The Art of Loving in Uncertain Times

In January, I emerged from the campus library with a stack of books, titles I had written in the back of the notebook I’d been keeping in the winter months, because they had been referenced in other works of interest at the time.  One of these was Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving. I found its opening half rich and interesting and then I was interrupted by other necessities, a major writing project, and the beginning of the spring semester.  Three months passed, and then came COVID-19 school closures and the governor’s stay-at-home orders. I cleaned, among other things, my nightstand, and found, hidden behind and beneath a collection of numerous other books and notebooks and magazines, this slim volume. Suddenly it seemed timely.

When Fromm published The Art of Loving, in 1956, he was fifty-six years old and a prominent psychoanalyst living in Mexico City after fleeing Nazi Germany, first for the United States. He had already published, to wide acclaim: Escape From Freedom, Man For Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics, and The Sane Society. I have yet to read these. All seem equally apropos to the moment at hand.

Certain questions emerge now: how do we care for one another? Certain truths about purpose tend to make themselves known when others fall away. Among those separated by lockdown, relationships may be alternately strained by distance and more deeply and poignantly appreciated. For members of the same household living together, a new closeness may emerge, along with a surfacing of irritation and frustration. The heart hopes for renewal and the heart sickens with separation.

Fromm makes it clear that the casual reader looking for a simple tutorial in loving well will be disappointed, and he makes his thesis clear at the outset: “Love is not a sentiment that can be easily indulged in by anyone, regardless of the level of maturity reached by him.” He goes on to explain that love is unattainable without true humility, courage, faith, and discipline.

The book opens with an epilogue from Paracelsus:

“He who knows nothing, loves nothing . . . the more knowledge is inherent in a thing, the greater the love  . .  . anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time as the strawberries knows nothing about grapes.”

A central question opens the book: “Is love an art?” A central premise is that it is, and the purpose is to explore how understand and practice towards mastery, and to cultivate an awareness of the pitfalls and barriers to the development of healthy practice. Modern society, as Fromm sees it, is ripe with these barriers.

Chief among these are principles of capitalism which pervade modern Western society, and which are antithetical to love in all of its forms: brotherly (love between equals), maternal (love for the helpless), divine (love for God), and erotic (desire for deep union with another soul). The last of these, unsurprisingly, is the most fraught with illusion and pitfalls. Fromm highlights the problem with the popular “market model” of love that pervades Western culture, which dictates that “two persons fall in love when they believe they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values.”  The practicality of such a model is problematic because it is egocentric and because it tends to exclude possibilities for transcendence. When it comes to popular psychology of relationship, Fromm finds fault in the "teamwork" model of partnership, which is based in corporate models favored by capitalist societies, and which reduces the individual to a mere means to an end while failing to recognize the divinity of each "partner" as an end in themselves, while also tending to forestall any chances of transcendence within this limited framework. The idea of “falling” is also problematic because it is oppositional to the posture of mature love, which is standing in active and focused attention, with full concentration on loving. Falling is wild, passive, and unpredictable; standing is done with calm intensity, with the fully active engagement of an individual’s highest potential, and with constancy.

Considering the art of such a stance, Fromm orders his study of loving into two parts: theory and practice.  Mastery of both, fused in to one, epitomizes the mastery of any art. These combine with a third essential factor, namely that “the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern.”

William Blake, Elohim Creating Adam

His theory of love begins with a theory of man. A defining characteristic of man, in Fromm’s view, is his original “awareness of aloneness and separateness, of his helplessness before the faces of nature and of society.” It is recognition of this state that Fromm recognizes as the original pain of humanity. The sudden shame felt by Adam and Eve, as Fromm sees it, was precisely the result of this awareness. It is appropriate that the story of humanity in the Christian tradition begins here. The recognition of one’s separateness is the original source of shame, and also of guilt and anxiety; reunion may come only through the transcendence of deep and mature love (be this brotherly, maternal, or erotic — any of which, in its pure form will bring deep and lasting union with all other beings and with God).

It’s an old question: how to overcome the prison of alienation in favor of at-one-ment. Various cultures before today’s Western (and increasingly global) one have had various ways of connecting to nature and to one another. Primitive societies had various seasonal rituals by which communal orgiastic states were achieved. These were often violent and destructive in nature, but undoubtedly provided a form of transcendence. In order to attain more lasting and life-giving forms of transcendence, Biblical man was challenged to set aside these practices for the purpose of graduating towards a budding understanding of a model of mature love (hence all of the Old Testament admonishment of sex-and-religion practices, which people were constantly drawn back into for reasons that are as understandable as the pull of addiction). Man’s craving for transcendence beyond his own separateness is so deep and relentless that it will either find resolution or fuel individual or communal pathologies. There is no in-between.

