Spoken Word

Words strain,

Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,

Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,

Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,

Will not stay still.

   (T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton V)

I’ve been thinking and blogging about courage – courage to think, speak, act.  

And puzzling about what gets in the way of living into courage: what keeps us from the hard work of whole-hearted living? What fears keep us silent when we know we should speak?

A friend posted about improvisation: the anxiety of attempting something new, the fear of rejection. And then she taped herself improvising on her harp, and posted in on Facebook. A lovely gift of courage.

Poetry is a place where my own anxieties bubble up.  I wrote poetry as a kid, some of it awful, some of it moving toward something of value. Then I retreated from even the thought of poetry: too revealing, too threatening, too hard. I dip my toe back in now and then, shudder and turn away. And yet, I feel the pull of the struggle with words, the attempt to grasp something bigger than words and hold it, if just for a moment.

I recently agreed to review a new volume of poems for Speakeasy, an on-line review community, and then found myself wondering why I’d done it. I’m happy to pass along poems I love. But review poems? Critique them? Offer comment on anyone brave enough to assemble a volume of poems and display them for the world to see?

 

That seems a bit presumptuous.

But – I agreed to do it.

So here’s my review:

Help Me Be: Praying in Poems, is a slender paperback volume by Dale C. Fredrickson, with forward by Walter Brueggemann (CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2013; 48 pp.)

The cover displays three paintings included in the book: evocative abstracts by Lindsay McLean which highlight the collection’s three sections: Orientation (Or, Life is Good), Disorientation (Or, Life is Not Good), and New Orientation (Or, Life is Good Again).

“Prosaic” is the word that first comes to mind, both in considering the section heads and some of the poems themselves. They confront their topics head-on, with little of the expected stuff of poetry: metaphor, allusion, musical phrasing, memorable imagery.

Reading the author’s note on the back of the book, I was struck by the mention of spoken word, and turned to read the poems out loud. Suddenly, they came alive, with the passion of praise, the rhythm of complaint, a sense of verbal play: 

We sigh. We cry. We ached.
Stunned. Numbed, Undone.
Erased. No one can be replaced.

 Alienation.
Desperation.
Negation.
Misinformation.
Bifurcation.
Causation?

Fredrickson’s poems don’t work, for me, as contemplative reading, as quiet reflections at the end of the day. But as spoken word, or “slam poetry” (poetry written to be performed out loud) they have an energy and rawness that would work well in a public setting, in a worship service, youth group event, shouted aloud on a hillside, read in call and response, or as a congregational chorus.

My first experience of this kind of spoken word was Amena Brown, a gifted poet and performer encountered at a youth conference several years ago. I’m not sure her poems would communicate well as flat words on a bare white page, but as she performs them, they dazzle, sizzle, sing. (Looking for her latest work, I find IVP just released her first book: Breaking Old Rhythms: Answering the Call of a Creative God. Add that to the reading list!)

Looking through Fredrickson’s website, I found some of the poems from Help Me Be recorded as audio files. Another poem is available on youtube. It gives a glimpse of how the poems are used in the context of a creative worship service.

I admire the courage and creativity captured in Help Me Be, and the portrait of a life of faith lived honestly, with passion and real energy. At the same time, I winced at small mistakes a careful editing would have corrected, and the erratic capitalization and over-reliance on alliteration running through many of the poems.

On the back cover of his book, Fredrickson notes: “For me, everything is material for learning how to live well: family, friends,, kayaking, camping, music, surfing and good books. My desire is to engage people with words that shimmer and to ignite in them the desire to be fully what God has created them to be.”

The fear of being less than perfect too often keeps us from the kind of whole-hearted life Fredrickson’s poems model: honest, hopeful, fully human:

Your choice is not easy
Risky freedom or
Safe slavery.
Do you step forward?
Or do you turn back?
(Risky Freedom Safe Slavery)

My friend, considering the challenge of improvisation, wrote: “Sometimes these anxieties take on a life of their own.” And then she moved past it: “I want to be done worrying about this one thing. If only they were all that simple.”

