Assuming it Matters

"Assuming it Matters" first appeared on the Kore Press blog "Persephone speaks" on WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Assuming it Matters by Susan Baller-Shepard

When I was very little, I loved to write in my room, on long skinny strips of paper given to me by my great aunt the librarian. In seventh grade, I won an essay contest and a big chicken dinner for my whole family. In eighth grade, my essay about a local candy company was published in a state history journal, and my mom and I got to have lunch with the governor. The message to me: words feed people.

But in college, writing become uncomfortable, so I abandoned it. I worked at a church, left the country, returned, got married, went to grad school in a dual competency program, and got two masters: divinity and social work. I took one writing class, along with my other graduate classes, and the instructor told me I had “verb tense problems.” I got ordained, worked at churches, eventually had two sons and adopted a daughter. I did the things women do that get repeatedly undone: laundry, dishes, meals, house cleaning.

I felt an urge to write again. I thought no one would take me; I hadn’t written or published in years. Still, I kept feeling this need to put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard. I submitted a manuscript to Dr. Lucia Cordell Getsi, editor of Spoon River Poetry Review, asking to get into her graduate poetry writing class. I was convinced it wouldn’t happen. I got an email back from Lucia saying I was welcome to come and try out the course. She wrote, “I can tell from your manuscript that you are a serious writer.”

Lucia helped me think again. She was not as I had conjured her in my brain. She was short, attractive, worldly, wordy, scientific, mathematical, poetic. I tell her she is surgical in her editing. She cuts away what doesn’t belong, and sees what is healthy and connective. Mostly, though, she helped me to think through poems, learn the skeletal frames of the poems, consider their sinewy tissues. Now I have a book length poetry manuscript which Lucia edited, a children’s book manuscript, and I am presently writing a collection of essays.

I am forty-five and grateful to have age on my side, to be a woman writing the truth of my life, as a minister, web site editor, wife, mother, writer. They are mutually inclusive roles. My brother Jim says I should be glad my roles feed each other. That’s the beauty I see in the over-forty writing women and men I know well. They speak the truth about their lives: the good, the bad, the less-than-perfect. I value this. It’s less about publication now than it is about giving voice to what needs to be said, what can finally be said at this side of forty. If we don’t say it now, maybe it won’t get said.

On TV recently, I saw Jessica Lange give the commencement address at Sarah Lawrence College. She urged the young women,

“Remember who you are. Because, right now, you have it all: the power of your imagination, the velocity of your dreams, the language of innocence, and the passion of a beginner. Don't lose it. Don't let it evaporate or get stripped away or worn away. And, as time passes, if you find you've come far away from yourself, allow the breeze of humility to remind you of who you were—who you really are.”

Persephone lived in circles, cycling between worlds, going away, coming home. I am thankful to Lucia, and others, who reminded me of my writing self.I have circled back around to the child I was, the child who shut herself in her room because she loved to write.


Spoon River Poetry Review
http://www.litline.org/Spoon/index.html

Jessica Lange’s Commencement Address
http://www.slc.edu/news-events/Jessica_Lange_Commencement_Address.php

Love the whole notion of "Playing for Change," a global music effort

Sure thing...

So if words are like bread, and they feed you as you write them,
then how do You choose to share them? Or do you?
It's a conversation we have in our writing group.

And, if you wish to have your bready words published, then how, and when, and why?

If you haven't picked up The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, it's a great book on writing, etc.

Meanwhile, got my first non-fiction manuscript rejection this week.
Surely this is supposed to inspire humility, a rethinking, a pause?
But it doesn't really. I'm just glad I know the yea/nay thing with that imprint.

What's the sure thing in your writing process?
For one friend, it's the writing process that's the sure thing.
For another? It's the writing and the publishing that count.
For me? It's the conversation, the shared wordy bready things.
The talk about what sustains us on this journey.

Have you ever been on an airplane for an extended period of time, maybe on the tarmac
and because of your hustle between connecting flights you have missed every meal,
and then you find yourself rooting through your stuff to see if you have anything
like a mint or a piece of gum, something wholly unsatisfying, but anything, because
your stomach is actually growling above the din of the plane's motor?
Do I want the words I share to be the linty piece of gum wilting in the bottom of my purse?
No. I want to write words like the spread before Johnny Cash in his "Hurt" video,
something you can choose to take or leave, but a big spread nevertheless.

So maybe the words are food, or maybe they're not, but if you're hungry,
you'll dig for something to sustain you more than a piece of gum.
And maybe that's something to write to: the hunger
And as Sheryl Crow sings, "Maybe that's something."



