go to The Limits of Your Longing- "Let everything happen to you: Beauty and Terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final..." brought me through a very difficult time in my life.
I was going through a divorce and I felt very alone and very scared. I didn't know if I could make it on my own after being so dependent upon another person for 20 years.
I would read and re-read these lines and soon, I began to remember the strong, young woman I used to be.
The young woman that packed her bags and left home at 17. The young woman who was the first person in her family to go to college. The young woman that worked three jobs to put herself through college and bought her first car all by herself, remember?
I had to find and Nurture and coax THAT young woman out of me again.
Eventually I found and befriended my younger self and got her to trust the future me.
I started to develop Compassion for myself.
I'd place a hand over my heart, and say, It's still me, remember? You can do this. You can do hard things! You've just forgotten how.
Take my hand, I'll teach you again... "No feeling is final. Just keep going..."
Years ago, as a freshman in college, I was studying philosophy. I came upon this phrase: “I think, therefore I am”. Soon thereafter I dropped out of this study of Western philosophy because I felt poisoned by it. Back then, I couldn’t explain what this poisonous quality was. I just felt it very strongly. Now, years later, I am beginning to catch sight of this poisonous source. For years my reasoning dominated my life. I was disconnected from my heart. There was still a thread, thank goodness, but tangled, distorted, and ruled by anger. My father used to say, in anger and impatience, “use your head”. What was, and still is to some degree, missing was my heart. Now I better understand the Chinese, and as well from many cultures, belief that the heart/mind function is one and the same, creating a wholeness of being. I-deas are abundant and often delusional unless grounded in one’s heart. With a rich wholeness of heart/mind there is only this moment, a deep pause from the haunts of past and future. “I am, therefore, I can think” more clearly, sanely, and be less delusional. Welcome home, dear heart/mind. 🏮
Thanks for sharing David. If I may be so bold, I write a very short piece about the very thing you are bringing up here last week on my Substack. Do have a look if you feel so called. Yes, we absolutely suffer from too much ‘head’ in this culture, we need it but it doesn’t always serve us well.
I relate to this from the perspective of having been told ‘you think too much’ which usually followed an earnest and heartfelt attempt at communication.
Beautiful! I love this!
In the autumn of my life, I've been thinking a lot about the roots of words like "enjoy," "delight," & "in love." When I think of those for whom I feel "love," they are the ones whom I "enjoy" - with whom I am "in joy" when in their presence.
Semantics...it is all about semantics.
When I was little, my parents often read me poetry at bedtime. The way going to sleep was framed by these poems, I’ve been realizing lately, affected me deeply. The poetry made me think of sleep as a magical voyage of which I was captain on which I could collect sustenance and sweetness. The line that stands out is from Wynken, Blynken and Nod by Eugene Fields: "Where are you going, and what do you wish?” The moon was speaking to the little sailors and so were the stars. The poem told me I could go on a journey of imagination alone and return safely with treasures. The lilt of the language was part of the sense of sailing away on gentle waves to a place that was different from prose-laden daytime. Honestly, I never understood children who didn’t want to go to bed. My bedtime parents almost seemed like different people — suddenly understanding, encouraging and tender. In this way, I took off the costume of my daytime life and slipped, not just into my pajamas, but into my own skin.
What a lovely share! So, then, that begs the question or questions: Does someone still read poetry to you (or you to yourself) at bedtime? And do you have children of your own that you read poetry to? I resonate with being a kinder, gentler me at bedtime with my kids. It was always the sweestest time of day. XO
The poetic bedtime experience is deeply internalized. I sometimes ask for a dream and think of gathering stars in my nets of silver and gold, as the little sailors did. My husband & I have a phrase we say every night that is what his mother said to him. I sang to my little ones. That’s what they liked.
so sweet! thank you!
I resonate with this Trish and Danielle. I wasn't read to as a child but I read to my children and now my grandchildren. It is a joy. A time of slowing down. Of presence and engagement. My partner and I also still read to each other. Quotes we love, our poetry... and that is a very kind and gentle way of seeing into and being with each other. Thank you for sharing your story Trish.
My kids, one in particular, LOVED storytime at bedtime. Such a sweet time with your kids. And I love, love, love that you and your partner read to each other!! That is so romantic and lovely!!! Yes!
