Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good morning, everyone. It's great to have you all here today. We're really happy to see you. And we. We decided to form a circle rather than be in lines.
So this is going to be sort of a poetry circle this morning, and we're beginning our new series in Advent. Sing of a Savior, Words that Prepare the Way.
And we're so happy that we have Thais, Carter and Virginia with us today, who and both of them serve with me on the Adult Education Committee.
It's been a real gift to be able to spend time with them in this committee, and we're so happy that they're going to share their gifts with us today.
So I will introduce them in a moment. But first, let's pray. Please pray with me.
Gracious God, thank you for our friends here this morning.
Thank you for Thais and Virginia and their willingness to share their gifts. We ask that you bless our time together this morning as we invite your presence among us. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
Thais Carter is director for Strategic initiatives at Princeton Theological Seminary and serves on the boards of Lit World and the Westminster Foundation.
Virginia Kerr is a Princeton attorney and a member of the Adult Education Committee. Along with Thais, she has taught poetry through ABC Prison Literacy and the nonprofit People and Stories Gente and Suentos Cuentos. Thank you.
Please give a warm welcome to Thai east in Virginia.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: All right, can you guys hear me? Okay, so you might be already looking through your packet and wondering like, well, these aren't religious poems, and that is on purpose.
So today we are talking about waiting.
Advent is a season of waiting.
But this is not about kind of a passive delay until the thing that we're waiting for actually happens.
It's about kind of an attentive way. Way of thinking about the moment that we are in, so thinking about an attentive presence.
And each of these poems is included to help us kind of explore those in between spaces, whether that be longing or change or uncertainty, memory, hope.
And so what we're going to do is we're going to kind of move through each poem. Virginia and I will take turns introducing the poem.
We'll invite one of you to read the poem out loud. If people don't volunteer quickly, we are going to move forward, friends, because we want to make sure that we have plenty of time for discussion.
But as the poem is read, we want you to listen for a phrase that resonates with you, an image that either clarifies something or maybe even unsettles something, or a question that is coming up within you as the poem is read.
And then we'll have a couple reflection questions for you to kind of consider, and then we'll come together as a large group at the end to talk about it.
But with that, Virginia's going to kick us off with the first poem.
[00:03:18] Speaker C: All right, my challenge. I've met my first challenge. I've turned on the mic.
So we're starting with a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks. I'm sure a lot of you know about Gwendolyn Brooks, but I'll just tell you a little. She's an African American poet who was born in Chicago in 1917. She died in 2000. She won many awards, published her first poem when she was 13 years old. John Parker, a member of this congregation, went to school in Chicago, and Gwendolyn Brooks actually visited his class.
And I'm here because John Parker can't be here. I am the B team here. So I'm just telling you that just as we talk about this poem and you think about it, I'd like you to also think about what you would sing if you could sing anything at this moment.
And having said that, do I have a volunteer to read this poem? Yes.
I shall not sing a May song. A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November and sing a song of gray I'll wait until November that is the time for me. I'll go out in the frosty dark and sing most terribly and all the little people will stare at me and say that is the crazy woman who would not sing in May.
Thank you.
Wonderful.
Just as a couple of background comments, too, about Gwendolyn Brooks. She was a technically proficient poem. And this poem is extremely simple on the surface, but when you look at the rhyme scheme, it's pretty complex.
You might also hear an echo of Walt Whitman in this.
So.
And I have that sitting here, the echo. But I'm not going to treat you to the echo. So are we asking for comments now or.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I think part of what we want you to consider with this poem is what expectations your own or others, do you feel pressure to meet, especially in this season?
Part of the kind of beauty of the structure of this is that it's not that she won't sing or can't sing, but that she will do so in her own time.
And so something to consider is where might you need permission to follow a different pace? I think especially going into the holidays, that can be like a wonderful place to start of, you know, what is your song, which I Think was the.
[00:06:14] Speaker C: Way that you set it up? Yeah. What is your song? What would you sing? And also, I think it's useful to keep in mind that Gwendolyn Brooks was an African American poet living at a particular time.
