Peace, Poetry, and Cyprus
Posted on | November 21, 2011 | No Comments
The past two weeks have been a departure from my usual routines of writing and woodworking, as I journeyed to research some family history at the old family home in Virginia and then took part in this year’s Lake Junaluska Peace Conference, followed by the semi-annual conference of the North Carolina Writer’s Network. In between I sandwiched in a memorable celebration of my birthday and the first anniversary of my infamous kidney operation. That’s why you haven’t seen any poetry – yet. This is a brief report on these doings.
My sister Lois, who maintains the old family farm house (minus the farm) in Loudoun County, Virginia, has also diligently assembled many of the family archives. These include pictures from my mother’s two-year stay on Cyprus in 1923-25 with her family. Her father was a mining engineer who helped re-open the old copper mines that the Romans had operated two thousand years ago. My mother often spoke of their experiences, and some of the artifacts they uncovered in the mines have passed down in the family. Some of them are in the Carlos Museum at Emory University. Sylvia and I decided to celebrate our thirtieth anniversary by going to Cyprus this coming May and try to find the old monastery they lived in, the Skouriatissa mine itself, and the mountains they used to have picnics in. Our trip to Virginia enabled me to scan the old pictures to guide us in our search. If all goes well, you’ll here more about this next summer!
The Peace Conference focused on Poverty, Abundance
and Peace, drawing our attention to the impact of hunger and poverty on peacebuilding around the world. Sylvia and I set up her mobile of cranes and other art pieces she has made for the conference as a setting for the presentations and worship events. As always, the Conference took an interfaith perspective with the presence not only of Christian leaders like Bishop Ntambo from the Democratic Republic of Congo, but also Rabbi Mordechai Liebling from the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, and Dr. Ibrahim Moosa, Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University. Their powerful presentations made it clear that any effort at peacebuilding and economic justice requires that our religious traditions recognize and affirm their interdependence, at theological as well as institutional levels. Bob Edgar, of Common Cause, drove home the desperate need to reform the financing of our political system, while David Beckman, of Bread for the World, delivered an impassioned plea for supporting efforts not only to alleviate hunger but to eliminate it in the next 20 years. With these and other events, the Conference demonstrated a maturity in vision, rhythm, and quality that lead it to next year’s focus on non-violent movements for peace and in 2013 on the ecological dimensions of peacebuiling.
At the Writer’s Network conference in Asheville I spent over three hours in a Master’s Poetry Class with Anthony Abbott, Professor of English at Davidson University, who led me into a new phase of my writing, namely memorization and performance. Yes, memorization for people over 70! In exploring the experience of memorized performance I could hear the cadences, rhymes, alliterations, and assonances that have so marked my poetry and that prepare it for use in worship. A couple of generations of students have benefited from his insight, enthusiasm, and encouragement. I may be in the caboose, but thankfully I’m on the train!
Here endeth the reportage. I won’t report on the double bevel sliding compound mitre saw that Sylvia authorized for my birthday. What a beauty she is. I can’t wait to get back in the shop.
Tags: Anthony Abbott > Cyprus > Ebrahim Moosa > Lae Junaluska Peace Conference > Mordechai Liebling > North Carolina Writer's Network
Raisin’
Posted on | November 4, 2011 | 3 Comments
At our recent poets’ gathering at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC, a quip passed around the room evoking painful laughter. It grew into a little poem to share with you.
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I raised ‘em best I could,
Did my best to hold ‘em to their promises,
Let ‘em play but kept ‘em at their chores.
Worried how they handled money,
Let ‘em make mistakes but told ‘em what they were.
Helped ‘em set the table at Thanksgiving,
Laughed with them while building Santas in the snow.
Yes, we travelled,
But I told ‘em not to speak with strangers,
Called ‘em back from edges of the scenic canyons,
Let ‘em know how many miles to go.
Showed ‘em how to operate their first computer,
Wowed ‘em with my knowledge,
Planted questions in their minds.
Now they are old,
They utter words I cannot grasp,
Their diapers sagging,
Mumbling in their memories,
Waiting to be raised again.
