LA POSADA

We had our annual Posada last Saturday--the Christmas procession with Mary and Joseph/Maria and Jose, looking for shelter for the holy child.  We had some really mean innkeepers turn us away, which was great!

I'm looking for Posada or shelter from all the craziness of this past year.  The tax cut for the rich has passed, sacred lands are going to be sold to mining companies, Dreamers are hung out to dry, pedophiles are honored, but don't say "transgender" or "science based".  It seems like an assault a day.  But--as they say on the ads for "miracle" products on late-night TV--"there's more!"

That "more" may indeed be more assaults on the poor, the earth, those who are seen as "other".  But on this eve of the Solstice, I hold my hands out, not only asking for shelter, but offering it.   Mary gave the fetus that became Jesus (yes, Virginia, that's how it happened) posada in her womb.  She gave him breasts aching with milk.  She became the house for God, the house for hope.

I wrote this blog post on the Posada for our denomination's worship blog:

http://blogs.elca.org/worship/?p=925

And I ask, what indeed, if we were all Posada for hope, for justice, for healing.

Be Justice.  Be Beauty.  Be Shelter.

Patrick

Sounds of Silence

In 1967--I'm pretty sure of the year--I was out hunting pheasants with my older brother Mike and my father.  "Hunting" is the right word--not "getting" any. It would have been this time of year: not a lot of snow on the ground, the landscape a muted severity of grays, tans and browns.  A low angle sun that seems to call to the inner depths of things.  One of my favorite times of the year.

If you've hunted pheasants, you know that the two actions you take are walking and being quiet.  We walked cornfields, barely used railroad tracks, sloughs, edges of woods.  I can't remember if we ever saw any birds that day. I know that we didn't shoot any.

It was cold that day, and one of the joys of that day was getting back into the warm car and driving to the next stop.  There was a new song that really grabbed me, as I sat in the back seat.  It spoke to the cold day, and also to where I was in my relation to my family at that age:  It was haunting, melancholic, beautifully sung, and also contained words that challenged how we looked at the world: "the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCl8x1PaD7M&spfreload=5

I think maybe "The Sound of Silence" was the first song I fell in love with.  "Hello, darkness, my old friend..."   "In restless dreams I walked alone..."  I felt that, finally, someone was singing to my 14-year old soul. I didn't know where I fit into the family.  I was sad, in a time when boys--especially boys who played football, did Boy Scouts and hunted--didn't show that sadness.  I remember leaning back all of my 14-year old self into the back seat and thinking something like "I want to keep hearing this song forever".  There was something like joy and sorrow wrapped together in my hearing of it.

Except maybe I wasn't 14. The wonder--and curse--of on-line access is that I can just look up and see that "The Sound of Silence" was released in 1965.  Who knows how long it took to get to the top of the play list at KAUS 1480 in Austin, Minnesota.  But it probably didn't take two years. So maybe I was 12 or 13.  And maybe it doesn't matter, because as I continue to discover myself, who I am now at 64 (that I can confirm), who I was, and who I will be, I can give thanks for the beauty, the pathos and the call of that song. And so many others.

This is a poem I wrote over 30 years ago. I think that 12 or 13 or 14 year old boy is in there.

THE MASS

For Thomas Merton

A boy raises a match to twin candles,

Chanting baseball scores behind his prayers.
Bread and wine are ground into the stone,
The water is drawn, knife whetted,
Colors kissed and draped over shoulders.
The priest steps slowly to the altar,
Holding his years like stones coughed up by the sea.
He opens the book, lets the words slap his face,
Turns reddened to us, and weeps history.
It is a moment to say yes to failure.

 

The candles burn thick with darkness,

The music dances in the flames of a thousand circles.
Now the host is raised up to the beaks of night,
Now the words are shouted from the cross:
“This is my Body!” “This is my Blood!”
Walk now to the River, with hands open to receive the promise.
Like a tooth picked off a playground after a fight,
You put it in your pocket, wish on it,
Watch it grow into some terrible friend,
Some new and utterly lonely beast.

 

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be thanksgiving.

Patrick

ME TOO

ME TOO

 

I was hit on by someone in a position of authority over me, and inappropriately touched by a colleague on several occasions.  I can say “Me too”.

 

But that’s not enough.

 

In both those cases, I was physically stronger than the other person, and had options for getting out of the situation.  That position was ending soon, and I could often avoid the person who touched me.  I wasn’t catcalled, groped on the bus or subway, called a slut or sexually assaulted.  I know many women—among my church, family and friends who have been.  I have tried to work against all kind of sexual harassment and violence, and I could say that I stand with women who have been threatened or attacked.  I could say “Me too”.

