You Do Not Have to Be Good

Dear friends, 

Happy New Year! I hope these first days of 2023 have been kind to you.

I started the year by preaching at my church and then leaving for a weeklong artist residency co-sponsored by the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Sisters of Loretto/Loretto Community. When I applied for the residency, I said I wanted to do a lot of writing. That's not what happened, but before I say more, let me back up. 

It is a great honor to share my reflections with my church community. It also always stresses me out. What if my theology is off? What if my message doesn't resonate with people? Since I've been given the privilege of doing this, I want to do it well. Between Christmas and the new year, I was still recovering from COVID and, to be honest, from the last several months of going, going, going. I was tired and didn't have a lot of energy to put toward my homily. As I was preparing, I kept telling my recovering-perfectionist self, "Good is good enough." I was sharing this with a friend, who looked at me and quoted from Mary Oliver's poem, "Wild Geese": You do not have to be good.  

I'll admit, "Good is good enough" was a stretch for me, so "You do not have to be good" was waaaaaaay out of my comfort zone. Still it was a helpful reminder that whether I offered a "good" homily or a "bad" one, it wouldn't likely change anyone's regard or love for me, and if it did, those probably weren't my people anyway. The homily seemed to be well-received, I had another conversation with a different friend about "Wild Geese," and I left for my residency.

On the first day, the poem still on my mind, I created a piece with the poem's opening line (pictured above and again below). I thought I was just getting it out of my system, so that I could then get to all the writing I had planned to do. 

I quickly learned that much of my residency work was actually to allow "Wild Geese" to work its way through me. What follows are the pieces I created from the first several lines: 

The poem continues: 
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

And then:

(The word that goes off the piece is "imagination.")

The final lines are: 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


I am not worried about whether any of the above are "good." I am simply grateful to have had the time to play and create, to "let the soft animal of [my] body love what it loves." It loves to create. Doing so was liberating! 

I moved slowly through the week. I rested. I reflected. I wrote, mostly things that no eyes but my own will see. I painted, cut, and glued. I walked. I had a few conversations with people and a lot of conversations with the cows that surrounded my house. They were patient and curious listeners. 

Since I've returned, the world has continued to offer itself to my imagination. Even as I have worried and approached despair, the world has repeatedly reminded of my place in the family of things in surprising and delightful ways. I belong.  "Goodness" has no bearing on the truth of my belonging. 

You belong. Goodness has no bearing on the truth of your belonging. 

Do you believe it? 

~~~
Nonviolent/Compassionate Communication has been an integral part of my journey toward releasing judgments of "good" and "bad," a work in progress, for sure. Starting January 25, I'm offering a 4-week introductory class via Zoom, Meeting in the Field of Connection: Compassionate Communication. I am extending the Early Bird discount to January 18, one week from today. Whether for a refresher or as a first-time student of these skills and practices, I hope you'll join me! 

I am also so happy to be working with Drepung Gomang Center for Engaging Compassion to offer Seeking the Shalom of the City, an in-person program that explores places and times in Louisville's history through a social justice lens. We are starting next week- January 19! 

Join me or, if you know of others who would love these classes, please share with them!

With care, 
Cory

Mending of Hearts

For more than a year, I’ve been playing with hearts…artistically.

I didn’t know when I started that I was working on my own heart in ways words couldn’t express, but my hands, given the freedom to do so, could.  

First by cutting and ripping pieces of paper and forming hearts or broken hearts or mending hearts in collages.

Then by drawing hearts within hearts within hearts, smaller hearts nested, protected by the larger ones. All open hearts, sometimes naturally, sometimes broken, jagged-edged.

Months ago, my dad, an artist, who I often show my not-like-his creations, noted, “Your hearts are changing.”

No longer broken and dark, but open and bright, filled with light.

I noted that the same had happened inside me. Somehow. Inexplicably. I had only a few weeks before returned from a most difficult stint in Palestine. In that place of deep brokenness, my heart returned to me, to the world, brighter and more open, willing to take in the hurt of the world only long enough to send the pain out buoyed by the light I had found in myself.

After that, I went a few months without creating anything. When I started again, my hearts made their way into otherwise abstract drawings of intersecting ribbons and swirls and strings of beads. I don't know why.

Last month I spent a few days alone in a cabin in the woods. I spent my days walking, watching, writing, drawing. Noticing the spider webs everywhere glistening in the sun, watching a spider in my screened-in porch devour one spider…and then another… I could only draw spider webs. Imperfect webs of connection against blurry backgrounds of creation. No hearts.

Almost 2 weeks ago, I was on a very different, and equally rich, retreat, spending time with the Benedictine sisters in Erie, PA, and a number of other wonderful women. For the first time since my previous retreat, I felt the impulse to draw. Again, webs. But this time, each web I drew had strands of silk that formed one heart, or a few. Ever since my sojourn into the woods, I had been paying attention to spiders and webs. They, or at least one, had been demanding my attention, biting me in inconvenient places (including inside my belly button) on more than one occasion (Side note: this was when I learned that lemon juice helps to soothe the itching and the swelling of spider bites when over-the-counter creams do not).

In Native American traditions, according to Jamie Sands, spiders represent “the infinite possibilities of creation.” Perhaps my spider was reminding me, not so subtly, that I had some work to do: weaving love into the web of my own creations.  

After yet another bite (I hope the last), my webs have not simply contained hearts, but been made of hearts within hearts within hearts. 

I created my last simple drawing a few nights ago. Bewildered by the troubles of our world, I started the web, first with the strands that met in the center, all bright colors. Then the strands that connected one to another around and around and around. In hearts.

Shortly after I began, I heard shouting in front of my house. Reluctant to leave my heart-growing endeavor, I went out on my front porch and saw two men who seemed to be attacking, one even beating with a stick, another.

One of the attackers, curly light brown hair, striped blue and gray shirt, saw me. “Call 911!” I didn’t understand what was happening and took another moment to take in the scene, trying to process what I was seeing. After a few more seconds of shouting, the man on the ground stopped resisting, thankfully conscious and, as far as I could tell, unharmed.

“He tried to steal a purse,” Curly told me, breathless. It had happened at a bar a few blocks from my house. “Call 911!” I dialed the number and handed him my phone. My pregnant neighbor had come out to see what was going on.

As the self-appointed doers-of-justice stood and the accused sat on the ground, my neighbor and I talked and watched. The accused stood up, the other two vigilant, ready to subdue him again. The accused asked me for water.

I noticed he was sweaty, his kelly green t-shirt nearly soaked. I wanted to give him water, but equally wanted to remove myself from a situation I still didn’t fully understand.

He asked again. I hesitated.

He ran. They chased. He only made it across the street and a few houses down.

My neighbor and I continued to watch as another man arrived to stand guard, now three surrounding the accused. Then the police came. The men from the bar left. An ambulance arrived.

I went inside, not knowing if the accused left in a police car or an ambulance.

I resumed the web of hearts.

Strand by strand.

Connection.

Color by color.

Intersection.

I knew that what I could give to the world that night was a representation of the world I wish to help create.

Not fine art, perhaps, but sincere.

A simple vision, so difficult to manifest in 3-D.

But possible.

I have to believe it’s possible.

I do believe it’s possible.  

Tonight, I was reminded that I am not the only person who believes this.

We can create a web of love.  

Linking us one

by one

by one.

Me

to you

to whom?