Poetry Friday: Birdtober Day Seven: Secretarybird

 

Photo Source: eBird.com

Surprise! I managed to write a Birdtober poem every day this week. I'll add links to them later in this post. 

Today's prompt is a Secretarybird. These amazing birds, over four feet tall and found on the coat of arms of South Africa and the emblem of Sudan, are endangered now, due to habitat loss. To the people who live near them, they represent intelligence and protection. (You can read more about them in my poem and this Wikipedia article is an interesting place to go next.) The Terror Birds mentioned in the poem are already extinct, and I hope the Secretarybirds won't be next.

Stomping
Striking
Killing snakes
a Secretarybird

Hunter
Doing
What it takes
that Secretarybird

Terror bird
Would hunt
the same
as Secretarybird

Quill-like
Feathers;
Hence its name:
the Secretarybird

Roosting
In A-
cacia trees
two Secretarybirds

Croaking
with their
families:
Secretarybirds

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

Here are the poems from the rest of the week:

 

Saturday: Rooster 

Sunday: Campo Flicker 

Monday: Macaroni Penguin

Tuesday: Hummingbirds 

Wednesday: Swan 

Thursday: Zebra Finch 

 

 

Here's this week's roundup. 

 

Birdtober Day Six: Zebra Finch

 

Photo Source: https://kidadl.com/facts/animals/zebra-finch-facts

I chose the Zebra Finch photo here to illustrate this Australian bird because I wanted to make it clear where the name came from. In this photo you can see its stripy tail. Yes, its tail is black and white, but it strikes me as an odd way to name this very distinctively marked bird. What about its brown cheeks, its spotted sides, its orange bill, the grey area below its chin? All of these things are highlighted in the description on eBird, but none of them influenced its name. 

In this picture you can't see another distinctive mark that eBird mentions: its black and white "mustache." In the picture below, you can see it better.

Source: https://favpng.com/png_view/bird-bird-zebra-finch-drawing-painting-png/b7RVq4Yr

In the past I've often speculated about why certain birds are named after one trait instead of another. I decided to write my Zebra Finch poem about this idea.

Yes, for sure I am a finch,
But why focus on one inch?
Why not talk about the rest,
For I am dapper, and well-dressed.
You could bring up my lovely bill
Bright orange, pecking, rarely still.
Or my vest with polka dots
Or my grey bib, which I like lots.
I have a mustache, very chic,
And did I mention my fine beak?
I’m just saying that I fail
To see why you discuss my tail
Instead of all my other features
When naming me among the creatures.
Yes, for sure I am a finch,
But why focus on one inch?

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

Birdtober Day Five: Swan

 

Photo Source: eBird

 

Twenty-six years ago, my husband and I spent Christmas in northern Japan, and we were taken to see swans that had migrated from Siberia. I remember we joked about how unbelievable it was that this frigid place was warmer and more pleasant than the home they had left in Siberia. I don't know now if they were Tundra Swans or Whooper Swans; both of these winter in Japan and spend the rest of the year in Siberia. This happened long before I was interested in birds and eager to identify them correctly. But I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the swans.

Northern visitors

Breathe out clouds of warm whiteness

Feathery snowdrift

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

Birdtober Day Four: Hummingbirds

 

 

There are over 350 species of hummingbirds in the world. We don't have them where I live, though we have sunbirds, which are reminiscent of hummingbirds because they too are small and iridescent. 

Last year during Birdtober I wrote about the Vervain Hummingbird, an island endemic, here, for an Artist's Choice day. This time I decided to write about hummingbirds in general.

 

 

Most are between three and four inches long
But they can fly 500 miles non-stop, alone.

Most weigh less than half an ounce
But they can visit 1000 flowers in one day.

A nest the size of a golf ball, eggs the size of jelly beans,
But they eat twice their body weight in 24 hours.

Heartbeat of 1200 beats per minute while flying
Slows down to almost nothing while sleeping.
To rest up for another day of being
Tiny
But
Mighty.
 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

Here's another source of hummingbird facts. 

Birdtober Day Three: Macaroni Penguin

Photo Source: eBird.com

 

Why are these guys called Macaroni Penguins? Here’s eBird’s explanation: “Disappointingly, named for the resemblance of its spiffy, 'fashionable' crest to the hairstyle of fashionable youth, or 'macaronis', and not for the pasta-sauce-orange color of the crest itself.”


