Circles

This past weekend, I was in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina for an Advent retreat organized by four women -- Elaine, Joyce, Kate, and Lydia -- whom I have the privilege and pleasure to know through a community called Word and World, a group of activists who are variously and manifoldly artists, musicians, pastors, teachers, dancers, cooks, care-givers, fundraisers, singers, masseuses,  students, weavers, farmers, organizers, poets, and travelers who cast their work from a faith-based perspective. 

This is the kind of community in which you find yourself being the recipient of the grace of a total stranger who has offered to give you a ride from the Asheville Airport to the heights of Bryson City (thank you, Amy!), then find yourself, three days later, being shepherded down the mountains by other total strangers (thank you, Rachel, Jim, Mark, and Michael!) who have given up their Sunday to put chains on the 14 cars driven by your comadres to provide traction for the icy roads that skirt the coves, hollers, and gaps that feature near-vertical crops of several hundred feet.

As part of the weekend, Kate invited me to lead a writing workshop in light of the retreat's themes of lamentation and celebration, and in reflection of the Magnificat, which, as Kate noted, is one of those points at which the Bible becomes a bit like a musical insofar that folks are moved to burst out in song.  I was using the framework of Lynda Barry's writing workshop that she shares in What It Is;  to help folks settle down to do the actual work of moving the pen across the page, she has folks engage in a relaxation exercise at the end of which she reads a poem by Rumi, then offers the prompt that will start the next session of writing.  I didn't have Rumi on me, but I did have Joy Harjo's How We Became Human and read her "Eagle Poem":

To pray you open your whole self
to sky, to earth, to sun, to moon,
to one whole voice that is you.
And know that there is more
that you can't see, can't hear
can't know, except in moments
steadily growing and in languages
that aren't always sound but other circles of motion.
Like Eagle that Sunday morning
over Salt River. Circles in blue sky, in wind
swept our hearts clean.
with sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
that we must take the utmost care
and kindness in all things.
Breathe in,  knowing we are made of
all this, and breathe, knowing
we are truly blessed because we
were born, and die soon, within a
true circle of motion,
like Eagle rounding out the moment
inside us.
We pray that it will be done
in beauty.
In beauty.


The writers in the workshop engendered amazing pieces in the space of seven and nine minute writing sessions.  I was so grateful for the gift of those words that I decided to leave How We Became Human in retreat center's library, knowing that we would be carrying Joy Harjo's words with us in our various travels back to California, Connecticut, Ontario, Nebraska, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Oregon, Indiana, Georgia, New Hampshire, Virginia, and North Carolina, and hoping that some future visitor would discover the collection and have the opportunity to spend some time with Harjo's words.


When I got home, I found a message from a local friend, Kaye, in my email inbox, with the message that she had found a poem that struck her with its power and beauty, and wanted to share it with me.  The poem in question was Joy Harjo's "Eagle Poem," so I very much felt that while I had left the physical book back on the shelves of Sabbath House, the poem had indeed accompanied me home.