To quote another poem from Help Me Be:

You say you want to live boldly purposefully without fear?
            Dig Deep
                        Push Beyond the Surface
                        Listen the Eternal Echoes in your heart.
You say you are ready?
            Dive Leap Step Start . . .
            (This Is The Year)

Well yes, I do want to live purposefully without fear. So, here’s my own attempt to Dive Leap Step Start: a poem of my own. Feel free to read it out loud, consider it silently, critique it, or applaud.

Spoken Word

Poem of the ages,
macrocosmic enterprise -
equations thrown across the galaxies,
quarks, neutrinos, antiparticles,
drenched in joy, in love, in laughter -
Look!
How many yom spent painting sea shells
plying that pearlescent pink
and now, of course, you're picturing a paintbrush –
me! making mud pies!
balanced on a ladder stringing stars.

I poured my very self into a hominid
and now you're searching out the bucket -
silly child.

Say this –

if you can speak at all -
the one who is

dreamed, breathed, propelled, imagined, sang
this universe in place
across time, empty space,
in ways your physicists, inventors, chemists, poets
see as through a darkened cloud
and you
wielding words

so certain of the things you think you know -

charash – be still, be formed,

imagine,

wait and see.

Each word holds worlds

each world a fragment

of the living Word.

Thank you, Dale Fredrickson, for embracing poetry, and challenging the rest of us to a life more full and fearless.


Message in a Bottle spoken word from Dale Fredrickson on Vimeo.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.

Courage, Hope, Generosity

No, no, there is no going back.

Less and less you are

that possibility you were.

More and more you have become

those lives and deaths

that have belonged to you. . .

Now more than ever you can be

generous toward each day

that comes, young,

to disappear

forever, and yet remain

unageing in the mind.

Every day you have less reason

not to give yourself away.

  (Wendell Berry,

         The Timbered Choir)

I spent this past weekend in the company of women of great courage, hope, and generosity.

I have been on an interesting journey, and most recently it’s been leading me into political engagement with the League of Women Voters. I’ve been working on a national agriculture study, leading caucuses and workshops about food and farming, and have just been voted onto the local and state League of Women Voters boards.

So, this past weekend, I went to the biennial state convention of the Pennsylvania League in the lovely town of Lewisburg, PA.

The start of the weekend was a wild caravan ride to see some natural gas drilling sites in the hillsides near Loyalsock State Forest. Guided by a local member of the Alliance for Responsible Drilling, our group drove down steep back roads, stopped along roadsides, counted waste water tank trucks in caravans of their own, then hiked across a muddy field for a birds-eye view of six active fracking wells.

One of the members of our group, a woman well into her seventies, carried a small note pad and jotted notes at every turn.

Another, just weeks after hip surgery, gratefully accepted a hand to climb a slippery slope, eager to see and understand further a topic she’s been studying for years.

The conversation never stopped: How many gallons. What happens to the waste water. How far is the nearest stream. How many trucks per day.

From there we went back to our convention site, for meetings about judicial reform, industrial farming, the broken party system, how best to advocate for more open primaries.

Some of those in attendance were younger than I am (57, if you’ve been wondering).

Many were older.

Some much older.

One woman spoke of working for thirty years to find a way to promote a more impartial, well-prepared judiciary.

Another has been studying Pennsylvania politics for almost as long, looking for possible points of reform, showing up for hearings, offering testimony, meeting with legislators, tireless in pursuit of something approaching a more open democratic process.

I sat several times next to a woman working to protect lakes, farms, and a fragile wetland area from the dangers of fracking wastewater being dumped into old, crumbling wells just miles from her home, not far from Lake Erie.

I spoke with another woman working hard to ensure adequate funding for education in rural schools far from any center of political power.

