Every Poem is a Love Poem

image by Kieran Rynhart

"This is a tree on fire with love, but it's still scary since most people think love only looks like one thing instead of the whole world." -storypeople

In March I met a poet who is also an activist. I don't think she intends to write a particular type of poem; it's just that activism is in her bones and words are in her soul. Naturally, activist poetry falls from her breath.

She said that she doesn't write many love poems, however, but then she re-thought that idea and decided that just maybe every poem--especially the kind that inspire movements or change--is a love poem.

I have to agree.

So I met a woman named Amira in April. We were at her apartment complex playing with our little friends from Burma and Bangladesh when we met Amira's oldest son. He just jumped right in and started playing with us, and that's really how we like it anyway. I believe the kingdom of God looks a lot like people of various shades, hues, tongues and incomes jumping right on in and chalking the sidewalk, blowing bubbles and chasing a soccer ball together.

Amira saw her son playing with us and came out to meet me. I loved the way her Egyptian accent curled. And I was struck by her desperate love for her three boys. I noticed that when she saw we had fruit snacks for the kids, she went back to the house and got her other two children. She encouraged all of the boys to eat the snack. I could tell that this wasn't just about greed, so I asked Amira her story. It was no sadder or more compelling than many of the stories of immigrants and refugees I've met. It was her story, though, and I was moved by being a part of hearing her journey as a Christian in a Muslim nation, her struggle to leave her homeland, her need for some kind of financial relief in this very expensive land. At some point she said to me that she had to choose regularly between feeding her children and paying for electricity.

Immediately after meeting Amira, I felt a poem coming to me. It just started one day while I was in the shower and then began taking many different forms. Then when I was invited to participate in the spoken word census of Nashville, I felt like developing Amira's poem as the piece to share a story of an Egyptian-turned-Nashvillian.

I didn't plan for it to be a love poem. Not even an activism poem, I suppose. I am just a storyperson and want to give form to a story after hearing Amira's. Who would have known that just a month later, Amira's husband would lose his job and find it hard to find full time employment, the threat of eviction would hover over them and that I would have a poem ready to share Amira's story and ask for help to keep a roof over her head? But that is the story of today. And thanks to the glories of Facebook and God's amazing grace, friends have offered generous donations in just minutes that will help this family in their emergency situation. And I know we will be able to find others who can help us walk alongside this family and help them figure out ways to make it here in the U.S. Because I also know that the kingdom of God looks not only like a playground but also like a community coming together and picking each other up.

So in this moment, I think about the poet Andrea's statement about love poems and rejoice in the fabulous shapes that love takes. Writing Amira's story helps me connect with her, and I believe that's where the love is born. And I'm grateful to be able to write a few love poems in this messy, messy beautiful world . . .

May we all write our own kind of love poems in the lives of the people we meet.

About Love . . .

I've thought a lot about love this year. Agape love. Romantic love. Heartbreak. Passions. I've even written a few heartbreak poems this year (which I don't typically do and rarely share because I'm not a fan of heartbreak poems, but it sometimes feels good to pull pain out of my being and leave it on paper) and several other love poems (because every poem, essentially, is a love poem, right?). I'm currently reading Madeleine L'Engle's poetry compilation The Ordering of Love.

I suppose it's my year of love. And I suppose it's kind of nice to have a year of love without a romance in my life. Maybe it will help me put love in its proper perspective.



Speaking of perspectives on love, I heard the song "My Love Goes Free" at the end of a film a few months ago and weeped for an hour. The film's story and my story collided with this song, and I was moved by the intensity of it all. I learned that Jon Foreman wrote this song for his wife. I initially thought it odd that he'd write such a beautiful love song for THE woman in his life where the chorus says, "If you love her let her go."

I'm used to LeeAnn Rimes belting out, "If you ever leave, baby you would take away everything good in my life" or PM Dawn proclaiming "I'd Die Without You." I'm not used to love songs saying, "my love goes free." But these other popular radio hits are songs we could sing to food and water--things we consume, devour. And these are the songs that make us think we love someone?

What a warped web of love we spin!

I found a quote where Foreman explains his thoughts on love, talking about another song he wrote ("Enough to Let Me Go"):

I was thinking about how love (not just lust or codependency that commonly flood the tunes on the airways) actually involves quite a bit of faith. There’s a lot of letting go involved. Two souls in love is an intricate dance of give and take. I can be a fairly solitary person from time to time. Sure, I love being with people, but I also need time alone. I guess I thrive on the poles. So this song is about the dance involved in a relationship the coming together and letting go. The song equates love with breathing- pulling in and releasing. Or a seed, for the seed to grow it has to be dropped and buried.

