As kids and probably the last time Dan was shorter than me. He stands 6’5′ and I stand a scant 5’2″.
“Remember that each day is an opportunity given to us by God.” Fr. Dan
“Thank you Fr. Dan for reminding us.” The students at Holy Ghost Prep
Cousin Dan’s students at Holy Ghost Preparatory School in Pennsylvania asked him to do a video and this is the result. It has been making the rounds on Facebook, well received. So here it is for you, an island of peace and uncommon good sense for troubled times.
My cousin is a priest who has lived and worked in Algeria and Dubai and until recently was teaching theology at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. He asks in a feature article for The BeZine, What Have We Done that People Can Pick-up Weapons and Kill.
“We have become our own worst enemy. Whenever we separate the world into ‘them’ and ‘us’, whenever we accept blind generalizations and cease to see a unique individual before us, whenever we forget we are all victims of carefully orchestrated deceit and deception for wealth and power, the force of darkness wins. Bullets will never win this struggle, only the heart and mind will.”
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FEEL THE BERN
For Peace, Sustainability, Social Justice
The Poet by Day officially endorses Bernie Sanders for President.
The New New Deal
Link HERE for Bernie’s schedule of events around the country.
“Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Bernie Sanders
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
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“What is Shamanic Journeying? Shamanism represents a universal conceptual framework found among indigenous tribal humans. It includes the belief that the natural world has two aspects: ordinary everyday awareness, formed by our habitual behaviors, patterns of belief, social norms, and cultural conditioning, and a second non-ordinary awareness accessed through altered states, or ecstatic trance, induced by shamanic practices such as repetitive drumming. The act of entering an ecstatic trance state is called the soul flight or shamanic journey, and it allows the journeyer to view life and life’s problems from a detached, spiritual perspective, not easily achieved in a state of ordinary consciousness.” MORE
A soul journey today: So much happening in the world and in my life, I decided to take time for “ecstatic trance.” This may sound strange to many, but it is a healing practice that has worked well for me for some time.
About twenty-years ago the daughter of my Native American friends committed suicide, hanging herself in the coat closet by their front door. As part of the healing process for her mom and dad, a local shaman performed a “soul retrieval.” Some would call this ceremony pseudoscience. I’d prefer to call it proto-science out of respect for my friends and their tradition, though that term more properly refers to science as it was evolving in the 17th and 18th century.
At any rate, though I knew nothing about shamanic drumming and soul retrieval, I went to the ceremony out of love and without any expectation. The shaman was a gentleman of both Mexican and Native American shamanic family traditions. His mother combined a Catholic belief system with traditional Mexican shamanism. Think of some of the curandeira like Ultima in Rudolfo Anaya’s coming of age novel, Bless Me, Ultima. His father was a shaman of the Objiwe peoples.
The ceremony was beautiful and I unexpectedly went into trance with the drumming. I discovered that this is rather easy and like prayer and meditation, it brings with it release, healing, vision, and other unexpected gifts. This poem shares a bit of what the experience is like. If you’ve had experience with soul journeying, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Riding the shaman’s drum
seeing through the heart
magenta sunlight against
an untamed chartreuse sky
grabbing the river as it runs
wrapping the sea in clouds
Elements of peace, like fledglings
nesting in the tree of life, nature
buzzing with heart’s thrum
heart’s thrum and the drum, drumming
Spirit quickens under a blithe sun ~
Journey on the hypnotic beat
below the outer-crust, tunnels
and tumbling, disarticulating bone
body bursting into shards … ….drawn back ……..reassembled! …. soul retrieved
filled with light, fed on knotty sedges,
the breeze, flowers chanting praises
and the dawning visions: progenitors
ghost-dancing on metamorphic rock
Earthkeepers dreaming the world
This is the video I used should you wish to try it yourself.
Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZineand its associated activities and The Poet by Dayjamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights and encourages activist poetry. Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.
Kreuzigung von Gabriel Wüger, Andachtsbildchen auf dem Vorsatzblatt der Ausgabe des Schott-Messbuchs von 1952
“The soul of the artist cannot remain hidden.” Henri Nouwen
I’m on vacation. This is a prescheduled post. Regular posting will begin again with Wednesday Writing Prompt on April 24 and Opportunity Knocks on April 25.
