WHAT DO WE SEE?

This photo could be a scene over Palestine as bomb after bomb lands on thin houses.  This photo could be the view from an Israeli farm, wondering when the next rocket will fly. It could be the sky over Ukraine, the sky over Iraq, the sky over Afghanistan, where red and orange and yellow do not harbor joy, but usher in another night of terror. 

But it isn’t. It’s the sky seen from our front yard, in a photo taken by my daughter, earlier in the summer, when the sun was reaching the farthest north, just before the solstice. Just after the sunset.

We’ve had beautiful sunsets in Minnesota lately, caused in part, I’ve heard, by the wildfires out west—acre after acre burning as the drought deepens and the planet gets hotter and hotter.  You can’t see the molecules that may be making the sky shimmer, and discern which comes from which source. Is it cloud, is it smoke, is it hope or is it fear?

My wife and I watched the 10 pm news last night, hoping, I suppose, to catch word of some miraculous peace, some unknowable justice that had rained down on a “conflict zone” and that now reigned instead of death.  It didn’t come.  There was a 15 second piece about Secretary Kerry demanding unfettered access to the site of the downed airliner.  There might have been a 15 second “shout out” to Gaza when I slipped into the kitchen to fill my water glass—I’m not sure.  We were told three times that today would be “steamy” with a chance for severe weather overnight.  We got something about cute animals or nice people helping neighbors, just before the requisite five minutes of sports.    

I’m not looking for an overabundance of gore, or story after story of homicides and assaults and wars.  But despite the access to “24 hour news”, it seems to me that we are shown so much that is not news that we are unable to see what is in front of us.  And so we hop from crisis to crisis: the schoolgirls kidnapped in Nigeria, the riots in Brazil, the fighting in Ukraine, ISIS in Iraq, the invasion of Gaza pop up into our consciousness like summer thunderstorms, rattle the windows for awhile and then pass on. 

I don’t have a ready-made solution.  I can’t tell the future.  Even though I am praying, at least some of the time I think that praying for peace may be a copout, because if it doesn’t inspire us to the kind of actions that make for peace, it is as empty as the news broadcast (No, parishioners, I’m not saying we should stop praying or that prayer is not efficacious. Just that uttering words by themselves without our spirit on the line doesn’t make a lot of difference.) 

I like to end these blog posts somehow tying it into the “Be justice. Be beauty” thing.   But I am not being either of those right now.  I am being frustrated, I am feeling broken, and I am hoping that what I can’t see I can truly hope for.

Patrick

TAKE NOTICE

I haven’t kept up with writing a piece a week about one of the photos our youth photography program produced.  I’ve been busy, I’ve been down, I’ve been sick.  Ok, got that out of the way.

I picked this photo because it troubles me the most.  The only color is the two notices on the door, both of which are pulling away.  As if the framers of these theses didn’t really care if they stood the test of time.  The tape is pulling away; the staple was not driven in all the way. Their message is clear: time to get out.  You don’t belong here anymore.

And yet, artistically, the photograph is beautiful: the lines, the angle of the shot, the sense that maybe a little breeze is trying to lift the papers away.  The young photographer had an eye for shape and framing.  Also a lot of courage to take a photo of a heartbreak rendered in legalese.

I don’t know who lived here, and what ghosts might inhabit a building found to be condemned.  When children at church ask me if I believe in ghosts, I tell them no. When writing poetry, that’s another question.  I do think that when we inhabit spaces fully, the space begins to inhabit us.  That’s why in the best stories, the place itself becomes a character.  And the characters leave a trace of their spirit in whatever place they pass through.

I imagine there is some heartache behind these notices on the door, heartaches that may be hard to notice because they are hidden from us.  Perhaps a family of immigrants—documented children, undocumented adults—who had to flee quickly.  Maybe a family that lost a job or had a health problem and couldn’t afford the rent or mortgage.  Maybe an unjust landlord.  The meaning is not posted with these officials signs.  Only that the building has been declared “unfit for human occupation.”  We don’t know why the people who lived here left, or where they have gone.  It makes me cry out for justice, for renewal, for grace.

I have been writing a series of linked stories that first started being placed in my hometown of Austin, Minnesota.  But as the stories grew, it began to be more about a small city’s relationship with what became a ghost town.  In “real life” there was a ghost town named Two Rivers, just south of Austin.  In the stories I’m writing, Two Rivers has become the settlement that the townspeople blame for their misfortune, a place that houses the “other” in a way that makes the respectable citizens uneasy. Eventually they burn the people of Two Rivers out, blaming them for the Spanish Flu epidemic.  But the woundedness and the beauty of Two Rivers does not disappear, but rather becomes part of the landscape.