And there are ways to read this poem that embedded in her own experience as an African American woman.
But for anybody who read.
Just glanced at the headlines this morning, it's not stuck in that. Her context.
And I'm just wondering if there's a word, too, in this poem that struck you, One word that just sort of jumped out at you?
Yes.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: The word little.
[00:07:04] Speaker C: Little.
And why.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: I didn't really hear it when it.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: Was read, but when I looked down, all the little people.
What does little mean?
Is it short people? Kids?
Or is it people who have a little mindset?
Interesting.
Or narrow people, perhaps Any other word that struck. Yes.
So you see, it's dark. Very dark. Yes. And it's a very dark poem.
I feel sad for the lady.
And I think that that is.
Being a singer, I associate Carol with this time of year. But frosty dark, it's even uncomfortable. But the speaker is holding onto that darkness, and that's very sad. I disagree completely with you.
I think it's sort of extraordinary that she sees a time that's dark. And I see frosty dark as invigorating. I mean, when you go out at night and it's cold, it's just beautiful.
And for her to sort of sing when everybody else is not singing, I just think it's extraordinary.
That's okay. She perhaps can't carry a tune.
So you. Yeah. Singing most terribly. You said it was defiant. I wonder what terribly means.
She couldn't carry a tune. Is that.
Are there other ways to think about. I think she's singing in pain. I think she's railing.
Yeah.
The word that struck me is gray.
First of all, this time of year, you know, the weather is often very gray. And I do think Advent and Christmas time. It's a really hard time for a lot of people.
And I really appreciate this poem and the acknowledgement of that.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: That.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: What I like about what she's doing.
[00:09:52] Speaker C: Is that she's acknowledging the gray and the frosty dark. But she's saying, I'm gonna sing something that feels right to me in that time. Because sometimes when we're thinking about a time that feels really hard for us, we just.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Especially this time of year, I think.
[00:10:05] Speaker C: About, like, hibernation or sleeping or, you know, you feel down and you.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Maybe you don't do anything, but she's.
[00:10:10] Speaker C: Like, oh, no, I'm going out there in the gray, and I'm menacing about what's going on with me. And it's hard. And I appreciate that.
Thank you.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess I was going to add that it seems easy to sing in May, so the fact that she's going to save it up till November is sort of, you know, along the same lines.
[00:10:31] Speaker C: Excellent. All right.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Well, we're going to. We'll be able to kind of come back and talk about all of these together, but we're going to move to the next poem, which is by Octavio Paz, called Between Going and Staying.
And this is really intended to be kind of meditation on being suspended between motion and stillness, and kind of how we can exist in two states at once.
[00:10:53] Speaker C: Who's Octavio Pas? What race is he?
[00:10:56] Speaker B: You know, I am not Virginia. And I did not do the full bio on every single poet.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: He's Mexican.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Go for it. Anything else you want to share about Octavio?
[00:11:06] Speaker C: Well, you go ahead.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Well, I was going to say if someone would want to read it, and then we can.
[00:11:10] Speaker C: He won the Nobel Prize in 1990.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: Love it.
Who would like to read this poem?
Thanks, Carol.
[00:11:26] Speaker C: Between going and staying, the day wavers in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive.
All is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass, rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall Into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye watching myself in its blank stare.
The motion scatters.
Motionless, I stay and go.
I am.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: A pause.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Thank you, Carol.
[00:12:29] Speaker C: That's a good question. And I don't know the answer.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: I don't know the answer.
I love that everybody is free to go down the rabbit hole of every single, single poem.
The questions here are kind of, where in your life do you feel poised between what was and what is emerging?
And kind of, what does that threshold ask of you in this season?
But I think to kind of pick up on Virginia's initial question. If there's a word or a phrase that resonates, and then kind of thinking about that question as we discuss.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: So the phrase that struck me for a poet was this paper, book, pencil, glass, rest in the shade of their names, which led me to believe he's writing about writer's block.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: I love that observation key.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: One of the things that stood out to me was the light turns the indifferent wall into a ghostly theater of reflections. Reminded me of Plato, who had the impression of what's happening by the shadows and maybe feels like he's looking at a part of his life in that way as he goes through what seems to be a transition.
