LIT-urgy (Almost) Daily: October 11

Craft advice today from Ursula K. LeGuin’s pithy No Time to Spare: Art is not a horse race. Literature is not the Olympics. The hell with the Great American Novel. We all have the great novels we need right now—and right now som man or woman is writing a new one we won’t know we needed till we read it.

Amen, beautiful sister-in-the-spirit, Dame Ursula. This also applies to the articles I’ve seen recently about Maneskin being the last rock band. WTF? Plenty of kids in 7th grade right now, somewhere out here on the prairie, or up on the plains, or in the glass-lands of Atlanta, Chicago, and Detroit are picking up guitars and drums and playing in garages. Maneskin is the last rock band? Get out. Great novels, poems, rock bands, and sculpture appear when we need them. Thanks be to Dionysus.

LIT-urgy from November 29, 2022

Ah. Advent. Finally. Waiting to wait is over and a new LITurgical year begins! Where better than to begin with Rilke’s Book of Hours: The Book of Pilgrimage (translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy). Advent. Spirit. Come.

I would rather sense you

as the earth senses you.

In my ripening

ripens

what you are.

LITurgy Daily for Tuesday, May 17: Kwame Dawes' "Talk"--For August Wilson

From the new and much-needed anthology, Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice (Cave Moon Press, 2022). I’m in the process of reviewing this timely and potent collection of poems and in the midst of this pandemic of racism in our country Dawes’ words—directed at America’s Shakespeare, August Wilson—speak beauty to violence.

“You, August, have carried in your belly/every song of affront your characters/have spoken, and maybe you waited too long to howl against the night,/but each evening on some wooden/stage, these men and women/learn to sing songs lost for centuries,/learn the healing of talk, the calming/of quarrel, the music of contention,/and in this cacophonic chorus,/we find the ritual of living.”

That stanza doesn’t even need unpacking. Every Black American in this country has a song lost when an angry white man silences it. We will find the ritual in living—again—after this recent attack on the sacredness of human life. Poetry, song, art, and story heal. Dawes, earlier in the poem, asks, “who will let loose/a river of lament,/find the howl of the spirit…” May we somehow come together in the river of lament.

LITurgy: Tuesday, May 3

Reading: from Ellen Bass’s “Moth Orchids” in her collection Like a Beggar: “Here they float: eleven creamy moths, eleven white egrets/suspended in flight, eleven babies in satin bonnets,/eleven brides stiff in lace, the waxy pools/of eleven white candles, eleven planets/burning in space.”

My son gave me a white moth orchid last year for Mother’s Day. As we approach this Mother’s Day, that same orchid has poured forth eleven new white blooms this year. They started sometime in March. One by one. As of this week, there are eleven white blooms, like “white fans glistening,” a reminder of my boys. A miracle that a) I even have children, and b) that this Mother’s Day orchid bloomed a second time. Orchids ain’t easy.

I am usually sad on Mother’s Day. I am grateful of my two wonderful and healthy boys, but I am reminded of my mother who has passed, the grandmothers I miss, and the miscarriage I had one Mother’s Day weekend many moons ago.

I have beautiful sons. Smart, in the fruit of their blossoming into men. I have eleven gleaming white blossoms with magenta centers smiling in their showy meringue. Heavy hearts can still be grateful.

Offering: Stare at a flower. One of the redbuds or dogwood blossoms or a sneaky azalea. Maybe you’ve got a crocus nearby or wild violets. Stare at one. Sit with it. In silence. In gratitude. It will come again.

LITurgy for Monday, May 2--Rilke's "Book of Hours"

Reading from “Ich glaube an Alles noch nie Gesagte:” I believe in all that has never yet been spoken./I want to free what waits within me/so that what no one has dared to wish for/may for once spring clear/without my contriving.” (translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy).

Reflection: I was searching for a “May” quote but I only ran across things I haven’t actually read. I don’t want to turn this into just quotes for quotes sake. What is it about the random quote or aphorism that seems annoying? I’ll work that out later. No. All readings and reflections in this LITurgy must come from full works that I’ve read and studied or am in the process of studying.

That idea of “freeing what waits within us” is transformational. I don’t generally like to spend much time on the self-help gurus, but one of those, Dr. Wayne Dyer, said something in one of his PBS fundraising shows that has stuck with me since some time in late 90’s or early 2000’s. He wanted to inspire people “not to die with your art still in you.” My mother died with her art in her. Stifled and burdened by years of patriarchal control and dead-end jobs, she only tapped into her enormous talent for drawing and painting in short bursts. At the end of her life, there were no more bursts and she died with her art in her at the very young age of 53. I will forever carry with me a heavy heart that I couldn’t help her free what waited within her. As an only child, it still hurts every day and I carry that sadness alone.

But may I free what waits within me. Today, choose one hour of the day to let loose the artistic within you. If you’re working on a project, go deep. Turn the screens off. Walk with your project in the woods or on the street. If you, like me, are often juggling too many projects, a job, family, pets, and laundry, find ten minutes to free some image from deep inside you. Don’t edit. Don’t contrive. Just free it. Have a beautiful May 2nd.

