Compromismo/2 (Reading/3)

Dear Professor

So last night I went with my friends to this bar
The same bar they’ve been going to for two years
Drinking the same overpriced drinks they always drink
Making the same chit-chat with the same guys who always come up to them
Listening to the same trite music
And people were making fewer intelligible comments with each passing minute
And the air was so thick with insecurity and false bravado
And I looked at my watch and realized I’d already been there for two hours
And I looked around at all the gaming and fretting and distraction and sadness of it all

And what popped into my mind was the time you used the expression ‘American Samsara’
And then I remembered that April day when we’d been reading Learning True Love
(Don’t ever take that book off of your syllabus!)
And you asked for two volunteers
And one person was to be herself and ask a question to the other person
And I was the other person who was supposed to channel Chân Không
And in that bar with its mindlessness and midnight mayhem
I remembered to breathe

Breathe in
Breathe out
In
Out
Deep
Slow
Calm
Ease
Present moment
Only moment

And I walked out the door
And back home
Smiling

Thank you!

Neeta Gupta

Stephanie's Blog

Check out Chicagoan Stephanie Krivus's blog, From the 526 to the 247!

Thesis 11, Still

One reader of Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine wrote me
With characteristic candor:

“Damn you! It fucking hurt to read this book
And thank you! It was the final push I needed to get off my ass”

It’s one thing to put together, compose
127 chapters

To create characters who say
To quote real people who say

“There are more things Herr Habermas in occupied Palestine
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”

Sitting Still by Owen Needham

I.

I need to sit still less in life because of Mike Brown, shot dead and left dead in the street for four and a half hours.

Because of Eric Garner, strangled to death while pleading “I can’t breathe.”

Because of Aiyana Stanley Jones, 7 years old, killed in her home.

Because every 28 hours

I need to sit still less because my government continues to kill people around the world, in Pakistan, in Yemen…

I need to sit still less because oil companies plan to extract and burn five times more fossil fuel than the maximum amount possible to avoid catastrophic climate change. Because they are willing to kill countless people for short term profit. Because they must be stopped.

I need to sit still less because of Coca Cola stealing water from poor communities in India.

I need to sit still less because of the TPP. Because they are trying push it through and create an unaccountable international tribunal in which corporations can sue governments for impeding their ability to plunder the resources of other countries and exploit people.

I need to sit still less because fuck capitalism, because fuck patriarchy, because fuck state violence, because fuck oppression, because we don’t need any of it.

I need to sit still less because I believe I can do more, because I believe I can do things that matter.

I need to sit still less because of the Zapatistas, because of the MST in Brazil, because of Noam Chomsky, because of Jose Gomez, because of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Because of so many brave people who never stop working.

I need to sit still less because more reasons than I can ever say or know.

I need to sit still less because I dream about a river that can flow upwards into the mountains.

II.

I need to sit still more because I need to relight the fire in my chest.

Her Favorite Photograph

Out of the blue
She texted me
First, there was a photo:

Then Lena Laserstein
Wrote underneath it:
“My favorite photograph”

Being ever so curious
I wrote her back:
“Why do you like it so?”

Lena: “It’s perfect
Perfectly
Blurry …

I’d like to be
In that photo
Some day”

'I'd rather go to sleep grateful instead of anxious.'

'I'd rather go to sleep grateful instead of anxious.'

So would I...

Thank you for the early morning birdsongs.

Thank you for the cool breeze before dawn.

Thank you for waking with Jose by my side.

Thank you for the rising of our chests together... our hearts beating in unison.

Thank you for the crazy people.

Thank you for dogs. They really are my best friends.

Thank you for my family:

     Mama Pam, Daddy O Dave, Sister Sarah and Brother Sam.

Thank you for the breath.

Thank you for the touch of another's warm skin.

Thank you for prayer and for saving me.

Thank you for holding back the doors to eternity.

Thank you for loving me in my darkest of days.

Thank you for the love.

Thank you for the simple sweet moments of oblivion to call my own.

Thank you for your love.

Thank you for supporting me and holding me when I couldn't hold myself.

Thank you for the way the world spins reminding me to take it all in.

Thank you for always coming back to me when I need you most.

Thank you for never really leaving.

Thank you for driving me to the edge of insanity.

