Author: Joanne Corey

Please come visit my eclectic blog, Top of JC's Mind. You can never be sure what you'll find!

Friday night fun – part one

On a Friday evening in March, I read at open mic poetry night for the first time. I had attended with my husband for the first time in January and planned to read in February, but, instead, we had to travel for my aunt’s funeral that weekend. So that brought us to March. B wasn’t feeling well, so I went alone.

There were fewer people this time then in January, but over half of us were reading at open mic for the first time.  (Actually, we meet at RiverRead Books and don’t need to use a mic, but it’s called open mic anyway.) I had signed up to read second, so that I could enjoy hearing the other poets without the distraction of having to think about my own reading.

Barrett, who began the monthly open mic program at RiverRead five years ago, did a welcome and read first, including a new poem he had just completed about visiting the Holocaust Museum. (Barrett is part of the group of poets that I began meeting with last August. We meet twice a month to hear each other’s work and offer comments. Were it not for that, I don’t know if I would have been brave enough to show up and read.)

I started my reading with “Moonlight” because it is my most well-received poem and my good luck charm.  It is the poem that I submitted for National Poetry Month in 2013 to “Off the Page,” a local program on WSKG public radio; they put listeners’ poems up on their website every April. (Well, they used to. The host retired in 2013, so that year turned out to be the last hurrah.)  I was so excited when it was chosen to be read on air! The host, Bill Jaker, read it. It was the first time I had heard someone else read my work aloud.

I say that “Moonlight” is my good luck charm because one of the guests on the program was Nicole Santalucia, who began the Binghamton Poetry Project (BPP). That was how I first learned about it, which led to my attending the spring 2014 workshop. I included “Moonlight” in our anthology for that session and read it at our public reading.  After the summer session, our instructor helped me find and join the critique group where I met Barrett and eight other local poets. With their and BPP’s help, I have learned a lot about poetry, about myself as a poet, and about how to make my work stronger and better. And it all started because of:
Moonlight

In the narrow valley of youth,
the moon was distant,
as though at perpetual apogee.
Cocooned in darkness,
I slept soundly.

In the broad valley of adulthood,
the moon is close,
casting sharp shadows.
Bathed in eerie light,
I lie awake.

I also read two newer poems, “(Not) the Aunt I Remember” and “Downy,” which I can’t post here because I hope to submit them to journals. My reading went well- I didn’t drop anything or lose my place – and then I got to sit and enjoy everyone else’s work. We had eleven poets read, with the first-time readers outnumbering the veteran readers six to five.

A curious thing happened. I had to remind Barrett and the other poets from our group that it was the first time I had read at open mic. While I am painfully aware of my newness as a poet-in-public, it appears that I can project at least some level of competence, which feels good.

Or it could be my silver hair just makes it seem that I must have been around a long time…

 

a new wrinkle

Besides joining in with Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays, my other Wednesday staple is facilitating a spirituality study group at my church. For the last decade at least, this group has been all women  – with me, at 54, the youngest in attendance.

Today, a young man joined us.

He is about the age of my daughters, in his twenties, which makes him the age of some of the grandchildren of the other women.

It’s going to be an adjustment.  Part of it is the gender difference. Part of it is the age difference. The biggest adjustment, though, is that most of the women in this class have been studying and pondering spiritual topics for decades and have a lot of background and experience with different authors’ perspective. Even for us, Richard Rohr, whose book Immortal Diamond we are currently studying, is sometimes difficult to grasp at first hearing, as the concepts are so deep and rich. It must be daunting to be thrown into the midst of the book with no preparation.

I will have to contemplate how best to offer background and explanations.

If the poor man is brave enough to return next week…

One-Liner Wednesday: painting and poetry

In honor of US National Poetry Month:
Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen.
– Leonardo da Vinci

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday! Details here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/04/08/one-liner-wednesday-life-is-too-short/

notification weirdness

I’m not sure why, but my email has just gotten a bunch of WordPress notifications that range over the last four days. I’m hoping I haven’t missed anything in my commenting and replies, but it’s possible. It’s ironic because I have been making a concerted effort to slog through my email backlog that developed while I was tending to family health stuff and had finally knocked it back to under 250 messages – until this new torrent of WordPress messages arrived. Oh, well! Back to work!

Drought, farms, and climate change

On the morning news, I heard the staggering statistics that California, which is in extreme drought, uses 80% of its water for agriculture, growing a third of the US supply of fruits and vegetables. It has already taken some farmland out of production or substituted crops that use less water. Meanwhile, it is in its fourth year of drought with snowpack under 5% of normal. As in over 95% of normally expected runoff water will not be there this year.

This should be setting off all kinds of alarm bells across the country. We need to shift our food production to more local areas and sustainable practices. Now, not in some distant future. We need to change our expectation of what foods we eat in which season of the year. When I was growing up, we ate fresh sweet corn in mid- to late-summer, when nearby farms were harvesting. We would prepare extra corn, cut it off the cob, and freeze it to eat at other times of year. We need to get back to this sense of eating fresh foods locally and preserving the extra produce to eat later rather than expecting California to send us strawberries in February. Certainly some crops, like citrus fruits, will not grow throughout the country, but others, like salad greens, can be grown close to where they are consumed, even in northern urban centers in winter where they can be grown indoors.

