Advent Poems 2022 [love]

 

The last candle of Advent represents love. It represents the love of God which sent His Son to earth to save us; it represents Mary’s love for her newborn son; it represents the love that Jesus Christ has for each of us; love that saves, uplifts, and heals.

For this week, I chose the poem “Love (III)” by George Herbert. Herbert was an Anglican priest and a 17^th-century metaphysical English poet, whose writings mainly focused on religious devotion. I first read this poem in an English survey class in college, and the conversation between the speaker and God moved me. This poem centers on a conversation between the speaker and Love (which, in this case, represents Christ), and how the speaker feels unworthy of love, but Love gently reminds him that love is a gift, not earned or deserved.

George Herbert was a Christian poet, and reading the poem through a Christian lens increases my own understanding of the love of God. But, I think this poem can also be meaningful to all of us, regardless of religious or spiritual persuasion. For love is a gift. It is not a transaction, it is not a contest. It is powerful because it is a grace, something that is given and received freely, and not because we are necessarily worthy of it. But receiving love transforms us.

Love welcomes us to the table, tonight and every night. And tonight we welcome Love to the manger, and prepare our hearts to receive the holy gift. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” (John 3:16-17)

Love (III) by George Herbert

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back

                              Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

                              From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

                              If I lacked any thing.

 

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:

                              Love said, You shall be he.

I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,

                              I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

                              Who made the eyes but I?

 

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame

                              Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?

                              My dear, then I shall serve.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:

                              So I did sit and eat. 

Advent Poems 2022 [joy]

The candle for the third week of Advent represents joy, specifically the joy that the shepherds felt when they heard the news from the angels that the Savior of the World had been born. Having a candle represent joy reminds me that joy can come suddenly, that it can feel undeserved, but that it springs from love—love from others, love for others, love for the world we live in. This week, I am sharing a favorite poem by Li-Young Lee (who is, incidentally, one of my favorite contemporary poets). I don’t have any eloquent commentary on this poem; I think that it speaks for itself. But I hope that by reading it, you are reminded of the times where joy leads to joy leads to joy, and how the simple and large are intimately entwined. Don’t be afraid to embrace joy when it comes to you, even if you feel unworthy or scared. 

From Blossoms, by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward

signs painted Peaches.

 

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.  

 

O, to take what we love inside,

To carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

image

Advent Poems 2022 [peace]

Peace

This week’s Advent candle represents peace. In thinking of a poem I wanted to share this week, I kept coming back to a song, so I hope you will indulge me.

“Be Still” is a song by the band The Killers, and sung by their lead vocalist, Brandon Flowers. Over the past five years, “Be Still” has been a song I have turned to (or one which comes to mind), when I need a sense of grounding, calm, and peace.

This song has personal significance for me. The first year of my PhD program was incredibly hard, intellectually and emotionally. PhD programs in general are isolating experiences for a variety of reasons. One reason they are isolating is because PhD students are usually far away from home, but they are also isolating because they are so cerebral. You spend a lot of time living in your mind (often trying to justify your decision to pursue a PhD to yourself or fielding arguments from skeptics), and the people who remind you that you are more than a brain are often miles away.

During the first semester of my PhD program, especially, I would come home to my one-bedroom apartment and just sob. I was overwhelmed, I was doubting myself, I missed home and the people who truly knew me, and I felt very alone. To comfort myself, I turned to music, listening to my favorite songs as I cooked dinner or washed the dishes.

I found myself returning to The Killers, in part because their music reminded me of home, of the American West, evoking images of canyon drives, of the desert night air, a palimpsest of languages, cultures, and pasts. (Additionally, Brandon Flowers is a Latter-day Saint, so I often hear echoes of Mormon beliefs and catchphrases, which makes me smile.)

But it was rediscovering “Be Still” which calmed me. I listened to it over and over, lying on the ground with tears streaming down my face, as the music and the lyrics planted peace in my soul. That didn’t mean that the song solved everything. I was (am) still in a challenging PhD program, with all the angst, uncertainty, and hardship that entails. But it planted a belief that there could be peace in my life, even in the midst of difficulties. It is a belief I still have to cultivate every day.

Peace is not the absence of conflict. Conflict is an intrinsic part of human relationships, and opposition is a facet of living. But peace eschews violence—to our communities, to our families, to ourselves. Peacemaking is hard, holy work. It requires sacrifice, it requires humility, it requires cultivation, and it requires integrity. “Be Still” reminds me that peace is steadying, and it gives me strength to “rise up like the sun, and labor ‘til the work is done.”

