Author Archives: Jendi Reiter

Alegria Imperial: “this change of name”


Alegria Imperial, a frequent contributor to this blog’s poetry pages, shared with me this meditation on an important upcoming transition in her life. Originally from the Philippines, she will now have dual citizenship in her adopted country, Canada. Her spare, elegant language and attunement to nature show the influence of yet another country, Japan, as her writing has been shaped by the discipline of studying haiku and tanka.

Alegria says of her multiple identities: “I’m about to take my oath as a Candian citizen and pledge allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II! I find it both exhilarating and ironic (the pledge of allegiance, in particular); here I am coming from a country that fought for freedom from Spanish royalty for 300 years, regained it, lost it again, and gained it back, but chosing to move to Canada I will now willingly become a subject to a queen in a few days.”

this change of name
by Alegria Imperial

it is
a matter of spelling
only
this change of name

or am i fooling
the skies i look up to
the clouds
none i can name

the mountains
that shimmer
stealing in in stead
the names

of mountain ranges
facing East
among its jungles
my spirit roosts

alien snow
now smothers
my laughter
i drift aground

is earth
unlike the sun
untouched
by sorrow?

i hear
from mourning doves
the language
of dawns

i mismatch
evening clouds
in my dreams
the chill stays

yet the sparrow
shares its songs
that seep into my sleep
lull my world

i regain my name
on Hollyburn
where a lotus by itself
on the lake

–such poignancy–
mirorring my loneliness
soaks the sun
as if enough

i trail the buds
lined along the Fraser’s North Arm
winding down and up
the river bed

the tide cuts a line
between my dreams and the sky
ripples catch my breathing
in rhythmic sighs

i’m scaling the breast
of Burnaby Mounains
my soul resists
its longings

i’m close to home
close to sinking
in the foam
skirting Horseshoe Bay

an eagle skims
my rhyming
my longings weave
in and out of the air

on a skein
of cherry blossoms
once only paintings on scrolls
i learn to haiku

–thinking of moths
in my childhood those slivers of light
that die on the light
and fade in the morning–

on my waking
i am who has always been
the city aground on my steps
whose name i can now say

even in sleep–
Vancouver


Sunday Non-Random Song: Keith Green, “Oh Lord, You’re Beautiful”


Some Christian friends and I were recently talking about what it means to “give your heart to God”. The one thing we could agree on was that we worried we weren’t doing it thoroughly enough! Perhaps, we thought, the first step is simply surrendering those spiritual performance anxieties into God’s hands.

Whether the object of our devotion is God or an earthly beloved or vocation, we sometimes confuse surrender with renunciation. Is devotion best measured by how much you push other things out of your heart to make room for God? Unless those affections have become disordered in some way (selfishly possessive or addictive), I would say not. The God of the Bible persistently asks us to rethink the scarcity mindset that makes us see interpersonal relations through the lens of desperate competition. In my Father’s house are many mansions.

Surrender, on the other hand, could be about trusting God to protect and give meaning to the life we already love, and thereby coming to see God’s presence in more and more places. We go from being Martha, who is anxious about many things because she thinks it all rests on her shoulders, to Mary, who sees that only God keeps the cosmos in existence from one second to the next.

For me, giving my heart to God starts with remembering that (1) I have a heart and (2) there is a God. That is, it’s about re-opening, yet again, to the vulnerability of joy and trust and hope, which requires me to rely on the God who has guaranteed that those qualities will ultimately triumph over cruelty and meaninglessness. I might think that that kind of God is a nice idea, but I can’t say I believe in Him until I actually act as if He were there to catch me when I fall (or am pushed).

That inward softening often happens when I sing worship songs. Something about opening to the flow of breath relaxes my emotional center as well. This simple, powerful song by Keith Green always moves me in that direction. I hope it warms your heart as well.

Read more about Keith Green on the Last Days Ministries website. He devoted his talents to spreading the gospel through music until a plane crash tragically took his life at age 28.

Oh Lord, you’re beautiful,
Your face is all I seek,

For when your eyes are on this child,

Your grace abounds to me.

