photo by Collyn Ware

When the Moon is Your Muse
     --for Gracyn
 
You hold the moon in your hands.
Because at eleven, it all seems possible
when the moon is your muse,
when all the world’s wonder is just a lunar length away,
when all its golden honey spills down your arms
and spreads across the earth
with abandon.
 
When the moon is your muse,
you welcome the night
whose dark corners are flooded with light enough
to scare the goblins away.
 
When the moon is your muse,
dreams dot the sky like quicksilver,
like fireflies eager to take their place
among the stars.
 
Oh, there will be time enough
for fruitless hours of work and dread
that march in with hawkish bluster,
eclipsing all that’s dear and pure.
There will be time enough
for nights which settle upon you like shrouds,
lead-footed and cold.
 
But on moonlit nights
when your muse offers her best,
you open your heart in hallowed expectation,
as all the trees genuflect, tipping their moon-glazed tops
to earth.

Photo by Collyn Ware

Beneath the Willow
--for Collyn

Not much grows beneath the willow.
Its leafy umbrella keeps out the sun,
so that the earth beneath it is moist
and barren.
Even the fungi have turned up their noses
at this spot, where light is always
compromised.
 
On the best days, the sun dapples a way
through branches which skim the earth
like a processional train.
 
But make no mistake:
there is an entire world here
beneath the willow.
You would know this if you push aside the green curtain
and enter.
Once there, your eyes—as eyes will—
struggle to adjust to the darkness of a summer afternoon.
 
But take the advice of one who has lived a thousand lifetimes there:
you do not need eyes to see what you have come to see.
So close your eyes.
It matters little—eyes open or closed—in this world
beneath the willow tree.
 
Outside, the sun shines as it must,
calling the blossoms and hours into sharp focus,
and the day inches on 
fraught with duty.
 
But beneath the willow tree,
you can try on different lives,
casting aside the rumpled remnants of one
in favor of another.
 
Here, you can do-over
and over.
 
Here, you can paint the sky apricot
and offer your heart, as open as a summer meadow,
to a world that always receives it
tenderly.
 
Here, the darkness is a feather bed
in which you can lay your weary worries,
and the oughts and musts have voices so small
that they are drowned in song.
 
Beneath the willow tree,
each day breaks in delirium,
a joy so generous that even the dirt
smiles.
 
So pass by if you will.
Give the willow a nod as you speed
towards somewhere.
 
As for me,
I will spend a thousand lifetimes here,
each one more splendid than the last.

The Summer Tanagers

live deep within the timber.
At dusk, they call to each other
warbling to welcome the night.
 
If you stand silently near the timber’s edge
you might see one:
 
a blood-orange jewel lying in the hollow
just at the base of summer’s throat.
 
Or you might follow their love songs into the tree tops—
blinking and refocusing,
scanning and rescanning,
 
to no avail.
 
Perhaps another time
when the sun is just beginning to set
and the last light floods a pocket in the upper story
where a single tanager sits.
 
Perhaps a moment when you forget
to try, when you simply look up
and there, on the limb of a young linden,
a summer tanager sits.
 
Or perhaps a dream
in which your lover calls to you,
his heart a blood-orange beacon
in the dark.
 
 

 Cancel Culture: the practice of withdrawing support for (or canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. [dictionary.com]

Talk of the Cancel Culture dominates much of what we hear and view these days. And although we’ve more recently given it an official name, it’s been around for a long, long time. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who isn’t intimately familiar with the act and art of cancellation. Talk to kids who’ve perfected the act of covering their ears and babbling nah, nah, nah. They’ve been doing this for years, selectively canceling their brothers and sisters, their neighborhood friends and classmates, their parents and teachers. If you press your hands tightly to your ears, squeeze your eyes shut, and babble loudly enough, you can get the job done, they’ll tell you. Annoying little brother who complains that you’re not playing fairly, canceled. Parents who command you to take out the trash, clean your room, eat your vegetables, canceled. The kid across the street who whines about getting a turn on your new bike, canceled. All you really need is two hands and a mouth, and you, my friend, can be in the cancellation business.

In a recent New York Post article, Brooke Kato cites Dr. Jill McCorkel, Villanova University professor of sociology and criminolgy, who argues that the roots of cancel culture have been present throughout human history. McCorkel said:

Cancel culture is an extension of or a contemporary evolution of a much bolder set of social processes that we can see in the form of banishment.

In a 2019 Vox article, Aja Romano quotes Anne Charity Hudley, chair of linguistics of African America for the University of California Santa Barbara:

While the terminology of cancel culture may be new and most applicable to social media through Black Twitter, in particular, the concept of being canceled is not new to black culture. . . [It is] a survival skill as old as the Southern black use of the boycott.

Charity Hudley maintains that canceling someone(s) is a means of acknowledging that you lack the power to change structural inequality, but as an individual you can still have power beyond measure.

