Unlearning

We are convinced

that we have nothing

to learn about

grief,

that we’re human

and so we grieve,

that our instincts

will tell us what is an outrage,

what is a tragedy,

what is too much,

what is too far.

We are human

so we must know

innately

what inhumanity is.

I think we’re wrong.

Maybe we start out that way.

I’m not sure.

But we learn somewhere

along the way

which things we

will cry out against

and which things

will merely merit

shaking our heads over,

What a shame.

Did you hear about 

[insert tragedy here]?

We learn these things.

I know

because I’ve

unlearned some of it.

I know because

last night something hit me

in the stomach with the

force of a fall

(like when, as a child,

 I tripped in the front yard

and fell on a brick

and couldn’t breathe,

couldn’t even make a sound,

but when the air rushed back

I cried out instinctively,

wailed out loud

before the pain even

registered in my brain).

Last night I grieved for something
I’d never felt in quite that way before.

Don't get me wrong.

I'm still pretty trite. 

Like when I'm upset 

about the news I'm reading, 

I go on a jog and

write poetry,

because my default reaction

is to wrap myself up in the mantle

of my very enlightened

reactions to the world, 

a sort of self-satisfied melancholy

because at least I have the humanity 

to call these things outrageous. 

I cry a lot these days, and then I have

the audacity to all but congratulate

myself for feeling sad. 

But it isn't all self-centered. 

The point of this poem is that

some of it is real, and I'm trying to

find the pieces of it that I want to keep. 

I was praying. Or reading a prayer,

but for me they are the same thing. 

Someone else's words, but as they emerged

from my lips, as I prayed

for the poor and the persecuted

and the sick, the refugee and the prisoner

and the endangered and the broken,

I wept aloud. 

And I asked God for mercy. 

Not for the broken, because God is

with the broken, God is always with the broken.

But I asked mercy for we who do the breaking. 

And I tried not to feel self-satisfied afterward. 

Not because I'm strong; because it just won't go away

Though I feel

at times

broken or

empty (as though

plundered, as

though

bruising fingers

have rifled

through the leaves

of my mind

and found little

but have torn it and

crushed it anyway,

for fun),

though I feel

at times

like nothing

good escapes the

searing heat

of this world,

though I feel

at times

wounded

and lonely and

bent from what I’m

meant to be,

there is hope.

Do you hear me?

There is hope.

“Sometimes

the bravest thing of all

is to hope.”

 --Brave Saint Saturn

 

I remember my affliction and my wandering, 

the bitterness and the gall.

I well remember them, 

and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet this I call to mind

and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
--Lamentations 3:21-23

The Contemplativeness of Things

Like laundry, I mean.

It’s been said a lot, that

there’s meaning in small things,

and of course I only

want to say new things

which is at best naïve

and at worst self-important.

But I’ve gotten off track.

Here’s what it feels like:

one moment you’re folding laundry

and it’s part of that endless

list of things to do (they don’t call it

a laundry list for nothing)

and in a split second,

it transmutes—the whole thing, your

hands, your mind, your heart, the

things you’re

touching—

into eternity, or into

meaning, or maybe into happiness

although that’s not quite it.

The point is that there’s a

switch and in an instant making

a pile of shirts

isn’t a task but an act in itself

and you feel that a life is made

of things like this;

but then you rebel because

even saying that sounds lame,

and the feeling itself is

enormous, really.

There’s a peach colored shirt,

loose-fitting and a bit stretched out,

a little pocket on the front left side.

I feel breezy in it, and grown-up

(the oddest thing about that being
that it’s ceased to feel odd).

And in the act of setting it on

four other shirts, I was

transported more solidly into

the current moment than I

ever manage on purpose.

The more I talk around the moment

the further it gets from words.
But it was beautiful.

A Prayer for Heavy Times

I flew to Orlando two days after the shooting at Pulse Nightclub, and two days before the little boy was killed by an alligator at a Disney resort. It felt heavy, all of it, and I found myself writing a prayer. I thought about sharing it at the time, and it just didn't feel right yet.

Now there is the bombing in Baghdad and the shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. And other things too, so that scrolling down my news feed this morning, it all just felt really heavy. And I went back to that prayer and prayed it again.

I share it not because I'm awesome at writing prayers, but because sometimes praying other people's words can be really meaningful to me, and I wanted to put this one out there for others who feel the heaviness of all this.

A couple of notes on the process of writing this prayer:
I've been practicing understanding God in different ways, stepping outside the images of God as father or God as king (while those images are certainly true and found in many places in Scripture, they are not the only meaningful ones). Lately I have been praying to Jesus as my Brother, which is both beautiful and strangely intimate.
Also, I drew heavily from Psalm 123 for this prayer.

A Prayer for Orlando (and Other Heavy Times)

Brother Jesus, we are spent with grief. Brother, we are broken. We are an open wound. Have mercy, Brother, have mercy; for we have had more than enough contempt. We have had more than enough scorn and more than enough hatred and more than enough fear. Be gracious to us. In your great mercy, show yourself kind.
Amen.

A Steadiness of Hand

Found this poem in a notebook I was flipping through--written circa my junior year of college, I think. I'd completely forgotten about it, but I rather like it so I thought I'd share.

He steps back as I draw the bow,

left arm straight, right hand on the string.

I am still as windlessness at night.

I release.

In the edges of my sight,

his figure stills my hand,

stops my breath.

My arrow quivers

at the center of the mark.

He stills my hand.

A Letter To A Friend Which I Poemed Because It Felt Poemy

The seams of my being

had been bulging alarmingly for days,

but yesterday evening and today were such a relief.

I sent my thesis draft to my committee last night,

which I'm fairly convinced triggered a rush of endorphins,

(turning things in—a grad student's drug of choice).

It means a brief reprieve

(hm, there's poetry in those two words together, I think),

not from having to do things,

but from feeling anxious about them.

I looked at stars tonight

and breathed deep

and did not feel rushed.

My defense is two weeks from tomorrow,

and two weeks from tomorrow is gloriously finite—

two weeks is practically nothing.

After feeling for months that this dreadful thing

was going to go on forever,

it finally feels finite.
My soul is still tonight.