Oh Lord, you’re beautiful,

Your face is all I seek,

For when your eyes are on this child,

Your grace abounds to me.

I want to take your word and shine it all around.

But first help me just to live it Lord.

And when I’m doing well, help me to never seek a crown.

For my reward is giving glory to you.

Oh Lord, please light the fire,

That once burned bright and clear.

Replace the lamp of my first love,

That burns with Holy fear.

I want to take your word and shine it all around.

But first help me just to live it Lord.

And when I’m doing well, help me to never seek a crown.

For my reward is giving glory to you.

Oh Lord, you’re beautiful,

Your face is all I seek,

For when your eyes are on this child,

Your grace abounds to me.

Oh Lord, you’re beautiful,

Your face is all I seek,

For when your eyes are on this child,

Your grace abounds to me.

(Lyrics courtesy of www.sing365.com)

Advice to Myself, Across 20 Years


“I once believed in causes too, I had my pointless point of view…” —Billy Joel

I turned 39 this week, and I intend to stay that way for quite some time. (And if you get that reference, you’re older than me, haha.)

Twenty years ago, I was named one of Glamour Magazine’s Top Ten College Women, either despite or because of the fact that my hair was the size of a small hedge and I had no idea how to apply eyeshadow. Yes, I was a diversity hire: the crazy poet quota. The magazine treated us to a lovely weekend in NYC, including a Revlon gift bag and a visit to the MTV studios, and published our pictures in an issue with Cindy Crawford on the cover.

Earlier this summer, a Glamour staff member sent us alumnae this intriguing question:

We would like to know what you would tell your Top 10 College Woman self. If you could go back in time and give yourself some advice at the moment that Glamour honored you, what sage nugget of wisdom would you like to impart? We’re considering sharing some of your advice with our upcoming winners in the magazine.

With that in mind, here’s what I wish I could have told Jendi-in-1992:

Don’t be afraid to embarrass yourself in the service of the truth.

You have a right to believe that you are beautiful.

There are as many ways to perform femininity as there are female-identified people.

Get therapy and a decent haircut.

Someday, you will have good sex.

You don’t have to wait for someone else’s permission to grow up.

Style knows no dress size.

Don’t go to law school.

You’ve got to be your own mommy.

Walk away from any relationship that threatens your safety or your integrity. No exceptions. There’s always another way to reach your goal.

Every five years, you will completely change your mind about something important, so don’t be a butthole to people who disagree with you now.

Signs of the Apocalypse: Heartbreak Hotel


This item from the Springwise trend-watching newsletter qualifies for our Apocalypse Watch as yet another attempt to give a cheery (and moneymaking) facelift to what ought to be a solemn event:

For most separating couples, divorce is a process they would like to get out of the way as quickly as possible. Often, however, divorces can become lengthy and drawn out, as couples negotiate through reams of legal documents and calculate the repercussions. Hoping to speed up the process and provide all the assistance one could require, we recently came across Dutch Heartbreak Hotel.

The Hotel service promises to be able to care of a couple’s divorce over the course of one single weekend. For EUR 2,499, the separating husband and wife are booked into separate luxury five star hotels while the company handles all the paperwork — providing financial consultants, lawyers, and even child psychologists as part of its service. On the last day of the weekend, the necessary documentation is completed and signed by the couples, and the divorce is handed over to the courts.

Hotels are already known for
other amusements incompatible with marriage, such as co-ed business trips and pay-per-view movies, so I suppose they just wanted to capture maximum profits from this scenario. Wonder if you get a discount for booking your wedding and divorce as a package deal?


Dissecting the Divine Element


At least since the Scientific Revolution, Christians have been on the spot to explain how, exactly, the soul coexists with the body. Should we try to locate the divine element in a specific organ, as Descartes argued for the pineal gland in the brain, or in a behavior supposedly unique to humans, such as abstract reasoning or moral sentiments? Suggestions abound, their common feature being the attempt to separate some pure substance from the biological muck. We find it difficult to picture spirit and matter truly commingling.