OH my heavens, yes. So lucky and lovely. A prayer for every child : )
Such a magical memory of your experience. Thanks Trish.
In search of lullabies to sing for our new granddaughter, I rediscovered Donovan's version of Wynken, Blynken and Nod. His unusual chord progressions are so challenging but what an enchanting guide to the land of dreams! Thank you for bringing your wonderful memories into the sharing circle, Trish.
This is beautiful.
I have been on my own healing journey and it’s entailed a lot of suffering as I remember. But I’m becoming a more whole version of Me and I’m grateful for that. Dickinson’s line I read in high school- “Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul,” never meant much to Me- it just seemed like an odd metaphor. I’ve grown into a deep appreciation for her image because I am learning that it’s that relentless hope perched in us all that helps us to carry on and keep taking the next step toward our freedom; even if it means hurting to heal. There is hope embedded somewhere deep within that things will get better . . . and it might look different than expected, but they often do.
Thank you for your post Lanie, for bringing ED's unwavering, singing, feathered thing into my morning. That poem has also been long perched in my soul-- it's one of the few that I know every word by heart. 10 or so years ago I read a statement by Pema Chodren that stopped me cold. Something like, "You must let go of hope, as it is just the other side of fear."
I revere PC, and felt devastated. How could I let go of the feathered thing "that sings the tune without the words and never stops at all"? That sense of hope within me, within everything, was all that kept me going after the the unimaginable loss of my son's death.
It took me a long time, but with my heart and head and soul I came to a felt understanding of hope that allows me to hold both Emily's poem and Pema's warning. I must accept what is, and not hope for different outcomes. At the same time, I must listen to the song of the feathered thing perched in the soul of the universe: all is well, all will be well, all manner of things are well. Even if I don't understand how that is so.
Thank you Kathryn and Lanie, your thoughtful exchange on hope brought to mind one of my own favorite quotes from Vaclav Havel: "Hope is a state of mind not of the world. Hope, in this deep powerful and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good." The older I get the less invested I feel in success (I'm not going to be around to see the longer term outcomes anyway) and the more it feels essential to throw my body into the struggle on the side of what feels right.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit”
Thank you Lanie and Kathryn for bringing the song of the feathered thing perched in the soul of the universe and the mystic saying all will be well. Both have resided deep in my wounded soul as I, too, sought healing. And I too have believed without understanding.
And yet, perhaps a fresh look may help keep our hearts open what our minds cannot grok…
Fourteenth Century mystic Julian of Norwich offers a radical optimism amidst the ravages of the plague. 'All will be well, and all will be well and all manner of things will be well”.
This declaration that “all manner of thing shall be well” does not eliminate misfortune, sickness or death. It is pointing to what all the respected wise ones say about the ability to find peace, and even joy, in the eye of the storm — to come to trust that there is something that transcends chaos and impermanence.
Together we deepen this mysterious truth that lies beneath our collective minds, a wellspring of well being to be shared for the good of the whole.
Gratitude 🙏🏼 and peace ☮️
Aaaah. That Julian of Norwich quote is a favorite.
Dearest Kathryn, I don't have the right words to speak over you in this particular situation because I have not experienced the same thing you have in the same way you have. But I am very thankful and humbled that you have shared something so deeply vulnerable with this group in the hopes of offering just the right words to someone else inasmuch as you probably want and need to be held yourself. Thank you!! I know I don't know you or what happened exactly, but, as a mother, I feel you and I hold you. XO
Thank you Danielle.🙏💗
Kathryn, thank you. You named it for me, what I was feeling but couldn’t quite say. Something keeps us going when all goes dark. It’s unexplainable - and I do think it’s that thing perched in our souls. That hope. And yea, it’s not a hope for different outcomes. For me, I think it is a hope that light will somehow shine again. Thanks for your tender response. It brought good tears.
Thank you for sharing, Kathryn. I am so so sorry about the death of your son. Your reflections resonate and remind me of an essay by Joan Halifax on “wise hope.” I wonder if you’re familiar?
Thank you Mona. I'm familiar with Joan Halifax, but not that essay. I'll check it out.
Peace and healing to you, Kathryn.