At one meeting we talked about the Pennsylvania Justice Bell and the 1915 statewide referendum on women’s rights. While my county and many western counties voted for women’s right to vote, the majority of state voters (all men) voted emphatically “no.” We were reminded of the 72 years between the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, hosted by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the final ratification of the 19^th Amendment in August, 1920.

At another meeting we recognized fifty-year members – women who joined the league to work for Civil Rights, to advocate for the still-unpassed Equal Rights Amendment.

I was struck by the energy and resolve of these women, and the endless hours they give, showing up to register new voters, writing letters, making calls, trying to understand issues. One meeting paused over a motion about sales tax: Who is harmed by higher sales tax? Who benefits? Why should it matter?

Listening to the passionate discussions over morning coffee, over lunch, between meetings, late into the night, I found myself thinking about this month’s Synchroblog topic: ordinary courage. 

“In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown has this to say about ordinary courage:

'The root of the word courage is cor—the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant “to speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.'

“The great thing about ordinary courage is that it leads to wholehearted living.”

We live in a world that encourages us not to care: 

Don’t vote, they’re all the same. Give up, things will never change.
 It’s all too complicated, so why bother?
 Look out for yourself, it’s the best you can do. 

It seems unwise to engage our hearts, to let ourselves care too deeply. Somehow it’s okay to be passionate about a TV show, a new restaurant, a hairstyle. But keep your voice level when you talk of politics. Don’t say too much about poverty or prison reform. Don’t offend, don’t insist, don’t dig too deeply.

Please, don’t think too much.

 

This past weekend, one of the women I was with spoke laughingly of a reporter who wrote of “whip-smart women in comfortable shoes.”

Well yes – it’s hard to visit fracking sites in anything but comfortable shoes. Or to run down hallways lugging laptops and projectors in a pair of narrow high heels.

What kind of culture is more interested in women’s shoes than in what chemicals are in our water, what toxins are in our food?

I’m reminded of a passage from Wendell Berry’s essay “On Difficult Hope”: 

"We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our species. The list of its undeniable abominations is long and hardly bearable. And these abominations are not balanced or compensated or atoned for by the list, endlessly reiterated, of our scientific achievements. Some people are moved, now and again, to deplore one abomination or another. Others . . . deplore the whole list and its causes.
 "Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvements and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protestors who hold out longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal.  .  .
 "Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.” (Wendell Berry, "On Difficult Hope") 

Both hope and courage are qualities of the heart, essential to whole-hearted living, worth preserving no matter the stupidities of the age.

Yet, as I think of the women I came to know this past weekend, I see in them something beyond the  the perseverance Berry describes. I turn back to the poem I started with: the idea of generosity.

What motivates these women of courage is the wish to give something better to those who come

behind us.

The woman living near the waste-water wells, organizing town meetings, writing the EPA, protesting, once again, a dangerous practice she fears will do great harm, said emphatically:

“It’s not about us. Or even our children. It’s our grandchildren. And the children after them. What happens when those well-linings break? What happens when those chemicals leach into the water table, into the lake?” 

It takes courage to look past the economies of today, to spend time, energy, resources tirelessly, generously, in hope of passing on something of value to generations to come.

In a world of self-protectiveness, of turning inward, of looking out for number one, I admire, celebrate, and am happy to walk with those tireless, fearless, generous women who refuse to settle for a life in stylish shoes. 

Every day you have less reasonnot to give yourself away.

This post is part of the June Synchroblog. There are lots of links this month - take some time to visit them and join the conversation.