The Incarnation poses similar imaginative challenges. I believe in the “wholly divine/wholly human” character of Christ, partly because the church has fought to keep alive a belief that so fundamentally disrupts our preferred dualistic thought patterns. There must be something in this concept that we really need, that keeps us searching for truths beyond our current evolutionary level of understanding.

Yet we often put Jesus through the conceptual centrifuge, once again wishing to sift out the human features so that the divine element can be untainted and obvious. Did Jesus sweat, pee, lose his temper, have sexual feelings, misjudge people, make factual errors? The gospels themselves suggest that he did. If he was human, he must have done.

The more we admit this, though, the more we become anxious that we can no longer isolate the “God part”. And if we can’t isolate it, we worry it doesn’t exist — never considering that perhaps the overcoming of dualities and the all-pervasive sanctifying of mortal existence is where God resides. This is what God is most passionate about communicating to us status-obsessed monkeys.

I was led to these thoughts by my ongoing conversations with Christian friends about the authority of the Bible. As I study how women’s inequality has been built into the societies that wrote Scripture and is perpetuated today by communities that cite these texts, I feel strongly that we must not gloss over the Bible’s embeddedness in all-too-human hierarchies. Then where, my friends might ask, does the Logos come in? By what standards are we to pick and choose the passages that are “more inspired” than others?

I have some ideas about this, centering on the ethics of Jesus as the standard for our interpretations, but I’m beginning to wonder if we’re asking the wrong question. If the Bible is a gateway to divine connection — as it continues to be for me — perhaps that connection does not reside so much in any particular passage, least of all in the effort to shield the text from political critique. Could it not reside in the truth-seeking passion that motivates us both to learn gratefully from the Biblical writers and to challenge their limitations? Could it be something that proceeds from the loving, reciprocal accountability of believer and text, the way the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son?

Carolyn Howard-Johnson: “Inevitably Walls”


Carolyn Howard-Johnson is a widely published poet and the author of several marketing manuals for writers, including The Frugal Book Promoter. Her site The New Book Review features original and reprinted reviews, to help authors maximize the exposure of a good review. (This month, they’ve re-posted a review of my chapbook Swallow that first appeared on the Ampersand Books website.)

Carolyn’s poem “Inevitably Walls” was recently accepted for the first issue of the literary journal Solo Novo Wall Scrawls. The journal is published by Solo Novo Press, Carpinteria, CA and North Wilkesboro, NC. Editor Paula C. Lowe says, “‘Wall Scrawls’ is inspired by an Iowa farmhouse wall. Eighty years abandoned and orphaned, it is a hive of letters, a busy kitchen of words. Every kid with a can of spray paint somehow gets here and leaves his or her native tongue on the walls.” They’ve kindly given me permission to share it below.

Inevitably Walls

Near Jerusalem’s edge razorwire
coils above concrete slabs that trace

an imaginary line across the brutal
desert much like a wall we found

years ago when we lost our way
in a dark forest somewhere

in Germany, cried when we
found it there—unexpected—and it

not so different

from one in Ireland we visited only
last year, walls to cleave Irish

from Irish. Foreign walls, chains-linked,
wire-barbed, Krylon smeared walls

not so different

from our own, that fence that crawls
from Baja, through mountain passes

along the Rio Grande. Walls. Feeble, useless,
unholy billboards. Even poets

once wrote of mending walls…


Marriage Equality Comes to New York!


Yesterday, the New York State legislature passed and Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation that will give same-sex couples the right to marry! According to the Vermont Freedom to Marry press release: “Joining Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., New York becomes the most populated state to achieve marriage equality, and more than doubles the number of both same-sex couples and of Americans living in a state with marriage equality.”

Other organizations that deserve your thanks and financial support for their hard work on this legislation include the Human Rights Campaign, GetEqual, Courage Campaign, Freedom to Marry, and Other Sheep. If you live in Buffalo, give a shout-out (and your vote) to Sen. Mark Grisanti, a Catholic Republican who cast one of the swing votes for the bill in the Senate last night.

