2021.04.18 Appearances

Look behind to understand. Look ahead to dream. Look down to be present. Look inward for truth.

“At fourteen, I couldn’t see things as clearly as this, but I instinctively understood that power is beguiling and a person does not lightly give it up. Power will bend the truth and warp their own values to maintain their grip on power. I was a child of Africa, a white child to be sure, but nevertheless Africa’s child. The black breasts that had suckled me and the dark hands that had rocked and bathed me had left me with a burden of obligation to resist the white power that would be the ultimate gift from those who now trained me.”

The context of this, yes, powerful quote above is from a book, The Power Of One, by Bryce Courtenay. Courtenay (1933-2012) first published the book in 1989, and was afraid it would not sell. It became a best seller  Courtenay was a South-African-Australian advertising director and journalist. The Power of One is based on his own life and reads like a memoir. He was born in South Africa, attended prestigious private schools, and eventually was banned from returning to South Africa, because he initiated a weekend school for black people at his high school. It is easy to see how Courtenay got that idea and why he risked his writerly reputation to write this stunning book. This book is beautifully written and complex. Following this child as he grows through what he goes through was a distinct pleasure.  

 
            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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David Whyte, an Anglo-Irish poet grew up surrounded by fields, woods and the moors, is another genius in relational spirituality. His poetry is based on “the conversational nature of reality.” Whyte, 65,  lives now in the United States, Pacific Northwest, where he conducts workshops for business people/corporate types, training them in “Conversational Leadership.” 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I first fell in love with Whyte’s philosophy, spirituality, and poetry when I listened to his series,“Clear Mind Wild Heart,” in which he recalls his visit with David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk. Whyte complained of constant fatigue in his work life. Steindl-Rast listened. Then he said that the opposite of exhaustion is not rest but whole-heartedness. Whyte quit his job and became a poet. 

 MY COURAGEOUS LIFE
has gone ahead
and is looking back,
calling me on.

My courageous life
has seen everything
I have been
and everything
I have not
and has
forgiven me,
day after day.

My courageous life
still wants
my company:
wants me to
understand
my life as witness
and thus
bequeath me
the way ahead.

My courageous life
has the patience
to keep teaching me,
how to invent
my own
disappearance,
and how
once gone,
to reappear again.

My courageous life
wants to stop
being ahead of me
so that it can lie
down and rest
deep inside the body
it has been
calling on.

My courageous life
wants to be
my foundation,
showing me
day after day
even against my will
how to undo myself,
how to surpass myself,
how to laugh as I go
in the face
of danger,
how to invite
the right kind
of perilous
love,
how to find
a way
to die
of generosity.
…
My Courageous Life
A new adaption of ‘Second Life’
in Pilgrim
Poems by David Whyte
© Many Rivers Press and David Whyte
https://davidwhyte.com/.../books-cards.../products/pilgrim
…

2016.01.24 Shimmers of Stuff

A friend recently asked, “What’s an apostle? We say in the Creed, we believe in 'one, holy and apostolic church.'" He hastened to tell me he understood “one” and “holy” but wondered what apostles were, then added that he didn’t like saying what he didn’t believe in or understand.

I thought, “Well, join the group", but that was quick sarcasm. Still, I wanted a better answer, so I said, with equal haste: “The early followers of Jesus who preached the gospel all over their little world and, thanks to them, it took hold. Apostles."

That was an blah response really. But something else, equally icky but with more pizazz, occurred to me, so I added. “Apostles were first responders.” We laughed. 

Tomorrow is the day we remember the Confession of St. Paul, known as “apostle”—a man accosted by the holy presence of the Risen Christ, a blinding light—glaring enough for him to realize that the one everyone else was calling the Christ was asking him, a non-believer to say the least, to preach the good news of resurrection. Paul didn’t turn into an apostle overnight. He didn’t run off immediately to take on this assignment. His conversion to the ways of Jesus Christ was not magic or easy. Paul spent much time, as the legend goes, in literal blindness, wondering and questioning, and coming to the truth of who he was—really, truly, deeply. All this before he went forth to do the work of an apostle, to become a Christian missionary.

