Dona Nobis Pacem

Villages tend Peace

like food, cultivating by

hand and in person.

A Fountain of Youth

central to all—Peace quenches

thirst freely, fairly

Let's imagine it

now, here, building with stone soup—

Perfect!  Possible!

(Dream Peace Haiku

by Susan Chast)

I know praying for peace and attending marches and rallies and meetings, but blogging for peace is new to me.  I like having this challenge at this time because I have no time for it.  Absurd?   I am a workaholic that fills up my life so totally with the here and now that I forget to attend to larger things like peace or the death of myself and all I care for.  Emily Dickinson addresses this in her poem "Because I could not stop for Death":

Because I could not stop for Death – 
He kindly stopped for me –  
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –  
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility – 

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –  
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –  
We passed the Setting Sun – 

Or rather – He passed us – 
The Dews drew quivering and chill – 
For only Gossamer, my Gown – 
My Tippet – only Tulle – 

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground – 
The Roof was scarcely visible – 
The Cornice – in the Ground – 

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads 
Were toward Eternity – 

  

The Long Day of reckoning is the fulcrum between two different kinds of neglect.  The forgetfulness after death I cannot address, but the neglect caused by being too busy to attend while alive I can and should address.  That would be blogging for peace, I think, blogging to discover if it is viable to continue to live as if someone else would take care of peace.   I deliberately take this break from what engages me now in order to blog for peace, precisely because I haven't the time. 

*  *  * 

          I remember a decade when I was actively involved in peace work.  Back in the late 1970s, I was part of a women center group called FUSE, Feminists United to Save the Earth.  We educated ourselves so that we could educate others on the issues of war and peace, especially the proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear power on the earth.  I remember teaching aids like posters full of statistics measuring weapon stockpiling against what each weapon actually did and how much it cost.  I can see from social networks like Facebook, that this essential teaching still goes on.  If it is less personal, it spreads much further. 
          I remember being the back-up person for the FUSE affinity group during the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant anti-nuclear protest in 1979 when my group scaled the fence and was arrested.  The two days on Long Island caused the school district where I taught to dock my minimum-wage pay and it also gave me the words for what has been a life-long question:  

Is it a luxury to maintain a normal work life and save for retirement in the face of war and destruction; or is it a luxury to  protest when the world may not end and I will need a retirement plan?

I have been living into the answer.

* * * 

          I remember "Ladies Against Women," a local branch of a larger effort to reach out through satire and humor.  The humor included costuming like a 1950's sitcom and dialogue like: 

"Does your husband know you're here today?"
"Yes.  I cleaned the toilet yesterday and it sparkles so!  He gave me permission to raise funds for the Pentagon!  That's what this bake sale is for.  See?  $100,000 for this banana bread will buy  two bullets for . . ."

And so pictures of bullets and bombs and prices lay on tables along with familiar bake sale items, exposing some of the trade-offs we make for war.    It was dangerous  theatre, as some men and women thought "Ladies Against Women"  ridiculed housewives.  I thought the comedy had potential to mobilize housewives and career women for peace.  I hope this type of comedy still exists.

* * *

          I remember working in a collective to form the performance piece "It's Better to Speak" specifically shaped for the peace workers who sent material to use in it.  The title is from Audre Lorde's poem "A Litany for Survival" from which I quote only the last few lines:

. . .

and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive

― Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn: Poems

We asked for any writings which caused feelings of despair and its opposite--feelings of hope, empowerment and pride in humanity.  The piece we shaped rolled back and forth between material that raised us up and that which dragged us down.  We deliberately used the Shakespearean tool of comic relief in order to reanimate burnt out peace workers and raise energy for the cause.  Of the many places members of the "It's better to Speak" company performed, the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice may have been the most powerful.
          The idea for the Women's Peace Encampment grew when a young woman who received an inheritance wanted to make a difference.  She formed two groups: One was a foundation to which women could apply for funding; the other was a collective charged with finding and buying land for the purpose of establishing an encampment akin to Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp established in England by the Women for Life on Earth.  We wanted an encampment that would also be an experiment in living among different types of women united for the larger cause.  
          (There is so much to say about this all-consuming effort that I save it for a major project.   To read more now, visit the Archive highlighted above or the Wikipedia article in the meantime).

