DON’T BUY THIS

 

There is an impactful commercial that plays rather often on the TV stations we watch. It shows a person standing at an empty refrigerator, looking for what is not there.  The person’s feature changes, to reveal different people from different cultures, as words flash above telling us that 1 out of 8 Minnesotans are hungry, including 1 out of 5 children.  It’s an effective ad for Second Harvest Heartland, one they hope helps people make a donation to their effort.  An especially effective commercial during holiday times.

 

Today, the commercial came up again: I watched the faces change, I read the sobering statistics. We’ve been giving to groups that feed the hungry since the pandemic started, and it reminded me how important that is.

 

The next commercial was for “your Twin Cities Jaguar dealer”. No faces changing into others, just shots of the car, and words about how much you can “save”. The purpose, as with the prior commercial, is to move people to give money—in this case, a lot of it, to purchase what they want.  An especially effective commercial during holiday times.

 

It struck me that we will never make real progress in ending hunger until we see the connection between those two ads.  The first one asks you to make a difference in another person’s life, by giving $25 or $50 or $100.  The second one asks you to let Jaguar make a difference in your life, by giving them tens of thousands of dollars.

 

Both commercials, ultimately, are geared to making us feel good about ourselves.  The first may lead us into guilt first, but our donation can alleviate that into a feeling that we are good because we did something good.  The second one skips the guilt entirely, just leads us into feeling good because we can afford a Jaguar, and therefore, at some level, deserve one.

 

I have nothing against helping the hungry.  I have a hell of a lot against “helping the hungry” without taking a hard look at our consumption, and the structures that support and enable grow inequality.  If we don’t make those connections—personally and on a national and global scale—we are going to see the same commercials next year.  We will be able to give to help feed the hungry, and we will be able to buy, or fantasize about buying, the sexy power car.

 

I don’t want to feel good about that.  I want it to chafe.

 

 

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be as critical as the times demand.

 

 

Patrick

ANNIVERSARIES

October 5 would have been the 71^st anniversary of my parents, Walt and Monica.  It was also the 16^th anniversary of my mother’s death.  She died on the date she and her beloved were married, which seems fitting.  (October 5, 2004 was also the last day my hometown Minnesota Twins won a playoff game!  That’s a whole ‘nother story.)

 

Although I never thought about it exactly this way, I realize both of my parents were anti-fascists.  Both served in World War II. Mom was a WAC, and among other things helped in the training of French pilots, who were then sent to bomb their own country to free it from the Nazis.  I imagine some of those young men died doing that.  Dad was in the Army Air Corps in the Aleutian Islands on December 7, 1941, closer to Japan than Pearl Harbor was. He served in combat in France and Germany, and in the occupation of Germany after the war.  Then his German came in handy for his country, unlike in 1917, when he went to kindergarten speaking only German, and was told that children who spoke “the enemy’s language” would be hit.

 

I wish I could call them up and talk about our current political situation.  They voted in every election, and my mom worked for over 10 years as an administrative assistant for the county.  Dad was a barber and as I note in my poem “Cutting Away”:

 

You can learn a lot by holding

a man’s head in one hand

and a razor in another. 

 

I’m pretty sure there aren’t elections in the next life.  But if you can hear me, mom and dad, I want you to know that we are still fighting the good fight!

 

Here is a poem from my upcoming book that celebrates how my parentage came to be:

 

 

AUSTIN MINNESOTA

 

Austin, Hog-Town,

city of bent shoulders.

Maybe the hair of the men on the kill

grow more quickly over their ears,

so that you made a killing

with your scissors and clippers

and the fine hand broom that whisked

the dead hair off their shoulders.

You roomed at Maw Daly’s on Main

Street, where husband Bill left each

morning to work in the plant, and

daughter Monica checked the accounts

at Kresge’s and came home to work

for the house, cleaning the roomers’ rooms,

stuffing the laundry through the wringer

into galvanized pots.  I wonder how

often she washed your sheets, and how

much she wondered.  Mom said she thought

you were ugly and stuck up when she

first met you, but something must

have caught her heart—your mustache,

the scent of pomade and powder

on your hands, your fervency at Mass.

