Everyday Offerings
“But to be human is to be constantly in tension between attempting to control the world around us and to avoid being crushed by it.”
“Too dark.” “Not enough hope and optimism.” “Too much negativity and not enough positivity.” These are the implied, perhaps imagined (I don’t think so) sentiments underlying requests I receive to “unsubscribe me from the blog.” I get it. I respect it. I haven’t exactly been Mary Sunshine on this blog since late fall. It’s hard to know how to show up here and talk about the daily joys of retirement considering the state of things. I’m still trying to figure out who I am in these unprecedented times, and this blog is a space where I can work through some of the uncertainty, the fear, and yes, the hopes, too. But I totally understand that’s not for everyone. This isn’t how I thought I’d be chronicling The Precious Days of my retirement either, but here I am.
Enter Poetry Month. If there were ever a passion in my life that was sent to save me from the world, and more frequently from myself, it’s poetry. When I am filled with joy, there’s a poem that puts the feeling into words. When I am scared or in the depths of despair, a poet has found the words for that, too. I have my go-to poets to keep me company in sorrow and joy, and poets I seek out when my feelings are too complicated, just too overwhelming.
A few years ago, I came across the poetry of Ellen Bass. She doesn’t know it, but we immediately clicked. She is the poet I turn to most often when life is confusing, messy, uncontrollable, and uncertain. In an interview in Poetry Northwest, Bass talks about the roots of her poetry writing and her relationship with her poems: “Poetry is really where my heart is. It’s my way of life, and my way of grappling with my experience and my way of paying attention, my way of giving thanks, my way of being outraged—my way of living in the world. It’s a process of finding out things that I don’t already know—an experience of discovery.”
As my own way of “grappling with my experience” and finding something that would give voice to my own fear, sadness, and yes, outrage, I began to explore more of her poems and came across, The Thing Is, from Mules of Love (2002). I read it, then I read it again and again. Over a period of many cloudy early spring mornings, as I re-read Bass’s words I thought about how they described the visceral stomach-turn I felt with each disturbing news story, which seemed to be coming at me at breakneck speed. But more importantly, her words also captured the longing I had to love, to honor the everyday offerings of small joys, quietly beautiful things, in my personal day, in society, in the world. Deconstructing The Thing Is as an exercise in processing and reflecting on my own feelings provided an emotional outlet that has been sorely needed. Let’s begin with the poem as a whole.
The Thing Is by Ellen Bass
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
“to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it”
Wondering how to show up for joy in my life, even to allow it show up for me, had been troubling me since January. Just thinking about joy smacked of privilege to me with so many awful things happening to vulnerable people and to critical institutions of democracy that were built upon a foundation of what I believed had been shared American values. So I started to do a little research. I read a few articles on Black Joy and the concept of “joy as an act of resistance,” which brought me back to yet again, another poet. The phrase “joy as an act of resistance” may have first popped up in in a poem by Toi Derricotte. I was first introduced to her poetry when I was reading and studying the poet Ruth Stone. In Derricotte’s poem, From “The Telly Cycle,” the first line is “Joy is an act of resistance.” That one line gave so many people so much hope. I think it gave people not just permission, but almost a mandate to be joyful in the face of awfulness. Although the poem’s line consolidated it, the sentiment has been around for a long, long time. Its concept seems universal, appearing throughout historical periods of challenging conflicts, despair, and of course, much worse. I feel like I am treading on thin ice here, and I want to be respectful and careful. But the idea of not being robbed of joy, especially in dark times, seems pretty instructive, if not vital to humanity. Sorrow and joy make us human.
And empathy makes us human, too. I recently read a book that explored empathy between its characters, along with that theme again— joy as a form of resistance. The book, Kate and Frida, by Kim Fay, is a wonderful epistolary novel (remember those?) between two twenty-somethings in the early 1990’s. The last of the days with no ubiquitous internet, no emails, no 24/7 news alerts buzzing on your phone. The two characters, Kate and Frida are literally a world apart when their correspondence begins: Kate in Seattle and Frida in Paris. Frida wants to became a female war journalist, and has her sights set on The Bosnian War. She meets a correspondent who offers to take her to Sarajevo, where she is hit smack in the face with the realities of her “goal.” She meets Lejla in Sarajevo, who helps her both navigate the ravaged city (via a library) and understand the war. Lejla eventually ends up in Paris with Frida, who has returned there. Lejla brings some flowered curtains to Frida to hang in the hotel room, and Frida comments that the gift makes the room feel like a sanctuary — but to have a warm and safe feeling is wrong when there are so many suffering in Bosnia. Lejla actually bristles at that sentiment, calling it self-indulgent. She says, “We owe it to the people who are suffering to savor everything good and beautiful in our lives. Not that we should deny bad things or turn our backs on them…. We don’t help someone who’s miserable by being miserable— we only add to the world’s misery.” So Lejla does one beautiful thing each day, just to show the “bad guys” they are not beating her. Everyday offerings.
Lejla is just a story character of course, but what she says makes so much sense. So much so that one of Kate’s favorite author’s, Madeleine L’Engle, has actually put the sentiment into pretty powerful words. The character Kate shares them as a quote in the book (side note: This is the perfect book for book lovers, writers, friendship stans, and early nineties culture): “It is the tiny, particular acts of love and joy which are going to swing the balance.”