[00:13:59] Speaker C: It was originally written in Spanish.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Excellent.
[00:14:03] Speaker C: Thank you, Lolly.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: It is important to know.
[00:14:07] Speaker C: And it'd be fun to see the Spanish version too, to see how the rhythm and the words were.
Well, next time. Okay.
Any other.
Anything else that this last phrase strikes me. I am a pause.
It reminds me. There's an Anne Sexton poem that reads, I am a watercolor I wash off.
Which is if we want to talk about a dark.
It's title. On my lover returning to his wife. That's the title of the poem. So you. You can understand that. But I am a pause and this is a season of pause, in a way.
I mean, we're waiting.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:10] Speaker C: The one outside image is the bay.
And it's rocking, but it's circular.
The afternoon is circular. And I found that interesting that everything else is interior but that bay. And I myself like to watch water and find it calming. So I just thought I'd point that out. That's the one exterior image.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Thanks, Lorraine.
You want to move on to the next one?
[00:15:45] Speaker C: Okay. We're going to go to the.
Oh, we have. Oh.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: I found it in Spanish. And one line that's interesting is the one that they translate.
I find myself in the middle of an eye, watching myself in its blank stare.
So literally translated, in the center of an eye I find myself.
It doesn't look at me, it looked at me. And it's looking. It's like very like reflexive in a way that they can't quite capture.
[00:16:16] Speaker C: Can you read the Spanish? The original Spanish? I'm sure that the whole thing.
Why not?
[00:16:23] Speaker B: If you're willing to go for it.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Yes, sure.
I'm going to try my best.
Enamorado de su transparencia natalde sicular Es ya bahia insuqueto. Vai bien, se mese el munco.
Todo es fisible y todo es elusivo.
Todo esta cerca y todo es intocable.
Los papeles, el libro, el vaso.
Indifferente un espectral. Te atro reflejos.
No me mira memiro en sumirada Sevicipa el instante.
Si moverme. Yo mequedo, yo me voy.
Soy una pausa.
[00:17:38] Speaker C: Beautiful. Thank you, Eric. Thank you so much.
Yesterday morning I Got up before dawn.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: And I sat in the living room in the dark, and I looked at my western wall as the light coming.
[00:18:01] Speaker C: In the eastern window.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: Cast different shapes and displays.
[00:18:09] Speaker C: And finally there was some orange light. I thought, aha, the sun is up. And I went and I looked, and I could see the orange ball of the sun.
But when you sit in the dark and look at the wall, it really does put on quite a show for you.
Thank you.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: Wonderful.
[00:18:32] Speaker C: Okay. Well, we're going to move on to the next poem. And this is by Wendy Cope. She's an English poet.
She's called that rarest of writers. A poet who's both critically acclaimed and a true best seller. She was born in 1945 and was raised in Kent, England.
And Lissadel is a place in Ireland, in Sligo, northwestern Ireland.
And the house Lissadel has a lot of history and meaning connected with the Irish uprising.
Yeats has a poem about Lycadel also, but this one is Wendy Cope's Lycadel.
And do I have a volunteer to read it?
Yes.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: Last year we went to Lissadel. The sun shone over Sligo Bay and life was good and all was well.
The bear, the books, the dinner bell, an air of dignified decay.
Last year we went to Lisendell.
This year the owners had to sell. It calls to mind a Chekhov play.
Once life was good and all was well.
The house is now an empty shell, the contents auctioned, shipped away.
Last year we went to Lise Adel and found it magical. We fell in love with it. We sometimes say, when life is good and all is well.
The light of evening, a gazelle.
It seemed unchanged since Yeats Day.
Last year we went to Lisendel and life was good and all was well.
[00:20:32] Speaker C: Thank you. It was wonderfully, wonderfully read.
This is what's called a villanelle. That's the form of this poem.