I wrote this poem as a companion piece to those stories. It was originally published in the Austin Daily Herald around Halloween last year:

WHAT IF A GHOST TOWN HAS NO GHOSTS?

What if its river carries no cries down its long

and twisted fingers?  What if the cemetery has                    

no hinges between heaven and hell?  What if

the stories you were told were told to the first hearers

not to  lift their wings or give them hope, but to

shut them up for every hour?  What if the shovels

and the pitchforks and the lanterns and the shouts

all marshaled to bring the old town down, still hover

in the copse of pin oak and maple that looks

over the long, slow bend in the river?  What if                                 

the houses, built log by log, peg by peg,

first the frame, than the roof, then the longing

in the roof, the longing for sky and protection          

from storms, the child’s dreams wafted into prayer,

the moon beheld and the sun obeyed; what if

the chair set by the sick bed and the stool pulled

next to the stove in deep winter were the first

to go up in flames; and what if those bodies,

the dammed and the saved, did not weep as they

were driven from their homes, but held their hands

as wings in front of their bodies,

two to cover the face, two to cover the flesh,

two to hover and to rise as if all sacrifice                  

were but the backlash of praise, and what if             

those angels, those devoured by our fear,

hold not to hatred, nor sorrow, nor the lust

to kill, but incense, candlelight, the taste

of warm bread and sweet wine, and what if

as you and I walk through fields of poppies and oxeyes,

our eyes brightened by the late summer sun,             

we discover that what we thought was curse

was blessing, and that these enemies

driven from among us, have returned

in our children, in our song, and will stand

for us in the last night, in the last breath,

in the sound of the trumpet?

What will we say then?

* * *

What are the ghosts in our communities, our houses, our nation that cry out to be noticed? What do you say?

Be justice. Be beauty.  Take Notice

Patrick

COFFEE BREAK

This is the second in a series of reflections about photographs taken by children in our photography project at St. Paul’s Lutheran in Minneapolis during the summer of 2013.

This photo was taken by one of our Young Leaders as part of the summer show “Under Construction”.  You can see that the building is more under destruction than construction.  Two glass blocks have been broken out. Knowing how sturdy these blocks are, I can assume that it wasn’t wind or another force of nature that took them out, but human action.  It makes me wonder who did it, and why.

I have to confess that I broke a lot of things on purpose when I was a teenager. Petty vandalism, which wasn’t petty to the person who had their property damaged.  I know that part of the reason I did it was to fit in with a group of youth doing it, or even to shine as the leader of that group.  Part of it also was the sound that breaking something made, a sound that was paralleled by a kind of controlled fury in my heart.  It felt good to break something. I could have tried to justify it at the time by saying others were breaking me, others were damaging me, and I was just trying to “get back”.  That didn’t exactly ring true to me, even in my wilder days. No, I think the truth is that I liked breaking things for the sake of breaking them. I liked being the destroyer.

I think we probably all like being the destroyer.  Is it innate in us, or something that we have built into our life together so that it effects every one of us?

There have been quite a few programs on the radio lately about the passing of Maya Angelou.  On at least two of them, I heard her quote from the Roman playwright Terence.  Terence was a slave from North Africa; purchased by a Roman Senator, who later gave him his freedom (that last phrase deserves a whole essay).  The quote Maya Angelou cited was "I am a human being, I consider nothing that is human alien to me.”

As a theologian and follower of Jesus, that is a great summation of the Incarnation.  As a poet, that is a blessing to write about, for and with anything human.  And as a human, that exempts me from judging.

Maya—may I call you Maya, or would you prefer Ms. Angelou?—riffed off  Terence in a talk in Minneapolis in 1984 that was replayed this spring on Minnesota Public Radio.  She talked about how all of human experience is open to us, and we are open to it.  The thing that struck me the most was when she talked about the “most heinous acts that humans commit.”  She said that, being human, we cannot say “I could never do that”.  We can say: “I will try to never do that” or “I will work with my community to get the support to never do that” and so on. I’m approximating her quotes, except the one that says “I could never do that”.  That one I know I got right.

I cannot say that I could never kill anyone. Or torture. Or betray a loved one.  I’m not planning to do any of these things, but more importantly, I am trying to build a life that will keep me and others from doing those things: prayer, meditation, my support group, being honest with my family and friends, working for justice, confessing my sins honestly and accepting forgiveness graciously, trying to build a community of love where I live and I work.  I hope that I keep doing that. But I cannot say “I could never do that”, and strangely, that has given me a great deal of freedom.  When I trust that nothing human is alien to me, my fear diminishes.  I don’t need to fear myself or others, and that also relieves me of the burden to judge myself or others.

