There’s no better anodyne for the morning news than a walk in the neighborhood, glorious this year with an especially colorful springtime.

I walk in gratitude for all love and goodness and in prayer for the world that “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”–Julian of Norwich.

 

What We Are Here For
 
To turn gradually from doing
toward being: effort
translated into sheer effect
like the energy of light
posed
as a flowering tree.
 
Think of water
that caresses
into existence
a canyon.
 
Of wind gently kissing
a passage through stone.
 
Of time
not happening
but there.
 

Barbara Loots
 
Published in Potpourri 1994
 

Finally get there. April 2019

No, not the ones from Greek mythology, although those Sirens may perhaps be lurking in the background of the poem below. I’m talking about real sirens, the kind that call my attention frequently to the fact that life in the neighborhood where I live may be more or less in a constant state of crisis. We hear sirens night and day.

I’ve been reading my way slowly through a lovely book of reflections by Vietnamese Buddhist monk and scholar Thich Nhat Hanh, nominated by Martin Luther King, Jr. for the Nobel Peace Prize. He has written many books. This one is Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers. As a Christian, I find this title, and the book itself, compelling.

Hanh writes, “When I was a small child I used to go to the village Buddhist temple…I heard the sound of the bell a lot….I became a novice monk at the age of sixteen, and at that time I had a chance to discover what role the sound of the bell really plays in the practice of Buddhism.” Hanh goes on to speak of “inviting the bell to sound” by reciting a poem while breathing deeply in and out. I made up my mind to remember, and perhaps practice, saying these lines of the poem, though, in my case, without the sound of any kind of bell. Then it occurred to me.

The “bell” in my neighborhood is…a siren. Hardly the sweet, peaceful invitation of Hanh’s Buddhist bell. And yet, in those sirens I hear the reality of suffering. I remember my human connection to everyone and everything those sirens signify. So I have revised the monk’s poem by one word. You’ll know which word that is.

Body, speech, and mind in perfect oneness.
I send my heart along with the sound of this siren.
May the hearers awaken from their forgetfulness
and transcend the path of all anxiety and sorrow.

I wish I could claim the calm mindfulness that the remaining few lines of the Buddhist poem lead into. For now, I’ll settle for mindfulness of where I live and who lives there and what is happening with them and with me.

Below, you will find a poem I wrote about the sirens.

On a brighter note, Bill and I bought a tree to be planted in our front yard. The picture shows the tree as it might someday look. For now, ours is simply an expression of optimism and hope.

Happy Spring.

      Japanese Maple Orangeola

 
SIRENS
 
On 39th Street, screaming east or west,
the sirens rip the air apart and make
a whorl of purpose, fading in their wake,
the destination sure, the fate unguessed.
Something gone wrong, an accident, a crime,
has summoned them, a heart attack or fire.
With help or hindrance as it may require,
the sirens strive to interfere in time.
 
Safe in my room, and startled out of sleep,
I can’t prevent the circuits in my head
from spinning out scenarios of dread
and accusation, all the fear I keep
well hidden, listening with the certainty
that sirens coming on will stop at me.

 
 
Barbara Loots
 
 

Decades ago, someone in my family reported these words spoken by my mother: You know Barbara. She’s in love with love. Then and now, I believe that she was commenting on my tendency to attach myself to a succession of “unsuitable” romantic partners in the hope of finding the one true “love of my life.” A romantic idealist indeed. As things transpired, I married in haste the candidate I finally fell for–his suitability, I must admit, still questioned by my parents. But never mind. Read on.

From the beginning of dating age, I wasn’t very good at feminine wiles. I wanted too much conversation and too little making out. Thus my preferred relationships with the opposite sex were carried on by correspondence. My high school boyfriend and my later college boyfriend were located hundreds, even thousands of miles away. The former wrote from the States while I was living in New Zealand as an exchange student. The latter, a soldier in Vietnam whose name I plucked off a college bulletin board, sustained my romantic interest for about three years. We never met in person. Turns out he was married. Or was he? I’ll never know. I do know that our conversation by mail was deeply sustaining for both of us in our respective struggles with life as it was.

