I am not sure how to convey the power of this poetry collection.

I can tell you that once I picked up Love Cake, I could not put it down until I finished every poem, even though I sometimes had to read through my tears. Upon finishing, I immediately had to call a femme friend to read her a poem that reminded me of her. Relocating from my couch to my bed, I sank in and re-read the entire collection.

I want to say that the poems tore out my heart. I keep seeing an image of my heart getting pulled out of my chest, but my heart does not remain in the air, naked and exposed. Instead, birds carefully wind orange velvet ribbons around it before they replace it in my chest cavity, prettier and stronger than it was before. These poems demand that I feel everything more intensely–including grief and rage–but in return, they give me back something I didn’t know I was missing: an expansive sense of possibility. The morning after I read this collection, I woke up from my sleep with a feeling of anticipation, remembering that I had been given an unexpectedly precious gift that I will carry deep inside me.

The gift of this poetry collection is nothing less than a roadmap to what liberation can look like for queer people who survive personal and collective trauma. Describing border crossings that she experiences as a queer working class person of color, Leah Laskshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha gives voice to the involuntary incursions on her body: child abuse, colonialism, racism, and war; as well as her voluntary crossings of boundaries: leaving her family of origin, rediscovering her roots in Sri Lanka, and reclaiming her body. She maintains a tension between oppression and healing throughout, in poems that leave no doubt about her power as a survivor, healer, and activist.

Wisconsin workers

Happy International Workers Day, everyone! All over the world, on grand and small scales, people are celebrating the majority in every society: workers and would-be workers. Every day, in my work as a teacher, I see that the belief in fairness continues to flourish among the majority, the baristas and servers, the nurse’s aides and clerks, the dishwashers and groundskeepers.

photo by Jonathan McIntosh wikimedia commons

It’s a complex situation, of course. Workers can be hard on one another, proud of their endurance under extreme conditions. As one server told me recently, “If you can’t take abuse and disrespect every day, you don’t belong in the restaurant business.” And yet, in a recent class discussion, both men and women restaurant workers acknowledged that at the end of the working day, they often cried.

There Is Hope

Though the power of the privileged has grown grotesquely and the power of workers has shrunk, commitment to justice is a motion-sensitive light that turns on again when we move.

The last time the Tikkun Award went to a poet, it was Allen Ginsberg who received it in person at a ceremony at Columbia University in New York City. He joined a list of significant figures who had previously received the award including Grace Paley, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, and Abba Eban.

Tikkun‘s poetry editor Joshua Weiner provides some context on why it is going this year to C.K. Williams.

What is the role of the poet in Tikkun‘s core vision, of commitment to peace, social justice, ecological sanity? What is the role of the poet in a movement that aims to foster solidarity, generosity, kindness, and radical amazement? What is the role of the poet when it comes to social change and individual inner change?

Poetry is often discussed in our culture as a kind of commodity that few people are buying; but like meditation, reading poetry, listening to poetry, is less of a product, and more of a process, of coming into fuller awareness. Awareness of what? Our sense of connection to others starts within, moves without, and returns. The reciprocity between self and world is one of continual fluctuation, and there is no poet writing today who is more attuned to the ethical implications of that existential flux than C.K. Williams.

Two things just brought this new collection to my attention. Our friend the poet Adam David Miller came by with a review of it, and two of the poets, Rose Black and Melanie Meyer, let us know that the first San Francisco reading from it will take place next Tuesday evening, February 22nd, at Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco (details here).

“Five Bay Area writers, Rose Black, Margaret Kaufman, Melanie Maier, Susan Terris, and Sim Warkov, all published poets, invited five additional published poets, Dan Bellm, Chana Bloch, Rafaella Del Bourgo, Jackie Kudler, and Murray Silverstein, to contribute to this collection of poems of Jewish identity.”

Chapter & Verse: Some notes and observations

By Adam David Miller

When Rose Black handed me a promo sheet for Chapter&Verse I read “Five Bay Area…poets, invited five additional…poets…to contribute to this collection…,” I wondered what manner of work was this. With the thin-skinned, fragile, ego-driven, fractious nature of many poets I wondered how they even got the book together.