In the Christian tradition, the coming of Christ represents this call to graduate toward a more mature relationship with God, an experience of divine love that is neither an all-protecting mother or a punishing father. In reminding his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, “You are the salt and the light,” Jesus calls people to recognize this deep union with creation, not with passive poses of submission or supplication, but as active participants in creation.

We would do well to remember this today, particularly when uncertain circumstances of global unrest tend to cause such desperate anxiety that people often cling to false senses of certainty which miss the point, prevent growth, and silence human agency. These are wild optimism (everything will be fine, just wait) and dire pessimism (everything is ending, just wait). Both are passive. The alternative is loving faith, and as many wise thinkers have pointed out, the opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is certainty. In uncertain times, we are called to love. We are reminded that our vulnerability is not our own, but one that is shared by all other humans.  The addictions, compulsions, depressions, and widespread anxieties that plague so many of us modern society are symptoms of our failure to know and understand how to be -- which is as students of this art. In a world where so many activities are routinized, prefabricated, under constant surveillance, “how should a man . . . not forget that he is a man, a unique individual, one who is given only this one chance of living?”

As I am finishing these notes, I step outside for an afternoon walk and on it I listen to Krista Tippet’s On Being Interview with Rebecca Solnit, author of many volumes, including one published in the wake of the 2016 election, called Hope in the Dark. In it, Solnit speaks of the need for better metaphors and truer stories. The ones we tend to be most familiar with, when it comes to crisis moments like this one, have to do with falling apart, and the fragility of human beings. But what is also true is the “joy of disaster” which comes from the escape from separateness, from the natural coming-together in the midst of crisis moments, a tendency that points towards quite another story: one of human nature’s remarkable capacities to embody the call to be the salt and the light of the world, to participate in the ever-renewing spirit of creation which is not only his ancestry and his birthright, but the healing hand for his original pain, and it is made of the same substance as his own, raised in celebration, submission, awe, and wonder — all opposites to certainty, and each fundamental to faith — and art, and love.

Sharing silence near the ends of our worlds

 In the first week of COVID-19 isolation at home, I found myself as many did: checking news updates and then getting outside or reading poetry or staring through the window as an antidote to the noise, wondering if I had enough of various essentials, being a bit unnerved by the lines outside the grocery store, and by the empty shelves, and by the reports from Italy of elderly sick being left to die. I have also been deeply moved by moments of compassion, empathy, thoughtfulness, and by wonderful humor. This week I also had the pleasure reading Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic, and of being moved by the vision of a people who have chosen a collective deafness to the commands of the soldiers occupying their town, and by this line, from one of the many beautiful verses in this masterpiece, in the voice of one of the “Deaf” townspeople: “Our hearing doesn’t weaken, but something silent in us strengthens.”

“It’s the air,” one speaker observes, “Something in it wants us too much.” The townspeople lock arms and form a circle to keep the soldiers away from the dead body of a murdered boy.

And in this moment, I am moved and inspired at the idea of listening in this spirit, while resisting the urge to respond obediently when expected. And also, as many I know are, wondering about the difference between what is and what officially is; and feeling deeply at certain wavelengths that are often undetected, noticing what tends to escape standard qualification as legitimate observation.

Among these observations, a recognition that the moment at hand is a global event, that the people living through it are those for whom it will become a defining hour in various ways, and that I — as one of them — can’t help but notice how fitting it seems, how like something I had long suspected was just around the corner. I sense that I am not alone here. I fall into that strange category of generation that is a bit too young for the utter disaffectedness of Gen-X and a bit too old to catch any millennial confidence. (As a child, I was deeply moved by the appearance of Reagan’s sincerity. It would be another decade before I could begin to understand the problematic moral crisis that his policies presented, and when this happened, R.E.M.’s “The End of the World as We Know It” was playing at a constant loop.) My natural melancholic strains have long been tempered with a wild-eyed sense of living at a tremendous time, and this in turn is equally tempered by a natural mistrust in professions of progress. It was clear that some bottom had fallen out somewhere, and like any family secret this became the thing that no one would discuss.

