POST 30: "Stars in the Night"
GHOST RANCH EDUCATION & RETREAT CENTER, Abiquiu, NM
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GHOST RANCH EDUCATION & RETREAT CENTER
Abiquiu, NM
|
SOME OF MY TEACHERS FROM BROADWAY COMMUNITY, Inc./BROADWAY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
“Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.” Mother Teresa
That Summer of Great Renewal I took the kids for three weeks to the Presbyterian Camp and Conference Center, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. Forrest agreed to apartment watch because we had an ailing cat, Homicidal Bill, and a defenseless kitten named Bob. Both girls. Yes. We are afflicted with feline gender confusion. In the discovery of personal hope I took three weeks to try to write again.
Writing, however, didn’t know if it wanted to work with me. I kept burning it over and over throughout the years. I was a faithless and untrustworthy companion. So who is to say I would do anything different this time? So I sat down with a pen and a pad of paper. “Writing,” I said with great compunction, “I can’t promise anything. I know I’ve behaved badly toward you. I know I’m too old. Just humor me a little.”
Now, the Politburo, my endless fountain of criticism and doubt, had transformed into a Committee once I became a Presbyterian minister. So the Committee debated, consulted the Bible and its by-laws, voted and agreed to let me off my leash for a trial period.
We got to New Mexico and that very first night I was awed and overwhelmed by the expanse of stars in the night sky. Living in cities robs us of nature’s grandest wonder: to look up at the sky and see so many stars, pinpoints of light. Scientists try to explain to us very patiently that the light we are actually seeing has been traveling through the universe for millennia.
These are stars probably seen by our Neanderthal cousins and by the endless stream of humanity. These stars connect us to all the stories and songs that have been inspired throughout recorded time. These stars have seen the beauty and brutality of all we have done. I just imagined those stars having a record of all the stories, of all the songs ever sung throughout the ages.
One huge mega databank in the sky. The scientist Carl Sagan reminds us that, “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
So I was witnessing a family reunion.
Oh, I got spiritually drunk on those stars. I wrote. Under a miraculous New Mexico night of sky-flung stars I remembered. They told me stories and music that filled me for a lifetime and shaped me as a minister. Poems like this:
My Teachers
My teacher is Maria
Who lives in the World of the
Undocumented
whose child is in the “care” of the Administration for Child Welfare
because she drank too much
and got beat up too much
trying to forget the children
she left behind in Trinidad
My teacher is “Patty G”
with a gold crown on her front tooth
she proudly calls herself a cussin’ Presbyterian
because she snuck on the bus one day to evade a narcotics cop and
said aloud to no one in particular,
“damn, I got to give this shit up.”
But my teacher, Serena, was sitting next
to her and said
“I know a place where you don’t need a
Medicaid card.”
Serena, 31 with H.I.V.
caught smoking a joint in the church’s alleyway
now clean for the first time
for six straight months.
My teacher is “Diane”
killed a man
who raped her for three days straight
for which she served five years in prison
but now, every Saturday,
She just rocks to sleep AIDS babies at Harlem Hospital.
My teacher is Jose
twenty years clean when
his 17 year old son was murdered in cold blood
when his buddies came around
and encouraged him
to “take care of business”
he said no.
My teacher is Frannie
raped and thrown from a roof at 16
with her shattered leg and misaligned jaw
finally kicked her
crack-using partner out
of her new home which smells sweetly of pine sol and baby powder.
My teacher is Lou
whose mother hated her
and tried to kill her when she was six
Lou's only daughter died of AIDS
A week before her 35th birthday
And since Lou couldn’t bake her baby-girl a cake
She went to an AA meeting instead
My teacher is Bernice
The first person I baptized
The first person I buried
She loved Kirk Franklin and Jesus
And held my hand at the end and
Said "Tell my daughter
not to give up.
Don't you give you."
No Bernice. I will not give up.
Notes:
http://www.verybestquotes.com/mother-teresa-goal-quotes-reach-high-dream-deep/dream-quotes-reach-high-for-stars-lie-hidden-in-your-soul-dream-deep-for-every-dream-precedes-the-goal/
http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3237312-cosmos
Give the gift of music to the next generation through donations to:
The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301
info@manilowmusicproject.org
Click here to go to the next post or click here to return to the previous post.
