Try it, you'll like it!

"Poetry is never a sensible choice on financial grounds.
Burglary beats poetry, when it comes to making money."
— Garrison Keillor

Yup. A working, mid-level poet might earn in the two figures from poetry. (Keep the day job.) And yet, I am drawn to poetry like to nothing else. I think it comes from sitting still every single morning of my first seventeen years and listening to and hearing Mother read from the King James Bible. Talk about a book of poetry.  I hear that one still sells pretty well...

I've branched out to reading lots of other poets. Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, Denise Levertov, Tony Hoagland, Mark Doty, John O'Donohue... Oh, my list of favorites is a long, long one into history, including Rumi and Hafiz and Tagouri. Every day I read Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac. Check it out, it's online, a daily poem and a few fascinating tidbits of historical information.

I tend toward high blood pressure, and if I've been stressed and rushing about before it's measured, the doctor always frowns at me. But if I get to my appointment with twenty minutes to spare and in that time read some Mary Oliver my b.p. is fine.

Such a simple Rx with no bad side effects: read some good poetry.

I've been absent here because the intensity of life overwhelmed me. On September 7 my sister Sarah died of leukemia. On September 14 my son got married. On September 21 we met at my sister's memorial. In between these huge events, I had a poetry reading on September 17. (Thanks to my friends, the room was nicely filled and there was discussion as well as reading. Blessings on friends.)  I've started attending poetry workshop again, and am actively working on poetry just because I love it and it's-- well, I guess it's important to me. And we've been lucky to be spending a day a week with our granddaughter. We want to, we can, and her working parents say it helps them, too.

None is more surprised than I to discover me reading, studying and writing poetry. I'm from blue-collar, practical people. Sakes alive, my bachelor's is in Home Economics. Domestic Engineering. Don't get much more practical than that. But here I am, I'm a poet and I'm finally saying so right out loud in public. Through all the intensity of the summer that built to the events in my life in two weeks of September, poetry of many stripes is my most intimate companion, my comfort, my guide.

My voice of experience: Try it, you may like it!

Pattern Recognition and Tools for Thinking

The first tool for thinking is our human brain. Self evident, but so basic.

Ancients established philosophy as a discipline for channeling reasoned thought. From that, in loose descriptors, grew natural philosophy, grew the scientific method.

With all the power of algorithms and computers capable of crunching huge amounts of data, there is still nothing quite as good as the human brain for pattern recognition. And for all our abilities, we cannot know the details of the world, there is much too much, we know the world through recognizable, repeating/repeatable patterns.

That's where the scientific method comes in. It helps divide the durable, inherently trustworthy patterns from the spurious ones. I love the question, search, tease out fascinating details, make the next supposition, ask the next question way of examining data used in the scientific method.

Another tool for thinking of the world, though, is poetry. And I'm not talking just the pattern in form poetry. I'm talking about how a line carries a little surprise, in the words, their layered meaning, the single line, how the line spins into the strophe/stanza, how the stanza swirls together to a piece.

A physicist friend of mine recently spoke for about fifteen minutes about how the brain will create the notion of pattern around what is just chaotic nonsense, and he used as his illustration the spurious patterns we imagine we find in Lewis Carroll's poem Jaberwocky.

Oh, but wait. Take for example the second and third verses:

     "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
         The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
     Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
         The frumious Bandersnatch!"

    He took his vorpal sword in hand:
         Long time the manxome foe he sought--
     So rested he by the Tumtum tree
         And stood awhile in thought.


If I take out the silly words and replace them by implied idea, reading context, we get advice from a father adressing his son (or any younger man) to beware this dangerous thing with "jaws that bite, ...claws that catch," and shun that thing whose very name sounds hazardous. And then, after a long time seeking the foe, father takes his sword and stands by a tree where he rests and thinks and gives his advice. And so goes the whole poem. What is a more known, familiar, very real-world and reliable pattern than for an elder to give advice, painting the picture of his own experience to back it up?

Carroll's own suggestions meaning and not-meaning imply some push-pull between providing interpretation vs. going even farther into intentional confusion, i.e., he suggested the poem be republished in reverse printing. The publisher told him it would be just too expensive. So Carroll is left with a standard English alphabet, and many interspersed meaningful, familiar words. So it is with so much of the back and forth between intuitive knowing and provable pattern.

What will scientists make, for example, of the four-letter alphabet of our DNA, and the "junk" they find there? I'd be willing to bet that the "junk" isn't, that it's just that we don't understand properly yet. I see a reality where the imagination of the poet and the rigor of the researcher following the scientific method, both, are useful to find a dependable answer to whatever questions we might think to ask the ocean sky.

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." H.P. Lovecraft

Everyday prayer

     Let us each:
Want what we have.
Do what we can, and see how.
Be who we are, and know how.
Experience best outcomes, soonest.
Settle and rest in this present moment.
Be kind and gracious to ourselves and others.
Find each next step to be gentle, easy, and clear.

Everything counts: balancing me and we

It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.

(Betty Friedan, 1921 – 2006)

 

This was today's meditation posted by Galen Guengerich, Senior Pastor of All Souls Church, NYC. (The more I learn about this man's journey the more I respect him and his path and process.)

Betty Friedan's quote begs the question: How do we find ourselves whole in our own skins? 

We can never see our own eyes directly, only through a mirror.  We experience life in our bodies and we also experience our lives in relationship. It's obvious that we experience from the inside. It's equally obvious that we also see our lives and selves through the eyes of particular individuals around us and through the lens of societal expectations. 

An introvert, I struggle to find some balance of self evaluation that names me worthy in relationship to the world at large. A stay-at-home mom of the generation that Betty Friedan led to break old stereotypes, it's easy for me to see my insignificance.  If you are reading this, you are a rare soul.

Yet direct observation makes it so clear that we are connected to everything, conscious of it or not. Our being, which determines our actions, echos out. (As ye think in your heart, so shall ye be) No one of us can solve a single societal problem alone, but each of us must seek a best path on his/her own. 

As a species we are polluting our home place, our planet to the death of other species. Yesterday I picked up litter along half a mile of the country road where I live. This morning there was a fresh batch. Who are these people? I ask myself. 

Now comes one answer to my mind: they are among those who do not see themselves as whole enough to know that they count in the whole, big picture. But everything counts. Everything.  

"Be the change you wish to see." You count.

Help us to recognize, and to rejoice in, what has been given, even in the midst of what is not given. Richard Rohr

There it is, my most basic, primary mantra-prayer: Thank you, thank you, thank you....

Better with age...

“The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better” is one of our core principles at the CAC. Just do it better yourself, and don’t waste any time criticizing others or the past! writes Fr. Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation.

I can get so lost in words. Is there a continuum from evaluation to criticism? Does "practice of the better" mean passing judgment (maybe harsh) about "bad?" Is there a continuum from humility to arrogance, and is it possible to stray into arrogant humility? Am I speaking of a circle rather than a fulcrum-balanced line of continuum? Am I lost in a word circle?

Let me return to the breath, the simple breath, and watch the robin in the dogwood tree, so curvy-limbed with its mid-green leaves looking like the most beautifully arranged Japanese art work. There goes the robin, flying away.

No still life, this world. Active, very active with change. The most constant thing I know of is mathematics, and it's hard to translate a mathematical formula into a moral, ethical directive for change. Yet I do believe in the surety of natural sequence and consequence. I do believe in the scientific method as the best means to evaluate cause and effect.

My life question: How can I go forward in this day to practice a better way of being in this world than I was able to practice yesterday?

Best outcome for the day, in gentle, easy, clear steps. Best outcome, soonest.