There was a deep sense, which grew like a hearty weed resistant to slogans on optimism and positive thinking and the virtues of technological progress. It grew in the pit of the stomach, tainting our abilities to receive such messages with anything better than a forced smile and willingness to do our best to be (to use a catchphrase of the moment) a "team player," or if we couldn’t do that, to aim at being the next one to “break the mold” (in the name of progress, of course). By the time we were old enough to read Yeats, or to come to him by way of Joan Didion’s famous Slouching Towards Bethlehem, in which she quotes the poet’s “Second Coming” which we first read in certain formative years, many of us would be stunned by the way that such a moment that seemed so particular to us in its strangeness, and so defiant of words, had already been foretold: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer —. . .”

"Falconer's Bird" by Steve Herring on flickr 

We were born after the listening stopped, but our hearts were crowded anyway with vestigial memory of what it had been like in the days before there was so much relentless noise or deadening speed.

There is something here, I think: in the days of Corona isolation, in-between impromptu homeschool math lessons and physics experiments and reading poetry and making food and playing tennis and sharing conversation with fellow isolated;  in between moments of relief at being off of the schedule of the machine, and deep into a deeper kind of work, and I’d like to take some time to think about it more before I try to share. But, observing that the organic nature of the busy-ness of these days at home makes it unlikely that I’ll be doing this any time soon, makes me want to offer this observation up to neighbors in isolation in the same spirit that I would offer a half-empty travel-sized bottle of hand sanitizer, some cans of tomato paste, a bag of beans, a bar of soap, or a half-empty pint carton of half-and-half. This is what I have right now.

I used to want to give when I had enough to offer, but it turns out that when shortages become real, the impulse to give persists anyway, but more desperately and with fewer restraints, and it’s all I can do when I see you, stranger: hold out this half of my sandwich and say “Here” so we can listen as we chew our simple meal in silence, staring at the sky.

What do we do when no one's looking?

Every year, at various points,  I find myself asking this question of my classes and myself: "What does it mean to have integrity?" And an answer invariably comes,  proclaiming something like this: "It's when you do the right thing when no one's looking."

We live in the age of surveillance, the age of the machine, the time of the non-stop treadmill. Except that suddenly, this week, it's stopped.

Two weeks ago, it seemed like I and everyone I knew was desperate — for time, for a thing we could not name, for a moment to breathe and safely step off the machine without risking loss of life and limb in its relentless gears.

Image provided by Healthy Families BC

Then practices were cancelled. Then playoff games. Then church and tournaments, then public readings, and then school. Next came gatherings of 250 or more, and then it was fifty and then it was ten and then in some areas it was none. And here I am reminded of lines from David Wagoner’s poem “Lost”: “Here is the place where you are, and you must treat it like a powerful stranger.”

And here we are, so many of us, and so suddenly, in the face of a powerful stranger. When we were running to keep up with the machine of its relentless gears we were nowhere, panting. Then it stopped. Now we send messages and make calls: “Hello?”; “Are you there?”; “I think of you”; “I miss you”; and “Love.”

I wonder about love in the times of Corona. This is how I think of the way you were difficult when you were so in my face, and this is how I miss the beauty of your thorns. Here I trace your face, I hold your heart, I meet you even when we remain out of reach; this is how you look now, stranger: like another trapped in strangeness, and I look up when I see you coming and unless I see fear in your eyes at my approach I will likely not move exactly six feet away. It’s certainly less if you seem unafraid and we pass in opposite directions, meeting eyes and saying hello.

Honor, Healing, Hope, and Death: Reflections on Service on a Holiday Weekend

"A Mess" by Susanne Nilsson 

In honor of Veteran’s Day weekend, with no school Monday and the beginning of three days of rest, I spend more time than usual in bed over coffee, thinking about the things that come up on such occasions. “Wow, I’m tired,” is among these, and this is immediately followed with a sense of gratitude for the chance to rest, as well as irritation that such a level of fatigue is such a constant symptom, one I share with pretty much every person I know over the age of twelve.

It goes without saying: “I’m tired,” is a constant refrain, but why is everyone always so tired? If everyone were as busy as our ancestors might have been in harvest season, this might make some sense. But if those ancestors were to spend a day inside the average body today, they might find that outside of prescribed moments of regular exercise afforded to a certain class of people, our physical exertion is relatively little as compared to prior eras in history.

Perhaps the cause of this relentless fatigue is something other than physical. There’s something relentlessly mechanistic in the way that the extant order of the "Real" day -- as measured by any number of authorities on topics such as “Healing,” “Self-Help,” “Recovery,” and (this problematic word, so often overused and misappropriated that perhaps it means nothing anymore) “Spirituality” -- is now largely comprised of glossed-over and commodified abstractions, separate from the grit and mess of everyday living.