Yes! Holding both, experiencing both, accepting not knowing (or unknowing, maybe). Thank you!
I really appreciate this comment, Lanie. I have a similar story, and your thoughts help me see that hope (which I never thought I had much of) has been there all along.
I am glad you are on this journey of healing, Lanie! Keep it up. You are worthy of being healed. XO
Many many thanks Danielle. 💜
❤️
With every step I take into my favorite season, life slows and becomes autumnal, allowing us to pay more attention to the little mandalas of grief at our feet.
🍂 And sometimes the leaves fallen, like our legacies and longings, spell out phrases for us. As if perfectly and perceptibly placed to catch our consciousness.
Can consciousness be caught or even captured, or is it a through line no matter where we stride? Like the board games I played as a child, Shoots & Ladders or Paris Metro, is all of this reliant on the the roll of the dice? 🎲
The word so woven into a contemporary phrase that plays with my mind these days: INDEMNITY. She finds her echo these days in discussions around Generative AI and arbitration, but I am called to know her origin.
Indemnity, she sounds like a mythological siren wooing the looks of today’s Titans as they scale our post modern Mount Olympus. 🗻
Its Latin origin is INDEMNIS: “free from loss, unhurt.” That return to root reminds me to reframe the phraseology. So, now when I hear the reverb of the percussive blast of a phrase like “unlimited indemnity” I feel the tension. I ask myself, “How can one ever be free from loss, and unhurt unlimited?”
We cannot...ever. For, as we are re-minded in today’s Word for the Day on grateful.org by Greta Crosby:
“Loss makes artists of us all as we weave new patterns in the fabric of our lives.”
Without loss, we cannot weave. No, we will not let the Siren INDEMNIS take our threads 🧵 away, tempting us with promises of the “unhurt.” For that is no way to live. It’s from the hurt we find our words.
And that’s why no robots’ 🤖 words will ever reach the apex of expression and connection, because they are but 1s and 0s and prisoners of algorithm, with unlimited unhurt. And those patterns generated by the unhurt machines will never lead us to look down and find our footing among the fallen. That’s reserved for the keening, grieving, autumnal Achilles in all of us. 🏹
Amen!
So much beauty and hope here. Thank you for this, Bill! <3
Beautiful; thank you! I am touched simply that you used the Word of the Day on Grateful.org because it deeply touched me this morning when I read it, as it is so true!!
The term “food desert” is a term that has been in use a number of years to describe an area where a person must travel some distance to find healthful and affordable food. It seemed to work well, as commonly shared images of deserts include people walking and walking without seeing much but sand and/or walking in the heat seeking water sources that are far apart. But in working on a food terms primer, I discovered that people living in an area labeled a “food desert” didn’t name that themselves, didn’t ask for that description to be put upon them, and are stuck with a deficit-based description of the place they live. Also people who know desert locales intimately know that there is more than meets a quick look over, with quiet, subtle beauty and sources of sustenance for the creatures living there. So I tend not to use the term much any more, even though describing an area may need doing so with a few more words.
Hi Karen, thank you for your beautiful - and powerful - meditation on "food desert." I never thought of it as a description of a deficit, as an insufficiency created by outsiders, but there you are: reframe.
The beauty (I come from and live in a mid-sized city with a bad reputation) of those streets that people walk to find food, find services, find community reminds me of our former mayor's campaign, based on a line from the poet and rapper Tupac Shakur: Roses from Concrete. There's a beauty in straggling to survive and becoming, strikingly, a rose despite the odds. Or perhaps because of them (concrete nourishing). It makes me think of our community spaces in the south of town and how they, too, are roses in concrete that nurture those tiny little saplings and full-grown roses who get love and affirmation, nourishment, from the full-grown roses.
Anyway, thank you for your reframe. I appreciate how you describe the bigger picture of "food deserts" and include the creatures who actually live, survive, and thrive there.
Thank you for sharing your observations and the analogy to the “roses from concrete”.
Yes, years ago I was deeply affected, in both my international and local work, by my introduction to the Asset Based Community Development approach before it was a well known idea. I think it was in a workbook by someone named Mc Kinley? It turned everything around for me, this permission to name the strengths and resources I had been noticing. Somehow, I'd absorbed the idea that people who were professionally focused on helping (if that's what we were actually doing) under resourced communities were only allowed to focus on all the problems and deficits.
