Tag: poetry

Prisons of Our Own Making: Fear in the Age of the Refugee

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Photo credit: Ana Ferreira

During the season of Lent this year, as we lament the ways that both we  and the world in in which we live are broken, my church community is particularly focusing on the theme of imprisonment, the liberating power of Christ, and the places where we long to see that freedom break through.

Celine Chuang, another writer in our community, put together a beautiful booklet of readings for each day of the season, inviting us to use poetry, prose, and visual art to engage with the question, “What prisons – whether literal, spiritual, physical, or structural – are present in our world today: in our city, country, society, and in ourselves?” In this booklet, familiar voices from our own neighborhood find their way onto the page alongside those of theologians, activists, and artists from around the world, exploring what it means to “acknowledge and lament imprisonment” and to “posture ourselves towards and participate in liberation from these forms of captivity.”

The first step to getting somewhere is knowing where you want to go. And so as we seek to live into the vision of God’s Kingdom on earth, we are trying to imagine together:  “What does freedom from prisons look like?”

The poem below was my attempt to name some of the prisons I see around me and to envision a life beyond them.

Prisons of Our Own Making: Fear in the Age of the Refugee

We

imprisoned by narratives of fear

and scarcity

label the other as

Terrorist;

Illegal:

taker of lives,

taker of jobs,

taking away our homogeneity

and sense of security.

 

We call our prison a fortress,

believing it is we

who have prevailed over

the chaos outside,

and not our own fear

that has won by

relegating our existence

to captivity and isolation.

 

And they—

those from whom

we have separated from ourselves

by language

by place of origin

by passport stamp–

or lack thereof–

they

are imprisoned, too.

 

But their cells are not

the walls of their own imagining.

They are the real cement and iron

of immigration detention centres

turning profit

by the bed

by the day,

punishing the audacity

of those who have the nerve to

cross politically imagined lines in the sand

and seek opportunity

seek safety

seek survival.

 

What would it be

if we could look them in the eye

and see

not outsider

or villain

or poster child

or political symbol

or threat to our way of life,

but a reflection

of ourselves?

A spark of the Divine;

a life that’s on the line.

A human being

who belongs,

and who longs

to be free?

Today I wear shorts: A poem written in anger

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Sometimes  when I experience street harassment, I confront the inappropriate words or behavior right there in the moment. But much more often, I am so taken off  guard–or uncomfortable, or even afraid–that I either find myself unable to meaningfully respond at all, or I make a calculated decision to exit the situation as soon as possible instead of reacting, for my own safety. In such instances, rage or disgust tends to start welling up inside me as soon as I walk away. These emotions are directed towards the person who violated or intimidated me, and also–unfairly, I know–at myself, for my own silence and passivity, or for not thinking quickly enough to find the words or the action that I needed in the moment.

map

In her book The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron writes that “anger is a map” that “shows us where our boundaries are,” what is important to us, and “where we want to go.” When respected and “acted upon” instead of “acted out,” Cameron says, anger helps us find a way forward. So today, instead of stewing powerlessly on my anger and replaying this infuriating episode over and over again in my head, I’ve decided to write it out–what happened, and what I wish I had been able to say at the time. What I still want to say to the world.

Here it is, a poem mapping out my anger to put it to use:

Today I wear shorts

Today I wear shorts
Because the weather is warm.
Because I want to be free.
Because I have not felt the pleasure
of a temperate breeze
against my bare legs
since I bundled up last October.

And yes, because my legs are beautiful.
Because I am not ashamed of my body,
and because I have no reason
to hide my God-given limbs
from you or from anyone else.

And no, I do not owe you any explanation
for the shorts I wear today.
But it would appear that I do
need to explain the self-evident fact
that I am not wearing shorts
for you to take pictures of my ass
on your cellphone
while you wait in line for the bus
while my head is turned the other way
while another man loudly announces to me,
and to others,
what you are doing.

Perhaps, in the privacy of your addiction
you have seen so many women on the screen—
performing a false intimacy,
giving you something for nothing,
posing and moving as though they belong to you—
that you have forgotten:
we all belong to ourselves,
and you are not entitled
to my body or to anyone else’s.

Or perhaps, you have learned
to treat people like things
because this is the cycle
your own experience brings.

I’m sure that there are reasons,
but whatever they are,
none could constitute an excuse.
So stop.

The Surprise Apocalypse

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Syncrude Aurora Oil Sands Mine, north of Fort McMurray, Canada.

An apocalyptic landscape: Syncrude Aurora Oil Sands Mine, north of Fort McMurray, Canada.