I think when people refer to "Spirituality" as an interest or describe someone as "Spiritual" as though such a word denotes a demonstrable way of being, they are usually meaning to refer to someone possessed of concerns beyond what passes for everyday commerce. This seems to underscore how much the noise of getting, spending, mindless distraction, and the pressure of keeping up with the relentless schedule of most days — has polluted the everyday experience of being, such that matters once considered everyday: births and deaths, illness and recovery, friendship and grief and sharing regular meals in community — are relegated to the sidelines. You don’t have to be particularly “Enlightened” (another capitalized, commodified concept of the moment) to intuit that something in the order of this is wrong by an order of magnitude quite a bit more vast than anything our ancestors could fathom.  But when this shift occurs at a time when religious institutions have also, by and large, been pushed to the sidelines of community life (except in cases of “Communities of Faith” which aim to recreate what was lost) — people lack language to express the pull towards something more than what is so commonly accepted as capital-L Life.  “Spiritual,” becomes a descriptor widely used to designate such an awareness, as if it is a distinctive quality. “Human” might serve the same purpose.

Contemporary philosopher and social critic Henry Giroux makes a distinction between being “at war” and “in war” and deftly observes that most people in the United States today live in the shadow of a machine that places them perpetually in a state of vigilance against attack, a backdrop of violence, and a constant state of watchfulness against imminent destruction.  Another symptom of living in war is that the war itself becomes invisible. Fish, if they spoke, could have no word for water; our constant immersion in war makes us similarly ill-equipped to recognize it for what it is. Add to this an aversion to death, a simultaneous glorification of Youth and War, and the compartmentalization of death, dying, illness, and old age into institutions separate from the places where daily lives are lived. Gone also are most everyday occasions for recognizing these deaths, these losses, this aging we all experience. Enter the age of anxiety, a rise in suicide rates among the young, and a sense that to grieve is to be unable to function in a world that makes no room for grief.

Enter also the rise of whole industries and “Wellness Communities” devoted to such abstract concepts as “Healing,” “Recovery” and “Mindfulness.”  Many fine people come to visit an engage with what has been commonly relegated as a set of practices widely described as “alternative.” It is perhaps flattering for some among these to consider themselves members of an elite and it is certain that access into such capitalized Communities is generally something that is only available to classes of people with enough time and resources to devote to what was once called Leisure (In his 1948 essay on the subject, Josef Piper follows the connection of leisure and culture, while lamenting the simultaneous demise of both in a workaholic world).

These things are on my mind because I have a moment to pause in a world where such a hiatus from frenetic noise is rarely allowed, and also because I was recently asked if I would like to participate in such a community, a request that forces me to notice the aversion that I’ve developed to the packaging of the spiritual. Also, it’s Veteran’s Day weekend when I write this, and with this comes regular and neatly patched-on sound bytes on “Courage,” “Service,” and “Honor,” against the din — all of which rightly apply to the men and women who have served courageously in military service, and all of which, like “Spirituality,” tend to be grossly overused and drowned out by mechanistic noise in such a manner that they become abstract concepts separated from the tangible source.  The source is human. An abstraction is the opposite; it belongs to the language of machines.

image by Leonie on flickr

In these times of war, where the sleek abstractions of capital-letter ideas tend to replace the lowercase grit of our sweating humanity,  it seems as critical as ever to recognize that any capital-H Honor we wish to recognize in our veterans should never be placed on the same stage where death is smiling and wearing a cartoon bow, and capital-W War is stealing the show as hero of the moment. Life goes hand-in-hand with death, and war is an affront to both the living and the dead. In these times of “in- war,” survival of what is human demands that this be recognized.  Healing is not shutting eyes tight against violent destruction, scorched earth, and the bodies of brothers and sisters bleeding out from senseless attacks, from children behind bars, or from hungry brothers and sisters denied the dignity of a shower and a toilet.  I want lower-case healing, the kind that actually treats these wounds one by one and individually: one scratch, one mouth, one crying child and one funeral at a time.  Let's not rush so quickly to celebrate Recovery. Let us stay in the mess for a while, among those hurting most. The healing I want takes time; it takes silence, it takes stepping away from the noise of war as well as from the brightly-lit, organically sourced temples by which certain basic birthrights of all human beings: healing, recovery, spirit, to name a few — are commodified and distributed as products for purchase, to be stored like ammunition against the enemies elsewhere.