During the long slog fighting against shale gas development in New York State, I used many arguments against various aspects of this industrialization of our state. One of them was that, in this time of shifting climate, we needed to preserve our New York farms and forests for food production. Much of the farmland in the US is projected to have major droughts and heat waves as atmospheric carbon increases, including California and the Great Plains/Midwest farm belt. The Northeast, while expected to warm, is not expected to have severe issues with water supply. New York must assiduously protect its soils, water, and air from pollution in order to feed itself and other states as climate stressors increase.

Interview with Ivone Gebara

I just finished reading a great interview with Catholic feminist theologian Ivone Gebara of Brazil.  http://iglesiadescalza.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-pope-has-good-will-but-he-cant.html

There are so many threads for me that come together here: my own experience as a Catholic woman and mother of Catholic daughters; years of study of church history, doctrine, Scripture, theology, and spirituality; my advocacy for social justice through NETWORK and other organizations; being an alumna of a women’s college; recent blogging reading and writing, including my Holy Saturday post and a reply to one of OM’s post on women and the priesthood, which I can’t seem to find at the moment so link is to his homepage; the women’s history month/feminist posts that I have been planning to get to for months and haven’t; and reaction to long-standing problems with oppression, violence, mutilation, and human trafficking around the world.

Serious stuff.  The top of my mind gets overwhelmed sometimes…

women waiting

In my Roman Catholic faith tradition, today is Holy Saturday, the day between Good Friday, which commemorates the crucifixion and death of Jesus, and Easter, the celebration of Christ’s resurrection. It is a between time – neither part of Lent nor part of the Easter season – a time of waiting.

This Lent, I have read a number of pieces about how it was the women disciples that accompanied Jesus on the way of the cross while nearly all the male disciples faded away. The women also became the first witnesses to the resurrection because they were the ones going to the tomb to anoint Jesus’s body in accordance with Jewish burial custom.

The reason that the women could not do this ministry immediately is that they needed to observe the sabbath, the day of rest from work that is such an important part of the Jewish faith tradition. That particular sabbath was an even more solemn one because it was during the eight days of the Passover celebration. So from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday, the women rested and mourned and waited to prepare Jesus’s body with perfumed oils and burial cloths.

The women (or Mary Magdalene alone – the gospel accounts differ) must have made their preparations during the night because they were at the tomb near dawn. Finding the tomb empty, they became the first witnesses to the resurrection. In John’s gospel, Christ appears to Mary Magdalene and directly commissions her to “go and tell” which is the essential apostolic mission.

Today, I am reflecting about Jesus who was also resting on that sabbath – although resting in death at that point. Yesterday, at Good Friday services, the deacon reminded us that Lamb of God was one of the oldest titles for Jesus. The coinciding of his death with Passover, when the lamb is slain in commemoration of the protection of the firstborn of the Israelites by marking their doorposts with lamb’s blood, is a powerful reminder of his Jewish identity and faithfulness to the covenant and his mission.

I don’t think that Jesus meant to found a new church. In his earthly ministry, he reached out and healed and spoke and ate with those who were on the margins of society, including Samaritans and others who were not Jews. It is a human tragedy that religion has been used to separate people, to perceive others as enemies, to perpetrate violence and oppression. I believe that God is a spirit of love, revealed in various ways to different cultures throughout time. Like Pope Francis, I appreciate all people of good will, whether they belong to a faith tradition, spiritual or philosophical practice, or not. I recount religious and spiritual topics here from time to time because this is part of who I am; I do not intend to imply that my belief should be yours or is superior to yours or anything else of the kind.

But back to today…

I’m waiting. Tonight, after sundown, we will begin the Easter vigil by lighting a new fire and blessing the Paschal candle which will be used throughout the year, including for baptisms and funerals. Later in the mass, we will use the candle to bless baptismal waters and new members of the church will receive the sacraments of initiation. We will celebrate Eucharist together, sing songs with alleluias, and rejoice!

The waiting makes it that much more special when it arrives.

SoCS: delightfully short

I should be delighted that the SoCS prompt is so open this week. It was sweet of Linda to take into account people who are doing the A-Z challenge so that they can double-dip with the letter D and SoCS. Of course, I am not disciplined enough to do those every day kind of things, but more power to all those who are participating!

I guess I could ramble on SoCing with whatever is Top of JC’s Mind, but I should work on some of the backlog of posts I need to write. Well, at least the Holy Saturday post which expires today…

The prompt from Linda for Stream of Consciousness Saturday: use a word, anywhere in your post, that begins with the prefix “de-.” Extra points if your word ends with “ed”! It’s all about the fun – have some!

http://lindaghill.com/2015/04/03/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-415/  Anyone can join in!  Just go to the link above for the rules, which include linking back to that post so others can find your contribution.

socs-badge

How to cope with Holy Week when you feel less than inspired | National Catholic Reporter

In a Lent and Holy Week that have been less-than-optimal for me spiritually, I appreciated Father Reese’s honesty and perspective, especially about the theology surrounding the crucifixion.

How to cope with Holy Week when you feel less than inspired | National Catholic Reporter.

April fool

It’s April first, also known as April Fools’ Day, when pranks and practical jokes abound.

I am not participating and am attempting to avoid as much of the folderol as possible.

I have never enjoyed pranks and let’s just say that I am not known for my sense of humor. Or maybe more accurately, I don’t have a broad sense of humor, which most April-Fools’-Day-ness requires.

My natural resistance to it is only part of the story. There are just too many serious circumstances and happenings right now – both on a national/international level and among family and friends – for me to spend time dealing with jokes and false news stories and such.

So, I’m opting out and trying to get my head together to deal with the remainder of Holy Week and Easter amidst the challenges of winter-becoming-spring.

JC