Whispering to Remember - Christmas 2017

Hope - Peace - Joy - Love - The Four Candles of Advent

It's Christmas 2017.
One entire year of the Trump Administration.

Usually reflecting on the year, no matter how hard, is a joy...
we have each other...
we will get through.

During the four weeks of Advent, one of my favorite traditions is the Advent Wreath.
We have four candles, three purple and one pink, set in a circle.
We get to light one each week...so that by the time Christmas comes around,
there is serious light in the darkness...
four bright candles...shining triumphantly.
Holding open the spot...creating space for a baby...and a miracle...and family.

I was pregnant at Christmas time twenty five years ago.
All these years later, I cherish that extra special time of singing and preparing for two babies during that Advent in 1992,
not just one.

But this year is different.

I feel the weight of a year's worth of lies.
A year's worth of looking the other way.
A year's worth of pretending everything is ok.

I feel the crushing crashing of dreams of so many Americans withering on the vine...
this week it is grad students due to the tax bill that gives massive deductions to corporations over its citizens...
months ago, it was those with disabilities...
those with medical conditions...
...people of color...
...women...
...the LGBTQ community...
...or immigrants...
...or refugees...
...or children.

A year ago, I could feel an entire nation of children's eyes watching the adults in the room
make excuses...
it doesn't matter that she's never been in a public school classroom...
or that he derides the Environmental Protection Agency...
or that he flies private planes all over the United States at our expense...
lower your eyes...
pretend you don't see.

Are our children any better twelve months later?
Sadly, no.

They've seen open racism and half-hearted excuses.

They've witnessed their President UNwelcome entire nations of people.

The've had to accept a new normal and the sickening taunts of a president...
corruption and people so achingly out-in-the-open greedy that it insults those that work to teach integrity and honesty.
They've witnessed the open disregard for suffering people in Puerto Rico...
the pointed, barbed insults to people hidden in the shadows working for our safety...
the FBI, the CIA...
and our press...
daily derided...
with blatant untruths...
and intentional misinformation.

*****

This Christmas I want to whisper who we are.I want to remind each of us what it means to be American.

Like the Advent candles, first I offer HOPE.We are better than this.
Integrity.
Character.
Honesty.
Humility.
THESE THINGS STILL MATTER.
Millions resist openly.
Millions more resist in the smallest of ways.
Two-thirds of us...the majority of us say NO.

Light the candle of hope...and see how it breaks the darkness.
The second offering is LOVE.
Love is opening the circle wider...building a longer table...
love is recognizing fear and still pushing up your sleeves to do the work.
Love is the answer...the only response to racism and sexism.
Love is knowing that all humans are equal and working against injustice...
it's seeing yourself in the stranger.
It is living in the present moment.
What can I do right now?
and then taking the first step to begin.

Choose love and you change the trajectory.

Ours is not a small God...the endless, timeless beauty of the universe whispers the grandeur of Higher Love.
Seize it.
Breathe it in.
It is yours everyday for the taking...
grace in the ordinary.

Can you hear the murmurings??

The third offering is JOY.
With so much hatred, corruption and villainy...joy can be hard to find...but it is there.
There, in the ironic plot twist of a transgender women winning the seat away from someone who bragged that he was "Chief Homophobe" in Virginia.
In the way the sun still sets...the clouds still swirl across the sky...
the perfect simplicity of a cup of tea...or an act of kindness...a baby's laugh...a toddler's wonder...
rain on a rooftop...clothes fresh from a dryer...firefighters who work to save houses...and teachers who read out loud to students stories that bind us together.
Pick up a rock.
Try to watch the dance of a snowflake.
Gather friends together and cherish their company.
Walk your dog.
Hug your kid.
Dance.

Laugh.

The last offering is PEACE.This seems like a wish.
A fantasy.
Something out of reach.
But tonight I listened to a mother who had to bury her first grader after he was murdered at his elementary school in Newtown live her life with forgiveness at its core.
Five years after every mother's worst heartbreak, a woman named Scarlett showed me the way.
Forgiveness carries peace on its wings.
Scarlett mentioned:
Nurturing, Healing Love.
She wants every human to have that and recognizes that her child's killer was unable to
either receive or give love.

One year of Trump's despicable behavior...his devastating cruelty...his duplicitous companions that tolerate the tarnishing of all that is sacred about our country...
one entire year.

Advent offers light in the darkness.
My whisper blows it forward...
to you...
to another you...and another you...
as Pope Francis said in his TED Talk:
"Hope begins with you and then another you and another you
until it becomes US.
When there is an us, there is a Revolution of Tenderness."

I'm ready for the Revolution.

I know you are too...
let us begin.
Light the candle.
Notice the warmth.
Offer it to others.
Remember the way home.
Be honest.
Work hard.
Resist.

We are better than this.
Demand it.

Why Poets Should Negotiate Peace Treaties or The Power of a Clump of Words

In the fall after Patrick was diagnosed with leukemia - Fall 2002 - 

I was making lunch for Patrick and listening to CNN.