Those of us who’ve used the hands-over-the-ears method of cancellation most likely had no intentions of banishing or boycotting anyone. We probably wouldn’t have even understood what banishing or boycotting meant. And our actions would’ve been less about survival and more about an immediate–albeit temporary–solution to the problem at hand. We didn’t really want to ruin the other person, to discredit or to remove them permanently from the family, the neighborhood, or the school. We just wanted them to shut their mouths, so that we didn’t have to listen to what they were saying. Even as we clapped our hands over our ears, we generally understood the childish nature of our actions and that the very words we were desperate to cancel would invariably be back again to chip away at our resolve.

Today, however, canceling a person may be truly tantamount to ruining them. Cancelers aim to get people fired, to destroy their reputations, and to discredit their life’s work. In The New York Times article, “High School Students and Alumni Are Using Social Media To Expose Racism,” writers Taylor Lorenz and Katherine Rosman explain that students have repurposed large meme accounts, set up Google Docs and anonymous pages on Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, and wielded their personal following to hold friends and classmates accountable for behavior they deem unacceptable. They quoted one young woman who reported that some students made a Google spreadsheet that identified names, school information, social media profiles and contact information of students who post racist comments on social media. Another student wrote, Someone rly started a Google doc of racists and their info for us to ruin their lives. i love Twitter. And yet another argued that if you prevent these young racists from advancing beyond high school, you’re helping to stop the spread of racist lawyers or doctors or people who make it harder for the black community. For these Google Doc creators and others who’ve harnessed the shaming power of social media, cancellation really does mean ruining someone–or at the very least making it extremely difficult for them to survive in their high schools, colleges, and communities.

Having taught high school and college students for 40 years, I have no doubt that there are those who hold biased, even bigotted views and who speak and act in morally reprehensible ways. I called one young man into my office after overhearing what he’d said about another student. I could’ve called him out in class, could’ve shamed him publicly in such a way as to make his life in our school extremely tough. But I chose to speak to him privately. After confronting him, we had a productive conversation that resulted in genuine remorse and an admission that what he’d said was hurtful and wrong. I’ve been thinking about what might have happened if either his classmates or I had tried to cancel rather than talk with him. Truthfully, it’s hard to imagine positive results.

Certainly, there are legitimate times for public criticism and exposure. If a person, group, institution or corporation has been confronted–individually, collectively, or legally–and continues to speak or act in ways that are generally agreed upon as harmful, then most people accept that public confrontation is necessary and morally responsible. But defining what is harmful and therefore deserving of this type of public exposure is dicey. What is harmful in one person’s eyes may not be in another’s. What some insist should be canceled, others do not. And the fact that cancellation has now evolved from largely targeting celebrities and high profile people, groups, or companies to targeting ordinary people should give us pause. The thought that someone may perceive my words or deeds as harmful and consequently might put all my contact information on their Google Doc/hit list is truly frightening. And the thought that someone may someday try to cancel my granddaughter or grandson is the stuff that nightmares are made of.

Dr. Jill McCorkel explains that cancellation creates a sense of shared solidarity, a sense that you are a part of something larger than yourself, but others like corporate diversity consultant Aaron Rose believe that it may give us little more than a short-term release of cathartic anger. For Rose, rejecting the cancel culture doesn’t mean that you have to reject social justice principles. For him and others who oppose the cancel culture, the real issue is whether or not you believe that people targeted for cancellation can change. Rather than being primarily concerned with expressing outrage and working collectively to destroy someone, he argues that we should adopt a more traditional approach, one that, according to Vox writer Aja Romano, includes apology, atonement, and forgiveness.

Still, we are as divided on the issue of cancel culture as we are on so many other issues. There are those like Aaron Rose who maintain that real and lasting change comes through helping people learn to genuinely communicate and to treat each other humanely; there are others who, as Vox writer Aja Romano argues, regard cancel culture as an extension of civil rights activists’ push for meaningful change.

After my attempts to cancel one of my siblings by covering my ears, most often I was promptly reported to my mom who asked me to apologize. And within moments, all was well. Our country needs a cosmic mom right now, a compassionate yet powerful mother to call us into the house, to lovingly confront us, and to ask us to atone. We need a mom to cry and vent to, to wisely rebuke and encourage us. Above all, we need a mom who truly expects us to change and to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves.

Actually, this job is much too big for one mom. We need a tsunami of moms who sweep over us, washing away all our desires and attempts to cancel each other. This would be a welcome storm, for in its wake, we might find opportunities for real and lasting change.

photo by Collyn Ware

Marmalade Moon

As the moon rises
it spreads marmalade across the treetops.
 
Too often, the world is a wafer
broken easily by brittle words.
But tonight, we who live lean
stand dumb in the presence
of such decadence:
 
a light feast,
a banquet of lunar nectar.
 