* * * 

    

        One result of the peace work I had done was an increased interest in the way theatre works to unify community through creating art together and/or sharing a common experience.    In 1983, I started attending graduate school for theatre.  Another result was that I started attending Quaker Meetings regularly.  I would become a committed member of the faith in another 10 years, but in 1983 more inportant to me was how calmly Quaker women lived through the "negotiation of differences" at the Peace Encampment.   There were many differences.  Desire to increase the peace and work for justice was our lowest and our highest common denominator.  The women at the encampment were feminists and anti-feminists, lesbians and homophobes, right to lifers and free choicers, patriots and world citizens, Christians and Pagans and every faith under the sun, mothers and non-mothers, vegetarians and vegans and meat eaters, law makers and anarchists.  I took long-hand notes, took long walks, met all kinds of passionately interesting people, and joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) both in worship and in training in what was still fairly new at the time: Alternatives to Violence.
           Teaching is the ministry that education, faith, the women's  movement and the peace movement guided me toward.  As a teacher, I found the ATV training very helpful for class management, class dynamic exercises, and both writing and research projects. Add to that acting, directing, playwriting, improvisation and HIPP (Help increase the Peace Training) and I had the tool box for opening communication and welcoming student voices into meetings for learning.  I taught from 1977 to 1979 and from 1983 to 2012, a total of 31 years, sometimes high school English and sometimes college-level acting, directing, theatre history and performance theory.  Always, I learned along the way.

* * * 

           I am now retired with disability due to pain from deteriorating lumbar discs, fibromyalgia, and other conditions common at my age.  For the last few months, I have been writing poetry, maintaining this blog, and devoting every Tuesday night to making phone calls for the local Obama phone bank. That will end after election day.   
          This month, November 2012, I began writing historical fiction about what I outline above.  Ways to peace.  The way it was. Choices.  I am using the program of NaNoWriMo to stay disciplined.  Will I finish?  Is this what I should be doing?  Remembering and creating certainly gives me joy, and the work environment here at home is both peaceful and stimulating.  Now, eight months into retirement, I am busy writing and testing out the way forward. 

* * * 

 

          My mother, an 88 year old artist, has been sending me "GO VOTE" visuals on Facebook, asking me to send them on to others.  Tonight we had a good laugh on the phone because we could publicize with just a few pushed buttons.  The process used to be to design a flyer, reproduce with a mimeograph technique or offset printing, poster and flyer our area (these are verbs), and address envelopes, stuff, stamp, sort, and post (as in bring to a post office).  Although we must still do some of this old process to reach all of the people, for most technology-producing countries, communication is instantaneous.   
          Language also changes with technology.  I think it was Kurt Vonnegut who pointed out that the language of the analog clock is already going (gone?).  "It's one minute before midnight" is one of the phrases we will lose.  It means that--if we say that the entire lifetime of this planet is 60 minutes--the planet has less than a minute left to live.  That's the rate at which we are destroying the environment with gasses, with continuing to mis- and over-use resources, and with war.  
          When I apply this 60-minute analogy to my own life, I find I have a full 20 minutes more to do what needs to be done. Compared to earth's one minute, paradoxically, I have lots of time.  And I have already lived into part of the answer to the question raised in the Shoreham action of 1979:

Is it a luxury to maintain a normal work life and save for retirement in the face of war and nuclear destruction; or is it a luxury to go off and protest when the world may not end and we will need a retirement plan?  

There is no luxury, but sorrow and happiness both exist. 

I am--we each are--responsible for maintaining self, including listening to and loving self as we build relationships with God and other people. 

I am responsible for asking for the help I need and accepting it gratefully. 

I should always, always live as if there will be a tomorrow and always be all I can be.  

And I will.

To Be Continued . . .