In our barcode media, love is often portrayed as consumption. As consumers in a commercial driven culture we can begin to view other souls as objects, or potential cures for our deepest fears and insecurities. “Perhaps if I found the right lover I would no longer feel this deep existential despair.” But of course no human soul could be the Constant Other, the face that will never go away. Only the infinite can fill that role. But the silence can be deafening. It’s a fearful thing to be alone. Do you love me enough to let me go? “I can’t live without you”- “I would die if you ever left me”- These are not the songs of love, these are the songs of consumption.

So beautiful. Divine love is so freeing. God created us to release us to the world--to let us go and love us whether we choose God or not. I like this thought on love. And I'd like to live more fully into the pull-and-release of love in any future romances, in my friendships, in the way I love the world.

Would love to hear your thoughts on love.

May we all love freely.

2010: Books Come to Life . . .

I've been inspired by my friend Rod to up my reading ante this year. Rod completed 40 books on his list in 2009. Nice.

I really love books (clearly . . . I write them). Reading makes me happy. Reading improves my writing. Nothing satiates my imagination like a good book. The benefits to reading are endless. And yet I find myself surrounded by a gazillion books on shelves and in baskets on the floor of my room--all lonely and wishing I'd read them. I start them, and they feel loved and admired for a couple of days. And then they sit there lonely before I ever finish them.

Not this year.

And so I thought I'd blog about it and hope that knowing I've written it here will hold me a bit accountable. So I'm starting Hopscotch by South American (though born in Belgium) author Julio Cortazar today. There are two ways to read this book, and I think I'm going for the second way, which begins with chapter 73 and takes you on a haphazard journey of chapters to discover the story. I'll post more later.

I found this video of the NZ Book Council on an artist's blog the other day when I was looking up orizomegami (more on that art and what I'm doing with it another day), and I think it's appropriate for my year of books coming to life. And it's just pretty darn creative:



May you find time to let books come to life in your life this year . . .

I Adore Life . . .

"I adore Life. What do all the fools matter and all the stupidity. They do matter but somehow for me they cannot touch the body of Life. Life is marvellous. I want to be deeply rooted in it - to live - to expand - to breathe in it - to rejoice - to share it. To give and to be asked for Love."

-Katherine Mansfield in a Jan. 20 letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell

May we all be deeply rooted in life today and all the days to come . . .

Dennis Brutus, 1924-2009

We do not talk, do we
of Blood Diamonds?
We do not talk do we
of displaced peoples?
of stolen land?
of sweated labour?
of bloodied labour?
bloodied diamonds?

for blood diamonds, too,
are forever

-From "For DeBeers" by Brutus, 2009

I learned only today that South African activist and poet Dennis Brutus died Dec. 26. I began reading some of his work less than six months ago, so even though he's lived a long, full life, I feel as though a recently unearthed treasure has been stolen from me so suddenly. But his words are powerful, and the beauty of poetry is that it has the power to breathe even long after a poet expires. I am grateful for how he raised his voice and used his words to promote justice and peace and beauty. A statement from his family says that he died quietly in his sleep. May he rest in peace . . .

I leave you with the first Brutus poem I read:

Letter 18

I remember rising one night
after midnight
and moving
through an impulse of loneliness
to try and find the stars.

And through the haze
the battens of fluorescents made
I saw pinpricks of white
and I thought they were stars.

Greatly daring
I thrust my arm through the bars
and easing the switch in the corridor
plunged my cell in darkness

I scampered to my window
and saw the splashes of light
where the stars flowered.

But through my delight
thudded the anxious boots
and a warning barked
from the machine-gun post
on the catwalk.

And it is the brusque inquiry
and threat
that I remember of that night
rather than the stars.

-20th December, 1965, from a South African Prison

High Country Weather by James K. Baxter

I've taken a liking to this poem. A friend introduced me to New Zealand's beloved poet James K. Baxter several months ago, and I recognized Baxter's name when I stumbled upon this poem today:

alone we are born
and die alone
yet see the red-gold cirrus
over snow-mountain shine

upon the upland road
ride easy stranger
surrender to the sky
your heart of anger

So beautiful . . .

peace.

Truth ampersand Reconciliation

I'm reading poetry by Dennis Brutus, a South African poet and activist (thank you kindly, Will, for the introduction). His poetry, first of all, is beautiful. The few pieces I've read take me into his jail cell (he was imprisoned at Robben Island for 18 months) and strike my bones. It's honest, lyrical, haunting.