“and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands”
It’s feels hard to know how to be me in my everyday life. Things that used to make me happy, things I might look forward to just aren’t cutting it right now. They feel mechanical, superficial. Being retired, I wonder if it would be different if I were caught up in work everyday. But my profession was rooted in public education, so I doubt it. The Department of Education is being decimated, and along with, it student rights and resources. These are things dedicated people fought for years to put in place. Ridiculous executive orders are sending state agencies into tailspins. No, that would all be very present in my workday. Sometimes I think about people who voted for this, who say “I didn’t vote for this”…but come on. How could you not know? So much that good people have worked for, dedicated their careers to … dismantled in a day. So, I’ll look to Lejla from Kate and Frida to remind me to savor something beautiful that hasn’t crumbled. There will be spring flowers on my kitchen table. Morning coffee will be the day’s first taste of joy. Stacks of books will call out a friendly welcome. The sun peeking through will invite me on a solitary walk. My husband will make me laugh with his terrible impersonation of a local weatherman. Our tiny adopted tabby will curl up closer and closer to us both on the couch. Our long-haired dachshund will do her prancing dinner dance. And soon enough it will be time again for three hours of jazz on my local public radio station on a Friday night. Not everything I hold dear has crumbled. Not the everyday offerings.
“when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this?”
“Politics has clogged the air of my life,” the late Donald Hall, poet and essayist from New Hampshire noted in one of his essays on aging. It’s true. Sometimes it feels like it is the only air in my life. The weight of grief right now is political grief. Political grief is a real thing. The collective losses to our democracy pile up every day: people disappearing, Congressional assaults on voting rights aimed at people of color and women, the gutting of democratic institutions, a crashing economy, corruption and grift at the highest levels, and a looming oligarchy. These daily cuts into our democracy do create “an obesity of grief.” Psychology Today says political grief, “…can shatter our assumptions around safety, justice, meaning, and identity.” Further, “Political grief can occur when we experience a loss of safety, trust, or hope for the future because of government practices and/or backlash to enacted policies.” We all have expectations about how the world should work, and when those are shattered by politics, “there is no going back; the way the world made sense before and the expectations and beliefs that were deeply held about oneself and others are no longer salient.” Sheesh, no wonder some of us no longer feel safe. The co-author, Darcy Harris, urges readers experiencing political grief to focus on common humanity and critical reflection to address some of the polarization we feel. And the hardest part of all, focus on connection. Well, as the Chicks said in their song, “I’m not ready to make nice; I’m not ready to back down; I’m mad as hell….” I guess I’ll be sitting with this for a while as I continue to unpack the PT article.
“Then you hold life like a face between your palms…”
There is such tenderness in this line and what follows it in Bass’s poem. I think it’s one of the most beautiful lines of poetry I have ever come across. In her New York Times opinion essay Tenderness as an Act of Resistance (a must-read), author Ruth Renkl states, “Fury is a powerful motivator of resistance, but there is only so much rage a person can harbor without nurturing something cold and still and hard in the place where a warm, living heart once beat.” She goes onto comment on how exhausting this is, and we are barely into the shock and awe that is, after-all, the plan. Rage wears us down. They are counting on it. Despite her own fury, Renkl is working hard to keep her heart soft. She goes on to say, “A tender heart feels the fury and the fear, the sorrow and suffering, the beauty and the bravery alike. In the years ahead, we will need them all.” This is how tenderness is a radical act. A radical act can be defined as something that takes us out of complacency, out of our “comfort zone.” I need to figure out how to make a “tender heart” part of my own radical acts of resistance. Honestly, right now it feels like an uphill battle. Everyday offerings of a tender heart?
Along with tenderness, gratitude can be another “radical act” of resistance. In Gratitude: A Radical Approach to Life, Kristi Nelson writes, “Cultivating, practicing, and sustaining gratefulness as an approach to life is radical – because it flies in the face of internal and external forces….” Right now for me those forces include guilt for going about my everyday life, having the resolve to bear witness to the breaking of our democratic institutions, having the energy to fight back, and keeping my heart tender and open to beauty and humanity. Wow, that’s a lot to layer my life in and still have time to prioritize gratitude. Again — that’s what makes it a radical act. I never fully understood that phrase, “radical act,” before. I guess I was never called upon to actually live it. For so many years, I and many others have lived in a comfortable bubble of privilege, politics as usual, and the ups and downs of daily life. We reassured ourselves that the hungry were being fed, wars were being avoided, smart people were looking out for our economic interests, and we were a leader on the world stage. That reassurance is gone. There is a mountain of circumstance to inhibit gratitude right now. Many of us are at a moment in time in our country of losing what we love about it. But it’s not all gone, not by any means. I am so grateful for the millions of people protesting, writing letters to elected leaders, working to get leaders elected at every level who will defend democratic values and speak truth to power, reaching out to their neighbors with kind words and support. I am grateful to be among them. I am truly grateful for so much, but am aware that much of what I am grateful for affects only me — my comfort, my safety, etc. The radical act is to be grateful for the collective work to safeguard, preserve, and rebuild the institutions, the laws, and a humanity that wants to guarantee support and safety for everyone.
“yes, I will take you I will love you, again.”
So at the end of the day … well, we love. That’s what we do, isn’t it? When we are out of our depths, when we are out of our minds with worry, when we are out of ways to resist, to show up…we love inspite of it, and start to grow whole and strong once again. I comfort myself with the belief that it will not always be like this. That’s my greatest everyday offering right now: to allow myself to still feel a little hope.
Sigh. This has been a rambling post for me to wade through some feelings and, as Ellen Bass said, “find out things I don’t already know.” If you are still with me, thank you. I’m going to wrap up this post with the words of yet another poet, one I know that many of my readers love, too. Mary Oliver is a poet I turn to when I need to reconnect with the everyday offerings of sudden awe and joy. Her words can sing the song of things I want to love again and again. In my opinion, no other poet can put words together about finding beauty in some god-awful, man-made ugliness like she did. And because of these times we are living in, because of the processing and reflection inspired by poets and authors, I am more keenly aware than ever before that “joy is not made to be a crumb.” These are still The Precious Days.
“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, be very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.”