Somehow you ended up talking, then

dancing, then walking down the aisle

at Queen of Angels, Mom’s brothers

still alive, Grandpa Bill delighted to see

his daughter finally married, Grandma

Daly wondering who would clean the sheets.

 

 

Be justice.  Be beauty.  Be anti-fascist, as effectively and peacefully as you can.

 

Patrick

GREETINGS POETRY LOVERS

For those of you who remember Rocky and Bullwinkle, you may remember that greeting from the Moose: “Greetings, Poetry Lovers!” It was meant to carry a lot of irony (as did the whole show), but I have loved that line ever since I was a kid.  Now that I’m retired, I love it even more.

 

One of the joys of retirement is that I not only have more time to write poetry, I have more time to READ poetry! Which, of course, helps writing immensely! Especially reading one volume by an author from start to finish.  In the last part of July and the first part of August, I read these works:

 

“Straight Out of View” by Joyce Sutphen

 

“Between Us”, by Margaret Hasse

 

“I” by Toi Derricotte (still working on that big one!)

 

The past week or so, I’ve been reading:

 

“What Falls Away is Always” by Richard Terrill

 

“Idanre and Other Poems” by Wole Soyinka

 

“The Essential Rumi” by Rumi (still working on that one, too!)

 

I didn’t set out to read all women writers at first, nor switch to all men writers later.  I just picked up their books—either because I saw it on my shelf (we’re trying to declutter and organize—still working on that one, too!) or because their book came out, or because I found their book in one of the many little free libraries I pass on my daily walks.

 

Each of these poets has their own style, of course, but each touches on one part of poetry that is essential: mystery.  I won’t try to explain each of their approaches, only to say that each of them take delight in words, take delight in putting them together, and take delight in the mysterious communication between solitary writer and unknown reader.  So I commend them all to you.

 

For those of you who are struggling with writing during this pandemic—or any other times—I leave these words of wisdom from Rumi:

 

“This is how it always is

when I finish a poem.

 

A great silence overcomes me,

and I wonder why I ever thought

to use language.”

 

Be beauty. Be justice. Be poetry. Be silence.

 

Patrick

HOW LONELY SITS OUR CITY…

How lonely sits our city…

That was all I wrote on my Face Book page this morning.  It follows after the first verse of Lamentations: “How lonely sits the city that was once full of people”.

Our city of Minneapolis is full of rage, violence, fear, anger, hatred and deep, deep sorrow.  At some moments, it doesn’t feel as if the city can hold it all.

I want to reach out my arms and hug, but we are physical distancing.

I want to reach out my hands and heal, but we still haven’t completely opened the wound.

If you want moral clarity, this is what I got:

George Floyd was murdered by the police.

George Floyd was murdered by the police.

One policeman knelt on his neck while three policemen watched and did nothing while George Floyd was gasping for breath and crying out for help.

The anger and frustration of the African American community, and other people of color is not going away, it is justified and it demands justice and compassion.  Those who have endured the lynching of its people over decades, over centuries—by a system that devalues people of color, in order to maintain a system that privileges white people (and not all of them) and the rich—they deserve justice.  Reconciliation and healing are not possible without it.

That’s what I have for moral clarity right now.

Other things are not so black and white (forgive the play on words)

The neighborhood that was so severely damaged last night is my neighborhood.  It is the most diverse neighborhood in the city, one that has suffered under police brutality and poverty, and now have been slapped in the face by destruction of its food supply, economic base and safety.

I understand that frustration can lead to rage and desperation can lead to violence.  All violence leads to more violence.  That doesn’t mean that all violence is equal.  The spark for this terrible fire was the police murder, in plain daylight of a man who allegedly tried to pass a forged $20 bill.  We may never be able to pinpoint the exact moment that the violence began in the street; but the police department made a decision before a PEACEFUL march that they were going to engage it with riot gear, chemical weapons and rubber bullets.  As far as I can tell, no attempt was made by the police to negotiate or deescalate. As usual, the people our police are called to serve and protect were seen simply as a threat.

