Hope

 Definition: to cherish the outcome of desire’s good. 

-- The Web’s Brainy Dictionary

Can we really define hope? 

Theologists and poets through the centuries have tried. Perhaps we should accept Emily Dickinson’s enduring abstraction:

                                    Hope is the thing with feathers

                                     That perches in the soul

                                    And sings the tune without the words

                                    And never stops at all.  

Hope is the vital ingredient that makes all things possible in psychotherapy, religion, and –yes, even our understanding of science. A mother once approached Einstein to ask him how her young son could improve his mathematical skills. Einstein’s reply was, “Try telling him some stories.” Einstein understood that the imagination and hope are entwined in finding scientific solutions. Hope must be tied to the life of the imagination, for the nature of hope is to imagine what has not yet come to pass but still is possible. To use an expression from Martin Buber, “hope imagines the real,” thus distinguishing this form of imagining from the unreal absorptions of day dreams or fantasy whose object tends toward solitary self aggrandizement.

            As William Lynch writes in Dr. Leslie Farber’s book “Images of Hope” (1965):

 Since ‘hope cannot be achieved alone,’ imagination must be admitted to be dialogic in character. In other words, we imagine WITH. Even the novelist or poet grimly describing the absolute hopelessness of the human condition is till imagining this landscape WITH his reader; though he conceals the fact, he must possess some hope to achieve his description.

           Erik Erikson believed the first psychosocial task of trust, essential in the first year of life was entwined with hope, and without it, the human was impaired in relationship and future endeavors:

Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. Others have called this deepest quality confidence, and I have referred to trust as the earliest positive psychosocial attitude, but if life is to be sustained, hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired. Clinicians know that an adult who has lost all hope regresses into as lifeless a state as a living organism can sustain…Hope is the enduring belief in the attainability of fervent wishes, in spite of the dark urges and rages which mark the beginning of existence ... The fact is that no person can live, no ego remain intact without hope and will.

                                              Insight and Responsibility, W.W. Norton & Co., l964, pp. 115-118

Ted Bowman, educator and consultant writes:

  Hopelessness can find reinforcement if and when our stories are not heard or when our stories are not validated, or when our stories are superseded by stories that “someone” deems more important  . . .  An essential element of hope is the belief and conviction that one’s story will be heard, even if it is a story one does not want to tell. “I don’t want  to be a widow.” “No, not me. It can’t be cancer.” When someone is dealing with grief, especially losses that alter one’s identity or self-perception, the story becomes all the more important.

Ted reminds us that hope can be rekindled or restored by focusing on hopeful actions

          * By acts of care for self and others

          * By future commitments, even in the next few hours

          * By writing, music, talking ... to make sense of and to give voice to your    thoughts and feelings

          * By connections to life in the midst of death

          * By practice of disciplines like the serenity prayer — awareness of    what you can change, what you cannot, and the wisdom to tell the difference.

          * By telling and hearing stories of hope.

                                             Finding Hope When Dreams Have Shattered. St. Paul, MN. 2001

My favorite story about Hope is a tale that circulated following the 9/11 attack. It is actually an old Native American teaching.

A grandfather was talking to his grandson. He said, “I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one.”

          The grandson asked him, “Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?

 The grandfather answered, “ The one I feed.”

Feed Your Hope.

           Regardless of how hurt or wounded the individual may be, there exists a healthy part of the self straining to flower like a seed that takes root and naturally pushes through the earth toward sunlight. Biblical commentary on the Book of Genesis suggests that over each blade of grass there is an angel praying, “Grow! Grow!”  Such faith may considered romantic, delusional or overly optimistic… but we can hope, can’t we?

Blessings to you, my reader.

  

Sherry       

P.S. To exercise your imagination and writing skills, try the Creative Meditation: “In the Orchard of Hope” or the writing prompt under Exercises for Growth and Healing.

Exercises for Growth and Healing

1. Read Steve Porter's essay "The 50% Theory" .

Now write your own essay or poem choosing your own percentage of positive vs. negative events based on your life experience.

