Getting The Word Out

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The Power of Poetry

As odd as it may seem to some people, we really believe that following the advice of Jesus about how we should live together will help achieve the Millennium Development Goals. And here's an astonishing thing: many people who think of themselves as Christians have never read the gospel stories. They don't know what Jesus did, much less what he would do. I thought one way of getting the word out, would be to make the rather dry, antique language of the bible used in church into ballads, something that people can sing.

The spoken word files for these poems are posted on the kinds of websites that aspiring rock and roll bands use to showcase their music. Here is the player for my site on iSound, which is currently ranked #3. It's set to play the first chapter of the gospel according to Mark. Just click on the little arrow to get it started (click it again if you want it to stop). You can scroll down the list and hear all four gospels if you like, along with some tracks pertaining to human rights and other aspects of spirituality.

I also put in a link here to my new website: http://www.sustainyourspirit.com/ . There are more free recordings there, of sacred texts from other eras, other cultures. I hope you can find time to visit and see the various podcast books I have written and posted as spoken word performances. I believe that crossing over into other cultures to find common ground for understanding is the way forward for human survival on our planet.

If you agree with me, please consider making a donation to support this work.

By sustaining others you also sustain yourself. Thank you.

Creating a Global Partnership

The Eighth Millennium Development Goal asks us to consider how we can work together to:

CREATE A GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP FOR DEVELOPMENT.

I find that this notion has become swathed in layers of disguise during my lifetime. When I was a child it seemed easy to imagine that our country, actuated by a kind of long-range self-interest, would invest what we called "foreign aid" in needy countries around the world so that they would, in some sense, prosper and come to have societies more like ours.

Now I read books that tell me that institutions like the World Bank encourage development projects that help global corporate enterprises grow and make more money for their stockholders, while degrading the environments and nascent local industries of countries they claim to be helping.

I'm not sure what to believe any more. But I know how I feel, so I try to express that. And that is why I believe we should find poetry that works to implement the Millennium Development Goals.

Here's a passage from my verse interpretation of The Gospel of Thomas, a gnostic text from the Nag Hammadi manuscripts:


Jesus saw some babies nursing.
He said to his disciples, this saying:

“These nursing babies are like those souls
Who enter into my Father’s halls.”

They said to him,

“Then shall we enter the Father’s halls,
Even though we are grown, yet as babies?”

Jesus said to them,

“When you make the two into one,
When what is inside, outside has gone,
And when the out is like to the in,
And the upper like to the lower,
All the same, seed, root and flower,
And when you make male and female
Into one, combining them all,
So that the male will not be male,
Nor will the female be female,
When you make eyes in place of eyes,
When you make hands in place of hands,
A foot in place of a foot appears,
An image in place of an image is,
Then you will enter the Father’s halls.”

I hope you will join me in my effort to use your poetry to change the world.

What Does It Mean To Sustain?

For me, sustaining means providing a means of nurture, of knowledge, which will not be consumed by itself. I think the culture we live in is "running on empty," is "devouring its young," is "burning the candle at both ends," (you can play this game, choose your own metaphor).

We can do something to change the direction of this behavior. I learned more about it by training as a "facilitator" for a group that calls itself the Pachamama Alliance. They conduct seminars that explain the relationship between environmental sustainability, social justice, and spiritual fulfillment. Click on this link to see a schedule of their upcoming seminars (these are held periodically at sites all over the world; locally there is one in Basking Ridge, NJ on March 9).

http://www.awakeningthedreamer.org/beta/component/option,com_events/task,details/Itemid,3/

Of course, you may do other things to help achieve the 7th Millennium Development Goal:

ENSURE ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY.

We are a part of the whole universe. One way of understanding this is to hear the stories of people who live more sustainably than we do. Here is a passage from my poetic paraphrase of Dine Bahane, the Navajo Creation Story, that I think expresses this idea:

The white corn became a new man,
The first father of the first son,
And he had a willing partner:

The yellow corn, the first woman,
The first mother of a daughter,
And these two were our ancestors.

It was the wind that gave them breath.
They could know life before their death.
And so it is with us, today.

When this White Wind ceases to blow,
We become speechless, then we die.
All people in this world, today.

In the skin of your fingertip:
Before your eye there, hold it up;
You see the trail of the White Wind.