You can watch the video to get some of the references in the poem explained.


Spiffy, tony,
Macaroni
Faithful spouse
In matrimony,
Makes a scrape
With ceremony,
Throws out one egg
(It’s a phony).
Listen to my testimony:
You’re the greatest,
Macaroni.


©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

 

 

Reading Update

Book #44 of the year was Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, by Tish Harrison Warren. I really enjoyed this book, which encourages us to find the connections with God in ordinary moments, like waking up, brushing our teeth, losing our keys. The writing is lovely.

Book #45 was a reread (a rererereread), Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen. In times of stress, I always return to these old favorites.

Book #46 was another reread, though this one was only for the second time. It was Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning, by Tom Vanderbilt. (The link is to my review the first time I read it.)

Book #47 was Paris to the Moon, by Adam Gopnik. I enjoyed this story of how the Gopniks moved to Paris so much that book #54 was another Gopnik title, Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York.

Book #48 was Graceland at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South, by Margaret Renkl. This is a collection of op-ed pieces that appeared in the New York Times. Renkl lives in Nashville and writes about politics and the environment. I enjoyed this book.

Book #49 was The Assignment, by Liza Wiemer. This YA title is about what happens when a high school class is given an assignment in history that some of them, and two in particular, find offensive. They're asked to argue in favor of the Nazis' Final Solution. 

Book #50 was My Lover's Lover, by Maggie O'Farrell. Though not my favorite O'Farrell title yet, this one was intriguing. I'm eagerly awaiting her new book, The Marriage Portrait, which I have on hold at the library.

Book #51 was The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy. I can't believe I hadn't read this book yet, especially considering how much I love many Indian novels. Now I'm about to embark on her newest book.

Book #52 was 96 Miles, by J L Esplin. I wish I were still teaching middle school English and could share this with my students. This was so good, suspenseful, and exciting! Now I want a sequel!

Book #53 was The Guide, by Peter Heller. I've been waiting to read this one for a long time. While it wasn't as good as the The River, to which it's a sequel (the link is to my review of that one), this one was entertaining. I do like Peter Heller's writing.

Book #55 was Ghosted, by Rosie Walsh. Like the other book of Walsh's I've read, The Love of My Life (the link will take you to my review of that one), this one was very twisty. I was glad I didn't stop reading what seemed at first to be a pretty straightforward story. All my assumptions were shown to be wrong in quite unexpected ways.

Book #56 was a YA title called Moonrise, by Sarah Crossan. It's a verse novel set in Texas, and it has themes like the death penalty, family dysfunction, and sibling relationships. It was very readable and well done, but I wish an American editor had worked on it because I just didn't buy that the characters were Americans because of all the British usages in the writing. 

Book #57 was a novel in French that I'm going to be teaching, Petit Pays, by Gaël Faye. I thought it was brilliantly written and gripping. It's a story of a French-Rwandan boy living in Burundi in 1994. Highly recommended. I'm looking forward to teaching it.

Book #58 was The Kurdish Bike, by Alesa Lightbourne. I enjoyed this book, recommended by a friend who has also taught at international schools, like me and like the protagonist of this novel. My only complaint is the head-spinning dénouement, in which huge numbers of issues are resolved in a few pages. I need to go back and read the ending again to get it all straight in my mind. I liked the portrayal of life in Iraq among the Kurds.

Birdtober Day Two: Campo Flicker

 

Photo Source: eBird.com

 

When we lived in Paraguay, I often saw three Campo Flickers all together. Rarely did I see one or two of them; if one of them was there, all three were. I wondered what their relationship was. Were they a pair with their offspring? (They all seemed the same size.) Were they a little group of buddies? I don’t know.


These birds used to be called Field Flickers. A student at our school had found them in her bird book, and she was excited to show them to me on our campus. “Look at the Field Flickers!” she said, and again, there were three of them. I wondered if they were the same three we saw at our apartment, quite nearby, but of course I didn’t know for sure.


I decided to write a little nursery-rhyme style poem about these Campo Flickers.


