Poetry: Musing and Reading
Posted on | August 11, 2010 | No Comments
On Thursday, August 19, I will be reading and reflecting on my poetry at 10:30 am for the “Coffee with the Poets” group at City Lights Bookstore, Sylva, NC. The poet’s group is just one of several under the umbrella of the Netwest Mountain Writers, affiliated with the North Carolina Writers Network. (Check out www.netwestwriters.blogspot.com.) We are convened by Kay Byer, a former NC Poet Laureate, who has graciously encouraged me to reflect on my thirty years of often hidden poetry writing. As I have been reflecting on this welcome task, two poems popped up that I thought I’d share with you. They both involve the quirky, unexpected way that poems elude our normal patterns of perception and expression. I thought you might enjoy them.
I Love That Poetry
Do you like poetry? I asked.
Oh yes, he said. Last year I went to see a poet
Maya Angelou and she was beautiful.
The curtain opened and the spotlight lit upon her hair,
not white, but lustrous gray.
She wore a long crushed velvet dress, much like a kaftan,
bell shaped sleeves descending to wide cuffs
embroidered with a band that looked like kinte cloth.
A long string of pearls draped down from her broad shoulders,
picking up the highlights in her hair.
She was surrounded by a bank of ferns that reached up to her waist
as she sat down among them.
The ferns were like extensions of the dress. They billowed like her hair.
Oh, it was gorgeous. I just love that poetry.
I’m glad you liked it, passed my lips. Perhaps you might cut off a little more
above my ears. I want to look my best tomorrow night.
Riding Her Out
You get on
confident,
saddle cinched,
bridle set just right, the teeth full forward,
reins in hand, fingers gripping left
then right.
The trail lies slant crooked cross the field where the old barn leans
with bulging hay and sentiments of harvest.
Today you’re going to take the Love Lost Trail,
the one that wanders past the precipice where the fated lovers fell in Indian tales.
She steps out walking,
then a trot and canter,
but suddenly she takes the gate into the Devil’s Britches Trail,
up the stony steps and down the creek beside the ancient hemlocks to the jagged Z,
the switchback where the Devil lost his pants.
Adjusted to the steeper climb, the aromatic pungency,
the moisture oozing from the rocks, the slower pace, the torpid rhythm of her shoes,
you settle back to see the view until
you come upon a gushing rivulet,
dismount, and cup a shimmering icy drink from falling waters,
a place where you had never been.
Then back on, your knees and hands in firm command,
you find the gap out to the bald.
Skimming over grasses at a smoother, breezy pace,
you wind back down the mountain past the cut-off to Persimmon Grove,
emerge flush breathless right beside the leaning barn.
It wasn’t what you’d planned but it’s a good poem anyway.
Roundtable Worship Guide is Online!
Posted on | August 2, 2010 | No Comments
I am pleased to announce that the book Roundtable Worship: A Reflective Guide is now available online at the website for JustPeace. Just go to the site (http://justpeaceumc.org/) and you’ll see it, along with a link to the full resource. It can be read on the site or downloaded free as a .pdf file for reading or printing. We will continue to add materials and plan to include a place for people to contribute their thoughts on worship in the context of reconciliation.
This little Guide has emerged from the experiences of a group that has gathered regularly over the past seven years at our church in Waynesville, NC, to explore how we can celebrate (“rehearse,” in my words) the dynamic of reconciliation and renewal at work in our world. This arose from the conviction that our activities of mediation and conflict transformation need to be grounded in deep symbols and rituals drawing on our Christian and Jewish traditions as well as on Native American circle processes.
JustPeace, the United Methodist organization for mediation and conflict transformation has been an ongoing partner and resource for this work. Its founder, Tom Porter, has just published a book about his work in mediation entitled The Spirit & Art of Conflict Transformation: Creating a Culture of JustPeace (Nashville: Upper Room Publishers). You can read more about it on the JustPeace site.