There you will see where the wind blew,
When first people from corn ears grew.
I say, may this wind never end!

Are You Okay? Are You Really Okay?

Millennium Development Goal #6: COMBAT HIV/AIDS, MALARIA AND OTHER DISEASES.








Driving Home


The light from the oncoming car
Seeps out from a pinpoint and
Spreads across the blotter of the dusk

As seen through my windshield
By me, on my way home
February first I think
In the year of our lord
Two thousand and something

It’s coming

A cylindrical, blunt shadowshape
With highlights of gray airbrush
Fading into black
Lazily vaulting end over end
Slow, inevitable
Under the white hole of the moon
In a sky empty as enamel.

It’s getting bigger
It’s filling up the whole windshield
It’s on me now like glue

No, not like glue, it missed,
It just missed me. I’m okay.
Until next time, I’m really okay.

The Story of Stuff Supports Healthy Mothers

Annie Leonard is the star of a popular video on the internet which explains, in very simple terms, the relationship between free-market economics, public health, environmental degradation, and the impending disasters of resource depletion and atmospheric chemistry changes. You can see Annie's video by clicking through on this link:

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

I found the most memorable part of Annie's presentation to be the part in the second section (entitled "Production") where she explains that since human beings are at the top of our food chain, we serve as the accumulation site for many toxic chemicals in the ambient environment. In practical terms, this means that, whether we like it or not, human breast milk contains a higher concentration of many toxic substances than any other food available. And, we expect vulnerable infants to consume it. The fifth Millennium Development Goal -- IMPROVE MATERNAL HEALTH -- tries to address the issue of environmental toxicity, and many other issues affecting the health of women.

I don't think it's really possible to separate the health of the mother from the health of the infant, and I think that this inseparability is thoroughly woven through the writings of the 14 c. Anglican mystic Julian of Norwich. Here is a passage from her work, The Showing of Love, paraphrased into metered verse, that expresses our connection to God by using the relationship between mother an infant as the paradigm:

Excerpt from Chapter 57:

For when God knitted him to us
As child within the Maiden's womb,
He took himself our sensual soul,
In which taking, he wrapped himself,
Having us all enclosed in him,
He oned himself in our substance.
In which oneing was perfect man.

For Christ, having knit into him
Each and all those who shall be saved,
Is perfect man and perfect woman.

Thus our Lady is our Mother,
In whom we are all like enclosed,
And of her we are born in Christ,
For she who’s Mother of our Savior
Is mother of all who shall be saved;
And our Savior our very Mother,
In whom we are endlessly born
Yet never shall come out of him.

It is distressing to see the intervention of toxic chemicals, many of them unknown and poorly understood, preventing the continuation and development of such an intimate and fruitful bond.

Is This The World We Want To Leave Behind?

You can't really separate caring for the children of the world from caring for the world, Mother Earth. Today we are systematically destroying the same world that our children will need to live on.



Millennium Development Goal #4: REDUCE CHILD MORTALITY.


Here's a nice pair of links to get you started on understanding what our children will face:


http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/10/01/science/20071002_ARCTIC_GRAPHIC.html#first

http://unfccc.int/2860.php/



The first link shows the rapid and unprecedented loss of ocean ice at the north pole during the summer of 2007; the second link shows what the United Nations and thousands of other organizations are trying to do to prevent further degradation of the planet.


You would think that most people in our society are opposed to killing children, but isn't that what we are doing, with our rampant disregard for the destruction of the world systems that sustain life, along with our rampant commitment to more of everything, more population, more economic 'growth', more consumption of goods, more collateral damage?


Gee, maybe we can all take a spaceship and go live on Mars. Here's a poem about the perennial human need to escape the consequences of our collective actions:



The Floating Island

(We have a need to realize the remotest place as the happiest. As we heedlessly change the climate on earth, we dream of colonizing Mars.)

In Lydia there is a certain lake
Amid the mountains standing blue and high;
And at its middle does an island make
The iris of a giant eye;

Along the shore do men and women stand
And to the water spirits daily call:
Until, in answer, rises up the land,
Floating in the sky above them all.

Come now, they cry, let us our joy complete;
Leave now your melancholy and your fears,
Come to the island in our little boat,
And we will rise and live among the stars.

Women Ask: Why Don't You Do Something About It?