Three Campo Flickers,
Early morning crew,
Perched on the power line
Looking down on you.
If one flew away,
Then there’d be two.

Two Campo Flickers
Wouldn’t have much fun,
Making sounds like hungry puppies
In the noonday sun.
If one flew away,
Then there’d be one.

One Campo Flicker
Lonesome in a tree
Late in the afternoon
Eating bugs — you see?
No, no, of course you don’t,
Cause look! There are three!

Three Campo Flickers
Taking to the sky.
Three woodpeckers fly away,
Yellow flashing by,
Almost always three of them,
Though I don’t know why.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

Birdtober Day One: Rooster

Photo Source: https://www.raising-happy-chickens.com/why-have-rooster.html

I love that the first prompt of Birdtober this year is Rooster. Because let’s face it, no matter how we long for the new and exciting lifers, no matter how much we travel to exotic locations in search of rarities, the bird we see and hear most often is a chicken. When I make recordings of the birds in my neighborhood, there’s nearly always a rooster in the background. The same was true in Haiti, where the rooster — at all hours of the day and night — was the most iconic sound of all. For many years we lived near a cockfighting ring, and there was many a fighting rooster raised in our neighborhood. A beloved late friend whose job took him around the world used to say that one loud rooster followed him everywhere he went. 

And if you look at a rooster closely, you’ll see that it’s as beautiful as any other bird we seek. It’s just the commonness of it that blinds us to how amazing it is.

Sometimes people complain about the sound roosters make. Can you believe that? There have been several stories in the news in France about this over the past few years. I couldn’t find an outcome for the latest case, that of Pitikok. Holiday-makers eager to enjoy peace and quiet in a rural retreat took Pitikok’s owner to court because Pitikok was too noisy. The owner invoked the new law protecting the “sensory heritage” of the countryside from noise complaints. The most recent articles I could find said that Pitikok’s owner wanted to withdraw from the case because he had been receiving threats.

Can’t we all, birds and people, just get along?

Here’s my haiku about Pitikok and his noisy brethren. 

This daily alarm
Sound of countryside mornings
Will not be silenced

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

Poetry Friday: Here Comes Birdtober!

Hello, Poetry Friday friends! It has been a while since I've managed to post anything for Poetry Friday. The last time was in July, and I just counted and discovered I've only posted twenty Poetry Friday posts in all of 2022. 

When I chose "Beginner" as my OLW for the year, little did I know I'd be drowning in beginnings again in the second half of 2022. My husband and I moved to another new country in August, and we're now living and working in the beautiful city of Kampala, Uganda. If you're thinking there must be a story there, you'd be right, and maybe some day I can tell it to you over a cup of tea. In the meantime, here I am, learning all the things, a Beginner again.

Counterintuitively, I have often found that an answer to being overwhelmed is to add something creative to the mix. So I'm going to try that, and see if it works this time. October will be starting on Saturday, and I think I'm going to attempt Birdtober again. It was one of the most fun things I did last year, and October 2021 was wilder than this year's is likely to get (I hope). Below you'll see the list of prompts I'm planning to use - there are several floating around, but this is from the same person whose list I used last year (you can see her site here), and I really like it. Birdtober is an offshoot from Inktober, and it's supposed to be for visual artists, but I wrote poems last year, and that's my intention this year also.

As always when I embark on one of these projects, I'm not committing to every day, but I hope to post quite a few of the days in October. And in the meantime, here's a link to all my Birdtober poems from 2021.

Tabatha has the roundup this week!

Reading Update

Book #37 of the year was The Memory Thief, by Emily Colin. I kept reading this book, about a man who dies in an avalanche but then is somehow still present, because I wanted to figure out what exactly the premise was. I guess the premise sort of made sense in a paranormal way, but it wasn't really my kind of book.