You are encouraged to display your work (poetry, art, photography, cartoons, music videos and so forth) and your artistic successes and other arts-related announcements at The BeZine Arts & Humanities Facebook Group Page
Many people are honoring Good Friday today, a day considered holy by some and that you likely know even if you are not Christian. These two poems are offered without judgement or analyses, simply as an example of different responses by poets of the same era to a moment marked by history. One poem is from American lyric poet and Pulitzer Prize winner, Sara Teasdale (1884-1933). The second poem is from English poet and classical scholar, A.E. Housman (1889-1936). It is generally agreed that atheist Housman’s poem is a reference to Jesus’ and his death. Sara Teasdale was raised in a devote Baptist family.
The Carpenter’s Son
The summer dawn came over-soon,
The earth was like hot iron at noon
In Nazareth;
There fell no rain to ease the heat,
And dusk drew on with tired feet
And stifled breath.
The shop was low and hot and square,
And fresh-cut wood made sharp the air,
While all day long
The saw went tearing thru the oak
That moaned as tho’ the tree’s heart broke
Beneath its wrong.
The narrow street was full of cries,
Of bickering and snarling lies
In many keys—
The tongues of Egypt and of Rome
And lands beyond the shifting foam
Of windy seas.
Sometimes a ruler riding fast
Scattered the dark crowds as he passed,
And drove them close
In doorways, drawing broken breath
Lest they be trampled to their death
Where the dust rose.
There in the gathering night and noise
A group of Galilean boys
Crowding to see
Gray Joseph toiling with his son,
Saw Jesus, when the task was done,
Turn wearily.
He passed them by with hurried tread
Silently, nor raised his head,
He who looked up
Drinking all beauty from his birth
Out of the heaven and the earth
As from a cup.
And Mary, who was growing old,
Knew that the pottage would be cold
When he returned;
He hungered only for the night,
And westward, bending sharp and bright,
The thin moon burned.
He reached the open western gate
Where whining halt and ***** wait,
And came at last
To the blue desert, where the deep
Great seas of twilight lay asleep,
Windless and vast.
With shining eyes the stars awoke,
The dew lay heavy on his cloak,
The world was dim;
And in the stillness he could hear
His secret thoughts draw very near
And call to him.
Faint voices lifted shrill with pain
And multitudinous as rain;
From all the lands
And all the villages thereof
Men crying for the gift of love
With outstretched hands.
Voices that called with ceaseless crying,
The broken and the blind, the dying,
And those grown dumb
Beneath oppression, and he heard
Upon their lips a single word,
“Come!”
Their cries engulfed him like the night,
The moon put out her placid light
And black and low
Nearer the heavy thunder drew,
Hushing the voices . . . yet he knew
That he would go.
A quick-spun thread of lightning burns,
And for a flash the day returns—
He only hears
Joseph, an old man bent and white
Toiling alone from morn till night
Thru all the years.
Swift clouds make all the heavens blind,
A storm is running on the wind—
He only sees
How Mary will stretch out her hands
Sobbing, who never understands
Voices like these.
– Sara Teasdale
The Carpenter’s Son
Here the hangman stops his cart:
Now the best of friends must part.
Fare you well, for ill fare I:
Live, lads, and I will die.
Oh, at home had I but stayed
‘Prenticed to my father’s trade,
Had I stuck to plane and adze,
I had not been lost, my lads.
Then I might have built perhaps
Gallows-trees for other chaps,
Never dangled on my own,
Had I left but ill alone.
Now, you see, they hang me high,
And the people passing by
Stop to shake their fists and curse;
So ’tis come from ill to worse.
Here hang I, and right and left
Two poor fellows hang for theft:
All the same’s the luck we prove,
Though the midmost hangs for love.
Comrades all, that stand and gaze,
Walk henceforth in other ways;
See my neck and save your own:
Comrades all, leave ill alone.
Make some day a decent end,
Shrewder fellows than your friend.
Fare you well, for ill fare I:
Live lads, and I will die.
Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded. I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read byNorthern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”
“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
“ . . . for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.” The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
COMPASSION ANTHOLOGY has been publishing anthologies of “compassion-based works of visual art, essays, stories, poems and video” since 2015. The editors are interested in work that inspires and engages compassionate tendencies including mindfulness and meditation. It is partnered with The Charter for Compassion founded by Karen Armstrong. Submissions are open through January 31, 2019for the next anthology, which is themed “Mercy for the Displaced.”
“key terms: refugees, caravan, California fires, Puerto Rico, hurricanes, Syria, illegal immigrants, family separation, deportation, RAICES*, domestic violence)”. RAICES is a refugee aid project in South Texas.
Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded. I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read byNorthern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”
“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 