Check out my Substack newsletter, Poetry & Life: Notes of an Old Lesbian, for weekly essays and news. I’ll continue to maintain this website, but it will not be updated as often as my Substack.
The Sisters’ Journey & Prophecy
Thank you, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg for choosing my poems The Sisters’ Journey and Prophecy for The Coop. I am thrilled and honored for these to be my 4th and 5th poems published in this marvelous venue.
What the Mind Thinks It Cannot Have
It was so lovely to wake up this morning and see my new poem published by MockingHeart Review. I love this journal! This issue has a great group of poets and features my friend and teacher, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg. Join us!
What the Mind Thinks it Cannot Have
We who were born on earth
so hard-cracked dry
our bodies shrink
from each other, how
can we believe in rain?
Me, Defined makes its debut. Thanks Lavender Review!
I am so pleased to that The Lavender Review. has published my new poem. What a marvelous issue.
Many Thanks to The Coop!
I am honored that The Coop: The Poetry Collective has once again published my work. Here’s the latest:
The Art of the Old Lesbian
Is to slide down the slope of a woman’s body where everytime her tongue tastes skin she splits apart somebody’s
wall of rules.
She’s practiced at slamming a sledge hammer into the
concrete that presses down with the heft of millions of
mouths chanting sin-sin-sin.
more
Thank You, MockingHeart Review!
Should You Choose to Accept,
Your Mission is to Find Joy
At the bottom of this slot
buried so deep between
buildings you want to
crawl away in fear,
be human. Raise
your head. Listen.
(read the rest)
The Absent Poet Returns
Life has been full and joyful, but oh my, I have failed to tend this website. A thousand apologies! Shall I make it up to you with a poem? Want to go to the mountains? I wrote this while sitting on a cabin porch in southwestern Colorado.
In the Sangre de Cristo Mountains
High up rocking on a cabin porch
perched on top of a ridge.
Black clouds bubble. Booms rumble.
The whole mess surges at me.
A hummingbird feeder dangles
from the roof. Oscillates wildly.
I should go inside, but I keep
rocking, hat tied under my chin,
brim flapped up at attention,
temperature dropping, I grin.
lean forward, intently watching
a dozen tiny birds thrumming.
Torpedo thin. Darting in and out.
Hovering. Unshakeable in the wind.
A Grand Time
We had a grand time this Saturday at the first-ever virtual Lawrence Poetry Fair. Originally scheduled as an in-person event in April, we moved the fair online for obvious reasons. Even though making it virtual meant that we had to miss the milling about joy of in-person conversations before and after the readings, holding the fair online meant that we were able to draw three Kansas poets laureate, including Denise Low who now lives in California. I was honored to act as emcee, and my reading comes a hair after 46 minutes into the event, but stay and watch the entire video. We had an amazing lineup including one of my favorite poets of all time, Annette Billings.
I am a poet
I feel the pressure of words, anxious to break free—to fling themselves at ancient walls, to chisel, nibble, batter, and shatter all the old understandings. I feel the desperation of words to settle—to become drops of rain pattering on railings, become the smell of a freshwater sea, and after resting a bit, to take flight on fingered-wings.
My journey to becoming a poet has been a stop-start, stumble this way and stagger that way oddity. When I was a kid I believed poetry was a broken, obsolete art characterized by pomposity, stupidity, and incomprehensible language. When I came out as a lesbian at age 28, and another lesbian introduced me to our great foremother Sappho, I discovered that not only her work, but also the work of poets like Judy Grahn, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, and Olga Broumas could move me in ways that no novel, no movie, no song had ever done.
I began writing poetry then. I had some immediate success, and then abruptly, I stopped. The words that dripped off my fingers scared me. I was frightened by what I was learning about myself, and by the power of what I realized I could do. That was 40 years ago.