Healing, hope, and rest don’t need to be relegated to holidays or to a particular aesthetic affordable only to a woke elite. It’s hard not to notice how rarely  the words “hope” and “death” share space inside a sentence, and there’s reason to push back against this kind of compartmentalization — in the name of accessible healing, the kind that actually renews and rebuilds individual humans as well as the communities in which we were meant to live. Not those specifically self-designated as “spiritual,” as the designation is redundant. All: the messy, the unclean, the uncentered, broken, fractured, dirty, corrupt — which is to say, all of us, taken as whole individuals, instead of the abstractions of our profiles and "brands."

I’m not sure what to make of the brand of hope that seems to have an aversion to standing in the stinking face of death. I don’t have patience for the sort of window-dressing, scented candle version of “Spirituality” that seems best suited to selling $40 candles. You can shove that kind of hope inside a dark place, as far as I’m concerned, and try to light it there.  But for those of us in the actual dark, the kind touched by death and dismemberment, I need something not so quick to balk in the face of an impolite thought.

I’m tired of being asked to pretend I’m not tired, and grateful to step outside of the noise of the moment long enough to remember why. I know I’m not alone in this; most people I care about and speak to regularly feel the same. This weekend, in the name of rest, I am glad to be afforded an opportunity to observe the relentless pace of the machine so vast and intricately connected to most of what passes for day-to-day that it might easily go unremarked, and in the name of healing, I’m grateful for the chance to notice certain injuries — my own and others — that might otherwise go unobserved, and in the name of life, to acknowledge the dead and the dying, and in the name of honor to acknowledge a call to act. It’s not a capital-C Call, although such a thing would certainly be gratifying to my ego. It’s a multiplicity of calls, from a multiplicity of lives, and I can start at any given moment, any time of day, to answer. Responses may be equally varied, and they will rarely be glorious. Here a hand, here a first-aid kit, here an invitation to share a meal. Here an off-color joke at a time when gallows humor is all that will do; here is a blanket, here is a shower, here is a toilet, here is a hand. Please ignore the untrimmed fingernails. Here’s a mug of coffee, here’s a chair, here’s a blanket for your lap. Come here, sit down, stay awhile. I have nothing to offer but the silence of this shared space between us.

In the book of Revelation, when a war breaks out in heaven, Michael and the angels battle the dragon. In the folk version of this story, the voice of Lucifer shouts back, “I will not serve.”  The voice, sometimes called Lucifer, sometimes Satan, but always representative of the great Deceiver of the world, embodies an unwillingness to submit.  And Michael, leading the angels responds, “I will serve.” The Latin word Serviam is one I learned early from the Ursuline nuns of my high school. When the church leaders were waxing authoritatively about Doctrine and Salvation and Heaven and Hell, the nuns and laypeople I admired were embodying the proclamation of Michael. “Serviam,” was something they rarely said aloud. Instead of speaking or proclaiming, professing or pretending to have some elite access to the elite kingdom of capital-S Salvation, they were doing the daily acts of service and saving, one hungry mouth, one deathbed, and one new package of diapers at a time.

I pray for the wisdom, whenever thoughts of Healing and Recovery arise — which, given the times, should be as often as possible, and Courage, too — that I may remember the service of these early teachers, and also of countless others who gave their lives quietly and with surrender to something much larger than themselves which they knew better than to try to name. They did not shout, they did not run; they did not turn their faces from destruction. They simply looked the dragon in its gaping maw and announced allegiance to another order, each with the quiet conviction of one who refuses to abandon the urgency of real needs for the convenience of pretend answers.

It’s almost too much to bear, but so is knowing that one day I will die and so will everyone I love.  If what happens between this moment and that one is Spirit, I’ll be here waiting for a visit and tending to calls for as long as I can muster the courage to listen. In these quiet spaces of mess and disorder, of seeming chaos and constant loss, in chorus with the living and the dead, good company waits, bearing no title, no badge, and without the pretense of being able to fix anything. It is blindingly bright.

Because the Gift of the Year is Always its Harvest

In the spring of 2017, a season or two before Chris Ernest Nelson published his first collection of poems, I had the honor of writing a brief blurb for the back cover. Here it is:  

To read the poetry of Chris Ernest Nelson is to find solace against the pain of human frailties. Nelson’s words return the weary pilgrim’s gaze to the heavens, singing reminders to delight in the dance of being: in all of its absurd failings of promise and pain. His work belongs not on a shelf, but at the bedside, for hope at the start of a day, and comfort in a dark night of the soul. He reminds us back to the best of our nature, edifying the awkward pain of human nature against the promise of divine light. 

