Making Progress in Tough Times

"In October, I had a moment with my eldest son that really brought home to me the angst that many progressive people were feeling throughout 2018.

It was the day after the release of the incredibly worrisome Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. You probably saw the press coverage. One of the report’s key findings is that we only have a dozen years in which to avert catastrophic global warming damage. My 14-year-old had seen some articles about it on-line and took me aside just before heading to bed."

Read the article here:

Rick Smith, Broadbent Institute - Making Progress in Tough Times, Lessons from 2018

Your Voice

Your voice is the temperature gauge

using the mercury of all you have seen and heard

of those who have harmed and saved you

an alchemical mix including your history

back to the first walk across the land

the first hut built of dry grass

your eyes wide as the saucers

that hadn't yet been invented

and the memory of a deep voice

directing you out of despair

calming the scream in your bowel

just as you were ready to split yourself open

in rage for all the times we let you down

when you were counting on us

to reach in for your bloodied arm

pull you up out of the pit

that had no steps or rocks to climb

and when we stop to think about it

we know we keep listening for the monster's roar

shuddering across the valley from mountains

too far and too high to climb

while your voice is so small and so close

we could begin to learn by listening

what could be done by someone

someone, anyone who hears

who has a hand to lift you up

and an arm to put around you

whenever your voice is ready

to ask for help.

Poetry That Heals by Naomi Beth Wakan - a review

How can poetry heal? Naomi Beth Wakan shows us through a tour of the different forms of Japanese poetry and ultimately answers the question.

Each chapter pairs the poetic form with the way healing intersects with reading and writing. But first the author asks “Who has not at times of distress sighed, groaned, cried and let out an anguished “Why?””

Chapter headings read like a self help guide: Being Here Now, Reading Haiku, How to Write a Haiku, The Haiku Walk, Healing the Earth, Loosening with Laughter, Freeing the Artist, Letting it all out, The Journey.

But it’s not shallow advice, not a quick-fix-buy-this kind of magical thinking.

Writers throughout the ages took to writing stuff down as a powerful antidote to despair even in the most sad and tragic times. Even sadness expressed at a particular event can fight against depression.  Poems that witness minutes, seconds, days or years, without rushing toward a solution, are revealing an element about life which the ego matures and understands - we are not in control.

Having experienced that catatonic flood. That rock in the stomach that prevents a move forward, that inner system bunged up with too much information for the mind and heart to process, I have turned to something unrelated to gain balance, and it has often given me new insights.

Being Here Now (the first chapter) shuts the door to all the weather swirling around and points to a particular moment: the heron / looks at its image / shallow waters. Nature offers a  return to the universe. Ah yes, right.  Got it! Vanity is a lonely pursuit.

Reading Haiku and How to Write Haiku makes it clear this book is not a guide on how to become a post-modern Basho. “Haiku don’t tell you what to think or what insights they might offer.” writes Wakan. “Haiku present images for readers to consider and then experience the resonances within themselves that the strong images of the haiku produce.”

The Haiku Walk is about reconnecting with nature, the eyes, the ears and the mind, using our own feet. 

Healing the Earth when there is so much abuse of this planet and its beings,  “you will find no despairing comments … No “it’s so bad!” or “it’s so terrible! Nor will you find overt comments on the awesome wonder of it all. What you will find is just what someone has sensed intensely at one moment in time.”

This is easier to contemplate than lists of what we can do and what we can’t control, or endless arguments about politics … the promise of a better world and better leaders, and the inevitable hangover after the “drug” wears off.

Anything we cherish needs more care than clever speeches from politicians. It needs a level gaze. It needs to be nurtured.  The difference between sadness and despair is that sadness can evoke our care, whereas despair can lock the heart and mind in a vault.

The poet will share an opinion with humility through careful observation with her senses and her humanity.  “Yes, at such bitter and such sweet times poetry has its uses, I find.” writes Wakan.

This books taps into human nature - the apps that we are born with, that have served us throughout the centuries: the power of humour, freeing the artist, letting it all out, and the journey. 

This book is light in weight and size yet large in its capacity to bring us back to our humanity.

[published by Shanti Arts Publishing 2018

first published in 2014 by Pacific Rim Publishers]

In Canada you can order the book here mail@pagesresort.com 

In US here info@ShantiArts.com

BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Healing / General
POETRY / Haiku

ISBN: 978-1-947067-28-8 (print; softcover; perfect bound)
ISBN: 978-1-947067-29-5 (digital)

LCCN: 2017964362

Released February 2018

104 pages

When the world keeps telling you they have all the power and you have none

Remember where that voice is coming from.  Is it your family, your spouse, your company, the ad agencies, the government, the bank, or your mind?  Who keeps giving you the message that you have no choice or that we have no choice?

Once you've figured that out, ask that voice what a super-hero would do, or a genius? Ask Nelson Mandela what he would do.  What would your grandmother do?

Take notes. Write down all the other voices along with their answers.  Put the notes away and come back to them later.

Going over those answers - are there any that you are capable of doing. You don't have to do anything you don't think you can do.  Not now anyway.  There may come a time when you really have no choice and there is no time to weigh up the costs, but now you can ask yourself what you can do.

At the very least, this exercise is one of privilege, and it can help us feel compassion for those whose only option is a dangerous trip on the sea or perish beneath the bullets and bombs.