Two years ago, the pressure of words became too great to resist anymore, and again I took up the poet’s pen. Much to my surprise, I discovered what my young self couldn’t understand: Poetry can save us. I can’t explain it any better than Olga Broumas does in her amazing poem, Artemis. Here are her last lines:
like amnesiacs
in
a ward on fire, we must
find words
or burn.
Reclaiming Joy through Breezes & Bare Feet
The final lesson my smashed little toe taught me was that there is more to reclaiming joy than accepting our feelings and rewriting our story. Once that goofy toe stopped throbbing, I limped to the beach. I had less than a block to go since the resort I worked at that summer was on the shore of Lake Michigan. When I arrived, I plopped down onto the warm, dry sand, leaned back, bracing myself on my hands, and breathed in the view.
If you’ve never been to the shore of a Great Lake, don’t underestimate the scene that greeted me. The water of this sweetwater sea looked like it stretched forever. The horizon was an endless straight line where the cobalt blue of deepwater met the light blue of sky. The wind off the lake was cool and sweet. A Great Lake smells different than an ocean. To me it’s the smell of home — fresh and clean. I filled up with it, and with the coolness of wind on my cheeks, and the warmth of sand under my palms.
No thought. No words in mind. Just feeling. Just being. Utter joy.
No matter where we stand in the great debate about the nature of humanity (Are we spiritual beings having a material experience, or merely meat?), most of us would admit that the life of the flesh matters. And isn’t it wonderful that it does? It’s the material, the solid sweetness of digging our bare feet into sand or feeling the wind on our faces that ground and center us even in the worst times.
Our task, then, is to stop, look and feel. Open our eyes, ears, noses, and skin to the reality of the space we inhabit at the moment. If we can’t get out to nature, we can look up at the sky. We all know the joy of a blue sky, but even clouds can be beautiful in their delicious variations of white and gray. If we can’t see the sky, then we can look down. Is there beauty in the rocks, or an unexpected sparkle? Is there soil we can touch and explore? Or we can look around us? Can we find fascination in the feel of the wood of a desk or a chair? The sharp coolness of the metal around us? Is the aroma of the air unexpectedly delightful? Is that a bird singing or a person?
Stand or sit. See what’s in front, below, or around you. Or close your eyes and listen, sniff and feel. Come into the moment and rest.
This image of Lake Michigan is from tmannis via pixabay. Thanks!
Reclaiming Joy by Rewriting Your Story
We live by our stories. We die by our stories. If we think kindly of ourselves and create positive narratives out of the events of our lives, then the sun shines on us no matter what’s happening in the sky. Some of us grew up with families that bestowed happy stories on us. Some of us, not so much. As we grew, we adopted our family stories, thinking that whatever our family told us about ourselves and life in general had to be true, but we don’t have to hold onto those stories. And we can learn that Mom and Dad actually didn’t know diddly squat. Whether we’re 15 years old, 25, 35, 65 or 105, we can literally rewrite our lives by changing the way we think about them.
Sometimes it’s hard to accept that. We can feel as if we’re imprisoned by an impenetrable wall of emotion. My experience, though, is that such walls are surprisingly thin and brittle. When I sit with my feelings instead of running from them, those things that looked like walls fall to dust.
So here’s my prescription for those moments when it feels like life punches us in the stomach: Rewrite the story about what happened. Every novelist is the god of her own world, deciding what happens and what it means. I recommend that we realize that we are all the writers of our own lives. We can always rewrite the narrative and change the meaning.
For example, when I smashed my little toe into that half-buried brick back in Michigan so many years ago the outcome depended on the story I told myself about it. I could have grabbed my foot, cursing and yelling in pain, and shouted at myself for being clumsy. “I’m always clumsy,” I could have said. “Why am I so stupid? Why don’t I ever pay attention?” Or, I could have grabbed my foot, cursing and yelling in pain, and said, “Ow, that hurt! I’ve gotta get ice on that!”
