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Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Monday, February 20, 2017
Saturday, February 18, 2017
No Escape
Many of my liberal acquaintances struggle to make sense of the rise of the current administration - the pussy-grabbing, white-supremacist, anti-science, anti-fact, authoritarian regime currently at the helm of the Empire. Often, their struggle is posed from the point of view that they are innocent by-standers to the great unfolding.
How comforting that would be if the notion of innocent by-standers was in the least bit true. Unfortunately - it falls on the same error that my conservative brothers and sisters make when they exclaim "I built this blah-de-blah all by myself! I am a self-made man/woman! My success is my own! It's because of me and only me that I am where I am." The error is the illusion of separation. There is none. This world is a vast interconnected web of cause and effect. Because there is this, there is that.. Because there is no separation - there is no 'safe space', no sunny high ground where the 'not-my-faulters' can rest - protected from personal and corporate responsibility. It's all a stinking swamp. We're all knee deep in it. In fact we may well be 'waist deep in the big muddy' as Bruce likes to sing. While this may seem an unsatisfying collection of opinions to those who are energized by outrage over current events - in the end it is the only way things will move forward in a productive manner. There can be no good result in trying to stand outside, hands on hips, clucking, tsk-tsking, and breathing out 'oh-my-god-did-you-hear-what-they-did-now?' There is no outside. There is no 'they'. We all did this. We are all doing this. Moment to moment - we co-create our shared lives. If there is a mess - it is our mess. No escape. |
"They're ain't no one leavin' this world buddy
Without their shirttail dirty
Or their hands a little
bloody"
~ Bruce Springsteen ~
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Friday, February 17, 2017
To Hell With Heaven
Hammer is the Prayer There is no consolation in the thought of God, he said, slamming another nail in another house another havoc had half–taken. Grace is not consciousness, nor is it beyond. To hell with remembrance, to hell with heaven, hammer is the prayer of the poor and the dying. And the wind in some lordless random comes to rest, and all the disquieted dust within, peace came to the hinterlands of our minds, too remote to know, but peace nonetheless. ~ Christian Wiman ~
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Thursday, February 16, 2017
Much worse offense
“Christianity stands or falls by its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power, and its apologia for the weak. I feel that Christianity is doing too little in making these points rather than doing too much. Christianity has adjusted itself much too easily to the worship of power. It should give much worse offense, more shock to the world, than it is doing. Christianity should take a much more definite stand for the weak than for the potential moral right of the strong.” ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer - via Danny Coleman ~ Bonhoeffer does not say that Christ stands or falls - but rather - Christianity - the flawed attempt to be followers - to be practitioners of the way - along with the accompanying clawing cloying "Christian" institutions - that whole mess stands or falls by way of actions played out in the world. Bonhoeffer prescribed more shock, more offense - in effect proscribing polite, bland civility. ~
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Monday, February 6, 2017
Ugly knitting
Pretty ugly knitting.
Dropped stitches. Uneven stitch size. Split yarn. Gaps in the work (See "Dropped stitches" above). Still - believe it or not - it's nicer than the first two trial squares I did. Those looked orders of magnitude worse. Jumbled. Tangled. Confused. They looked like someone spent more time wrestling with the yarn than knitting it - which of course - is exactly what I was doing. Wrestling. For one thing I was holding the needles too tight. I held them so tight that my right thumb had a deep valley where the knitting needle had been pressed into it. You're not supposed to clench when you knit. Your thumbs aren't supposed to be grooved - or numb... And still... this little bit of ugly knitting is not nothing. Although I've been crocheting for decades, I've never been able to learn to knit until now. My neighbor taught me. She's a great knitter who knits in the continental style... I sat down at her kitchen table last week and in about an hour or so I was "knitting." At this point, I am trying to focus on "enjoying the journey" rather than on any specific outcome. "Enjoying the journey" means not constantly enumerating all the things I don't know about knitting.. It means just doing it.. Whereas crochet makes complete sense - knitting is still mostly mystery. I 'kind of know' the hand motions that will result in a knitted stitch. Kind of.. My left hand really (really) wants to interact with the work as it would do in crochet.. not helpful. This'll change over time of course - for right now though - telling my left hand "no - don't do that" is part of 'enjoying the journey.' That - and not holding onto the needles like grim death. Hah. They say that you should go through a skein of yarn before you try and do a real project of any type.. even something simple, like a scarf. The way things are going, it may take two practice skeins or three skeins or four skeins or....
