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This presentation, delivered on 11/19/2024, was created for poetry students on how poetic form influences our personal stories. The topic, Radical Healing, was predetermined by Laura Lentz, Literati Academy’s host.
I offer my understanding of this topic from a spiritual perspective, of how the fundamental nature of healing is tethered to our return to the womb, and the recovery of wholeness to our body in the first hour after birth.
Return to the Womb
The following poem, written and sung by rabbi Shlomo Carlbach, unveils the uncorrupted state of the soul:
RETURN AGAIN
Rabbi Shlomo Carlbach
Return again, return again,
Return to the land of your soul.
Return to what you are.
Return to who you are.
Return to where you are
Born and reborn again.
Return again, return again,
Return to the land of your soul.
Return Again – Shlomo Carlebach (3:29)
– Simple Turning
We return to the our original self, by turning with humility. This poem, is from the Shaker community in Maine:
SIMPLE GIFTS
Elder Joseph Brackett
‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come ’round right.
Here is Judy Collins rendition of it. (1:39)
– Befriend the Dark
Wr befriend the dark within the womb’s cocoon with these two poems, The Gift, by Maurya Simon, and To Know the Dark, by Wendell Berry:
THE GIFT
Maurya Simon
This darkness is a rope, not a prison:
hand over hand I haul myself in
to touch your face, to blossom.
My fingers crawl toward heaven
leaving behind whirling shadows;
this darkness is a rope, not a prison.
I follow light through forgotten
canyons and grottos;
I touch your face and I know
that even the sun has a mission:
as it climbs, it grows.
This darkness is a rope, not a prison
not a cell from which I hasten.
Freely, hand over hand I follow
to touch your face, to open and open
like a night-blooming jasmine,
or a well widening with echoes:
this darkness is a rope, not a prison,
I touch your face, I blossom.
TO KNOW THE DARK
Wendell Berry
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
The American choreographer, Judith Jamison, recounts, The first time I started choreographing was in the dark, in my living room, with the lights completely out, to some popular music on the radio. I put the radio on full blast and I started moving. I didn’t know what it looked like. I didn’t want to see it. I had to start in the dark.
And now to the lyrics of Jesse Colin Young’s
DARKNESS, DARKNESS
Darkness, darkness, be my pillow
Take my head and let me sleep
In the coolness of your shadow
In the silence of your deep
Darkness, darkness, hide my yearning
For the things that I cannot be
Keep my mind from constant turning
Towards the things I cannot see now
The things I cannot see now
The things I cannot see
Darkness, darkness, long and lonesome
Ease the day that brings me pain
I have felt the edge of sadness
I have known the depth of fear
Darkness, darkness, be my blanket
Cover me with the endless night
Take away, take away the pain of knowing
Fill the emptiness of right now
Emptiness of right now, now, now
Emptiness of right now, now
Darkness darkness, be my pillow
Take my head and let me sleep
In the coolness of my shadow
In the silence of my dream
Darkness, darkness, be my blanket
Cover me with the endless night
Take away away the pain of knowing
Fill the emptiness of right now
Emptiness of right now now now
Emptiness of right
Oh yeah, oh yeah
Emptiness, emptiness
Oh yeah
Robert Plant’s rendition (3:26)
– Laila
Once we’ve befriended the dark, we meet the Angel of Conception. Her name is Laila.
In Rabbinic Judaism, Midrash is the body of homiletic stories told by sages to explain biblical texts. A passage in the midrash (Tanhuma Pekudei 3), tells us that Laila’s task is to light a candle allowing the fetus to see from one end of the earth to the other, then teach it the world’s knowledge during its development. Laila, is the Hebrew word for night.
After completing this awe-inspiring task, the Midrash tells us that Laila does something dramatic and shockingly unexpected. Upon the baby’s exit from the womb, she presses her forefinger on its upper lip, causing it to forget everything, leaving an imprint – anatomically named the philtrum; it is the indentation in the middle of the upper lip.
– First Breath
So, the newborn emerges out of the dark and takes a first breath–what sounds like a gasp, as it reacts to the change in temperature and environment.