So as I've read more about him, I learned that he refused an induction in the South African Sports Hall of Fame at the end of last year. His activism played a major role in an international sports boycott of apartheid South Africa, which banned them from the Olympics starting in 1970 and ending with the fall of apartheid. I suppose they wanted to honor him for his commitment to bettering SA sports. But Brutus publicly declined the induction, stating that many of the people currently in the Hall of Fame are there at an "unfair advantage, as so many talented black athletes were excluded from sport opportunities." So he gracefully (much to the chagrin of the committee, I'm sure) declined, saying that "it is incompatible to have those who championed racist sport alongside its genuine victims. It's time--indeed long past time--for sports truth, apologies and reconciliation."

I find this story quite interesting to think of how brave it is to really call a people to real reconciliation. When South Africa became a new country, the waved a new flag, sang a new national anthem, adopted many new national languages. These are mostly symbolic, but they are the necessary symbols to begin saying, "we are truly going to live into something new." I love that Brutus is calling even the Sports Hall of Fame to the same kind of newness, even to simply recognize the fallacy of their work during the apartheid era. If a country is going to live into truth and reconciliation and even champion the cause, it must do it in all facets of its life.

My sister L and I have been discussing for years, "why hasn't the U.S. had our intentional process of truth and reconciliation?" We have certainly come a long way. I am a generation removed from any strange fruit dangling from southern trees. Our president is biracial. No doubt that we are in a far better place. And, yet, I still can't wrap my mind around Emmett Till's 1955 lynching and how his murderers actually confessed to the murder without any justice being served or any intentional moves toward reconciling their wrong.

And we have so many examples of where we never spoke the truths or really reconciled. In fact, my friend K and I were talking the other day about how taboo it still is to talk about race in the U.S. Having both spent time in South Africa, we were impressed with how freely the people we met speak of race (sometimes appropriately and sometimes offensively--but the taboo of addressing race doesn't seem as strong). Whereas here, I've heard people remark that President Obama's election has started to awaken bitter race relations in our country. This is not true. This divide has been alive and very much awake (just look at a photograph of a high school cafeteria in Greenville, SC); we just don't talk about it or acknowledge it or look it in the eye. The election placed a mirror in front of us and forced us to see the truth: we've never really intentionally reconciled. Our flag still looks the same. Our song still sounds the same. Some people boycott MLK's birthday celebration. I get followed at a three-letter clothing store because I'm a black woman of a certain age, while 14-year-old and white Johnny stuffs a baseball cap under his shirt. Hispanic people are consistent targets of racial profiling. I'm still an "other" in this nation that has been mine since birth, and I'm labeled "bitter" or an "angry black woman" whenever I mention this.

We have miles to go before we sleep, and I hope that we'll be so moved to practice truth and reconciliation in our future days. Only when we hear each others' stories and begin to hear/see each other can we move toward healing.

Hopscotch & Hula Hoops: Praying in Color

I discovered this book online a while ago and put it in my Amazon wish list. It's called Praying in Color. I was immediately fascinated by the idea of it, but I never physically saw a copy of it.

When I was in the office of one of my editors last week, however, I saw the book on her desk and got really excited. The author Sybil MacBeth had written for their magazine, so my editor had just finished looking at the book and was willing to let me borrow it. So I began diving into my childish ways and let coloring be a major part of my prayer life this past weekend.

It's been such a neat practice. Basically you doodle around someone's name like I mastered in middle school science class. But you doodle after reading scripture, lighting a candle and preparing your heart for prayer. When you finish a doodle for that one person, you write another name and begin doodling around theirs on the same piece of paper (or journal page, as is the case with me). Eventually, your doodles create one image, which serves as your prayer icon for the day. Then during the day, I remember this image, I remember the people and their prayer needs, and I'm faithfully offering intercessory prayers for my family and friends (and even for my own prayer needs). I love it. You don't have to know how to draw, and your icon doesn't have to be a coherent picture, though some of mine have been.

Sunday I colored a prayer that was kind of a coherent drawing when I decided to doodle flowers around people's names. I'm having a hard time with one of my housemates and her boyfriend. We were addressing some house issues on Sunday, so I decided to add his name to my doodled prayer. While it didn't fix the problem, it definitely calmed me tremendously to enter into conversation about him after I had prayed his name on a page filled with flowers.

Sunday's colorful prayer

Experiencing that with my prayer for him reminded me about one of my favorite quotes from Dawson's Creek (Hey! No snickering . . .) that said that prayer isn't about changing God's mind, it's about changing me. Even though the situation still stinks, my attitude about it became a bit more flowery--even if only for that day.

Praying in color . . . there's much joy to it.

September, September!!!

I realize that I failed to record last week after the much-anticipated Sept. 21 return of Grey's Anatomy. I've been waiting only the entire summer for last Thursday. I went to NY, though, and I made it home from dinner JUST after the series title/cast sequence, so I missed the first few minutes of the show (NYC transportation at its finest!) much to my chagrin. But I was thrilled all the same!