The Third Millennium Development Goal is:


PROMOTE GENDER EQUALITY AND EMPOWER WOMEN.

I think we should do this for a lot of different reasons. First, it's the right thing to do, particularly if you live in a democracy and you claim that all of us are created with equal rights and opportunities. Second, if you look at the historical record, it appears that women, when they have had the opportunity, have done a better job of governing than men. Surely women have been less prone to attempt resolving disputes by means of implementing the evils and wastes of warfare. Third, it has been said, and in my experience it has been true, that women are better at finding and implementing consensus, (an example of this is Eleanor Roosevelt, in the photo, the champion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)).



My oldest daughter Jane gave me a good example of creative consensus-building. In college she conceived a new line of water-resistant clothing styles as a way of raising people's consciousness about the impending threat of global warming. She reasoned that everybody needs clothing, and that trying on new clothes is the kind of personal experience that will make enough of an impression to stick. Let's hope she's right. Here is a link to her website:

http://www.climatechangepreparednesscenter.com/



While we are on the subject of links, Jane has pointed out to me that this blog needs a link that will help you understand more about the Millennium Development Goals that I keep talking about. So here it is:

http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/mdg2007.pdf

And of course, I wouldn't feel right unless I left you with a poem. So today's poem will be by a famous woman poet, and one of my favorites altogether:

THE BRAIN is wider than the sky,

For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.


The brain is deeper than the sea,

For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.


The brain is just the weight of God,

For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.

--Emily Dickinson


Do you have a poem you can send me, too? Just email me at jabez.vancleef@verizon.net. Or, you can post your poem as a comment at the bottom of this page.

Primary Education (For Children and Adults)

This blog is intended to increase interest in, and involvement in, the efforts of Episcopal Relief and Development to promote the Millennium Development Goals. We want to use the blog medium to get people to write and post poems which are, to a greater or lesser degree, "about" the feelings they have when they confront the issues implicit in these goals. Then we will, with the permission of the contributors, record the poems and create a podcast which can download into their iPods or mp3 players.

I remember hearing a story about Mohandas Gandhi. He was in London on a visit, and a reporter stopped him in the street in front of the house where he was staying. "Mr. Gandhi," the reporter said. "What do you think of Western Civilization?" Gandhi answered, "I think that it would be a very good idea."

This leads us to a meditation on the Second Millennium Goal:

ACHIEVE UNIVERSAL PRIMARY EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN.

I think there is many an 'inner child' that is still in need of primary education. Grown people run businesses and governments all over the world, but by the year 1980 there were over 50,000 unregulated toxic waste dumps in the United States alone. Since 1941, the governments' armed forces were the greatest contributors to soil pollution in both the United States and the Soviet Union. (Source: Something New Under The Sun, by J. R. McNeill, pg. 29).

A few years ago I wrote a set of poems, each of which is based on one article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I "pointed" the poems and set them to Anglican Chant tunes so that they could be sung like psalms in church. Here is the poem I wrote for the 54th article:

54. Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

S225 (Herbert S. Oakeley)

The farmer’s children · take their · rest
As the · sun falls · to the · west;

Above them go the · things that · fly:
Chalk lines a · cross a · board of · sky.

The teacher’s lessons · do not · reach them –
The lines do · not know · what to · teach them.

One day passes · like an · other,
Child like · father, · child like · mother,

Until at last they · come to · die,
Not knowing · where the · world would · be,

If they had known all · they could · know,
If they had · grown all · they could · grow.

Wars and disorders · still im · pede
The knowledge · that each · child will · need

To end the famine · and the · fights,

To cele · brate their · human · rights.

Do you have a poem you can send me, too? Just email me at jabez.vancleef@verizon.net Or, you can post your poem as a comment at the bottom of this page.

The Missing Millennium Development Goal

My unruly imagination wants to include a Millennium Development Goal that isn't on the list. That is, let's have a goal that all the stupid despots, countries, united fronts and whatever else they call themselves, who use warfare and other military action to achieve their goals, would just stop it. You can do it right now, guys, I won't be upset if you act quickly on this one.

Here is a poem I wrote a few years ago about how it makes me feel inside, cold and withered, like a dead leaf, whenever I think of how many children are killed every year in wars.

Do you have a poem you can send me, too? Just email me at jabez.vancleef@verizon.net Or, you can post your poem as a comment at the bottom of this page.