Meanwhile, one of those in-person swains—probably a blind date if my usual pattern pertained—accused me of being a girl who only wanted to “mind-f*ck.” Nice. Being prissy (that is, acutely self-respecting) and perhaps a little too overtly brainy, didn’t seem to be a “winning” attitude in the dating game. Who needs it? Think I’ll just stay home and study for my French test.

Nevertheless, not very long into my independent life, I met a man who really did love me. He loved me with the kind of insane worship reserved for a goddess. Yep. That was IT for me! Friends who knew us throughout the thirty-eight years of our marriage until he died will tell you how extravagantly he proclaimed my image of perfection. He upheld me as a treasure, a trophy wife, the ultimate lover, the more-than-equal partner, while I had the privilege of both claiming and modestly shrugging off the impossible image he promoted. Trust me. This feels pretty good.

In short, I got what I wanted. We both did. Of course, our profound life-shaping relationship came with a price. Every relationship does. But that’s another story. With that choice of a partner, I never deviated from my early impulse to remain perpetually in love with love.

Of course, it isn’t just romantic love I love, and never was. All along, mine has been a hunger and thirst for the connecting spirit of the entire universe. As husband material, try “competing” with God! My lifelong explorations in love have involved a lot of books, discussions, worship experiences, contemplation, and poems. And of course, letters. I totally know that love goes far beyond the boundaries of human experience, but we are created by it, in it, for it. I want all of it.

Now joyfully married again, I’m still in love with love, and I’m grateful for God’s infusion of true love into each and every day.
 

CONVERSATION
 
After the last, late crying of the birds,
the murmur of a deep rain folds us in.
Our conversation leaves no room for words.
Your silent touch becomes a sound within.
 
Softly at first, a pulse of ancient drums
sending a message through my wilderness,
while to my hearth the storyteller comes,
the virgin dancer, and the sorceress
 
strumming their runes of ecstasy and grief
on every nerve like an electric song
till I become the very mouth of life,
wild with the ululation of God’s tongue.
 
 
Barbara Loots
 
Published in Landscapes With Women (1999)
 
 

If only someone had asked Jesus a question about sex. Apparently the entities in charge of the rules at the time and place where Jesus was teaching confronted him about adultery and divorce, mostly to see if they could get away with it. But as for the commonplace human activity of having sex that has become wildly problematic in today’s world, we have no explicit teaching from Jesus.

Even so, what might we infer from what Jesus did say to help us behave, judge, legislate, and otherwise organize our everyday lives on this matter?

Well, first we can knock off judging. Even the Pope (Francis) declared, “Who am I to judge?” Jesus did not judge people. He looked around him with broken-hearted compassion, and loved them all, whoever they were, whatever they were doing. If he sometimes said, “Don’t do that anymore” or “Do the right thing now that you know what it is” he didn’t appear to check up later.

As for legislation, Jesus wasn’t fixed on rules set up by the powerful, either the religious kind or the political kind. That’s where he got into some trouble, ultimately fatal. He seemed to acknowledge the futility of making enough rules to cover all the possibilities for human conduct, and left some things open-ended. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?” Answer: “Whose image is on that coin?” Question: “Is divorce okay?” Answer: “What do your rules say?” Jesus meets questions with questions.

In our day and age, we have mostly determined that, for human beings, having sex is not exclusively about reproduction. Therefore, having sex occurs in a number of imaginative and legally undefined ways. Cultural or criminal? Forever or just for now? Freely shared or forcibly taken? Offered or bought? Life-giving or not? Is this Jesus who refuses to judge and fudges on the law indifferent to all this human stuff and making distinctions?

What Jesus says, and often shows us, about goodness, justice, and compassion is not about what to believe or think, but about what to DO. It would appear then, about having sex, the words of Jesus are perfectly clear: “This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you.” Jesus, at that moment in time, actually embodied human evolution: he brought love into everything we do.

What is this “love”? Love is the spiritual energy that unites human beings with the mystery of creation, not only procreation, but also the unfolding of the universe itself. Love as Jesus spoke of it is the embodiment of human potential. “Having sex” fits into a much larger picture. People using other people’s bodies as objects or using their own bodies as weapons kicks the species back down the evolutionary ladder.