This story is biblically dramatic, but do not we all go through such times when something intersects our lives and we see ourselves anew, perhaps taking new directions?

It’s nearly impossible to describe such soul-collisions, such conversionary experiences. Poetry does it best, or maybe a wise insight of a reverent mind, a bit of amateur prosody, or even a throw-off but passionate line in a TV series. Whatever it is you are, for a second, blinded.

Self Portrait
    It doesn't interest me if there is one God
    or many gods.
    I want to know if you belong or feel
    abandoned.
    If you know despair or can see it in others.
    I want to know
    if you are prepared to live in the world
    with its harsh need
    to change you. If you can look back
    with firm eyes
    saying this is where I stand. I want to know
    if you know
    how to melt into that fierce heat of living
    falling toward
    the center of your longing. I want to know
    if you are willing
    to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
    and the bitter
    unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

    I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
    the gods speak of God.

      -- David Whyte
          from Fire in the Earth
          ©1992 Many Rivers Press

“My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”
― John Dominic Crossan, Who Is Jesus? Answers to Your Questions About the Historical Jesus.

Who Told Me Who I Am?

I was a miracle,
a gift from God.
My mother told me so.
But I demurred
and tripped on all her haloes.
No, not my status, Mom.
But gift from God?—
showed promise.
I looked above and then below
and finally looked within where
Lo! Behold!
I quickly saw that a present
was really a Presence.
    Lyn G. Brakeman, 2016


“Healing is an art. Every person is our Sistine chapel.” (A nurse’s line in the television series, “Mercy Street” )

2013.11.03 The College Essay—and Beyond

Well, I never thought I’d be saying such a thing but in the spirit of the blossoming teenagerhood of Gillian, a seventeen year old granddaughter, plus my own memories, I’d say poetry rocks—mostly because it's not in itself an achievement but rather an inspiration.

This summer I was excited when Gillian told me she was interested in poetry. Excited might be too mild a word. How lovingly narcissistic it is to see a grandchild take a direction that feels like yours.   Grampy and I introduced her to David Whyte. We sat together on the couch and watched a TED talk by Whyte. Later in the bookstore Gillian asked if I'd heard of "this guy." It was Pablo Neruda and she bought a small book of his love poems, which she read three time over during the rest of the vacation time. I asked her if she wrote poetry herself and she said yes, but not the public kind.

I remember the non-public poetry I wrote at 17—dramatic existential blasts and blurs when life felt big and bold and intriguing and terrifying and I wanted to swallow it all whole.

Gillian has her own drama of course but I was delighted when her proud mom sent me her college essay which begins with a poem of her own, and a good one. She felt relieved it was “over with now.” I’m near-70 years older and I know it's only the beginning of her unfurling as a beautiful young woman with a blossoming gift for using bold words to tell her heart. She gave me permission to publish her work on my blog and I do so with pride and a few sweet tears......................


Caught in the in between,
Can’t decide between you and me.
If I stay,
My world washes away,
If I go,
You’ll be the first to know.
We’re like fire and ice
You’re the fire
I’m the ice;
You melt me
To where I am almost nothing,
I never let anyone in before
But you,
You melt me to the core.
I let you in,
You burnt a hole through me.
They say opposites attract,
But mother says it’s never good
To play with fire.

My love for poetry started a long time ago.  The first time I remember thinking about poets was in elementary school when my teachers would read Doctor Suess; and in middle school Edgar Allen Poe. I had always loved the fact that words can be transformed to rhyme and make a rhythm so profound that you could fall in love with just a stanza in a single poem. It was only until recently that my own inner monologue started to talk to me in different rhymes and rhythms.

Ever since I was a young girl I have been drawn to and loved music as well. Whenever I listened to music the lyrics would pull in me in leading me to write all over my desk with song lyrics and little poems made up in my head.  Over time I switched to pen and paper and now have multiple notebooks with different poems and lyrics, and they get longer and better as written products.