Peach Blossom and Dove, ink and colors on silk

by

Isen'in Hoin Eishin (Japanese, 1775-1828)

Finding Peace

by

                   Susan Chast   (2012)

Look behind the shower curtain as a human washes her body religiously

Look under a human's hands surprising another by covering his deep eyes with love

Look over the bare foot of a child testing the water before plunging into the colorful sea of humanity

Look around the wings of Pegasus rising over the surface of the moon-filled night to bring humans an end to their worst fears.

Look through your soul to find the obstacles to peace.

Other Peace Poems by Susan Chast:

• John Woolman’s Testimony: Walk the Walk
• The Answer
•  Cemeteries: a Sixling  
•  Breathe Peace
•  Dream Peace Haiku

The Art of Conversation

          Isadore "Izy" Gruye interviewed me for Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads this week.  The result, In this Version of My Life--An Interview with Susan Chast, carries the marvelous tone of an engaged conversation, an unusual event in this time of my life.  It was fun to chat with Izy on-line, hear her voice on the phone, and then watch her shape the posted interview through her generous emails.  I laughed and learned while interacting, and regretted the end of the conversation.  Here's part of the raw conversation from Facebook chat: 

• 

  10:43pm

  Isadora Gruye
  

  
  

  I think you are saying wonderful things thus far, I wouldn't want to reign in a wild horse....but let me circle back

• 

  10:43pm

  Susan Chast
  

  
  

  I just noticed how close p o e t i c a l and p o l i t i c a l are in spelling

  A wild horse!

• 

  10:44pm

  Isadora Gruye
  

  
  

  you deserve to run free

• 

  10:45pm

  Susan Chast

  poli-poet-ical
  O, we all deserve that. But could we get jobs? Could we survive in the wild?
  Easier and safer to let the wild survive in us.

  
  

              Ha ha!  I remember being in settings such as college housing, bars, coffee houses, and beaches where rising dialogue was plentiful.  Nothing else was quite as effective at making me forget to go to bed, meals, classes, work, and even dates.  In these conversations I had the sense of rising up in an elevator through tall mountains of thought; I felt movement from peepholes to picture windows at the same time.  Heat was generated, but not the heat of battle--more the heat of building a high-rise in the light of day or walking in sunshine without a protective hat.   That was talking to think, just as now I write to think.  Rene Magritte's image of conversation nicely captures what I mean:

L'Art de la conversation by Rene Magritte

          This week I was blessed with two of these conversations, after missing them for what seems like years.  The second one occurred at the yearly 2-day conference of the Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts.  There we each shared our art(s) at an open mic of poetry, music, song, theater, and slide presentations.  Visual arts--paintings, fabric and paper art, pottery, and sculpture--formed a gallery, and I actually entered my raw notebook of first drafts here (besides reading 4 poems in the show).   We expanded our perception of the world through trying out new ideas in workshops and at meals.  Here is a picture of me with Pat Reed in the "Clay: Naturally!" workshop she led with Marilyn Morrison of the Lancaster County Art Association:

Pictures are by Blair Seitz

In his "Revision" workshop, Blair Seitz read from his new book and led us through an exercise of writing for 20 minutes and then work-shopping our work in the intimate group.  I wrote about my broken heart, one still evident despite retirement from teaching English in Philadelphia's secondary schools.  The conversation climbed because it did not hinge on  particulars but on the theories and experiences of learning we each brought into the room.  I was finally moved to tears from an overflow of gratitude, tears from being part of a true meeting for learning in the Parker Palmer sense:

Meeting For Learning: Education In A Quaker Context
by PARKER PALMER
"Much of what I want to say about education in a Quaker context can be organized around one of Quakerism's most central, concrete, yet spacious images: the image of "meeting." Among Friends, of course, there is first the meeting for worship, but then there is the meeting for business, the meeting for marriage, the meeting on the occasion of a graduation , the meeting in memorial of one who has died.... Friends made a simple and compelling point: The common element in both worship and business should be the search for truth - and the expectation that, if we give it space and time, truth will come to us."

            - Palmer, from the pamphlet   "Friends Council on Education" 2007 13 PP. Paper

        
          When I speak of the "Art of Conversation,"  I am not speaking about the discipline of Rhetoric taught in academies, but the meetings for learning that can occur inside or outside of them when the spirit comes out to play as well as emotions and mind.  In this art, we find our vulnerabilities, our meanings, our friends.  In these meetings we grow.