     Enjoy the view!

Thank you for weed.

Thank you for Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs.

Thank you for Neal Cassidy.

Thank you for Ken Kesey.

Thank you for lessons inside each moment.

     Waking up has never felt like such a  process.

Thank you for the process of becoming me

     I'd have it no other way.

Thank you for the Electric Heart Glue.

     It's really taken a hold of me.

Waking up can be so hard to do.

Waking up can be so freeing.

Waking up can come alone or together.

     Let's wake up together.

Life Reflections by Wendy Lee

Wendy is part of our class and I wanted to share this reflection she sent me from long ago when she was with the Peace Corps in Cameroon.

16 September 2008

Dr. C,

Hello! Hope this email finds you well. Classes must be well on its way and I am sure you are enlightening many other students like myself as we speak. I’ve wanted to write you this email ever since I read the first chapters of your book about Mev. But I opted to wait until the end to write it. I picked an interesting time to read the book – a time of many changes. I first begin reading it while still in training, where I was constantly surrounded by 35 other Americans, either complaining or lamenting aspects of our lives. Just as I started to lose sight of the real reasons that I am here in Africa, your words reminded me. The “bubble” that you often mentioned in our classes still exists even here in the Peace Corps. It’s easy to surround myself with other Americans (or Chinese) and not step out of my comfort zone to “be with the people.” I thought I had burst the comfort bubble when I boarded that plane for Africa in June. Even just over these few months, I have learned that bubbles and comfort zone will always exist and one has to constantly fight hard to not be in it.

Faces/1 (A Letter from Prison)

“Dear Perry

Thinking of you a lot these days
Been reading the martyrs
Here in my homey little cell
(For a while I got solitary for asking disruptive questions)
Wanted to send you this little gem from Monseñor
It’s like he read my mind
I’ll try to call you collect
Before you take off on your odyssey

Love in a Time of Nukes,

Steve”


The church in Latin America
Has much to say about humanity.
It looks at the sad picture
Portrayed by the Puebla conference:
Faces of landless peasants
Mistreated and killed by the forces of power,
Faces of laborers arbitrarily dismissed
And without a living wage for their families,
Faces of the elderly,
Faces of outcasts,
Faces of slum dwellers,
Faces of poor children who from infancy
Begin to feel the cruel sting of social injustice.
For them, it seems, there is no future—
No school, no high school, no university.
By what right have we cataloged persons as first-class persons or second-class persons?

--Oscar Romero, El Salvadoran Archbishop



--from the soon-to-be-released novel, Dear Layla/Welcome to Palestine

La Vida Es Tremenda by Owen Needham

“La vida es tremenda.”

Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, 2011.

Doña Lesbia, my host mother, and I are sitting on plastic chairs on the front porch, reading newspapers, and eating cubes of watermelon from a bowl.

At some point Doña Lesbia says to me, “mira” and points across the street. At the other side of the street a strange looking animal, dark, bone skinny, and with a head that seemed too large. It’s a stray pig, which, it should be noted, is a highly unusual thing. Most people would be happy to have a pig to feed and raise to be nice and big to sell or to slaughter. A pig’s a good investment. How this pig came to be the only stray and starving pig in Ciudad Sandino is a mystery.

Doña Lesbia is watching him intently. “Pobrecito, anda buscando comida,” she says quietly. (“Poor guy, he’s looking for food.” I’m translating “pobrecito” as “poor guy” which is more or less the idea, but there’s no translation for how it sounds when it’s used by a middle-aged Nicaraguan women to refer to a stray pig that she’s concerned about.) She goes to the kitchen and comes back with the rinds of the watermelon that we have been eating. She unlatches the gate between us and the street, steps out and throws the rinds in the general direction of the pig. The pig quickly approaches the rind and begins eat them hungrily. 

Reflection on Oscar Romero by Abbie Amico

I have spent a lot of this semester thinking about what traits make Monseñor Romero such a vivid person in our history, one that still draws our attention today. I figured that their had to be one. specific. reason. that so many remember him. 

But when beginning to plan this week, I realized that a lot about what Oscar Romero has taught me can not be put into words. I can tell you stories, both about myself and about women and men who I have encountered since I got my first glimpse of El Salvador and Oscar Romero’s life, but what I have gained is not one trait, or one lasting memory. 

