Sunday's Thought

Some Good Advice from a Juneau ReSister

“A person’s way of being human is the most authentic expression of their belief or unbelief. A person’s life speaks more about their faith than what they think or say about God.” –Tomas Halik

I am part of a Juneau-based group of women called the ReSisters, which basically means I receive daily emails curated by a new volunteer every week with actions we can take to save the world. I have made a lot of calls to my congressional delegation. Sent emails to state government. Written checks to good causes. But am I engaged? Not really. I am, to be honest, kind of overloaded by all of it.

Then this week, an old acquaintance, a woman I admire, hosted the ReSister thread, and she began with a poem. I perked up —and then read all of her posts and did the best I could to live them out. That, my dears, is why poetry matters. One poem moves the heart more than a hundred Action Alerts. Claire also asked us to laugh at ourselves, and do the good we could, where we could. Of course I know that, but sometimes, especially when its gray and raining snow and dark (7 hours and change of so-called daylight) It’s a challenge.

Still, with the fresh snow, that silver sliver of silent light is beautiful, isn’t it?

Claire wrote:

Per the Tuesday Action item request [To laugh at ourselves] —I laughed at myself for not only dashing into the wrong condo for a hospice bereavement visit but even going so far as taking off my shoes until I looked around and thought, “Uh-oh, wrong home!”

And this:

I think standing ‘at the margins’ is more than handing out food, donating money with a QR code, praying for ‘them in church’, or dropping off donations— it means that if we are with them we sit down together for a meal, strike up a conversation at the grocery store, and make eye contact.

This summer I started noticing women hunched over their shopping bags in bus shelters with the rain pelting right on them. Fred Meyers, Foodland, Safeway. I started to pull over and ask if they needed a ride. I would introduce myself. They all accepted the rides, to their apartments, Forget Me Not Manor or to work. They were all ages and races. Our conversations were mostly about the weather. I carry some cash with me when the person in front of me seems short of funds. These are not earth-shattering actions. But we create community one step at a time.

Oh– and the poem Claire shared that caught my attention?

For When People Ask

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I want a word that means

okay and not okay,

more than that: a word that means

devastated and stunned with joy.

I want the word that says

I feel it all all at once.

The heart is not like a songbird

singing only one note at a time,

more like a Tuvan throat singer

able to sing both a drone

and simultaneously

two or three harmonics high above it—

a sound, the Tuvans say,

that gives the impression

of wind swirling among rocks.

The heart understands swirl,

how the churning of opposite feelings

weaves through us like an insistent breeze

leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,

blesses us with paradox

so we might walk more openly

into this world so rife with devastation,

this world so ripe with joy.