In this month of marmalade moons
we remember how the world ripens;
how the sweet peach of summer swallows
all our pits and stones;
how we rest in the nectarine assurance that—
if even for a moment—
there is enough for all.

We had entered an era of limitlessness, or the illusion thereof, and this in itself is a sort of wonder. My grandfather lived a life of limits, both suffered and strictly observed, in a world of limits. I learned much of that world from him and others, and then I changed; I entered the world of labor-saving machines and of limitless cheap fossil fuel. It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
― Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food

I have some questions about limits that will undoubtedly bring the disapproval and dismissal of those who will argue that only one with privilege would dare to ask them. And I concede that, to a great degree, this is true. Those without privilege rarely ask that limits be established when they’ve been limited in one way or another, by one group or another, their entire lives. In this light, then, as a white woman of privilege with questions about limits, I am guilty. But I really want to know. Regarding works of art–statues, paintings, sculptures, even architecture–I want to know if limits identifying what should and should not be removed from public venues, are not only inescapable but indispensable, as Berry writes?

Most of my life, I’ve shouldered the helpful harness of limits: curfews and deadlines, defined duties and expectations, organizational structures of every shape, shape, and origin. Using The Shape A Writer Can Contain, a composition manual my father wrote in the 70s, I learned to write, and later teach, a coherent, organized, and focused essay. The parameters of its parts–the introduction, the body, and the conclusion–yoked my many-legged ideas which threatened to bolt for other pastures. The framework of a single paragraph trained me to look closely and dig deeply, exploring and expounding upon one good insight. The stricture of a thesis statement or topic sentence kept me honest and bound to the ideological contract I’d made with my readers.

It wasn’t until the 80s when I attended an English Language Arts conference that I was told that assigning my students a five-paragraph essay was a quick road to composition hell. This traditional structure didn’t even merit purgatory. No, force your students to write it, and you condemned them to the eternal and dreadful compliance of expository hell. Let them write organically, the presenters argued. Let their ideas grow freely and naturally as they will. As a relatively young teacher, I stewed and fretted all the way home from the conference, admonishing myself for such naivety. Maybe there were better ways to help students learn to write. Maybe I’d been simply unaware.

After two excruciating months of organic writing during which more students suffered and failed than not, I returned to the form which had proven itself over and over again, convicted that its limits were more helpful than harmful.

But most limits, even those that may be largely beneficial, are not without controversy. Laws regarding mandatory seatbelt use: personal limits for safety or an affront to civil liberty? Dress codes for restaurants (no shoes, no shirt, no service): reasonable public health restrictions or an infringement on personal freedom? By their very nature, limits are restrictive and exclusive; they define what is acceptable and what is not, what is in and what is out.

Certainly there are–and have always been–limits that privilege, please, and protect some groups and not others. In our country, we don’t have to go back too many decades to identify examples of these. The Jim Crow laws are some of the most aggregious examples. It goes without saying that limits may be helpful or destructive; they may serve the greater good or serve a privileged few. The best ones are always carefully considered, ethically examined, and clearly defined.

Even in rural Iowa, most people I know agree that we should limit the public display of Confederate statues that profile individuals known primarily for defending and promoting the pre-Civil War South, including and especially the institution of slavery. Although they may argue that it’s not acceptable to destroy or deface them, they will concede that these statues should be removed from the public positions they’ve held.

But the removal of other statues and pieces of art isn’t as clear cut. In a recent Boston Globe article, “Lincoln’s emancipation statue triggers debate on how the Black experience should be commemorated,” Meghan E. Irons writes:

But nearly 150 years after its debut here, the statue has become a flashpoint in the nation’s latest reckoning with public art portraying figures from the Civil War and its aftermath. What was intended as a depiction of liberation can look demeaning to 21st-century eyes: a submissive Black man bending at the feet of the president. Yet even as activists in Boston and Washington have urged the statues be torn down or repurposed, some argue against, saying the art, however challenging, is worth preserving.

Even the distant relatives of Archer Alexander, the black man used as the model for the statue’s kneeling figure, disagree over whether or not the emancipation statue should be removed. One of Alexander’s distant relatives, Keith Winstead, contends that the statue is a tribute to a critical period in Black history and to an American hero who risked his life to help Union soldiers during the Civil War. Another descendant, Cedric Turner believes that taking down the statue is akin to wiping out the story of freed slaves who donated money for the statue, and of Alexander himself, who helped his country during the Civil War.

But there is also distant relative, Maryum Ali, who argues that it is degrading and offensive and said that she was certain that her great-great-great-great grandfather would not want to be viewed as bowing down to anyone — Lincoln or anybody else. Like Ali, Raul Fernandez, a lecturer and associate dean at Boston University who has extensively researched the statue, claims that it is clearly a tribute to white supremacy. 

So how do we proceed? What stays and what goes? What is acceptable and what is not? What celebrates and what offends?

