Journal for The Journey-A Poetry Class

This has been a most interesting and soul searching week for me. I got in a discussion on the Journey class forum about the age old argument - is prose poetry really poetry and why are we so wrapped up in the poetic dressing or form we use instead of the message behind it. I went into the argument with the mindset that leaned toward defending the free form poem and came out of the argument defending nothing but the right to express ourselves in whatever form or lack thereof that our soul and our imaginations feel is right for the particular message.

Then, I got on the Native American forum and again entered a conversation trying to understand the difference between Native American culture and their spirituality and the Christian traditions. I find myself again on the fence. While I'm no where near fundamental in my religious view, I do have a spiritual base in Christianity (all I've been raised around). However, I read Eastern writings, and some other traditions and what I see from all of them, stripped down past the rules and practices, is an across the board similarity. There is a greater power in the universe, each of us has a piece of that inside-call it a soul, I suppose, and that we need as humans to have a purpose, to realize our purpose, and to help others reach theirs (or at least get out of the way and let them reach their own. I was trying to see how my internal feelings I have about this Creator might fit with that traditions of the Native Americans but I was shown that one cannot separate the religion and culture of Native Americans raised in a NA culture. It would be like trying to BE Jewish if you were born otherwise. You can learn about it, practice it, become part of the church but does it make one into someone of the Jewish ancestry? I think you can be born into it, be married to one and do and teach your children the traditions if you were taught by inlaws how to do it and why it is done but you must be WITHIN a culture that practices the ways of the culture to truly take it on. Its not like deciding one day to change from Episcopalian to Lutheran or something. Its a lifestyle change.

Anyway, I realized the instructors had a point, a good one. We musn't try to jump the fence because the grass looks greener over there. We should be learning and practicing ways to get our own grass to grow, tend our own trees and garden, teach our children to tend their own garden and teach them the ways we were taught (well, if they were positive things that is). If your life history was rough, teach them how you've learned to make it better. But we must "bloom where we're planted. Does that mean being satisfied with being stagnate. Surely not. What it does mean, I believe, is walking your journey within the family and community you are now, and learning and practicing ways to improve that community, your family, and yourself in those most subtle ways such as how to surrender to things that you have no control over, how to take positive action rather than complaining about what already is, how to relate to each other better, how to listen more,etc. If we all take care of our little square on earth instead of trying to tell someone in another square how to fix theirs, we as a people would be more at peace.

So, I think my world was appropriately rocked this week and I've come out a more reflective person. I look forward to learning more about the Native American traditions and I look forward to opening my mind to other artists and poet's points of view. Some things I learn from both sources, I will keep and incorporate in my daily life, some I'll keep in my mind so I can understand the journey others have made, and some may not be for me and I will lovingly choose to walk around those paths and not journey down them right now. They will remain, perhaps, in the depths of my memory for a time when they might be needed again. But for now, I will walk down my own journey, love my neighbors and those I don't understand, try to make my workplace, my home and my town better in whatever ways I can, and someday when I leave this earth, I will be able to say I tended well to my own little garden plot on earth and will die satisfied. What more can we ask?

Brandy




** Image ID #1467193 Unavailable **

** Image ID #1265210 Unavailable **