Writing Into Transformation

A Summary of  "Say the Wrong Thing: Strategies of the

 H.E.A.R.T. for Racial Justice and 

Authentic Community"
 

a workshop with Dr. Amanda Kemp

To hold the space for transformation, we are 
learning, can be more important than

to make a point or to be certain that “those others” don’t 
mistakenly believe

we are with them.  We want a larger we. We want to grow able 
to love and to

critique ourselves simultaneously—a muscle that is 
underdeveloped.

So DANCE.  Find out where you each hold your breath and feel it ease under loving attention. How you create the space for transforming is by discovering that you are frozen

in formal bias and letting it ease within loving attention.  Oh.  

WE ease

and Melt THEM, breathe and direct attention to them, 
opening up the door to love

without conditions or defensive moves. In this homebase for transformation, we

give “those others” a chance to change, we take a chance on 
trusting an unfamiliar

procedure.  Oh.  We melt.  We speak our truth in order to 
connect, to hear their truths,

to meet them in space for transformation. If I say it often enough, it’s true. I think we can, I think we can.  To climb to transformation peak, to grow ourselves.

Exercising critique and love muscles in us, we contemplate 
and wait on God.

We take care of our soul and their souls, too. Oh.  How 

wonderful the parallel acts:

of releasing bodies, of holding space for transformation, 
and of opening

the door with time with curiosity with God and them and we--
expanding we.  I see.

☙❧

Just Saying

Over at 1sojournal, Elizabeth offers prompts for these challenging post-election times.  Her first 3 were Fear, Love and Acceptance. Today's is a poem and question.  Here's my answer:


Just Saying

for Elizabeth on Day 4

DO I know what I mean by saying “Just
Saying”?  I mean "I meant what I said, but
let me disparage it before you do
because I do not want to hear any
critique or commentary of my point
OR view."  And that’s true.

"The words, images,absolutes just crept
out of my mouth, like fish moving through an
aquarium toy, maybe a castle
with open doors and windows—my image
of what you must be—receivers of no
concern of mine, things for me to weave webs
around and to eat later during my victory
two-step and my twirl.  And why aren’t those fish
aquarium toys edible? Cakes are
and bird seed patties and the ground I stand
and the masses, faceless but nourishing none-
the-less."  (My brother taught me this meaning
and I haven’t used the words since he did
because he was savvy. I’ve become better
at listening and interpreting lines.
Trust a businessman  to know the lingo.)

Just saying.
With love, Susan

I love Elizabeth's directions for this series of prompts:  

The Challenge here is to use your creative talent to bring light into the current distress in the world around you, in whatever form that talent takes. Please remember that we are reaching out to a world that is facing upheaval and possibly a great number of changes. Let us reach out to that world and bring it the lessons we have learned by becoming artists and writers.  You may use images, photos, music, poetry, prose, short story fiction, personal essay, or whatever suits you best. I will post one word a day, adding a few of my own thoughts about the word. The rest is up to you. You may post as many times as you like, and may use old or new pieces, as you choose. When you have finished creating your post, return here and leave the URL in the comments section below. Then post it to whatever social media you are involved with. If you are not connected to some form of social media, consider joining one now. If not, say so when you post, and I will attempt to post it on mine, which is Facebook.

Visit her.  Visit me.

Election Day

First Do No Harm

Layers in My Life

Today I moved into Richard Rohr's meditation on the 8th and 9th step of AA, his take on how the creator of the 12-Step Program can help anyone to Let Go and Let God.  

This was the hardest day for me so far.  It took me three hours to think through who I have harmed through my addictions to property, privilege and righteousness--and how I might ever make amends.  This is three hours on top of a lifetime of paying attention to the oppressions in play around me.

As I have done for the previous meditations in this series, I let my contemplation culminate in a poem, but it is not a poem.  Rather, it turns out to be "a thinking through" of how to move forward from this moment, how to remove one irritant from the vast field of racism that oppresses people of color.

Steps Eight and Nine: Reparations

“It is the indispensable tool against white supremacy.  One cannot

propose to plunder a people, incur a moral and monetary debt,

propose to never pay it back, and then claim to be seriously

engaging in the fight against white supremacy.”

– TA-NEHISI COATES, The Atlantic 1/19/2016 

I didn’t mind taking the apartment

that was offered to me just 'cause my skin

was white, one little needle in the hay,

just one more straw to break a burdened back. 

Besides, I lost a scholarship four years before

because Black students stood up and sat-in

demanding equitable aid at last.

Years later, I finally understand:

I never doubted I could find a way

to borrow, work and pay with a fine home

and way opening up for me.  I had

to struggle, true, but I knew what to do.

