Diane Morrow | Writing and Healing

Everything, a Found Poem

Posted by Diane Morrow on December 20, 2011 in Blog, Healing Books, Healing Poetry

Often I am asked, Who taught me to write? Everything All the blank times, the daydreaming, the boredom, the American legacy of loneliness and alienation, the sky,the desk, a pen, the pavement, small towns I’ve driven through. Writing became the tool I used To digest my life Not because everything was hunky-dory But because we can use everything we are. We have no choice. Our job is to wake up to everything. ____________________________________ from Natalie Goldberg’s Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America (p. 19, Bantam trade paperback) You can read more about Long Quiet Highway at my other site here. And here. Photo from FlickRiver...

From Shine by Joni Mitchell: A Poem for the Shortening Days of December

Posted by Diane Morrow on December 13, 2011 in Blog, Healing Poetry

This song is one that can often restore me to sanity when I stray from it. It reminds me—that no matter what is going on—rising oceans—empty nets—tunnel vision—there’s a sane response—to all of it. Oh yes, right, that too, I can shine my attention on that—shine light on that. It puts me in mind of the fabric in Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, Kindness—the way we can begin, sometimes, to get a feel for the size of the cloth—how enormous it is—how warped and flawed and various and beautiful. Oh let your little light shine Let your little light shine Shine on Wall Street and Vegas Place your bets Shine on the fishermen With nothing in their nets Shine on rising oceans and evaporating seas Shine on our Frankenstein technologies Shine on science With its tunnel vision Shine on fertile farmland Buried under subdivisions And if we shine—like white blossoms falling against a gray sky—then there may be beings who watch us—herons? angels?—beings who, one way or another, might shine back? Let your little light shine Let your little light shine Shine on the dazzling darkness That restores us in deep sleep Shine on what we throw away And what we keep Full text of Shine lyrics can be found here at Joni Mitchell’s site The song can be purchased here—among other places. A piece on Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, Kindness See also net of jewels, another image of light reflected. Candle photo from owlfish.com...

KIVA: Extending the Healing Corridor

Posted by Diane Morrow on December 6, 2011 in Blog, Book, Healing Corridor

This month I’m posting the fourth chapter of One Year of Writing and Healing: Gathering Provisions. It has to do with figuring out what’s essential for healing—what tangible objects, what words, what stories—and then beginning, perhaps rather deliberately, to gather them. And of course writing along the way to question and reflect on the process. It seems somehow appropriate then to also post this month a piece on Kiva, an organization that allows people like you and me—people with perhaps only 25 dollars or so to spare this month—to invest that money in someone who’s going to use it well. Someone who’s going to use the money toward gathering their own essential provisions. Six months or so later the money we invest is returned and we have a choice—withdraw the money for our own provisions or simply lend it out again to someone else. It’s a beautiful thing. I first learned about Kiva when I read Half the Sky this past summer. In June I visited the Kiva site and lent twenty-five dollars to a woman in Ghana who runs a shop in her village selling electrical items. I also liked the idea that she sold donuts and that part of the money would be used to buy flour and cooking oil. Each month since, I’ve received updates, and thus far 16 of the 25 dollars has been repaid and has been deposited in my account. Writing this has reminded me to do something with my account. I decided to add 9 dollars to the 16 and lend to a single mother in Mexico who has three young children and operates a food stall. The 25 dollars will go toward allowing her to increase her inventory of ingredients—vegetables and cheese and tortillas and such. Interestingly, I learned over Thanksgiving break that my daughter, who’s in college, had also heard about this organization through one of her classes—a course in Trans-National Feminism that’s part of her Women and Gender Studies minor—and she’s been meaning to invest. I decided I can help the process along by getting her and my son twenty-five dollar gift cards for Christmas so they can start their own accounts. I’ve done the Heifer gifts before—where you can give animals to families in need around the world—but I’m feeling now like Kiva is a better investment. I’m basing this on the range of services that the money can be lent for and also on the rating given Kiva by Charity Navigator, a site which rates charities on a number of different factors. Interested in learning more? Here’s a very short video that explains the Kiva process. How Kiva Works from Kiva on Vimeo. Here’s a link to Kiva where it’s easy to navigate to buying a gift card and/or browsing potential borrowers and/or opening an account. My fourth chapter of One Year of Writing and Healing, Gathering Provisions, can be found here. Charity Navigator can be found here. An article about Half the Sky can be found here. Also, if you’re interested in learning more about this notion of small loans or microfinance in general Kiva has a great page here which includes a longer video explaining the process of microfinance. The photo above is from the Kiva site. The group of women is Las Gaviotas (The...

from November Angels by Jane Hirshfield

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 22, 2011 in Blog, Healing Poetry

A single, cold blossom tumbles, fledged from the sky’s white branch. And the angels look on, observing what falls: all of it falls . . . Angels as observers. The afternoon lengthens, steepens, flares out— no matter for them. It is assenting that makes them angels, neither increased nor decreased by the clamorous heart: their only work to shine back, however the passing brightness hurts their eyes. Angels watching. Saying yes. Shining back. It is assenting that makes them angels The full text of November Angels can be found here. The photo is of a print, Blossoms Falling, by Masha Schweitzer at the Los Angeles Printmaking...

November Angels?

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 16, 2011 in Blog, Healing Poetry

One thing leads to another. Three years ago I wrote about the poem, “My November Guest,” by Robert Frost. This morning I found myself looking at the poem again. It’s a poem in which the speaker becomes aware of sorrow as a guest and begins to understand how deeply sorrow appreciates “the desolate, deserted trees/ the faded earth, the heavy sky.” Since I first came across Frost’s poem I’ve been struck by his notion: feelings as simply guests. Nothing more or less. They come and they go. A particular feeling can be absent for days or weeks or even months and then one afternoon it can simply show up, unexpectedly. The same notion is there in Paul Simon’s lyrics: “Hello darkness, my old friend.” And it’s there in Rumi’s poem: This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Sorrow as unexpected visitor. Sorrow as stranger? This morning I found myself doing a simple search on hospitality toward strangers. I found this, from Hebrews: “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.” And then I found this: a poem, “November Angels” by Jane Hirshfield. An interesting juxtaposition, I think. Sorrow as stranger. Sorrow as angel? And what is an angel really? Or what could it be? It’s one of those things that a person could write about. Note: Lately, I’ve been placing my links at the bottom of my posts instead of in the middle because of something I read this past summer about the process of reading in Nicholas Carr’s book, The Shallows. He makes a good case for the way links in the middle of things disrupt a process of deep reading and engagement and concentration. One of these days I’ll write a bit about that here. In any case, the links for this post: My November Guest at A Healing Library The Sound of Silence lyrics by Paul Simon Rumi’s poem, The Guest House The citation from Hebrews See also: from My November...

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