It has 19 lines, and you can see there's a repetition of the first line and the third line.
And it's has a kind of enchanted quality about it.
I'm wondering what struck you about this poem.
A word.
Feeling.
Yeah. Andrew.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: Something I felt was a kind of sadness of an adjacent misfortune, like a favorite restaurant closing, where.
But for the owners, it's a catastrophe, and for me it's a sadness, but it's not the same.
The loss of this house might be a really profound grief for the people who owned it.
And for her as a vacationer coming to this place, there's also a sadness for her. Even though they're not matched in the same measure.
I appreciate that. Poignancy of the impact isn't fully brought to you, but nevertheless, there's something really sad about it.
[00:22:12] Speaker C: But she found it magical, or the poet found it magical.
So.
Think of houses that we grew up in that eventually got sold, and then we go back and see what's happened to them.
[00:22:31] Speaker B: Well, it's a wonderful way of thinking about how memories and kind of like traces of an experience or a place inform who we are today.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Yeah. And did it become magical and reflecting back on it?
[00:22:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: Like, did she realize how. To what degree did she realize it was magical?
[00:22:50] Speaker C: Did you have. Yeah.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: I guess the question I have is which Chekhov play is referred to?
[00:23:00] Speaker C: Because I have that question too, and I haven't really answered it, but I think it's the Cherry Orchard. Yeah, it's kinda pain they had to sell it.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: A very practical interpretation. Yes. Cherry orchard.
[00:23:16] Speaker C: 100% okay, the cherry Orchard.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: But I think the illusion here is that it brings these things. There's sort of hidden mysteries. Unless you know that. But if you do know it, it brings into mind other things, as.
[00:23:42] Speaker C: Are we.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: Anything else for Lissadel?
[00:23:47] Speaker C: Carol's got it.
I'm totally puzzled by that last stanza. The light of evening, a gazelle.
What is that about?
I thought I meant it fleetingly. It went those fast.
One piece I noticed in connection with that is that there's a bear when they're there at the beginning. And then there's a gazelle and there's sun in the first and evening in the last dance. I'm not sure I know what to make of that.
And if we knew what she's got in mind for Yeats, that would also help. We've got somebody here who's going to quickly give us the answer to that one.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: Patricia's like, I'm so glad you asked.
[00:24:39] Speaker C: Well, I took that line about the bear that books the dinner belly when she goes in. And there's the stuffed bear sitting on the chest of drawers and the books on the shelf and the dinner bell that's left farther in the dining room, which is sort of in images of what she sees every time she used to go back. That's all I thought that was.
And the Yeats. There's a Yeats poem called In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markovitz.
And they were both very involved in Irish politics and they were both poets. And the first line of that poem is the light of evening, Lissadel. Great windows open to the south. Two girls in Cinque Kimonos, both beautiful, One a Gazelle.
So you can see that Wendy Cope is. And that's about. Poetry is built. You know, poets build on all sorts of things, beginning with the Bible and then lots of works by other poets. But she's very explicit there in that reference. It's like all the secrets you need to know, but you don't really. I mean, I think the poem kind of stands on its own.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Well, she's very referential. I think it does. But she's also doing a very specific kind of work. Like, she's situating herself in other people, in other stories in the same way. Like, this idea of, like, how these memories, like, inform who we are. Like, she's informed by, like, her referencing is part of, like, the work that the poem is doing, whether, you know, the references or not.
[00:26:13] Speaker C: Does she do that in other poems of hers?
Well, I'm not sure. Her most famous poem is called the Orange, which, when we finish, I can read to you if you're interested. It went viral, the poem, the Orange. But it doesn't seem to be filled, packed with literary illusions. So people just love the orange.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: I'll jump in and just forgive me already. I belong to her. So, John Marshall, this is a year. I mean, it's Advent, back to the Advent season. And this for me has been a.
[00:26:52] Speaker C: Year of transition as well.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: And the house is now an empty shell.
[00:26:57] Speaker C: My father died in February and the.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: House that he lived in is now.