21. As It Should Be


The cut leaf maple
in the front
held its leaves
for the longest time
but last night
that hard frost
made all the grass
white
and now
as the bright sun
comes on strong
it melts the frost
on the higher leaves
and the weight of the water
breaks them loose
so they fall
one by one
and cover
the frozen grass
with red.

The Bell on the Crutch

In medieval times, lepers fastened bells to their crutches so that those not afflicted would hear their approach and avoid them. Thus do we collude in trying to place the greatest distance between ourselves and those who most need our help.


The first of the Millennium Development Goals is similarly direct, only the ringing of this bell is meant to draw us nearer. We have a goal to:

ERADICATE EXTREME POVERTY AND HUNGER.

In my mind, that bell rings directly, categorically. The verb "eradicate" suggests digging right down under the roots and removing the vicious vine of extreme poverty and hunger from the earth, roots and all.

I wrote a poem about the lepers with the bells on their crutches. Do you have a poem you can send me, too? Just email me at jabez.vancleef@verizon.net. Or, you can post your poem as a comment at the bottom of this page.


The Lepers

Hear us
Hear us.

We warn you, we are coming

We do not warn you with a mighty weapon
We have no weapon

We do not warn you with a coat of mail
We have no armor but our skin

We do not warn you with a mask of anger,
Only what there is of our faces

This fist cannot strike you
This foot cannot oppress you

We burn in our own slow fire

So hear us,
hear us

We ask you, hear us with your ears
See us with your eyes

In your eyes we search for pity
Not for anger, not for fear

In your eyes the cooling depth
Of mercy, pity, peace and love

Just see us with your eyes
As we pass along this highway

See us, hear us, touch us
Let our weakness perfect your strength

The Song of Matthew, Episcopal Relief, and the Millennium Development Goals

Years ago, I was working to transform the Gospel of Matthew into a more poetic form, in regularly metered lines of blank verse, iambic pentameter. I found that what I thought was the most beautiful passage in my poem was in many ways the most direct appeal, or exhortation, in the gospel account: when Jesus tells us how the Father in heaven will know who is blessed, in Chapter 25.

This also happens to be the source of the mandate for Episcopal Relief and Development, that part of our church which is asking us to consider helping to meet the Millennium Development Goals.



When the Son of Man comes in his glory,
He will sit upon a throne on high,
And all the nations will be set before Him,
And He will sort the souls from one another,
As a shepherd sorts his sheep and goats.
And He will say to those upon his right hand,
Come, for you are by my Father blest,
Come you now and enter in the kingdom,
Prepared from the foundation of the world,
For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty, and you gave me drink,
I was a stranger, and you welcomed me,
I was naked, and you gave me clothing,
I was sick, and you took care of me,
I was in prison, and you visited me.
And then the righteous souls will answer him,
When was it, Lord, that we did see you hungry?
When did we see you thirsty, and give you drink?
When were you a stranger, and we welcomed you?
When were you naked, and we gave you clothes?
When were you sick, or in prison, and we visited?
And the Son of Man will answer them:
Just as you did it for the least of these,
These who are members of my family,
So you did to me, and so now come,
And enter into heaven’s kingdom with me.

Welcome to "Love Bade Me Welcome"

At the beginning of 2008, Martha Gardner of Maplewood, NJ, and Jabez Van Cleef (pictured at left) of Madison, NJ, both Episcopalians in the Diocese of Newark, NJ, engaged in a dialogue about poetry.

They were imagining ways that the power of poetry could be harnessed to help the church understand itself better.

They wanted to find people in every parish who would distill their spiritual hopes and aspirations into poetry and post their poems online to create a kind of poetic commons.

They hoped that this effort would help to revive the great and illustrious tradition of spiritual poetry in the Anglican tradition.

They wanted to find in poetry a bridge of understanding between urban and suburban parishes.

They wanted to capture the idealism of youth groups and direct the attention of the people to the church's effort to achieve Millennium Development Goals, to help people who have been marginalized, impoverished, distressed.

They wanted to see and hear poetry from people in every part of the world.

After some thought, Jabez gave this initiative a name, "Love Bade Me Welcome." It is the first line of a poem by George Herbert, an English poet who was, like many another, an Anglican priest.

So here we are, and we now offer Love's welcome to you.