Tsunami Wings
Posted on | October 17, 2011 | 1 Comment
The earthquake and tsunami that devastated Sendai, Japan, last March continues to reverberate in our minds and hearts, just as the painful task of recovery continues for the Japanese people. On World Communion Day this October, we remembered this suffering and struggle for restoration in solidarity with the people of Japan. My wife Sylvia created an installation
composed of fabrics recalling the waves, pieces of reuse, and dormant stalks symbolizing a life still to rise from the destruction. She constructed a mobile of 150 origami cranes that we suspended over the altar, each crane representing 100 of the known dead, which surely will reach some twenty thousand people. The cranes, a symbol of peace and hope, move slowly and quietly with the air above the altar.
In response to this moving memorial I composed a poem, which I share here. In addition, Sylvia led our Roundtable Worship in creating our own origami cranes as a work of prayer, meditation, and reflection about the arduous movement from tragedy to transformation.
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Sky disappeared
when water stole our lives
and slunk back to the darkness of the sea,
leaving dolls, refrigerators, calendars, and cars,
whole houses in a pyre
waiting for the burning.
The rabid wave,
an aquaeous lava
lunging from the tortured crust of earth,
foamed over fleeing forms,
her appetite an echo of our greed.
Thrown out of time
we hovered in the air
serene beyond the paper shell
that folded into origami wings
gathered up our souls
to fly from the abyss like cranes
white with fright and innocence.
The arms that waving sank
now orchestrate the air invisible
above the altar
of our hopes and tears.
Tags: Tsunami
Contradictions in Cherokee
Posted on | October 10, 2011 | 2 Comments
Last week we went over to Cherokee for the 16th Annual Trail of Tears Association Conference at the Cherokee Casino-Hotel. Cherokee is now effectively two towns – the traditional tribal offices, museum, fairgrounds, and craft shops; and the casino-dominated buildings and motels to the east. What echoes in my memory is the cacophony of contradictions contained in the experiences of our two days there. The Association is composed mostly of historians, National Park Service workers, genealogists, and “cultural tourism” representatives. Through their presentations we could explore everything from the savage 1776 Expedition of Griffith Rutherford against the Cherokee to the restoration of the railroad carrying Cherokee exiles across a bend in the Tennessee River between Decatur and Tuscumbia, Alabama. I could rehearse once again how Valentine Thrash, Sylvia’s collateral ancestor, marched up and down the road below our house on the settlers’ mission of revenge and extermination. I could reflect anew on the curious threads that linked one of my collateral ancestors, Alexander Hill Everett, to the Treaty of New Echota (1835), which began the Removal, as well as those binding Sylvia to the Cherokees and settlers alike. These are the strange contradictions of our own lives. Most of the people there could tell you some version of their own.
After leaving a presentation detailing how White settlers swindled, pillaged, and forced 19th century Cherokees out of their homeland, I walked down the corridor to face a screen (one of many) telling us that the casino had paid out $3,722,540 so far that day. You can guess at their total receipts. From the balcony in the casino hall you can observe row after row of retired people blinking into the promissory lights of the impassive machines (no levers to pull, no coins jingling out – it’s all electronic). I used to be cheered that finally the Cherokee were being paid back for their stolen land, but I also realize that what was stolen was a way of life. No amount of money can buy it back. Instead, thanks partly to the diligent expenditure of some of the casino’s proceeds on cultural advancement, a new way of life has arisen that carries traces of the old. The DNA, though mingled with strands from other cultures, is still there. You can see it in the hauntingly beautiful earth-toned architecture of the mammoth hotel towers and halls. You can see it in the art and sculpture throughout the buildings, its pungent colors and flowing lines contesting with the tawdry hopes of “gaming” addicts. It is as if they had peeled back the contradictions just below the surfaces of all our lives, in which polished memory and glorious aspiration grow up in the humus of our earthly exploitations. As our young Rabbi Jesus said, the wheat and the weeds grow up together. You can’t separate them until the final threshing.
The Trail of Tears is a great field of weeds and wheat, tended by story-tellers and archivists, each of us trying to read the leaves in the bottom of our cups, trying to discern what path might lead us to a greater integrity in our relations with each other and with this earth. It still has a lot to teach us.
Tags: Cherokee > Red Clay Blood River > Trail of Tears
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. READ MORE...
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.