I began to seriously consider these questions when I thought about the bronze statue of my father that stands outside of the university classroom building where he taught for much of his life. The statue is a beautiful piece of artwork, lovingly crafted by sculptor Martha Pettigrew. But it is a statue of a white male teacher/poet flanking a building that has also housed a black teacher/poet. So, some would consider my father’s statue a microinvalidation, a piece of art that excludes, negates, or nullifies the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a minority person. Has the bronzed Don Welch invalidated and excluded the minority person who, instead, should stand as an affirmation of teaching excellence on the University of Nebraska Kearney campus? And if so, should my father’s statue be removed because it’s yet another symbol of the systemic racism that privileges whites over blacks?

My father was a man of the truest integrity and one of the finest teachers, thinkers and writers I have known. I believe that the statue his friends and colleagues commissioned is a worthy testament to my father’s legacy as an excellent teacher. Still, I’m not naive enough to assume that a majority would vote to keep his statue if a national poll was taken today. For there really are no clear parameters that identify what we should keep and what we should remove. And without these, what specific criteria–if any–do we use? And who decides upon this criteria?

I know there will be some who consider me foolish for worrying about my father’s statue. After all, it’s not like my dad was a Confederate officer or former slave owner, and it’s not like he has a history of racist speech and actions. And yet, there will be others who would argue that, because my father was a white man, his statue should removed and replaced with one that validates and celebrates the reality of minority persons.

Like Keith Winstead and Cedric Turner who prefer that the emancipation statue remain, I prefer that the statue of my father remain. There will be others who prefer that both statues be removed and forgotten. But preferences are not carefully considered, ethically examined, clearly defined limits. They are simply personal predilictions, individual desires. And as such, they leave us in a quagmire. There are as many preferences as there are people who hold them, so whose preference should prevail?

I’ve read that my desire for clear limits regarding public art is yet another symptom of my white privilege. Perhaps it is. But even so, is this desire wrong? Would such limits cause more harm than good to most people? And might not the discussion of such limits be a progressive step forward?

These statues weren’t intended to be idols before which we worship. Rather, most of them were created as public pieces of art intended to commemorate imperfect human beings whose prevailing legacies are honorable and good. In the end, someone or some group will decide if a public statue stays or goes. I would like to think that their decisions will be carefully considered, ethically examined, and clearly defined so that the criteria used to make these decisions may be applied consistently–or at least more consistently.

Before we remove or destroy them, then, I’d like to know if we might come to a consensus regarding the criteria we will use to determine what stays and what goes. I’d like to know if there will be any limits beyond preference to guide our decisions. I’m painfully aware of the challenges that establishing such limits will pose. This is messy stuff–perhaps the messiest. Done well, however, it should take us beyond politics and preferences to sound, ethical guidelines that we can collectively agree upon. Done well, it should be part of the solution rather than exacerbating the problem. Done well, it should result in limits that are truly indispensable.

You see how I try
To reach with words
What matters most
And how I fail.
―Czelaw Milosz

Language, for me, has continued to be both blessing and curse, a love affair and a trial. To commit a word to paper (or screen), to launch a string of words into a public sphere, to destine a paragraph for the larger work of an essay or story, to craft poetic words that hold the integrity of a line–herein lies the pleasure and the pain of language.

During my university and professional years, my season of language was largely characterized by explaining, interpreting, analyzing, critiquing, reflecting upon, and recommending. I remember the evening hours I spent in the Calvin T. Ryan Library on my college campus. These were dedicated writing hours during which I labored (and I mean labored) to transfer my research and insights into something worthy of being submitted to my professors. A productive night? A three-hour hashing and re-hashing of the best words I could muster into a single paragraph. A blood-letting of the mind and soul that resulted in a fatigue that often left me even too tired to sleep. There was no quick-drafting. No spontaneous overflow of ideas or emotions. Nothing like that. This was more the work of a laborer than an artist. This was the gut-wrenching work of trying to reach with words/what matters most only to fail more times than I succeeded.

Ernest Heminway writes:

All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

In spite of the challenges of this season of language, I was, and continue to be, smitten with the beauty and power of words. I like the way they sound when spoken, the way they appear, letter by letter, on the page. I like the feeling of seeing them for the first time–those I’ve never encountered and those I see with new eyes. Sometimes, I carry a word around with me like a stone in my pocket, taking it out every now and then to admire it. Or to shudder in its presence.

When my brother was in kindergarten, my mother and I were in the kitchen and overheard the neighbor boys yell across the fence, “Throw our ball back, nigger!” Even before I really understood the power and history of this word, the shudder that went me was seismic, literally off the language richter scale. And after my brother had thrown the ball back into the neighbor’s yard and burst through the back door, he asked, “What does it mean when someone calls you a nigger?” Standing before my five-year-old brother in that moment was a moment in which my language failed. Any words I might have offered would have been woefully inadequate or tragically wrong in the face of such injury. For as Wilkie Collins writes: Our words are giants when they do us an injury. . . [A Woman in White]

I admit that I’ve often used words thoughtlessly, tossing them out too quickly–sometimes in the heat of the moment and sometimes in a moment of what can only be called ignorance. Regardless of the intent or lack of intent, I’ve come to understand the consequences of such careless words which generally take on lives and intents of their own. In The God of Small Things, novelist Arundhati Roy claims, That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.

