To My Mother

A poem by Wendell Berry.

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.

Sappho, Prudery & Sexism

History hasn't given us very many female voices to speak for themselves. Usually we have to hear about women from a male contemporary. We ought to pay special attention to the exceptions, therefore. Few voices are more exceptional than Sappho.

Sappho was a poet of the lyric age from the Isle of Lesbos. We know almost nothing about her biographically. There were no contemporaries who wrote about her. Most biographical information derived from later sources is very suspect as it relies mostly on the comedies who freely made up legends about her for entertainment. It would be like learning Scottish history from Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Here's what we do know. She was a great poet. She composed hundreds and hundreds of poems, inventing her own style, and musical forms - even instruments to match her compositions. Later grammarians sorted her work into 9 volumes, each a different form of poetry. She was praised and revered by countless male poets who are better preserved. Plato called her the 10th muse. She was that good.

She was also a homosexual - or so it appears from her poems, many of which are very personal love poems written to women. From her name we get the adjective "sapphic" and from her example we have come to use the word "lesbian," meaning a person from the Isle of Lesbos, to mean a female homosexual. No one really knows the truth about her sexual activities, but it doesn't matter - her reputation is established.

And it is this reputation which led to her being trashed (or in later centuries - whitewashed) by prudish Christians. As early as 180 AD it was said of her that, "Sappho was a whorish woman, love-crazy, who sang about her own licentiousness." In 380 AD her writings were ordered burned in Constantinople, and at various times through history after that. From Savonarola to Pope Gregory VII Christians never got tired of pointing out how lewd her poetry was and tossing it into fires. Worse than the book-burnings though, was the slander which led to her being so unpopular that her works were passed over by monks transcribing ancient manuscripts until most of the copies of her poems simply disintegrated.

Because of this, of all of her work only fragments remain - about 70 lines of verse and only one complete poem. Most of this is reconstructed from where she is quoted by other writers. We have all but lost her voice.

Here is a really ugly truth about Christianity - for most of our history we have been deeply misogynist. The censoring of Sappho is a perfect example of how sex has been a tool used for the benefit of men and the subjugation of women. The problem with homosexuality is that it undermines the narrative men of authority have written which is that women are designed for submission and men for domination. When a man has sex with a man, or a woman with a woman, this power structure is destabilized. Sexual prudery serves these interests by reinforcing the status quo in which only heterosexual men have genuine sexual agency.

Sappho is disturbing because she has such potent sexual agency:

O Gongyla, my darling rose,
put on your milk-white gown. I want
you to come back quickly. For my
desire feeds on

your beauty. Each time I see your gown
I am made weak and happy. I too
blamed the Kyprian. Now I pray
she will not seek

revenge, but may she soon allow
you, Gongyla, to come to me
again: you whom of all women
I most desire.

So self assured is she, that she warmly celebrates the sexuality of others:

Bride, warm with rose-
colored love, brightest
ornament of the Paphian,
come to the bedroom now,
enter the bed and play
tenderly with your man.
May the Evening Star
lead you eagerly
to that instant when you
will gaze in wonder
before the silver throne
of Hera, queen of marriage.

It is my intuition that what the Church needs, in order to escape our morass of patriarchalism, is a hefty infusion of sapphic love - a love which breaks apart this infernal game of dominance and submission that we've been playing, and demonstrates confident sexual agency. Love which isn't either prudish or pornographic, but celebratory and frank.

Neil Gaiman - "Instructions"

Just another extraordinary thing from Neil Gaiman. Few people, in my opinion, have been able to inhabit the logic of myth so completely.

"remember your name.
do not lose hope
for what you seek will be found.
trust ghosts.
trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn.
trust dreams,
trust your heart,
and trust your story."

I think, sometimes, that Neil Gaiman writes stories for the same reason that I write sermons. He just does it a whole lot better.

leaving

o the road is long
dust powders my feet
and i'm better off gone

stride out in the night
beneath companion stars
a moth following light

leave you sleeping alone
to roll over and sigh
when the money runs out
i'll wither to bone

the devil comes for me
all debts to collect
and i'll not return

dust i came from

and i didn't learn

yawn

nothing
solved nothing
re
solved nothing ab- solved

just a winding down
whether or not
i want
tomorrow

not enough time
but what would be enough

further reflections on collapsed greenhouses

feed the roots
not the structure
time has chosen sides
every order falls
every shape
collapses
fractally
and you, amidst
pieces raining pattering pattern past
as green, then brown
surges upward
there is no way to climb
only to be borne
aloft

this "practice" is dying on the vine, but...

flying low over
ruined carcasses
of concrete, steel bones
protruding from a teeming green
flocks of birds alighting from
skyscrapers
i long to be on the loam-smelling floor of it
in amongst things greater and more immediate than myself
to be eaten
like what is left of us

One Third There

The point of my practice was to write about 60 poems by the end of this last CPE unit. I'm one third there and two thirds done with the unit. This is not good.

I've learned that I'm still very bad at scheduled practice. Nothing magic has happened since last time I tried this to make it go easier or more naturally.

If I look at the practice as The Practice, as a whole, then one third is just nonsense. What is one third of a life, or one third true, or one third lovely, or one third of love? So whatever point I find myself at, there I am, and it is a good place to be. That feels like something I'd want to continue.