In the first instance, the story makes the pain worse. A simple misstep becomes an indictment of me as a human being and what started as a painful toe turns into one more piece of evidence about how I’m inadequate. In the second instance, the story is neutral when it acknowledges pain and empowering when it notes that I can make the toe feel better by icing it.
What story did I actually tell myself? I chose the neutral and empowering story. At the time I was 20 and had not yet heard about the power of reframing. But I naturally chose the positive story because I had never thought of myself as clumsy. I was blessed with a mother who liked the idea that I wanted to be an athlete. I even had the role model in my grandmother who climbed trees into her 40s.
In almost all other matters, though, I struggled. I remember telling a therapist once that my life was like a road map where every road led to the same destination: the idea that I was a horrible soul. In the past, I viewed every event in my life as proof of my awfulness. In other words, today I talk about the importance of rewriting our stories because it’s what I’ve had to learn to do. And I’ve gotten pretty good at it.
May this be the beginning of a new day for you. May you discover your inner novels. May you write the life you want.
IMAGE: Joshua Earle via Unsplash.
Reclaiming Joy
When I was 20 and working at a resort on Lake Michigan, I happily strode along a path one perfect summer morning under a bright blue sky. The sound of waves caressed me. The cool, soft breeze ruffled my hair. I lived and breathed joy. And then from one instant to the next, joy was the furthest thing from my mind. I wore sandals that offered no protection for the outside of my foot and had forgotten the half-buried bricks lining the path. From one step to the next, I slammed my little toe into a brick. I was in the middle of a full, vigorous stride when I hit that brick. The brick didn’t give, but my toe did.
To this day I don’t know if I broke my toe. I never went to a doctor, but the outer half of my foot turned amazing shades of blue, purple and charcoal gray. Immediately after smashing that poor little toe, I hopped up and down, screaming the most incredible variety of curses I’ve ever produced. Did I say it hurt? OMG it hurt.
In the moments after toe met brick, all I knew was pain. It wasn’t like I had much choice except to feel it. I had to gut it out. In the moments after our lives meet unexpected bricks, it’s natural to feel pain. We might have lost a job, been diagnosed with the one thing we never wanted to get, seen a great love affair end, or learned about the death of a loved one. We might have flicked on our favorite device and seen images that scare us.
It makes no more sense to deny this kind of pain than it would have for me to deny my agonizing toe. Sometimes, though, we get the idea that in order to be happy we must be happy every moment of every day. Those of us seeking a spiritual path may be more likely than most folks to punish ourselves for acknowledging our pain. Aren’t we supposed to be above it all? If we believe in the Law of Attraction, we might also fear that acknowledging pain attracts more pain to us.
I don’t buy that idea, and I don’t agree that spirituality means never having to hurt. The first trick to reclaiming joy is not to numb out pain, but to move through it. For me reclaiming joy starts with surrender — surrendering to pain, fear, anger, whatever. Every time I surrender the most amazing thing happens. I’m not going to lie; it can feel awful, but if I stay with the feelings, if I let tears-curses-fear-fury flow, the storm passes, my head and heart clear, and I’m at peace.
That smashed toe taught me a lot about reclaiming joy. In the next few posts, I’m going to talk about what I know about the spirituality of joy with a little help from that toe. Join me.
IMAGE: Kazuend via Unsplash.
Who We Really Are
In this time of struggle for so many, The Dalai Lama’s prayer is appropriate. Some people call this an aspirational prayer, but I don’t think these words express our hope for who we want to be as much as they express who we have forgotten we are. Will you join me in both praying and living this?
May I become at all times, both now and forever
A protector for those without protection
A guide for those have lost their way
A ship for those with oceans to cross
A bridge for those with rivers to cross
A sanctuary for those in danger
A lamp for those without light
A place of refuge for those who lack shelter
And a servant to all in need.
Wouldn’t it be marvelous if this prayer could become our nation’s mission? What would happen if we both prayed and lived the following?