This Is Courage by Jen Bradbury
Being Vulnerable by Phil Lancaster
Everyday Bravery: Overcoming the Fear of Being Wrong by Jessica
Moving Forward Takes Courage by Paul W. Meier
How to Become a Flasher by Glenn Hager
Ordinary Courage by Elaine Hansen
The Courage to Fail by Wendy McCaig
The Greatest Act of Courage by Jeremy Myers
Sharing One’s Heart by K. W. Leslie
All I See Is Rocks by Tim Nichols
I Wonder What Would Happen by Liz Dyer
What is Ordinary Courage? by Jennifer Stahl
Loving Courageously by Doreen A. Mannion
Heart Cry: The Courage to Confess by Elizabeth Chapin
The Act to the Miraculous by VisionHub
the spiritual practice of showing up & telling the truth by Kathy Escobar
It’s What We Teach by Margaret Boelman

The Great Reversal: A Resurrection People

“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. . . . Our task in the present . . . is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day.” ( N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope)

What does it mean to live as resurrection people? As agents of hope in a world where hope is in short supply?

How do we demonstrate – in our daily actions – our confidence that death is no longer the final word?

What does it look like to live so aligned with Jesus, so like him in word, deed, motive, that people who see us see evidence of resurrection?

The sermon on the mount is a good place to start. Looking back, it becomes clear that Matthew 6 is the proclamation of the Great Reversal: a new kingdom coming, a new way to live. Jesus says: Look, you do it this way. Turn it upside down.

Blessed are the rich and powerful? No – blessed are the poor and humble.

You love those who love you? Love those who don’t as well.

You worry? Learn to trust.

You want your own way? Want my way instead.

This reversal shows up in small ways through the gospels: tax collector Zacchaeus, stunned by Jesus’ acceptance and forgiveness, decides to give half his possessions to the poor and pay back four-fold anyone he’s cheated.

Woman at the Well, Hyatt Moore, US

The Samaritan woman at the well starts her story afraid to draw water at the normal times, reluctant to talk with Jesus, a secretive woman burdened by shame. She ends her story sharing the news of Jesus with everyone in town; according to Orthodox tradition, she was renamed Photini, "Equal to the Apostles,” and went on to witness in Africa and Rome before being martyred for her faith.

Were there others whose lives demonstrated a reversal of intent, a radical, visible change? Certainly people were healed. Lives were redirected. The teaching and example of Jesus attracted plenty of attention.

But in the gospels, although Jesus taught about the coming kingdom, it wasn’t really visible in the lives of his followers. The sons of Zebedee, James and John, were still wondering how to maneuver their way to power. Peter, self-focused from the start, was busy with his own off-beat agendas. Mary and Martha bickered about the proper role for a spiritual woman. All seemed convinced their own ideas, their own plans for the future, would somehow work better than whatever Jesus had in mind.

What Jesus had in mind, in his cross and resurrection, took their ideas, plans, hopes, vision of how the world should work, and shredded them. Completely.

Want power? Turn the other cheek. Again.

Want a future? Let your best hopes die.

Want to be an insider? Part of the gang? One of the club? Align yourself with the marginalized, forgotten, despised. Set your reputation with theirs. Claim their abandonment as your own.

The resurrection isn’t some sweet idea of spring and tulips and happy thoughts rising as the days begin to lengthen.

It’s God’s deep song of joy, rising up from the very darkest place of pain and grief: the story isn’t over. The hardest word is not the last. The thing you feared most is the best gift yet. The deepest loss is the avenue to deepest joy.

Beyond that, with the knowledge of that, everything changes.

The Crucifixion of Peter, Filippino Lippi,
c. 1581 , Florence

The disciples, once fearful, found themselves courageous beyond imagining: singing in the face of imprisonment, merry in the face of floggings, buoyant when confronted with crosses, lions, vats of oil, stones, beheading, new instruments of torture. Their persecutors exhausted themselves trying to find more frightening forms of execution. And still the disciples, and those who came after, women, teens, thousands on thousands, went to their death rather than deny the truth they’d come to believe: Jesus was God himself, raised from the dead, bringing freedom for anyone who would follow.

