T.S. Tuesdays

If you know me at all, you knew this had to be coming. Well, the alliteration part if not the T.S. Eliot part. T.S. Eliot is one of my favorite poets, so I decided to dedicate one day of the week to posting some of my favorite lines of his.

I am doing this because:
1. I think T.S. Eliot is the bomb dot com.

2. I was getting a little self-conscious about spilling my heart and soul every day.

3. It gives me an excuse to read more T.S. Eliot to find more tasty T.S. tidbits for you.

4. Alliteration. Enough said.

This has long been one of my favorites from his poem "East Coker" (Number 2 of 'Four Quartets'):

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Don't worry, I'm not exactly sure what he means by this either. But I love the way it sounds. I love the idea of emptying ourselves of our preconceived expectations of hope, love, and faith. I am intrigued by the parallel to Jesus' upside down Kingdom in which "the first shall be last and the last shall be first." In my hurried life, I'm convicted and challenged by the importance placed on waiting. And I love the image of the quiet, patient, stillness allowing space for the dancing in our souls.

I am not an island, You are not a "Them"

I thought this blog would be about hope, not anger. But anger is a very real part of my journey toward hope.

I used to be really angry about injustice in the world. Don’t get me wrong, it still breaks my heart, still brings tears to my eyes, but it no longer hardens my heart.

I used to be enraged on behalf of others. Particularly the plight of the rural poor.

I used to use this anger as an ideology. As my new religion.

I used this anger as an excuse not to move. To stay stuck. To lash out.

I used it as an excuse to dehumanize the poor. To reduce them to a “them” I could be enraged on behalf of. Not people that I knew and loved. Not people that deserved my hope and my efforts as much as my anger and indignation.

A while back I wrote a poem about this act of dehumanization I masked as romanticized, righteous indignation. And here it is:

I am not an island

You are not a “them”

I remember the romance of the pain

Weathered, leather face

Acidic fumes

I forget you

I talk anger

I feel smug

You are a story I heard

A feeling I felt

Not a person I know

I use you to feel pain

In pain I am Justified

I use you to reject Him

But you praise Him with your chapped lips

Chapped, I said it,

Romanticizing again

I put it on you

It’s never me

I’m the enlightened one

Finally free

Of the guilt on my hands

Of the burden of me

But am I angry for you?

Or angry for me?

In the fury of my rage

You become a “them”

I become a lie

I am not a martyr

Remind me yet again

I am not an island

You are not a them

Pictured to the left: Me with a woman, Grey, that I stayed with in Nicaragua. She shared not only her house and food--mostly pineapples--with me, but also her thoughts, her hopes, and her dreams. She was one of the women I wrote this poem for a year after I came back to the States.

Have any of you experienced a time when you used anger on behalf of someone or a group of someones as an excuse to stay stuck?