Monday Poetry Train #13

Since so many of my posts lately have been referencing my upbringing in a fundamentalist sect, I thought this would be an appropriate time to present this poem which I wrote while in the midst of the psychological turmoil I was thrown into when I came face to face with the dark side of my religion, my fellow believers, my family, and my self.

The extended metaphor I use in it references the destructive power of gossip. A power I saw deployed both as conscious tactic and unconscious means of social positioning among my classmates on the playgrounds and school buses, in lunchrooms and classrooms; had frequently been the victim of it even; but never recognized for what it was when it was used by members of our assemblies until after the events that forced me to question the very foundations of all of my understandings.

I was shocked I tell you, electric-socket-finger-hairdo shocked, the first time I realized that teachers and elders and their wives were using the prayer chain to spread information calculated to disempower the prayer recipient: "Brother J and Sister K need our prayers because they are having financial problems, you know J had to take the credit cards away from K." or "Please Pray for Brother P and Sister D. Brother L's son saw their little R, only 13 you know, applying lipstick on the bus last week."

I could go on and on but I'm sure you catch my drift. You may not see the deeper implications though. See, teachers, elders and deacons were not considered worthy of positions that put them in authority over any segment of the flock if they could not keep their own houses in order. Thus, an easy way to discredit a teaching from the pulpit one might not like was to discredit the teacher by implying his wife or children were out of control.

See we didn't have pastors who were hired as full time preachers. There were about sixteen assemblies of various sizes from about 20 to just over 100 regular attendees spread between Saskatchewan Canada, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Arizona. Each one had two to ten Brethren capable of giving a lesson from the pulpit. All of them had day jobs 'out in the world'. Each assembly held four meetings per week, not counting the Bible Conferences some of them hosted at Xmas, Easter, Memorial Day, Labor Day etc that ranged from one to four days with three two hour meetings per day. Even if there hadn't been doctrinal disputes at issue, there would have been a bit of a shortage of slots for those who aspired to teach. But it was more about controlling the message I think. And it worked pretty well for nearly sixty years.

One of the events that catapulted me out was when I recognized that a message from the pulpit had been directed at one of the other teachers with whom the speaker was having a dispute with. Something clicked in my mind then. I asked why I should trust the words of someone who was using the Word of God to manipulate opinion about a Brother. And then I wondered how I could tell the difference between what was true about God and what might just be someone's opinion about God. Not long thereafter I became convinced that most of what was spoken about God from the pulpit, the airwaves, the press, etc was nothing more than gossip about God.

Just like the Telephone game.

Telephone Giclee Print by Diane Ong for sale at Art.com

Rule of Tongue
by Joy Renee

I’ll thank you not to speak of me
For you know nothing.
Only speculate upon illusion
Then speak my name in vain
When you proclaim and postulate
And spew out views
To congregate your pews
A fellowship of shrews

I’ll thank you not to speak of me
For you hear nothing
Not fear nurtured in the ground of hate.
Then speak my name in vain
To create the cruel rules
That castigate the other--the not-you--
To confirm your chosen few
A rulership of Rue.

I’ll thank you not to speak of me
For you say nothing
True. For shame is not my game.
And you take my name in vain,
Your guilt a project incomplete
You give another to do
To escape the dues
A dictatorship accrues.

I’ll thank you if you’ll keep for me
A silence of unknowing.
Then contemplate your ground of being
Where my name nurtures like rain
The blooming of your soul--
That making all things new
True worship will imbue.

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The Measure of a Man by Sydney Potier

I really can't call this a review. Not a formal one at any rate. I no longer have the book with me to refer to, nor did I take notes as I read. I was practically speed-reading it Sunday and did not finish until nearly midnight. I set out to write a quick review while it was all fresh but my laptop was in a balky mood and had to be restarted and during the restart I started Stephen King's Lisey's Story. Thirty pages into that it was my eyes that were balking.

I had to let the Potier memoir go back to the library when my husband left for work at seven this morning. I hate trying to do a review without the book in front of me but I just can't let this one go by without commenting on it. It moved me tremendously. He talks about the struggle to live with integrity. He confesses to not always measuring up to his highest standards. He talks about the necessity of confronting one's own darkest impulses, which must begin by acknowledging they exist.

He confesses that if pressed, he will admit to a belief in God. But he considers this to be, not an entity, but an immense consciousness that holds every particle of the entire universe in its awareness at every instance. He is uncomfortable with even this much defining and demurs at naming it even with the word 'god' as he sees naming and defining as the beginning of devisiveness. I am paraphrasing horribly here and hope I have not shredded his meaning too badly. I just had to share this part because this was where I got goosebumbs as I read because he was describing so closely the understanding that I have come to through my own studies and contemplations since I broke with the Fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity in 1992. And like Potier, I still hold a great affinity for the Christian story, its metaphors, images, rituals and aspirations but also like him, I hesitate to name or define. I would go so far as to say that attempting to pin it down with a name is the beginning of idolatry.

My favorite part was the first couple chapters that cover his life from early childhood on Cat Island in the Bahamas to his discovery, in his late teens, of a passion for acting. Events in between had taken him from Cat Island at ten, to Nassau and then to Miami and eventually to New York.

The bulk of the book consists of anecdotes and reflections for each of his major stage and screen roles. I have missed most of them, tho I faintly remember having seen at least part of To Sir With Love as a teenager and having been moved by it, however briefly, to consider becoming a teacher. I remember wishing that I had ever had a teacher who could 'see' me like that teacher 'saw' each of his charges.

I went up on the library's online catalog this morning to see which of his movies were available on DVD. I ordered several of them on my husband's card because after Wednesday, I will be unlikely to be able to check anything more out on my card for at least two weeks as I have to work my card's load down from 97 to under 30 items in order to check out any more of the requests coming to me. I am highly motivated to do so though as among the requests I am next in line for are To Sir With Love and the Defiant Ones. Both Sydney Potier movies. Also Crash and Dangerous Minds and Waking Ned Devine. All three of which I've been waiting months for. So the next couple of weeks are going to be an intense exercise in letting go.

Among the Potier DVDs I ordered on my husband's card were Look Whose Coming to Dinner, Raisin in the Sun and Lillies in the Field (which he won the Oscar for). I, (or rather my husband) got either first or second slot on each these so there is hope I will get to see each of them before April 6. It would be nice if not too much time goes by between reading Potier's commentary on them and actually watching them.

I was dissappointed to not find A Patch of Blue in either DVD or VHS in the library system. I was most eager to see that one as it features a blind girl. And I don't believe I have ever seen it. I think I would remember as visual impairment was such an issue in our family with my Mother and her Mother both suffering from RP, and me learning I also had it just before I turned thirty.

Well, back to Lisey's Story. It has been an exercise in delay of gratification to not pick it up again before I at least tried to say something about the book I spent most of Sunday with. The large print of the Potier book has spoiled me tho. That is probably why I was able to read over 300 pages in under ten hours. Something that used to be so common I never thought twice about it but has become as rare as slugs in a salt mine in the last five years. My plan is to intersperse DVDs with reading whenever eyestrain gets the best of me.

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