I need not have wondered. From Ethan Kaplan’s cover photograph of “Stained-glass window from Congregation Emanu-El, San Francisco…”; to Tania Baban-Natal’s tasteful cover and book design (in this case “You can tell a book…) with two apt blurbs; to Jane Miller’s (“a well known American poet) thoughtful and inviting Introduction, Chapter &Verse is an anthology readers will immerse themselves in, learn from, cry and laugh with the poets who do cry and laugh at themselves. In plain speech, this is one helluva fine collection.

by Rebecca Foust and Lorna Stevens

It was in San Rafael, in a tiny subterranean artist studio with walls of thickly plastered brick that I made my acquaintance with New Zealand’s huia bird, meeting it in my friend Lorna’s intricate twig sculptures and an altered artist’s book whose pages had been painstakingly excised, erased, and inked with images of haunting delicacy. I learned how the bills of males and females (his squat cudgel for shredding bark, her curved needle for finding insects) had evolved so as to make them mutually dependent mates-for-life. I also learned that the huia had recently become utterly, unalterably extinct, so that not only would I never see it with my own eyes, but neither would my children, nor my children’s children, nor their children and so on and on down the long, bitter corridors of never.

Three poems by Elizabeth Cunningham.

IT’S NOT ALL PRETTY

It’s not all pretty.
The earth knows terrible things.
She receives all deaths,
gentle and brutal.

She bears the pain of every birth.
She turns all things back into herself;
she worries the bones to dust.

She is changing, always changing.
Layers shift.
Her own bones crash and break.

Tides heave.
Rock erupts into fire.
It’s not all pretty.

Beauty never is.

By Barbara Bash from her blog True Nature today:

Sitting in this quiet studio
(husband and son off on their adventures in the world)
as snow falls steadily outside.

Hours spent this morning on the phone and computer,
attending to – caring for – relationships.

Now I turn to the strand of bittersweet,
clipped and unwound from the rose brambles,
waiting for me . . .

Photo from Appalachian Trail. Courtesy of FlickrCC/steev-o

This week’s spiritual wisdom is a beautiful poem that Ned Green wrote on the Appalachian Trail in his journal in 1997. On February 18, 2001, at age 26, he passed away while doing what he loved most — climbing. After his support on an ice ledge gave way, he fell into a deep chasm on Mt. Washington, New Hampshire.

Precarious

A grounded bird
Perched feet from sheer faces,
Freefalls and deadly drops
Flying on jutted thrusts of rock
I suddenly feel boreal
And pseudo-alpine.

The wind rustles steadily
In lower reaches of this chasm,
this monstrous ravine.
Clouds puff and duplicate
In the sun’s constant spread.

I’ve been watching the nightmare of thousands of barrels of oil and gas pouring into the ocean and the spectacle of pundits and lawmakers trying to decide whom to blame for the mess. In the midst of that, I happened to pick up a book of poetry by Abraham Joshua Heschel, written before he was 26 years old in 1933. This particular poem, Forgiveness,  struck me as one of the ways that I am different from many other people. I resonated with it strongly and I would guess that others, who think quite differently from me, would think it utterly absurd. Read on and let’s discuss it!

Every year at winter solstice, I perform in a Interfaith Yule celebration at First Unitarian Society in Madison. Every year I tell a story and sing a song. This year I told a T’salagi (Cherokee) tale explaining why some trees are evergreen. In the spirit of the season, I’d like to share it with you.

In order to really understand the Cherokee story, you need to know that the T’salagi or Cherokee people lived in the southern Appalachian mountains until they were forced onto the “Trail of Tears” by white settlers who wanted their land. This part of the world is extremely luxuriant. In fact, there are more plant species in the mountains of Georgia and the Carolinas than in all of Europe. As a result, the T’salagi — living as they did in harmony with the land — knew a lot about the flora of their native territory and respected its medicine. The evergreens were among the most sacred plants and were only harvested by a shaman for healing purposes.

