Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination
in two persons to promote
the good and happiness in one another.
~Eustace Budgell
Friendship
Democracy
The opposite of poverty isn't wealth; it's justice.
~Bryan Stevenson
Release
In these past years, hurts, disappointments, confusion, resistance, loss, e.e. cummings‘ poem says it best:
let it go – the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise – let it go it
was sworn to
go
let them go – the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers – you must let them go
they were born
to go
let all go – the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things – let all go
dear
so comes love
Antidote
This, my dear, is the greatest
challenge
to being alive:
to witness injustice in the world
and not allow it
to consume
our light.
~Thich Nhat Hanh~
Art As
Art enables us to find ourselves and
lose ourselves at the same time.
Thomas Merton
Art benches
Obrigada
OBRIGADA
What if the first word we learned
in another language
was not toilet, how much,
or even where, but instead
thank you;
would we see past lines of experience,
the stumbling of innocence,
broken teeth, exquisite eyes,
to each person’s essence,
the miracle of existence,
and be grateful for a form
that could say gracias, dhanyavaad,
tak, xìe xìe, spasibo, danke, shokran?
Thank you to the editors of Marin Poetry Center Anthology VI for first publishing “Obrigada.”
Mirroring
The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love - whether
we call it friendship or family or romance - is the work of
mirroring and magnifying each other's light.
Gentle work.
Steadfast work.
Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments,
we are that person.
James Baldwin
Speak Out
This isn't the end of fascism.
No. This
evil
will visit and incubate
in another
nation.
Carl Jung
(at the end of WWII)
Post title from the final line of
"First They Came" by
Pastor Martin Niemöller.
Question
If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.
Church Visits
CHURCH VISITS
We brought you this poinsettia—
would you like it in your room?
Your drawl rich as poppies
introduces you and your children to my mom
who smiles, tries to remember if she knows you,
dementia shredding whole stands of friends each night.
Where would you like me to put it?
No directive in your mist of questions,
knowing Alzheimer’s has already clear-cut her choices.
You sit beside Mom’s bed and talk
with a comfort never shared in our family—
your husband in the reserve, children,
teens really, open as sky beside you.
But when you say your surname, Church, I cringe,
expecting Mom’s grooved tirade against religion
yet it builds a temple pointing to the majesty of blue
through which our planet spins within its womb of stars.
You are the woman I refused to be—
soft-bodied, eyes averted, submissive to spouse and god—
while I’m independent, direct, decisive,
yet am weary of my strength, worn
from years of keeping myself and others alive.
In fact I’m drowning in competence, longing to shed my life and slip into your rose-glow skin reflecting your life’s devotion to faith, service, listening presence, as you teach your children this steadfast path to kindness. Within your sphere of serenity, I pray: Throw me a rope, please, over and o–
Thank you to the editors of Melancholy Hyperbole for first publishing this poem.
Elizabeth Oakley Weaver 