Every day I have between 4 and 6 hours of good energy--enough to do some dishes, fold some laundry, teach some classes, and then collapse on the couch. A few hours later, I can sometimes muster 2 to 3 hours more of low energy to help kids with homework, make a simple dinner, read stories, and put kids to bed. Sometimes, thanks to a laptop I can use in bed or on the couch, I write some things and send them to publishers. Sometimes, if I budget well, I can go to a party or take a child shopping for a birthday present. The bard says how I too often feel here, as if he had already read the Elizabethan DSM-IV:
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
I've been under this energy constraint for the past five years, and sporadically before that for my whole life, when I've had episodes of depression. It's held me back from doing things I want to, and know I can, do, kept me from consistently putting in the hours required to do everything I'd like. Every day I hope it will change. I plan on things changing in the future while feeling frustrated with the present. Today I want to assess the damage that too much hope has done to my life, to my relationships with my children, my poems, and my world, and to make a shift from hopefulness to faithfulness.
A few years ago, in poetry workshop with the amazing poet and teacher Donald Revell, he taught us that we should have more faith and less hope in our poems. His reasoning goes like this: you can't write poems hoping that someone else will love them, or that they'll win a prize or adulation because you have no control over the way other people respond to you or your loved ones, and because the reward of external approbation is never big enough make it worth spending time doing things you don't love. You can write poems that you love and send them out in the world with your faith. Some misunderstood poets, like Emily Dickinson, have eventually become better understood. I love Dickinson because she loved her poems so much, and wrote them believing (as opposed to hoping) that others would love them, too. And they did. Eventually. After she was dead. And that's because she wrote poems she loved. Which doesn't ever guarantee that someone else will love them. Only that their author loves them. Which is enough. Should be enough. And because her poems didn't receive love until she was buried in her beloved earth. Dickinson says:
This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,--
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!
That never wrote to me,--
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!
(I love how much Dickinson loved the world. Loving the world makes good poems.)
During Don's lesson, I had a major parenting epiphany. This statement about hope and faith holds true for children as well as poems. I realized then that I had not been displaying a full acceptance of my children. Instead of reveling in their unique presence, I spent too much time correcting, hoping for change and improvement. This was a huge mistake that robbed me and them of the full measure of love and joy we could have had then. Here's apology number one: To my children, especially the oldest two, for not backing you with full faith earlier in your lives.
Apology number two: I'm sorry world. I haven't loved you enough. I have wished you to be different, not lived in you enough. I want to change. Here's what Brother Revell says about the world in his poem "My Mojave":
A perfect circle falls Onto white imperfections. (Consider the black road, How it seems white the entire Length of a sunshine day.) Or I could say Shadows and mirage Compensate the world, Completing its changes With no change.
Mormon doctrine, the one I was raised with from the day of my birth, has (what seems to me in my fuzzy understanding of Western Christina Traditions) a less dualistic view of heaven and earth, body and spirit, than many Christian traditions. The earth and our bodies are not so much fallen states as they are stops on a journey. Every Mormon knows this scripture by heart from the second book of Nephi: Adam fell that men [and women] might be. Men [and women] are that they might have joy. And here's what what we sing as small children:
Whenever I hear the song of a bird,
Or look at the blue, blue sky,
Whenever I feel the rain on my face,
Or the wind as it rushes by,
Whenever I touch a velvet rose
Or walk by a lilac tree,
I'm glad that I live in this beautiful world,
Heavenly Father created for me.
Children, world, poems, Brother Revell says:
I'm not needed
Like wings in a storm, And God is the storm. But I need you. I love you better and better, live in you more and more.
