WELL. . .
Have you. . .
Have you ever walked into room and forgot why you walked in?
Hey, wouldn’t be great if we could forget to remember
what we really need to forget to remember. . .
The wrong somebody did us. . .
The story somebody told about us. . .
The word they used against us. . .
Hard to forget all of those THAT’S
but we have a nice saying that salt-in-the-wound-STINGS:
FORGIVE AND FORGET
or how about this one:
“I’ll forgive you, but I won’t forget it. . .”
W E L L
Maybe it’s time. . .
maybe it’s really time that we do forget to remember
Seriously, right now, right here,
what it is that YOU need to forget to remember. . .
Uhhhh, guess what. . .
I T
doesn’t take a lifetime
or ages
or conditions
I T
can happen in, in, in just a moment. . .
The question is,
WILL
I T
SHE MAKES THINGS GROW
SHE MAKES THINGS GROW
All ground is fertile
and she proved it
by taking what had no life
L I V E
She makes my soul her soil
when she digs deeply
and prunes, sharply
The ache is more of a yearning
Ahhhhhhhh
than a moaning Owwwwwwl
She makes things grow
out of nothingness
an Everythingness
hardly without notice
but never unnotable
This is a poem I wrote a little over a year ago. Its title is the one for my sixth chapbook that I wrote as a result of the SPRING poetry challenge that demanded 15 poems in 10 days that couldn’t exceed 15 lines. It had a different theme of the day where one or two poems could be written on that given theme. The theme for this poem on this particular day was
E M E R G E N C E
S E E D S
even in the most soiled of hands
have no chance of growing
no matter how warm the wish
or fervent the prayer
b u t
BRING WHAT YOU HAVE
(who you are)
TO WHAT YOU’LL SERVE
(who you love)
AND WHA-LA
You have a magical garden
S U R P R I S E
There’s no secret to a HAPPY MARRIAGE
I can’t give you the 12 STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL RELATIONSHIPS
But showing up each day
with the goal to be a
BETTER ME
for a
BETTER HER
has never failed me
and it has failed me horrifically
WHEN I HAVEN’T BEEN A BETTER ME
or at least not given it a better than
half of a chance. . .
OUR BEST TIMES
HAVE BEEN SOME OF
OUR ROUGHEST TIMES
(an ohhhh, there have been some severely rough times)
because soaked, shaken and jostled about
we’ve always ended up stronger, more invincible and
C L O S E R
SHE MAKES THINGS GROW
especially when I’ve given her
some-not-always-wanted-manure
and yet
that served as some of the richest fertilizer
to some of the
greatest growth
that could never really been imagined
. . .only experienced
38 Years ago,
on June 9, 1986
the day after we got married
we were laying by the hotel pool we had all to ourselves
talking about the future;
we both assumed we’d never see 50 years together
because of our ages
and then
like now
have never been bothered much by how much time we’ve got
because of the time
WE HAVE
(and so the message that I usually include in each wedding ceremony
I conduct, is the message we’ve always taken to heart)
. . .Marriage is
HARD WORK
but it’s the best job
you’ll ever had. . .
I may have seemingly had The World to give
but Erin’s always had the grace to
bring me Home
We’ve been able to show each other
what we could have never seen alone. . .
SHE MAKES THINGS GROW
Pssssssssssssssssssssst:
Take it from a Drain
who’s been transformed into a
f o u n t a i n. . .
WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD
. . .And JUST LIKE THAT
it’s 2024
A NEW YEAR
Whether a new year fills you with excitement or dread (or maybe a mix of both!), the hope is that when you look back on 2023
there are too many wonderful moments to count
which serve has the greatest foundation
for new memories to be
m a d e. . .
ALL WAYS Remembering that
which are gentle reminders
between old and new years of
Letting us each know in between all of the Seasons
Past
Present
Prospective
“May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
And may you stay forever young
May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
And may you stay forever young.”
And may you stay forever young.”
Photo in New York, by John Cohen (1962)
Here’s hoping
the New Year exceeds your expectations
and a tad past your
i M a G i N a T i O n
SEEING BEAUTY THAT DOESN’T EXIST
Have you ever seen
BEAUTY THAT DOESN’T EXIST?
Let’s face it. . .
