It Begins With a Call: The Season Turns (Part 16)

Right now it is Autumn Equinox.  The following post was written 6 months ago at the last equinox.

Tomorrow is another equinox, and something is stirring inside.  I haven’t written here yet about the importance of the oral tradition in my life.  I blogged a poem yesterday that arose out of a dream:

By Heart

The poem is not your friend.

The poem is a pest. 

It gets under your skin and

nestles down inside you.

You would like it to go to sleep,

give you a break,

but the poem tosses and turns,

throwing off its blankets to expose

this line or that.

The poem does not care about you.

It is looking for a home,

and when it finds one in you,

it will move in for good, or at least

for a long stay.

If you ignore it, the poem will pout

and keep tapping you on the shoulder.

The poem will tell you,

“Here.  I belong to you.”

The poem doesn’t care who wrote it,

only who gives it residence.  

The poem will 

pick at your scabs, 

make you cry,

yell in your face.

Then it will pat your back and say,

“There, there.”

As long as the poem includes

one line of mystery, it will continue to

niggle at your thoughts,

tug at your heart,

poke you in the gut.

Repeatedly.

But although it isn’t your friend,

the poem will be

your companion.

It will move you,

agree with your deepest thoughts,

tell you if you are on track.

Even if you forget one of its lines,

the poem will reveal the lesson

in that omission.

The poem will be 

your teacher.

And you will love it.

What is it about the oral tradition that feels so important, especially in these perilous times?  Part of me thinks it is too insignificant to have much impact on the world, but, really, how do we know what impact something will have?  Re-storying/re-storing the world isn’t a small thing, so I need to stop discounting it.  It feels right.  It nourishes my soul and, at the minimum, helps me feel more oriented to what is real and important.  Our big idea is this: We are attempting to restore the soul of the world.

We learn poems by heart because we love them.  Because they become a part of us, and can, in fact, work on us from the inside.  Here’s an example.  I had heard Theodore Roethke’s In a Dark Time a number of times, found it intriguing and deep, but was never moved to learn it.  Then, when at the teacher’s two years ago, it came into my head, and I absolutely had to learn it. Here it is:

In a dark time, the eye begins to see, 
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; 
I hear my echo in the echoing wood-- 
A lord of nature weeping to a tree. 
I live between the heron and the wren, 
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den. 
What's madness but nobility of soul 
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! 
I know the purity of pure despair, 
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. 
That place among the rocks--is it a cave, 
Or a winding path? The edge is what I have. 

A steady storm of correspondences! 
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon, 
And in broad day the midnight come again! 
A man goes far to find out what he is-- 
Death of the self in a long, tearless night, 
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light. 

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. 
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, 
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I? 
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. 
The mind enters itself, and God the mind, 
And one is One, free in the tearing wind. 

If this isn’t a dark time, if I haven’t myself been in a dark time, then dark times don’t exist.  I needed that poem, and right away.  It’s a mystery.  And I have to say, the poem hasn’t let me go all of this time.  I’ve recited it at salons and at Rumi’s Caravan.  I’ve repeated it to myself over and over.  The fact that some lines are mysterious and not totally apparent only makes it more intriguing, and I wrestle with it.  Also, it has one of the best lines of all time – “What’s madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance.”  Brilliant.

My SoulCollage® card for Eleusis - 

Persephone's entrance to the underworld

I have been in the underworld for quite a while.  Years, really.  The world itself feels underworldly and full of mortal demons.  But it is Spring equinox tomorrow, and I feel – maybe, just maybe – a hint of rising.

The Poetic Conversation

The oral tradition and its revival have been central to our lives in the last 20 years or so, and I wanted to talk about why that is.  Those of us participating in salons and events like last week's Rumi's Caravan have found that it is a way to restore our spirits in these dark and confusing times.  It's not that we want to ignore the world's troubles (although sometimes I wish I could) or numb out to them; in fact, sometimes the feeling can go very deep and very dark in these events.  But somehow, by the end of the evening, I leave feeling nourished in a profound way.  As my friend Larry says, we are trying to restore the soul of the world.

What's really fun about salons and Rumi's Caravan is that we try to get into what we've been calling a "poetic conversation."  No one knows what poems are going to brought in or by whom, even in the performance events.  When it's working really well, one poem leads to another, in theme, or by the same poet, or with a similar image.  I felt that Rumi's Caravan in Oakland last week truly accomplished this.  We also had another opportunity to present later on in the week, at a retirement community in Marin County.  At this event, there were only four of us presenting, but it really did become a poetic conversation, the mood flowing and changing from very soulful and dark to humorous and playful.  It was so much fun!  And we received such appreciation afterwards.

When you bother to work on a poem or a story to be told by heart, something happens beyond just memorizing words.  The piece works you.  You wouldn't bother learning it if it didn't mean something to you to begin with, but it really lives in you after that.

All of this is why we do what we do.

Barry found a line from Rumi that I want to share  - "Learn things by heart because they die of cold on the page."

Because of the conversational aspect, some pieces you carry don't make it into the event.  I had wanted to do this poem of mine at the Caravan, but it never fit in.  So, I get to share it here.  It's called, "We Are All Pilgrims."

We are all pilgrims.

We are all pilgrims.

Some worship at the temple of materialism.

Some linger in the warm pools of Aphrodite.

Others trek to mountain peaks

or hidden springs,

seeking the source

of mystery itself.

But we all journey somewhere.

We are all pilgrims.

The roads we travel –

the dusty miles,

the muddy rain-soaked roads,

the twisting uphill trails -

drag on, so arduous and long,

with no endpoint in sight.

But then, one day,

you look into a mirror, or

catch your reflection

in still water,

and you see

that you have grown old.

Suddenly, a different destination looms.

You cry out –

I’m not ready!

Now you understand that

it was never arriving

that mattered.

You know –

deeply and without doubt –

that the pilgrimage itself

was the point.

All of those hours lost

in complaint, confusion and misery –

you realize that they were

opportunities ignored and departed.

Even now,

walking the great camino,

you rouse – repeatedly –

from drifting moments.

You desperately want

to stay open-eyed

and grateful.

But even our failures are the journey.

And we are all pilgrims.