If I look at the practice as a bean-counting exercise where I am supposed to produce the beans, then one third makes too much sense. You're behind. You won't likely catch up. You failed to achieve, or missed the mark. This sounds like something I'll be happy to be done with, to put it behind me.

Not really what I'm going for in spiritual practices.

It makes me think, in this stream-of consciousness way, of sin. Of missing the mark.

We see our lives as a bean-counter would. We miss the mark. We do not add up. We amount to little.

God sees - or I believe that God sees - us as whole, so what sense does missing the mark make to God? It just ends up falling down to a proportionality, God the Ultimate Bean Counter, finding homosexuals or liberals or Muslims or whomever to be Lacking Sufficient Beans, whereas conservatives and heteros and the orthodox have Just Enough Beans.

I don't buy it. I don't think that God makes bean-counter sense.

At the very least, I hope that I do not let my practices make bean-counter sense of me.

I understand if this post only makes sense to me.

jaws

barely minimal
efforts swallowed entirely
by the jaws of time

beauty

iron more beautiful
dressed in light

mountains more beauty-full still
in fog-raiment

the trespasser beauty of the sea
as alien as the womb

creature beauty of limb, sinew, coat
of skin, hair, eyes
everywhere immutable

most beautiful is the very human beauty
of i am sorry
i love you
i forgive you and
goodbye

miss

ever have that feeling
off your game
whatever you say
an idiot

i find, writing
it happens
all the time

quirky homage to this evening's frivolities

Mouse-Guards

honest-hearted, true

their keen minds and blades
a bulwark around the Mouse Territories
from Darkheather to the wide green sea
Scent Border to Wild Lands
all brave, selfless mice
heed our call

a conversation with a shcizophrenic patient prompted the following

sung, in my head, to a tune i can't get rid of

you pray
for proof
but somebody goofed
you look
behind
but can't get it off your
mind
it's true
it's finally gotten
to you

God is dead
it's all made up in our head
God is dead
it's all
made up
in our head

you look
around
there's mines buried in the
ground
and then
some children come by and
they go off - bang!
and nobody can say why

we

let this happen

God is dead
it's all made up in our head
God is dead
it's all made up
in our head

it used to be alive but we killed him
he used to be alive but we killed her
she used to be alive but we killed it

and now we all just
worship
bullshit

Mid-Course Correction

On reflection, this practice of poem-writing is about as difficult as I'd expected, but it has fallen by the wayside and become entirely ad-hoc and improvisational. I've found no consistency with time - my goal was to do it in the morning, but I forgot that my brain doesn't work in the morning (I begin each day empty and end it full if I'm lucky) and so I put if off and then it doesn't happen, or happens when I remember for no particular reason.

I'm going to change what I'm trying to do and see if that works. I've found my sleeping pills, so what I'll do is write one poem each night, right before I take the sleeping pill and brush my teeth and do the final few rituals before I trudge off to bed to lay there and toss and turn for another night.

We'll see how this goes. I guess I should be patient with myself, having never had a scheduled...anything on a regular basis.

now, don't get me wrong
i love havin' a church
keeps the rain off our heads

an' if people want to find us
they know where to look

but the Body ain't the church
any more than the Word is a book

ugh

poems
too
tired
swell
beneath the roiling
sleep
churn
bubble
dissipate
quiet
still

gone

your damn fault

your fault i am even out here
isaias; triplet monographs
mouth-burned mumblers
the lot of you

crack-lipped, numb
pustuled prophets

i've shattered not a single yoke

i've taken every one in hand, and
they don't even bend

no light springing forth
no listening ear

just we like oxen dragging ourselves behind us

if you mouth(s) had never been burned
i would be smooth-lipped
maybe gainful, maybe
yoked yet

better if we had not met

The Enneagram in Nine Haikus

depending on how this practice persists, I'll count this as one poem or nine...if you are familiar with the enneagram, you can guess which is which.

ever i balance
see all sides and empathize
fulcrum disappears!

everything in place
someone must divide and see
nothing in between

an open heart cracks
into many smaller hearts
each open always

mirror polishing
i can never see myself
except in success

a perfect lone rose
petals quivering with dew
falling like teardrops

behind battlements
heap upon heap of knowledge
and always i watch

let's each make a deal
if you run then i run; if you
fight then i fight too

what Tiggers do best
bouncy bouncy bouncy bounce -
what was the question?

go ahead, test me
this is me up in your face
i won't hesitate

haiku reflections on our bike ride today

flock of pelicans
how like our leaders; swarming
and jostling for fish

and at the outskirts
dainty-wading water birds;
delicate, graceful

watch the commotion
everywhere would be quiet
if we could let be

i go panting past
clattering from gear to gear
i can't help but think

last night's mare

i woke up with a little mumbled cry
brought the dog upstairs
in concern
going back in time
bullet popping back out of the front of my skull
swallowing what i said the moment before
please don't shoot me
the man in the coveralls moonwalking
back out of the abandoned bathroom
up the ominous stairs

i try to make sense in reverse
confused; the alarm
late to the game

i think i was supposed to learn something
i don't know what it was