Since then, my dear friend has published Harvest to the acclaim of anyone fortunate enough to get a copy of this limited printing, and now, at the end of the following year, he has published his second edition. As I put my feet up for winter break and finally savor the moments I get for reading my copy, I am prompted to get back to my words of praise for a writer whose art (as a visual artist, writer, and teacher) and friendship I deeply cherish. 

I’ve been treasuring Nelson particularly this year, because at the end of the past school year he retired from teaching after twenty-five years. If it is indeed true that there are no accidents in this life, then I consider it a great stroke of divine interference that I was fortunate enough to be greeted by his beaming and generous spirit on the first day of my teaching career, fifteen years ago. He was, and continues to be, my first friend on campus, and his absence is deeply felt. He visited last week in his Santa suit to the delight of staff and students, among whom he is a minor celebrity every holiday season, as he graciously poses for Santa photos (for clarification on how apropos this particular character is for this particular author, see the photo below, of Nelson reading at Verbatim Books).  Even better, he came into my fourth period class and treated us to a reading. To be read poetry by a Santa you call friend, in whose original work you find comfort and edification of spirit, and to be hearing this work in the company of students you teach, is one of those rare delights that makes it easy to understand the magic of the twinkle in Santa's eye.

To appreciate the work of any artist fully, it is helpful to consider the context. So let's go back a year and consider the year preceding the publication of the first edition. It began with an inauguration that seemed almost allegorical in its service as an emblem of a dark national era at hand. Orwell's 1984 was on the bestseller list, for reasons that hardly need explanation here, and a bit further behind (but still on the top 100 books of the year) was Bradbury’s dystopian Fahrenheit 451. Goodbye DACA, hello hurricane Maria, goodbye power in Puerto Rico, and thousands dead in its wake. Meanwhile, cold war rhetoric pervades negotiations with North Korea, and the threat of nuclear attack looms large. A solar eclipse crossed the continental U.S. for the first time in almost a century. The shooting in Las Vegas became another in a string of mass killings and we realized we could no longer keep track of the numbers; rollback of net neutrality, the Russia investigation, families separated at the border, children in cages on U.S. soil, the death of Stephen Hawking, the thousands traveling North on foot, seeking asylum from war-ravaged homes. 

Nelson meets us here, in a voice outside of time, to remind us that the specific horrors of the specific age are yet not enough to void an older birthright — participation in the ebb and flow of a soul walking through perennial seasons. 

Where does one begin? In winter, perhaps. 

Or in the morning, where the antidote to a sleepy fog may be a reminder that “morning light comes softly drifting/ into your quiet room . . . [and] greets you with questions about your dreams.”

Yes, I think. Question me more on my dreams. I am tired of speaking of anything else. 

This is the edification offered by the artist who knows that “Art should speak/ an excruciating truth/ that is both personal/ and universal.”

You can read Harvest, if you like, as a public service announcement. In seasons of stormy weather, the poet offers a reminder to “Find shelter” and:

flip on the bedside lamp when/ shadow demons pass your window in the dark;/ move to higher ground” . . . [because] “it’s the small things we can manage.

When I found myself in the midst of a season of being ravaged by the inclement weather that came with the closing of the most significant chapter of my adult life to date, he offered me this poem on my birthday, on my facebook wall:  “Pick up a shovel, pick up a seed,/ turn up the earth./ It’s time to plant a dream.”

In a time of lightness, he cautions against self-satisfied confidence, reminding:

Tomorrow when the great storm comes/ with its arched back and bared teeth/ to stand you up against a wall/ and teach you the virtue of fear.

Apt caution in times of exuberance, when the ego is ripe with satisfaction, ready to be plucked and tossed; and much-needed comfort in times of trouble. In times of terror, by this logic, it is possible to recognize moments of enlightenment - and here, in these moments, is company.

What about  love? 

A lover’s heart is in his tongue,

he is called to tame the wild thing 

and as its master, he must guide it

into deep and dangerous dominions.

Nelson reminds us that the words of the lover are “Treasures born of yearning.”

This is a book to read by opening to a page at random and listening to what is offered. The poet’s voice in this case is almost inseparable from the teacher’s, because the kind of teacher Nelson was when he was speaking to his students is one who understood the value of the questions that no one was asking, and of the objectives that went unnamed. He spoke of “Spirit Talk” and "the children" (as he grew fond of calling them) gathered around his desk to listen as he told stories and spoke of a magic just beyond the veil of the seemingly known world. Chris Ernest Nelson's great gift has always been to offer regular reminders of the ever-present mystery beyond what is immediately perceived in any given moment.