I could knock out the glass blocks in this photo.  I could also put the coffee there.  Whether it’s an offering, a sophisticated piece of littering, or something staged by the youth photographer, I don’t know.  I just finished my morning coffee from a coffee shop, and I’m going to take it home and recycle it.  Or plant something in it.  Or fill it up with more coffee.

Be justice. Be beauty. Be human.

Patrick

WHAT WORDS WE SEE

I got this idea to write a blog post a week this summer, riffing off a photograph from a show that the youth in our summer program did last summer.  The show was called “Under Construction” (and can be seen at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, 2742 15^th Ave S. in Minneapolis, by appointment. I’ll let you know when it appears elsewhere!) because there were no less than five construction projects going on in our neighborhood last summer.  This summer’s projects have started up already.

The youth also were able to look at the idea of construction in two other ways: nature, and human community.  How are we under construction?  How is the world?  There really are some beautiful photos, which I hope to share with you over the summer.

I started writing this post thinking about the words that were captured in some of the photographs, and how many of them were negative: “Sidewalk Closed” “Bridge Closed” “Stop” “Condemned” “Danger Construction Area Keep Out” “No Trespassing”.

It made me think how many times our young people hear and see those words directed at them: stay out, stay in your place, don’t come in, this is NOT FOR YOU.  Many of our youth are undocumented, or the children of undocumented parents.  That status comes with a kind of roving sign: “You are welcome to work here” (in fact we need your labor) but “You are not welcome to feel welcomed here” (we fear your culture, your language, the way you look, what you may represent about us).

I’ve been teaching poetry to some of these youth, and one theme rises from them over and over: you don’t really see me.  You don’t see me as I am, you don’t want to get to know me, you assume my life is “just like yours” or “totally different than yours” without ever really asking me what my life is like. 

You would think that would lead them to bitterness, but I don’t see that in them.  I see hope, a willingness to explore, and a determination to change things.  They all have incredible stories, and I have been honored to hear them.

Their photo that I chose for this writing is one of a worker holding a hard hat. At least that’s what I thought it was, until I really LOOKED at it.  I think it’s two workers holding a hard hat—the one on the left a woman (I assume, from the nail polish), the one on the left a man (assuming again).  The worker who has worn the hat has seen some work, it seems to me: look at how the “l” and the “a” are scraped off the words “laborers” on the cross.  “Laborers” has become “borers”: boring down into the heart of things, as construction does.  Boring at times, as all labor is.

It’s interesting to me that Local 563 is proclaimed in both church and state: the cross and the flag.  It just begs me to write something about the connection and disconnection between the two this Memorial Day weekend.  But I’m not going to do it.  I am going to ask you to pay attention to how many places of worship will have memorial day messages or celebrations, and how often we’ll be asked to remember and thank veterans.  Then compare that to Labor Day weekend, and see how well the labor movement fares.

But I digress, as is my wont.  What else do you see in the photo?  Why is the orange scraped?  What IS that drawing above “Maverick”.  What are those hands doing today? Why did the youth ask them to hold the hat the way they did?

I hope that we all see some very interesting things this summer, and it leads us to ask some very interesting questions.

Be justice.  Be beauty.

Patrick

FAREWELL TO NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

A fellow poet Bao Phi posted on his Face Book page in early April how he was going to write a poem a day during April, National Poetry Month, and allow himself to experiment, fail and other stuff I can’t remember and can’t find!  I wasn’t going to do it this year, but I decided to write a poem a day for April.  April 30 and counting: I have started 33 new ones—who knows how many will make it to fruition fully.  But it also gave me the chance to experiment and not worry about failure.  Including immersing myself in other poets.  This one was written after reading Gerard Manley Hopkins, like me a priest and a poet.  It’s dedicated to the artists of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater, who will bless Powderhorn Park and our community with the 40^th May Day Parade this coming Sunday.

