Thought for the Day

What songs are audible when the wind stops?

What has been kept alive in the time snatched from work

and sheltered from ongoing destruction – what moments

of recognition, what ways of relating, what other

imagined worlds, what other selves? 

What other kinds of time?

~ Jenny Odell on 'Vertical' Time

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Quoted from Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, "Another Kind of Time: An Interview with Jenny Odell" at Emergence Magazine (Online Transcript), April 25, 2023

Jenny Odell, Multidisciplinary Artist, Writer, and Educator. Odell's most recent books are Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock (2023), Inhabiting the Negative Space (2021), and How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (2019).

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, Filmmaker, Naqshbandi Sufi Teacher, Spiritual Ecologist; Founder, Podcast Host, and Executive Editor, Emergence Magazine

THought for the Day

When we see the smoke and flames on the horizon

are we seeing not just a fire but a reflection

of our own voracious appetites and desire

to consume until we're finally extinguished?

~ Jeffrey T. Manuel on John Vaillant's 'Fire Weather'

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Quoted from Jeffrey T. Manuel, "Our Neighbo(u)rs to the North, Aflame: On John Vaillant's 'Fire Weather'," in Cleveland Review of Books, March 12, 2024

John Vaillant, American-Canadian Nonfiction Writer, Journalist, and Novelist

 

Jeffrey T. Manuel, Historian on Energy, Technology, and the Environment; Professor of History, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville; Writer and Author

Thought for the Day

The most practical thing you can do,

even in hard times, is to lead with curiosity,

lead with respect, work hard to understand

the people you might be taught to detest.

~ David Brooks

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David Brooks, "How to Stay Sane in Brutalizing Times," The New York Times, November 2, 2023

David Brooks, Author and New York Times Opinion Columnist on Politics, Culture, and the Social Sciences

Thought for the Day

Nobody will give you freedom . . .

you have to take it.

~ Meret Oppenheim 

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Quoted from Meret Oppenheim, Acceptance Speech, City of Basel Art Award, 1975

Meret Oppenheim (1913-1975), Swiss Artist, Photographer, Poet

Note: See The Loveliest Vowel Empties: Collected Poems of Meret Oppenheim, trans. Kathleen Heil (World Poetry Books, February 2023).

Thought for the Day

Love is convinced that it is the source of life,

and life is convinced that without it, love is

nothing. And in fact, nonhuman life on Earth,

which is most life, has no need for love. Love

is necessary for humans, because without it 

we are destroyers of worlds, and with it, we

still struggle not to be destroyers.

~ Fady Joudah

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Quoted from Aria Aber, "Fady Joudah: The poet on the war in Gaza changed his work" in The Yale Review, February 28, 2024 (Online)

Fady Joudah, Award-Winning Palestinian-American Poet, Writer, Translator, Co-Founder/Co-Editor, Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, Physician in Internal Medicine

Fady Joudah Profiles at Academy of American Poets, Jewish Currents, and Poetry Foundation

Flour Massacre (Poem)

 Flour Massacre

        This bag of flour [. . .] it's

            the most expensive food ever made.

            ~ Mohammed al-Simry, father of four

On Leap Year Day, aid trucks at last

arrive, and the crowd, having gathered

in al-Rashid Street the night before,

makes for the goods.

 

 

Once, what came before the trucks

with their sacks of flour, 

before the bread to be baked

and then heaped with hummus,  

 

before the fattoush salad,

the soups of lentils and fava beans,

the eggs or chicken,

the copper pitchers of sous,

 

was the anticipation of taste,

the clarity of a satisfied stomach,

eyes delighting at the sight

of knafeh and date-filled ma'mool. 

It is four forty-five a.m.,

the morning of February 29,

and the trucks arrive.

So, too, do the soldiers.

Look: they are anywhere,

even everywhere, 

the aid trucks are.

But these soldiers,

they make no exceptions

for the food-deprived.

They feel the hunger.

Dropped sacks of flour

dust the heads  

of hundreds, there

in al-Rashid Street.

No one clamors now

for bread. 

No bread

will be made this day.