The full text of the legislation is here. An excerpt:

Marriage is a fundamental human right. Same
sex couples should have the same access as others to the protections,
responsibilities, rights, obligations, and benefits of civil marriage.
Stable family relationships help build a stronger society. For the
welfare of the community and in fairness to all New Yorkers, this act
formally recognizes otherwise-valid marriages without regard to whether
the parties are of the same or different sex.

It is the intent of the legislature that the marriages of same-sex and
different-sex couples be treated equally in all respects under the law.
The omission from this act of changes to other provisions of law shall
not be construed as a legislative intent to preserve any legal
distinction between same-sex couples and different-sex couples with
respect to marriage….

***
…A MARRIAGE THAT IS OTHERWISE VALID
SHALL BE VALID REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THE PARTIES TO THE MARRIAGE ARE OF
THE SAME OR DIFFERENT SEX.
2. NO GOVERNMENT TREATMENT OR LEGAL STATUS, EFFECT, RIGHT, BENEFIT,
PRIVILEGE, PROTECTION OR RESPONSIBILITY RELATING TO MARRIAGE, WHETHER
DERIVING FROM STATUTE, ADMINISTRATIVE OR COURT RULE, PUBLIC POLICY,
COMMON LAW OR ANY OTHER SOURCE OF LAW, SHALL DIFFER BASED ON THE PARTIES
TO THE MARRIAGE BEING OR HAVING BEEN OF THE SAME SEX RATHER THAN A
DIFFERENT SEX. WHEN NECESSARY TO IMPLEMENT THE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBIL
ITIES OF SPOUSES UNDER THE LAW, ALL GENDER-SPECIFIC LANGUAGE OR TERMS
SHALL BE CONSTRUED IN A GENDER-NEUTRAL MANNER IN ALL SUCH SOURCES OF
LAW.
…

It remains to be seen how broadly the religious exemptions will be construed. The relevant text reads:

A CORPORATION INCORPORATED UNDER THE BENEVOLENT ORDERS
LAW OR DESCRIBED IN THE BENEVOLENT ORDERS LAW BUT FORMED UNDER ANY OTHER
LAW OF THIS STATE OR A RELIGIOUS CORPORATION INCORPORATED UNDER THE
EDUCATION LAW OR THE RELIGIOUS CORPORATIONS LAWS SHALL BE DEEMED TO BE
IN ITS NATURE DISTINCTLY PRIVATE AND THEREFORE, SHALL NOT BE REQUIRED TO
PROVIDE ACCOMMODATIONS, ADVANTAGES, FACILITIES OR PRIVILEGES RELATED TO
THE SOLEMNIZATION OR CELEBRATION OF A MARRIAGE.

Few would argue that clergy should be forced to perform marriages that don’t meet their denomination’s doctrinal requirements, or to use church property for the same. I would imagine that even without this provision, a First Amendment claim would be resolved in the church’s favor. But what other “privileges” or “accommodations” might they try to withhold? Could a religious hospital block a gay spouse from visiting and making medical decisions for an incapacitated partner? Hopefully, courts will construe this clause narrowly as only applying to the actual ceremony (“solemnization or celebration”), not to the legal status (“a marriage”) that follows from it.

All in all, a great day for justice and freedom! Hooray New York!

Thursday Random Song: Talib Kweli, “Cold Rain”


Some of the most creative rhyming among contemporary writers can be found in hip-hop and rap music, but it’s a guilty pleasure because of the misogyny, homophobia, and violence that the lyrics often glorify. A welcome exception is rapper Talib Kweli, who fits within the social protest tradition of slam poetry. His album The Beautiful Struggle is in my frequent playlist. He recently appeared on The Colbert Report to promote his new album, Gutter Rainbows. Enjoy this clip of him performing “Cold Rain”. Lyrics below courtesy of killerhiphop.com.

Cold Rain


Lets try something new
It’s been a long time coming!
Let me try something brand new
Hey yo Ski!
What you ever do, man?
Come on!
Yo, what we doing it for?