Another fact also brings this story alive. When Cherokee children went through their rite of passage to adulthood, they participated in a vision quest, during which they were to stay awake for seven days and seven nights. Here’s my retelling of the story:

Place Setting from Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party"

When I take a vacation, I love the freedom it offers. And the experiences I would otherwise miss. This time those events included hearing our daughter Linnea sing and play drums with her band Lights (magnificently, I might add). They were at the end of their eastern tour and it was her 28th birthday, so all-round it was a unique occasion. If you want to hear (and see) them, check out their music video. (Linnea’s the drummer. She faces directly into the camera in the first frame with faces, and her music partner Sophia Knapp is in profile on the left). They’re now on their southern tour, so go see them if you’re nearby. Here’s the schedule.

This was a special time for both sides of the generational divide. I’m a proud mama and surprised as well, because in her youth, it didn’t look like Linnea’s future included composing songs for a rock band. And during the concert, I heard my daughter exclaim in exuberant tones that all her best Brooklyn buddies were there “with her parents in the front row!” We think she’s amazing, and I guess she returns the favor.

Besides wonderful ethnic food, which we always savor while in NYC — this year the best was a sushi fusion outing — we also spent time enjoying the Dinner Party. This installation is perhaps THE iconic artwork of twentieth century feminism. Judy Chicago envisioned and designed much of it, and hundreds of other women helped her create the runners and ceramic pieces that adorn the triangular banquet table that pays homage to 39 historical and mythical women. It took all of them five years to complete this gargantuan project, and when it came out in 1979, the entire feminist community was breathless with anticipation. I’ve seen photos of most of the place settings, but I had never been in the presence of the entire dinner party. I say “in the presence,” because that’s what it felt like. As I walked through the banners that led into the banquet hall, I began to tear up, overwhelmed with the immensity of what I was about to experience.

This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from Mary Oliver‘s New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 2005):

When a couple gets married, they traditionally have a wedding. When a child is born, people usually throw some kind of celebration. When a ship sets out on its maiden voyage, it is customary to break a champagne bottle against its bow.

A position as a blogger is, of course, nothing compared to those things. What are the opinions of one pundit, compared to a marriage, a new human life, or the ocean-crossing journeys of a ship? Nevertheless, all traditions teach us that origins are important, and that we should try to begin our first ventures as well as possible–even such humble ventures as this.

So, where to begin? Why not start with the most famous of all accounts of origins, the creation of humankind? But Genesis, by its very nature, covers so many things, so I shall cite just one aspect: its account of the spiritual reasons for human communication.

Genesis portrays the beginnings of communication with the existential need of human beings to be in union with other persons. We can have the whole of inanimate and animal creation brought before us. But we need to engage in the back-and-forth of linguistic communication (whether verbally or in body language) with another person. And the most profound kind of inter-personal communication is that of intimate love between two people.

We know the need for something from its lack. Genesis shows communication as a divine gift to overcome the pain of loneliness. The late Pope John Paul II spoke about this in his lectures on “The Theology of the Body.” Judaism and Islam have their own “theologies of the bodies,” which predate this development in Christianity. As a Muslim who loves poetry, both Eastern and Western, I have decided to give a poetical interpretation of the loneliness of Adam, as described in Genesis, from the standpoint of Sufism (or Islamic metaphysics).

We’ve started a new program named “Quest” at First Unitarian Society (FUS). FUS created Quest in order to help members who want it to develop a deeper commitment to their spiritual journey. Some of the introductory writings about the program describe it as “a journey toward wholeness, holiness, and peace.” It’s a very exciting two-year “pilgrimage,” and I’m blessed to be a part of it as a mentor to two women who are participants.

Today one of my partners contacted me. I’d just finished re-reading a chapter from Parker Palmer‘s A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life about “Being Along Together,” a good metaphor for my role in this process. And yesterday I had finally bought two chairs for my meditation room, where I hope to meet with my partners –if that’s what they want. So synchonicities are lining up to indicate the “rightness” of this choice.

For several years now, I’ve been considering spiritual direction as a new option in my life, and being asked to become a Quest mentor helped strengthen this interest. Sometimes referred to as spiritual guidance or spiritual friendship, spiritual direction like mentoring takes place in a one-to-one relationship, in which a person who wants to become more attentive to their spiritual life meets regularly with a “spiritual director,” in order to awaken more fully to the presence of spirit and how it moves through their existence. I’m not using “God language” here, because not all UUs are comfortable with it. But what I realized while re-reading Parker Palmer is just how uncomfortable I am with the term “spiritual direction.”