It instead is a lifestyle, a choosing of a reality so seemingly different from my own.

And as I read through his homilies, his letters & his thoughts, I’ve realized that what makes his memory unique, one worth living by, is that he also had to choose it, and by choosing it his memory gave way instead to a memory of a people.

When Romero was elected archbishop he was originally chosen because he was the “safe” choice. He was elected to ignore problems, not question them. But as we’ve experienced in this past year sometimes the problems become too close to ignore. For Oscar Romero the event that brought the problems too close was the death of a friend, Fr. Rutilio Grande, a fellow priest who had devoted his entire life to the poor. 

Untimely Timely Gratitudes

I wasn't able to make it to Cafe V this weekend because I was studying for my oral comprehensive exams - one of the ever fewer "to do" items left on the Masters of Public Health checklist. 

In the spirit of gratitude I picked up from this weekend's writing agenda, here is my abbreviated weekend writing. 
I am grateful for those who have been: supporters, parents, teachers, friends, and roommates, rant listeners, bearers of study breaks, givers of surprise mini pies, senders of early morning and late night text message encouragement, rant listeners round two, laughter sharers, perspective lenders. I am grateful, too, for the quiet voice within that knows I can do this - and for the loud voice inside that's more than ready to be finished!

(I passed.)

Today I'm Grateful for... by Ellen Albritton

-a job that is pretty cool about me getting into the office at whatever time I manage to get there

-east-facing windows, and the morning sun that shines through them, without which I may never get out of bed

-a season that feels almost like spring

-friends, near and far, and their mundane, exciting, inquisitive, heartbreaking, weird, and gossipy workday Gchats

-a well-stocked fridge

-Gilbert, the self-checkout attendant who no longer makes me show him my ID when I buy wine

-a baking drawer full of sugary delights

-friends to plan baseball games, dinners, and "girl talk" brunches with

-some serious solitude

-space and time to read, to write, to sit, to be 

I Am Drawn to This Course... by Ellen Albritton

...because look at the title! "Be in Love with Yr Live"--how can I not be drawn to that?

...because maybe I'm only "in like" with my life right now, and that's not enough--I want more!

...because I've always found myself turning to The Book of Mev in times of stress, anxiety, transition, internal change, and I think I'm in one those right now

...because I constantly have a running internal monologue going on--might do some good to put some of that onto paper

...because I'm craving connection--to myself, to others, to words, to purpose, to direction, to sense and nonsense, to memory

...because it's Spring, and that seems like a fitting season to seek all of this

Poetry Is Anything and Everything by Katherine Kelliher

Poetry is anything and everything.

Abstract ideas fill the mind and then empty out; filling  a blank page, line after line.  When the thoughts stop flowing, we stop writing and call it poetry. Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and Maya Angelou inspire minds and spirits alike, with awe for their written word.  Bob Dylan’s lyrics are often noted for their poetic undertones. These selected few are known world-wide for their ability to capture hearts.

A well-written composition of words resonates. The mind understands, the heart ignites, and then we call it poetry.

Poetry is harmony. It is a meal crafted to perfection. The flavors, textures and smells harmonize together to form one cohesive delicacy.

A poem is a combination of passions and thoughts derived from the right side of the mind. This side contains bundles of colors, images, sights, and sounds flourishing together, every second of every day.

The ending sounds and syllables do not have to rhyme. Children’s ideas of poetry are skewed at a young age by teachers reciting “roses are red violets are blue”.

Poetry is a process. Think of pouring a glass of wine. One does not simply pour a glass of wine and drink it. Poetry needs to occur, first. The poem begins when the wine bottle is opened;  the bottle stands alone to take its first breath; we pour the wine into a glass and observe its complexion, perhaps a smokey red or a sweet white;  we slosh the wine around in the glass to release the built-up flavors; we let the aroma fill our nostrils, further intoxicating our senses and then finally, the wine wets our tongue.

Poetry wakens our inner spirit. Experiencing inner peace and feeling one with the earth can heighten our senses. A connection between the body, mind and spirit is poetry.

Walking along the water, the wind lightly lifting our hair, toes buried in the sand, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, the scent of fresh sea salt in the air, that is poetry.