We don’t breathe in the future and we don’t breathe in the past. We’re always breathing in the present, which makes breath potent as an object of meditation. Breathing is dynamic, not static. On one hand, one breath follows another, over and over. On the other hand, each breath is unique and happens just once.
Like life, breathing seems to be continuous, but in fact it is not. In each breath cycle, the in-breath is birth, the out-breath is death, and the short period in between is life. In meditation, we tune into this arising and dissolving process. With each breath, we are born and we die. With each breath, we let go and we allow something fresh and new to enter us, and we breathe into silence our healing.
The next poem, about conscious breathing, is crafted to return our attention to the present moment. It is penned by Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh:
Breathing in, I know I am
breathing in.
Breathing out, I know I am
breathing out.
Breathing in, I notice my in-
breath has become deeper.
Breathing out, I notice that
my out-breath has become
slower. Breathing in, I
calm myself. Breathing out, I
feel at ease.
Breathing in, I smile.
Breathing out, I release.
Breathing in, I dwell in
the present moment.
Breathing out, I feel it is a
wonderful moment.
– The Golden Hour
Once the newborn exits the womb and takes its first breath, it enters into the Golden Hour. This is the first hour after birth, when the baby is placed skin-to-skin on its mother’s stomach, and instinctively starts to crawl towards her breasts.
During this hour, time stands still as the baby gets to know its mother. It is an hour of postnatal bliss that creates a surge of oxytocin in the mother–the love hormone, amplifying her bond with her bewborn.
The Chilean poet, Gabriela Mistral, speaks to this:
Like those jars that women put out to catch the dew of night,
I place my breasts before God. I give Him a new name, I call
Him the Filler, and I beg of Him the abundant liquid of life.
Thirstily looking for it, will come my son.
– Poetry as Lullaby
In the womb, the fetus had been listening to Laila but also to its mother’s voice. Research has shown that the baby will recognize it when she starts to sing.
I GET TO BE THE ONE
Lyrics by JJ Heller, sung by Jacqui Rivera (3:10)
Well hello,
Little baby.
Your eyes have never seen the sun
You should know
Little baby
That I am the lucky one
I get to be the one to hold your hand
I get to be the one.
Through birthdays and broken bones
I’ll be there to watch you grow
I get to be the one.
Don’t feel alone now,
Little baby.
Do you hear me singing you a song
I can’t wait to show you
Little baby
How to crawl
How to walk
And how to run
I get to be the one to hold your hand
I get to be the one.
Through birthdays and broken bones
I’ll be there to watch you grow
I get to be the one.
How does someone so small
Hold my heart so tightly
I don’t even know you
I love you completely
I get to be the one to hold your hand
I get to be the one.
Through birthdays and broken bones
I’ll be there to watch you grow
I get to be the one to hold your hand
I get to be the one.
Through birthdays and broken bones
I’ll be there to watch you grow
I get to be the one.
– The Well in the Desert
It is in the desert–desert as metaphor for isolation and illness–that we have an opportunity to recalibrate our compass. In the desert, the dreams, goals, and visions of the false self can be seen clearly, sometimes for the first time. It is where we articulate a strong NO to who we are not, and YES to who we are. Antoine De Saint-Exupéry, tells us What makes the desert beautiful is that it hides a well somewhere.
– Kindness & Compassion
In composing poems about healing, be kind to yourself–the way your mother was towards you. Go back and adopt the tenderness you received, and redirect it back to the injured adult self, or embrace and cradle the wounded child that never experience it.
Be not afraid to enter into your pain. Own your limitations. Embrace your illness. Emotions, like children, heal when they are heard and validated. Poet Rolf Jacobsen, said, Let the young rain of tears come, let the calm hands of grief come. It’s not all as evil as you think.
Thich Nhat Hanh adds, Do not fight against pain; do not fight against irritation or jealousy. Embrace them with great tenderness… Your anger is yourself, and you should not be violent toward it.
And Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, reminds us that healing is coming to terms with things as they are. That’s very different from curing. With curing, there is an expectation that things will be restored as they were before.