But the looting, torching of buildings, gunshots and acts of physical violence against others is not justified.

Some will say—and have said already, “but you can’t equate torching of a store or looting as the same as the murder of an unarmed black man.”  I am not equating them.  But one can be horrified and enraged at police murder and be horrified and enraged at looting and arson.

“But they only torched big corporations’ stores,” some say.  Not true.  Many of the stores that were damaged were minority owned, many built by immigrants, some of whom do not have enough insurance to cover the loss. And who worked at the Wendy’s, the Target, the Cub Foods?  Mostly people of color, who have lost their jobs.  Many of them do not qualify for unemployment or any government help.  How does that help the cause of justice?

“People should obey the police.”  But the police are the ones who take an oath to protect and serve the people, not the other way around.  We taught our children to obey and respect civil authorities, partly so they would survive and because it is right to do so.  But we also taught them to question civil authorities when they are destructive of human beings.

One irony of last night was that the police shot rubber bullets from the rooftops on mostly peaceful protestors and did nothing to stop the looting and arson.

Another irony is that it’s becoming clear that some of the instigators of violence came prepared to do that, and had nothing to do with the protest.

A third irony: we’ve fought for years to combat gang and individual graffiti in our neighborhood, one of the hardest hit by vandalism.  It started to creep back this last year.  On building after building today, you can see “Fuck the Cops” alongside newly painted gang tags.  Put that in your progressive or conservative pipe and smoke it.

I will protest today and tomorrow.  I helped clean up broken glass and looted goods this morning.  I will pray for justice and I will work for it, but I must confess I am tired and sad and angry and feeling a loneliness though I am surrounded by people who love and who are putting their lives on the line.

This is a portion of a post this morning from a friend, Kari Slade:

“I wish for us all the ability to light up like the skies of Minneapolis last night.

With a fire for justice and the ability to see that this

was the trauma and pain of Racism ignored for far too long.”

Kari leads the Health Careers Program at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis, where both our daughters graduated.  We have been working with her and her students on a public art project that was suspended by the pandemic.  A major theme of that work was using art as a way to understand and heal from trauma—individual, communal, generational.  It saddens me that we won’t be able to complete this project this school year.  It saddens me more that the students in her program have a lot more trauma to work with going forward.

Be justice.  Be beauty.  Be lonely, but be lonely together.

Patrick

TIME FOR A CHANGE

I went to our church building yesterday to set up some things for “virtual worship” (whatever the hell that means!).  I happened to look at, not just glance at, the bulletin board by the front door.  It still had the Lenten flyer with the schedule and the list of Sunday Gospels.  I had written it in late January, in order to send it out ahead of time, and had forgotten our theme of Lent. It is: “A Big Change Is Coming!”  I guess so!  I was referring to the wonderful stories of liberation: the Samaritan woman, the man born blind, Lazarus raised from the dead.  I did NOT anticipate thousands dying, the economy ground to a halt, physical isolation of our flock.

I’ve seen memes on social media that say something like:  “Look out for a bush of babies born nine months from now!”  Maybe.  But maybe, also we need to look out for a rush of divorces in two or three months.  Sharing space all day has it’s blessings; it also uncovers some of our defects of character and lack of real communication gifts.

For me, it has also opened me up to reflecting more on the world view, or cosmovision of how we live together.  Let me start by sharing some reflections on this old, battered book that I’ve been reading during Lent:

If you can see, the book has been with me a long time. The price tag says $1.45, but I think I may even have bought it for less at a used book store, back in the 1970’s.  Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander was published in 1966. It was written by Thomas Merton, who was a Cistercian monk, part of an order that maintains a strict silence.  And yet, Merton was one of the most astute commentators on social issues of the day, from civil rights to the war in Viet Nam to the environment.