"Speak to us of wonder," says no one too loudly, in the hallways or the dutiful chambers of most classrooms, and yet, among us, he spoke often, asking:

Do you know how it feels to  breathe high mountain air; you know, your head like a  boiled egg about to split open  and spill its robust essence into the open?

To those of us burning with undeclared passion and inchoate confusion, he reminds:

Have you ever held in your bare hand  a fresh coffee in a paper cup, caution extremely hot, without the cardboard sleeve, just to feel its heat?

Anyone living has done so, and yet to live where we do, when we do, is to be subject to an environment that invites us, cajoles us, reminds us, provokes us, to constantly pretend otherwise. The ubiquitous “it’s all good” infects language to a degree on par with “whatever” and “meh” and it is possible to be surrounded constantly by a muffled cacophony of inarticulate cucumbers able to comment inarticulately on nothing but their self-possessed cool. It seems to me that other visionaries over the ages have reminded something similar: to be hot, be cold, but never be cool. Profess all you want, but never profess to know.  I’d prefer to contemplate, and here again I find a friend, noticing with me:

the dust of mortal stars and the eternal spirit swept into the crux of irresistible gravity..

It’s as if he writes constantly to the questions he anticipates would be asked of a teacher by a student, if only they could find the right approach. It’s hard not to imagine echos of Gibran’s prophet in some of the lines, and to imagine an implied “Teacher, speak to us of right and wrong,” preceding Nelson’s eloquent response:

to choose righteousness without inspiration or revelation
To do the honest thing
without
a law or a moral code;
To give oneself away
without
a thought of its return. . .

It’s the time of year where many around the world celebrate the arrival of the divine presence in human form, born in the lowliest of places. As I type this, I have recently returned from Christmas Eve mass, with it's reminder that now is the time of year to “make room.” I can’t help but think of an afternoon over the summer when Chris and I shared a meal on an outdoor patio in South Park, and the conversation took its usual turn towards one version of what he would call “Spirit Talk” and as we spoke wordlessly and in between words about things unseen, he got wet in the eyes and he told me, “If only people could see. I mean, really see. The message is this: The kingdom of God is at hand. It’s right here, right now.”

Gulls, Justin Cherry

Fifteen years ago, Chris Ernest Nelson found me in person, in the mail room, when I was in an unfamiliar place where I was scared and knew no one and was desperately in need of a friendly face. 

At the time, I did not even know he was a writer. How wonderful to celebrate this writer now, at the second published Harvest, and to know that his words are available to countless readers locally and around the world, to greet people in dark places with the warmth of an old friend. It’s a few days after the winter solstice, the day when the sun in our hemisphere is the furthest it will be, a time which marked for many cultures historically, the beginning of the famine months. It’s a season of dark days and a time to reflect in preparation for new season of growth. In the shadows, in the words of the poet who penned Harvest, a friend is waiting. One must only make room.

Art is, after all “a refuge where all are/ welcome; where everyone, by his own light/ may come in and find a home.”

You can find the poetry of Chris Ernest Nelson at cnhrisernestnelson.wordpress.com.  To get your copy of Harvest, you can email the author at chrisernestnelson@gmail.com. 

Moving Over the Abyss: A Monday Morning Benediction

Image by FloridaMemory on flickr

Recently a friend of mine relayed a game that he sometimes plays with young nieces and nephews: Holding them up high - sometimes over a pool or the ground or the churning waves of the ocean as they squeal with an inextricable mixture of terror and delight, and assuring them , “I’ve got you, I’ve got you!” Its the fun of swinging a child into the air by her hands. 

“Again,” she will cry, if she is young enough to still be unafraid, “Again, again!”

What an apt metaphor for the terror/ delight of being. Which, in my experience, tends to be more habitually acute (the terror part, that is) at the start of a given week than at any other time.  After a certain age, how quickly we come to focus on the abyss below us as we flail in complete uncertainty, while completely forgetting the hands that hold us. 

My customary habits for reacting to this fear include paralyzing terror and complete panic. I don’t suppose this makes me too different from many, although I am sure there are better ways. So this Monday, at the first onset of wishing to bury my head desperately into the sand as I notice the alarm has gone off and I have sweat through my sheets again with another round of nightmares, my intention is this: To lean into change and not away, letting go of fear of being held over the abyss, to focus on the hands holding and not the vast space below. Perhaps even to find some way to delight in the thrilling insecurity of it all - for if I were not so desperate, would my eyes and heart ever be as open as now? 