May the United States become at all times, both now and forever
A protector for those without protection
A guide for those have lost their way
A ship for those with oceans to cross
A bridge for those with rivers to cross
A sanctuary for those in danger
A lamp for those without light
A place of refuge for those who lack shelter
And a servant to all in need.
And what would happen if this prayer became the world’s song? What if we all got up every morning, fell onto our knees or looked up into the sky, or merely stood and spoke that prayer, that undying pledge for our world? If we spoke it as if we already know it was true, then the world would become what we speak.
This marvelous image is by Rowan Heuvel via Unsplash.
Fred Phelps and the Golden Rule
Living by the Golden Rule is a pain sometimes. There are days when I wonder what the heck I was imbibing when I decided this was a good idea, but here it is, my first spiritual principle:
I seek to live by the Golden Rule, treating all beings as I want to be treated. I will give the respect and consideration to a stranger that I would give to a loved one.
How does this translate into action? It means I seek to treat everyone with respect whether that’s a child who is irritating, a woman who confuses me, or a man who thinks I don’t have the right to draw another breath.
Honestly, I blame my embrace of the Golden Rule on the Unitarian Universalists, and of course, Fred Phelps. About 20 years ago, I attended a UU fellowship in Lawrence, Kan. I loved the place, the people, and the UUs seven principles, particularly the first one where they endorse:
The inherent worth and dignity of every person
I remember the moment when I walked out of the Fellowship into a bright Kansas morning, and my mouth dropped open because a thought had just hit me upside the head: If I truly did support the inherent worth and dignity of every person that meant I had to support EVERY person, which included Fred Phelps.
Oh my.
That’s the anti-gay Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church fame. For people who lived where I did, about 30 miles from Phelps and his church, their nasty protests were an everyday in-our-face reality. I hated him. I was supposed to believe that this guy I hated had inherent worth and dignity? Noooooooooo!
And yet, it didn’t seem that there was an escape clause in that first principle — no believing in the inherent worth and dignity of this person but not that person. What the heck was I supposed to do? After much thought and gnashing of teeth I came to a few conclusions, which may or may not be of help to you. Let me know what you think.
#1. I’m doing this for me, not Phelps.
I met Phelps a couple of times before he died. The first meeting came only weeks after I moved to Kansas 30 years ago to take a job as a reporter in the Statehouse. One morning a tall, craggy faced man with cropped, graying hair, maybe 50 years old, and wearing skin-tight bike shorts and a skin-tight, short-sleeved bike jersey appeared at my office door. He thrust a press release at me.
I will never forget how he looked that day. I don’t know whether he was mentally ill. I don’t have the knowledge to diagnose. But I do know the man I met was being consumed by something. As I read the release, he loomed over me, watching with hunched shoulders and quivering with barely repressed energy. He was the most uncomfortable person I have ever seen in my life. He looked like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin.
When I think back to that moment, which ended politely, I finally got it: Whatever Phelps worth might have been, I didn’t want to be him. I didn’t want to be the hate-obsessed soul who quivered and shook in anticipation or fear. If I wasn’t going to be consumed by hate, I was going to have to let go of hate, and that meant letting go of my hatred of Phelps.
#2. Like everyone else, Phelps was once innocent.
Once upon a time, he was someone’s baby with chubby arms and legs waving happily in the air. I bet if you had reached close enough, he would have grabbed your finger, curling his tiny fingers around you in trust. I don’t know what happened to turn that infant into the man we knew, but I do know I can believe in the inherent worth and dignity of that child.
#3. I can see the infant’s worth and dignity without endorsing the beliefs and actions of the adult.
I can look at Phelps with compassion, and I can feel the tragedy of his life without agreeing with him. Compassion means understanding; it has nothing to do with agreement or capitulation. I have marched, organized and spoken out against Phelps and his church and will continue to do so when the need arises. Compassion didn’t change my actions, but I did notice that it changed the way I spoke about him.