But tonight is the big night to watch the full episode in the comfort of my sister's apartment, surrounded by food and a few friends. I'm excited. Last week's episode was amazing (thanks for asking, Lane)! It wasn't filled with too many shocks, twists and turns, but I thought that made it a pleasant season opener! Can't wait to see what happens with Izzie's character. Those were great scenes with her sprawled on the floor. And both McVet and McDreamy are in the race for Meredith's heart . . . should be fun! I was thrilled when both of them proclaimed their interests, so I have no clue which I prefer. McVet for a while, I guess, because I don't want Chris O'Donnell going anywhere anytime soon.

Grey's aside, real life is good . . . I'm still living in the White House in Brentwood, and it's lovely. My room is a mess, but the house is lovely. I miss Hillsboro Village more than I ever imagined and look forward to returning to Nashville one of these days. It's just not the same. I'm working on a promotional video for the Youth Service Fund, and that has been fun. I'm still writing for other UM publications and have a book idea or two wading through my mind. I've been volunteering with the youth at church more often, and I love it. Bellydancing is still a blast, and I'm working on a choreography for late October when one of my favorite tabla talents comes to town: Raquy and the Cavemen. Our all-church retreat is next week, so Shane will be here soon. Yay!

I like this about Shane's contract for speaking at an event: Being mindful of the impact that our hyper-mobile pace and fuel use have on Creation, and of the fragility of the current patterns of consumption that have led to wars over natural resources and the degradation of God’s earth, Shane has a commitment to offset the ecological impact of his travel. There are two ways a group hosting Shane to speak can participate: either have a group of folks fast (go without) oil for a day the week Shane visits (a good guideline would be, at least one person go without fuel one day for every 100 miles Shane travels) -- this may mean something as simple as carpooling or biking to work or as imaginative as converting your car to run off used veggie oil (awip.us) –OR- (less exciting) you can add an additional $100 to the honorarium and Shane will donate that to a group dedicated to erasing the footprint his travel has on the environment. For more information on this, check out demotorize.org.

Thanks for reading my hodge podge of life and tv . . .

Ciao, ciao!

Irresistible Community

I cried this morning as I sat on the porch of my new home. I did not cry because I do not like my new home. Nor did I cry because my home is so whelmingly beautiful and inspirational (although it is absolutely perfectly fantabulous . . . so much so that I'm inspired to write and *gasp* blog again). Instead, I cried after reading this paragraph of Shane Claiborne's book The Irresistible Revolution:

A married couple who were unable to have children happened to meet a woman who had found herself six months pregnant and homeless, so they invited her into their home. It proved to be such a beautiful experience that they decided to continue living together to help raise the new baby girl while the mother pursued her dream of going back to school to become a nurse. They have been living together over a decade now. They are a family, and the baby is now a teenager and the mom a nurse. A heart-wrenching twist to the story is that the wife of the married couple is now very ill with multiple sclerosis, but now the nurse living in her home is caring for her, just as she had cared for the nurse. This is the divine gift of mystical providence and radical interdependence.

I cried because I celebrate the will of God being done on earth, as it is in heaven, through this story. In a time when we are taught to be so fiercely independent, God's will reminds us that, as Daniel Ladinsky paraphrases St. Catherine of Sienna, "vulnerable we are, like an infant. We need each other's care or we will suffer." We are called to community, Communion.

We try so hard to have our "own children," our "own house," our "own healthcare," our "own money," etc., etc. We frown upon 30-year-olds living in their parents' homes and call them "losers." We help others, all the while keeping in mind when our charity is too abundant; soon the needy become "moochers" taking advantage of us.

The kingdom of God, however, looks like a little girl knocking on the door of a family who opened their home to me in South Africa. The child said, "Auntie Connie, we don't have any bread." Without hesitation, Aunt Connie, who did not have much herself, gave a loaf to this child. The kingdom looks like this couple, radically opening their doors to a needy pregnant woman and calling her "family" instead of a "moocher."

The New York Times posted a story today about how lonely U.S. citizens are.

As we face a lonely world telling us there is little hope, the kingdom of God reminds us that hope is in our community and our interdependence.

A Word from Ferlinghetti

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you
-Lawrence Ferlinghetti

For the complete poem, click here.

Quotation: I'm a writer . . .

"I'm a writer. And I believe that the highest gift that man has is art. And I am audacious enough to think of myself as an artist. That there is both joy and beauty and illumination and communion between people to be acheived through the dissection of personality--that's what I want to do. I want to reach a little closer to the world, which is to say to people, and see if we can share some illuminations together about each other."

-Lorraine Hansberry