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For articles on the event that has come to be known as the "Flour Massacre," see Zaina Arafat's essay "Fasting for Ramadan While Gaza Goes Hungry" (The New Yorker, March 11, 2024) and Simon Speakman Cordall, Mohammed R Mhawish, and Mat Nashed's reporting, "When Israeli Soldiers Shot at Hungry Palestinians" (Aljazeera News, March 5, 2024).

Fattoush is a type of Middle Eastern (Lebanese) chopped salad that uses, among other ingredients, pomegranate molasses, sumac and other herbs, mixed greens and vegetables, and toasted pita chips.

Sous, or erk sous, is a licorice drink typically imbibed during Ramadan.

Knafeh is a cheese-filled sweet made with filo dough and ma'mool are sweet cookies, often stuffed with dates.

Thought for the Day

I think self-promotion is a really bad idea for

a couple of reasons – the greatest of which is 

that you start thinking that public attention is

how you know your work is good. Applause and acclaim

 are not how you know something has quality.

~ Scott Cairns

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Quoted from Ben Palpant, "A Conversation with Scott Cairns" (Online), The Rabbit Room, February 26, 2024

Scott Cairns, Poet, Spiritual Writer and Memoirist; Professor of English and Director, M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Seattle University; Blogger and Podcaster

Scott Cairns on Facebook

Thought for the Day

[. . .] We must learn how to be surprised,

not to adjust ourselves. [. . .]

~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

____________________________

Quoted in Tali Sharot and Cass R. Sunstein, "Why People Fail to Notice Horrors Around Them" (Guest Essay), The New York Times, February 25, 2024

Dr. Tali Sharot, Neuroscientist, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London and Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cass R. Sunstein, Law Professor, Harvard University; Founder and Director, Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy, Harvard Law School

Affective Brain Lab

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), Jewish Theologian and Philosopher; Author

Arnold Eisen, "The Spiritual Audacity of Abraham Joshua Heschel" at On Being, September 21,  1917

Thought for the Day

The correct response to uncertainty is mythmaking.

~ Martin Shaw

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Quoted from Martin Shaw, "Navigating the Mysteries," Emergence, May 12, 2022

Dr. Martin Shaw, Mythologist and Storyteller; Author, Translator and Poet

School of Myth and Story

 

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, "Mud and Antler Bone: An Interview with Martin Shaw," Emergence, June 4, 2018

The Children / We See (Poem)

 The Children / We See

            What childhood does /

            a destroyed childhood beget?

                    ~ Fady Joudah

 

We see them –

the children

rummaging through the fallen

fortress that once was Gaza

 

Their urge –

to eat, sleep, play

to wake as if free

like the kites

they fly in hope

their dreams

of so many seeds

their grandfathers sowed

when the land was theirs

to harvest

and they could

taste the white cucumbers

the figs and the olives

Battiri eggplant, gourds

with necks like swans'

These children –

we see them

what they've become

ghost-eaters

dirt-diggers

what they would give

for a taste of khubeezeh

a drink of cold water

a wash in the Red Sea

They push their steel pots

their plastic bowls

to the front lines

their eyes on those

with the stronger arms

the longer reach

the elbows out and ready

 

They are children –

we see them

know what they teach us

what war does

how power takes

on a life of its own

delivering back

their small bodies

into the arms of their fathers

borne too early of their mothers

denied them

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The epigraph is from Fady Joudah's poem "[. . .]."

Khubeezeh, as locally known in Gaza, is cheeseweed. It has become, according to the United Nations, a major food source for Gazans. A plant, it typically has been used in recipes for side dishes.

Thought for the Day

Hope is a song in a weary throat.

~ Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray

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Quoted from Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, Verse 8, Dark Testament and Other Poems (Liveright Publishing Corp./W.W. Norton, 2018)

Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray (1910-1985), Lawyer/Legal Scholar,  Poet, Episcopal Priest, Civil Rights Activist

 

Pauli Murray Center, Durham, North Carolina 

Pauli Murray Resources

Note: On February 22, 2024, the U.S. Mint released the new Pauli Murray quarter. (See American Women Quarters Program.)