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go

Choosing A Protocol of Prayer

     I have prayed the fervent prayers of a mother with a feverish child, uttered anguished prayers over a loved one's plight, concerned prayers of a parent handing over car keys, offered prayers of thanksgiving and sorrow as I've sat with those breathing their last breaths. I wish I thanked God more: for the lilies, the gold finches, the fawn that just ran across my yard at a full run; for the old people I love and the new ones I've yet to meet; for the friends and family who have been hewn and are steadfast as rock in my life.
     Recently, while talking about prayer, a friend replied, "I'm no good at it." This got me thinking. I told her, "I'm no 'good at it' either, I just do it a lot." I've heard there's a Chinese proverb that says, "Before preparing to improve the world, first look around your own home three times." Prayer, if anything, helps me get my spiritual home in order. Before I can pray for peace, or for others, or for whatever/whomever I wish to pray for or about, I seek God in silence, try to get quiet in light of all the noise, just to listen, to be still.
      A pilot friend of mine recently had to make his first-ever-emergency landing.
I asked him, "Were you afraid?"
He replied, "No. I had too many things to do, there was protocol to follow."
     Prayer can be like that. In the midst of all the noise and urgency of life, instead of choosing fear or worry, choosing a protocol of prayer. Prayer is the go-to plan, and when the emergencies have passed, prayer is also remembering to say, "thank you."

Prayer

Holy One,
Sometimes what we want is answers--
why things happen as they do,
and to know where You are active
and where You are not, and why?
Today we ask for Your grace.
We ask for courage to live brave lives
full of compassion for others.
We ask for peace everywhere, and justice.
We ask for Your presence.
Thank You for what we cannot see with our eyes.
Thank You.
Amen.

Quotes on prayer & peace
"To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world." --Karl Barth

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it - always."--Mahatma Gandhi

"In my dream I scratch my head and get up and listen. I listen and listen, until the dawn. All my life I have heard rain, and I am an old man; but now for the first time I understand the sound of spring rain on the river at night. -Yang Wan-li

Originally written for the Odyssey Network's "Million Minutes for Peace" Program
http://www.amillionminutesforpeace.org/on-prayer-SusanBaller-Shepard.shtml

Ethics in an Oil Spill: Sorrow in a Spill

                        Here we find ourselves again, viewing images of Lake Pontchartrain. This time, the threat is not from nature, it’s human-made. Tar balls from the Gulf Oil spill threaten the lake, as that oil spill looms into not days, not weeks, but months. Surely, this gas and oil spill has been both a nightmare, and a public relations fiasco. Images of smoke billowing from the oil rig, reminded me of the General Power Plant we passed when I was in Zhangjiakou, in the People’s Republic of China. That power plant spews forth things like carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, mercury, etc. Breathing in that air makes you feel like you have a chronic case of strep throat. What is the air like near the spill, I wonder? What legacy is this spill leaving for future generations to face?
Seeing the plethora of images of oil and smoke pouring out of the rig with seemingly nothing to stop it, makes me feel most of all, sad. The Congressional hearings before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to "get to the bottom" of this bottomless spill, left me feeling bereft. "Who’s at fault?" was the question.
          As the buck was passed, like a hot potato, as fingers were pointed, and accusations hurled, about "what was retro-fitted and when was it fitted?" I thought of the chant, "What do we want?" (Fill in the blank) and "When do we want it? Now!" All of this made me wonder, what do I want to hear in all of this? What would be a welcome relief from this game of hot potato?
                I think of the oft-quoted line from Genesis, God asks Cain about the whereabouts of Abel, and Cain responds, "I do not know, am I my brother’s keeper?"* Do Halliburton Co., BP, Transocean Ltd. and see themselves as responsible for the lives and livelihoods that will be completely changed as a result of this spill? What does BP see as "legitimate claims?"
           In Genesis, "God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very good."** I think of the Dawn commercial where a woman washes off an oil-soaked bird like I’d wash off a dinner plate. One bird at a time. Still the images of oil-soaked birds are on the news daily. How many birds, marine life, humans will be harmed by this spill, and the use of the widely disputed chemical dispersant Corexit? No one has used Corexit in "real life," in real situations outside of a lab, and it was dumped into the Gulf of Mexico’s morass as if it is water, making millions for the Nalco company, creator of Corexit. No one knows the shelf-life of Corexit, how it affects the endocrine levels of marine life, how that could potentially harm generations of marine life and human life, no one knows the potential toxicity levels, because it’s never been used at this volume.
         Meanwhile, the oil spill flows into months now as we watch and wring our hands. When will it stop? What these corporations don’t realize, in this massive mess, is the grief attached to it. Young people see the images, and get this message: Human-made environmental catastrophes can happen, do happen, and there is little that can be done to stop them. They also sense this: The amazing Gulf of Mexico will never be the same after this spill.
       What I am not hearing, that I want to hear now, in the midst of this sorrow is corporations saying, "Mea culpa," Latin for "My fault," or
"Mea maxima culpa," meaning, "My most grievous fault," because if this oil spill and clean up is anything, it is grievous.

*Genesis 4:9
**Genesis 1:31

This essay by Susan Baller-Shepard first appeared on the Patheos website
http://www.patheos.com/community/mainlineportal/2010/07/08/ethics-in-an-oil-spill-sorrow-in-a-spill/