Phelps Bashing is an Olympic sport where I live. With every rise in his church’s notoriety, we’d ratchet up the rhetoric. We used every nasty name you could devise to describe Westboro and Phelps, some I can’t mention in print. At the very least, we labeled him the embodiment of evil, and then we hooted at the Westboro folks like bullying 13-year-olds.
Over time, I began to feel like I didn’t want to do that anymore. The man who came to my office was in pain. Yes, he inflicted pain, but he was also in pain. The protests he led at funerals, the pornographic signs, the nasty words shouted at mourners piled outrage on top of tragedy, but I think the tragedy of Phelps’ life was far more painful that what he and his family did at funerals.
The mourners could be free of Phelps once the funeral was over, while Phelps, his children, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren and their spouses had to live inside a maelstrom of hate.
When Phelps died of natural causes in March 2014, his family did not have a funeral. I hope and pray that if there had been a funeral, no one would have picketed it. No one deserves that. If nothing else, Phelps taught us that there are some lines you never cross.
That’s how the UUs and Fred Phelps taught me the importance of the Golden Rule.
A NOTE ON THE PHOTO: This one’s mine. It was taken on Sapelo Island, Georgia.
Belief vs. Faith
Google the word “belief” and you’ll get this definition: Belief is “acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.” Many people think that religion is only about belief. Do you believe in God or don’t you? But I disagree. I think it’s about faith. Google the word “faith,” and you’ll get this definition: Faith is “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.”
Faith doesn’t need a supernatural being like God, but faith does require the complete trust and confidence that something that seems impossible is possible. I love sociologist Brene Brown’s definition of faith. In The Gifts of Imperfection, she writes:
Faith is a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty.
For some folks that place of mystery is their belief in a divine being. For others like me, it is faith that I can let go of my fear of uncertainty and that I can let go of the idea that love is lost, prosperity impossible, and peace on Earth and justice for all just pipe dreams. It is the faith that our best human impulses can be achieved, and that I can have the strength, courage and wisdom to be the kind of person this world needs.
A NOTE ON THE PHOTO: This marvelous image was harvested from http://publicdomainarchive.com/. A thousand thanks to them for their fine taste and their generosity.
My First Theory of Goodness
My year is up. No more dodging the issue. It’s time for me to answer my own question: What is goodness? To do that, however, I have to first talk about God, moral codes and baseball.
Millions of people seek goodness in God. I’ve been blessed to know many folks who are devout and practice goodness so delightfully and well that I believe it’s absurd to assert, as some people do, that religion cannot be a path to goodness. I’ve known Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews and those of other religions who are the embodiment of compassion and love. Far from being a detriment, their spiritual practices keep them on the goodness path.
But what about the others? What about those who use religion as a bludgeon? What about clergy who abuse children? What about ministers who use their influence to drain the faithful of money? And what about the fact that no matter how much you believe in God you still have the responsibility to choose: Which God? Which scripture? Which interpretation? God may be part of the answer, particularly for some, but God cannot be the whole answer.
Millions of people also seek goodness through secular moral codes. These lists of dos and don’ts are supposed to guide us when we’re confronted with ethical problems. As a young journalist, I took great comfort in the code I had been taught. I was so squeaky new to the job that I had no past experiences to drawn on. Journalism ethics gave me definite answers, and those answers worked, except when they didn’t.
At their essence, moral codes are lists of rules. Life, however, is messy, and its complexity makes it impossible to write a rule to match every situation. Even more distressing is the fact that rules don’t take human emotion into account. We all have emotional issues. We drag this mental baggage from situation to situation, and when our issues are triggered, logic and the guidance of law and code are impotent.
A Wall Street banker who was raised to believe a man’s worth equals his income may bend financial laws to the breaking point. Add to that situation a dash of child abuse and a full cup of emotional abuse, and this banker could be driven to do anything – smash the law, destroy his own business, bring down the economy, as long as he gets richer.