Origen, an early church theologian, at seventeen lost his father to beheading, lived most of his life under the threat of persecution, spent years in hiding and more years suffering a mix of ingenious tortures. In his “Principles,” he wrote:

“When God gives the Tempter permission to persecute us, we suffer persecution. And when God wishes us to be free from suffering, even though surrounded by a world that hates us, we enjoy a wonderful peace. We trust in the protection of the One who said, ‘Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world. . .  From His victory we take courage.'”

The power of the Christ’s victory showed up not just in the courage of the new followers, but also in outrageous generosity.

Resurrection people, from the start, have shared things with each other, and with those in need. Not just now and then. Not just when the harvest is exceptional, or the person in need a particular friend.

“All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. . . They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people” Acts 3. 

The early resurrection people acted as if they understood, and could trust completely, what Jesus had said: we don’t need to worry about our own stuff. We can let go of the anxiety, the fear of scarcity, the competitive worry that if I feed you today, my family will go hungry tomorrow.

Ignatius of Antioch:  "I prefer death in Christ Jesus
 to power over the farthest limits of the earth. . .
 He who rose for our sakes is my one desire."

Justin Martyr, in one of the earliest histories of the church, wrote:

“We who used to value the acquisition of wealth and possessions more than anything else now bring what we have into a common fund and share it with anyone who needs it.”

Clement, describing the change visible in any person who took on the name of “Christian,” noted:

 “He impoverishes himself out of love, so that he is certain he may never overlook a brother in need, especially if he knows he can bear poverty better than his brother. He likewise considers the pain of another as his own pain. And if he suffers any hardship because of having given out of his own poverty, he does not complain.”

Clement, like the others who chose to live the resurrection, put a high value on love: your pain is my pain. Your poverty is my poverty. Your illness is my illness.

In Philippians 2, Paul says “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”

Who does that? Who puts the interests of others first? Not occasionally, but daily? Not when it’s easy, but when it costs health, future, personal safety?

When plague devastated the 3rd century world, Christians cared for the sick, gathered and took into their homes people thrown into the street by family members fearful of becoming infected.

When Romans and others threw their deformed, surplus, unwanted babies on trash piles or into rivers, Christians gathered them up, fed them, cared for them as their own.

John Chrysostom taught, "If you see anyone in affliction, do not be curious to enquire further... [the needy person] is God's, whether he is a heathen or a Jew; since even if he is an unbeliever, still he needs help."

As Justin Martyr observed:

“We used to hate and destroy one another and refused to associate with people of another race or country. Now, because of Christ, we live together with such people and pray for our enemies.” 

Inexplicable courage, outrageous generosity, sacrificial love. There have been glimpses of those in every culture, in every age.

But only in gatherings of resurrection people do these traits become visible on a scale that rearranges history.

St. Francis and the Leper, Frederic Loisel
1961, France

Resurrection people were the first to imagine free, generous care for the sick.

Resurrection people were the first to offer financial and emotional support for the aging who had no families to care for them.

Resurrection people started the first orphanages, the first free schools, the first homes for the mentally unwell.

Resurrection people worked, and continue to work, to end the ugly sin of slavery.

The story goes on and on, from the first centuries following the resurrection, through stories of Benedict and Francis, through the leper colonies of Africa, mission to untouchable Dalits in India, prison ministry in forgotten holes of misery around the globe.

Yes, generosity shows up in people of other faiths, and no faith. So does courage. So does love.

And yes – people calling themselves Christians have done great harm, in many ways. That’s a story for another day.

But the sheer volume of care, poured out by resurrection people, year by year, country by country, gives proof to a reversal of agenda with no other explanation than Christ’s defeat, through love, of hate and death, and his invitation to live as new people in a new, unending kingdom.

Where that reversal is visible, God’s glory is made clear, the good news is heard and joyfully received, and God’s people “shine like stars as they hold out the word of life” (Philippians 2:15).

This is the second in a series about Resurrection.

• Risen Indeed: The Hermaneutic Community

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