Presumed innocent in all my conflicts,

I could assume police would protect me

even when I protested war, even

when they did not (like in cases of rape).

But wait.

I’m here to make lists and amends

and find a way to make reparations

too.  Sifting through my life, I see students

I held back and passed on when I shouldn’t—

Ah! Harm. But now, persist!  If we agree

a subject is worth learning, I’ll learn, too,

and break apart structures to find out why

and who they empower the way they are.

And that’s the question I will answer now:

whose feet am I stepping on to be heard

when I aggress and speak up first because

I can, I have, I will, and I am I?

Still blind, I almost pause to stop the flow

of power to me.  I almost respect

you, Friend.  Any minute now I’ll get it

and pause.  Instead of plowing on, I’ll stop.

And then how will I make amends? Now that

I know experimentally

that I hurt you, can I repay? Or pay

forward what I can never quite retract?

At least do no more harm or hold you back?**

                                              #

Notes:  If I have made progress today, it's because yesterday I participated in an URG meeting, a gathering of a small group of Quakers, an Un-Doing Racism Group within the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. There I marveled at an unspoken dynamic, one in which I both acted and reacted badly.  Three times women of color and white women and men asked that people be mindful of speaking too much or too often, and I suspected they were cautioning me--that I was the aggressor--and they were trying to do so respectfully.  But I couldn't stop.  In fact, I provoked more because I thought those who cautioned were also avoiding meeting my eyes.   And I was aware of being out of line, but I did it anyway. Ugh.  I couldn't stop.  Now God lets me see myself in an inner ocean of shame, but won't let me stay there. That would be too easy. Instead, I have to become aware, write it down and apologize and change.  And it is in here I finally find humility in myself and practice steps Eight and Nine of the Twelve Steps: 

• Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
• Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.*

#

I have written this down so that I may remember it.  I am not too old to learn, and I hope there is more!  I write this down so that I can pay forward by sharing what I learn about white supremacy with other white people.  God knows it takes us a long time--it takes me a lifetime--to inch forward.

*“J,” A Simple Program: A Contemporary Translation of the Book “Alcoholics Anonymous” (Hyperion: 1996), 55.

**Part of my series Oh, Ye of Little Faith*

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright.

© 2016 Susan L. Chast

Oh, Ye of Little Faith*

Image by jclk8888., posted with the Richard Rohr Meditation referenced below

My writing is the prayer that opens me

up to the meditations I read and/

or hear now each and every morning .

A discipline of sorts, it heals my sins

of Absence, Addiction and Attachment.

As a child I competed to get A’s—

But, now, Alone time is the only A

I seek.  Not even Absolution is

preferable to Love, Unlimited.

Writing is the prayer that opens

me—paradoxically opens me—to

in-pouring Love of which words are mere trace.

Out-pouring is the call that I am more

or less obedient to, ministry

I do not understand and so resist.

My writing is the prayer that opens me

beyond logos to roiling listening

and eventually to giving back.

And I hereby exhort myself to write—

despite not feeling it—despite what we

excuse as writer’s block, despite boredom.

Oh, yes, I bore myself and turn to film

and other diversions—most of which are

empty occupations which lead me back.

To where if  I were willing and able

to write through reams of dross, I’d think past

what I can write now into faithfulness.

If I could know the story’s end before,

how easy it would be to follow course—

how little faith I would need, then, to write.

*Matthew 8:26  He replied, "You of little faith, why are you so afraid?" Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.  (New International Version)

Inspired by today's meditation by Richard Rohr: 

Twelve-Step Spirituality: Week 1

In Need of Healing Sunday, May 29, 2016 Quote:  "Nine of Jesus' healing stories are actually exorcisms. Although we may think we are too sophisticated for such stories, the fact that there are so many speaks to their importance. I understand "possession by devils" as a primitive but absolutely truthful way of referring to what we now call addiction. In each case, the person is in some sense trapped by a larger force, and is powerless to do anything about it. The only cure for possession is "repossession." You have to be repossessed by Something Greater than the disease." Find the entire meditation HERE.

And I haven't written either blog posts or chapters since ... since .... Perhaps this is a new beginning.

It generated a series of poems:  

• Step One:The Paradox of Powerlessness
• Step Two: Going for a Walk with Truth
• Step Three: Rest
• Step Four: Taking Stock
• Step Five: Calling the Dance
• Merciful Presence: a sonnet
• Steps Six and Seven: There Are Truly Gifts Inside
• First Do No Harm:  Steps Eight and Nine: Reparations
• Step Ten: Consciousness
• Step Eleven: Remember the Day
• Step Twelve: Good News

In case you are interested, here are The Twelve Steps of AA (from Great Britain).

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright.

© 2016 Susan L. Chast