Mary Oliver, Rumi and Me.

Mary Oliver.  Photograph by Rob Howard.

This morning on NPR, poet Mary Oliver, in a promo for her new book A Thousand Mornings, spoke of prayer becoming more integrated into her mornings and quoted Rumi: "Hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." Because this quote resonates with my own experience living and also with writing poetry, I googled the quote and found that it came from a longer Rumi poem available on line from The Wandering Minstrels:

Rumi

                              (Poem #472)






Spring Giddiness

 Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
 and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
 and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
 Let the beauty we love be what we do.
 There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

 The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
 Don't go back to sleep.
 You must ask for what you really want.
 Don't go back to sleep.
 People are going back and forth across the doorsill
 where the two worlds touch.
 The door is round and open.
 Don't go back to sleep.

 I would love to kiss you.
 The price of kissing is your life.
 Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
 What a bargain, let's buy it.

 Daylight, full of small dancing particles
 and the one great turning, our souls
 are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
 Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

 All day and night, music,
 a quiet, bright
 reedsong. If it
 fades, we fade.

-- Jalaluddin Rumi    

Today--actually yesterday and all night--I have been meditating on my fears because of a challenge at the on-line poetry workshop group dVerse Poets Pub to write about fears and phobias.   Rumi's poem speaks directly to that.  I am a horn, a brassy instrument, I fear the air ceasing to enliven me.  Here I am, let me play.  I am song, therefore I am.

Me

 

Art for Art's Sake: an Apology

I believe that my poem says that Art for Arts Sake is morally purposeful and/or subversive.  I deny the possibility of cutting art off from spirit and assert that pure art is spirit.

Yesterday I posted a poem called "Let this be my epitaph" which said to my readers that I am in the "Art for Art's Sake" camp of writing.  Here I am making an Apology: I just read through the poems I have written since April 2012--six months of almost a poem a day.  Few--if any--of them are "Art for Art's Sake." Indeed, this poem opens a paradox while actually redefining this very term.  Did I know this when I wrote it, or discover the riddle later?  

 

This must sound funny--that I had to reread my poems to discover this meaning and this question--but it is not a joke.  I do not mean to say that I write in some kind of trance state.  There are stages of writing, however, and then stages of performing which fall into the realm of prayer in the same sense that a person, an action, words--all we do in the name of God or that God does through us--can be seen as prayer.  Here I want to discuss this spiritual action in three steps: (1) what my poem actually "says," (2) what "art for art's sake" is, and (3) poetry as spiritual action.

 

(1)  

In "Let this be my epitaph,"  I wrote:

I make art; I go to art for its aesthetic alone 
and find vacation from play and work and giving 
that nourishes  all three

What seems a direct claim for "art for art's sake" contains a paradox.  If art "nourishes" it has purpose, and--if it has purpose--the art is not art for art's sake.  In these lines I compare the purpose of art to the purpose of vacation, which is, I assert, to nourish "all three": "play and work and giving."  Vacation is for refreshing vocation, not for escape from vocation.

 

In fact, it is a fallacy to say that since p (play) = P and w (work) = W and g (giving) = G, then a (art) = A.  Instead, the truth is that a (art) = p + w + g = PWG = A.  Perhaps logicians can tell me in formal terms what I am saying here.  

 

In informal terms, I am saying that by making and enjoying art--by definition outside the context of necessary daily occupation--I find new meaning in daily life.  When I can, I use poetic and other forms of writing to pass on the truths and questions I find.  That is my art.  It may also be a paradox to find art necessary and useful and powerful--not at all a luxury.  Government censorship of the arts--and of the kinds of free public education that encourages the arts--is proof of its power.  I believe that creating and enjoying art is a way of training independent thought and creative solutions in every imaginable context.