Dance is poetry in motion. The body moving to the beat and rhythm of music is magical. Whether the music is slow and sensual or fast and sharp, dancers mold their bodies to the sound and interpret the poetry.

Without poetry, people scuffle through the robotic motions of life. Poetry keeps us alive; alive with hope, alive with emotion, alive with wonder.

Laurel in El Salvador

Laurel Marshall is blogging in El Salvador; please check out her posts!

Chelsea's Blog

Check out Chelsea Jaeger's blog when you have a chance!

Solo Mujer

I sent this to Mark in November and he asked if I would share it then...I haven't had the courage until listening to Te share last night at Share the Wealth. SO...in the spirit of healing from writing and from sharing writing, here is a monologue I wrote when I was on silent retreat in El Salvador nearing the end of my semester there. Seguimos adelante! Romero, presente

Solo mujer

I am woman, solo mujer

What is it to be woman?

And more

What is it to be woman in El Salvador? (A country ravaged by war, machismo, and systemic injustice)

To be woman is to be born into a world already in the bottom fighting to be heard

To be woman is knowing how to make tortillas before learning to read or write

To be woman is to have your childhood cut short

It’s letting the priest have the last word…or not

To be woman is to know you will never be man

It is not planning too far into the future because you don’t want to get your hopes up

To be woman is also to answer every “how are you” with “I’m here, Graciás a Dios”

To be woman is walking down the street and feeling the eye of every man you encounter undress you

Being woman is waiting, sick, for 3 days to hear if your son made it across the border safely to the U.S., (knowing he’s is there because of you)

It’s giving birth to your child only hoping you both will survive

To be woman is to look down and walk ahead when a man calls you chucha, or bitch

To be there and be woman is to know your newborn daughter awaits the same reality you have

To be woman is to hope your husband will not treat your son better than your daughter

Being woman is feeling great anguish in your womb when it is dark and your children have yet to come home from school

It is wanting, needing to rest in the hammock but knowing your place is in the kitchen

Being woman is burying your 8-month old baby because you couldn’t afford a doctor

To be woman is hoping your newborn baby will breast-feed long enough for your husband to find work to buy food

To be woman is to watch your son be paralyzed by a fall at work knowing he only started working to put food on your table

Being woman is to have man read and write for you because it’s just too hard

To be woman is having to trust the bottle of pills the doctor gave you is really what you need, because you don’t know the difference

It is your children having 3 different fathers, none of whom stuck around

Being woman is lying on your all too early deathbed knowing you are leaving your 21-year-old daughter to take care of her 8 younger brothers and sisters

Being woman is sending your disabled son to a government home because you can’t afford to care for him properly

It’s dancing with your drunk husband because it’s safer to just do what he asks

To be woman is to always look over your shoulder because you don’t want that solider behind you to follow you home and rape you

Being woman is dreading the end of the school year because when classes end, so do the free lunches

Being woman is seeing your father leave your mother to be with the woman next door

Being woman is knowing you are woman

But also…

To be woman is to know, a pesar de todo, in spite of everything, all is grace

An Autobiographical Attempt (only a beginning)

I.

It was frosty in the outer world

and I was slipping into it like racing pony

amid howls of excitement

my Nana clapping and singing

my mom in her catcher's stance, mitt in hand

as I, grabbing my daddy's paint brushes

and 2 additional cans of paint, slid by.

I know that it was this way

My Nana had a piano and played

Irish (American Irish) songs and hymns

and still many of those notes sing-song through

my brain

fluttering like birds on a wire

still the softballs fly whacking my mothers mitt

thwack, thwack

my father's mother sighing, needle and thread in hand,

“she ought to be quilting'

daddy, so far away but bristling with brushes

at the workbench or in his cellar bed

he said it would be too hard to teach painting to me

when he hardly knew it himself struggling as he was

 with life's dirty left hand, with the noonday demon

it's life, this is it

we come and we go

is the picture clear?

Okay, I forgot the priest

flinging his holy waters and sacred oils

hoping it would stick,

mother sighed, father shrugged, nana sang

and that was that

within a few years those paint cans sprouted

and 2 additional sillies joined the cooking pot

swirling and singing, laughing and crying

we swam together, ran together

played ball together

and thus it continued for a long time

mother clapped, father sighed, nana smiled

It's life, this is it

we come and we go

II.

