The Vine

You didn't choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain.                    ~ John 15:16

Showers of tears,
the fruit of the vine
touched by a raging sun;
yet, still she reaches out,
season after season,
ever onward and upward.

Despite such daily assault,
no bright flames
shall singe nor harm her;
and her fruit shall nourish
the nations with the sweetness
of a love like no other.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

This poem has been set to music by Carson P. Cooman,
in his cycle of songs for solo voice entitled Brief Vibrations, Op. 870

Waiting for the Barbarians—21st Century Update

NOTE: This is not an original work by me, but it is an homage to the work of the modern Greek poet C.P. Cavafy. This monumental poem of his is about society and politics. Current events called this poem to my mind, and made me reconsider it in a new light. If you exchange the word terrorist for the original word barbarian, there is almost a direct parallel. I have made further tweaks, to make the poem modern--the opposite of Cavafy’s, which was set to reflect an ancient time. The word fear does not show up in the original or in this refiguring, but fear is the undercurrent that rocks this poem.

ÐÑ

                                           Waiting for the Terrorists

What are we waiting for, glued to our iPhones,
                       Twitter feeds and social media?

      The terrorists are due here today.

Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?

Why are the senators sitting there not legislating?

      Because the terrorists are coming today.

      What’s the point of senators making laws now?

      Once the terrorists are here, things will be too chaotic to legislate.

Why did our president get up so early,

and why is he sitting in the oval office,

ready to make a statement?

      Because the terrorists are supposed to be coming

      and the president has been waiting to receive their leader.

      He’s even got a document to give him,

      loaded with criminal charges.

Why have our generals come out today

Wearing their uniforms and armed with loaded guns?

      Because the terrorists are coming today.

      [The order is “shoot to kill”;

                 there will be no trial.]

Why isn’t anyone telling us what is going on?
Where are the reporters of the news media?

      The terrorists are coming today!

Why this sudden triumphant joy, this confusion?

(How joyful people’s faces have become!)

Why are the streets and squares filling so rapidly,

With everyone going home chanting slogans and yelling epithets?

      Because night has fallen and the terrorists have been murdered by our military.

      And some of our men just in from the farthest borders claim,

      Along with the government, that there are no terrorists any longer.

Now what’s going to happen to us without terrorists?

For our government, terrorists were a kind of solution.

ÐÑ

Source of the original version of this poem:

C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems 
Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard Translation Copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard (Princeton University Press, 1975)

How to Change the World

I returned home, from a weekend away (in the peaceful countryside), to a battery of news that whipped around from "Royal Wedding" to "Death of Bin Laden" to "U.S. RULES!" I was dizzy all day Monday. I am still dizzy.

I wrote this morning:

The banner line reads: A World Changed. I say, Really? The figurehead may be gone, but the underlying problem, that which caused the figurehead to resort to terror, is not. Where is the problem? We need to look into the collective societal mirror. Do we honor life? Do we make peace? By our fruits, we are known. Do we really know what these are? Do we really buy into the policies that our leaders enact in our names?

I wonder if we really know how we stupid and foolish we are, like five year olds on a playground who cannot share the rubber ball. The decisions we make, as adults, sometimes seem to echo the mean and selfish child. Whereas we took pride in building the sandcastle and wielding the stick then, we now take pride in destruction and death.

How sad. How unenlightened. How un-evolved.

After a similar event several years ago, while some other tyrant fell (while we crowed) and other awful events occurred, I wrote this to a friend:

We spoke of emotional pain, and wondered together how it was possible to give others excellent advice that we cannot follow for ourselves. Recalling [a] recent sermon [where it was discussed how we are each made in the image of God], I surmised that it is not possible for us to look into the mirror--we must be face to face with the true image of God in order to receive the information God has to impart, and that it is for just that reason that primarily that there is more than one being. [Individuals] are necessary reflections of the ultimate truth that a mirror can only hint at; however broad and fine the resolution, a mirror image of self fails to impart what a living, breathing person can...

The mystery lives not only on the paten and in the chalice, but within the fragile architecture of sound [and of touch and of interactions and of speech and of so many other ephemeral things]...

I must admit, the horror of the continuing carnage of the ongoing conflict/WAR, combined with the equally senseless one-off horrors of events such as those at Virginia Tech, have engulfed me in an unspeakable sorrow. I went to my church, while the twins were at their respective karate and ballet lessons, and sat with the pastor, talking and praying. It was my thought to bring the church community together in a liturgy, not just to pray, but to cherish life, living, and the lives of the departed--not an office of the dead, but an office for the life eternal, on earth and not on earth. 

The office is supposed to honor life, but somehow, we get stuck on the death part, and glorify that more.

Today is a New Day, the newspapers proclaim. But I sit with Jeremiah and Micah on my shoulders, and I say that we have not been honest with ourselves, and that we continue to teach war and destruction and death and oppression and might-makes-right. And we give away our authority to people who misuse it, in our names.