2. There is a great story in one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books about a mother whose son is accidentally struck in the eye when he is playing darts with his twin bother. When she finds out that he will lose the sight in one eye, she is filled with anguish. How can she tell him that he will never see from that eye again?
She tactfully tells him,  "The Lord created everyone with two eyes — one to see the world with a good eye and one to see the world with a bad eye. Right now you have  the privilege to be able to see the world with only a good eye.” 
The boy was silent for a moment, and then said,“Boy, I’m sure glad the arrow didn’t hit my other eye!”  

Writing Directive: Draw a line down the page and entitle the two columns "My Good Eye"and "My Bad Eye". Write a list of what you see with your "good eye" and your "bad eye". Which list is longer?

3. Read the Meditation of "The Orchard of Hope". Then do a creative visualization of what you have read. Follow with writing about the experience

When Heart Speaks … Heart Listens

Dear Friends,
  Voice is at the heart of our work and relationships. I have created two unique learning opportunities of spoken word for you: Write Your Way to Forgiveness and Peace

An online seminar of poems, stories, and writing exercises exploring anger and forgiveness. Click here for more info:http://www.dailyom.com/cgi-bin/courses/courseoverview.cgi?cid=352&aff=

   Also please take the time to view the free youtube video  Power of the Spoken Word 

at the very end of this blog.  This 11 minute video includes the oral interpretation of “If” by Rudyard Kipling, “Invictus” by William Henley, Sonnet XLIII  by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and more. Please share with all lovers of the spoken word.

Blessings,

Sherry Reiter

The ancient Masaai tribes of Africa create a signature song for every child that is born. It is an identity song, with the unique details of the child’s birth, his/her family, and the season and celestial state at birth. Should this baby ever stray from its path through ill health or crime, the tribe gathers around the person to sing their unique song and help them re-claim identity. The song is part of a heart-felt celebration, embodied in the music of language and voice.

Words that emanate from the heart enter directly into the heart of another. This principle was taught by King Solomon in Proverbs: “As water (reflecting) the face is to the face, so a man’s heart is to (his fellow) man.” The human heart intuits the emotions of others and if one speaks with an open heart, the heart of the listener will open as well. Whether we believe this is due to “mirror neurons” or simple empathy, heart-felt words enable others hear us at a deeper level; we are magnetically drawn to those who are authentic and when you speak from the heart, who can resist listening?

Your voice is your personal signature in sound. In other words, your voice has unique vibrations and configurations in pattern that sound out your identity in the world.

In “The Alchemy of Voice”, Stewart Pearce says,
“The voice can move us to tears,  shatter a glass or hear a broken heart. It can mesmerize, seduce, infuriate or command; inspire fear and dread, trust and love. The sound of a voice can evoke memories, sensations, thoughts and feelings. It has an awesome force to make or break strong bonds, to torture or uplift, create or destroy. The voice therefore lies at the core of our personal power and resonates the essence of our truth.”

Pearce writes about the four points of the body that voice emanates from: 1) the head informs, 2) the throat soothes or discomforts, 3) the heart empowers and empathically connects us to others, and 4) the pelvis is a place of deep emotion. Persons in deep sorrow will often speak from this place, and the practice of speaking from the pelvis may help thaw frozen feelings that are stored in the gut. The effective speaker uses all of these body parts, and empathically we respond to vibration, volume, pacing, intonation, and the melody within the voice.

According to Hazrat Inayat Kahn, the great Indian Sufi master and musician, voice is not only indicative of man's character, but it is the expression of spirit.

The voice makes impressions on the ethereal spheres, impressions which can be called audible; at the same time they are visible. Those scientists who have made experiments with sound and who have taken impressions of the sound on certain plates – which impressions appear like forms – will find one day that the impression of the voice is more living, more deep, and has a greater effect. Sound can be louder than the voice, but sound cannot be more living than that the voice.

                        “The Voice,” The Mysticism of Music, Sound and Word, Volume 2, 1923

Kahn was considered a great singer, but later turned his talents to using the spoken word.