This is for all the day-trippers and the hipsters
Whores and the fashionistas
Spiritual leaders practicing all the laws of attraction
The teachers who read the passages from the Bhagavad Gita
That be bustin off Dalai Lama’s or flashing heaters
the last of the boosters
With the shooting, the thugging and all the booning and spooning
and all the crooning, and cooning and auto-tuning, alive
You be tellin, peddlin’ to consumers I’m helping them to see through it
get with this new movement,
Let’s move it!

Feel the cold rain
Still I’m standing right here
Even the winter summer days

Yeah I’m a product of Reaganomics
From the blocks where he rocking a feds like J Electronica
drop and make this a lock
if he promises where the heart is
whether Jesus or Mohammad
regardless of where the Mosque is (word)
They hope for the Apocalypse like a self-fulfilling prophecy
Tell me when do we stop it?
Do they ask you your religion before you rent an apartment?
Is the answer burning Korans
So that we can defend Islamics?
The end upon us with a hash tag, a trending topic
You take away the freedoms that we invite in the game
Then you disrespect the soldiers; you ask them to die in vain
In a desert praying for rain
The music’s like a drug, and they tend to take it to vein
It ain’t for the well-behaved
The soundtrack for when you’re great but its more for when you’ve felt afraid
More than your average rapper
So you sort of felt the way
The brain is like a cage, you a slave, that’s why they lovin’ you
This is the book that Eli that start with a K-W.

I do it for the trappers, other rappers
the Backpackers, the crackers
the n-ggas, the metal-packers
the victims of ghetto factories
I do it for the families, citizens of humanity
Emcee’s, endangered species like manatees
I do it for the future of my children!
They the hope for the hopeless
Karma approaches, we gon’ be food for a flock of vultures
The end of the World
Ain’t nothing left but the cockroaches
and the freedom fighters
We’re freedom writers like Bob Moses
the chosen, freedom writers like Voltaire
For my block, my borough, my hood, my city, my state, yeah
My obligation to my community is so clear!
yeah, we gotta save them, this opportunity so rare!
We do it so big over here that it’s no bare
To the punks, bitches, the chumps, the snitches, the sneak in the game
We let them live with all they’re weak and they’re lame
The bozo’s and joker’s, promoting when they’re speaking my name

Other Sheep Africa Leader Protects the Marginalized in Kenya


This article from Michgan’s MLive.com profiles the courageous work of Rev. John Makokha and his wife Anne Baraza at Other Sheep Afrika-Kenya, an independent offshoot of Other Sheep, the international ministry that advocates for GLBT Christians in the developing world. The former United Methodist minister currently serves at Riruta Hope Community Church, where his wife is a leader in the Riruta United Women Empowerment Programme.

Rev. Makokha recently completed a multi-state fundraising tour for Children of Africa Hope Mission, a charity that cares for AIDS orphans and homeless children in the slums of Nairobi. I had the pleasure of meeting him last fall at Rehoboth Temple Christ Conscious Church, a gay-affirming Pentecostal church in Harlem.

From the MLive article:

The Rev. John Makokha explains with obvious pride in his voice that his United Methodist church that’s nestled in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, is a house of worship that embraces open hearts, open minds and open doors.

That’s a watchword widely supported in Methodist circles in the U.S.

But the catchphrase comes with a price for Makokha who, along with his wife, Anne Baraza, have dedicated their ministry to reaching out to gay and lesbian people in the East African nation where people can still be imprisoned or stoned to death for being homosexual.

For that reason, and several others, pastoring the church and his Children of Hope school has made it a tough row to hoe for him, Makokha said last Sunday at an adult education forum held at Westminster Presbyterian Church in downtown Grand Rapids.

Homophobia is the culturally accepted norm in Kenya, but it’s a standard tinged with irony, Makokha said. Gay political and church leaders stay lodged deep in the closet but are famous for publicly proclaiming gays, lesbians and bisexual people should be put to death.

And Makokha’s bishop has cut off funding to his church and his school for neighborhood children, many of them AIDS orphans.

