December 9 -- Poetry and Spirituality + MAG

DEC: CONNECTION …to each other, to peace in the midst of craziness, to spirit in the midst of materialism, to light in the midst of darkness (hope), to needs greater than our own, generosity, brother’s keeper, interdependence, empowerment of each other, reigniting the spark in each other, connection to our Christian roots, connection to all religions lifting up the light n the midst of darkness,

Jennifer Grotz: The Umbrella --
Joseph Stroud: Manna
Thomas Hardy: At the Railway Station, Upway
James Wright: The Blessing
Wave: Joanna Goodman

Different connections --
the Umbrella brought up the most -- how sweet fruit risks a moldy end; the blooming of umbrellas on the sidewalk; the sky escorted by the wind,, the way something that is supposed to protect (umbrella) becomes the vehicle to deliver the unexpected...

the midsection allows rain to become feeling and yet there is something not quite smooth in the jerkiness of "stutter"...

It poured until it wasn’t rain anymore
but something one endured with feeling,
deafening as laughter in a crowded bar
but equally awful because it made time stutter
inbetween day and night, city and sky.

John brought up a memory of going up the Pompidou elevator just as rain is starting, and looking down on the square where umbrellas popped open ...
Manna, also has the word "happy" in it -- in this case, snow.

childlike, not apologetic, nor arrogant, no need to feel ashamed, or to be "shriven of shame"...
key word, "so be it" -- not as conclusion of an Amen, but slipped in midway into the poem.

The Thomas Hardy painted a touching portrait of a Christ-like figure in a scene that would seem surreal if witnessed. From an article on empathy in APR.

James Wright's Blessing -- the curiosity and connection between the horses, and speaker and friend; the etymology of blessing -- Originally a blood sprinkling on pagan altars.

The wave... one senses a speaker overwhelmed, unable to put words together, at the end of a relationship, where the final gesture is love enough.

**
To leap from this discussion to leading children through art of the renaissance -- consideration of how to depict reality with feeling, humanize, put some personality into the narrative, the details, the facial expressions. We had fun with perspective -- how the floor looks like the knave will slide right off past the table, out of the picture; how the turned face of the man mostly out of the picture relies on the guesswork of the onlooker; how different from the floors of the renaissance painting. The "drama" of what all the people are saying in the Judith and Holoferness painting... the fun of feeling a painting really coming alive...