His mission was to “tune souls instead of instruments.” His goal –one of the goals in poetry therapy – to harmonize people.

If there is anything in my philosophy, it is the law of harmony: that one must put oneself in harmony with oneself and with others. I have found in every word a certain musical value, a melody in every thought, harmony in every feeling; and I have tried to interpret the same thing, with clear and simple words, to those who used to listen to my music. I played the vina until my heart turned into this very instrument; then I offered this instrument to the divine Musician, the only musician existing, Kahn’s discourses on poetry are woven throughout his work. (http://wahiduddin.net/mv2/II/II_0.htm)

All too often, the voice and oral interpretation in this century is neglected. Now, at a time when texting and e-mail is so popular, when the phone is used less and less, personally, I hunger for the sound of the human voice. It remains the signature of identity, as strong as the expression when you look into someone’s eyes, inimitable and personal.

What is the relationship between poetry and voice? The relationship is intimate and essential, in my opinion. Poetry originated in oral transmission when early man is believed to have chanted around the tribal fire. Poetry still is a form of sacred ceremony for some of us, a ritual in which we combine our hopes, prayers, and search for meaning.

The truth is that oral transmission of poetry is a natural art form, most accessible to all through the spoken word. Poetry Jams and competitions flourish in America and in Europe there are still cafes and meeting rooms where people crowd in to hear the music of poetry and look into the eyes of the speaker.

As poet May Sarton so eloquently wrote, “Poetry exists to break through to below the level of reason where the angels and monsters that the amenities keep in the cellar may come out to dance, to rove and roar, growling and singing, to bring back to the enclosed rooms where too often we are only ‘living and partly living’”.

When we read to others, we foster a sense of connection and community; we anchor our humanity through voice and language. Stanley Kunitz wrote about the paradoxical role of the poet in society: “Language is no barrier to people who love the word. I think of poets as solitaries with a heightened sense of community.”

From a writing viewpoint, when we read writing out loud, then we can be even surer if our pacing is true, we can discern when our words are superfluous, and our thoughts clear or muddy. The content of your thoughts are clarified, and then these thoughts are blanketed in the personal, intimate qualities of your voice. Nothing speaks louder than the individual qualities of your voice; it is the consummate embodiment of your individuality.

And when heart speaks, heart listens.

*  *  *

Speak


Speak, your lips are free.


Speak, it is your own tongue.


Speak, it is your own body.


Speak, your life is still yours.



See how in the blacksmith's shop


The flame burns wild, the iron glows red;


The locks open their jaws,

And every chain begins to break.


Speak, this brief hour is long enough


Before the death of body and

tongue:


Speak, 'cause the truth is not dead yet,


Speak, speak, whatever you

must speak.
   

                        Faiz Ahmad Faiz

*  *  *

The Poets Speak about Voice, Breath,  and the Music of Words

 “Sound was my doorway into poems, and one of my faults is that I may deceive myself into writing a phrase down that sounds beautiful but doesn’t mean a damned thing. When I was twelve, it was Edgar Allan Poe who started me writing poetry, his spookiness, but also his sound… I say you read poems with your mouth, not with your ears, and they taste good.”

                                                                                                                               

Donald Hall            

* * *

haiku (for you)

love between us is

speech and breath, loving you is

a  long river running.

                           

Sonia Sanchez  

Homegirls and Handgrenades, 1984

* * *

“As long as the voice is genuine, as long as it comes from a genuine part of the culture, that’s sufficient for poetry. But poetry requires many, many years of struggling to understand what is the natural voice, not the rhetorical voice but the naturally quiet spoken voice.

                                   

Robert Bly

* * *

“I love what the words can do. I love the language, the music that happens. I’m not going at this because I want something in particular to happen. I do it because I love what I can make with it.”

                                                           

Joy Harjo

* * *

“There’s a sense in which poetry is not so much the writing of words as it is the movement of breath itself. To write it, you must pay attention the breathing of poetry, to all speech as breath, to the relationship of our thoughts and emotions and the actual way they fill our bodies. This is the emotional, physical centering of the activity of poetry.”

