… And while we cast our ballots alone, we chose hope together. Hope over tyranny. Hope over big money and small ideas. Hope over despair.”
—Zohran Mamdani, Mayor Elect of New York City
Today’s offering is a Special Edition, devoted to thoughtful words & Good News. (Yes, Virginia, there really is Good News!) I believe we’re overdue. If you feel that way too, let’s spend a few extra minutes together today.
Who Shall Bear Hope
By Marge PiercyWho shall bear hope, who else but us?
After us is the long wind blowing
off the ash pit of blasted genes, or after,
the remarrying of the earth and the water.
We must begin with the stone of mass
resistance, and pile stone on stone on stone,
begin cranking out whirlwinds of paper,
the word that embodies before any body
can rise to dance on the wind, and the sword
of action that cuts through. We must shine
with hope, stained glass windows that shape
light into icons, glow like lanterns
borne before a procession. Who can bear hope
back into the world but us, you, my other
flesh, all of us who have seen the face
of hope at least once in vision, in dream,
in marching, who sang hope into rising
like a conjured snake, who found its flower
above timberline by a melting glacier.
Hope sleeps in our bones like a bear
waiting for spring to rise and walk.
It was Emily Dickinson, of course, who declared “Hope is the thing with feathers”. I like to believe she was right, so I feed the birds and watch them shuck & jive & twirl & twitter & I welcome their joy on the darkest of days. I especially love Ara Duzian’s rendition of Emily’s poem put to music. What better time to share it with you than today?
If you’ve known me for a while, you know that my “go to” when I start to feel my serenity being threatened, is often Poetry … or Making Soup. My last newsletter included a Fall harvest recipe and my next one will too, but today my comfort offerings are poetry, music, and beautiful things to look at. It should be noted that not all poetry is intended to comfort the afflicted. There is much that is definitely meant to afflict the comfortable. As the late Robinson Jeffers reminds us, “Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts. It is not necessarily a moralizer; it does not necessarily improve one’s character; it does not even teach good manners. It is a beautiful work of nature, like an eagle or a high sunrise. You owe it no duty. If you like it, listen to it; if not, let it alone.” Good advice, I say.
I do love these words from Richard Blanco’s poem, “America the Beautiful Again”, from his magnificent collection, How To Love A Country. “How I still want to sing despite all the truth of our wars and our gunshots ringing louder than our school bells, our politicians smiling lies at the mic, the deadlock of our divided voices shouting over each other instead of singing together. How I want to sing again – beautiful or not, just to be in harmony – from sea to shining sea – with the only country I know enough to know how to sing for.”
I think about Dorothy Day, the Catholic Activist who said, We can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world.
And speaking of not sitting down and feeling hopeless, I want to give a big Shout Out to Rabbi Sandra Lawson, who in her Substack post of October 28th, spoke out with such fierce and radical Love. “Fear”, she said, “may keep us vigilant”, “but only courage, rooted in relationship, will keep us safe … Real courage right now means rejecting the language of fear and embracing the harder work of bridge-building. If we truly want to defend the Jewish future, we must do it alongside others who are fighting for theirs.”
And while I’m in Shout Out mode, here’s one for Aaron Parnas, who is fast becoming one of my favorite GenZers (and I have a growing list), the twice-a-day, 25-year-old podcaster/newscaster, who graduated from law school at 21, having entered college at 14, a young man carrying a kind of dedication you don’t see much these days. I wonder sometimes if he’s channeling Walter Cronkite. With so much of mainstream ‘news’ becoming sanitized and slanted so as not to offend the powers that be, and keep those paychecks coming, I find myself relying more and more on independent reporters for what I consider balanced and less-biased coverage. Do check him out here, if you believe as I do, that GenZ is where most of our hope lies.
It wasn’t too many weeks ago that I shared a delightful poem about a grandpa with some good advice about singing. Some things are worth repeating.
Sing ’Til It’s True
By Gavin Van HornI’ve got peace like a river in my soul.
–African American spiritual, arr. by William J. Reynolds“The thing about singing,” said grandpa,
“is you have to keep singing for it to come true.”
So a small group gathers
beating steady rhythm
calls the salmon home.
And a mother, through tears,
rocks her baby, letting her know,
she’ll buy her a diamond ring.
And the ghost of Woody Guthrie,
a sharp twang that bounces
down the canyon, keeps repeating:
“This land is your land.
This land is my land.”
We wake, turn on the smokebox,
wires to our ears like thin tapeworms.
Keep singing
At the coffin, at the pine-grove,
in the still small silences of night.
Keep singing
To remind yourself:
there didn’t have to be music in the world.
There coulda been blood and bruises
With no tourniquet, no balm.
There coulda been a pit
with no ladder
An ocean without dry land,
a storm without shelter.
There coulda been.
There’s no certainty
of benevolence. But
there’s music.
And you can sing
alone, in pairs,
or with the storm itself.
“The thing about singing,” said grandpa,
“is you have to keep singing for it to come true.”
I say, LET’S DO IT!! Let’s make America Beautiful Again … Humane, Kind, Loving & Generous & let us do what is ours to do and be proud to call our ourselves Americans. It’s not too late! Remember, there didn’t have to be music in the world … Hope is not just another 4-Letter Word. Let’s keep on Singing together!
See y’all next time.
Love, Sulima
Buying me an occasional coffee helps me keep these stories coming … and gives me one less reason to cross my fingers when my Social Security payment is due!