It was one of those mornings

one of those mornings when I wished

I could stand in the warm shower forever

as if the warmth streaming down my body

would envelop me, would keep me alive

would preserve those that I love

I have been reading Joan Didion's book

about loss, more than loss, death,

and the terrible deep loss, the finality, that entails

and the warmth of the water seemed protective

like a blanket or a lover on a

chilly winter's eve

just after or just before Christmas

It's life, this is it

we come and we go

and earlier I had been remembering

all of the boyfriends that I had

that I had made out with

but had never spoken to

(I don't usually talk, you know)

what did they like? Or wish for?

What were their loves or were

they just angry about everything?

Did any of them end up in VietNam

or Iraq? Did they hold objections to war?

did they end up with PTSD?

Where are they today?

It's just life, this is it

we come and we go

III.

those two little paint buckets that

followed me into the world

round and pink and female

disrupted my placid self-centered life

teasing, laughing, running

destroying all the sensibilities that

my sensitivities had maintained

they were a nuisance, a nuisance

for years and years

thank you, but all I wanted was a book

and some peace and quiet and a lack of interruption

(my Gurdjieff teacher said that I was spoiled)

It's life, this is it

we come and we go

and the terror of school, the teachers

and their tantrums

(someone said that if you climbed

to the top of the jungle gym after school,

you could see the nuns taking off their

habits, see what they looked like with their

short cropped hair) but true to my nature

I was appalled at the idea of spying

and went home to the thwack, thwack

of my mother's softball glove and my father's

sometimes painterly life in the basement

It's life, this is it

we come and we go

IV.

there is, someplace buried in my mind,

my soul, a love for the beauty of the word,

which flowered a time or two under the tutelege of Mark

a veritable Buddhist magician

drawing all sorts of triumphal flights of images

from his (mostly) younger followers

smitten as they are with his quiet and open self

traits too often lacking in the modern American male

yet beloved by most women

a male poet of feeling, rather Whitmanesque

and greatly beloved

it's life, this is it

we come and we go

surely I have a lot on my mind these days

the conflict within my family being uppermost

the criticism of my daughters and my sister

the problems and illegal behavior of my son

my own tendency to shut myself up in my room.

It all gives me a headache of immense proportions

probably because I do not know how to deal with it

I can see, as I often do, both sides of the question

which leaves me paralyzed

I neither wish to fight or flee (where would I live?)

it's life, this is it

we come and we go

V.

I see, momentarily, the emptiness of things

and yet their fullness

how what others do, they do,

and how doing nothing is also okay

how I can see and feel my fingers

on these computer keys

see and feel the thoughts rushing through my mind

but know that the quiet of my soul is what

is meaningful

I wish to keep and hold dear the few relationships

that I have – with Chris, with Tom, with Mark

and Tina? Where did she go?

And where did that child go who was slipping

so joyfully into this life?

A quote from Joan Didion -

“I have already lost touch with a couple of people

I used to be”

It's life, this is it

we come and we go.

I took a day long retreat/seminar on Ignatian pedagogy last week and one of the pillars of this paradigm is context. I have since been trying to consider the context of others and my own context while also pushing myself to share my context with those I encounter. SO here goes. My name is Lindsay and I graduated in May from SLU with my doctorate in physical therapy. In the spirit of lifelong learning, I am pursuing my specialization in orthopedics through a year long residency at SLU and SSM here in St Louis. I started last August and end this coming August. That is most of my context these days, which is why I am so grateful for being a part of this writing class and community, it expands my context. I do not normally use "writer" as an identifier when explaining myself, but I am working on it. I do not always feel in love with my life, but I try to remember that being in love is not always pretty or exciting or happy....thank you Mark and Mev. My project for writing class this season is a blog...I won't go much more into it because it is laid out in the first 2 posts on the blog. Feel free to read and share as you feel called...and if you would be so willing to contribute, send me your email address and I'll add you!


tosoothemyquarterlifecrisis.wordpress.com

Thank you for this space, this place and these people!

It's About

As I offer to share a 250-page novel/collage
(Dear Layla/Welcome to Palestine)
With a friend here and there

A typical question is–
“What’s it about?”