                                                         

Robert Haas

* * *

How badly the world needs words

Don’t be fooled

By how green it is,

How it seems to be thriving.

“Willow” secures that tree

From its radiant perishing.

How much more so then

When you name the beloved.

                                      Gregory Orr 

                            Concerning the Book That Was the Body of the Beloved, Copper Canyon Press, 2005

EXERCISES FOR GROWTH AND HEALING

1. Read an excerpt “About Original And Wild Voice in Speaking and Writing” by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés

This chapter is from “Tending the Creative Fire manuscript” by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés © 1989, 2010, All Rights Reserved. This particular work may be used non-commercially as long as it is kept entirely intact.

2.  Eli Greifer was a pioneer who believed that there are deep benefits for mental health from memorizing. Here are his words:

We have here no less than a psychograft-by-memorization in the inmost reaches of the brain, where the soul can allow the soul-stuff of stalwart poet-prophets to “take” and to become one with the spirit of the patient. Here is insight. Here is introjection. Here is ennoblement of the spirit of man … by blood transfusing the personality with the greatest insights of all the greatest-souled poets of all ages …The hypnotism of beautiful figures of speech, the melody of rhythm and meter and assonance … painted scenes …dramatic episodes, love's pervasiveness-all are consecrated by the master poets to gently enter and transfuse the ailing subconscious, the abraded and suffering personality.

Eli Greifer, Principles of Poetry Therapy   New York: Poetry Therapy Center,1963, p.2.

Find a poem that speaks to your heart and soul and resonates totally and completely. If you are stressed, find a soothing poem. Memorize it. If you have difficulty falling asleep, recite it repeatedly. As Dr. Jack J. Leedy was fond of saying, “Take two aspirin and one poem.” Identify for yourself an emotion that would enhance your life. Is it the ability to feel joy, empowerment, tranquility, excitement, or even grief?

Now find the poet whose voice has captured this feeling for you in words.  In ancient Egypt, in the 4^th millienium B.C., the shamans wrote healing chants on papyrus and had the ill patient drink in the words to make sure it took effect. Your objective is to completely take it into yourself, memorize it, say it for friends and relatives. But most importantly, say it over and over till it becomes part of yourself.

3. Listen to the audio recording stressing the flexibility of voice and its ability to take on the colors of different emotions of the heart. I have demonstrated speaking from the four points in the body – the head, throat, heart, and pelvis. Although we are using all of these sources in oral interpretation, particular poems illustrate this interesting concept. 

POWER OF THE SPOKEN WORD with Dr. Sherry Reiter

 

4. More spoken and written word if you register for the OM online seminar - (flip-down menu shows you can pay as little as one dollar!) for  Write Your Way to Forgiveness and Peace

 http://www.dailyom.com/cgi-bin/courses/courseoverview.cgi?cid=352&aff= 

What Perishes Is Not Always Lost

What Perishes Is Not Always Lost

Winter As a Time of Survival and Resilience   

In her book Housekeeping, Marilynn Robinson writes of the life of perished things:

I have seen two of the apple trees in my grandmother’s orchard die where they stood. One spring there were no leaves, but they stood there as if expectantly, their limbs almost to the ground, miming their perished fruitfulness. Every winter the orchard is flooded with snow, and every spring the waters are parted, death is undone, and every Lazarus rises, except these two. They have lost their bark and blanched white, and a wind will snap their bones, but if ever a leaf does appear, it should be no great wonder. It would be a small change, as it would be, say, for the moon to begin turning on its axis. It seemed to me that what perished need not be lost. 