Book #38 was Jonathan Martin's new book, The Road Away From God: How Love Finds Us Even As We Walk Away. I am a Martin fan; I've read his shipwreck book at least five times. (You can see what I wrote about it the first time in this post.) This book is geared more for people who are thinking about walking away from their faith, for whatever reason. He takes as his metaphor here the story from the gospel of Luke when two disciples are walking away from Jerusalem after the crucifixion of Jesus. They meet a stranger on the road, who turns out to be the risen Lord. Even though they were walking away, Jesus still meets them. This book includes much more politics than the previous one, giving specific examples of why people have chosen to walk away from Christianity, particularly the evangelical flavor. Martin certainly knows his way around a metaphor, and this book is worth reading. Here's a taste:

 

"Life isn't plotted so all the movements are linear, telegraphed, obviously related. It's much more chaotic, clumsy, and ambiguous than that. We rarely know what's happening at the time, or really what we are doing or why, much less what anything actually means. But for most people I know who have been on the road, there has been a particular moment when they realized, with some kind of deep knowing, that there was no going back to the world as it was, the world as they knew it before. This was the moment that sent them out walking." 

Book #39 was Ready Player Two, by Ernest Cline. This is the sequel to Ready Player One, which I read for my Adolescent Lit class back in 2012 and wrote about in this post. This one is more of the same, people living their lives virtually instead of IRL, neglecting the planet. There's more of the scavenger hunt content, based on movies and popular culture from the eighties. Like with the first book, I found myself wondering who Cline's audience is. Although I was a teenager in the eighties, I don't have nearly the encyclopedic knowledge of eighties lore than his characters do. The characters are a little flat, and there's lots and lots of wish-fulfillment in the playing and winning of video games, the endless amounts of money, and the adrenaline-fueled plot. 

Book #40 was Shauna Niequist's I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet: Discovering New Ways of Living When the Old Ways Stop Working. This is my second time reading it since it came out in April. (The first time, I wrote about it in this post.) This is a really good book. Here's Shauna: "I'm sad that this is a plot point I have to incorporate into the story of my life. That's the heart of it. I don't want this part. I want to stick my fingers in my ears like a child. I want to lock the door against it. You can't be a part of my story."

Book #41 was a reread, Persuasion, by Jane Austen. I don't even know how many times I've read it before. The last time was in 2019 and I wrote about it here. This time my reading was instigated by watching the new adaptation of the novel on Netflix. It has been much discussed on the internet. It was silly and anachronistic and I still can't say I hated watching it. And it made me read the book again, which is always a good thing. Austen is always a comfort read for me. 

Book #42 was Kentucky poet Ada Limón's latest book of poetry, The Hurting Kind. Limón was just named the new Poet Laureate of the United States. I enjoy her work and have shared several of her poems before on this blog. This first reading of her book was rewarding, and I'll be reading it again.

Book #43, The Fight for My Life: Boxing Through Chemo, by Kelly Motley was written by a friend who is married to another friend I met in graduate school. I got to go to an event that Kelly did in Nashville promoting this story of how she fought breast cancer, using boxing and a macrobiotic diet. This is an intense book, and Kelly doesn't shy away from describing the agony she experienced. Sometimes I had to put it aside for a while because it is so intense! She emerges as a strong, indomitable woman facing a formidable foe. Probably the part that will stay with me the most is the epic saga of her hair. Her nutritionist said that her clients never lose their hair during chemo. I won't give away what happens, but just know that my words "epic saga" are appropriate! I liked the writing, the honesty, and the unflinching description.

Spiritual Journey Thursday: Summer Nurtures our Souls

Carol Varsalona is our host today and has asked us to reflect on the way summer nurtures our souls. I decided to go (mostly) wordless and show you some photos I've taken during cycling and birding expeditions in Kentucky and Tennessee this summer.

In that last one, you can see a foreshadowing of the next season!

Poetry Friday: Every Mile

 

This week, my total number of cycling miles since I joined Strava in April clicked over to 1000. (Strava is an app to keep track of athletic activity.) A thousand miles, mostly on a tandem (the one in the picture, from summer days in Kentucky, or the one in Paraguay), but some on a single bike. 

 

The poem I'm sharing today is really a song, written by one of my favorites, Nichole Nordeman. It's about miles. (Scroll past the video to read the words.) As I listen to this song, I think about the miles from this year so far. Some were fun and exhilarating, coasting or even pedaling all out downhill, going out-of-control fast. Some were painful, endless climbs, in the lowest gear. I even fell off my single bike a couple of times, once landing hard enough that I had to replace my helmet. (Always wear a helmet, kids.) There were a bunch of literal miles, and it's also, of course, a metaphor for all that I can't go into. You have your own miles; you know what I mean.

