This is a little oracle draw I did yesterday from Nick Bantock’s Archeo deck: The Healer, The Jester, The Trickster. Here we enter the fray as Healers. What do we have to offer as healing? What sustenance and repair can we spread to our communities in this time of anxious uncertainty? And then those two cousins, Jester and Trickster, both! The Jester uses humor and drama to show us our social shadows. The Trickster turns the jesting upon our personal egos. Not only must I take a careful look at the problems of society, but I must look at my own ego-bound nature. And laugh and dance and caper. These capering fools might offend, but in the service of learning and the greater good. What does the Trickster have to teach me, even as I am searching for ways to join the Jester in unpacking our wider social troubles?
I have crowd-sourced Tools for the Resistance on a Facebook thread, and will turn that into a poem. This is not yet that poem. This is just cracking the codes in some words.
Secret Codes for the Resistance
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Take the spa out of despair. At least
don’t pair it with your idea of self-protection.
And unweave the silence from resilience—
share your arc of hope in the bounce-back.
But keep, perhaps, the rage in courage
in this age of rampant anxieties.
Keep both the fierce and fearsome lion
and the summoning bell
inside your bold rebellion,
and oh Dear Sisters and Resisters:
Let love lie lightly (although in reverse)
in this hopeful revolution, like a secret rose,
waiting to bloom.
Gratitude List:
1. Watching deer on the hillside in the bosque across the road with the kid this morning.
2. Family and spending time with relatives we haven’t seen in a long time
3. The many colors of red on the hillside
4. Chocolate as medicine (I think I have said that one already a time or two in recent days)
5. Rhythms and cycles, wheels and spirals, knowing that the turning will always come
May we walk in Beauty!
“We’ve got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible, because we are still each other’s only hope.” ―James Baldwin
“Poets are kind of like—it’s a bad metaphor, but—canaries in a coal mine. They have a sense for things that are in the air. Partly because that’s what they do—they think about things that are going on—but partly because they take their own personal experience and see how that fits in with what they see in the world. A lot of people might think that poetry is very abstract, or that it has to do with having your head in the clouds, but poets, actually, walk on the earth. They’re grounded, feet-first, pointing forward. They’re moving around and paying attention at every moment.” —Don Share
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” —Toni Morrison
“…Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.”
—from “How to Be a Poet (to remind myself)” by Wendell Berry
Morning Prayer
by Phillip Newell
In the silence of the morning
your Spirit hovers over the brink of the day
and a new light pieces the darkness of the night.
In the silence of the morning
life begins to stir around me
and I listen for the day’s utterances.
In earth, sea and sky
and in the landscape of my own soul
I listen for utterances of your love, O God.
I listen for utterances of your love.
Mockingbird Chronicles 