Unfortunately, the season of careless words has no apparent end. It hangs around our necks like an albatross, groaning at the words that make people love and respect us a little less, take us a little less seriously, and make us wounders instead of healers. For better or worse, we live in a time when words–carelessly, intentionally, or naively delivered–are under considerable scrutiny. Say the wrong word, and you make people love you a little (or a lot) less. Say an inadequate or an ambiguous word, one whose history and intent may be questioned, and you can also inflict pain. Keep your words to yourself and maintain a carefully cultivated (or cowardly) silence, and your unspoken words can still wound. And that these careless words can be from your past–even and especially words from a younger, less introspective or less ‘woke’ self–matters little or not at all.

Op-Ed staff editor and writer for The New York Times, Aisha Harris recently wrote about the current season of This You?. In her article, she explains the movement and its intent:

Brutally crisp and blatantly rhetorical, the phrase has become a catchall representing the internet currency of receipts, forcing bandwagon participants to confront things they might have said or done that seemingly contradict their newfound commitment to the cause.

In the season of This You?, whatever language you may use now to support a person, idea, or cause may be tarnished or even obliterated by language you once used. And so, language from your past can become the proverbial gift that keeps on giving, keeps on making others love you less, keeps on reminding everyone of who you once were, and keeps on targeting words you once used. Truthfully, when I consider things I’ve said and written in the past, I can only brace myself for a potential This You?

But there are seasons when words delight and bless, when they move us with the sheer magnificence of their beauty and power. St. John of the Cross writes:

They can be like the sun, words.
They can do for the heart what light can for a field.

Before I die, I want to write one thing that truly does for the heart what light can for a field. One thing that–if I were digitally outed by a This You? devotee–I would joyously say yes, yes, yes! I would say this is me, and perhaps these words are the best of me. I would confidently announce that, of course, the sun must shine when I commit these subjects to paper: the violet clouds along the horizon, the hand of my grandson in mine, the sound of the cottonwoods in the wind. In this season, the words of poet Anne Sexton are as close as any in describing my bliss:

Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face. ["Words"]

Let the doves fall from the ceilings and the legs of summer stroll through fields of sweet clover! Let six–no 100–holy oranges sit in my lap! Let us call upon all the words that do for the heart what light can for a field! Let us choose a word to hold in our palm and, as Emily Dickinson writes, look at it, until it begins to shine!

And if we can’t find the right word, then let us throw caution to the wind and invent our own like an 11-year-old girl did the day I worked with her during a poetry residency. Struggling to find the right word to describe a keepsake–a glass figurine she kept on her dresser–she’d erased a hole in her notebook paper when suddenly she cried, “I got it! It’s glassable! Yup, that’s exactly what it is, glassable!” I might have offered up the word I thought she was searching for, but how this word fragile paled in the light of her sun. And I could only hope that her season of wonderful words stretched long into her life. Like writer Aldous Huxley, I could only hope that she might have Shakespearean feelings but never talk about them like automobile salesmen or teen-agers or college professors, that she never practice alchemy in reverse–touch gold and it turns to lead; touch the pure lyrics of experience, and they turn into the verbal equivalents of tripe and hogwash. [The Genius and the Goddess] In her season of words, let her become a master alchemist turning a leaden world to gold.

In her poem “Words,” Anne Sexton concludes:

Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.
But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair.

In all my seasons of words, I, too, most often fly like an eagle/but with the wings of a wren. I have sent my words into the wind only to find that they lack the muscle to stay the course. I have used words of prey only to discover that they cowered in rock crevices or were eaten by more capable foes. I have summoned words of color and sound and motion only to realize that, wren-like, they furiously flap their wings but fail to take flight. And yet, I send them out. Again and again. Because even when I try–and fail–to reach with words what matters most, even when my words struggle and subsequently die, they have too much life-force to contain. And when they occasionally soar? There is no better season.

Let it be said that I am no stranger to shame. Truthfully, I suspect most people aren’t strangers either. But there are those like me who often find themselves cohabitating with shame, a ballsy roommate who raids your refrigerator and refuses to give up the remote, subjecting you to a curated set of films, programs, and videos designed to bring your shame into even sharper focus. Once shame has moved in and claimed squatter’s rights, you can forget about eviction. And just when you think you might vacate and move on to a new place, you find that shame has already loaded her suitcase into the back of your car, that she has buckled herself into the passenger’s seat and reminded you: Whither you go, I will go.