Tags: JustPeace > Roundtable Ministry > Tom Porter
Two Fundamentalisms
Posted on | July 21, 2010 | No Comments
I have been reading Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God during the Senate hearings for Elena Kagan, Obama’s latest nominee for the Supreme Court. In both cases I was absorbed by their struggle with fundamentalism. While Fundamentalism in America has a number of facets, it always exhibits a commitment to certain key tenets and a belief in the literal inerrancy of the Scriptures. That is, it is an ideology married to an interpretive method. In particular, Fundamentalism has carried on an intense warfare with theories of evolution, that is, developmental theories of life and history. The two go together. The Scriptures cannot have an eternal and unchanging literal message and also be seen developmentally.
The so-called conservative wing of the court is also typified by anti-developmental literalism. However, here it is the Constitution instead of the Scriptures, developmental theories of its interpretation rather than evolution, which is at stake. But the same mindset, the same questions, and the same disregard for consequences typify judicial fundamentalism as its religious counterpart. If the Constitution can be interpreted to mean every individual can “bear” arms, then this absolute must be honored regardless of how many Americans are killed by guns every year (over 30,000 last I looked). In the process, the meaning of the very words “people,” “bear arms,” or “militia” are conflated with contemporary meanings, since there can be no developments of the meanings of words and therefore no contextualizing of its past meanings. Adherence to the “literal meaning” of the original documents must be upheld at any cost.
What is missing in both of these fundamentalisms is the covenantal reality underlying both the Jewish and Christian scriptures and the Constitution. If you see both as covenantal documents, you see them as testimonies to foundational promises among people and the ultimate power that has formed them and their earth. The question, then, is not merely about the words of the promises, but the relationship among the founding powers and parties. In this regard, the Preamble to the Constitution becomes very important.
This observation about the covenantal structure of the history these documents witness to does lead us to new arguments, even theological and cultural ones. But that is what this struggle with “fundamentalism” is about. Let’s address it there. At least the covenantal perspective opens up the argument so we can see what is really at stake, even as the Senators worry juridical literalism, activism, and restraint to death, and the religionists try to hide their god behind a thicket of words.
I wish the Senators could be reading Armstrong. I wish she could comment on our Senate. You don’t have to wait. You can comment here yourself!
Ligaments of Love
Posted on | July 16, 2010 | 1 Comment
Ligaments of love
hold life erect,
pump tendrils out
across the clearing
where the giant tree has fallen.
In dappled light we gather, sing,
let weeping like lianas
fall to ground,
touch earth,
sink new root,
receive the sun,
let life ascend, grow back.
It’s love that gives a funeral its birth.
***
This poem arose as I was reflecting on a memorial service for our friend Roger Geyer, a life-giving spirit who recently returned to the Greater Laughter from which he arose.
William J. Everett
In my teaching career I authored eight books and numerous articles in social ethics and religion. After over thirty years of academic work — in Germany, India, and South Africa as well as in the United States — I wanted to turn my hand to a poetically written novel to probe the issues of ecological and human reconciliation.
When I am not writing, I create furniture for worship settings. For more about my work, go to www.WisdomsTable.net, where you will also find galleries of artwork by my wife Sylvia, whose ancestors were the original inspiration for Red Clay, Blood River. Click to read my complete bio...
Red Clay Blood River
Red Clay, Blood River is a story told by Earth about two brothers from Germany and an enslaved South African woman whose lives bind together America’s “Trail of Tears” and South Africa’s simultaneous “Great Trek” of 1838. Memories of their journeys through oppression, estrangement and reconciliation reverberate in the lives of three contemporary students brought together by their interests in ecology. Through their often difficult friendship and a surprising discovery they begin to unravel the mystery of their estrangements, struggles, and deep connections to each other and to the earth.
Based on extensive research in the United States, South Africa, and England, this book takes readers through a sweeping saga of love and conflict in the context of emigration, invasion, slavery, and exploitation. Through its stories we are invited to see our fractured human history from within the sensibilities of an earth that seeks the flourishing of all creatures and transcends their deaths within its life.
I welcome you to read Excerpts from Red Clay Blood River.
You can also view some Reader's Responses to the book.
If you are already reading Red Clay, Blood River, check out the Reader's Guide and Glossary of Names.
If you are in a Book Club, go to the Guide for Discussion Groups.
If you want to know more about people who helped me in writing this book check out the People Present at the Creation.