And of course, Helen Keller’s gratitude, I thank God for my handicaps, for through them, I have found myself, my work and my God.
– Respond to Illness with Affirmations
Here is E. E. Cummings 7 line poem, affirming the positive mind:
I thank you God for this most amazing day
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything
which is natural
which is infinite
which is yes.
Poet Rainer Maria Rilke reminds us that perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, is something helpless that needs our love.
PRAISE
Rainer Maria Rilke
Tell us, O poet, what do you do?—I praise
But those dark, deadly devastating ways,
How do you bear them, suffer them?—I praise.
And the Nameless, beyond guess or gaze,
How can you call it, conjure it?—I praise.
And whence your right, in every kind of maze
In every mask, to remain true?—I praise.
And that the mildest and the wildest ways
Know you like star and storm?—Because I praise.
We should remember that one cannot be grateful and sad at the same time. That’s why, Charlie Chaplin, joyously declared, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head.
Responses to Challenges
Now we meet 3 people who have dealt with assault on their bodies, and how they responded to it:
1. American journalist Norman Cousins, believed that each patient carries his own doctor inside him, a belief he maintained as he battled crippling tissue disease. Told that he had one chance in 500 of recovery, Cousins exposed himself to laughter brought on by the television show Candid Camera. He said, I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep. When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, I would switch on the motion picture projector again and it would lead to another pain-free interval. I have learned never to underestimate the capacity of the human mind and body to regenerate – even when prospects seem most wretched. The life force may be the least understood force on earth.
Cousins was also well aware that Not every illness can be overcome. But many people allow illness to disfigure their lives more than it should. They cave in needlessly. They ignore and weaken whatever powers they have for standing erect. There is always a margin within which life can be lived with meaning and even with a certain measure of joy, despite illness.
2. Tibetan Buddhist nun, Ani Pachen (Nun Big Courage), was 25 when she was imprisoned for 21 years for her refusal to denounce the Dalai Lama. She was beaten and hung by her wrists, spent a year in leg irons, and nine months in solitary confinement with no light. They put me in a hole in the ground and forced me to live in my own feces. In response, she recited the Purification Prayer, and completed her 100,000 purification prostrations within the confines of a 6’x9′ cell.
BUDDHIST PURIFICATION PRAYER
Until I am enlightened, I take refuge
In the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.
Through the merit I create by practicing giving and the other perfections
May I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings.
During her time in prison, the Cultural Revolution was in full force. Ani Pachen saw her friends and compatriots executed or die of hunger. A central Buddhist teaching is that all things are impermanent, and contemplation on impermanence becomes an antidote to suffering.
The concept of impermanence is distilled in this 7 line poem:
IMPERMANENCE
Patrul Rinpoche
Whatever is born is impermanent and is bound to die.
Whatever is stored up is impermanent and bound to run out.
Whatever comes together is impermanent and is bound to come apart.
Whatever is built is impermanent and bound to collapse.
Whatever rises up is impermanent and bound to fall down.
So, also, friendship and enmity, fortune and sorrow, good and evil, all the
thoughts that run through your mind—everything is always changing.
3. Dutch Jew, Etty Hillesum, was deported in 1943 and murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp. Less than 3 months before her murder, she threw a postcard with her final words out of a train, it read: Opening the Bible at random I find this: ‘The Lord is my high tower. I am sitting on my rucksack in the middle of a full freight car. Father, Mother, and bother are a few cars away. In the end, the departure came without warning. We left the camp singing. Thank you for all your kindness and care.
Ought we not, from time to time, open ourselves up to cosmic sadness? Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears his grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge-from which new sorrows will be born for others-then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply.
At night, as I lay in the camp on my plank bed, I was sometimes filled with an infinite tenderness and I prayed, ‘Let me be the thinking heart of these barracks.’ That is what I want to be. The thinking heart of a whole concentration camp.
I never have the feeling that I have got to make the best of things; everything is fine just as it is. Every situation, however miserable, is complete in itself and contains the good as well as the bad. Those two months behind barbed wire have been the two richest and most intense months of my life, in which my highest values were so deeply confirmed.