I’m not in the habit of writing apocalyptic poetry, but I wrote this a few months back as I reflected on what I’ve been learning about the industrial food system, the global economy, and climate change. We often use the word “apocalypse” to refer to the idea mass destruction or the end of the world, but in the original Greek it means “uncovering”: the lifting of a veil; a revelation.  For people who seek to be shaped by the Biblical narrative, its important to know who we are, and where we are, in the story. Imagining all kinds of evil outside of ourselves or our own community without recognizing our role in contributing to life or to destruction is worse than useless–it actually distracts us from using the power available to us to take meaningful action.

I grew up in churches where we talked about the end of the world fairly often, but it was all mystifyingly spiritual–beyond our control and even beyond our understanding. We rarely discussed any of the real-world destruction going on around us in the form of wars or other man-made disasters. We never imagined that we might be benefiting from, let alone contributing to, the very systems of power that were destroying God’s creation or the lives of our fellow human beings.

St. John wrote the book of Revelation to help his readers understand the times in which they lived and to help them respond faithfully to their situation. Here is what it might look like to interpret the book of Revelation in our twenty-first century context of climate refugees, mass extinction, and a worldwide economy that depends on ecological and human exploitation to sustain its perpetual growth:

 

Apocalypse

I nightmared of the rapture

From the age of ten

Looking out for all the signs

That would mark the end:

 

The blood-red moon,

The rebuilt temple,

Rumors of famine and war

It was simple

 

To keep watch and prepare

For the tribulation:

A mysterious age

When the world would be one nation

 

With power concentrated

In a single pair of hands:

The evil antichrist

Against whom we would stand

 

We brave, holy Christians

Ready to be martyred

If we hadn’t been raptured already

By the time the suffering started

 

Yes, this was the revelation

According to St. John

And Tim LaHaye

And on and on

 

They proclaimed with confidence

All those fiery preachers

They understood it all;

They were inspired, spiritual teachers

 

The evil they envisioned

Was otherworldly; other

It had nothing to do with us,

With how we lived with one another.

 

But what if apocalypse does not depend

On events beyond our knowing?

What if the world will meet its end

At the hands that should have been sowing

 

Gardens of perpetual abundance

Instead of economies of perpetual growth

Contentment instead of greed

So that life would not be choked?

 

“Rule over all the earth,and subdue it,”

Say our scriptures in the beginning.

“Tend this garden in my stead,”

But already our heads were spinning…

 

With ways to turn this mandate

For protecting the work of God’s hand

Into the right to rape and plunder

like warlords on stolen land.

 

God said that it was very good

But we couldn’t just take that at face value

There was still untapped potential

For air-conditioning and indoor bathrooms

 

And look, God approves–

With wealth He does bless!

Convenience, comfort,

More is always better than less

 

But somehow we missed the signs

Of the snowballing destruction

That we “the faithful” brought about

With our affluent consumption.

 

“Fallen! Fallen

Is Babylon the Great!”

Her sins are piled to heaven,

Judgment will no longer wait.

 

The saints and apostles

and prophets rejoice,

But we wealthy who made merry

Cannot find a joyful voice

 

“Come out of her,” the Lord had said

But we all felt just fine

It was difficult to leave—

We all had drunk her wine

 

Drunk with power, and distraction

It was difficult to see

all the blood there on our hands

as we lived our lives in ease.

 

For our finely-built houses

We turned forest land to sand

For our juicy beef burgers

We drove peasants from their land

 

But this all was done by proxy,

Please try to understand,

We would not have done this dirty work

Directly with our hands.

 

“Woe! Woe, O great city,

O Babylon, city of power!”

All your horses and chariots and tanks

Could not prolong your life by an hour.

 

For your growing empire was rotting

All along, from the inside out,

Destroying the very nourishment

That you could not live without.

 

You sought to trade

and buy and sell

Human bodies and souls

ecosystems as well

 

You poisoned your own rivers

And you counted it as profit

The important numbers grew,

But you never measured losses.

 

Why think about the future?

In the present, you could thrive.

No need to let inconvenient fact

Intrude on your way of life:

 

Freedom of choice

Freedom of trade

Slave labor hidden

In everything that’s made.

 

Poison air that burns the lungs

Of the workers making shoes

“Pleather weather” over factories

That produce for me and you

 

Ocean waves enclosing

An island homeland beneath the surf

That’s the end of someone’s world,

If not the entire earth.

 

Famines, droughts, deforestation,

And wars waged over water

This certainly will end the lives

Of certain sons and daughters

 

Genocides of birds and of fish

And bees and soil, too.

All creatures that eat food will die.

Eventually, humans do.