So let’s ask Jesus, the fully evolved human, “Is it right for this person to have sex with that person?” Jesus might reply with a question: “Do you (or they) love each other as I have loved you?”

Call me a crazy idealist. Could we teach children—and all people–how to inhabit and hold in awe our sacred, evolved bodies? Our answer could put a great many issues in perspective, including, and far beyond, having sex.

I haven’t written many (published) poems about sex. But here’s one from decades ago that suggests the sacredness inherent in a woman’s body and her self-giving role in the incarnation of…well, everybody.
 
 

A KIND OF CLOTHING
 
Folds, openings, mouths, a kind
of clothing is what
a woman is,
holding, gathering,
covering the intimate
appearances
of others. A man, a child
put on and take off her body
that belongs to them
before she discovers herself
alone.
Even God wanted to
enter into this garment
to be known.
 

Barbara Loots
 
Published in The Bride’s Mirror Speaks (1986)
 
 

Do I have your attention? On the subject of sex and sexuality, the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth would make a fascinating study, don’t you think? Alas, we have no text to refer to. The reports of the gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, include no comment at all from Jesus about appropriate practices of human sexuality, with a couple of exceptions. One exception is that thing in the gospel of Matthew about a man looking at a woman with a lustful eye being the same as committing adultery. Elsewhere, in the account from Mark (said to be the earliest of the gospels) Jesus is asked, in a question intended as a form of entrapment, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” As he often did, Jesus answers the question with a question: “What did Moses command you?”

Great—a Moses reference! So, we might expect to find, in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament to some), a thorough teaching about the laws of marriage and divorce. We might look there also for some practical wisdom that Jesus might have known concerning the fundamental conditions and practices, not only of marriage, but also of having sex. (In my humble opinion, Adam and Eve aren’t much help. Their options were extremely limited, and Sex in the City was a long ways off.)

Unfortunately, the words “sex” and “sexuality” do not appear in my copy of Cruden’s Complete Concordance (although later concordances for the many translations of the Bible appearing since 1968 might have them.) So once again I’m out of luck on text references for our study. Whatever Hebrew scriptures Jesus knew at the time, he wasn’t bringing forth from those scriptures any advice about having sex.

So, except for the lusty descriptions of love between a man and a woman described in the Song of Solomon or Song of Songs—often reinterpreted by some religious traditions in metaphorical rather than physical ways—there’s nothing in the entire Holy Bible (Christian version) that helps me find out what Jesus might have known or said or thought about having sex.

In fact, most stories dealing with sex in both parts of the Bible involve lust, adultery, incest, rape, multiple wives, wives and sex slaves captured in battle, pagan temple practices, prostitution, and the isolation of women during their menstrual periods. I find nothing encouraging in all that. For women in the Bible, having children reinforces their standing with their husbands and the community. But we get no information about the spiritual connection between a husband and wife in the act of begetting. There are a few rules in the Old Testament about “forbidden” ways of having sex, which Jesus never cites.

But never mind. Many rules in Old Testament Law are freely flouted anyway, especially the one about divorce that Jesus was so adamant about. Most of us aren’t worried about eating pork, or wearing a cotton/wool blend sweater, or shopping on the Sabbath (whichever day you choose). So how did we end up in today’s Christianity making such a Big Freaking Deal about having sex?

Why was guidance about such a powerful drive, shared by all species, overlooked by the man many consider to be the full human expression of God’s Own Self? How can we know what Jesus might have told us? If only someone had asked him a question about this!

TO BE CONTINUED…comments welcome so far

What are you going to be when you grow up? This is the classic question addressed to children, and often, partly in jest, to adults. I’m not going to be silly about it: I AM grown up. Way grown up! Now the question is: What have you done with your life? or What have you become?

Many people in their later years can and do answer it by naming a role or a profession or an accomplishment. They have specific skills (I was an electrician. I was a teacher. I was a homemaker and a volunteer. I was a judge.). Although some people speak of their roles in the past tense who are not getting paid for them any longer (if they ever did), the skills and accomplishments and the labels that go with them do not end with aging and retirement. Whatever you were, you are, and it’s still useful and good.

