Am I a real poet? Beginning in late adolescence, I began to ask myself that question. In various ways, I tried to get others–mainly people I considered “real poets”–to answer it for me. On the face of it, it’s kind of an absurd question. People don’t ask, “Am I a real plumber? Am I a real neurosurgeon? Am I a real opera singer?” What an odd question it would be for them. You go to school, you go to work, you test your skills and talents, and just…do it. Some succeed better than others. But essentially, you are what you do. As it happens, at a certain point in life, I just knew that I was, without question, a poet.

As a scribbler from childhood, I couldn’t help it that much of what I wrote came out in the form of verse. I didn’t write stories. I didn’t write journalistic reports. I didn’t write song lyrics while picking out chords on my cherished guitar. I didn’t have a guitar. (We had a ukelele, but it wasn’t fashionable at the time.) I read and re-read poems I liked. I wrote imitations of them. I used poems to curry favor with teachers. I put together little poetry collections. I sent poems to magazines that published poems by children. (Never successfully.)

These days, most school children are encouraged to write poetry–which is to say, to put together words with some kind of imaginative language strung in short lines down the page. It’s good practice for manipulating words. They can call it poetry. But most of these “poets” grow up to be plumbers or neurosurgeons or–a few–opera singers. They make a better living than any “real poet” ever has.

Me? I got stuck with being a Real Poet. I hear messages in my mind and write them down. Sometimes they are what you could call “prophetic”–wisdom beyond my experience that becomes more true and informative to my life over time. Sometimes they are critical of culture, curious about science, or cries of experience. Sometimes they are simply songs about beauty and gratitude. Sometimes they even get published. Am I a “real poet”? Who gets to say??
 

 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
 
At first I wrote for comfort.
And then I wrote to blame.
And then I wrote in rapture
at the music of a name.
And then I wrote for money.
And then I wrote for fame.
And now I never write,
and all the world is quite the same.
 
 
Barbara Loots
 

The year 2017 marks the 500th since Martin Luther, a German monk of the Roman Catholic persuasion, posted a list of debate topics on the door of a church in his hometown of Wittenberg, Germany. Talk about the “law of unintended consequences”! What Luther meant to do, as a scholar, an observer, and an agonizingly conscientious practitioner of the Christian faith as he knew it, was to begin the long-overdue process of cleaning up the overgrown garden of the Roman Catholic Church.

You know how it goes: plant one thing here and another one there; let the perennials get out of hand; neglect the weed patches; let some greedy gardeners take over the place; and pretty soon, you’ve got a tangle nobody can control that strangles the good fruit you meant to produce.

The Roman Catholic Church, the prevailing religious and political power of 16th century Europe, had grown weedy to say the least. Martin Luther wanted to invite others to join him in a sincere attempt to straighten things out from within the church, a church that he loved. What happened? Protestants parted company with Roman Catholics, and began to grow their own ideas. If you ask me, a new weed patch got going, too. But that’s another story.

As a devoted monk, Martin Luther aimed to make his life perfect to please God. Trying to be perfect nearly drove him nuts. Happily, making ourselves perfect (and trying to make other people perfect) isn’t God’s idea. Knowing that we are loved (and trying to love others) comes closer to God’s idea. We–all of humanity–are already absurdly, undeservedly, eternally loved by God. There’s proof.

On a really bad day, please keep that in mind.

 
 
BROTHER MARTIN
 
 
Awake all night in a cold sweat of prayer,
he hears the devils writhing underneath
his bed. In the shut cell, their sickening breath
prickles his nostrils with the foulest air.
What must he suffer never to be pure?
What punishment of everlasting death
shall he deserve for merely being Luther?
What anguish and uncertainty endure
who cannot find a goodness nearer God’s,
and would not buy the way to paradise?
Brained by lightning, marching as to war,
at last he stakes his life on holy odds,
takes the stone steps, a pirouette of grace,
and nails his mighty doubts on heaven’s door.
 
 
Barbara Loots
 
 
published in The Christian Century
 
 

Many Christians, like me, are observing the season of Lent, forty days of reflection and sometimes renunciation, leading up to the celebration of Easter. At my church, we are engaged in a study of the letter of the apostle Paul to the Galatians. Pastor Rock points out that fully half of the 27 books making up the canon (accepted as authoritative writings) of the New Testament are attributed to Paul, a Jewish teacher in the first century CE, who was persuaded to follow Jesus by a blazing (and blinding, for a time) insight.

Among other things Pastor Rock said in his sermon on March 12 (find it here), he invited us to consider what might be our personal “signature sin”–the aspect of ourselves that needs correction, but is often difficult to admit, let alone work on. So, in the spirit of Lent, right here in the internet universe, I offer my confession.