Can we commit to memory what we cannot preserve in the physical world?
Perhaps the challenge, when presented with loss, is to “lose what I lose, to keep what I can keep” (May Sarton, Autumn Sonnet XVII). Can we outwit winter with preparation, with play and compassion? Can we find ways to celebrate? Can we embrace the given temporality of our lives, and the unique cycle that winter brings into our lives? In  The Snowy Day by Jack Keats, a young child climbs the snow laden mountains, makes snow angels, and smuggles a snowball into his warm house—only to find that it is no longer there in the morning. Yet, what is perished is not lost, if we hold it in our memories and cherish it with grace. 
 (Be sure to see the featured story, “From An American Childhood” by Annie Dillard and the writing exercise to help us to preserve the winter memories and images that will stay with us our entire lives).

As the cold assaults our senses, we are confronted with a challenge: how to find beauty and meaning in the leafless tree, the frozen, unyielding earth, the treacherous ice. Jamaica Kincaid, in “A Fire By Ice” revels in the gorgeous garden she had in Antigua and compares it to her later garden experience in Vermont. In Antigua, the garden was lush wit green leaves and the pink stems of rhubarb, flowers and vegetables of every color.

After a heavy rain, she writes,

…everything is strong and itself, twinkling, jewel-like. At that moment I think life will never change; it will always be summer. The whiteness of snow is an eraser, so that I am in a state of near disbelief…

When she hears that that the temperatures will drop to a frost, she writes:

 I cannot help take this personally; I think a frost is something someone is doing to me – only to me. And this is how winter in the garden begins – with another tentativeness, a curtsy to the actual cold to come, a gentle form of it…How can it be that after a frost the entire garden looks as if it had been to a party in Hell?”

Indeed, the alternative to the Garden of Eden is the experience of  winter as a “cold day in hell.” Winter can be a time of intense loneliness, hardship and the struggle to survive.

Some of our finest poets through the ages have inspired us with their views of winter.

Eleventh century Sanskrit poet, Vidyakara, suggests that companionship and a warm body help:

The peasant and his wife

sleep in a grass hut at the corner of the field

with coverlet and pillow made of barley straw.

The frost avoids their slumbers,

a boundary being drawn to its advance

by the warmth emitted from the plump wife’s breasts.

________

Matsuo Basho, a 17^th century Japanese poet, infused a mystical quality to express universal themes through natural images, from the harvest moon to fleas in his cotttabe. Basho brought to haiku “The Way of Elegance,” (“fuga-no-michi”). He approached poetry as a way of life (kado, the way of poetry) and believed it could be a source of enlightenment. Thus, he writes:

Cold Night

the sound of a water jar

cracking on this icy night

as I lie awake

                                     ________

At the house of a person whose child has died:

bending low—the joints,

the world, all upside down—

bamboo under the snow

                                    _________

first winter shower –

the monkey also seems to want

a mall raincoat

                                    __________

somehow, in some way,

it has managed to survive—

pampas grass in the snows

And to Sultan Bahu, Sufi mystical poet of India in the sixteenth century, love faces down every tiger, every fear. It claps its hands in triumph:

                        Love saw me weak and it came, taking over my home,

                        Like a fussy child, it will not sleep nor let me sleep.

                        It asks for watermelons in winter, where can I find them?

                        But all rational thoughts were forgotten, Bahu,

                                    when love

                                    clapped its hands.

                                                            ________

Playfulness emerges in the old Lakota belief in which Woziya, the fierce giant who kills with his frozen touch, breathes frigid air and bitterly wars with his brother, the South Wind. He dresses in heavy furs and lives beyond the pines and guards the places of snow.

Yet with all his ferocity, he is jolly and merry, a guardian of the northern lights. The northwestern Indians and Eskimos of North America joyfully played in the wonderland of winter:

We will watch the Northern Lights

playing their game of ball

in the cold, glistening country.

Then we will sit in beauty on the mountain …

                        Abenaki (collected by James Houston)

_______

Robert Frost, in “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening” stops his carriage  to marvel at the glory of the woods and snow. He pauses as beauty overtakes him. This pause for beauty is not a luxury; it is vital to the spiritual journey.