“Be Still,” by The Killers

Be still
And go on to bed
Nobody knows what lies ahead
And life is short
To say the least
We're in the belly of the beast

Be still
Wild and young
Long may your innocence reign
Like shells on the shore
And may your limits be unknown
And may your efforts be your own
If you ever feel you can't take it anymore

Don't break character
You've got a lot of heart
Is this real or just a dream?
Rise up like the sun
Labor 'til the work is done

Be still
One day you'll leave
Fearlessness on your sleeve
When you've come back, tell me what did you see?
Was there something out there for me?

Be still
Close your eyes
Soon enough you'll be on your own
Steady and straight
And if they drag you through the mud
It doesn't change what's in your blood
(Over rock, over chain, over trap, over plain)
When they knock you down

Don't break character
You've got a lot of heart
Is this real or just a dream?
Be still
Be still
Be still
Be still

Over rock and chain
Over sunset plain
Over trap and snare
When you're in too deep
In your wildest dream
In your made up scheme
When they knock you down
When they knock you down

Don't break character
You've got so much heart
Is this real or just a dream?
Oh, rise up like the sun and
Labor 'til the work is done
Rise up like the sun and
Labor 'til the work is
Rise up like the sun and
Labor 'til the work is done.

(For a lovely acoustic version of this song by Brandon Flowers--singing at Senator Harry Reid's funeral--you can click on this link here.)

Advent Poems 2022 (Hope)

 

Blackout in Kyiv, October 2022 
(via Reuters) 

For a few years, I’ve been wanting to write my own poems about hope, peace, love, and joy for Advent. It will, unfortunately, not be this year (my mind and creative energies have been focused on finishing my dissertation). But there are poems on those themes that resonate with me, and those I want to share during the next few weeks leading up to Christmas.

To start out the Advent season, I want to share part of T.S. Eliot’s “East Coker” to represent hope, even in the depths of despair. “East Coker” is part of Eliot’s Four Quartets, which are a series of meditations on time, God, history, loss, and renewal. “East Coker” is the second of these quartets, and was written near the beginning of World War II, and published during the Blitz. Within the poem, death and life, doubt and faith, despair and hope are woven together.

This year, the poem reminds me of Ukraine—especially as the country is plunged into darkness by Russian attacks. “East Coker” was a poem birthed in war, in a time of darkness, and of grief. It reminds me that loss and hope are not mutually exclusive, and that hope knows hard times. Hope is quiet, not garish; hope does not dole out platitudes, but rather lifts a sturdy, steadying hand to our shoulders as we sob for the dreams we have lost.

As Eliot writes, hope is in the waiting. And as choirs across the country sing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” to welcome in the Advent season today, it is that waiting for deliverance which gives me courage.  

From “East Coker,” by T.S. Eliot

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, and the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody’s funeral, for there is no one to bury.

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing façade are all being rolled away—
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

Ukrainian Lachrimosa

I.                  I took my son to Arlington Cemetery for the first time a few weeks ago. My father was in town, and we decided to visit his grandfather’s (my great-grandfather’s, my son’s great-great-grandfather’s) final resting place.

Arlington can be a maze, with the dazzling rows of white crosses bewildering those who seek a specific name. I had been to Arlington to find my great-grandfather’s grave before, and had a general idea where we were going (but still, we had to backtrack to find it).  

Once there, my son clamored to get out of his stroller, so we let him crawl among the headstones, his dumpling hands reaching for fallen leaves in the prickly spring grass.

“You know that old curse? About how ‘I’ll dance on your grave’?” my dad said as we watched that sweet baby boy. “I can think of a blessing—May your great-great-grandchildren crawl on your grave.”

II.                   The first time I ever told my (future) husband I loved him was in a cemetery overlooking Utah Lake. He had taken me to the cemetery since it was a gathering spot for his family—his grandparents had chosen burial plots there, and, even though it would be a few years before their death, the cemetery was already a peaceful place for family gatherings, beneath the cragged Wasatch peaks.

            I know some people might think that strange, to profess love in a cemetery. But love is not meant only for the land of the living. It is what ties us to the dead. 

 

III.                 The first time I ever visited a Ukrainian cemetery was outside of Mariupol, at the seaside dacha of a friend’s mother. We had gone to help our friend’s mother with yardwork. It was mid-May, not yet summer, and the sea breeze drifted into the garden as we pulled weeds, and spilled into the kitchen where our friend’s mother sliced radishes for a salad.