At this time in my life, my assessment of what I “became” when I grew up is rather, well, fuzzy. Professionally speaking, I managed to make a living as a commercial writer. Does that make me a writer? Well, kind of. But there are vast areas of writing that don’t belong to my skill set: I never wrote a novel, a grant proposal, a Wiki post, a screenplay, a theological treatise, or advertising copy that made news on the Super Bowl. Although I’ve devoted most of my existence to writing short lines of artistic language, to declare myself a poet sounds both grandiose and wimpy. Where’s my Pushcart Prize, let alone my Pulitzer, for all that? Thousands of people write poetry, possibly everyone.

Is Writer what I have become? Might as well say Talker, as that is what I am doing here and now. Indeed, I have a memory, or perhaps an impression, that my mother used to say I was born talking, and had to become a writer when I couldn’t get anyone to listen to it all. So I’ve decided to broaden the idea of writing or talking even more and call myself, past, present, and future: Philosopher.

The dictionary provides a number of nuances to this word. I’ll pick the one that avoids mention of scholarship, logical reasoning, and analysis in favor of: One who pursues wisdom.

Yes, I think that’s it. I am a Philosopher. Life brings wisdom through many channels, and I think I’ve at least kept my eyes open. A book I’ve recently picked up holds delightful new insights from Thich Nhat Hanh, whose writing is deceptively childlike, deeply wise, and wholly refreshing: Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers (1999). The pursuit of wisdom requires a boatload of books, family and community, spiritual inquiry and practice, an open mind with discernment, and love for what the universe holds for the evolution and delight of humanity. I hope I’ve been actively part of all those things all my life.

Shall I leave you with a recent poem to assert my credentials in that part of my life? This one was written at the invitation of a fellow docent at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. If you live in Kansas City, you can view the actual object in the America Indian gallery. Hope it prompts you to find another way to your own wisdom.

  
HUMAN HEAD EFFIGY JAR
Late Mississippian Culture 1350-1550
 
for A.L.
 
Imagine if a light were set inside
this ancient figure of a human head.
Could these deep eyes alive and deified
connect us with the wisdom of the dead?
Whatever consolation we might seek,
this intercessor only comes to hear:
the lips are sewn. The image cannot speak.
Perhaps some golden gift adorned each ear.
 
We ponder lines incised upon your face,
mysterious symbols that we do not know,
divided now from your ancestral place.
Yet in the flicker of that inner glow,
we share the wonder of the mind within,
life made of common clay, our human kin.
  
Barbara Loots

This conversation with myself arises from a training session yesterday for Docents at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Our presenter, PaKou Her, endeavored to give us a framework for addressing sensitive subjects and emotions that arise during our conversations with visitors in the presence of certain works of art, with the primary focus on racism.

Several times on this blog, I have cited the Biblical message delivered by angels, prophets, and Jesus: Don’t be afraid. Fear not. What is there to be afraid of? According to some accounts, three-hundred-and-sixty-five times! One for each day of the year. About racism, war, domestic abuse, and every form of human violence—anger, hate, revenge, warfare–I might say that all, all spring from fear. Fear, it appears to me, is a primal, protective response to the unknown. The tiger in the dark. It’s a safety element built into our deep selves. Well, I don’t encounter many tigers in my part of the world. However, there is still darkness.

Sometimes that darkness looks to me like ignorance. Or perhaps it is a belief or conviction different from mine that I can’t even begin to understand. Sometimes it is a whole arena of life experience that I do not and cannot know. The only way to address the darkness is by trying to reduce what is unknown, in so far as possible, and bring in some light.

First of all, I must acknowledge and take steps to alleviate my own fears, and that begins with naming or identifying them specifically. Here’s one now: I fear attending night-time events in predominantly Black neighborhoods not far from my own because I have read about random gun violence there. Although I have felt “uncomfortable” as one of few white people at such a gathering, that feeling is not fearful, because I do trust in the goodwill of most people of color (they’ve had a lot of practice when it comes to white people). And they might have reason to fear what I do in the parking lot. I suppose in that we have common cause. Does this fear convict me of racism? What do you think?

Here’s my work: stepping out. I need to work harder at getting to know my actual neighbors, not just the hypothetical neighbor cast into my path as in the story of the Good Samaritan. I need to shine some light on my fear and hear about the fears of others in everyday life.