THE GREAT BLUE HERON RETURNS TO POWDERHORN LAKE

Oh great, gangly grey-blue ghost of the shallows,

Stand still on back-bent legs along the lee of the island

Where the willow weeps wistfully to the water’s edge,

Her hair hanging hallowed on the holy love of hydrogen

And oxygen, who do not fret, fight or feud, but frolic

In full freedom, a resting place, a refuge for duck,

Goose, loon, gull, crappie, bullhead, sunnie, snapping turtle,

Bugs big and small and all manner of beasts that swim

Or crawl or fly through our imagination and our delight

In this city of waters, this chalice of homework, heartache

And hallelujahs we call Minneapolis.  Many men and women

March down to these shores, skating solemnly on the skin

Of ice when winter winds its wisdom and its woe, singing

Spring to the sun to strengthen our spirits, forcing

Fire on the 4^th, launching lanterns that long for an end

To war, a weary welcome to peace.  Over all, the long-legged,

Wing-spun, hook-necked fish-finding guardian of our souls

Stands like a “fifth season”, the unseen wind at the center

Of all flesh silent in its breast, its blood a river running

Rampant to the core of the earth, until some hand hidden

In the heart of God bids it rise, bids it fly, bids it circle

The island the lake the city the world the song.

Bao Phi reminded me that today is also the day of “The Fall of Saigon” in 1975.  It is also the day of the final lying down of my grandmother Florence Kelly Daly in 1979. I am so grateful that God has given us poetry—those events, and so many others in our lives can be held, cherished, challenged and transformed by the words we have been so graciously granted.

Be beauty.  Be justice.

Patrick

WHAT IS A HOLY SATURDAY?

It is perhaps an occupational hazard that pastors share: we are often so busy during Holy Week and Easter that we don’t have much time to reflect on the mystery.  My sermon is now done.  There are still preparations to complete, the most important of which is my making a raspberry white chocolate cheesecake for our Easter Dinner tomorrow.  With raspberries from our garden, lovingly kept in our freezer.

What is Holy Saturday?  I would guess for most pastors it is a day between focusing on death and its great power and mystery, and focusing on resurrection and its wonder and doubt. Many churches have Easter Vigils tonight (we do not), but that really is a resurrection service. I looked forward to Easter Vigil when I was a kid for two reasons:  lots of pagan stuff in the liturgy (fire, light, praising the bees) and because after it was over, we would eat everything we gave up for Lent.

What was that first Holy Saturday like?  At the risk of oversimplification, the men were hiding, and the women were waiting.  The men, almost all of whom had fled, were in their fear.  Maybe so far into their fear they could not truly mourn.  The women who had stuck with Jesus to the bitter end, found a way to prepare the spices to return on Sunday and anoint his hastily buried body.  Then, starting at sunset on Friday “they rested according to the commandment”.  They obeyed the Sabbath even though God had not obeyed their deepest desire.   They waited and suffered in the space between death and hope.

I have no doubt that the women mourned deeply that Sabbath.  There was no work to be done, and even though it was the Great Sabbath during the Passover, there was no rejoicing.  But that mourning was faith itself. Because it did not seek to escape from reality itself.  The men practiced escaping (hiding is but another form of escape).  The women practiced grief and mourning.  (I make the distinction, perhaps unwise, between grief, the state given to us by death, and mourning, the actions we take in our grief.)

Was their practice of mourning the reason that the women could continue to be faithful in the face of their hope devoured?  Faithful to go to the tomb without knowing who or what could take the huge stone away.  Faithful to bring spices to anoint the body, in accordance with the love we owe the dead.  And was their faith—a faith born out of a willingness to be in the very reality they would have loved to have avoided—that enabled them to see the risen Christ and believe him.  The men doubted—another form of escape.

(Sorry men—we do redeem ourselves come Pentecost, so hold on.)

I think we do not know how to mourn very well in our society.  At least not collectively.  I’ve done two funerals in the last two weeks and will do my cousin Joe’s next Wednesday.  The best mourning I encounter often includes a lot of laughter, as well as wrenching tears.  The best mourning I see speaks of hope rather than certainty, it acknowledges death as a real power that has robbed us and not a blessing.  It cries out.

I don’t think we mourned very well as a nation after September 11, 2001. That was a terrible death, but the emotions I saw portrayed by our media and our political leaders quickly turned from sorrow to anger and to pride.  There was surely reason to get angry, and there was pride at the sacrifices firefighters and police and others made.  But think about a death of a loved one?  Anger would be in the mix, but would pride be quick to follow?

I think we did not give ourselves time to mourn enough, to cry out to God, to wait in the space between death and hope.  I don’t know if we wept enough. If we had, maybe we wouldn’t have made so much mourning necessary for so many people in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Guantanamo. I’m not saying we should not have had a response.  It’s that when our response is based on anger and projection of our power, it tends to squeeze out compassion.  Compassion is not afraid of powerlessness.  And powerless is how we were when those planes hit.

I could write about other grief work we probably need to do as a nation, maybe even going quite far back.  The genocide of the nations who were here, our embrace of slavery, the loss upon loss of immigrants coming to a new land, whether that was from Sweden in 1887, or Mexico in 2014.