I admit that much of my shame has been self-imposed, thus making me both landlord and tenant of the psychological, emotional, and spiritual house I inhabit. I’ve thought a lot about why I so willingly host shame and have often seemed powerless to evict her. Licensed clinical psychologist and author Marilyn J. Sorensen writes that [u]nlike guilt, which is the feeling of doing something wrong, shame is the feeling of being something wrong. I think this comes closest to explaining my landlord status. I give shame permission to take partial possession of my house because I fear that I am something wrong.  I’m something wrong because of what I believe, what I don’t believe, what I’ve felt, what I haven’t felt, what I’ve dreamt, what I’ve failed to dream–the list goes on. In short, there have been many times in my life when I looked at who I thought I was and found myself sorely lacking, at times enough so that I felt paralyzed by and powerless in the face of shame.

And so, given my familiarity with shame–self-imposed and otherwise–I should have some expertise navigating the current climate of shame. That’s what I thought, but I was wrong. My boat has capsized, and I’m struggling to even tread water. I’m in trouble.

After weeks of furious treading, I’ve decided that my real problem lies fundamentally in my confusion about shaming. That is, is shaming generally a necessary means to a desired end? Or is shaming rarely, if ever, a necessary means to any end? Is shaming primarily a whole group rather than individual act? Or is shaming–if used at all–generally more appropriate and effective on the individual level? Is shaming a natural and acceptable consequence of all sorts of moral and social evils? Or perhaps is shaming a natural consequence of all sorts of evils but one that shouldn’t be condoned? The bottom line: Is shaming necessary and “good” or not?

When I’ve turned to those who have studied and written about shame, I’ve discovered that–suprise, surprise–they don’t always agree. Author, speaker, and licensed social worker Brene Brown is one of these authorities. Consider her words:

—Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.

—We cannot grow when we are in shame, and we can’t use shame to change ourselves or others.

—You cannot talk about race without talking about privilege. And when people start talking about privilege, they get paralyzed by shame.

—Guilt is just as powerful, but its influence is positive, while shame’s is destructive. Shame erodes our courage and fuels disengagement. 

Brown is perhaps best known for her research on and willingness to talk openly about shame and its effects. She contends we can all agree that feeling shame is an incredibly painful experience, and that even if those who’ve shamed us apologize, the truth is that those shaming comments leave marks.

Or consider these words from Joseph Burgo who wrote “Challenging the Anti-Shame Zeitgeist” for Atlantic:

The consensus within our culture is clear: shame is a uniquely destructive force, and one to be resisted. Movie stars, educators, pop icons, psychologists, and spokespeople for the pride movements will all tell you the same thing — shame is the enemy. It drives those individuals who are different into the shadows. It causes us to hide our vulnerability, distancing us from those we love. It enforces conformity and stifles the creative or dissident individual. It kills the spirit.

Or consider the claims of Willard Gaylin, writer and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons:

—Shame and guilt are noble emotions essential in the maintenance of civilized society, and vital for the development of some of the most refined and elegant qualities of human potential.     

—But, like other aversive emotions such as fear, shame is functional to the extent that it encourages goal-directed behavior and survival. There is now substantial psychological evidence – including physiological, cross cultural, social, and evolutionary – to suggest that shame helps us to negotiate group life by alerting us to when our membership of, or status within, groups is at risk.

Or Kara Alaimo, a global public relations consultant, professor and writer for Bloomberg (2017):

But shaming can also be good for society, because it allows us to hold people and organizations responsible for bad behavior. Witness the ad Dove posted in October showing a black woman turning into a white woman with its product. The picture immediately generated lots of criticism online, and rightly so. The company apologized. Similarly, in January, activists exposed the identity of Mike Enoch, a prolific podcaster who founded the website The Right Stuff. Enoch, who peddles in horrific racism and anti-Semitism, deserved to be called out for his abuse. He was fired by his employer.

Or John Amodeo, Ph.D. and author of “The Power of Healthy Shame” (Psychology Today):

—A positive aspect of shame is that it tells us when we’ve hurt someone, when we’ve crossed a boundary that violates a person’s dignity.

—Shame grabs our attention. If we can pause and notice it rather than plow forward, we have an opportunity to correct our behavior.

—Being mindful of our shame offers an option to apologize as a way to rebuild trust.

I could go on and on quoting writers, authorities, commentators, and ordinary people who hold very different views on shame and effects on behaviors and beliefs. And I could provide even more diverse views on if and when there are conditions or situations in which we should use shame as a primary tool for change.

Before I go futher, however, I want to concede the following:

1. Our nation, like many of the world’s nations, has a history of systemic racism. Tragically, this continues.
2. Blacks deserve opportunities to thrive in safe environments, as well as laws and practices that guarantee this.
3. The institution of American law enforcement sorely needs reform, including better and more training involving deescalation strategies, increased accountability, and serious consideration and redefinition of the responsibilities of law enforcement officers.
4. As a white woman, I have privileges that many blacks do not have.
5. The right to peacefully protest has always been, and continues to be, a valuable, poweful, and legal way to affect change.