Every Mile Mattered

by Nichole Nordeman

 

Spread the map on the table

With the coffee stain

Put your finger on the places

Show me where you've been

 

Is that California

Where your teardrops dried?

You drew a circle around Georgia.

Can you tell me why?

 

I see should have beens, could have beens

Written all over your face,

Wrong turns and bridges burned,

Things you want to change

 

It's history

You can't rewrite it

You're not meant to be

Trapped inside it

 

Every tear brought you here

Every sorrow gathered

It's history

But every mile mattered

 

Get the box off the top shelf

With the black and white

Snapshots of your old self

In a better light

Ghosts and regrets back again

I can see it in your eyes

Send them home, let 'em go

Don't you think it's time?

 

It's history

You can't rewrite it

You're not meant to be

Trapped inside it

 

Every tear brought you here

Every sorrow gathered

It's history

 

Every road and every bend

Every bruise and bitter end

All you squandered, all you spent

It mattered, it mattered

Mercy always finds a way

To wrap your blisters up in grace

Every highway you'd erase

It mattered, it mattered

But it's history

It don't define ya

You're free to leave

It all behind ya

Every tear brought you here

Every sorrow gathered

It's history

Every mile mattered

Every mile mattered

 

 

I shared this song once before, in 2018, with some thoughts.

Mary Lee has the roundup this week.

Poetry Friday: July

I'm in the United States during this warm, dry summer. Some of the best moments in the last few weeks have involved friends, family, birds, and bicycles. I took the coneflower photo above on a morning birding expedition a couple of days ago.

Here's a poem about July:

July Day

by Babette Deutsch

The afternoon sways like an elephant, wears

His smooth grey hide, displays his somnolent grace, weighing

The majesty of his ponderous pace against

The slyness twinkling in an innocent eye.

 

Keep reading here, where the metaphor of the "elephant afternoon" goes on. 

Here's this week's roundup.

Reading Update

Book #33 of the year was a re-read, How to Survive a Shipwreck: Help is On the Way and Love is Already Here, by Jonathan Martin. Since I bought it in October 2016, I've gone through it several times. You can see the review I wrote on first reading here.

Book #34 was Summer Love, by Nancy Thayer. This was a fun, if forgettable, read.

Book #35 was Karma Gone Bad: How I Learned to Love Mangos, Bollywood, and Water Buffalo, by Jenny Feldon. This is a story of an expat, a "trailing spouse" who moves to India for her husband's job. She has trouble adjusting, but eventually manages it, as the title suggests. This was well-written and quite entertaining.

Book #36 was The Kidnapping of an American Missionary: One Woman’s Story of Courage and Conviction Under Fire, by Phyllis Sortor. I read a paper copy, but it looks as though the only format currently available from Amazon is on Kindle. Sortor, a long-term missionary in Nigeria, recounts the story of her traumatic kidnapping.

Poetry Friday: I Remember Galileo

I love Gerald Stern's description of the mind in this poem. Is the mind more like a piece of paper or a squirrel? You decide. 

I Remember Galileo

by Gerald Stern

I remember Galileo describing the mind

as a piece of paper blown around by the wind

and I loved the sight of it sticking to a tree

or jumping into the back seat of a car,

and for years I watched paper leap through my cities;

but yesterday I saw the mind was a squirrel caught crossing

route 80 between the wheels of a giant truck,

dancing back and forth like a thin leaf,

or a frightened string,

 

Here's the rest.

 

And here's today's roundup. 

Reading Update

Book #27 was Father of the Rain, by Lily King. This is the story of Daley, first in her childhood as her parents are splitting up, and then as an adult as she struggles to help her alcoholic father dry out. This was my third Lily King novel, and I enjoyed it.

Book #28 was H is for Hawk, by Helen MacDonald. Helen's father has just died, and Helen is training a goshawk. She's also reflecting on T. H. White, the author of The Sword in the Stone, who did some falconry of his own. My daughter recommended this one, and I was glad I read it.

Book #29 was Love Makes Room: And Other Things I Learned When My Daughter Came Out, by Staci Frenes. Frenes is a Christian musician whose life was upended by her daughter's revelation, in high school, that she was gay. This book chronicles the family's journey to acceptance.

