On poetry, procrastination and the plane I need to catch

So, I need to leave in three hours to go to California (yes, another stay at our favorite Catholic retreat center), for a training on Pastoral Care for Religious Educators. I haven’t done my homework. We were supposed to read a book – “The Helper’s Journey: Working with people facing grief, loss and life threatening illness.” I have to say, I find myself a bit intimidated by that kind of title (so I spent the week nursing a cold with some historical fiction).

In many ways, not for the first time, this is a post about procrastination. I like my job and I like my life, so why do I put off the things that I have myself chosen to do. One of my friend’s thinks procrastination increases pressure, and that she for one produces better work under pressure. Another friend, M., thinks procrastination is a way of avoiding failure. If we are always putting things off we are never giving life are all, and if we are never giving life our all, we aren’t ever really trying and subsequently can’t ever really fail. My own procrastination style probably lies somewhere between these truths.

So, this morning, this week, what am I avoiding by putting off work and reading? Often I find that I am reminding myself that I enjoy the work that I do, that I have the privilege of working with so many people in such a meaningful fashion. That the writing I do for my job is creative and fun, that the people I work with (somehow, sometimes) gain something from my presence and performances, and my own soul is nourished working with people in the context of worship and religious education.

That I am going to this training cause 14 months ago a youth in a church a few hours away from where I work committed suicide, and of course there arose within me that wave of – what do I do? I am not prepared for this.

Who is prepared for a tragedy? Who wants the job of explaining such an event to the 16 year olds, 14 year olds, 12 year olds they work with, not to mention their parents? I went to a workshop a few years back on liberal religion and crisis. The speaker (a very witty, very irreverent nun) said the role of liberal religion in crisis was not to give answers but to create the space for people to ask, “Why did this happen” and answer “I don’t know.”

We all have so many questions. And one form of spiritual intimacy can be found in the space we create through the asking of questions, and the reverent silence that can sometimes unfold when we do not loose ourselves seeking answers.

There’s a poem that’s been lingering in my mind for several weeks (we’re using it in service later this month), and I leave you with these words before I drive up a hill south of LA and continue to explore new corners of the work that I do, and perhaps in so doing, come to some deeper understand of why it is that I do (and sometimes don’t do) the work that I have chosen as my own.

Hold fast to dreams
for if dreams die
life is a broken winged bird
that cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
for when dreams go
life is a barren field
frozen with snow.

- By Langston Hughes

A Poetry Saturday

I like to write poetry posts on Saturday mornings while drinking coffee. There is a part of me that wants, that needs, Saturdays to be that day of rest. But for me, in my rhythm of the week it just doesn’t work out that way. So I post poetry, and salute these Saturday mornings (and then I often go to work).

I accidentally took the graceful little volume The Far Mosque by Kazim Ali home with me from Hawaii and having been reading it all week (thank you Petitpoussin).

Y’all should also totally check out the first installment of the Creative Writing Carnival which Sylvia is hosting. It comes in yes, one, two, and three installments.

Dear Rumi

-By Kazim Ali

You’ve forgotten he other life in which
Shams-e- Tabriz threw your books into the fountain.

The ink, finally unrecognizable,
Reached for you in dissipating life.

Once I went up the mountain at daybreak, and still met pilgrims
coming down who had woken for the journey earlier.

In the tomb on not-Shams I prayed and prayed to be found.
Am I the sun inside me?

Shams will walk out the back door and never return.
You will go mad—spend years looking for him.

One day in the marketplace, estranged and weeping,
You will understand the farthest mosque is the one within,

and that the sun in the sky is not the one you orbit around,
nor the one who went out the back door and never returned.

Somewhere in the world now, every minute,
A sun is dropping over the horizon into yesterday.

At the fountain in the village square,
The books are still sinking, bereft of your hands.

Even the mountains are bending down to try and save them.
Dear Shams-e- Tabriz, Ido not mourn.

You spindle me, sun-thorn, to the sky.

Poetry Rejoicing / Poetry Ranting

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

- By Rumi
- Translated by Coleman Barks

Excerpt from ii. Improvisation

there is something caught in my throat
it is this place
my baby is sleeping
i check to see if she is alive
she does not know about gagging
she does not have this place / in her throat
she doesn’t know where we are
how it sears the membranes
eats the words right outta your mouth
leaves you suckin’ pollutants impotence
& failure/

- By Ntozake Shange

pressing

This has been a week full of work, meetings, good conversations, visiting friends who are sick, and wonderful weather.

I woke up this morning an hour before my alarm clock, with my To Do list pressing onto my chest, my neck, my forehead.

Thoughts on lamentations, on exile, on remembrance, on Sabbath, have been beginning to form in my moments of reflection this week past. While great writing may eventually flow from these thoughts, for now, I have found a new aspiration of sorts: to live my life in such a way that my souls is happy.

Yes this seems like a terrible cliché.

But I know people, and perhaps you do too, who very simply glow. The ways they have found and chosen to work, to rest, to challenge themselves and engage in the world, are true. They are alive.

I am not there yet. To wake up with anxiety. To feel overwhelmed by the trivialities of the day. To want to apologize for all that is wrong in the world, without being ready to take action to change it. To see the beauty of the sunrise, and yet still spend the day inside. To want so much and yet still feel so stuck. This is where I still am.

Last week I started my Saturday with a poetry post. It felt good, true, alive. And so this week I present you with two of my favorites.

Neruda’s “Keeping Quiet”

This past week there has been some a stream of Pablo Neruda poetry posts. I first read about this wonderful phenomenon over at Truly Outrageous. And Sylvia at the Anti-Essentialist Conundrum, who posted the first Neruda poem, has been tracking the Neruda craze.

I first discovered Neruda the summer I was 16, and am pleased to join in the Neruda blogging with:

A callarse / Keeping Quiet

Ahora contaremos doce
y nos quedamos todos quietos.

Por una vez sobre la tierra
no hablemos en ningún idioma,
por un segundo detengámonos,
no movamos tanto los brazos.

Sería un minuto fragante,
sin prisa, sin locomotoras,
todos estaríamos juntos
en una inquietud instantánea.

Los pescadores del mar frió
no harían daño a las ballenas
y el trabajador de la sal
miraría sus manos rotas.

Los que preparan guerras verdes,
guerras de gas, guerras de fuego,
victorias sin sobrevivientes,
se pondrían un traje puro
y andarían son sus hermanos
por la sombra, sin hacer nada.

No se confunda lo quiero
con la inacción definitiva:
la vida es solo lo que se hace,
no quiero nada con la muerte.

Si no pudimos ser unánimes
moviendo tanto nuestras vidas
tal vez no hacer nada una vez,
tal vez un gran silencio pueda
interrumpir esta tristeza,
este no entendernos jamás
y amenazarnos con la muerte,
tal vez la tierra nos enseñe
cuando todo parece muerto
y luego todo estaba vivo.

Ahora contare hasta doce
y tú te callas y me voy.

Keeping Quiet / A callarse

Now we will all count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,
let’s not speak any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.

The fisherman in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn’t be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren’t unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,
if we could perhaps do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I’ll go.

-By Pablo Neruda
-Englsih translation by Stephen Mitchell