Writer Kim Rosen (Saved by a Poem) visited a safe house in Kenya for young Masai women who had run away from home to escape genital mutilation. The girls liked to sing, and asked Rosen if she knew any songs. When Rosen said that what she really likes is poetry, the girls asked her to recite a poem. The first poem to come to Rosen's mind was Mary Oliver's The Journey, a poem about leaving home, which begins:
One day you finally knew
What you had to do
By the time Rosen was done reciting this poem, she and some of the girls were in tears. One of them asked, "Who is this woman, Mary Oliver? Is she Masai?"
We do not know the horror experienced by these young Kenyan women, but we do know what it means to feel, even in a small way, the encumbrance of fear and / or shame...
...to not be seen.
...to not be known.
...to, quite literally, disappear.
Rosen writes, "It can be lifesaving to return to a poem that you hold within you. It lives inside you like a sanctuary, like a mosque or a church. Whether you know it by heart or you turn to it on the page, that poem literally does what I believe temples were created to do. It returns you to what matters most."
I preach this stuff.
I believe in the exhortation to live deeply and deliberately.
What Annie Dillard calls "spending the afternoon."
What Thoreau described as "sucking out all the marrow of life."
How Jesus invited us to "life more abundantly."
(These are inspiring to be sure. And with the right calligraphy, I'm certain that they make great wall posters...)
Which make me wonder... why is it so easy for me to live vicariously?
Or, choose any number of synonyms: to live carefully, cautious, guarded, measured, numb, detached, apathetic? Or on the other extreme, perfect, faultless, without blemish--though still ashamed. Maybe you can relate? I do know this much: All of these options are fueled by fear. And all of them take me away from a place where I feel integrated... where I am known, whole, and alive in my own skin.
On his right hand Billy tattooed the word love
and on his left hand was the word fear,
And in which hand he held his fate was never clear.
Bruce Springsteen, Cautious Man
As if that's not enough, we give ourselves grief for having not lived the way we "should" live. Or, we feel beholden to the identity others have given us. That somehow, whatever or whoever we are, is not enough.
So, I wonder... what could a poem actually do--to give hope, or to "save"--those young Kenyan women? There is no doubt that it offered some kind of key, to unlock their shame. Here's my take;
The poem honors them.
The poem gives value.
The poem embraces their particularity... in this moment.
Yes, a poem is, in a way, beyond words, and yet the words are essential.
But only if they...
...open doors, rather than shut them
...invite vulnerability, rather than disconnect us from our heart
...create space to give, rather than put up rigid boundaries that divide us from one another.
Let's try this again. We are--all of us in our own way--broken. The gift of the poem to the young Masi women was not a denial of their brokenness. The poem offered mercy, and in that mercy, freedom... freedom to live deliberately and deeply, even in their brokenness.
My favorite part... This freedom did not come from a sermon, or a doctrine, or an argument, or an explanation. (I laugh, remembering my seminary days, when I spent an entire year in a course where I was required to "prove" the existence of God. I was to accomplish this by writing a paper--50 pages or more--with a convincing argument. Now, in retrospect, I realize that it would have been better to have simply read a poem. Or perhaps, brought a bouquet of freshly picked flowers to class.)
I could have read St. Catherine of Siena. . .
I won't take no for an answer,
God began to say
to me
when He opened His arms each night
wanting us to
dance.
The New Year is under way, and many resolutions are already being renegotiated. (I did not make any resolutions, but I will confess that my blood pressure took a hit watching my Seattle Seahawks win this weekend. And apologies to non-football fans. But here in this neck of the woods, the 12th Man is religion.)
My garden is in-between, some days offering a glimpse--in the daffodil shoots peeking from the ground--of spring. So, even still with grey skies, I walk the pathways of the barren winter garden, delighting in the surprises covered by summer's excess and am reminded, in the words of Robert Browning, that "God is the perfect poet."
Happy New Year friends...
May 2015 be a year of light and life for you and yours.
Heartfelt gratitude for every gift / donation in the year 2014. They made Sabbath Moment possible. Your gift makes a difference. Thank you...
