Thanks and Praise

I wake early. Unless I stayed up too late watching the Star Trek movie with my kids. Then I might loll in bed for a half hour, awake but pondering life. I love when I wake in joy. Waking in anxiety, or in nothingness, tends to happen at 3:00, or 3:03, or 3:06. An excellent time to read a book. But, hey, what isn't an excellent time to read a book?

This morning I woke remembering to post Poems of Thanks and Praise over at Escape Into Life, a mini-anthology of lovely poems by 4 poets whose names link to their solo features there. It has gorgeous art by Christy Lee Rogers, reminding us of the glory and beauty of the human body and the eternal dance. Of the swirls of water and air and color everywhere in our lives. And the darkness always in the background.

And there is a quiet political statement in the center of her feature in a piece called The Promise that seems terribly pertinent this particular Thanksgiving in America, when many are hungry and suffering, or fearful and uncertain; when many are actively protesting injustice; when many are still not seeing or solving the problem; when a few keep a brutal hold on the money, power, and status quo. I'd like to see us instead come together in a feast of thanksgiving and peace. But I see that the promise holds the shape of a V, as for Victory, and remains open to interpretation.

Please enjoy the poems of thanks and praise of Susan Rich, Richard Jones, Maureen E. Doallas, and Robert Lee Brewer, and escape into your beautiful life.

Bravo, Farewell

This beautiful magazine, the fall issue of Confrontation, arrived in the mail this morning, with a poem of mine in it. For that honor, I give thanks. The cover art is a detail from a painting by Claudio Bravo, called Red, Rose and Orange Paper, courtesy of the Marborough Gallery in New York. Bravo's art is featured inside as well in a color portfolio at the center of the magazine, beautifully done.

Alas, Bravo died this summer in Morocco, where he made his home. He was Chilean, and his work was shown all over the world. I am glad he had a long life, and that his art had come to this "crescendo," as Edward J. Sullivan puts it in his essay in Confrontation.

I look forward now to reading the poems and stories in this issue! So far I have allowed myself the prizewinning poem by Zoe Donaldson, "Nonesuch," a gentle elegy and a villanelle.

I will also allow myself some pumpkin bread this morning, as I have baked loaves for Thanks-giving gatherings and an extra loaf for us to eat now, and some pumpkin muffins with cream cheese frosting...but those are to take to Phyllis, home from surgery and rehabilitation just in time for the holiday.

A Handy Image

As I had hoped and predicted, the subject in church yesterday was the sheep and the goats on the left and right hands of God in Matthew 25:31-46, and you can read it here, in the Reflecting Pool. It is written by Bob Ryder, the husband half of the powerhouse duo that is Our Double Pastor, aka the s/he unit. I am comforted by Bob's suggestion that division into sheep and goats is "a handy image," not a casting of aspersion onto goats, whom I dearly love for their drunken goat cheese. (See handy image at left hand of blog.)

Though I did not attend church that morning, Matthew turned up at the kitchen table during the poetry workshop, as we tracked down a reference to "Rachel weeping for her children" in one of the poems, a New Testament Rachel (common name) weeping after Herod's murder of the children.

All too timely, this harming of the innocent by those protecting the powerful and the status quo. Sigh.... A reason to be blue on a Blue Monday, despite the beautiful blue sky. (See handy image at right hand of blog.)

Yet, in the midst of my country's current troubles, and trouble all over the world, I am thankful and full of praise and a sustaining joy as we enter Thanksgiving week. For those of you who celebrate this holiday, have a good one. I will probably post on into mid-week. If I am silent for a time, I am giving thanks with family.

How Did I Miss This?

Much as I love my church, today I will probably stay home from it. (Fortunately, I can read the reflection online at the Reflecting Pool later.  Or sooner, as s/he sometimes posts it before s/he says it!) (Yes, my pastor is a female/male unit.)

My son has come home for Thanksgiving, and it's my daughter's birthday weekend, and I feel homey. And thankful.

Plus, I can reflect right now on this post by The Bloggess: God and Jesus.  It's like when your parents get on Facebook.

Shall Not Perish

It's true that I get a lot of my news from NPR and Comedy Central (via Hulu). So I often get it highlighted and/or a day late.

Or on Facebook, via links to timely stuff in various publications. It's random but not more biased than Fox News--indeed, much less so, as I can glean from clips from Fox News on The Colbert Report.

My scatter shot method works rather well in keeping me informed and exposing me to a variety of points of view. It is a far cry, of course, from my days at the City News Bureau, where my job was to read the paper--several papers, every single day, and clip the leading news stories, especially local, to have background information to give to reporters who called in for it so they could understand the context for what they were covering that day, and to flesh out the story for their readers, as needed.

Today various things come together on the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln's famously succinct speech at the dedication of the soldiers' cemetery in Gettysburg, PA. In honoring the dead, Lincoln also encouraged us to recommit to democracy itself and make sure that "government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." I think the Occupy movement is another instance of this, a reminder "by the people, and for the people" that the "government of the people" ought to remember its purpose and not favor the rich nor continue to rig the system toward the advantage of the few.

Comic and cosmic ironies are the specialty of sweet Stephen Colbert, whose feature "The Word" on November 17 pointed to the idiocy of a Super Congress who would take health benefits from the 1%, meaning veterans, to help balance the budget, instead of taxing the 1%, meaning the super rich, which would be fairer.

Meanwhile, on The Daily Show, Sarah Vowell came on to remind us of Evacuation Day, November 25, when the last of the British troops left Manhattan, marking the very end of the American Revolutionary War. Many of us are unaware of that former holiday, as it was taken over by Thanksgiving, as Vowell notes, humorously casting the blame on Abraham Lincoln, the same guy who did not want us to forget the Civil War dead and what they had done for us.

And for another interesting war connection and collection of observations on what's going on today and how it fits into a historical context, please visit Confessions of Ignorance on the Bonus Army, a World War I soldiers' protest during the Great Depression...

The winding and layering of our stories somehow also coincides with Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, a documentary film about the songwriter, and his story of a great general who suddenly sees the truth about war, with a Lincoln-like melancholic awareness, but is reminded by Krishna that he is a warrior and must do his work and be what he is, anyway, though all these people will die, including himself. What are we to do?

We shall perish. What shall not?