Merton writes about the “disease” of the U.S. involves seeing ourselves through lenses of innocence.  That way of seeing (which is really a way of blindness) imagines our country as being liberated from history: we are the New World.  We’ve started fresh, without the old evil of the places we left (meaning Europe).  Because of that core belief, our ideology refuses to see evil as something in us.  Rather, evil, decay, sin are located “outside of us”.  In other cultures and ways of thinking.  In the sixties, Merton sees how the prevailing ideology locates evil in communism, “outside agitators” and “uncivilized peoples” and how our collective memory celebrates only our unique goodness.  Even the evil we have done—for example, slavery—is celebrated as something we ended.  We took care of it with a terrible war, and then moved on.

Of course, that is not the experience of those who were enslaved—before and after legal slavery. Nor the genocide experience of Native Americans, nor the experience of Vietnamese and Central Americans, where the US “fought for democracy”, and for many other people.  In “seeing for innocence”, we make even the victims of our oppression and violence into the guilty ones.

I can’t find the exact quote from him, but the essence is that when we locate evil as something outside of us, we always end up being violent.

Merton also reflects on the great Myth of the American State, which flows from our supposed Innocence: a fervent belief in Progress.  It is so hard for me not to fall under the spell of that power.  I so want the world to be better, and I have seen advances we have made.  But faith in Progress is a shaky faith.

I’ve heard over and over during these past weeks the phrase: “we will get through this”.  I’ve said it to others, usually adding the word “together” at the end.  On the one hand, it is a message of hope, and hope is so needed right now.

But clinging to the idea that “we will get through this” can keep us from doing the hard work of grieving that this terrible crisis is causing.

The truth of it is that we will not be all right.  Not all of us will be all right.  Our Lt. Governor’s brother has died of Covid-19. A Latino owned  restaurant was destroyed by fire, and four other businesses adjacent were heavily damaged.  Five people living in an apartment above the restaurant are now homeless.  Many of our members work in the service industry and have been laid off.  Those who are undocumented will get nothing from the government programs.

Not all of us will be all right.  And in profound ways, all of us will not be all right.           

We may not get through this as we imagine.  We may never “return to normal”. We don’t know what is coming, but we do know that what is happening now is horrible. 

Hope has an answer for that, but true hope—as opposed to optimism—is born out of suffering (see Romans 5:1-5). In order to get to hope in this time, I think we need to lament first.  So much of what is presented to us by the news—and what we ourselves share on social media—are ways to distract us while we are sequestered.  Read books, do home repair projects, binge watch TV series and movies.

Some of those coping mechanisms may be necessary.  But what if we took time to actually feel our grief, experience our loneliness, accept the fact that we are going to die—not in this epidemic necessarily, but some day—and mourn all the daily losses we suffer.  Grief is hard to bear alone, but we do have means of communicating when we can’t be in person.

Many people around the world—Palestinians in eternal lockdown, Yemenis starving in the midst of war, families separated at our border—have learned how to live in the midst of grief and uncertainty that things will get better.  Maybe they can be our teachers.  What better time to do that but Holy Week.

I encourage you to read Merton.  Another good book I’m reading is “Glimpsing Resurrection” by

Deanna Thompson, who writes about living with the trauma of incurable cancer.

The poem “Lament” I include here is first of all, a call to me to not run away from my sorrow and the sorrow of my family and my flock.  It doesn’t offer answers, but I hope that it can help us to journey through our grief together.

Be beauty. Be justice.  Be lament.

Patrick

LAMENT

God is the straw within the straw.

                                                Edith Sitwell

God is the straw within the straw.

The quota of bricks not lessened.

The lash across the slaves’ backs.

God is the straw within the straw.

The family shamed to give birth with the animals.

The baby barely born laid in a feed trough.

The body hunted like a plague.                      

God is the grass within the grass.

The withering, the scythe,

The roaring oven,

The word that does not end.

God is the flesh within each battered flesh.

Bones ground like wheat,

Wind ripened and let loose,

A goblet of sweet and bitter wine passed around the table.

God is the stone within the stone.

Lapis angularis shattered with iron rods.

The rock struck and then struck again,

The pool stirred by the angel.

God is the water within the water.

Leviathan hung by a hook.

A coin in a carp’s mouth.

Rain that refuses to wash away the blood.

God is the wood within the wood.

The seed dead and sprouting green.