For the past few weeks, I’ve read, heard, and watched others who have argued that I should be ashamed, truly ashamed, of the fact that I am a privileged white woman. I should be ashamed of who I am because being white is the real problem, more aggregious even than what I’ve done/said or haven’t done/said. Honestly, I admit that I haven’t done enough to help end systemic racism, to change the institutions and laws that need changing, to listen and consider closely enough. And I accept guilt for this.

As a human being, however, I’m struggling with whether or not accepting shame for the skin color I was born with and can’t change, will serve as a positive catalyst for change in my own life. Right now, more than anything I feel shame’s destructive nature, how, as Brown writes, it erodes our courage and fuels disengagement. That’s why I’m furiously treading water instead of truly engaging. That’s why I feel that, at any given moment, I might just stop treading and let myself sink to the quiet depths of despair– even though I’m painfully aware that many will regard all of this treading and disengaging as even more cause for shame.

If you listen or read enough, you soon realize that there are many voices vying to be recognized. It appears to me that some of these voices matter a lot, and others, not so much, if at all. This appears to be true even within the same race–black or white. The shaming may occur even when you acknowledge a voice that matters, but you also acknowledge a voice that one group has claimed doesn’t matter. The shaming occurs when you’re not on the right side, when you don’t hold the right view, say the right things, feel the right things. And this shaming is an equal opportunity force. There’s a tsunami of shaming sweeping through every ideological camp. And for those of us who have lived with a fair amount of our own shame for years, this storm threatens to drown rather than motivate us.

I have more questions and more heartfelt concerns than answers. Still, I’m plagued with what legacies I will leave my black son and my white grandchildren. I fiercely love my son and have done what I could to help him understand that he should never be ashamed of his skin color, of who he was born to be. And I fiercely love my granddaughter and grandson. But what should I help them understand about their race? That it’s not enough to acknowledge and accept guilt for what their race has done and continues to do, that it’s not enough to be a catalyst for real systemic change in their own lives, but that for any of this to matter, they must denounce their race and embrace the shame of their whiteness? Am I to help them understand that although I want their uncle to be proud of his black heritage, they should be ashamed of their white one? If I listen to many voices today, the answer would be yes to all of the above. As I wrote in a previous post, I find that I can only weep.

In Till We Have Faces, Christian theologian and writer, C. S. Lewis writes:

“I felt ashamed.”

“But of what? Psyche, they hadn’t stripped you naked or anything?”

“No, no, Maia. Ashamed of looking like a mortal — of being a mortal.”

“But how could you help that?”

“Don’t you think the things people are most ashamed of are things they can’t help?”

This is where I am right now. Perhaps more than anything, I’m ashamed of being a mortal. And because I’m a mere mortal, I’m struggling with the notion of whether or not I should feel shame for the things I can’t help. Still, I’m hopeful that, even as a mortal–albeit a white mortal– I will soon stop treading water and have the courage and conviction to begin the slow swim towards a better somewhere. And I’m hopeful that once I get there, I will find it to be a place where my son and my grandchildren–where all mere mortals–are safe, valued, and flourishing.

End Note:

British Indian novelist Salman Rushdie wrote that [s]hame is like everything else; live with it for long enough and it becomes part of the furniture.  I’m quite confident that there will be those who will read my words here and argue that I should be ashamed for who I am or who I’m not, for what I’ve done or what I’ve failed to do. And so, I’m just as confident that I’ll soon find myself sharing a sofa and bowl of popcorn again with the roomate who has become just like another part of the furniture, a persistent and permanent fixture.

photo by Collyn Ware

On The Occasion Of My 65th Birthday
 
At the edge of the pond:
a single leaf,
a mottled mess
of green and brown and gold
lies beached upon the sand.
 
It has sailed the waters
of better days.
With chlorophyll coursing through its veins,
it once steered bravely into summer,
trolling the shoreline,
easing into deeper water until
the tides of sun and time pulled it here
to rest among the rocks.
 
I, too, am mottled and beached,
my sailing days over,
my mast graying
and spineless.
 
True, there is rest in dry-dock:
a life mostly lived, the years floated out
and returned to shore.
 
But oh, the waters of better days!
The sunny soul of them!
The greening promise of tomorrow
and tomorrow!
The taste of sweet tempests
that whip the world with abandon!
 
Let these waters rock me.
Let them roll in glorious waves that pound my final years,
oh, let them roll.