I like to write about love. I have read Pablo Neruda’s Love Poems about 10 times and ever since then, it’s all I want to write about.  The fact that I have never been in love may add to the fact that I love the idea of being in love. That said, maybe I have found love in Neruda’s poems. In David Whyte and Robert Frost, I have fallen in love with places and people I have never met or seen. Maybe that’s why poems sometimes seem so cliché - perhaps I need a better outlook on life than that which is written in black and white.

I wanted to share this poem because I believe it is one of the best I have ever written. It came to me in about ten minutes and I didn’t have to change a thing. I have never taken a poetry class before, but I would love to. This poem and the ease with which it came to me marks a time in my life when I just simply knew I was no longer a little girl.  I realized I’m growing up and am a young woman with deep thoughts, intelligence and a creativity I’d only once imagined I possessed.

Going to college is important to me for many reasons but mostly because I know it will open my mind and heart to new ways to write and think about life and my future. I am all about opening my mind to new experiences and new beginnings, and that’s what I’m really hoping college will give me - a chance to explore. I want to find out who I am, and I think leaving home and being on my own will help me do that.

             ©Gillian B. Colbath, 2013, printed with permission.


God bless you on your way, Gillian, my chica, with life abundant and the courage to believe in yourself and the wonders of poetry.  And bless Dr. Seuss whose creative imagination did away with the abysmally boring Dick and Jane reading primers I had to learn to read by.  As one of your uncles said, you "will do wonderful things."

The Church: Wholehearted for Godde's Sake

The Church is one of the most reactive institutions I know.

Something comes up in the culture, a trend, a fad or a deep movement toward secularization ( currently in vogue) and the Church leaps in to organize programs that are relevant, hang new signs that are attractive and LARGE, create kicky ads and slogans, beef up its church school, etc.

These strategic quick fixes may bear some short term fruit but usually they are hasty and don’t take root or ripen because these efforts are anxiety-driven. This is abusive all round.

Anxiety kills Spirit.

Clergy get exhausted and churchgoers and seekers are absent, apathetic or overworked. Over-reactivity for short term gain is sinful according to one Kabbalist (ancient Jewish mystical tradition) definition of sin as superficiality.

The worst abuse however is self-abuse, self-forgetting. The Church forgets to love the God who calls it into being and instead serves the almighty market to sell itself.

The only healing for this compulsive pattern is whole-heartedness. Know who you are, what you have to give and what you can do. What the Church does that is unique to its vocation is teach about Holy Scriptures, create liturgies that give meaning and ritual shape to people’s lives, build a welcoming community of prayer and sacrament, and provide pastoral care and compassion in times of need.

I do not include social justice because this is the work of all decent citizens and because there are many agencies involved with this work. It is not the Church’s job or her gift to be one more such organization. It is the Church’s job to encourage its members to devote a portion of their time to such work outside the Church.

To be wholehearted isn’t always obvious or easy. Poet David Whyte tells a story on himself. He was working in a social service agency, racing from thing to thing, task to task, desperately engaged in the work of helping others. One day he raced into a conference room in which he thought there might be a meeting he was supposed to attend and said to those assembled, “Has anyone seen David?” After laughter they sent the exhausted David himself home for the rest of the day.

Once home Whyte spent the evening with his friend and monastic brother David Steindl-Rast who listened to Whyte’s tale of overwork, reactivity and fatigue. Steindl-Rast told Whyte that the antidote to exhaustion was not rest. Astonished, Whyte looked at his friend and said, “What is it then?” Brother David said, “Wholeheartedness.”

Their talk led Whyte to consult his heart, find there his true gift and passion for poetry and to risk quitting his job and becoming a poet. Since then he has written many beautiful volumes of fine poetry and also used his poetry to help people in both church and corporate settings find their own hearts.

David Whyte wrote in his poem "Sweet Darkness": Sometimes it takes darkness/and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn/that anything or anyone that does not/bring you alive is too small for you.

Perhaps the Church could in this, its time of darkness and dangerous reactivity, re-enlist its own tired heart, not to self-serve but to dare to be wholehearted—for Godde's sake.