Limbs sheltering birds and their songs.

A box shaped like a no.

God is the night within the night.

Moon full, stars strung like teeth,

Comet slung across the horizon,                    

Silence hounding silence.

God is the cry within the cry.

Nipples cracked and bleeding,

The war child’s mouth rippled with sores.

The storehouse locked, horses ready to ride.

God is the question within the question.

How long?

Why me?

Where are you?

God is the pain within the pain.

God is the prayer within the prayer.

God is the doubt within the doubt.

God is the hope within the …

BREATHE LISTEN NAME

SOUNDS:  I heard my first robin of the spring Monday morning, yesterday morning, and once again today.  Usually it takes a couple days before I see one, but it joys me to know they are there.  Schools are closed, and we can’t do our artistic residency, but yesterday evening, I could hear neighbor children down the block laughing and screaming.  A blessing.

On the other side of sound, my wife Luisa is organizing the thousands of myriads of glass she uses for mosaic.  Yesterday, while I was meditating upstairs, she dropped a box of them on the floor.  It’s happened before, so I wasn’t too alarmed, but it made me think about all that is being broken in our world right now: bodies, families, businesses, our social life.  There will be time and imagination to make beauty out of this brokenness, but first we have to be in the brokenness.

BREATH: Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, nine months before Christmas Day.  It almost always falls in Lent, the time of pilgrimage leading up to the death of Jesus on the cross, and his resurrection.  Angel Gabriel says to young Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you”. In Greek (as in Hebrew), the word for spirit and wind are the same.  I imagine Mary breathing in the spirit of those words of Gabriel, and letting the power of the most high overshadow—from inside her, inside her very guts.  Not just her womb, but her entire body, her whole life becomes the shelter of the holy.  Considering the Greek word is δύναμις, from which we get the word “dynamite”, that must have been quite a breath!

I’ve been practicing a meditation technique the past couple of days, where I take deep breaths. I do that often, but in this practice, you hold your breath (which I think is holding yourself) for awhile after you’ve breathed it all in.  And you hold your breath, your self, for awhile after you have left it all out.  I found that when I hold my breath, myself while I am full of breath, I can feel the pulse in my head and I start to get nervous until I let it out.  When I hold my breath, myself when I have emptied my breath, I feel calm.  There is wisdom in this, wisdom that Mary knew.  Emptying ourselves makes our selves be more open to grace.  I did discover that it helped to open my mouth just a little when my lungs were full of breath.  Maybe that made me—literally—a little less full of myself!

NAMING:  Gabriel also says to Mary: “therefore the child to be born will be holy; will be called Son of God.”  I think you could also translate that (my Greek is very rusty, but I have no qualms about making things up) something like: “because of the Spirit coming upon you and the power overshadowing you, the one who is to come will be holy, will be named Child of God.”

There is a lot we don’t know about what is to come with this virus, the economy, our world.  But I believe we can breathe this word that hung from our baptismal fount in church from Advent until almost Lent:  “All children are holy”.  That was the theme of our Posada this past December, that as we come seeking posada, shelter for Mary, Joseph and the little one who is coming, we come bearing this undeniable peace: that all children are holy, that each life is precious, and that we all have within our bodies, our selves, a remarkable inn, a beautiful and cozy sanctuary in which we can shelter the holy breath.

And that holy breath comes with incredible power to love, even when we are kept apart.

The poem below is from my book “The Devouring Land”, which is NOT on Amazon, but you can purchase from me. 20% of my cut goes to ministries with immigrants, who stand the most to suffer from the economic recession,

Be justice, be mercy, be listening, breathing, naming.

Patrick

THE EGYPT OF MARYS WOMB *

A small town.  A back door.

A young woman at her work

chopping, searing, holding.

A flash, not so much of light, as

the chorus of sight that light trails                 

as it passes by.  A strange

word, an aspiration,

a slight bow of the head,

a warm wrapping of wings.

There will be lions, later.

There will be swords.

But tonight, your flesh

is reed and pitch,

bitumen and straw,

floating on the great river,

eyes open, naming,

one by one, all the stars

of the vast, quaking world.