Book #30 was The Bird of Light, by John Hay. This was a paper copy, given to me for Christmas by my daughter, and it turned out to be the perfect choice for a day of air travel. It's a beautiful book about terns, both scientifically and poetically written. 

Book #31 was I Wish I Could Say I Was Sorry, by Susie Kelly. This is a memoir about a young British girl growing up in Kenya in the 60s, and then her subsequent life. 

Book #32 was The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change, by Pauline Boss. This recent book, by the author who popularized the term "ambiguous loss," is a quick and helpful read.

Spiritual Journey Thursday: Celebration

 

"The joy that Jesus offers his disciples is his own joy, which flows from his intimate communion with the One who sent him. It is a joy that does not separate happy days from sad days, successful moments from moments of failure, experiences of honor from experiences of dishonor, passion from resurrection. This joy is a divine gift that does not leave us during times of illness, poverty, oppression, or persecution. It is present even when this world laughs or tortures, robs or maims, fights or kills. It is truly ecstatic, always moving us away from the house of fear into the house of love, and always proclaiming that death no longer has the final say, though its noise remains loud and its devastation visible. The joy of Jesus lifts up life to be celebrated." Henri Nouwen

You can see what everybody else posted here.

Reading Update

Book #19 of the year was a non-fiction title, The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, by Kirk W. Johnson. This story introduced me to a world I had no idea even existed, of people who make fishing flies, and seek feathers from rare birds to do so. It's a story of true crime. You just couldn't make it up. I couldn't put the book down.

Book #20 was one I read because it was in the anthology I was using with my eighth graders. It was In Search of Honor, by Donnalynn Hess. The book is set in the French Revolution, and I learned a few things I didn't know about that time period. I liked it way more than the kids did. To be fair, that is sometimes the case when I read books with middle schoolers!

Book #21 was The Love of My Life, by Rosie Walsh. I really enjoyed this book, which should have the tagline, "Keep reading. It's not what you think!" The ending was just wonderful. 

Book #22 was Princess Academy: Palace of Stone and book #24 was Princess Academy: The Forgotten Sisters. Both of these were sequels to Princess Academy, which I read aloud to my seventh graders once back in 2007. I hadn't fully realized there were even sequels, but some kids in the library were asking about them, so I downloaded them from my US library to preview. I enjoyed these. They are firmly in the middle grade range, in spite of the subject matter which involves a bride being chosen for a prince. It could have gone in a very "The Bachelor" direction but never does. There's romance but it's extremely tame. What I did really appreciate about these was the social consciousness, something you don't find often in fairy tale type stories. There's a whole plot about the "shoeless" of the kingdom, the people who are neglected and living in poverty. I would definitely purchase these for a library.

Book #23 was Pride: A Pride and Prejudice Remix, by Ibi Zoboi. (I reviewed another book by Zoboi here.) Somehow, in spite of my radar being keenly attuned to YA books with Haitian themes, I had missed this when it came out in 2020. It's one of those few truly successful Jane Austen retellings. Zuri Benitez is a Haitian-Dominican girl living in Brooklyn with her parents and four sisters. When the Darcy family moves into the neighborhood, sparks ensue. It's a story of gentrification, life in New York, and cultural mixtures. Some of my readers might be surprised by the vodou/santería subplot. It's not a huge part of the story but definitely there. Check out the link earlier in this paragraph for evidence that that's something Zoboi has explored before. These things are part of the subculture she's writing about, but some won't like them. 

Book #25 was Passing, by Nella Larsen. This book, set in the 1920s, was first published in 1929. The "passing" of the title refers to the practice of light-skinned African-Americans living as white people. In some cases, even those closest to them didn't know the secret. This book is short but packs a huge punch.

Book #26 was Crying in H Mart: A Memoir, by Michelle Zauner. Zauner is the daughter of a Korean American mother and a white American father. This book is about her fraught relationship with her mother, and especially her mother's last illness and death. It's also about being mixed-race and, most of all, about Korean food. H Mart in the title is a Korean grocery chain in the United States. This is good, but heart-rending. Maybe not the best read in times of stress.

