Author: Nancy LeTourneau

No, this is not another recipe diary. I’m wondering what people do to feed their soul these days.

I was raised in a fundamentalist christian community and abandoned that years ago. I am very aware of my need for a meaningful spirituality and am constantly looking for ways to address that. I envy those who find a religious community that actually feeds their soul. But its not for me.

Anyone reading this has probably found some of that need met by visiting this blog. I know that is true for me. I could write about lots of other things that feed my soul, but I wanted to focus on poetry for now.

A few years ago I first heard David Whyte in a video presentation and then bought some books of his poetry. He has been a profound influence in my life since then.  
Here is his take on the power of poetry:

The Lightest Touch

Good poetry begins with
the lightest touch,
a breeze arriving from nowhere,
a whispered healing arrival,
a word in your ear,
a settling into things,
then like a hand in the dark
it arrests the whole body,
steeling you for revelation.

In the silence that follows
a great line
you can feel Lazarus
deep inside
even the laziest, most deathly afraid
part of you,
lift up his hands and walk toward the light.

And here is a poem that seems to have been written especially for today:

Imagine My Surprise

Imagine my surprise,
sitting a full hour
in silent and irremediable
fear of the world.

to find the body
forgetting
its own fear the instant
it opened and placed
those unassuming hands
on life’s enduring pain,

and the world for one
moment
closed its terrifying eyes
in gratitude.

Saying,
“This is my body, I am found.”

So, do you have any soul food available to share with us?

I spent the morning today at a funeral service for 18 year old Kelly J. Thompson who was killed in a car accident last Sunday. I wanted to post this diary in her honor and make it a charge to myself to try to shine my light a little brighter in her absence.

Kelly is one of those examples of an apple that doesn’t fall far from the tree (as the priest said today at the funeral). Her step-father works on affordable housing issues and services for the homeless. Her mother is the director of a non-profit organization working with troubled youth, serves on her local school board and volunteers with the Girl Scouts and the League of Women Voters. They embody the idea of giving your life blood for peace and justice.

To demonstrate the loss we have all experienced (whether we knew Kelly or not), I’d like to offer the following, which is an excerpt from “Hope” written by Kelly and passed out at the funeral today:

“Has the human race not yet seen enough turmoil? Have we not witnessed enough death and despair to echo throughout the ages? Have the sands of time been cleansed by the blood of our ancestors? What drives us? What moves us to linger in this world when we are sure of our destiny? For the beauty of a rose is not etched into the stone of history. The laugh of a child does not resound through the ages. The march of a bloody sword crosses eons. Was hope given to our souls for a purpose? Are we naive in believing in all that is good? Smiles are so easily lost. Yet tears can be wiped away. Even the red blood will eventually fade. What drives this hope we hold so dear? What gives motivation to this flickering light? Yet somehow, through the shrouded darkness, somehow through the bleak despair, we can still admire the beauty of a flower. We are still able to hear that laughter which had left the ear so long ago. Hope is not fleeting. No, hope cannot flee when one still clings to its sweet reassurance. Hope is not merely an invention of the grasping soul. Hope is alive in all that still can reflect its never-ending glory. Hope is in a summer’s breeze. It thrives in what you can see and feel and even in that which you cannot. Hope is a boundless wonder that drives a failing heart. Hope gives reason to enjoy beauty and to cherish laughter. Hope gives reason to live when none should be granted. Hope is the work of a greater being. It is that of which human kind will never truly understand…”

I can only be humbled by Kelly’s wisdom at such a young age, grieve her loss and promise to myself that I will continue to hope.

The first time I noticed that my internal processes were going in a radically different direction from our prevailing culture was my reaction to 9/11. While it seemed that everywhere I looked, the prevailing mood went quickly from shock to sadness to anger, I got stuck in the sadness. I never had a sense emotionally of needing to get revenge. I felt increasingly distanced from our national march into the “war on terror.” And this eventually drove me to revisit a book I read back in the late ’80’s by Riane Eisler titled “The Chalice and the Blade.”

Eisler contrasts the “chalice” (read: matriarchal) cultures of the Neolithic agrarian era with the “blade” (read: patriarchal) cultures that formed during the early development of our Judeo/Christian history. She then tries to go beyond the either/or of these two cultures to define a partnership model of society to replace our current hierarchical model. The diary by Sven Triloqvist on “How systems can work without leaders” takes what Eisler was talking about 25 years ago into the 21st century. I’ll encourage others to read Eisler’s book rather than try to capture all of it here, but a few of her ideas will help me get to my point.
Original chalice cultures worshiped the goddess and celebrated birth as the central symbolic demonstration of their spirituality. For the blade cultures, “the central mythical image… is no longer the birth of the young god. It is his crucifixion and death” (ie, “The Passion of the Christ.) She says, “The underlying problem is not men as a sex. The root of the problem lies in a social system in which the power of the blade is idealized – in which both men and women are taught to equate true masculinity with violence and dominance and to see men who do not conform to this ideal as too soft of effeminate.” Eisler also draws on the research of psychologist David Winter, who in looking at historical patterns was able to demonstrate that “more repressive attitudes toward women are predictors of periods of aggressive warfare.” She sounds her ultimate warning this way, “For be they religious or secular, modern or ancient, Eastern or Western, the basic commonality of totalitarian leaders and would-be leaders is their faith in the power of the lethal Blade as the instrument of our deliverance. A dominator future is therefore, sooner or later, almost certainly also a future of global nuclear war – and the end of all of humanity’s problems and aspirations.”

This is why, when our own beloved Democratic Party decided to mount a completely militarized national convention and thought they could trump the Republicans as the party of the blade, I despaired and wondered “WHERE IS THE FEMININE VOICE?” that is needed at least as a balance. I think the debacle that we are seeing in Iraq is beginning to wake up this voice in our culture. But I’m still straining to hear it clearly.