I heard a lively anchor share a news story in an upbeat voice...

she had something great to share...

and I needed great...

so I listened.

I paused my lunch making and listened:

"The latest research shows that if your child is in day care, 

they have less chance of developing leukemia."

Shit, really?

You mean, if Patrick had been in day care we could have avoided all this?

Really?

I rewound the past few years of Patrick's baby life.

His birth.

His instant diagnosis of Down Syndrome...

not even a single day of life free from that label...

another diagnosis that took only a few days of life: a heart defect.

In need of open heart surgery at nine weeks old...

coming home from the hospital and just wanting to love my baby...

and somehow, some way, tend to my other kids...

day care was last on my list.

Now, just a mere two years later, the leukemia diagnosis and the Three Year Protocol - always sated with capital letters - and the big unknowns...

Life...what does it look like three years from now?

Health? Is that possible three years from now?

Family? What does that feel like three years after this?

Just hours after that CNN report, in the dark of night as I am not sleeping, 

I watch Bill Moyers interview a poet, a Palestinian-American poet,

Naomi Shihab Nye,

and I hear her voice read a poem...

this poem...

and it changes my life.

On.The.Spot.

I'm instantly different because of the words.

I gift them to you, right here:

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

*****

Those words made everything in my world make sense.

I clung to them.

Sorrow became a tattoo that I could locate on others...

which allowed me to locate the kindness.

I wish I could convey the depth of those words in the engraving on my heart...

...but as life likes to do,

I moved on.

Patrick survived - truthfully, thrived - through the Three Year Protocol.

I stumbled and bumbled through it...with plenty of bad attitude and crushing worry.

2005 happened and our family cheered.

We snuck away from blood counts and chemo...

we hid from conversations about blood cancer...

and we got away with it.

No one came looking.

2006 arrived and brought its amazing grace, sweet baby Caroline, and life got busy...

with the regular things...

school lunches, soccer practice, homework...

Naomi's poem hibernated within my heart.

2016 arrived with election insanity...

meanness as an accepted way to live in our world...

shutting our collective eyes to refugees...

so, so, so, so many of them...

plugging our ears to the din of the poor, the overlooked, the desperately lonely...

and along comes Naomi Shihab Nye - chosen as the UC Davis School of Education's 

Author in Residence and Words Take Wing Author.

Something within me, sleepy from slumber, awakened.

What?

She will be here...in my orbit...how?

I couldn't fathom the good fortune.

Couldn't take it.

Kept shoving it down...

and then it happened.

December 13th, 2016 Naomi Shihab Nye was hanging out in Davis and our worlds collided.

I first got to hear her speak to student teachers...a room full of worn out beginning teachers...so vulnerable and shy...about 40 of them.

Do you know what she tells them?

First thing.

I know because I took copious notes the entire time she was around...

like a stenographer on steroids...

she said:

"I congratulate you on your life choice to go into teaching and knowing that teaching is the center of where it happens."

*****

You may not hang out with beginning teachers...or any teachers...but I want to stop here and point out how incredibly UNcommon this gift was that she gave the student teachers...why? 

Well, virtually NO ONE congratulates someone on going into teaching.

They get the constant refrain of one of these reactions:

A) Well, you get your summers off, that's awesome!

B) Yeah, I thought of teaching too... (as if it is the best second place option around)

C) Are you sure? You make so little money. 

It's hard work to become a teacher - really hard - and to be met with those three reactions wears even the most optimistic, badass beginning teacher down.

So, to have a world-renown, award-winning poet come in an begin with a congratulations...well, it was a gift. 
A genuine gift. And we could all feel it.

*****

She reads an excerpt from a book called, News of the World:

"Maybe life is just carrying the news...surviving to carry the news...maybe we just have one message, it is delivered to us the day we are born..."

And then she asks us to think about our message.

What is it?

She asks us to write it down.

And she says:

I'm not going to ask you to read this, it's just for you to hold.

She reminds the teachers that

"Creative writing needs to be an ongoing practice - not saved for the last weeks of May."

[Beth, are you listening??]

She makes writing accessible to each of us...

shows the teachers how to help their students write with their hearts...

makes it seem effortless...

like, of course, I could write a poem...

she shares the poems of 6 year olds and Palestinians...

she reminds us that we are Living in a Poem...

and touches us with the beauty of a lemon, a walk with a friend, a note of hope.

Her gift is helping all of us see poetry.

Like hieroglyphics, we all think it's cool. 

We feel a kinship.

We want to know what it means.

Naomi, shows us what poetry is...

and helps us to feel that it is essential.

Like oxygen.

*****

After school, Naomi does another session for the Resident Teachers that host our student teachers.

Her energy is palpable.

Her reverence for the teachers is a gift she bestows on them...

like one of the Three Kings.

She's a bright light.

Sunshine

Starlight.