One final piece: I’ve been reading a book by a sage and scholar named Thich Naht Hanh, who was nominated by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the Nobel Peace Prize. In my journal, I have written: In my understanding of life, an experience and a relationship with a transcendent unifying energy—call it “Mind”—defines our humanity. Faith, religion, and spiritual practices, however diverse, are evolving efforts to bring all humanity together. Some call that energy “compassion.” Some call it “love.” Some call it “Brahman” or “God.”

The essence: Reaching out to my neighbor. Listening. That’s not theological or theoretical.

This idea popped into my head as I was reading about a new robot delivery system for snack foods being tested on a California campus. Sitting on a park bench, you suddenly have a yen for a potato chip and a sugar drink. Cue up smartphone, hit the app, and a vending machine on wheels that looks a bit like R2-D2 (no doubt on purpose) will trundle to wherever you are and deliver the goods.

Without a doubt, humanity will continue to invent things. Anyone on Facebook knows how their feeds are littered with advertising for clever gadgets—especially pet products–that make you think, for a millisecond or two, Wow! I could really use that! Most of the time, we move right along. If we didn’t, before very long, we’d have to call in a consultant (see previous blog, Tidying Up) to help us get out from under the debris. And the debt. Most of the time, I manage to monitor my decisions.

Taking charge of our own brains, let alone our own behavior, presents a lifelong challenge. For one thing, it’s hard to see what our own persuasions and prejudices actually are. Being female, I am surely in thrall to genes, hormones, parental admonitions, and past experiences in ways I don’t even recognize. I’ve been working on it for, well, 72 years. However, I take just a little pride in not letting what’s “out there” steer me away from what I discern to be right and good “in here”—that is, in my brain and in my heart.

That process of discernment involves revelations and mistakes, risks and failures, dazzling hopes and profound disappointments. Me? I like having something to look forward to more than I like remembering what I did or was or had yesterday. As a consequence, it’s possible that I have had to learn the same lessons over and over again. But I’m keeping my mind on alert. For one thing, I want to be aware of how artificial intelligence might help humanity evolve in a good way. And I don’t want the artificial stupidity of “media” to suck up too many of my precious brain cells. That said, thank you for visiting my blog. On our marvelous internet.

Speaking of tidying up, yesterday, I made Refrigerator Soup. You know what that is: you check the fridge and freezer for whatever might be a likely ingredient, put it all together, and simmer for the day. In this case, the ingredients included a packet of curry powder I got in Cambodia a few years ago, and leftover turkey gravy from Thanksgiving. (Yes, it had been frozen!) Bill is still alive, so the soup was a success. There’s a lot of it. But in case this isn’t alarming enough, I’ll post a poem I wrote years ago that captures both my thoughts about discernment and the fridge experience.
 

REFRIGERATOR POEM
  
Today is the day I must open the crisper,
Where something organic has gone into goo.
Today I must answer the visitor’s whisper,
“There’s death in this kitchen. I smell it. Don’t you?”
 
Today is the day when my conscience must answer
For loss so expensive, and messy, and sad.
Today I must have out the vegetable cancer
Of careless indifference to things going bad.
  
Barbara Loots

About Netflix: I spend more time searching than I do watching stuff. Sometimes I get lucky. The other day, I clicked on a Netflix “reality” show called Tidying Up, featuring a tiny and gentle Japanese lady named Marie Kondo. Apparently, she’s written a best-selling book that I never heard of. But I quickly got hooked on watching her (with her translator) enter into people’s homes and show them how to fix the mess. In some cases, it’s a mild version of Hoarders. In others, it’s family relocation chaos, loss of a partner, empty-nesting, or some other not-too-extreme case of clutter out of control.

In every episode, the gentle and kind Marie begins by reverently “introducing herself” to the house. For the tidying process, she presents a list of categories in a specific order: Clothes, Books, Paper, Komono (other stuff). She invites the participants, when sorting their stuff, to consider, for each item in hand, which ones create in them a “spark of joy.” Nothing else is kept. Things to be discarded are “thanked” for their use in the past before being set aside.