This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from Jonathan Granoff, the author, attorney, and peace activist whose writing we featured earlier this month:

A Flood of Joy

The Earth will ultimately make its claim
The Water lets us know our frailty
The face inside the face of bones
The face we had before the bones
The face we have after the bones
The face of the body of light and limitlessness
beyond claims, beyond frailty
dances across
birthless
deathless
celebration of the eternal essence of life
joyously celebrating our mortality
while we are here
dancing a celebration of the eternal essence of life

This week’s spiritual wisdom is from Jalal al-Din Rumi’s Mathnawi story of the man who swallowed a snake, in a version by Coleman Barks:

Jesus on the lean donkey,
this is an emblem of how the rational intellect
should control the animal-soul.
Let your spirit
be strong like Jesus.
If that part becomes weak,
then the worn out donkey grows to a dragon.

Be grateful when what seems unkind
comes from a wise person.
Once, a holy man,
riding his donkey, saw a snake crawling into
a sleeping man’s mouth! He hurried, but he couldn’t
prevent it. He hit the man several blows with his club.

Before I started blogging for Tikkun Daily, my web publishing consisted of my own website, www.mamasminstrel.net, and articles in Matrifocus, the web magazine by and for Goddess women published four times a year. What I love about Tikkun Daily — the lively interaction that’s beginning to occur — is something I found in embryo in Matrifocus.

Matrifocus always has a wide variety of articles that inform me, entice me, lead me to think a little differently, and most importantly, feed my soul. Often it includes essays by some of he most interesting thinkers in feminist spirituality: Patricia Monaghan, Vicki Noble, Susun Weed, Max Dashu, Johanna Stuckey, and even occasionally Starhawk. It always includes poetry and beautiful art, as well reader-submitted reviews of Goddess books, DVDs, theater, and films.

This quarter the articles range from my description of “Tree Divinations” to two articles on permaculture by Mary Swander and Madelon Wise plus a lovely introduction to fairies and devas by Susun Weed. Vicki Noble, the well-known creator of the Motherpeace Tarot Deck, writes about her experiences at an Italian spring festival that celebrates ancient Goddess traditions just beneath the surface of a Roman Catholic feast day.

Ritual is not a word that we Unitarian Universalists tend to use. We think of it as formal, rigid, hollow of any meaning, coming out of traditions that have prescribed rules and customs that we no longer perceive as valid. Ritual, as I said, is not a word that we UUs tend to use.

Unless we’re pagan UUs. Then the word has very different connotations and meanings. Ritual, for me as a pagan UU, has to do with creating an experience that shapes energy in a particular way with a particular group of people for a particular purpose. It’s will in action, directed energy. Ritual is a participatory experience. And as Margot Adler (another UU pagan) says (in Drawing Down the Moon),

Ritual seems to be one method of reintegrating individuals and groups into the cosmos, and to tie the activities of daily life with their ever present, often forgotten, significance….Just as ecological theory explains how we are interrelated with all other forms of life, rituals allow us to recreate that unity in a non-abstract, gut-level way. Rituals have the power to reset the terms of our universe until we find ourselves suddenly and truly “at home.”

This week’s spiritual wisdom is a poem from Brian Piergrossi‘s book The Big Glow. The poem has been circulating the Web under the name “A Spiritual Conspiracy.” Brian told us its original title and invited us to share it with you here:

Love Is The New Religion

On the surface of the world right now there is war and violence and things
seem dark
But calmly and quietly, at the same time, something else is happening
underground
An inner revolution is taking place and certain individuals are being called
to a higher light
It is a silent revolution
From the inside out
From the ground up

It is time for me to reveal myself
I am an embedded agent of a secret, undercover
Clandestine
Global operation
A spiritual conspiracy
We have sleeper cells in every nation on the planet

The sun loves me.
Oh yeah, I know, like the Bible says
the sun shines on good and evil alike
and I like that about old Sol.
But when the sun shines on me
touching my cheek like a lover
turning my heart wild and green
lighting my crown like the 4th of July
grand finale, I know
the sun loves me
and on behalf of the planet
I take it very personally.

– Elizabeth Cunningham, from Small Bird

This was one of the poems my wife, Debi, read at our service in Tilden Park on Sunday.