To Contend, To Enliven, To Distance, To Advocate, To Investigate, To Rally, To Prioritize, To Surprise

I’ve read Anne Waldman since 2001 (Fast Speaking Woman: Chants and Essays got me started). Her epics, poems, interviews, and edited anthologies (from the Kerouac School at Naropa) have stimulate and open up possibilities. One of her most engaging books is OUTRIDER: Poems, Essays, Interviews. For you, friends in the writing sangha, I offer the following passages:  May one or more of these be a goad, an encouragement, an invitation.

Worry the essential library. Write what you would want to read. Utopian poetics, what you want to read. 15

A good idea: Contemplative education. Non-competitive education. 17

Maker of books she might be. Maker of schools. 23

Encourage street corner culture. What happens below the radar. 27

Nowhere to go again but the library. 29

To contend, to enliven, to distance, to advocate, to investigate, to rally, to prioritize, to surprise. 31

To vocalize. To mouth the impossible. 31

I have declared in one manifesto, a writing beyond gender, and have tried to inspire a poet’s Bodhisattva Vow, in which one becomes a bridge, a path, a shelter, whatever is required, for others. And one reads and studies and performs… for the benefit of others. 46

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Share the Wealth with Ashaki Jackson: Some Food for Thought

My name is Ashaki Jackson and I am native to Trinidad and Tobago. My family immigrated to the U.S. when I was 8 years old and later on I moved to St. Louis and pursued a degree in Anthropology. I am working towards an MSW degree with a special interest in mental health and mind, body, and spirit healing.

Ashaki Jackson, among many other beautiful things, is an explorer. If you pay close enough attention, you will observe her on one of her bold expeditions across the body, delving into the mind, and unbinding the spirit. She searches for what proves elusive, an old knowledge spoken in new languages, a nurturing of imagination, a bold embrace of all the joys and sorrows that exist within simply breathing and being present in this moment with you. –TK Smith

Join us
Saturday 10 February
Potluck dinner begins at 6:00 p.m.
Ashaki begins sharing at 6:45
At the home of Jim and J’Ann Schoonmaker Allen
4519 Oakland Avenue Forest Park Southeast
63110

The Good News of Knowing Them, 6.17.2017

So many of us inter-are with Doctors Neil Munjal and Neeta Shenai!

 

The Good News of a Fence, 7.11.2017

For her 60th birthday, Joanie’s family helped resurrect our backyard, including setting up a bamboo fence.

 

The Good News of Giving and Receiving Books, 6.26.2017

Ten years ago, because of a Social Justice theology class, I got to know Melissa Banerjee, a Bengali-American.  It made sense to me to give her a hardback edition of the The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.  Later on, after staying several weeks in India, she brought back to me Letters of Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna’s foremost disciple. Melissa inscribed the book this way: “Dr C., Hope this brings  you a small ‘piece’ of the peace I experienced at Sri Ramakrishna’s Mission and Math at Belur, Kolkata.”

This selection of Vivekananda’s letters  range from 1888 to 1902, and address members of his community as well as  Westerners eager to learn more about Indian spirituality.   The following is a small sample  of passages I noted of the swami’s observations, advice, exhortation, and insight…

On the Buddha: His greatness lies in his unrivaled sympathy. 18

Have faith in yourselves, great convictions are the mothers of great deeds.  64

Every soul is a sun covered over with clouds of ignorance, the difference between soul and soul is due to the difference in density of these layers of clouds.  69

The Good News, 6.4.2017: This Leads to That and That Leads to This

A couple years ago, Andrew Long suggested to one of his Barat Academy  students that she read The Book of Mev.   So she did.  And through social media we got in touch.  She just finished her first year at George Washington University, and it has been a delight to have visits and exchange correspondence with Liz Burkemper.

 

The Truly & Exceptionally Ecstasy-Inducing Good News, 4.29.2017

Last September, Brendan, and Jen, friends whom I had in Social Justice class years ago at SLU, told me that he had been diagnosed with malignant metastatic melanoma. The other day, Jen sent me the following text: “We just found out that Brendan’s full body CT scan done on Tuesday was normal—so no signs of cancer 12 weeks into treatment and 6 months after his surgery!”

The Good News of Publishing a Novel, 4.19.2017

At Amazon.com, I see that my friend Jason Makansi’s novel, The Moment Before, will be out in November. It’s about “a woman and her beloved Syrian father, separated forty years earlier when he is swept up in a geopolitical odyssey from hell, are almost reunited by a lawyer struggling to save his Illinois hometown from financial ruin.” I read a gripping draft of it this past summer, and I am pumped to facilitate a reading group of his book this fall.

 

The Good News of Pregnancy, 4.10.2017

Eileen McGrath Mosher responded to my out of the blue text with word that she is expecting her third child this September.

Adah, Eileen, Brent, Eamon

The Good News of Remembering a Friend, 4.8.2017

In 45 minutes I wrote three post cards, two letters and one note to a friend on the East Coast; I’ll post one a day for the upcoming week.