My signature sin (according to me): Smugness

Smugness is an ugly word on the face of it, right? To be smug, according to the dictionary, means to be “highly self-satisfied” (with an underlying current of complacency). A person like me can be smug in the feeling that my life–through good luck, good choices, and good behavior–is just fine, thank you very much. The outward, if unspoken, attitude arising from this feeling is, “Why isn’t yours?” And that’s a harsh judgment. Other people can feel it, even if I don’t “mean it.”

I hope that those of you who know me personally will understand that I am working on this, and I hope you will consider at least provisional forgiveness in the meantime.

I acknowledge that my life–everything that I am or have, the planet I live on, the history I am a part of–is pure gift. Furthermore, because of a gift called, in my tradition, Grace, I know that I am loved and forgiven, even in the midst of my signature sin. Because of that, I can proclaim the same gift to you. You are loved. You are forgiven.

That’s a good thought for Lent and for always.

I wrote the poem below in 1977. The “loaf” is still a work in progress.
 
 

BREAD
 
That I might be the bread to feed a little one in pain,
winnow me, Spirit, by thy breath. Let fall the perfect grain.
 
Grind me by the rock of faith into a useful flour.
Sift me, knead me, lift me with thy leavening of power.
 
Mold me into humble loaves, and fire me by thy Word,
then set me where I may be blessed and broken by the Lord.
 
 
Barbara Loots
 
Published in The Lyric

Recently, someone leaned towards me in a confidential way and said, “You are one of three people on my short list to help organize [the big event]. I hope you’ll say yes.” Instantly, I was flattered to be asked. I like to be thought of as a dependable person. A person who can be counted on to get things done. However, if my years have taught me anything, it’s this: I’m not a Leader. I’m a Cheerleader.

Don’t get me wrong. The world needs BOTH, and there’s no hierarchy. However, these abilities–leader and cheerleader–are different and complementary.

A Leader is someone with confidence and insight, who clearly grasps the scope of a task, defines its action requirements, discerns the right talent, chooses the workers, then directs, motivates, and rewards their efforts.

A Cheerleader is someone with enthusiasm, optimism, energy, sincerity, and a gift of gab, who encourages, teaches, and (at best) sets a good example.

A Leader is a team builder. A Cheerleader is more of a soloist.

My gifts and abilities definitely fall into the Cheerleader category.

Of course, this is just one perspective or, perhaps, my prejudice. Such broad categories and descriptions are extremely limited. Feel free to disagree. However, as a working document for my life, this distinction I finally figured out has saved a lot of frustration for me and for everybody. I hope my hard-won self-awareness was clear to my flattering friend when I said, no, not me. Thanks anyway for the vote of confidence.

From my home office window, I can see the line of cars headed north into the downtown area along the road I used to travel every workday for more than forty years. This year marks the fiftieth since I arrived in Kansas City with my brand-new college degree in hand and sat down to my job as a writer at Hallmark Cards. I guess that worked out all right.

One rainy day at home way before my actual retirement, I wrote the poem below. I was imagining the sense of loss or emptiness I might feel at the end of all the productive, structured years. The picture in the poem is pretty bleak.

Actual “retirement” isn’t like this at all. I put “retirement” in quotation marks, because it’s such a misnomer for what occurs when you give up corporate office hours for the freedom of setting your own schedule. If you’re not careful with your “yes” and “no” regarding that “free time,” plenty of people will jump in to fill it for you. Life gets busier than ever, even as I vow to preserve my contemplative time.

At a discussion event the other night, we were invited to pose our own “most essential” question. (This is your assignment for today!) I suppose my question, as always, boils down to this: What am I here for? As I become acutely aware of the flying years, how little time there really is for the individual me to make a difference, I look to fill my days with activities, engagements, studies, and thoughts that keep me connected with the biggest purpose I can think of for human life. I find my answers–provisional answers anyway–in theology, art, poetry, and in relationships arising from these pursuits. I can only make a difference by joining hands, as my friend Veda would say. So I join hands, not only with the people around me, but also with the people before me and, in whatever ways I can, with those who will come after. I’m not alone with my questions. And neither are you.

RETIREMENT
 
 
The day after the send-off of her friends
and colleagues after almost forty years,
the weight of freedom instantly descends.
 
She tweaks the puzzled cat behind the ears
and pours herself more coffee. Still undressed
at ten o’clock, she feels the grind of gears
 
against the drag of useless time. The rest
of Wednesday is eternity to her,
the old routine undone, the new unguessed.
 
She hears, from blocks away, the muffled purr
of cars and trucks that have somewhere to go.
She gazes at the empty calendar.
 