* Title from a poem by Robert Bly

RANDOM AND NOT SO RANDOM THOUGHTS

RANDOM AND NOT SO RANDOM THOUGHTS

-           I rent a studio at the Loft Literary Center, in the Open Book in downtown Minneapolis.  It is a block from Gold Medal Park and a couple blocks from the Mississippi River. I often walk down there when I take a break.  Over the past few weeks, it has been fun watching the ice recede slowly and then—poof!—disappear almost overnight from the main channel.

-           I usually stop at the memorial to the thirteen people killed and the many injured in the August 1, 2007 collapse of the 35W bridge.  Our daughter’s name is on the wall of survivors, and I rub my fingers over her four names (see the poem at the end of this).  Lately, I’ve been rubbing my fingers over two other names, who were on that bus as young people.  One allegedly took the money he got from the settlement when he turned 18, and went to Syria to fight with ISIS, and was killed.  Another, who had worked as a parole and corrections officer, is sitting in jail, awaiting her trial for a kidnapping that ended in a murder.  It has made me think about what happens to the trauma in us years later. I’m not saying that the bridge trauma caused  the choices these two made (or our Talia, for that matter). There were other traumas in their young lives for sure.  But it does make me wonder. And grieve.

-           On a lighter and more happier note, our older daughter has passed her state certification and now will begin selling insurance.  My wife, especially, helped her study for the test many nights, and she (and a little bit of me) learned a lot about insurance.  It happened that during that time, I turned on the radio in the middle of a commercial, which asked me (and I think you, dear reader, as well): “Is 2020 the year you finally get rid of insurance complacency?”   First of all, I didn’t know I suffered from insurance complacency.  I didn’t even know there was such a thing as insurance complacency.  But now, no doubt with help from our daughter, I plan on making this Election-Leap-Olympic Year a Year of Liberation from all forms of insurance complacency, both domestic and foreign.

-           Yesterday, we received a letter from a funeral home, addressed to “The Hansel Family”.  On the outside of the envelope—repeated in BIG LETTERS on the top of the letter inside—read the following words: We Need Your Help.  My first thought was “What, aren’t there enough people dying for them?”  And then I thought, “What actions would they ask us to do to reverse that trend?”  I mean, the coronavirus is doing its deeds across the world, and opioids and hunger and lack of health care are quite active in Minnesota   Turns out that they need help determining “how members of our community plan for one of the hardest things a family has to face.”  Which means they need help getting me and us as pre-paid customers.  Perhaps I will “help” them out, and then change my phone number.

-           In the bathroom at The Loft, there are new signs urging us to wash our hands, in about 20 languages.  I was pleased to see that most of the languages were from Asia or Africa and one indigenous one from here.   I’m hoping to see election signs in many languages up soon, and only one color: blue.  I’m not excited about Joe Biden, but not voting for him means helping the scourge of this man and his dishonorable party.  We have got to win this.

The poem below is from my book “The Devouring Land” about the 35W bridge memorial. I have a bunch of readings coming up: see my page PatrickPoet on Face Book.

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be washing your hands until they are blue.

Patrick

RUBBINGS

A man stops at the wall

to rub his fingers

over four chiseled names.

He has no brass

or paper, only the skin

of his fingertips,

unique in each loop

and whorl, yet genetically

linked to the smallest insect

that crawls across his hand.

He has rubbed these four

names for years,

not expecting a miracle

or some genie to pop

out and grant wishes—

his daughter, after all,

survived the bus

as it fell with the bridge

down to the riverbank—

but to remember

the shocking joy that

unexpected gratitude             

can bestow after

unsought terror

has been banished.

She is near sixteen now,

delighting and defying,

her memories secreted

in chambers she alone stewards,

and so he touches

her four names—

Talia, the morning dew,

Grace, the ground that sustains

when the very ground is shaken,

Cabello, that wonderful hair,

Hansel, the brother of the girl

who fled cruelty for wickedness

and was saved,

not by water, but by fire—

Oh, child of our hope,

joy of our remembering,

I lift your name

from the rock

with my skin.