[00:27:01] Speaker C: All packed up and shipped away. And I keep thinking about the time.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: Times when it was all together and that was a place of joy. And now all the parts have been distributed. And so it's.
And the same is true at work. I'm moving out of my office that.
[00:27:17] Speaker C: I've been in for over 20 years.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: And I just, over the last few weeks, packed it all up and brought a lot of it home, threw a lot of it away. But then I was thinking back to your comments earlier about this being a time of preparation.
And for me, yes, sadness, but also it feels increasingly like a fresh start and room to make new things and new memories and new space and all of that. So I'm letting go of those things in preparation for what's coming.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: Thanks, John.
[00:27:49] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: In four score and three years, I've moved around a lot and come to different places. What this poem says to me is, you can't go home again.
So we have memories and we take those memories and we put them on a shelf, and now and then we take the memories off out, dust them off and put them back again.
You can't go home again because home is time, not a place.
[00:28:23] Speaker C: Thanks, David.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: All right, so we're gonna move to our next poem. This one is called Narrative Theology Number One by Padraig Ottooma. He's an Irish poet, theologian.
He was raised Catholic and has done a lot of work in conflict mediation.
He has a number of collected works, but he's probably best known these days. He hosts Poetry Unbound, which is a podcast kind of within the on being with Krista Tippett Universe.
And so this poem is about kind of helping us think about how meaning is made through relationship and language and the willingness to let the story keep unfolding.
So who would like to read this one for us? Okay, ready?
[00:29:10] Speaker C: So ready.
[00:29:11] Speaker B: All the things you said make me.
[00:29:13] Speaker C: Want to read this poem, Narrative Theology Number One.
And I said to him, are there answers to all of this?
And he said, the answer is in the story, and the story is being told.
And I said, but there is so much pain.
And she answered plainly, pain will happen.
And then I said, will I ever find meaning?
And they said, you will find meaning where you give meaning.
The answer is in the story, and the story isn't finished.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: What parts of your life feel like they are still mid story?
And what is faithfulness look like in the mid story time?
[00:30:12] Speaker A: If you don't look up, you won't see hands raised.
Okay, so I definitely saw this poem differently than you explained it because I looked at this and I said, these are all the questions we ask of God.
And the transition of God from him to her to them was interesting and transformative to me. But also because I looked forward into the bonus poems, I connected this poem with no Time to Wait by Jose Oliveres Olivarez.
And I thought how much the story being told and this poem, no Time to Wait were closely related.
[00:31:05] Speaker C: I agree.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: Originally they were paired together and then we thought, we can't do so many poems in so little time. But Keith, you made the connection.
It's on you got it.
[00:31:29] Speaker C: This to me, this poem to me seems to be an action poem.
And the two lines that strike me is, you will find meaning where you give meaning.
So you cannot sit idly by and expect your life to go on. You have to be proactive.
I love that.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: What else stands out? Other questions that come up for you.
[00:32:07] Speaker A: So struck by this is that the questions are all.
They're questions of fact, they're question of explanation, and the only response that's given back is a story.
So It's. There's a mismatch between the kinds of questions that the author here is asking, presumably God or the universe or whatever. And then the response back is always story.
And I think that's just striking. That's all we get back from the universe and that's what we live in.
[00:32:42] Speaker C: I can't let that go by. Eric, you set me up.
Of course it's story.
And you all will miss the story this morning because it's a baptism, but it's a story of Hope. From Isaiah 9.
You might want to hear it live streamed.
You throw it to me because in these days my life is. I'm looking for hope.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: Where is the hope?
[00:33:15] Speaker C: And claiming there is hope. So I love the last line. And the story isn't finished, thank God. The story is not finished. Amen.
Well, so I was struck. There's really no imagery in this one.
It's abstract. The others have light and houses and walls.
No, they did. It's wonderful. It's true.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: It's a great observation.
[00:33:47] Speaker A: Look at the pronouns here. I said he said. I said she answered. I said they.
[00:34:01] Speaker C: Trinity.