 

No showy Armageddon;

Just a slow fading out:

Like a self-inflicted wound

That finally brings death round.

 

Or like the drug addicted

Overdosing on the sidewalk

En masse, of course, but just as

accidental and suicidal.

 

This, the self-made apocalypse

Of prideful, self-made men

More predictable than what we sought

In our cryptic verses back then.

revelation apocalypse

A new beginning (and a poem from the ashes)

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We’ve been in Canada for a month now. In some ways, it feels that we’ve been here much longer: we have been the eager recipients of hospitality in a loving community that has sheltered us and softened our landing in this new country. Even as new arrivals, we have shared most meals with friends, entered into daily and weekly rhythms of prayer and worship with others, played with children, and felt at home. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this as we begin to get our feet under us again. Just sharing the domestic sphere of cooking, cleaning, and common space with others brings a sense of belonging that is rare to find so quickly when one shows up in a new city without an existing network of relationships, or even a job. It’s ironic to think that we’ve moved into a “joint family” living situation only after leaving India, where we were surrounded by people who found it strange for the two of us to be living “alone”!

This community is centered around hospitality. When we briefly passed through this community several years ago, we were inspired to participate in extending this invitation of hospitality to neighbors who often brought their struggles with mental illness, addiction, prostitution, homelessness, or poverty into the house. Some of them are refugees and migrants. Others have been internally displaced within their own culture and society.

This time, however, we’ve returned to the community as strangers and foreigners in need of hospitality ourselves. This time, we feel most inspired by the hospitality that has been extended to us, from community members and neighbors alike. Community dinners at our house bring the whole diverse and quirky lot of us together, and it can be quite the adventure. The lines are blurred between who is hosting and who is being hosted; who is extending grace and who is receiving it. Several people from the neighborhood are long-time friends of the community who know what it’s like to live on the streets or to fight through an addiction, and they have become important partners in extending hospitality to others—they are some of the best cooks we have, they share their insight and their stories with us, and they offer compassionate, listening ears to newcomers.

***

We have yet to really process what it means to have uprooted ourselves from the slum in India and moved here. It will take time to unpack that experience; even our last day in the slum was stuffed full of the roller coaster of emotions I had felt throughout the time I lived there: waves of sadness, anger, tenderness, frustration, laughter, happiness, and grief. I felt exhausted by everyone’s desire to be with us as much as possible in those last hours. I felt overwhelmed by the intensity of their need. I felt humbled, too, by the gifts we received: one last, home cooked meal with our Indian family; hugs and kisses on the cheek from the little children who have become like nieces and nephews to us; a painting from my “little sister.”

“Just think,” our former landlady had told us earlier that week, “when you first arrived here, no one even wanted to offer you a room, because they didn’t know you. Now there’s not a single person in this neighborhood who isn’t sad you’re leaving.”

Those words express the heart and soul of what our time in India meant. By the time we actually walked out of the community, it felt like we were attending our own funeral. Thirty or forty people escorted us up to the main road in a somber procession and blocked traffic as they crowded around to hug us, say their final goodbyes, and flag down an auto rickshaw for us. Many people were sobbing openly. So were we, by the time we drove away. I feel many things about leaving, but in that moment the only thing I felt was immeasurable loss.

Sometimes these experiences elude the grasp of everyday language. They can’t find full expression in words of any kind, but poetry more closely approximates their meaning. I wrote some poetry a few days before our departure:

On the occasion of my leaving
this battlefield and second home,
strewn with unfulfilled hopes, half-discovered mysteries,
love, laughter, triumph, and sorrow,
a poem:

For the children locked up in dark rooms,
and the ones singing film songs, flying kites, playing marbles in the alleyway;

For the parents screaming at their children,
and for the mothers tenderly nursing infants; the proud fathers with toddlers in their arms;

For the women with broken bangles and bruised eyes,
for the grown-up boys who beat them;

For the men earning survival with their sweat and exhaustion,
and for the ones drowning in a malaise of alcohol and ganja,

For the feuds and fights and angry words,
reverberating off the narrow brick walls of the alleyways, and lodging in wounded hearts;

For the communal prayers also, and the generosity of neighbors:
meals for widows, and foreigners, and orphans;

For all the beauty and pain I have seen,
For the cruelty and the love.
Both have taken my breath away, in turns.

No victims here, and no heroes;
No one evil and no one righteous
(myself included)
All facets of the human heart laid bare
In these dusty alleyways and close quarters

Where there are no secrets
(except the ones we keep from ourselves),
And no illusions
(besides the ones in our own minds).

For all of us:
May we find peace
Instead of everything else we go in search of,
To fill the space where love alone belongs.