What do you think?

As I was writing today, I realize that it was 40 years ago this month that I started preparing to be a poet.  Or better, it was 40 years ago this month that I started being prepared to be a poet.  For it was more a gift than an effort.  I was in Chicago, on an urban studies term, and went through a lot of grief work, though I did not realize all of it at the time.  Loss of the career path I was sure I was meant to be on (becoming a lawyer), loss of a “true love”, loss of my fierce unbelief.  Jody Kretzmann and others helped me to start reading poets that spoke to that loss and to the hope planted in all pain.  I’m going to attach two poems that I read over and over that spring and summer in Chicago, two poems that continue to help me  with this holy waiting, and this wrestling with God.

Be justice.  Be beauty.  Be in “the wounding that precedes hope”.

Patrick

The Waking                                                          by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?   

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?   

God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,   

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?   

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do   

To you and me; so take the lively air,   

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   

What falls away is always. And is near.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

THE PREACHER RUMINATES BEHIND THE SERMON    Gwendolyn Brooks

I think it must be lonely to be God.
Nobody loves a master. No. Despite
The bright hosannas, bright dear-Lords, and bright
Determined reverence of Sunday eyes.

Picture Jehovah striding through the hall
Of his importance, creatures running out
From servant-corners to acclaim, to shout
Appreciation of His merit’s glare.

But who walks with Him?–dares to take His arm,
To slap Him on the shoulder, tweak His ear,
Buy Him a Coca-Cola or a beer,
Pooh-pooh His politics, call Him a fool?

Perhaps–who knows?–He tires of looking down.
Those eyes are never lifted. Never straight.
Perhaps sometimes He tires of being great
In solitude. Without a hand to hold.

IN MY STUDIO

I’m writing in a studio I rent at the Loft Literary Center today.  There are 7 studios, and you have to be careful to remember which door is yours when you walk down the two flights of stairs (Cheetos and Bugles for 85 cents in the vending machines in the basement).  You don’t want to walk in on someone else’s creative cave.

The studios are constructed from old doors, scavenged from buildings. I assume many of these buildings are “no longer with us”, as the euphemism goes.  Like the Metrodome sports arena, which I’ve had the honor of watching get knocked down right outside this window, in this studio.

The doors have little drawings or paintings on them, mostly of a biologic nature.  There is the “Twig” door, the “Flower” door, the “Bird” door and my current favorite, the “Bug” door.

When I go stretch my legs, I repeat to my brain over and over: the bug door, the bug door, so that when I return, I return by way of the insects, to my writing hive.

I like to write in the bugs.  The ones that pollinate us, and the ones that, well, bug us.  We think that pollinators just pollinate flowers (as if that is a minor undertaking), but they actually pollinate us as well.  They pollinate our eyes with wonder, our ears with swift music, our taste buds and stomachs with delight.  Without our friends the pollinators—hummingbirds, bees, butterflies, flies, moths, even bats—we wouldn’t get to eat tomatoes, almonds, oranges, peppers, onions, broccoli, beans, strawberries, avocados, mangos and a host of other nutritious, scrumptious fellow creatures.

And yet, we’re killing the pollinators.  Bees are dying.  The Monarch butterfly population is way, way down. A lot of that is caused by us.  Destruction of habitat, destruction of the plants that our friends the pollinators need to eat in order to help us to eat. 

Nionicotinoid herbicides that can damage bee colonies.  Genetically modified crops that withstand herbicides, so farmers can broadcast Round Up and other herbicides—it won’t kill the corn or soybeans, but it will kill all the milkweed, the monarch butterflies only food source.

Are we so afraid of weeds that we have to kill the pollinators that feed us?

I’m in the bug studio, right above where the recycling dumpster is now being lifted up by the giant blue bug called a garbage truck. The truck backs out slowly, and its metallic chirping assails my ear, as the rain begins to fall, as the rain turns to snow, as Minnesota turns reluctantly to spring. 

It reminds me that the beauty of language is that words, poems, stories, visions can be recycled. 

Today is my 61st birthday.  There are more and more old doors in my hinge-filled body. And more and more bugs.  I’ve lost some hearing—at high frequencies and low volume (in some gatherings, that’s a blessings). I’m looking at a hip replacement soon.  If I write a long time today, my carpal tunnel will flare up more fiercely.

But this is more wisdom in me, I trust.  And more comedy!

This is a poem I wrote a long time ago—in my twenties, no less.  It doesn’t bear directly on the subject of pollinators, but there is an old priest in it.

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 beauty.  Be justice.  Be a bug.

Patrick