OK

Reflections on The Book of Mev by Cami Kasmerchak

Dear Dr. C,

This is a long time coming, but I’ve put off writing this because I want to say it right. Then again, if I’ve learned anything from you and Natalie Goldberg, it’s that I must write and not care how it comes out. So here it goes:

This winter break was the third time I’ve picked up and read The Book of Mev. My first year at SLU right after we had met, Nebu and I would read random passages out loud with our friend Michelle in an abandoned dorm room. The book was a real life love story—something more accessible and affirming than the fairytales of youth. The second time I actually read it cover to cover. I was working for the Appalachian Service Project, and finally finished it the semester I returned to SLU (after that summer). It was a rough year, but diving into The Book of Mev was eye-opening. Mev gave me hope that the things I was thinking and feeling didn’t make me crazy or unrealistic or ignorant. That time I was re-reading the book in paperback form. It is interesting the flip through those pages and look at what I underlined or commented on—it is every telling to where I was. But this winter I wanted to come to The Book of Mev fresh.  I wanted to have a new experience with it. So, I read from the hard cover copy that you and sent to me my second summer working for the Appalachian Service Project. Coming to it with new eyes was amazing. I experienced a whole new level to it that I didn’t before. I have so many thoughts about The Book of Mev, so forgive me of the following don’t flow from one experience/thought of it to the next.

Saturday morning in DC from Ellen Marie

For those who may be interested, I made a B.O.M. playlist on Spotify comprised of the list of Music in the back of the book.

You may be able to access it by a simple search within Spotify, or if we are friends on Facebook, and you're on Spotify, I can share it with you that way.

Margaret

On a "Love My Job" kind of Month

Monday, March 16, 2015

You’re catching me on a “love my job” kind of month.

No, it’s not always that way.

When the questions are not answered and I don’t have the right words.  And the lines in the Eagle’s Nest are long and I think that the 20 minutes we have to wait for food will somehow delay our “real” conversation. 

But that’s just it.  Te acompaño.  Whether there is bread or not.  Whether you’ve gotten your salad yet or not.  Jesus is accompanying us in the breaking of the bread.  We’re accompanying each other in the sitting in the Eagle’s Nest.  (It all happened while [they] sat around talking)

__

I’m loving my job this month because I am seeing the students live the questions.  No, but really live the questions. 

We’ve started a “F.A.S.T.” week this year – Faith, Action, Solidarity, Today – and it has been such a joy to watch the students struggle (yes, a joy to watch them struggle), with the questions, concerns, realities.  How do we live this life?  Of faith and justice?  Of privilege and humility?  Of downward mobility in an upward reality?  We must carefully discern what is ours to do.  And then do it.

An alum tonight on the “Fall in love, Stay in love” Panel said something along the lines of, “When you beginning really leaning into these questions of what you are going to do, you begin to realize you are already doing it.”

__

I guess that’s it.  I’m doing it.  I work at a college campus (a very awesome/incredible/wonderful one at that), and I help students think about their lives and their vocations. I create/coordinate/support a program that exposes students more deeply to the realities of another community, often one which suffers from poverty or marginalization, and help facilitate that they fall in love.

Fall in love with what?  With compassion, with solidarity, with love and faith in action.

I walk around a beautiful university and learn from each student that comes through the door; each work study student whom I ask for assistance; each graduate student from the STM who shares another bit of faith.

It’s not perfect.  It’s not always this way.  And that will have to be a topic of reflection for another day.  But this month, yes, loving. 

__

How blessed am I to be among this community.
How blessed to love my job for a month.

Gratitudes

Our theme for our second session is Gratitudes.


You can read Wendy Lee's Christmas reflection.

This is from Pete Mosher around Thanksgiving 2013 just before he died.

Here's one I wrote a few years back.

Bridges Abound

Sharing the address of a blog that I contribute to from time to time. Visit to read poetry and accounts from family adventures.  With peace.....  Chris      

Why I Choose

I take this course to rediscover what I've lost... to seek what I never realized I was seeking. In the cold, dead of winter, I call out to god & the echo - the void- calls back with a whisper. Yet, I hear nothing. And, it's been this way for so long now. How do I reignite the fire, fan the flames, & find my way Home again?


