Wild Geese

Another poem for Poetry Month. 

WILD GEESE

by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Compassion

The Dark Magic of Tribal Shame

Photo: A Child's Cry for Peace by D. Sharon Pruitt (cc) 

I am fearlessly copying this post from Elizabeth Gilbert's Facebook page as it is relevant to readers who have abandoned Laestadianism. It's long, but worth it. Put your feet up and dig in.

BEWARE OF TRIBAL SHAME

Dear Ones -

OK, my friends — this will be a long post!

In fact, this will be the longest post I’ve ever written here on Facebook — but I also think that perhaps it’s the most important.

I want to share with you some revolutionary new ideas I’ve heard recently about emotional health and wellbeing. I came upon all this information just a few months ago, and I can’t stop thinking about it and talking about it with my friends and family.

This has been some really life-changing stuff for me — some of most life-changing stuff I’ve learned in ages — and I want to tell everyone about it!

It will take a while to explain this theory, but if you have the time…stay with me, OK?

I think you may find it’s worth it.

Random Stuff / Delurk Thread

Happy spring and World Poetry Day, readers. I know many of you come here looking for something fresh and leave empty-handed. My apologies. Below I've listed a few items that may tempt you to delurk and leave a comment, as the dialogue in the comment section is usually the best reading here.

1. Ed has a new post about exodus stories. Many of us take non-linear paths out of the church, some with a loop or two back in, for various reasons. But the guy who returned to the LLC to party? That had me SMH, as the kids say, shaking my head! Did you leave and return, and if so, why?

2. Another reader forward this link to Post-Cult Trauma Syndrome. Perhaps you recognize some of these symptoms? (I often feel "out of it" but have accepted it as my normal!)

• flashbacks to cult life

• simplistic black-white thinking

• sense of unreality

• suggestibility, ie. automatic obedience responses to trigger-terms of the cult's loaded language or to innocent suggestions

• disassociation (spacing out)

• feeling "out of it"

• "Stockholm Syndrome": knee-jerk impulses to defend the cult when it is criticized, even if the cult hurt the person

• difficulty concentrating

• incapacity to make decisions

• hostility reactions, either toward anyone who criticizes the cult or toward the cult itself

• mental confusion

• low self-esteem

• dread of running into a current cult-member by mistake

• loss of a sense of how to carry out simple tasks

• dread of being cursed or condemned by the cult

• hang-overs of habitual cult behaviors like chanting

• difficulty managing time

• trouble holding down a job

3. If you happen to be in Stockholm in June, check out the International Cultic Studies Conference. Surely religious scholars in the birthplace of Laestadius will be eager to discuss his legacy? Or not. I think Laestadianism may be the Rodney Dangerfield of religions and cults.

Guest House

Happy spring, readers. To celebrate, here's a photo by my son and a poem by the Muslim mystic Jalal ad-Din Rumi, who in spite of having lived 800 years ago is the best-selling poet in the United States today. Enjoy!

Guest House
by Jalal ad-Din Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.