 Henry Walden Thoreau, living at Walden Pond reveled in the extraordinary glory and the purity and beauty of ice and snow. His writings suggest that winter is a time to bathe one’s intellect in literature, the sublime beyond the present moment, and to appreciate the wondrous cycles of nature. Thoreau, in the following passage, imagines that all of the ancients drink at his well nearby:

I lay down the book, and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the brahmin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and the Hesperides, makes the periplus of Hanno, and, floating by Temate and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic gales of the Indian seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexander only heard the names.

_______

Still other writers and poets reluctantly submit to the coldest, darkest days of the year, and many of us fight our depression and hover closer to the fireplace (if we’re lucky enough to have one!) Some of us take comfort in accepting the cyclical nature of the season, and like seeds waiting to sprout under the ice, our dreams and creative enterprises are percolating in the dark and waiting for the right moment to emerge. One can almost imagine Jane Kenyon puttering about in her pajamas in a house surrounded by snow:

            My plan is to live like the bears: to turn the compost a few more times, prowl around a little longer and then go to sleep until the white-throated sparrow, with its course and cheerful song, calls me out of the dark.

As for me, I alternate between hibernation and spurts of energy, occasionally up writing into the wee hours of the morning, and then at other times, contracting from the cold with a heating pad and a hot tea, dreaming of laying on a beautiful beach in Hawaii, mellowed by the sun and sipping an apple martini.

Whatever winter way you choose to live, may you infuse the cold days with the tenderness of kindness. The Japanese proverb gently reminds us: “One kind word can warm three winter months.”