My father is a prime example of the problem of moral codes. He knew right from wrong. He desperately wanted to do right. He just couldn’t figure how to do it because his psychological problems got in the way.
God isn’t the answer. Moral codes aren’t the answer. What about baseball?
When I was a kid, everyone played ball in one form or another. There was Little League for the ambitious, and schoolyard ball for the rest of us. “Baseball” also came in many forms: hardball for boys and softball for girls. We even devised our own game called curb ball. I lived in a suburb with pristine cement curbs. We played curb ball by throwing a rubber ball as hard as we could so that it would bounce off the curb. We ran the bases in the middle of the street and adopted the rules of baseball for our game.
Some kids were great ball players. Most of us were middling. I had a good arm. I could throw and catch, but I couldn’t hit worth a damn. Of course, I never practiced hitting. As a girl in the 1950s, I also never received a single word of advice about batting, a fact that still irritates me, but I digress.
Everyone played. Some kids had a natural talent for playing ball. Some practiced all the time and got great at it. Some kids received expert coaching and improved. Others of us didn’t. Baseball was and is a skill. Talent helps, but a player has to work hard to excel.
After 365 days on this journey, I’ve come to believe that goodness may also be a skill. Like the ability to play baseball, almost all of us have the ability to be good. For the tiny fraction of the population that is psychopathic that may be impossible, but the rest of us don’t have an excuse, although we do come to goodness from different places.
Like Hall of Famers in the major leagues, some people seem to be born with a talent for goodness. Most of us aren’t. Some people think about goodness and practice their goodness skills constantly, and they get, well, good at it. Others don’t. Some of us get coaching and improve in our ability to do right over time, and some don’t. And like baseball players, we all have to learn how to deal with our emotions to succeed. (You think emotion isn’t part of baseball? Have you ever seen a homerun hitter choke in the 9th inning when the game is on the line?)
I think Ruth Grant is right when she says we all want to be good, but I believe that few of us (all of us?) know how to consistently commit goodness over time. Some of us frail humans are better at it than others, but we all struggle. If we are drawn to the secular approach, how do we decide which moral code is right and which is destructive? Which code and which rule do we apply to each situation? If we are drawn to the religious path, how do we choose between thousands of competing denominations, religions, clergy and interpretations? How do we know when our once-helpful choice has wandered off the path of goodness? When we’ve found the perfect path, then what do we do when our emotional issues rear their ugly heads? At some point (multiple points?) in our lives each of us has to exercise skill in the pursuit of goodness.
Viewing goodness as a skill leads to a multitude of implications. If goodness is a skill, then it can be taught, coached and nurtured, and anyone (sans psychopaths) can become good, do good and be good. And unlike playing ball, which requires a certain soundness of body, goodness can be practiced until the day we die. If goodness is a skill, then secular and religious approaches are not mutually exclusive, and do not have to be mutually antagonistic. Either approach can work as long as it is skillfully applied to life. Either approach can fail if you don’t study, practice or receive the guidance you need to succeed.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve let my own psychological needs delude me. (Daddy issues anyone?) But maybe not. If goodness is a skill that can be nurtured and developed, then all manner of things are possible. Humanity is not inherently evil. The problems we see around us are not signs of the apocalypse – either religious or secular. Perhaps all of this is telling us that it’s time to grow up and learn something new.
I wrote an initial version of this post on May 21 and revised it on May 31. This is entitled a “first theory” because I have no idea where life and learning will take me next. Above all, I pray that I haven’t bricked either myself or The Goodness Project into a corner by posting this theory. Please let me know what you think of my ideas, and don’t hesitate to post your own answer to the question: What is goodness? I look forward to hearing from you.
*This post first appeared in In Search of Goodness on June 1, 2011.
A NOTE ON THE PHOTO: This incredible image was taken by Julia Caesar.