Close to their dacha was a plot of land which served as the village cemetery. Our friend took us to see it (why, I cannot remember anymore—was it because a friend or family member was buried there? Was it to satisfy a Westerner’s curiosity? Was it because another one of our Ukrainian friends wanted to see the cemetery? I wish I could remember, but I can’t).

I had never seen a Ukrainian cemetery before. While a few crosses marked the dead, I mostly saw slabs of dark stone with the faces of the deceased embossed on the stone, their names in Cyrillic, the Orthodox cross signaling belief and tradition. There were flowers—wilted, fresh, and silk—and a few gravestones had food and drink surrounding them, remnants of Radonytsya (a Ukrainian tradition the Sunday after Easter, where family and friends honor the dead with their favorite food and drink).

We did not stay long, but it made me realize how disconnected I was from my own dead. One of my grandfathers was buried two thousand miles away from where I lived; my other grandfather was buried fifty miles away. I did not have the opportunity to visit their graves regularly, to think about their lives and their love for me. What would it be like to be so connected to a place, that generations were buried alongside each other? It seemed so grounding, so holy, even.  Certainly, that Ukrainian cemetery, outside of Mariupol, drenched in sunlight and sparkling with sea air, was a holy place, where the living honored their dead, young and old, small and great.

 

IV.                Mariupol is a necropolis now. A ghost town, where even mass graves are being burned by marauding Russian troops to hide their atrocities. The number of dead is shattering to me. As of April 13^th, the number is approximately 22,000 dead—killed by shelling, by starvation, by dehydration, by exposure, by torture. I have broken down, weeping, more than once, witnessing the suffering of the Ukrainians in Mariupol. I rejoice when I hear that another one of my friends (or the friend of a friend) has escaped. I fear the worst for those I haven’t heard from since early March. I grieve for the friends who have lost loved ones—who will never know where their loved ones’ remains are located, who can never mourn at a funeral or a gravesite. 

V.                  In Kharkiv, another besieged Ukrainian city two hundred and sixty miles north of Mariupol, there is a memorial to those killed during the Holocaust. On a representation of the Ten Commandments, the only commandment engraved on those tablets, repeated over and over in multiple languages: Thou Shalt Not Kill.

thou shalt not kill

thou shalt not kill

thou shalt not kill

thou shalt not kill

thou shalt not kill

VI.             Ukraine’s story is not over yet. The dead and the living will write the next chapter of Ukrainian history. But I mourn over the injustices and evils inflicted on the Ukrainian people. I cry for their suffering, for the children who will never grow old, for the children who have already grown old.

And I grieve, knowing so many will be unable to find and honor their dead; that their great-great-grandchildren will not be able to visit their graves. 

making varenyky while worrying about an ongoing invasion

 Note: This was written on February 22, 2022. I am late in posting this to my blog (though it has been on other social media platforms), but I felt it was important to post it here, too. May God bless Ukraine. 

making varenyky while worrying about an ongoing invasion

"I don't understand, I decidedly not not understand why men can't live without war." --Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace.

i remember reading an article

after putin invaded crimea

(almost eight years ago now),

about people in crimea

deciding to make varenyky

instead of voting in a rigged referendum.

they boycotted

by filling dough with cherries and potatoes,

as a way of political protest.

tonight i think about ukraine.

my heart is sick with reports

of boots on the ground

of sovereignty trampled

on the streets i once knew

in a country i love.

i cannot convince

a man

obsessed with rewriting history

(who hurtles through it, like the driver of

gogol's troika),

glutted with pride

wanting the world, if he could have it.

but my heart is with ukraine tonight

and my hands and head need something to do.

so i make varenyky

my favorite ukrainian comfort food

a small token

of my love for that beautiful land,

for those beautiful people.

the scents of the shallots simmering

in sunflower oil,

of sprigs of dill

send me back to donbas kitchens,

to times of eating buckwheat in the morning,

of gifts of pickled tomatoes,

of learning how to make borscht

in a tiny mariupol home--

our hostess explaining that the order matters,

that the flavors must marinate just right.

my varenyky are messy.

i am sure that a true ukrainian

would get the seal just right,

the shape just so.

but i am just an american

who will never truly be able to understand

the wars and famines ukraine has endured

for too many years,

an american

who cannot understand the worry of ukrainian mothers

while my own baby sleeps soundly in his crib,

as i make varenyky in the peace of my own home.

but with each press of my thumb

into the dough,

with each filling of cheese

and potatoes,

with each dumpling rising to the top

of the boiling water,

i witness again and again,

"i care, i care, i care."