From An American Childhood Some boys taught me to play football. This was fine sport. You thought up a new strategy for every play and whispered it to the others. You went out for a pass, fooling everyone. Best, you got to throw yourself mightily at someone’s running legs. Either you brought him down or you hit the ground flat out on your chin, with your arms empty before you. It was all or nothing. If you hesitated in fear, you would miss and get hurt: you would take a hard fall while the kid got away. But if you flung yourself wholeheartedly at the back of his knees – if you gathered and joined body and soul and pointed them diving fearlessly – then you likely wouldn’t get hurt, and you’d stop the ball. Your fate, and your team’s score, depended on your concentration and courage. Nothing girls did could compare with it.             Boys welcomed me at baseball, too, for I had, through enthusiastic practice, what was weirdly known as a boy’s arm. In winter, in the snow, there was neither baseball nor football, so the boys and I threw snowballs at passing cars. I got in trouble throwing snowballs, and have seldom been happier since.      On one weekday morning after Christmas, six inches of new snow had just fallen. We were standing up to our boot tops in snow on a front yard on trafficked Reynolds Street, waiting for cars. The cars traveled Reynolds Street slowly and evenly; they were targets all but wrapped in red ribbons, cream puffs. We couldn’t miss.             I was seven, the boys were eight, nine, and ten. The oldest two Fahey boys were there – Mikey and Peter—polite blond boys who lived near me on Lloyd Street, and who already had four brothers and sisters. My parents approved Mikey and Peter Fahey. Chickie McBride was there. a tough kid, and Billy Paul and Mackie Kean too, from across Reynolds, where the boys grew up dark and furious, grew up skinny, knowing and skilled. We had all drifted from our houses that morning looking for action, and had found it here at Reynolds Street.             It was cloudy but cold. The cars’ tires laid behind them on the snowy street a complex trail of beige chunks like crenelated castle walls. I had stepped on some earlier; they squeaked We could have wished for more traffic. When a car came, we all popped it one. In the intervals between cars we reverted to the natural solitude of children.             I started making an ice-ball—a perfect ice-ball, from perfectly white snow, perfectly spherical, and squeezed perfectly translucent so no snow remained all the way through. (The Fahey boys and I considered it unfair to actually throw an ice-ball at somebody, but it had been known to happen.) I had just embarked on the ice-ball project when we heard tire chains come clanking from afar. A black Buick was moving toward us down the street. We all spread out, banged together some regular snowballs, took aim, and when the Buick drew nigh, fired.        A soft snowball hit the driver’s windshield right before the driver’s face. It made a smashed star with a hump in the middle. Often, of course, we hit our target, but this time, the only time in all of life, the car pulled over and stopped. Its wide black door opened; a man got out of it, running. He didn’t even close the car door.             He ran after us, and we ran away from him, up the snowy Reynolds sidewalk. At the corner, I looked back; incredibly he was still after us. He was in city clothes: a suit and tie, street shoes. Any normal adult would have quit, having sprung us into flight and made his point. This man was gaining on us. He was a thin man, all action.  Suddenly, we were running for our lives.      Wordless, we split up. We were on our turf; we could lose ourselves in the neighborhood backyards, everyone for himself. I paused and considered. Everyone had vanished except Mike Fahey. who was just rounding the corner of a yellow brick house. Poor Mikey. I trailed him. The driver of the Buick sensibly picked the two of us to follow. The man apparently had all day. He chased Mikey and me around the yellow house and up a path we knew by heart: under a low tree, up a bank, through a hedge, down some snowy steps, and across the grocery store’s delivery parkway. We smashed through a gap in another hedge, entered a scruffy backyard and ran around its back porch and tight between houses to Edgerton Avenue; we ran across Edgerton to an alley and up our own sliding woodpile to the Halls’ front yard; he kept coming. We ran up Lloyd Street and wound through mazy backyards toward the steep hilltop at Willard and Lang.             He chased us silently; block after block. He chased us silently over picket fences, through thorny hedges, between houses, around garbage cans, and across streets. every time I glanced back, choking to breathe, I expected he would have quit. He must have been as breathless as we were. His jacket strained over his body. It was an immense discovery, pounding into my hot head with every sliding, joyous step, that this ordinary adult evidently knew what I thought only children who trained at football knew: that you have to fling yourself at what you’re doing, you have to point yourself, forget oneself, aim, dive.             Mikey and I had nowhere to go, in our own neighborhood or out of it, but away from this man who was chasing us. He impelled us forward; we compelled him to follow our route. The air was cold; every breath tore my throat. We kept running, block after block; we kept improving, backyard after backyard, running a frantic course and choosing it simultaneously, failing always to find small places or hard places to slow him down, and discovering always, exhilarated, dismayed, that only bare speed could save us—for he would never give up, this man—and we were losing speed. He chased us through the backyard labyrinths of ten blocks before he caught us by our jackets. He caught us and we all stopped.             We three stood staggering, half blinded, coughing, in an obscure hilltop backyard; a man in his twenties, a boy, a girl. He had released our jackets, our pursuer, our hero: he knew we weren’t going anywhere. We all played by the rules. Mikey and I unzipped our jackets. I pulled off my sopping mittens. Our tracks multiplied in the backyard’s new snow. We had been breaking new snow all morning. We didn’t look at each other. I was cherishing my empowerment. The man’s lower pant legs were wet; his cuffs were full of snow, and there was a prow of snow beneath them on his shoes and socks. Some trees bordered the little flat backyard, some messy winter trees.. There was no one around: a clearing in a grove, and we the only players. It was a long time before he could speak. I had some difficulty at first recalling why we were there. My lips felt swollen; I couldn’t t see out of the sides of my eyes; I kept coughing.             “You stupid kids,” he began perfunctorily.             We listened perfunctorily indeed, if we listened at all, for the chewing out was redundant, a mere formality, and beside the point. The point was that he had chased us passionately without giving up, and so he had caught us. Now he came down to earth. I wanted the glory to last forever.             But how could the glory have lasted forever? We could have run through every backyard in North America until we got to the Panama Canal, what precisely could he have done to prolong the drama of the chase and cap its glory? I brooded about this for the next few years. He could only have fried Mikey Fahey and me in boiling oil, say, or dismembered us piece-meal, or staked us to anthills. None of which I really wanted, and none of which any adult was likely to do, even in the spirit of fun. He could only chew us out there in the Panamanian jungle, after months or years of exalting pursuit. He could only begin, “You stupid kids,” and continue in his ordinary Pittsburgh accent with his normal righteous anger and the usual common sense.             If in that snowy backyard the driver of the black Buick had cut off our heads, Mikey’s and mine, I would have died happy, for nothing has required so much of me since as being chased all over Pittsburgh in the middle of winter—running terrified, exhausted—by this sainted, skinny, furious red-headed man who wished to have a word with us. I don’t know how he found his way back to his car.                                     Annie Dillard Dark Winter: A Spiritual Biography of the Season Eds. Gary Schmidt and Susan M. Felch, Skylight Paths Publishing 2003, pp. 212-216 Writing Exercise: Dig through your memory bank and find a winter memory that  is very special to you. Like Annie Dillard did, write about this memory in vivid detail. If you would like to submit your work for possible blog publication for the Inspiration Column, please send it to Dr. Sherry Reiter at sherryreiter@yahoo.com