– Another component of healing: Visualization
One method of tapping into our ideal state, is visualization. Michelangelo said I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
By visualizing specific actions, athletes mold their neural pathways to facilitate actual performance. Michael Phelps, prepared for every race using visualization. He mentally rehearsed every detail, including the feel of the water and the sounds of the crowd, creating a vivid mental picture of his performance.
My own personal practice, is to watch a multi-colored arrow glow and glide in the sky, piercing through every object I place in front of it.
– Poetry
We are Homo Sapiens but also Homo Fictus–the storytelling animal. With poetry we tell, in sublime form, the return to our holy body, and in gifting our wounds to the reader, we are healed.
Poet, Rudyard Kipling said Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind, and Jill Taylor, the American brain scientist who suffered a massive brain stroke said To experience peace does not mean that your life is always blissful. It means that you are capable of tapping into a blissful state of mind amidst the normal chaos of a hectic life.
– In Conclusion
Psychiatrist, R. D. Laing, said the way out is through the door you came in. Radical Healing isn’t so ‘radical’ after all. It is the return to, and the reclaiming of, the wholeness that existed in the hour after birth.
Difficult days offer a ladder towards rebirth; how we respond to our brokenness determines our humanity.
So, in writing:
– Befriend the dark. Benedictine nun, Joan Chittister, tells us that Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight. The spiritual task of life is to feed hope. Hope is not something to be found outside of us. It lies in the spiritual life we cultivate within. The whole purpose of wrestling with life is to be transformed into the self we are meant to become, to step out of the confines of our false securities and allow our creating God to go on creating, in us.
– Listen to the wisdom of your breath. Count your blessings. Don’t let illness define who you are. The darkest hour has only sixty minutes. Poet Marge Piercy tells us Hope sleeps in our bones like a bear waiting for spring to rise and walk.
– Compose and sing lullabies to your broken self. Remember that life is constantly providing us with new funds, new resources, even when we are reduced to immobility. In life’s ledger there is no such thing as frozen assets. Allow courage to guide your healing journey.
YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE
Lyrics by Rodgers and Hammerstein
Gerry & The Pacemakers (3:23)
When you walk through the storm
Hold your head up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
There’s a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark
Walk on, through the wind
Walk on, through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone
You’ll never walk alone
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone
You’ll never walk alone
A student of Thich Nhat Hahn tells us Imagine for a moment that everything you see, hear, smell, touch, and taste is your very best friend. The spoon in your hand and the distant sound of traffic; the raindrops running down your back and the smell of dirty laundry; the blue sky and the flavor of cumin—these are not mere passing encounters with two-dimensional items. Instead, imagine for a moment that everything you are experiencing is your very, very best friend saying hello.
If we focus on the elements we are born with, we find that the root of healing is not radical at all. Do not allow the wisdom and power of your birth to fade away. It is yours to reclaim. It is yours to re-imagine. It is yours to empower your spirit with and return to your uncorrupted state. Radical Healing sits quietly on your lap, like a faithful child–go ahead and discover the medicine already within.
– What if…
What if that illness is patiently waiting for you to unmask it?
What if you allowed yourself to emerge from the womb and retake that first breath again? Baptism and Resurrection is everyone’s birthright.
Now imagine, further, that uncertainty and fear are sitting right next to you. What would you say to them?
I conclude this presentation with my response to that last question:
COME HERE, FEAR
Abraham Menashe
Come here, fear,
come out of the dark.
Sit next to me—
it’s okay, you’re safe.
Tell me, has anyone listened to your story?
Has anyone gazed
Into your stony eyes—
Rubbed your hunched back?
Here is a blanket
for your cold bones,
Bread for your stomach,
and tea for your nerves.
I promise to listen,
to your amazing story!
In Pharaoh’s reign, your heart
was hardened, over and over…
Come closer, fear
Here’s my hand—
please touch it
Come near,
I want to know you.
Come here, fear,
I want you to know me.