Yes! This does happen! Thank you for finding a way to work from the asset frame and for sharing here.
Yes to this and avoiding deficit based descriptions
What is that thing that has changed me... Is it growing up? (No.) Is it growing old? (Not by itself). Is it growing inward? Yes, maybe that is closer to the answer.
Over the arc of my life, I have often wondered how to deal with the phrase/idea/(maybe myth in the big sense) that the world is broken. We certainly see that brokenness in our relationship to the planet, to each other, across tribes and economic systems.
As a person who came 'of age' in the 70's I too believed that our purpose was to bring whatever degree of healing to the world was possible. I spent much of my public life/career attempting to do that through providing access to healthcare or helping educate young people who would help provide health services. But almost all of that was out of a sense of obligation and grit. Yes, and maybe guilt too.
It was exhausting.
As the years have passed, I've come to see the brokenness in the world, in our systems, and in myself with more compassion. I do not excuse or condone the brokenness and I am still as irascible on that point as ever. But I am less likely to spend energy on assigning blame to the brokenness that we own.
Having been broken repeatedly over the course of my life and in particular and personal ways in the recent past, I've come to reflect upon the phrase, "Life will break you." The question - the art of life - is the nature of and response to that breaking. Life will either break you down or break you open. I am more consistently choosing to be broken open - to new possibilities, to greater compassion, to more reframing and to a wider tent and a more inclusive table.
I often find myself quoting the late Ram Dass who said, "In the end, we are just walking each other home."
May we own our own brokenness - and that of the world - and may we greet both with compassion.
Jim -- “May we own our own brokenness” makes me think of the Japanese art of kintsugi.
Kathleen, I am a sometime potter and I know that tradition. May all our breaks be healed with gold.
Also, this quote from Omid Safi in his essay on OnBeing.org, “Fail Better”
“The breaking of the heart along the way
has brought a healing
and I am the combination of the wound and the healing.”
Thanks so much for Omid's quote. I also really have enjoyed his podcast Sufi Heart.
Jim, Your post resonates with me, in the way the concept of "falling upward" does. Richard Rhor writes about how perceived endings can be reframed as new stages, full of promise and wisdom.
Christine - I love Richard Rohr's work and much of my life experience has been reframed by his teachings. Thanks for the kind comment.
"Life will either break you down or break you open. I am more consistently choosing to be broken open - to new possibilities, to greater compassion, to more reframing and to a wider tent and a more inclusive table." Jim this is so beautifully said. This is to live with a courageous heart. It is such a vulnerable thing to be willing to be broken open. I feel this so viscerally right now. To live in the tension of being hurt and still be open to loving, accepting, and forgiving is a very uncomfortable place to be. Yet I know that I need to in order to live life to the fullest. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for helping me to re-think broken with the option to break open.
Jim, Thank you for your lovely and heartfelt response. I love that you choose to be broken open. I do, too. It is the only way a seed can sprout into new life, by breaking open. So you are choosing new life, new beginnings and renewals by choosing to be broken, even though it feels like you are choosing something that could be perceived as negative by many, you are choosing the positive. I pray more choose to be broken open.
Thank you again, Padraig. I love that Joy Harjo poem! Always grateful to be reminded of it. An experience of reframing:
My middle child, brilliant and lovely was never easy, always a source of joy and a challenge. From the cranky infant, she grew to be the angry anarchist punk rocker by junior high. She did well enough in school despite refusing homework “on principle” and leaving class for protests downtown and finished college on time even with a semester away on a social justice fellowship. During all this, our home was loud with arguments and a good deal of our being called out by her for our colonialism (we had lived and worked in public health in Africa), our racism, our capitalism, our apathy, and all the failings of our limited privileged whiteness. After college, she lived with us or near us for a couple years and the calling out diminished. I took a course on the Enneagram, and learned about the 9 personality types. I was confused for a long while about my own type, but I was very confident of hers, the Rebel, number 8. All that challenging authority, the world’s and ours, her passionate engagement in justice and certainty of her beliefs. Easy. One afternoon we sat chatting when she had dropped by to visit and I mentioned how much I was enjoying the course, taught by the wife of her former ultimate Frisbee coach. I asked if she knew about the enneagram and of course she did. Being the overbearing mother, I told her how I was sure she must by type 8. She looked a little confused. “All my friends tell me I am a 2”. A 2? The Giver, over sharing, giving more than you have to give. And suddenly, in that moment, the past was reframed, shifted. All that loud calling out, the arguments about the way the world was and the way it should be - that was her giving us her attention on how to do and be better. She was offering a gift of her understanding of the world and she wanted us to share it. She didn’t yell at us because she hated us, she was angry because she loved us and wanted us to do better. We still don’t always agree but seeing this rebel child as a loving giver was the true gift.