 

           

You, darkness, of whom I am born-

Dear Friends,

Rilke's poem comes to mind as we approach the darkest days of the year:

You, darkness, of whom I am born-

 I love you more than the flame

 that limits the world

 to the circle it illumines

 and excludes all the rest.

 But the dark embraces everything:

 shapes and shadows, creatures and me, people, nations-just as they are.

 It lets me imagine

 a great presence stirring beside me.

 I believe in the night.

In the shortest days of the year, and the darkest, it is a time to celebrate the light within. We see the Xmas lights and Chanuka menorahs, and groups throughout the world include the light, candles, and fire in diverse spiritual traditions. But Rilke is on to something important. Yes, it is a time to celebrate light, but it is also a time to celebrate darkness, for all things, including creation and birth, begin in the dark. 

David Whyte's marvelous poem, "Sweet Darkness" is another poem that comes to mind:

Excerpt from Sweet Darkness

. . .You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

And I think to myself "ah, yes, the world to which I belong"! And where is that world?

But then the poet continues:

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness

to learn

Here comes the precious pearl of poetic wisdom!

anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

David Whyte    The House of Belonging, Langley, WA.: Many Rivers Press, l998

                                             

At this time, we are asking ourselves, "What is too small?" "What is enough?" "Do I have enough?" "What gifts will I receive?" "What will I give?" Too often we find ourselves exhausted, depleted and feeling empty. This brings me to Pablo Picasso's beautiful picture above called "Le Soupe." We see the adult serving the soup, palms cupped around its warmth.

The bowl has the look of waiting. Author David Applebaum suggests that when empty, the bowl has the look of perfection. It was made to hold that which cannot hold itself. All bowls imitate the human hand, with palm concave and stretching toward a generosity of heaven. After a passing shower, the bowl, full with rain, quenches the thirst of sparrows, thrushes and other birds. The bowl may also be thought of as exemplifying the law of service. For one thing serves another that serves a second that serves a third, and there is a round-robin effect, in which the ones giving service are sustained.

The poetry circle nourishes all who participate. The following exercise is a beautiful way to celebrate the completion of a poetry circle or a way to begin one. Place an empty bowl in the center of the circle, and prior to the event, ask each individual to bring a poem that nurtures the soul, and place it in the bowl. Each person then chooses one of the poems and reads it to the group. At the Creative Righting Center, we recently had this delicious "poem soup" and left filled. At the very end, we read this poem by Chrystos:

Ceremony for Completing a Poetry Reading  (Excerpt)

                                    This is a give-away poem

                                    You have come gathering

                                    You have made a circle with me…

                                    Within this basket is something

                                        you have been looking for

                                    all of your life

                                    Come take it

                                    Take as much as you want

                                    I give you seeds of a new way. . .

                                    Come

                                    this is a give-away poem

                                    I cannot go home

                                    until you have taken everything

                                    and the basket which held it

                                   

                                    when my hands are empty

                                    I will be full

                 Imaging the Word: An Arts and Lectionary Resource, Volume 3

                 Eds. Blain, Gouwens, O’Callaghan, & Spradling

                     United Press Church, 1996, p. 249