I think Lolly is right that technically there's no imagery, but for me, at least, the word pain brought up a panoply of images that were there.
Even, you know, allowed each person who seems to me read the poem to bring up the image of their own pain, singular or plural, personal or political, or whatever it would be, or all the above.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: I love that you brought that up, Kathy, because every time I read this, it hits me when the original he says, the answer is in a story and the story is being told. And I said, but there is so much pain. And this idea that how can the story be good if there's pain?
[00:34:52] Speaker C: Pain.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: And the fact that, like. But there. And she answered plainly, pain will happen. And like, this idea of, like, how we come to manage our expectations about, like, what is, like, the right story or a good story, and that, like, the absence of pain is not necessarily like, makes it a better story. But the idea that, like, the story isn't finished and that the pain isn't the final word. Like, I always find so much hope in this poem.
[00:35:18] Speaker C: Because of the pain. Yeah. And seems to me, I guess to me that was important because when everything is happy and beautiful, I don't ask why or what's going on or what are the answers?
And maybe we should ask all the time. But I think pain is what makes us ask, where are the answers?
I noticed, too. Sorry, I'm taking over. Sorry, Larry. I'll pass it back.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: I just have to say there is.
[00:35:47] Speaker C: Nothing in here about a story being good.
It's just a story.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: I noticed the title is called Theology Number One, and this concept of God is a trinity, he, she, them. So it's very Christian in that way. And perhaps it's trying to bring out that theological aspect as well.
[00:36:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:36:19] Speaker A: I couldn't help realizing that this one.
[00:36:21] Speaker C: Sort of slammed into me because when.
[00:36:24] Speaker A: I was living in Southern Russia and working there, it was living in the world.
[00:36:27] Speaker C: It's disinformation. And truth was what I was told to be truth. It was very interesting. Thank you, Marshall. Sleep at the switch.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: So, again, backed into my Christian theological hat. So the pain. The crucifixion was not the end of the story.
And I would say that the Resurrection was the beginning or a new beginning for the story. So I'm sort of interpreting this concept of story, of the story of salvation. Yeah.
In the face of pain and questions and meaning.
[00:37:20] Speaker C: You wrote in English, not Irish.
That's true. And I read the sources, the pronouns of the various pronouns as the answers come coming from various sources.
[00:37:38] Speaker A: Something that I thought of, too, is that often it's in hindsight that I realize where I've given meaning to things. Like, I realize later that something is meaningful to me. And it made me think of. I think that that's sometimes what we do when we tell a story is that we make choices about what was meaningful in what happened to us or what we did or how we acted. And I like that interplay of the sense of giving meaning.
Sometimes we give meaning without realizing we're doing it. And it's only in telling the story about what happened that's actually a realization of what was meaningful to ourselves.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: So those are the poems that we chose for. Yay.
But a couple of things. So we included all the ones that we also really liked in the bonus poems.
But the hope is, I mean, to kind of go back to the original, like, reason why we wanted to kind of kick off the adult education for Advent with poetry is the idea that, you know, there are ways that poetry can feel really inaccessible in, like, whether it's, I don't know, the references that they were making or, I don't know enough about kind of, like, the style or, like, what's actually happening here. But poetry is also the most accessible in that, like, it's something that is.
[00:39:09] Speaker C: Often.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Boundaried in a way that, like, you can really, like, dig into it. Like, we probably could have spent an entire session on any One of these poems and gone completely, like, down the rabbit hole. And that also would have been really fun because this is a good group to do that with.
But I think, especially in moments where I. And maybe, you know, I'm just projecting here where you feel like at capacity and there are so many other things happening. And it's like, I don't want to start a devotional that I'm not gonna finish. And I don't wanna, like, you know, go all in on something that I don't have time for.
That poetry kind of asks us to stop and pay attention in a way that I think is so appropriate for the Advent season.
And so if this kind of kickstarts a little bit of a kind of poetry discipline in this season, what a lovely gift that would be.
But just a reminder that waiting is not an empty action.
It is full of movement and memory and possibility and grace.