That Summer of Great Renewal I took the kids for three weeks to the Presbyterian Camp and Conference Center, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. Forrest agreed to apartment watch because we had an ailing cat, Homicidal Bill, and a defenseless kitten named Bob. Both girls. Yes. We are afflicted with feline gender confusion. In the discovery of personal hope I took three weeks to try to write again.
Writing, however, didn’t know if it wanted to work with me. I kept burning it over and over throughout the years. I was a faithless and untrustworthy companion. So who is to say I would do anything different this time? So I sat down with a pen and a pad of paper. “Writing,” I said with great compunction, “I can’t promise anything. I know I’ve behaved badly toward you. I know I’m too old. Just humor me a little.”
Now, the Politburo, my endless fountain of criticism and doubt, had transformed into a Committee once I became a Presbyterian minister. So the Committee debated, consulted the Bible and its by-laws, voted and agreed to let me off my leash for a trial period.
We got to New Mexico and that very first night I was awed and overwhelmed by the expanse of stars in the night sky. Living in cities robs us of nature’s grandest wonder: to look up at the sky and see so many stars, pinpoints of light. Scientists try to explain to us very patiently that the light we are actually seeing has been traveling through the universe for millennia.
These are stars probably seen by our Neanderthal cousins and by the endless stream of humanity. These stars connect us to all the stories and songs that have been inspired throughout recorded time. These stars have seen the beauty and brutality of all we have done. I just imagined those stars having a record of all the stories, of all the songs ever sung throughout the ages.
One huge mega databank in the sky. The scientist Carl Sagan reminds us that, “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
So I was witnessing a family reunion.
Oh, I got spiritually drunk on those stars. I wrote. Under a miraculous New Mexico night of sky-flung stars I remembered. They told me stories and music that filled me for a lifetime and shaped me as a minister. Poems like this:
My Teachers
My teacher is Maria
Who lives in the World of the
Undocumented
whose child is in the “care” of the Administration for Child Welfare
because she drank too much
and got beat up too much
trying to forget the children
she left behind in Trinidad
My teacher is “Patty G”
with a gold crown on her front tooth
she proudly calls herself a cussin’ Presbyterian
because she snuck on the bus one day to evade a narcotics cop and
said aloud to no one in particular,
“damn, I got to give this shit up.”
But my teacher, Serena, was sitting next
to her and said
“I know a place where you don’t need a
Medicaid card.”
Serena, 31 with H.I.V.
caught smoking a joint in the church’s alleyway
now clean for the first time
for six straight months.
My teacher is “Diane”
killed a man
who raped her for three days straight
for which she served five years in prison
but now, every Saturday,
She just rocks to sleep AIDS babies at Harlem Hospital.
My teacher is Jose
twenty years clean when
his 17 year old son was murdered in cold blood
when his buddies came around
and encouraged him
to “take care of business”
he said no.
My teacher is Frannie
raped and thrown from a roof at 16
with her shattered leg and misaligned jaw
finally kicked her
crack-using partner out
of her new home which smells sweetly of pine sol and baby powder.
My teacher is Lou
whose mother hated her
and tried to kill her when she was six
Lou's only daughter died of AIDS
A week before her 35th birthday
And since Lou couldn’t bake her baby-girl a cake
She went to an AA meeting instead
My teacher is Bernice
The first person I baptized
The first person I buried
She loved Kirk Franklin and Jesus
And held my hand at the end and
Said "Tell my daughter
not to give up.
Don't you give you."
No Bernice. I will not give up.
Notes:
http://www.verybestquotes.com/mother-teresa-goal-quotes-reach-high-dream-deep/dream-quotes-reach-high-for-stars-lie-hidden-in-your-soul-dream-deep-for-every-dream-precedes-the-goal/
http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3237312-cosmos
Give the gift of music to the next generation through donations to:
The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301
info@manilowmusicproject.org
Click here to go to the next post or click here to return to the previous post.