She was, as Human Resource records show,
dependable, a model employee.
New hires could always count on her to know
 
procedures. She would rarely disagree
with bosses, though it happens, when it came
to better job or bigger salary,
 
that no one influential knew her name.
And so the work she did so well remained,
from start to finish, pretty much the same.
 
You’ll be secure, the counselor explained,
with years of income from an IRA
and interest that your prudent saving gained.
 
The antique clock they gave her chimes its way
toward noon. It’s raining. Summer thunder booms.
She wonders what to fix for lunch today.
 
The carefree life she never longed for looms.
She’ll never finish picking up her rooms.
 
 
Barbara Loots

So-called Morning People have the advantage in life. Even with digital connectivity enabling 24-hour business worldwide, people who wake up in the morning bright and early–especially bright–have a productivity edge in the workplace over those who don’t quite get going until lunch time. This is yet another life habit for which I can thank my parents, each in a different way.

My mother, in hopes of encouraging a musical prodigy, secured piano lessons for my older sister and me (and eventually our younger sister as well). This brought along the necessity of practice. Mom determined that my sister and I should practice for one hour each before school. Realistically, who could expect a kid to come home from school and immediately sit down at the piano for an hour? Practice at 5 a.m. was far more enforceable. And so she did. And so we did.

I can only imagine my mother wincing as she lay awake in bed listening to the endless, and often careless, repetitions of Hannon scales or “The Happy Farmer.”   By the time we got to Chopin, Haydn, and de Falla, waking up early was inevitable and morning practice more endurable. I’m sure the playing got better, although nothing like a prodigy ever emerged.

As for my dad… During his career as an Air Force officer and sometime pilot, Dad was all about getting an early start. Every family journey began with “wheels up” at the crack of dawn, if not before. This may actually be a generic “dad thing.” In any event, I’m still given to buying those thrifty plane tickets that require us to be at the gate at six in the morning. Morning people can be irritating for this and many other reasons.

So, cue up the coffee pot to be perking early. Just like me.

THE METRONOME
 

How she complains against the metronome

let loose to discipline her clever hands.

It changes! she insists, when accents roam

awkwardly from the measure it demands,

while she, hurrying over the notes she knows,

or gingerly laggard at the tricky part,

asserts her independence as she goes

after the heedless rhythms of her heart.

This tension teaches how my will may go

stubborn and reckless while the beat is clear,

halting or quick, precipitate or slow,

despite instruction clicking in my ear,

until at last my little tune is done

and time unmeasured makes all tempos one.

 

Barbara Loots–published in The Lyric

 

 

My brain is wired for words. I don’t remember learning how to read. It seems I’ve just always known how. As a consequence of my enchantment with words, I was, among four siblings, the family “bookworm.”

I was often found nose deep in a book, practically insensible to input from the real world. Not unlike today’s texter or video gamer? I would read anything handy that had words on it: A box of breakfast cereal. Magazines like The Readers’ Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, Life. Library books (often overdue).

And comic books. As many as I could get my hands on. In later years, I learned that comic books in that era (the mid-1950s) were a fairly new and subversive influence on young minds. My mother was avid in trying to separate me from my mind-ruining addiction. It didn’t work. I devoured all the comics available to me: Donald Duck, Batman, Wonder Woman, Classics Illustrated, Archie, Little Lulu, and, of course, Superman. Friends complained, “You never want to play when you come over to my house–you just want to read comic books!” Sure I did–they had access I didn’t. Their mothers were not so rigid about bringing the dastardly comic books into the house.

Which brings me to the Cryptoquote–a newspaper feature involving a letter-substitution activity. Woe to the newspaper if it ever stops publishing the Cryptoquote. That will be the day I cancel my paper subscription. My morning ritual takes me straight from the headlines to the Crytoquote. I do this puzzle partly in memory of my father. It was his ritual, his passion, and his consummate skill. The reward of success in decoding the Cryptoquote is minimal. These days, the quotee is as likely as not to be a celebrity I never heard of. My hometown newspaper replaced the former “Cryptoquip” which was, I’ll admit, clever nonsense–possibly not worth the trouble–with the Cryptoquote. Perhaps the “quote” isn’t worth it, either. But that doesn’t matter to me. It’s all about the marvelous, mysterious decoding of letters, the revelation of words.

And after that, the JUMBLE….

It’s overwhelming. Even paralyzing. Having too many choices. What an exquisite thing to whine about in a country, and a world, that offers me, the privileged one, so many opportunities to pick and choose.

