I Wake to Sleep

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Those lines by Theodore Roethke got me started writing poetry almost 39 years ago, and I have thought about them a lot lately.   The second line is easier to define (and therefore possibly limit): it’s a statement that is reflected in a lot of theories of education, and in songs like the one based on a poem by Antonio Machado called: Caminante, No Hay Camino...se hace el camino al andar, golpe a golpe, verso a verso (Wayfarer, there is no way, we make the way by walking, blow by blow, verse by verse)

The first line is different: it starts with a contradiction, and ends with praise. You might wonder why I said “praise” instead of a commitment or action.  I wonder too!  But as I wrote the word “praise” out, it seemed to ring true.  Praise being a movement of the whole being, the whole body and spirit towards something powerful, just and beautiful.  What do you think?

I’m trying not to commit the cardinal sin of  poetry, which is trying to nail down what a poem or a line or an image means. If I try to figure out what “I wake to sleep” means, I would either go crazy or beat the living mystery out of it. 

One way to engage that line is to say that in some fundamental ways, our country has been asleep for a long, long time—to the violence in our midst, to global warming, to growing inequality.  Unfortunately, when we have had these little episodes of waking, we often wake up on the wrong side of the bed!  That is, we wake up mad, and start looking for scapegoats to blame.  We blame the media, we blame immigrants, we blame the government, we blame the big corporations, we blame the right, we blame the left.  The anger we feel may convince us that it is righteous anger, but it’s not leading to much fundamental change.

For the last twelve days, my wife and I have been teaching an immersion class for seminary students in our neighborhood.  It is supposed to be intense, and to give them a sense for multicultural ministry.  There’s a limit on what you can do in 15 days (we go until the end of the week), but we’ve been trying to push that limit as far as we can.  They’ve met with community leaders in education, business, health, the arts and social services; have gone to various events, and helped with worship.  But the most important part of the course is hearing the story of people in the community, particularly those of the poor, and especially the story of immigrants and their lives here in the land of the free.  Some of the students have not heard stories like the ones they’ve heard, and are—we hope—beginning to look at ministry in a new way.

It is hard for me to listen to voices, especially when they are shouting, if I disagree with their point of view.  I imagine I’m not alone in that.  I have been trying for the last year and a half to at least try and see the person and listen to their story.  Many times I’ve had to listen for their story, that is, to seek out what might be their own story of struggle and pain behind the points they are trying to make.

On the top of my morning devotion page, I’ve written a couple of phrases to help guide my day.  They originated from sermons I preached where I knew I wasn’t really living what I proclaimed.  One says “end of the line”.  The idea there is that if I’m in the back of the line, my self-interest is more in line with an idea of justice that says everyone should share in abundance. (Try this at the next church pot luck you go to).

Another says, “love your enemies”.  That’s there because Jesus told me to, and because I don’t want to.

The third one says “compassion first”.  My hope there is that whomever I encounter, whomever I look at, even and especially someone attacking me, I will see them first with compassion, and treat them first with compassion. That has been a slow waking to sleep, but I can say that it has made a difference in my relationship with people.  I don’t always get the “first” part, but it helps me even when I remember to look with compassion after I’ve looked with anger or judgment.

I don’t think compassion is the only answer, and I think anger, when it’s depersonalized and focused on an injustice needs to be part of how we make change.  The play of those two are never simple. I’ve seen the first two episodes of “The Abolitionists” on PBS, and look forward to the third one.  Compassion alone didn’t win the day on slavery, but it did help move the country to a place where action was possible.  Unfortunately, the action ended up being the terrible violence of the Civil War. 

I don’t know where this is leading, and I would rather let it rest there.

Be beauty. Be justice.  Be angry, but be compassionate.

Patrick