THE WORLD ISN’T ALWAYS A PRETTY PLACE
especially when it shows us
anything that could ever resemble even remotely
B E A U T Y
but maybe it’s time to rub your eyes
and take another look
A DEEPER GAZE
at what’s unblinkingly before us. . .
Some 60 days ago
the Israel-Hamas war began waging
to an almost unimaginable comprehension
near and far
FAR, FAR,
from anything we could label
B E A U T Y
but. . .
Seeing Beauty Matters,
Even in the Midst of War
When people find themselves displaced from their homes, finding or creating beauty is a human impulse that brings
hope and resilience. . .
Stephanie Acker from The Greater Good Magazine recently reported what we hoped but maybe, even now, still can’t comprehend. She pulls back the curtain to the following story:
A small group of children in Gaza sit on a lavender and white blanket around a small tray of beverages, singing “Happy Birthday” to a young girl. Like kids her age around the world, she wears a sweatshirt with prints of Elsa and Anna, characters from Frozen; unlike most kids, she’s celebrating against a backdrop of a war that, according to United Nations estimates as of November 10, 2023, has already killed more than 4,500 Palestinian children.
Celebrating anything might seem odd or even inappropriate in the face of so much devastation—and in the middle of what many are calling genocide.
However, in the research of refugees that Stephanie conducted with interdisciplinary artist and scholar Devora Neumark, they found that the urge to beautify one’s surroundings is widespread and profoundly beneficial—particularly so in the harrowing circumstances of loss, displacement, and danger.
When people find themselves displaced from their homes, finding or creating beauty can be just as vital as food, water, and shelter.
Gaza today
In the first six weeks of the Israel-Hamas war, 70% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have had to leave or have lost their homes.
Over half crowd into some type of emergency shelter, while others squeeze into relatives’ and neighbors’ homes. Food is scarce and increasingly expensive. According to the U.N., people are getting only 3% of the water they need each day. Much of the water they do have is polluted.
Crops are dying. Moms are not producing breast milk. People are getting sick. There are severe shortages of baby formula, as well as anesthesia for those needing surgery. The lack of space and overwhelming stress and fear add sleep to the list of things that are hard to come by.
These needs are urgent and essential. Without them, people will die. Too many already have, while the conditions for those who live are horrific. They make it hard to see much else.
But the endless images of bombs and blood hide the story of the life, colorand creativity that existed in Gaza. And they hide the beauty that persists despite war.
Beauty is often viewed as a luxury. But this isn’t the case. It’s the opposite.
A human impulse
Beauty has been a hallmark of every human civilization. Art philosopher Arthur Danto wrote that beauty, while optional for art, is not an option for life. Neuroscientists have shown that our brains are biologically wired for beauty: The neural mechanisms that influence attention and perception have adapted to notice color, form, proportion, and pattern.
We’ve found that refugees worldwide, often with limited or no legal rights, still invest considerable effort in beautifying their surroundings. Whether they’re staying in shelters or makeshift apartments, they paint walls, hang pictures, add wallpaper, and carpet the floors. They transform plain and seemingly temporary accommodations into personalized spaces—into semblances of home.
Refugees rearrange spaces to share meals, celebrate holidays, and host parties—to greet friends, hold dances, and say goodbyes. They burn incense, serve tea in decorative porcelain, and recite prayers on ornate mats. These simple acts carry profound significance, even amid challenges.
Urban studies scholars Layla Zibar, Nurhan Abujidi, and Bruno de Meulder have told the story of Um Ibrahim, a Syrian refugee. When she was pregnant, she and her husband transformed the tent they were issued at a refugee camp in the Kurdistan region of Iraq into home. They built brick walls. She planned paint colors and furniture. Around her, neighbors potted plants and set up chairs to create front porches on their temporary shelters to be able to gather with friends. They turned roads into places for celebrating special occasions. They painted a flag at the entrance of the camp.
They made a new home, but they also made it feel like it “used to in Syria.”
Creating hope in a hopeless place
The benefits of beauty are both practical and transformative, especially for refugees.
Many refugees experience trauma. All experience loss. Beautifying is a way to exert agency, grieve, and heal.
Simple acts—rearranging a home, sweeping the floor, or intentionally placing an object—allow refugees to infuse an area with their own identity and taste. They provide a way to cope when one has little control over anything else. Often, once someone is labeled a refugee, all their other identities are overshadowed or disappear.