[00:40:10] Speaker C: Grace.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: And so the hope is that these poems help you listen to the quiet work that is happening within you and around you.
And thank you all. You all have been such great conversation partners. We were like, listen, either people are going to talk or they're not going to talk. And we knew that this group could handle it. So thank you all for your lovely participation. Anything else you would want to.
[00:40:32] Speaker C: Well, I don't know. Does anybody. You want to hear the orange? Okay, I'm going to read the orange. It's going to. You tell.
I just have to locate the orange and I will read it. Okay, here it is.
At lunchtime, I bought a huge orange. The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave. They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange, it made me so happy. As ordinary things often do just lately. The shopping, a walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It's new.
The rest of the day was quite easy. I did all the jobs on my list and enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I'm glad you exist. I'm glad I exist.
How she wrote that. Did you read why she wrote it? No. Tell us. She went to lunch with these people and they were in the line picking out their food, and there was an enormous orange. And she got it.
And she wrote it that night, she said, for the man who was her new boyfriend.
Well, she's got quite a sense of humor.
And I could also. I have one more, well, poem that isn't on our list and anywhere.
[00:41:56] Speaker B: Well, I was also gonna say I would love it if Keith read the Jose Olivarez poem. He's a Chicago based poet. He's wonderful.
He has a great collection called Citizen Illegal, which I highly recommend. But the poem that we included, Keith, it makes me think of like.
It makes me think of the community here in a really interesting way. But I would love it if you would.
[00:42:19] Speaker C: And this was written in English?
[00:42:20] Speaker B: Yes, it was.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: And that was part of what attracted me to this poem as well.
No time to wait. Kneeling in the pews, my parents prayed to the statue of Christ for protection.
We were new to Chicago. We were new to the United States alone, you might think.
But it wasn't just Christ in that church. There was the Mexican family that housed us, the Mexican family that connected us with immigration lawyers, the Mexican family that got my dad a job. The Mexican family that invited us to birthday parties, the Mexican family that showed us how to make calls back to Mexico. There was the Mexican family gossiping behind our backs alone. My parents couldn't drink a beer without someone's Primo asking for a sip.
Kneeling in that church, there was salvation everywhere. Give Christ the credit if you want, but he never did whisper the winning lottery numbers in our ears. In that church there was a priest offering salvation later. And there were Mexicans with no time to wait.
[00:43:24] Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you.
Primo's a cousin, right?
[00:43:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
And all of ours parents were Mexican immigrants to Chicago.
[00:43:39] Speaker C: This is a wonderful group.
[00:43:42] Speaker B: We're at time. I mean, on my phone.
[00:43:45] Speaker C: We were at times.
Anything else?
[00:43:49] Speaker A: Did you have the Whitman echo?
[00:43:52] Speaker C: Oh, yes, I do. Well, yes, I think at the very beginning of Leaves of Grass, you know, I think my first question is, if you were going to sing, what would you sing? And Whitman oneself. I sing.
Oneself I sing. A simple, separate person, yet utter the word democratic, the word en masse of physiology from top to toe I sing. Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone is worthy. For the muse I say the form complete is worthier far, the female equally with the male. I sing of life immense in passion, pulse and power cheerful for freest action formed under the laws divine, the modern man I sing.
And I thought the Gwendolyn Brooks poem is so simple, but I just hear an echo of. Of Whitman in that. I mean, it's very.
It's the Crazy Woman.
The crazy woman is singing now.
And you know, I'm not going to sing a happy song in May, particularly if I'm not feeling happy in May.
[00:45:15] Speaker B: Not what you want or when you want it.
[00:45:16] Speaker C: Yeah, it will be great anyway, so.
[00:45:21] Speaker B: Have a blessed start to Advent, everybody.
[00:45:23] Speaker A: Let's give a big hand to Thais in Virginia.
Thank you so much.
Next week, we will be looking at more stories with Shannon Daley Harris. She is one of the authors of the Just Love Story Bible, a new children's bible inviting families to explore God's justice and love throughout the scripture. We hope you'll join us.