Wow! A powerful reframing of an extraordinary daughter and mother! Thank you for sharing your story. I am deeply moved and reflective. Almost teary. Thank you.
I LOVE this!! I love your sureness at the number 8 and her sureness at a number 2. That is delightful!!
I was introduced to the Enneagram forty years ago. I read at least 3 books on it, some more than once. Thanks for reminding me of that transformative resource that has helped me understand myself better.
“I am the holy being of my mother's prayer and my father’s song” —Norman Patrick Brown, Dineh Poet and Speaker
I stumble and am humbled over these words, sacred to the Dineh, I understand.
Yet, to me almost a mystery.
I never knew my mother to pray tho’ I sat next to her in Congregational church in my younger years. My Mary Jane’s and white gloves part of the memory.
What was my father’s song? I wish I knew. Looking back, he must have had inherited the music of generations of farm people on the Isle of Man. I visited there and can tell you that land was sacred earth for his and now my peoples.
We are holy beings. If one, then all. That is the way it is written in our prayers we speak within and our songs we sing to one another.
“There was no "I" or "you."
There was us; there was "we."
There we were as if we were the music.”
— Joy Harjo
We are reminded, this is about getting to know one another.
Thank you Pádraig as you walk the walk with us.
One can never go wrong in quoting Joy Harjo! Thank you Juju!!
Yes, we and us together. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing those references.
Andrea Gibson has a poem called Daytime, Somewhere that she wrote for her little sister who was an addict for many years and in jail at the time. How she was considered a lost cause by so many. How being treated like a lost cause puts people in binary boxes of good and bad, ignores the truth of our collective humanity. In one section she writes,
But no one heals what they refuse to look at.
So when asked if I think you’re a good person I say, I don’t believe in good people. I believe in people who are committed to knowing their own wounds intimately.
Wow. That phrase pierced my heart immediately. The truth of it. The invitation that “good” has never been. What might the world be like if we all committed to knowing our wounds intimately?
"But no one heals what they refuse to look at." Wow, thank you, that is a new way to look at people that we find objectionable. What needs healing within them?
Yes - total reframe.
Thank you!
A friend suggested that when one is feeling despair about the harm we are doing to the planet (and all this while you are trying to do the ‘right’ things in your own life to cause less harm), that repeating “I love you, I’m sorry”, especially when outdoors, might be helpful in order to stay present, appreciate the beauty around you, and not sink into a dark, sad place. It helps.
Thank you for this, Pamela. As one who is moved to sadness all too often when it comes to the harm that we humans are doing to the planet, I will take this on as a practice to see if it helps to lift the dark sadness.
We live short of a century. The planet will evolve. The bell tolls for us and humans yet to come.
Thank you, Manuel, I appreciate your perspective here. The earth is likely much more resilient than I think it is. Still, so much damage in such a short time can't help matters.
I agree with you Lisa. Our madness in putting profits ahead of survival is, well, madness. We must stand for life and beauty, in the fullest sense of those terms, with compassion for ourselves and others.
Thank you Pamela for sharing this. I once read a study on the Hawaiian Hoʻoponopono prayer. A prayer 'to put to right.' I found a practice of this prayer that resonated for me and alongside, I love you, I'm sorry... there was also, I thank you. I turn to this prayer over and over again. I love you, I am sorry, I thank you. I find it calms my nervous system, allows me to move from othering to connection and find my ground. Thank you for bringing your experience to light.