I seek my Truth once again.

I've lost my way through the disease, the betrayal,the broken heart, the recovery hasn't completed, yet. From the police shootings, protests, riots, children killed, cops shot, cops shoot, families break. We have all realized we are victims in this city, state, country, world. & it's my job... No,my duty... to hunker down in the newsroom,at my computer, gawking, seeking that prime video... video so deep the pain of this city and the broken families within feel like they're from a film, not a 20 minute drive to the Other parts of town. Watching all of the drama unfold... Who benefits from this shared drama & amusing pain? The advertisers? The anchors? The show? We seek no clear Soul-ution in the Newsroom... Only the Stories of this city we and our loves call Home.

Six months ago... 11:58, Monday, August 11, 6 months ago, we went on air for News 4 at Noon after a night of rioting, looting, and peaceful protesting.

Working Sunday, August 10, I have never seen or been involved in covering anything so extreme in my life. It was a surreal sight. Friends, co-workers, up in the middle of everything. . . “Ground Zero.” Canfield Green Apartments. . . Protesting, reporting. Trying to stay safe. Emotions running high. Threats being thrown at news crews, officers, protesters, neighbors. Broken windows on live trucks and a burned down Quik Trip.

An endless work day. A never ending story and movement begun.

The anonymous drone of 12 police scanners chirping in my ear takes my attention back to this course... And what do I seek? I take this class to fall in love once again with the Compassion and Poetic Beauty in waking up with my lover, José, by my side, Bird songs chirping their morning melody, the cool breeze tempting me awake.


Another day is here. Another day has begun.

Where does the time go?

What Draws Me to This Course by Brent Fernandez

I arrived last night at Bethlehem Farm, a place I call home even though I haven't lived here for almost 4 years. I call it home for many reasons: the connection to the land, the simplicity of life, the fact that I feel myself here, and I can be myself. It is also great to be in a place where you are surrounded by like-minded folks who want to transform the world, or part of it, and also their lives. 

Andi and Lauren are two of these folks. Both went to Creighton University and both have a passion for life and justice and love! It energizes me to be around such people. It also helps that they are 10 yrs younger than me and have a lot more energy. 

Some of us went to a dance and a "pie walk" last night. I struck up a conversation with Lauren. Since they went to Creighton, I mentioned Kate Linden to Lauren to see if she knew her. She flipped out when she found out that Kate was my first college friend and still a great friend to this day. Kate had mentored Lauren through college and helped her find her path. It's great to be surrounded by great people. It's great to be interconnected in this web of life with great people. I am the luckiest guy on earth... This is how I feel when I think about my friends. 

Last night while we did the pie dishes, Andi asked if I knew Fr. John Kavanaugh at SLU. I mentioned that I took a class with him and how amazing of a man he was. Andi and Lauren had both read Following Christ In a Consumer Society and were very excited to talk about him. 

We continued to play our game of "Connect the Jesuit dots," which lead to them asking if I knew Mark Chmiel and if I had ever read The Book of Mev. 

"As a matter of fact, yes! And I'm re-reading it NOW... and participating in a writing class with Mark right now." 

We spent the next 30 minutes discussing the book, how it influenced us, how we want love and life full, how we want to see the world, listen to the cry of the poor, but still smile and dance and sing. 

This is what draws me to this course. The fact that I knew these women for 3 hours and we started talking about this book and there was a connection. I felt an immediate trust. I found some comrades. This book does this... It connects people, it connects souls, and so I look forward to reading it and writing and sharing. 

This course gives me an excuse to read The Book of Mev_ again... Like I needed one. 

be in love with yr life: a goal

I’ve blocked myself.

It’s not writers’ block, some mysterious mental sludge that I have to wait to drain away, or just be less stressed out, or eat healthily, or what have you.

I’ve been keeping a blog since I moved to El Salvador, for whatever reason. Writing things helps me see my thoughts outside of myself, and it’s been important to share some of those with the people who loved me through the first twenty-two years of my life before sending me off, some more begrudgingly than others, into the rest of it.

When I came out to my parents, finally, a year ago, the pool of things about my life that we can talk about shrinked down to a puddle: am I healthy, what is the weather like, what am I making for dinner. And the pool of things other people are to know about me evaporated almost totally.