Listen to Murray's Dark Testament, Verse 8 at SoundCloud.

Thought for the Day

We ask of writers what we ask of our friends,

to help us mediate and interpret the world.

~ Hosam Zowa in My Friends

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Quoted from Hisham Matar, My Friends (Random House, 2024)

Hisham Matar, Award-Winning Novelist, Memoirist, and Essayist; Fellow, Royal Society of Literature; Associate Professor, Professional Practice in Comparative Literature, Asia and Middle East Cultures, and English, Barnard College, Columbia University

Hisham Matar Website

Thought for the Day

What is the worth of defending our lives

if we do not seek to protect the lives of others?

~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

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Quoted from Viet Thanh Nguyen, "Palestine Is in Asia: An Asian American Argument for Solidarity" in The Nation, January 29, 2024

Viet Thanh Nguyen, Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California; Novelist; Fiction and Nonfiction Writer; Editor; Winner, 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Thought for the Day

[. . .] the truest thing about being human

– the thing deepest down in us –

is not sin but the divine image.

~ Barbara Brown Taylor

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Quoted from Isaac Anderson, "A Conversation with Barbara Brown Taylor" in Image, Issue 97; Online Archive

Barbara Brown Taylor, Episcopal Priest, Teacher, Writer and Author

Barbara Brown Taylor on FaceBook

Thought for the Day

Finding time for anything that matters

will always be a challenge. [. . .] 

~ Margaret Renkl

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Quoted from Margaret Renkl, "The Nicest New Year's Resolution I Ever Made," The New York Times, November 21, 2021

Margaret Renkl, Writer, Author, Essayist, Contributing Opinion Writer for The New York Times; Founding Editor, Chapter 16, Humanities Tennessee

Thought for the Day

[. . .] How lovely 

it would be to become something

that cannot be contained; to become

something so present, yet so far out

of reach that no man even thinks of trying

to lay his hands on it.

~ Tariq Luthun

_____________________________

Quoted from Tariq Luthun, "I Felt Nothing" in How the Water Holds Me (Bull City Press, 2019), p. 25

Tariq Luthun, Detroit, Michigan-born Poet; Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellow; Community Organizer, Data Consultant

Thought for the Day

[...] what is more generous than a window?

~ Pat Schneider

 

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Quoted from "The Patience of Ordinary Things" by Pat Schneider in Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, Phyllis Cole-Dai and Ruby R. Wilson, Eds. (Grayson Books, 2017), p. 33

 

Pat Schneider (1934-2020), American Poet and Writer

 

Susan Bruns Rowe, "A Profile of Pat Schneider" at Literary Mama, March/April 2021

 

Gaza Funeral (Poem)

 

The lucky are those who have someone

        to bury them when they die.

            ~ Doctor in Gaza 

The too-short truce was all the time

they had to bury the dead boy lying

 

in their rubbled apartment. Already

they'd waited four days, the body

 

of their 10-year-old wrapped in

a blanket providing no warmth,

 

his last rites un-mouthed, never

to be heard amid the later bombings.

 

On the fifth day, hurrying past

the broken skeletons of neighbors'

 

burned buildings, the father spied

the guava tree that children used

 

to climb for its juicy, sweet fruits.

In the sand, giving way to the fallen

 

harvest, the father dug a shallow

grave and left his boy to sleep.

 

________________________________

 

The epigraph and some details for this poem come from Raja Abdulrahim's article, "As Gaza Losses Mount Under Strikes, Dignified Burials Are Another Casualty" in The New York Times, January 6, 2024.

Thought for the Day

[. . .] Light needs such quiet, gentle work.

~ Benjamin Cutler

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Quoted from Benjamin Cutler, "An Invitation to Light" (This is the concluding line of Cutler's poem, which was published in The Shore in 2019, and, more recently, included in the Advent Project, Day 15, December 15, 2023, of Biola University's Center for Christianity, Culture &  the Arts.)

Benjamin Cutler, Poet; English Instructor, Swain County High School, North Carolina