Row & Rest, Rest & Pull

Bearing Witness Poem & Help In Hard Times Video & 20% Off Sale: Supporting Subscribers & Online Store

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Bearing Witness

This is one of my song-poems. I came upon a grove of trees that looked like a circle of women. Each tree was an individual, and yet below the ground, their roots were entwined and supporting one another. Like these trees, we bear witness to one another’s lives and circumstances, holding one another as trees do in gracious times or gale force winds. My friends, nothing lasts forever…not even winter.

Bearing Witness

The trees on this hill are luminous.
A collective of spring green leaves
That seem to glow
From within.
Amid the new foliage
Dark branches are still visible
In patches and places,
Dramatic as inked lines on a page.

They are gathered together
Like a circle of women.
Some young and slender.
Some with babies on their hips.
Some barely standing, bent over with age.

Nothing lasts forever,
Not even winter.
This is the way the forest bears witness
To all that is soft and heavy,
Lost and lasting,
Pardoned and persisting,
How beginnings usually come
When something else ends.

And each year, the wood thrush
and lighting bugs come back
Winking off
And then on.
     A mystic
          Morse
                Code.

By Carrie Newcomer
From Until Now: New Poems 

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Row & Rest, Rest & Pull

My friends, It’s been a hard couple of days. Grief is not linear. It rises and falls like the tides. It doesn’t give up and give in just because the world says “You’ve taken more than your allotted days and hours for grieving, it’s time to either put on a happy face or have the good manners to not show up.” But grief and grieving a loss (personal, vocational or political) doesn’t pay attention to our culture’s tick-tock-times-a-wastin’ attitudes. Grief has a rhythm that is utterly personal. We deny and rage and weep and bargain and accept, only to spin the wheel and start it all over again. As Diana Butler Bass wrote from The Cottage, This is not simple personal disappointment…this is devastation and grief on a global scale.

I’ve found that my deepest losses never actually go away, I just learn how to walk with them with a bit more grace. And in learning to walk with the losses or griefs of my life my heart becomes larger, more empathetic with a greater capacity for compassion. I’m counting on that alchemical process in this moment. I’m counting on coming through to the otherside. It will happen. But not today. And so, I must to be patient and gracious with myself as I do the work of grief and forgiveness.

It is also more difficult to find a way to turn my sorrow and losses into something life giving when the full extent of the loss is not yet complete. Right now, we are all getting hit with fresh news of unfolding fall out of this election. Immediately, in the little progressive college town where I live the worst inclinations of human nature has been given full permission. In the past week, people leaving a celebration of Jewish theater at our local convocation center had to be escorted to their car by a guard. A Black Lives Matter sign at a local Lutheran Church was taken down and stomped upon during their worship service. A friends bi-racial grandson was called the N word at a football game by the opposing team. Deportation plans are already in motion in my state. I personally know women who have started carrying mace in their purses as men have become more aggressive on the street.

I still believe in the promise of good that is yet to come. But unfortunately, I sense that it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Someone told me yesterday that we are going to have to find a way to work with people who supported the Trump regime and all it stands for. We are going to have to find a way to stay in conversation if we want to mitigate the worst aspects of project 2025. We are going to have to sit at the table, have conversations and attend to the stories of those who are celebrating a turn toward authoritarian governance, blatant racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and unbridled greed.

But history has shown that appeasement never stops or even slows dictators or dictator wannabes. Yes, we will have to learn how to work with others who believe very differently than we do. But we will also need to be prepared to say “no” with passionate daily resistance.

The hard as stone truth is that people I know and love tossed other people I know and love under the bus for the price of eggs or because it was easier to believe bald faced lies then vote for a woman or person of color for a position of power. This is who we are as a country in this moment…and honestly, I’m still wrestling with where to place that knowledge.

Many of us are trying to figure out if it is possible to stay in relationship with family or neighbors who just put a target on the backs of people we love. Today, that kind of generosity of spirit feels Herculean. I’ve done Herculean things before and I will do Herculean things again. But I know deep down that this is not ok, it may never be ok. I will have to keep practicing forgiveness and it will not come easy.

At church on Sunday I saw a woman in the row in front of me with tears rolling down her cheeks. I was barely holding back tears myself. I put my hand on her shoulder for a moment and she relaxed a little, I relaxed a little too. We were not alone in our concern and grief, and that was enough in that moment.

Maybe that is where we are….

Maybe this is when we resolve to spell one another for the long haul. Some of us will keep rowing the boat when others have to stop for a while, rest or take a moment to wipe their tears before picking up the oars again.

Maybe this is when we give one another the utmost tenderness and allowance for our up days and down days and angry days and help one another find holy ground when we’re doing our best just to find the floor.

Maybe this is a time of hard core love, no shit love, when my dedication to a life of love made manifest is going to ask me to be faithful…even on the days it feels Herculean.

My dear Gathering of Spirits- until we all meet again - here around the table, here in the boat, rowing and resting, resting and pulling toward a better shore.

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