Spoiler alert: we shared starlight...big time.

She shows us our humanity and the thread that binds us.

Holds it up and then weaves it...

reminds us of our connection...

our beauty...

our messages and stories that we each MUST share.

She reads us poem after poem - of other poets -

friends of hers, mentors.

She shares the story of Juan Felipe Herrera - our nation's current Poet Laureate - how when he was in school, he said no words out loud, tried to disappear -

embarrassed by his inability to speak English - he hid behind a bush and sang a song that his mother and grandmother sang to him during lunch...passing on the other side of the bush, Juan Felipe's 3rd grade teacher...she stopped to listen.

Juan Felipe tells the story that after lunch, his teacher asked him to come to the front of the classroom and sing. He was shocked! Afraid! Disoriented...but his teacher had asked and so he did.

The classmates applauded and the teacher said the words that changed his life.

Five words.

"You have a beautiful voice."

With that little bit of encouragement, Juan Felipe began raising his hand, began seeing himself as a student, began to believe in himself and share his voice.

Sprinkling that story on the teachers, Naomi reminded them that they too,

have a beautiful voice...and beautiful profession...

a noble duty.

A sacred calling. 

She gifted them a chance to see the beauty in their work.

The importance of their influence.

Pausing and reminding them that they change lives.

She had us write "clumps of words" and used those clumps to help us write poems.

We shared them in this small group at 5 o'clock at night...

watching the twilight...

feeling connected.

This Palestinian American poet brought with her a cloud of grace...

peace...

community...

and it was then that I wanted to be in charge of the world.

I wanted to be able to appoint peace negotiators...

what if we had a Palestinian poet, an Israeli poet and a Palestinian-American poet all gather and forge out some peace with a few "clumps of words".

It might only take five words, like it did for Juan Felipe.

It might take twenty five...but we know poets are known for their choosy, careful way with words...we can be sure that unnecessary phrases would be absent. 

No posturing.

No facades.

No misleading text...

everything cut away to just a few words:

Thank you, Naomi Shihab Nye for your heroic ability to 

step out of your line and draw a larger circle.

Thank you for reminding me of the power of a clump of words...

the beauty in Kindness...

the love of the ordinary...

and the gift of a few clumps of words.

My circle is larger thanks to you.

Dear Benjamin Netanyahu

Dear Mr. Netanyahu,

I know it's crazy...this idea of a mom from California...just a teacher and mom presuming to talk to you...but somebody's got to.

Have you noticed what's happening?

Is it working out well?

You getting attacked...and you attacking back.

It's timeless.

It's pointless.

It's clearly not working.

You know the definition of insanity, right?  Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Let's back track:  your strategy isn't working.

Hamas continues to bomb and Israeli soldiers continue to die -- not to mention a whole bunch of children and mothers and fathers and people who have the sheer bad luck of being stuck right there at ground zero.

So...what can be done?

Well, you can continue doing what you're doing and it can continue not to work...or you can think outside the box.

You can be radical.

Radical for peace.

Imagine how powerful it would be to have Hamas launch rockets at Israel and to have Israel respond with silence...
how about with prayer?

How about if the entire state of Israel spent a day in prayer...deep in prayer all day long?

All of the businesses shut down...all of the schools closed...all of the vacationers paused...
paused in prayerful peace.

Would the world take note?

Would your enemies?

Last week, we had a horrific crime happen in a neighboring city.  Three guys robbed a bank and took three hostages and then proceeded to drive all over the city shooting to kill.  The mother of a 12 year old who was taken hostage was killed...while her 12 year old waited in their car at the bank...killed for no reason.

Guess what her sister chose to do?

In a terrible moment of grief, with a bald head from cancer treatment, the sister of the woman killed ask for people to pray for her and for her family...and then she asked that the crowd pray for the robbers and for their families too.

Incredible.

It takes two to fight -- that's what I tell my kids all day long -- two.

What if Israel just chose not to fight and instead chose peace.

Over and over again.

It might feel like the weakest thing you've ever done as a leader but in fact it would be the most powerful act you have ever done.

(I call this the Yoga Yield -- it's counter-intuitive -- but the moment when you yield when you really really want to push and force it, is the moment it yields and becomes right.)

We've seen what peace can do --

and it's a whole lot more powerful than weapons.

We know this.

You know this.

Be radical.

Think outside the box.

Stay silent in prayer.

Use your Iron Dome...you're protected.

But change it up...let your enemies be shocked.

And let the world see your goodness.

Let the world see you working for peace.

Make peace your goal.

Make peace your prayer.

Never stop believing in its possibility.

And watch what happens.

Give peace a chance.

You can be a hero for the ages -- like Nelson Mandela -- or you can be just another world leader who has missed his chance....and played an old game.

You choose.

Hint:  Choose peace.

Sincerely, Beth Foraker -- mom, wife, sister, daughter, Catholic, ignorant of so much  -- but a citizen of the world praying for peace.