A very young child does this naturally, upon being tossed into the air, knowing she will be caught again, by the same hands that released her so she could better feel the thrill of a weightless rise and rapid descent that pulses at the center of everything. This is the prayer: to embrace the pain of these innumerable faults and weaknesses in an imperfect heart, and understand these in concert and not separate from the injuries of the world, yet continue to believe in an endless river of beginnings, and in the constancy of growth everywhere. Entropy accelerates, yes - but with it, restoration of order, replacement of dead cells, the birth of new stars, the re-alignment of broken bones, and the continued beating of broken hearts. Sometimes all that can be done is to give oneself over to this endless movement, especially when the path is obscured. Members of AA call this “one day at a time,” marathoners call it the art of putting one foot in front of the other. Harriet Tubman, hero of the Underground Railroad, is known to have said over and over that the path to liberation, to rest, to freedom, to Grace, was simply this: “Keep moving.” 

Okay, then. Here we go: left, right left.

It is now mid-afternoon and I am glad to report that the strategy is not only effective, but rewarding. Even at an extremely slow pace, no fewer than three angels are counted: by angel I mean jaw-dropping manifestations of undeserved generosity and awesome beauty - which generally result in the surprise of tears, laughter, or a wave of relief - and as often as not, all of these at once.  In their presence, even my most cynical demons are reduced to cowering in the corner.  I wonder what tomorrow will bring? The only way to know is to walk into it, however slowly and broken and afraid.

To the Divine Mother

You repair what is broken, and pick up the pieces of the castle I was building when the wind knocks it over and it all falls down. You teach me gently, Look, make a game of it. Sing like this, hold hands and spin, "Ashes to ashes!" and at the end shout "We all fall down!"  - and then laugh and do it again.

When I am wrong you chastise me, carefully differentiating between the extent of my wrong and the extent to which I am eternally loved.  And then you offer something to eat.

Without this, I am not sure I could keep living; shame over my wrongs would be too great, and on top of this I would be too hungry and scared to move.

You love me anyway, and how often have I lived just for another moment of leaning in to the soft flesh of your body as you pull me close, and smell the familiar smell of your flesh: me and not me, more myself than I can name. I breathe and breathe and breathe, wishing to hold onto each inhalation forever. But eventually I cannot take it, I have to breathe out, and there you are again.

I am too afraid to move on. Then the other night I am on Facebook and you show up in the form of a video of a mother duck leading her ducklings as they leap in complete abandonment and surrender themselves to a paradox: the only hope of safety is to follow, and the only way to do this is to give up what is known, and take instead the endless encouragement that is offered, in all of its mystery.

Today, Catholics around the world acknowledge the feast day of Fatima, the vision of your incarnation who appeared to illiterate children in a field as they grazed their sheep. You offered nothing but your unfiltered self, but proof is a man-made concept.  The children believed you, and the doubters did not, so you offered even more. So returned months later, as only the children said you would, to answer the doubters, and on the thirteenth of October, thousands witnessed the spinning of the sun, and the sky as it swayed towards the earth. This mesmerized many, although it did little to eradicate doubt. 

You keep offering, anyway: constant radiation, the “pure cosmic play” of a poet’s ecstatic cry.

In another manifestation of your wisdom, the Goddess Kali wears a garland of snow-white skills, offering by her presence a constant reminder of freedom from the limits of birth and death. 

Teillard de Chardin observed, of the depraved creatures of a broken and endlessly renewing world:

"Humanity is being taken to the point where it will have to choose between suicide and adoration."

Everywhere you look, faces that only a mother could love, and realities so dismal that the only hope capable of enduring is that of a mother waiting for her child's return, even when all practical evidence points to certain loss. How many times has it been the faith of a mother that waited long after others gave up hope?  This love is always mad when measured by the insufficient tools of common perception: all mystery, all embrace beyond words, all given. “Be not afraid,” the resurrected Christ said when he showed himself first to the women at the tomb, and it is impossible not to hear in these words an echo of what Gabriel told Mary when he announced divine conception. She died to everything she knew to give birth, and only in the otherwise senseless death of her son could it be made clear why this was necessary.

To the mother who loves what comes, no matter what comes, however ugly it may appear to the tyrant known as objective sense:

Yours is the music of a funeral, and the cry of death in the moment before birth.

Yours is the world without end, and the surrender to mystery at the center of every Amen.