“They say we are promoting sin,” said Makokha, 43, senior pastor of Riruta United Methodist Church, who is on a fundraising/public awareness campaign in the U.S. through June 15.

But Makokha, who also is director of the gay and lesbian advocacy ministry, Other Sheep Africa, says that mentality neuters the gospel.

“Jesus came for us sinners, whether they are heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, white, black, green, or whatever,” he said, a grin spreading across his face.

“In my church, we work for inclusive compassion. When Jesus came to this world, he came for all of us.”

Other Sheep Africa helps women whose husbands died of AIDS by securing micro loans so they can operate their own businesses making handmade necklaces and bracelets. It also teaches classes on human sexuality and human rights.

Two Poems from an Anthology to Benefit Refugees


Yes, loyal readers, it has been a long time since I blogged. I’ve been refreshing my vocation as a Christian writer at the Glen Workshop East, an experience I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who has wondered how the identities “Christian” and “writer” can coexist harmoniously.

While I sort out my thoughts from this high-intensity week, please enjoy the following excerpt from The Last Stanza, a new poetry anthology edited by Dan Savery Raz of Danscribe Books. The Last Stanza features work by the members of StanzAviv, a creative collective of writers associated with Bar Ilan University and Tel Aviv University. StanzAviv members come from Israel, USA, UK, France, Canada, Latvia and beyond. Poets include Dara Barnat from Tel Aviv University’s English Faculty, literary translator Sabine Huynh, and Israeli poet Michal Pirani. The book also features atmospheric shots of Tel Aviv taken by award-winning photographer Nitzan Hafner. All proceeds from the sale of this book go to the ARDC (African Refugee Development Center), an NGO in south Tel Aviv that provides shelter, education, counseling and advice to refugees and asylum seekers in Israel. The ARDC was founded by refugees for refugees.

****


Finally
by Yedida Bernstein Goren

i am refugee, you were this too, yes? my friend
i ran, climbed, snaked to shaky part of your borderwall
oh israel holy-israel my mind breaking into pieces of glass
i hear jews are good people
months i journey hide every some hours
lost friends, brother, child back home
you also lose family shot at by crazed soldiers, yes?
we hear you did long long time ago 60 years
walking and walking and walking and walking
they aim bullets at me
they rape my woman
i stand there
my eyes stretch into my forehead, my pupils fall out my eyelids
i hold back the skyscream
trudge on with wife on back
over last sandkilometer
i reach you, finally, oh Israel
scarred, falling, hungry
you send me to holding station
like prison
you look down on me and wife
you so shy of kindtouch
so short on welcomewords
weeks months later
you tell us to leave on big plane
you pay
where, kind officer, do you think we should return to?

****

easyBank.com
by Dan Savery Raz

To check the balance of your account, press one.
To transfer money from one account to another, press two.
For lost or stolen cards, press three.
If you would like to pay your outstanding balance, press four.
If you like the word ‘muesli’, press five.
If you get scared by thunder and lightning storms at night,
   press six.
If you believe in a monotheistic God, press seven.
If you are an atheist or believe in many gods, such as the
   sun god Helios, press eight.
For reincarnation, press nine.
To listen to some ancient Tibetan Buddhist chants, press
   ten.
Trotskyites, press eleven.
Hermaphrodites, twelve.
For information on the displacement of the Aboriginal population
   of Australia in the late 18th century, press thirteen.
If you just want to get stoned, press fourteen
followed by the hash key.
If you treat your pet dog better than most human beings,
   press fifteen.
People that still carry some torch of hope for humanity, press
   sixteen followed by star.
For sarcasm or wit, don’t press seventeen whatever you do.
To speak to a customer service representative, call the
   premium number between 10 AM and 10.30 AM on Monday,
   Tuesday and Thursday.
To return to the main menu please text the words ‘Egyptian
   Mummification in the Predynastic Period’ to 666 or hold the
   line while we drill holes in your ear.
Thank you for banking with easyBank.com, finance at your fingertips.