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Sunday, February 5, 2017
The Contradictions of Your Life
Be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap around
You like a shawl,
To parry stones
To keep you warm.
Watch the people succumb
To madness
With ample cheer;
Let them look askance at you
And you askance reply.
Be an outcast;
Be pleased to walk alone
(Uncool)
Or line the crowded
River beds
With other impetuous
Fools.
Make a merry gathering
On the bank
Where thousands perished
For brave hurt words
They said.
But be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Qualified to live
Among your dead.
~ Alice Walker ~ Be Nobody's Darling
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Thursday, February 2, 2017
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Your Very Own Chain of Sorrow
"Bruised Orange (Chain Of Sorrow)"
My heart's in the ice house come hill or come valley
Like a long ago Sunday when I walked through the alley
On a cold winter's morning to a church house
Just to shovel some snow.
I heard sirens on the train track howl naked gettin' nuder,
An altar boy's been hit by a local commuter
Just from walking with his back turned
To the train that was coming so slow.
You can gaze out the window get mad and get madder,
Throw your hands in the air, say "What does it matter?"
But it don't do no good to get angry,
So help me I know
For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter.
You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there
Wrapped up in a trap of your very own
Chain of sorrow.
I been brought down to zero, pulled out and put back there.
I sat on a park bench, kissed the girl with the black hair
And my head shouted down to my heart
"You better look out below!"
Hey, it ain't such a long drop don't stammer don't stutter
From the diamonds in the sidewalk to the dirt in the gutter
And you carry those bruises
To remind you wherever you go.
~ John Prine ~
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Pilgrim #42 out now..
The most recent edition of The Pilgrim has dropped.
From the website: "The Pilgrim is a ten-times-a-year literary magazine from the homeless community of downtown Boston, edited by Atlantic columnist James Parker and published out of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, on Tremont Street.The Pilgrim is one of the places on the internet where my images live - happily nestled amidst the "poetry, protest, memoir, prayer, reportage" of The Pilgrim's writers - known as The Black Seed Writers.. Subscription information can be found here.
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Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Very well then...
"Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am vast. I contain multitudes." In the beginning - there was this. But then the newly elected administration went and declared January 20th, 2017 as a day of National Patriotic Devotion. Amidst the slop of greasy political pandering and vague longing for a whiter America, there was this line in the proclamation which I found myself to be in complete agreement with: "Freedom is the birthright of all Americans, and to preserve that freedom we must maintain faith in our sacred values and heritage."Since the beginning of our Empire, the most important sacred values and heritage the people have are the ones that have been passed down from the Tea Party to this very day: resistance and dissent. So - I thank the incoming administration for reminding me - for reminding all of us - what needs to happen today, tomorrow, and for years to come.
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Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
Maddening
I went to see Martin Scorsese's film "Silence" which is in large part, about a favorite topic, the silence of God in the face of great suffering.
"Silence" is a long, beautifully shot, meditation on the silence of God - or the deafness of humans (depending on your viewpoint). It was also brutal and in large part a showcase of Buddhists acting poorly - torturing and killing arrogant and incurious Jesuits and their faithful, good-hearted flocks... The film also deals with the issue of what is sacred - another favorite theme of mine. There are no easy answers in this film - but one quote from the character Father Rodriguez did pierce me: "But even if God had been silent, my life...to this very day...everything I do...everything I’ve done...speaks of Him. It was in the silence that I heard Your voice." Now - I am not an educated, ordained cleric and never will be. I am the furthest thing from a saint - and most times - I completely deny God. So clearly - not everything in my life speaks of Him - but then many things do - the Rosaries, the Malas, the Jizos, the artwork, the photography, the books I choose to read, even my denial speaks of God - or if not God - the idea of God. It's maddening. |
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Wednesday, January 11, 2017
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