Jim Thompson’s Spiritual Poetry Class #25

Dear Poetry People:

Elizabeth O’Connor, chronicler of the Church of the Saviour, the DC church Gordon Cosby founded in 1947, wrote Journey Inward Journey Outward, 4 words that have stayed with me these many years. Seemed like the perfect prescription for a life we can feel good about living.

This week’s poems go inward and outward, start deep and go deeper, and come around again, addressing the destruction of our planet and the mindfulness that can help us respond to the earth’s needs and each other.

Here are the poems, 3 works of incredible artistry.

• “Characteristics of Life” by Camille T. Dungy. “Ask me if I speak for the snail and I will tell you I speak for the snail.” I love this created word: “Underneathedness.”
• “The Big Picture” by Ellen Bass, a poet I have just become familiar with. I love so many of her poems that I was tempted to use 3 of hers today, so be on the lookout for more Ellen Bass in the near future. Also interested to learn she is local, that she apparently lives in Santa Cruz. “I can’t shake my longing for the last six hundred Iberian lynx with their tufted ears.”
• “Parallel the Care the Dancer Takes” by Hafiz. I’ve been working with this line from this amazing poem: “…when all you touch, You touch as if it were sacred.”

My definition of “sacred” is that which has ultimate value. And maybe all we touch becomes sacred to us if we Act As If, as Hafiz suggests to us from 14th century Persia (Iran today).

Here’s the link (passcode required)

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81559141019?pwd=bS9odlRoeFlzcWVNWVpZaUxYdlZVZz09 Passcode: 153924

Looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday!

Jim