I shudder that I sit with Evil Under The Sun everyday, and hear it called Goodness and Righteousness. Then someone says, "hey, let's go celebrate with a drink!"

Oh, darkness, darkness, how I am surrounded by it.

The mystery lies ever beyond, however. The mystery is engulfed in light. Our vocabulary cannot ever describe the life that the mystery holds and creates, vero de vero, being light within light. The Word is God, but we have never been able to hear it the way it should be heard, and so we cannot speak the mystery.

However, if we would but shut up, for a few minute--if we could stop the endless, mindless chatter of mouths and keyboards and even archaic pencils and pens, we might let the mystery speak to us.

Speak to me, Sweet Mystery! Speak to me! Teach me about light and life! Render my actions in the image of Your brilliance and peace, and guide me!

In the midst of darkness, I can apprehend your light, Oh Mystery Divine!

And I suspect that Yours is the only revolution that will survive.

Because it is not a war; we have misidentified the whole thing.

We need to lose the "r".

It is an evolution.

Kairos

Feet planted firm,
wind fills wings;
Tug on the thread
--my heart rings.

Head in the clouds,
dreaming of things;
Time flies a kite
--my soul sings.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

This poem has been set to music by Carson P. Cooman,
in his cycle of songs for solo voice entitled Brief Vibrations, Op. 870

Wishing you a great weekend and suggesting...

GO FLY A KITE!

Referral Spammers, Get A Life!

I always find it interesting that there are people who imagine that someone will click their links to pay for diet tips or training-in-how-to-be-an-annoying-spammer-for-money. These poor, deluded folks are located all over the world.

I could probably start a similar website of my own called "How To Be A Bitch". But I won't--I don't need to, someone else has already done this, I am sure.

But, as it is, this site is a site that is not devoted to making money or losing weight or porn or beauty products or anything remotely as stupifyingly inane as that.

This site is about creativity, and to a certain extent, critical thinking.

What is written up here is copyright protected. I am well aware that I cannot make money by flogging my blogging, and that it is ridiculous to try to do so.

I cannot imagine how all of you trying to sell decorating services in Russia and skin products in Brazil, and I cannot read the Cambodian site, so I don't know what you are trying to sell (could it be bootlegged DVDs of a prurient nature?) are going to find a client in me, but you can, I suppose, keep trying.

Really, I find it rather a sad and even an amusing commentary on humanity that people think they can get ahead in life by being such annoying leeches. Someone should do a sociological and economic study on whether this kind of BS is profitable.

Having commented on the phenomenon may perhaps bring more of such traffic. I am aware of that. But I want all of you who engage in referral spam to know that all it does is make me laugh and hope that the human species evolves sooner, rather than later.

That is all; you make me laugh.

So, by all means, if you feel you need to make me laugh, keep it up.

But, otherwise, may God BLESS you all, and may you find some illuminating light and peace, and a real life that is not so much caught up in sales or money or being annoying.

Public Servants

          Politicians are like diapers;
          they need to be changed often
          and for the same reason.
                      ~ Mark Twain

Weeds grow up

through cracks
formed in the aftermath
of any reign of terror.

Seemingly irreparable damage,
attributed to villains invisible,
is incalculable; somehow,
there is no money for repairs.

Wobbling platitudes
roll off the tongues
of the political class
we were free to vote
into office

to work for us.

If you are, like Flynn,
in the pockets of the powerful,
you need not be free or even real,
but you can afford to paint on a smile
and say g’day and it’ll be all right.

The cracks in the street,
the decay of a republic,
the decline of democracy,
and the absence of common decency
don’t figure into your paycheck.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Note: the origins of the phrase “in like Flynn” are unclear,
but in the context of this poem, all could be applicable.

Dawn

          a song for Easter

          The Holy Spirit is the rising sap, 

          And Christ will be the green leaves that will come
          At Easter from the sealed and guarded tomb.

                       Patrick Kavanagh
                       From the Great Hunger: III, lines 25-27

Steal in,
Steal in softly,
Steal in silently, sweet Other;
Flow thy sweet living steams in,
Flow in vision, flow in being
On the exuberant morning tide!

Illumine from dark to dim to light,
To consciousness and the recognition of it;
In you flowing tide, fill me from outside in,
Until you fill my veins and my visioning with beauty,
Gently birthing me out of your essence.

Steal in,
Steal in softly, Beloved,
Steal in slowly, dear Other;
Flow like the flames of dawn into my senses,
Sing like the lark through my veins,
Extrude me from your consciousness,
Unfold me from the budding of your source
Until I am everything,
And the fleeting thought on the wind,
As the light grows from rose to flame.

Steal in softly, and
Weave our endless song--
Theme and Variations
On our eternally new moment of discovery.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

This poem was written in 2002.

This text has been set to music by composer James Hurd.