A phrase i came across recently from EH Gombrich is ' theres no such thing as art , only artists' . I like that . I love art and try and create where I can . But Art has a mantle, a profile , a shape that society gives space to as a construct ..in a similar way that religion and faith operate. The construct becomes so often the idol and we forget that it is human beings that create it. Keeping it at the human level jeopardises its profile and its commercial and cultural power . Many will fear that as they are invested. Being an 'artist' is human , being .
Thanks for your insight. Perhaps I need to focus more on what the artist was experiencing that led to a work that I struggle to comprehend.
Hello Pádraig and fellow sojourners. Here is my reflection on the query.
Poetry Unbound
My participation in this forum almost every Sunday is like looking through a kaleidoscope. Each of you provides a unique facet through which to perceive existence. Through reading and considering that multitude of perspectives I am able to pause and appreciate the moments that give texture to your lives— and now mine. Each thought and phrase that you share comes from a special place within you and brings a unique view of your reality that then becomes part of my reality.
Happy Sunday!
I have not looked through a kaleidoscope for a long time! I miss that! Thank you for using that analogy to describe these Sunday gatherings.
Ah yes, kaleidoscope…whenever I volunteer at my grands urban K-8 school I’m looking at a “kaleidoscope of melanin” (as I like to call it)…beautiful.
Like flowers in a garden, Patrick ...Have a great week!
Bacatcha Braddah 🙏🏽❤️
I would love to understand your message, Patrick, but Google Translate was of no help. 😢
Each week I visit a coffee bar to see friends. The baristas are Afghans and one of them and I exchange greetings in Pashto. I offer Spanish greetings as well.
Just pidgin Hawaiian for “right back at you Brother”…returning the sentiments. Buenos Dias!
Gracias amigo. To your Hawaiian I would reply "Lo mismo, Hermano🙏🏻"
Buenas tardes (since it is past Noon where I am.) 😎
I would like to get myself a kaleidoscope... it has been too long. One to share with my grandchildren.
I seem to be reframing just about everything these days as I'm trained to be an HIV-AIDS educator for the Peace Corps in South Africa: white privilege, education, gender, power dynamics.....it's a sobering process, but one ( at the age of 75!) which really shakes up the bedrock of my assumptions. I'm grateful for the chance to be influenced, if not re-made.
On a past question regarding myths.... I wasn't told about specific myths, so much as saw them acted upon by my Irish grandfather and very Irish extended family. I seemed always to be aware of the famed Irish gregarious nature; the prowess at storytelling and the love of poetry and reading/writing. It was something in my DNA...and I was always very proud of the association. WSK
Thanks for the work you do, Wendy!
I am so gifted by this post. Thank you !
A dear friend and I collaborated on a curriculum for grief support and the sub title of that effort is
"re-membering, re-shaping, re-imagining". These words hold so much power to heal.
And in the support groups that I facilitated, one simple phrase we often repeated to each other was another way of waking up the heart to the truth. It was "we soften into strength". At least one message seems to me to be that we are not brave or courageous if we find a way to distract ourselves from feeling the truth that is ours to digest and navigate. Instead, we feel, express and grapple with every part of ourselves in the face of what has happened - unafraid to let it change us.
I think John O'Donohue said this somewhere.
These few lines from Rainer Maria Rilke's poem- Go to The Limits of Your Longing- "Let everything happen to you: Beauty and Terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final..." brought me through a very difficult time in my life.
I was going through a divorce and I felt very alone and very scared. I didn't know if I could make it on my own after being so dependent upon another person for 20 years.
I would read and re-read these lines and soon, I began to remember the strong, young woman I used to be.
The young woman that packed her bags and left home at 17. The young woman who was the first person in her family to go to college. The young woman that worked three jobs to put herself through college and bought her first car all by herself, remember?
I had to find and Nurture and coax THAT young woman out of me again.
Eventually I found and befriended my younger self and got her to trust the future me.
I started to develop Compassion for myself.
I'd place a hand over my heart, and say, It's still me, remember? You can do this. You can do hard things! You've just forgotten how.
Take my hand, I'll teach you again... "No feeling is final. Just keep going..."
So beautiful. thank you. No feeling is final. Very moving. I love Carrie Newcomer's song, You Can Do This Hard Thing... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHxRsSSeNBo&t=8s
That was a beautiful song. Thank you for recommending it. I had not heard it before.