Bill and I are not into clutter. Even unannounced visitors will find our home guest-ready, because that’s the way we like it. But watching Marie teach her new friends how to carefully fold things into drawers in order to keep them neat, visible, and accessible—that lit a spark in me. I went right to work with a sense of, well, joy.

First, the bedroom clothes closet. All those t-shirts and casual pants stuffed on shelves? You should see them neatly lined up now! Next, dresser drawers: socks, underwear, pajamas, more t-shirts, sports gear. Everything folded and rolled, readily accessible, and nicely tucked in. Yes, I tossed a few things into the Donate bag. But simply by organizing, I gained space. Best of all, opening those drawers and that closet makes me smile. Yes, a spark of joy.

And that’s not all.

When I tackled the “junk drawer” in the kitchen, in the mess of rubber bands, unidentified keys, discarded receipts, hotel ballpoint pens, and more, I found an envelope containing three gift cards from our wedding FIVE years ago. They are all still valid, I’m happy to say, and worth $150 in total. So my tidying had an actual cash benefit.

Maybe I’m just nesting as I move into the new year. But I give Marie the credit. She has succeeded with me in accomplishing her mission: to bring joy to the world through cleaning.

Who’d have thought?

During these in-between days when the uproar of Christmas has subsided and the obligations of the new year have not yet begun, I sit in my reading chair enjoying the embrace of a rainy day.  Thoughts send me to my books—the quite organized collection I created when Bill lent his carpentry skills to a pair of beautiful built-in bookcases.  

I pull down The Value of Doubt: Why Unanswered Questions, Not Unquestioned Answers Build Faith by my friend Bill Tammeus.  I want to read that again, so it goes in the stack beside my chair.  I also hunt in my newly alphabetized poetry collections for the first book of poetry I ever bought for myself.  There it is:  a small blue paperback of the Collected Lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay.  I bought it when I was in high school for sixty cents. Although Millay was out of fashion among poetry critics at that time, she is possibly the “mother” of my poetry soul. I love these poems still, and I think she is now having a posthumous comeback among the literati. Is that important?  

Well, it’s important to know that as a poet I can’t pay much attention to “critics.”  Granted, getting published in print over the past few decades has been a challenge, because the almighty Editor is always the first hurdle.  When your poetical work isn’t on trend, your voice can scarcely find a way out.  As it happens, my forever friend, the poet Gail White, and I found our own way. It was thirty years ago this year—1988—when we collaborated on and self-published what is known as a “chapbook” (a small paperback collection) of her poems together with mine, side-by-side on comparable subjects, eg. cat poems, poems on Biblical subjects, poems on hope vs. cynicism.  We titled it Sibyl and Sphinx.  Who is the Sibyl, who the Sphinx?  Still not decided.  The book is a rare treasure, with only a few copies afloat in the universe.   

At that time, my poetry publications were few and far between.  In the deepest and truest spirit of friendship, Gail wrote a poem encouraging me to keep at it.  You’ll find it below.  In the forty years and more we’ve been corresponding, we’ve both written and published a great many poems in so-called little magazines you’ve never heard of.  Since the internet became a thing, online magazines provide an excellent new forum for all kinds of voices.  Because my name is somewhat unusual, you can find my work via your browser or amazon. Gail White?  Not so easily.  But do try. Along with Millay, Gail White has always been an inspiration to me.  

Thirty years?  The twinkling of an eye!  The point of life is being you, the only one of you there is. It doesn’t last long.  And you probably won’t know what you do that makes the best difference.  

For Barbara
(on the publication of her poems)
 
A paradox:  paper, quick
to crumple, easy to burn
perishable as grass,
makes the best wings for a journey.
 
Adrift in your floating ark,
with all your beasts around you, 
send out a paper dove: 
it will rescue someone from drowning
 
perhaps, and return to you
with a branch when the tide falls lower.
And your paper coach will come
to the princess alone in her tower.
 
Poets can laugh like gods
at the rich, the wise, and the proper.
The wealth of the world weighs light
against our sheaves of paper.
 
For we turn from weapons to laws
when the useless wars are over,
and the print on a single page
gives the bride to her lover.
 
 
Gail White
Sibyl and Sphinx(Rockhill Press 1988)