For my dad, Don Welch, whose last full measure continues to fill our lives

In Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, he writes:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain —

On Memorial Day, The New York Times printed the names of 100,000 Americans who have died from the coronavirus. Like any memorial–in stone or in print–this full page of printed names should give us pause, should convict us to live better and more fully so that those who died will not have done so in vain. On battlefields, in neighborhoods and workplaces, in refugee camps, ICU units, and emergency rooms, there have been, and will continue to be, those who give their last full measures of devotion to causes, to faith, friends and loved ones, to principles and ideas. And there are those who pledge to take increased devotion to that cause for which these individuals gave the last full measure of devotion. On our deathbeds, most of us hope that the great measuring cup of our lives is filled to the brim with the best of us. We hope that our last full measures will be legacy-worthy, that our deaths will not go unnoticed, that we will continue to live in and through others.

What is the size of a significant death? This is a question my father wrote in his 1997 journal, and what a question it is. Isn’t every death significant and, therefore, large? I think most of us would answer yes and yes. But I also suspect that most of us would concede that some deaths are truly immeasurable and perhaps even more than significant. Identifying the impact of such deaths in no way diminshes the impact of any and all deaths. But there are some deaths that make unique and sizeable marks on the world.

Today would have been my father’s 88th birthday, an occasion on which we traditonally bestowed him with new sports shirts, cartons of malted milk balls, sundry office and racing pigeon accessories. Four years ago, his birthday marked the beginning of his last weeks. When he came home from the hospital to die, these precious weeks were filled with family, friends, colleagues, and students who came to pay their respect and sit–one last time–beside the man who had changed their lives.

Humbled is altogether an inadequate word to describe how I felt as I listened in on these final conversations. My dad’s memory was sharp until the day he died, his words as articulate and artful as ever. I watched how his visitors soaked them all in, desperate to fill themselves with as much of him as they could. I watched how they agonized over leaving, how the trip from his hospital bed to our front door seemed all too short and woefully wrong. I saw tears, heard the tremors of grief bubble in their throats, felt the palpable longing to simply hold on. And hour after hour, it broke my heart.

For we all understood the significance of his impending death. Even today, I find myself thinking If only I had just one hour–just one more hour–there are so many questions I want to ask, so many things I want to say . . . But I suspect that are so many others who have had similar longings, for my father was not just my mentor and teacher but the mentor and teacher to thousands all over the world. One of his friends and former students has been passionately working on a website dedicated to bringing Don Welch to the world. Two former students edited and published his final collection of poetry, and another is currently working on a video project to feature my dad’s life and work . Several friends and colleagues host an annual Don Welch educational conference to help bring my dad’s poetry into more K-12 classrooms. And former students, now teachers, are filling their classrooms with my father’s voice. What is the size of his death? Clearly, this has yet to be determined, for the cup of his life and work has only just begun to run over.

In my dad’s journal, he quoted one of his colleagues and best friends, David Rozema:

You could not, in the language of propositions, say what makes a poem a poem.  A great poem simply is.  It shows itself.  . . . You could not, in the language of propositions, say what makes a man’s life great or worthwhile.  A great man simply is.  He shows himself. 

Dave knew my father well, and his words here are so fitting. This is my dad exactly. A man who simply was, who showed himself in love, in wisdom and in art. A man who lived and wrote up, claiming a heroic voice and spirit in a flat and cynical world.

A book of collected poems:  It is not often you can fit your life’s work into one hand (Don Welch). Hours before he died, my dad received the final draft of his collected poems, Homing. As I handed him the book draft, my mother and I looked on as he held much of what he considered his life’s best work in his hands. But as much as this collection truly represented his best work, it could never fully represent Don Welch, the husband, father, teacher, colleague, and friend. This Don Welch could never be contained within the covers of a book, even a book of his finest poetry.

In his journal, I discovered an epitaph my dad had written for himself 19 years before his death:

 Epitaph
 Think of all those great,
 below, above;
 then remember who I loved.

My dad understood that remembering who he loved was, indeed, a truer measure of his life than anything he’d written. And he loved well. In reading letters he’d writen my mother in the early years of their marriage, I discovered a man who loved his wife with a passion and devotion that took my breath away. This was a love story for the ages, a love story that spilled over and through all the letters and poems he wrote for my mom and into the lives of his children, friends, and students. Above all, his last full measure of devotion was love.

He was a good man.  He went into the dirt, but not out of this world. I’m confident that when my dad wrote these words, he wasn’t writing about himself. And yet, how aptly they describe him. He left behind volumes of exceptional poetry, speeches, essays, and letters, a wife and sister, daughters and son, a parcel of grand and great-grandchildren, and a host of students, colleagues, and readers. And all testify to the fact that he remains gloriously in, not out of this world. And that he was a good man–a very good man.

In response to the deaths of great individuals, Abraham Lincoln advised that we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. As a writer and teacher of great literature, it’s no surprise that my dad wrote that there was no greater inheritance than language. I hope to live out my days with an increased devotion to the language I’ve inherited from my father. And a devotion to love. Language and love–what a bountiful and eternal last full measure.

The author of a book is a voice with a new body. Don Welch