So I shut up a year ago, and I’m over it now.

Mev is the reason I’m here at all, quite frankly. She went with me to Nicaragua when I was a jaded twenty year old and held my hand as I remembered what God whispered to each of us as she walked with us silently out of the night: that she waits for us all to find her in the underside of history. I’ve met so many people along the way that remind me of the women Mev met writing The Struggle Is One, and I’ve lent out and exchanged around my copy of her gospel so many times that I no longer know where it is. It seems appropriate that she be the reason I start reaching out my closed up little heart roots.

So my writing project for this class is to write on my blog again. Whoop de doo. But like, my grandma used to read it to her Sunday school group at Wendy’s over junior bacon cheeseburgers after church. It gave folks at home words to ask about more than the temperature and what-is-that-in-Fahrenheit. It was my self-inflicted open heart surgery on the world wide web, and I stopped part way through. I don’t want to wait until it’s healed up in pieces to try to put it back together.

Probably it will be a lot of like, see-judge-act, talking about stuff that goes on here or there and talking about what God seems to say in all of it. A lot of leaving crumbs along the trail of my own processes, so I can see where I’ve gone. US foreign policy, food sovereignty, corn, pianos, public busses. The price of tomatoes, Anita’s son’s days. The forecast, the full moon, Celsius-to-Fahrenheit.

“Be in Love with Yr Life”*: A Spring Writing Course

Like Sontag and Beseda, many of us are tempted to be intolerant of the ambiguity and intimidated by the risks of photography and other art forms.  Ultimately, I believe we are most daunted by the mystery, the question, the possibility:  “It could be us.”  Through my own photography I strive to bridge the distant worlds of our small globe.  I contemplate the mystery:  It is us.
–Mev Puleo

This spring will mark ten years since The Book of Mev was published.  Over the years I’ve been gratified by the responses to that story, from people I’ve known a long time and those I just met. It appears the book has encouraged some people on different aspects of their journeys.

I’ve often noticed  how many readers recognize themselves in Mev’s words, say, from her letters and journals.  I’m reminded of the French novelist Marcel Proust, who wrote:  “In reality every reader is, while she is reading, the reader of her own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable her to discern what, without this book, she could perhaps never have perceived in herself.”

For this spring’s writing class, I invite you to read (or reread) and write off of stories, themes, and questions from The Book of Mev.

I hope that reading and discussing this particular text may give you insight and encouragement on a writing project you’re in the middle of or one you’ve long wanted to start.  It could be a series of letters to someone, a blog, a long and rambling essay,  a one-act play, a chapbook of poems about life in Fenton.  You know what is inside you calling for more attention.

So we’ll engage such topics as being present, community, accompaniment, faith, spirituality, the state of the world, the state of our soul,  friends, mentors, teachers, creative arts (e.g., photography), travel, breakdowns, breakthroughs, solidarity, illness, celebrating, grieving, letting go, poetry, El Salvador, Palestine, Haiti, schools, gospels, letter-writing, gratitude, bearing witness, and much else.

Here are the specifics:

How Often: 7 weeks, 2 sessions a week, beginning Wednesday March 18 and ending Sunday 3 May.

Where and When: (1)  On Wednesdays, 6:30 – 8:15 pm, we meet at the home of Marty and Jerry King, 830 DeMun (Clayton, 63105) and (2)  On the weekend, we have a second weekly session for which you choose either meeting with us Saturday or Sunday  at Café  Ventana, 2-4 p.m. (3919 West Pine Boulevard, St. Louis, 63108).

Format: Class sessions will have at least an hour for concentrated writing; there will also be some time for paired and group sharing.

Essential text: The Book of Mev.

Recommended texts: Joe Brainard, I Remember;  Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces; Mev Puleo, The Struggle Is One.

I am happy to meet up with participants to discuss whatever is on your mind during the seven weeks (at a time convenient for you).

Tuition  is $125.  For people outside of Saint Louis, I’m happy to offer an on-line writing, reading, sharing experience ($75).

Please contact me if you are interested in this class! Or pass this information on to someone who might be looking for some time and community for writing.

Mark Chmiel
markjchmiel@gmail.com
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text: 314-807-8769

*Jack Kerouac, epigraph to The Book of Mev