I’m set off this time by a visit to a retail store, a women’s lingerie store, as it happens. All I wanted to do was replace a few past-due garments with the same item new. Easy, right? In this small-ish store (no huge warehouse), tables and tables were artfully laid with dainty lingerie. Bins and bins were bountifully piled with more. Signs detailed the SALE prices and the comfort features, marginally different from one location to the next. I wandered around in a daze. I couldn’t find the “exact” item I came for. I wondered how to identify what I came for–or how to select something a little different and “better.” Finally I realized that my simple transaction was likely to take a lot more time than I wanted to spend, and I abruptly left the store. Fled the store would be a better description.

Decision Paralysis. It happens to me in grocery stores, cosmetic stores, drugstores, shoe stores. Online shopping does not ameliorate this panic of over-abundance. Comparisons between items and sites can lead to hours of clicking and befuddlement.

Worst of all, I believe that my impatience with multiple choice is a sign of “old age.” I remember heading for the store with my dad’s shopping list when he was a resident of so-called Assisted Living. This toothpaste, not that. This bath soap, not that other one. Sometimes it was hard to find the sizes and brands he’d been using for decades. (Does anybody remember that icky yellow bar of Dial soap??) Woe unto me if I brought back the bargain store brand of something, or the newfangled easy-open container. He wanted what he wanted.

And so do I. Please don’t confuse me with so many alternatives. All this picking and choosing just sucks up the precious remaining minutes of my life.

 
THE AISLE NOT TAKEN 
 
Two aisles diverged in a CVS,
And sorry I had to stop and guess,
A lonesome shopper, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it appeared I’d find success,
 
Then took the other, as straight a line,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it displayed a likely sign;
Though as for that, these eyes of mine
Could scarcely discern a product name.
 
On shelf after shelf the boxes lay
With every size and every brand
In a vast and colorful array.
Oh! How could I make a choice that day?
My brain cells failed to understand.
 
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Sometime many a headache hence:
Two aisles diverged–bumfuzzled, I–
I took the one to Exit by
And fled from the place in self-defense.
 
 

Barbara Loots

Behold…the New Me.

Making the decision to “go natural” involved giving up the cachet I adopted decades ago upon choosing to become a redhead. Growing up as a regular brown-haired girl, I discovered in adolescence that having red hair, even temporarily, conveyed a certain social advantage. Do blondes have more fun? Well, redheads are “known” to be audacious, and that suited me just fine. I became a redhead forever.

The hair on our heads (or not) and what we do with it conveys a message and holds power, both within ourselves and in our public perception. Classic Bible stories like Samson, as well as the tradition in many religions of not cutting the hair, support the idea that hair makes a difference.

So I made the leap, celebrating my 70th birthday with a long-postponed decision. Surprise, surprise. I never expected to feel so…glamorous. Looks like I’m in for silver fun from now on.

(See Hair’s The Thing Part One 8/24/16)

A holiday time of leisure invited me to revisit a book I’d sometime downloaded on my Kindle reader: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. I’ve owned this–as an actual book–ever since it first came out in 1976. It’s a bit intriguing that I decided I needed to read it again. Why this? Why now?

As you can guess from the title alone, it’s a challenging book. Jaynes, a psychologist, makes the case for a theory of how the human brain developed into a state of consciousness. He derives evidence from archaeological discoveries, works of ancient literature, and contemporary neurological research, among other things. If you’re seeking a major intellectual massage, this could be it.

I’m especially interested in two aspects of his discussion. First, the way Jaynes’s theory touches on Biblical accounts of prophecies, visitations, and divine instructions. These are reported as delivered via visions (eg. a burning bush, a ladder to heaven), voices, angels, and dreams, among other things. Second, how the advent of language and its cadences created a new way of transmitting information and ideas, and thus an entirely different experience of human thought that could be described as consciousness.

In a previous post, I spoke of my delight in words–words as artifacts involving sound and history, as well as meaning. As a poet, I’ve always been captivated by meter and rhyme, even, stubbornly, during the most unfashionable period of these poetic devices in American literary life in the mid-twentieth century. Jaynes’s theory suggests that I may, in fact, enjoy the inspiration of a muse–a muse who not only feeds me ideas, but also dictates in iambic meter. And like the prophets of old, I might receive a gift of transcendent meaning simply by taking notice: of a dream, a star, the murmur of water, the handful of words that starts the engine of thought. Or even…silence.

 
SILENCE
 
 
No sound improves on silence
except a singing bird,
though other song is present
that may be sometimes heard:
 
the measure of beginnings,
the grind of celestial gears,
the thought as yet unspoken,
unmeant for human ears
 
enfolded in the golden light
that every morning brings.
Without an explanation
it sings…it sings…it sings.
 
 
Barbara Loots