Poetry Friday: Ada Limón

Ada Limón has a new book of poetry coming out! I haven't read it, but I sure wanted to when I heard this podcast this week. That link will take you to the transcript of Tuesday's BirdNote, and you can also listen there. It includes a poem from the new book, The Hurting Kind. (Go ahead and listen - it's only 2 minutes long!)

 

Ada hosts a podcast too; she took over The Slowdown recently.

I miss you, Poetry Friday friends! I haven't been as faithful posting and reading in this season. I hope this week I'll at least get a chance to come read your posts! 

Here's today's roundup.

Spiritual Journey Thursday: Abundance

This month's host, Susan, has asked us to reflect on the topic of Abundance. What a complicated word this is for me. I ask in advance for grace if you choose to read my thoughts -- it will soon become obvious that I have by no means figured this issue out! 

 

Jesus said that He had come to give us abundant life, and there's a wonderful spiritual abundance that provides for our days no matter what our circumstances. But as I look around the world and think of abundance, I feel so conflicted when I observe the deep poverty in which such a large proportion of human beings live, including many beloved to me. "Blessed are the poor," Jesus said. I think it's tempting for us to romanticize that blessedness by saying things like, "They're much happier than the rich." It's true that money doesn't buy happiness, but living a life without clean water, without health care, without security, without basic amenities of life, doesn't buy happiness either. Although I moved away from Haiti at the end of last year, I read the news from there daily, and I feel great pain to watch what is happening there, and how society is falling apart more each day.

On a far different scale (and I hesitate to even add this point because I am so well provided for), I am living in a season of paring down, having just moved and sold or given away so many of my possessions. I've been thinking a lot about what I truly need, how many dishes, how many books....  (See how the examples I give are of non-necessities, compared with people who carry their water on their heads from a common tap down the street, or people who have to leave their homes due to gang violence, and own only what they can hang somehow on their bodies? Even my scarcity would be enormous abundance to so many in this world.)

When I was thinking about abundance, I remembered a podcast from 2017, an interview that musician Sandra McCracken did with A Rocha founder Peter Harris. (A Rocha is a Christian environmentalist organization - check out their website for amazing resources!) I went back and listened to it again. I couldn't find a transcript, and I didn't have time to do a complete one myself, but here's a link to the thirty-one minute podcast, which is well worth the time, and below I'll include some quotes from it.

Harris talks a bit about liturgies, and how so much about living in and caring for the world is about repetition and faithfulness. He refers to a liturgy of turning on the faucet, if you are fortunate enough to live in a home with running water, getting into the habit of a moment of thankfulness when you experience that abundance. After he makes this comment, Sandra asks him if he has any thoughts on the words abundance and scarcity. In response, he talks about reading Ellen Davis. Referring to the children of Israel leaving Egypt, he says, "Egypt was the place of abundance. You knew exactly when the Nile would flood....The Promised Land was this place of scarcity...a semi-arid land between two deserts [ancient Hebrews saw the sea as a place of scarcity and chaos], dependent for rainfall on your relationship with God." In his organization, he says, "we've asked ourselves, does God want us in a place of [material] scarcity or abundance, and I don't think there's an easy answer...but I do think there's a creative scarcity, and a very destructive scarcity." He discusses the "thinning of nature," due to climate change and habitat loss, and how this leads to scarcity, "the scarcity of misery...soil impoverishment, water scarcity." In the middle of this litany of the opposite of abundance, he adds, "God occasionally takes us into outrageous moments of abundance." 

"You can't make sense of all of these things, can you, very easily? Gratitude is how we live, wherever we find ourselves, is what Paul says....I don't think our expectation should be for abundance. That's not the world we live in." He goes on to talk a bit about how physical abundance -- having riches, basically -- can put us in a position of temptation to rely on our own resources. 

Of course, as I mentioned earlier, there's a difference between physical abundance and spiritual abundance. We're physical creatures, though, and the older I get, the more aware I become of how much our physical and spiritual selves are connected. It's not as simple as having less materially making us more spiritual. But there's definitely a sense in which physical abundance can lead to spiritual poverty. 

I am so curious to see Susan's roundup of what others have to say on this topic. I always gain much food for thought each month.