 

(2)

I wrote the poem "Let this be my Epitaph" for the challenge "Arts gonna art" at Poetry Jam.  For her prompt, blogger Dani clarifies three stances on the merit of poetry as (1) "for poetry's sake," (2) "to serve some moral or didactic purpose," and (3)  "to be morally subversive."  She directs her readers to the Wikipedia article  Art for Art's Sake for more information, but also concludes, "Perhaps all viewpoints are valid."  She asks us to write a poem which takes a point of view on these merits by commenting on or debating one or more of these stances or by illustrating one of them.  I believe that my poem says that Art for Arts Sake is morally purposeful and/or subversive.  I deny the possibility of cutting art off from spirit and assert that pure art is spirit. 

 

For example, what if I paint one colorful and textured blob or write a poem all sounds and nonsense--in each case foregrounding artistic means and form but not content.  My only purpose might be to pass the time, or to play with elements and to avoid any purpose.  But, how subversive!  An audience member has to think, even in asking, "What is the artist doing, and Why?"   Dada--an artistic movement that engaged writers, artists, and performers in nonsense--was subversive in this way in the second decade of the 20th century as it acted against war, authority, and even museum-hogging of culture.  

 

Modern arts including "Art for Art's sake" picked up from there.  The spirit of "no" often arises, the spirit of "yes" often does too as well as more complexity.  I have not used the word "political" yet, but you can feel it coming.  All choices are political, even those NOT to align with any one system.  

 

(3)

In studying, teaching, and directing theatre most of my life, I learned that anything that advances the plot is action and often character in action.  Indeed, every element of the theatre and drama can be used strategically (politically) by actor, designer, and director to advance the story's plot and thought.  Words, looks, gestures, stance are action filled with intention.  Color, line, decor, balance, and the entire physical apparatus of the stage has active intention.  And then the actual movement and dialogue acts, as does stillness, groupings, comings and goings.  Everything.  

 

This is true of poetry as well, whether a poem lies on a page of a book waiting for discovery or whether sounded into words, phrases, juxtapositions, and voice.  All is action.  A tree stands, OK.  But, in a poem that tree also stands, placed there and framed by a poet.  Does the reader see the tree?  Does it matter?  Does the reader see it now but not later?  How does the reader change the tree?  That too is action for the theatre and for poetry.  

 

For my poem's opening lines I chose three of the many things that engage my conscious and unconscious mind: play, work, and giving.  I might have chosen eating, sleeping and loving or any of myriad actions, but I didn't.  I took the first three that entered my head and penned them in a new order: playing became first because I used to leave it out, I was such a workaholic.  And giving--which characterized a lot of my work--stood out as I am retired from teaching, so I am questioning how giving--ministering--will still be part of my life.  In each case I wrote a phrase parallel to art for art's sake:

I play for the sake of playing (and all my troubles stay away)
I work for the sake of working (and lose myself in its hours)
I  give for the sake of giving, ego–free, (and I gain more than my mind can comprehend)

 

I thought that if these phrases made sense I would know WHAT I had to write about art for arts sake.  They did make sense once I added a phrase clarifying the result (in the parenthesis above).  Therefore, my 4th line, quoted in Part (1) above, addressed the same question about art and simultaneously compared and redefined it.  What remained was to describe the art/vacation, and that came out as a mash-up of poetry I have written, spirit-filled yes, no, and thank you. Is it also a paradox to say that  "Yes, no, and thank you" are the only three answers I have ever received to my prayers?  It feels to me that the poems I--we--write are questions or answers to our moments in a

mash-up of “what if” with 

“is” and “was” that at best 

touches soul and opens spirit

 

This is, at best, the action of my poems in the world, and it was the action of this poem on me.  While writing.  While sifting thoughts and reaping between the lines.  And I thought wouldn't that be a wonderful epitaph?  And I made it so.  Would it be so.  It is, in this poem, a definite yes.

 

 

 

 

My first publication!

 



Nain Rouge  published one of my poems! I am so happy. It is a a new magazine for the arts out of Detroit which is international in scope, and it even has page numbers. It has a unique urban theme, and my poem "Blindness" (on page 33) fits in very well.
 

I have also submitted poems to 2 other publications: Apiary Magazine--written by humans--features Philadelphia writers and Friends Journal carries a few poems each month interspersed among features on Quaker life and thought today.

I am too excited today to write anything else.  I will commit myself to write a blog to post on Fridays.