Neumark’s study of over 200 individuals who experienced forced displacement found that beautifying the home helped heal intergenerational trauma caused by forced displacement.
Neumark observed that as children participated in efforts to beautify their home, it seemed to positively influence their own coping mechanisms and well-being.
Furthermore, if children could imagine their homes prior to displacement through the stories and images shared with them—what scholar Marianne Hirsch calls “postmemories”—then the actions taken to beautify their present-day homes could be transformative. They served as a bridge connecting the past with the present and facilitated the ongoing process of healing and preserving identity.
Ultimately, making a space feel more comfortable, secure, and personalized is a tangible expression of hope for a future.
Cultivating love and life
Even prior to the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Palestinians lived in the face of immense injustice and violence.
Their Palestinian research partner, who must remain anonymous for security reasons, described that their home in the refugee camp feels like living in jail, but that they still make it a beautiful place to live.
Prior to the start of the latest war, neighborhoods featured striking muralsand embellished walls. Intricate mosaics adorned buildings, and paint livened the facades of homes. Neighbors would gather to pray, putting on new clothes, spraying perfume, and burning incense to prepare for the rituals. As Christmas approached, Palestinian Christians, along with some Muslims, would decorate their homes. Both faiths would gather for annual tree lightings.
Geographer David Marshall described how youth living in a Palestinian refugee camp used beauty to focus on the positives in their environment and dream about a future beyond their camp—and the walls that constrained their lives.
In their community-based storytelling project in a Palestinian refugee camp this past summer, they witnessed the commitment to making homes beautiful in the thriving gardens that were created within very crowded quarters. Neighbors shared how their gardens calm them, provide a place to gather with friends, and serve as a reminder of fields they once tended.
In her 2021 research, Corinne Van Emmerick, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology, described Fatena, a Palestinian who was living in a refugee camp. She had flowers on everything—the roof, walls, and windowsills. They were expensive and needed “lots of love.” But, Fatena added, they gave her “love back.”
A form of resistance and resilience
One Guinean refugee interviewed as part of Neumark’s study said, “As refugees we lose our sense of beauty, and when that happens, we lose our sense of everything, of life itself.”
If the opposite of this is true, then clearly beauty cannot be thought of as superficial or an afterthought. One study of Bosnian refugees found that their ability to notice beauty was a sign of improved mental health.
Creating, witnessing, and experiencing beauty offers a connection to the familiar, works to preserve cultural identity, and fosters belonging.
It’s what ensures that a little girl in Gaza not only has her birthday celebrated, but that it is also made as beautiful as possible.
So. . .
do you see
BEAUTY
in the
B O T C H E D. . .
BRING YOUR PAINT BRUSH
. . .let your strokes be broad and bold
SHOW A BEAUTY
that muddied
can still never be besmirched. . .
(Devora Neumark, an interdisciplinary artist and researcher whose trauma-informed work explores the intersections between a home beautification and the human experience in the context of displacement, contributed to writing this article.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.)
YOUR REMEMBER WHEN’ER
This video has been making it’s rounds as the Holiday season is in full force unfolding before us. No matter what we believe or in what various moods/feelings we are treading or at times, seemingly drowning in, Holidays or not, it goes to the heart of our remembering, our once upon a times, that at times feels like hugging a porcupine and yet we squeeze all the more harder to keep those memories close and to actually do all we can to bring them back to vivid, living color so that we can feel all that is good, all that is love, all that once upon a time was. . .
Sometimes it’s not so much
WHAT YOU REMEMBER
as
T H A T
you are
R E M E M B E R E D. . .
Memories are precious
and the only things more important:
THE MEMORIES YET TO BE CREATED. . .
this holiday season
May your greatest memories
be those you’ve yet to create
(but undoubtedly will)
Let your Remember’er
bring you
what
THE NEW
sometimes can never quite promise
(and may your Remember’er do it often)
YOUR THANKSGIVING TABLE
In this special Thanksgiving of The Caring Catalyst Blog, my invitation is to have you go and be the reason another can be thankful, because the best table to ever be around isn’t the one with endless food; it’s the one with ongoing and everlasting sustenance that satisfies every hunger, quenches every thirst, binds up every wound, and makes every heart less lonely as it welcomes, always welcomes and never disappoints. THIS will be the mysterious blessing of: AS YOU FEED SO SHALL YOU BE FED
and full, ever full will your Soul be. . . .
Pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
Even if you folks don’t like
what you bring to the
T A B L E. . .
NEVER LET THEM EAT ALONE
HAPPY THANKSGIVING
H I N E N I
It’s been a whirlwind all over the world in these past two weeks and it has the feel of not ending any time soon, and worse, ending well. . .
I’ve heard a lot of words over this time and I’ve said a lot of words and there’s one word that came to me when I was looking to hear it or say it but now feel the need to share it:
H I N E N I
It’s a Hebrew word that means:
HERE I AM
But here’s the thing about words, or in this case
A WORD. . .
They don’t mean anything
Said or Heard
until they are experienced
until they are Living Verbs. . .
I’ve had to ask of myself:
JUST HOW AM I SHOWING UP
(and how often?)
I’m wondering (and now hoping you’ll be a little wondering, too) how am I saying, being HINENI to my family, my friends, my town, my state, my country, my world? How am I saying HINENI in a way that shows others how much they matter and that I am here? How am I answering THIS call?
It feels like we have lots of questions a few answers or is it really just this simple:
Why is the seemingly simple so complicated if not for my lack of
HINENI
Now
is so much more than saying a Word
or even hearing one
Looking at an inspiring picture
Gawking at a-should-never-be-seen-horrific-scene
We are way past AGREEING with this one
and DISAGREEING with that one
N O W
in our own individual way
with our own individual skills
It’s time to be an authentic, living
H I N E N I
and to be it profoundly
to Each’s
O T H E R
I BELIEVE
I first heard this song when it was only sung by Andrea Bocelli all the way back when BORDERS knew no borders; I stood there listening to it on their headphones that allowed you to hear songs/cd’s before you purchased; BRILLIANT but even more so, was that I stood there and listened and listened and listened and listened until I just bought the compilation cd for just this ONE SONG. . .
Ohhhhhhh that these words may now become a prayer that it may sooner than soon become an ANSWERED/REALIZED PRAYER
I Believe”
One day I’ll hear
The laugh of children
In a world where war has been banned
One day I’ll see
Men of all colors
Sharing words of love and devotion
Stand up and feel
The Holy Spirit
Find the power of your faith
Open your heart
To those who need you
In the name of love and devotion
Yes, I believe
I believe in the people
Of all nations
To join and to care
For love
I believe in a world
Where light will guide us
And giving our love
We’ll make heaven on earth
I believe in the people
Of all nations
To join and to care
For love
I believe in a world
Where light will guide us
And giving our love
We’ll make heaven on earth
Yes, I believe
I believe in the people
Of all nations
To join and to care
For love
I believe in a world
Where light will guide us
And giving our love
We’ll make heaven on earth
I believe
Ohhhhhhh that these words
may now become a Prayer
that it may sooner than soon
become an
ANSWERED/REALIZED PRAYER. . .
BE THIS PRAYER
THE COLOR OF YOUR FLAG
SO JUST WHAT COLOR IS YOUR FLAG. . . ?
Everyone knows about
RED FLAGS
No one wants to know about
WHITE FLAGS
But maybe it’s the
GREEN FLAGS
we need to be seeking and flying. . .
I recently had this feed from Tashin Rose (no I don’t know her and have never remotely purposely or accidentally followed her) seemingly pop up on my feed and I don’t see those as
FLAGS TO IGNORE. . .
Maybe for just here, just now, you shouldn’t either. . .
What just screams
GREEN FLAGS
about someone?
- When they don’t hold grudges , communicate clearly and sort out things as soon as possible.
- When they do anything and everything to make you feel loved.
- When they understand your love language and try to make you feel loved in your way.
- When they are honest and you don’t have to worry about their loyality for not even a second.
- When they don’t make you feel insecure in any way.
- When they include your name in room full of opportunities.
- When they want to see your growth, your success and do anything possible to help you out in your way of success.
- When they make you feel heard, seen and understood.
- When they make effort to make the relationship better than yesterday.
- When they give you time not only when their mood is to give but when you need them the most too.
- When they respect you always and also no matter how bad the fight is they never disrespect you out of anger. They know how to control.
- When they do mistakes and also accepts it and try to fix it.
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