 

But it wouldn’t be enough.

 

Because men, including myself, need to say “Me too” about participating in a culture and society where women are treated like objects.   About seeing women as something to “get”.  I would like to say that I never thought that way or spoke that way, but I would be a liar.  I could say that I was younger, that I was raised in a town and time where using women was drilled into males from a very young age, and that this socialization is ingrained in our society so deeply.

 

I could say a “Me too” to being socialized to use women, but that isn’t enough.

 

Look at the language of “get” that men use:  I “got” a girlfriend.  I “got” laid.  Even I “got” married.  This language of acquisition and possession can morph quickly into actions that “take” instead of “get”. And taking another person is violence on any level.  I am sorry that I have participated in that, but that’s not enough.

 

I am trying to live my life in a way that does not objectify, harass or molest women (or anyone else).  I’m not perfect, and I fail.  That’s not an excuse, nor a plea for pity or cheap forgiveness.  What I can do is join with other men in a different kind of “me too” campaign, where we commit each other to recognize our participation in objectifying and demeaning women, and we commit ourselves to working with other men to stop it.

 

That could be a really good thing for us men to say, “us too”.

Be Justice. Be Beauty. Be "Us Too".

Patrick

RAGING

I’m sitting in the studio I rent at the Loft Literary Center, a place boundaried by the ethics of silence and reflection.  I’m eating Extra Crunchy Peanut Butter out of a jar, and munching on crackers.  No other writers mind, because outside, down the block and across the street from the Vikings Darth Vader Stadium, in the parking lot of a bar, a heavy metal  raging scream shock damn it to hell band is playing its collective asses off for the masses.  I’m sure their volume control goes even beyond Spinal Tap’s 11, maybe up to 15 or so.  The guitar riffs are OK, the drummer is good, and the main singer—whom I’m guessing is a white guy around 40, whose long hair is starting to creep up his pate—is doing his best to channel rage.  After every song, a roar goes up from a couple hundred men.  Pretty soon, I expect to see pirates rappelling down the stadium walls to the plaza, where feral hogs will be slain by the sword and roasted whole over huge fires. 

I don’t write rage that well, and I’m trying to figure out how rage has taken over our discourse and our politics and even our families, rage not only from those who have been deprived, but from those doing the depriving. 

Interlude: the band just burst into their rendition of “I Want to Hold Your Hand”.  Touching.

I’ve been reading about how loyal Trump voters have stayed loyal, and how his bullying and coarseness and vulgarity actually make them feel better.  About him, and about themselves.  I know there are a lot of people feeling left out and powerless in parts of our country, and Trump feels like a champion.  But I wonder what will happen when that feeling doesn’t deliver, when all that is left is rage, with no action or strategy to funnel it into.  What will happen then?  There will still be music and rallies where we can shout about our power and our sense of being betrayed, but eventually that rage—real or imagined, it doesn’t matter—has to go somewhere.  God, help us.

 

This is a poem about a girl I knew who had reason to rage, and somehow found hope.  It was originally published in the anthology: Veils, Halos and Shackles: International Poetry on the Abuse and Oppression of Women.

 

DON’T KIDNAP MY MOM BEFORE MY FIRST COMMUNION
 

For Janette

She crouches behind

the stove on the 4^th floor
of a building with no elevator,
no front door, no smells
but rum, urine, frijoles,
flowers, fried fish,
t-shirts and asthma.
She breathes as softly
as her mind will let her,
with knocking at the door.                 

 

Who could it be?
A machete?
A tiny telegram from Tio?
An angel whose face
is on backwards?
The little peephole
is a magic pipeline:     
good things come in small packages
and bad things, too.

 

Her body is twelve, skinny
enough to squeeze behind
the stove, tight enough
to attract mustaches,
fingertips, maldiciones.
Her eyes are mousetraps
being nibbled.
She prays with her thumb,
her nightgown, the stuffed
bear she thought
to bring along.

 

She remembers
the story, from First Communion
of the five thousand fed:
five little breads,
two small fish,
given by a young boy.
“But it could have been you,
the pastor said. “It could have
been your hands
holding up the miracle.”
She looks at her hands,
browned like stove grease
from behind the stove,
white knuckled, red
in the creases,
eager to give birth.                 

I will be bread, she thinks.

I will be a fish:
A tiburón, a shark,
something that is
difficult to catch.

 

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be wary of your rage.

Patrick