LITurgy for Saturday, April 30:

Reading from Carl Sandburg’s “Clocks”: “Here is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a murder or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes. A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching booze eat out the insides of the man of the house; it has seen five hopes go in five years: one woman, one child, and three dreams.”

Reflection: The point of LITurgy Daily is to read the hours of the day as just what they are: hours. There is a rich heritage of stopping and praying or writing or singing or pondering the hours of the day from many spiritual traditions and practices. I have reflected on the hours of the day for many years using texts inherited from ancient Catholic monastics. It is a beautiful way to use texts to both find meaning in each distinct hour of the day and to produce meaning out of each of those hours. Today, religious texts may not impact readers as much as texts from our inherited literary tradition. I thought it would be a fun writing practice, and reading practice, to create an ongoing “Liturgy of the Hours” with a variety of literary texts. See what it feels like to read and reflect on snippets of poetry, prose, and drama throughout the day. Eventually, I hope to have a complete collection for each of the traditional “seven sacred pauses” celebrated over the century. These readings and reflections are for me. They’re for you. They’re a way to use the lens of the sacred as a tool to dive deeper into artists’ texts.

At half-past seven, in Sandburg’s imaginative language, we might encounter a wedding, a funeral, or a picnic. At any hour, a child is born, a mother dies, a grandfather bakes bread, and the man of the house has his insides eaten out. Possibility and paradox.

Writing Prompt: Pick an hour today. Maybe it’s 2:30. What is happening where you are at 2:30? What does it smell like? What are its sounds? Is this a poem? A scene for a story you’re writing? Is this one hour in a lifetime of memoir?

LITurgy for Thursday morning, April 28th: Lose Something Today

Reading: from Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art:” Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Bishop’s poem can be found in many places, including your bookshelf, but it is also over at the Poetry Foundation.

Reflection: The hour badly spent. I’ve felt that. The heaviness of hours lost when I know I should have been writing or cooking or working. Can I accept the fluster? The time spent searching for lost keys or that blasted cell phone?

What is an hour badly spent?

Offering: May you accept a lost hour. May it be filled with a still small voice of encouragement instead of self-critique.

Today's LITurgy Reflection: From Emily Carr in the May/June 2022 Issue of *The American Poetry Review.*

Reading: “This poetry pep talk/poetics essay/spell poem is brought to you by the High Priestess, the Hermit, Judgment, and Justice and is part of a larger project of confusing poetics and living, living and magic, magic, and poetics.”

Reflection: As a seeker who mixes and matches insights from Celtic spirituality, Tarot inspiration, traditional Catholic mishmash, and Buddhist wisdom, Carr’s essay/spell/poem’s true hybridity digs deep, beneath consciousness, to Pure Land dimension for writers.

Reading: “Because you are reading a poetics/essay/spell poem, I believe you are capable of maintaining a suspension of disbelief. I believe you, too, know that words are magic. Maybe you have forgotten how to spin magic with your words, and you want to remember. Maybe you already remember how to spin magic with your words, and you want to play, with consequence. Either way: come play with me. And then, by all means, make up your own rules for the game..”—Emily Carr, APR, May/June 2022.

Offering: May the High Priestess, the Emperor, the Sun, and Moon, and Stars grant a free-flowing river of words.

Bard Daily: Bard Inspiration of the Day

Finding Shakespeare in All Things:

On HBO’s Succession: Jeremy Strong’s Kendall Roy is more Henry V or Regan in King Lear? The show is clearly based on Shakespeare’s King Lear, with a dottering old man dividing his kingdom up among his back-stabbing kids. But it’s also a Shakespearean history play, with Kendall Roy being one of the more compelling figures on television. This is what keeps me up at night.

Review: Chicago's Court Theatre Production of Shakespeare's Othello--on a screen near you!

I have become a serious streaming theatre addict. I’d say I can stop anytime but I’d be lying. I won’t bore you here with my personal journey to streaming theatre, including the spectacular variety of audio theatre in the wide world of podcasts, because I don’t want to waste any time getting you to the ticket information for Chicago’s Court Theatre production of The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice. GET STREAMING TICKET INFORMATION HERE.

Led by the resplendent Kelvin Roston Jr’s deep dive into the title role, this adept ensemble moves with musicality and fluidity, utilizing every inch of the theatre to bring this story of a Venetian outsider, a pernicious villain, and a pesky handkerchief to life. The multi-level urban scaffolding surrounds the audience, who sit on the space of the stage in swivel chairs, masked and constantly moving to experience the action all around them. I’d much rather be in one of those sold-out swivel chairs, but the camera crew has captured this live production brilliantly. Co-directors Charles Newell and Gabrielle Randle-Bent don’t allow for an ounce of fat on this 100-minute intermissionless production which includes a stunning nuptial dance sequence haunted by the dark complexity of Timothy Edward Kane’s stalwart Iago. Aetherial Amanda Drinkall’s Desdemona, clad in a white satin gown, is balanced to perfection by Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel’s black satin-gowned Emilia. The active intimacy of Sheldon Brown’s Cassio and Darren Patin’s gorgeous drag queen Bianca is a show-stopping highlight.

As mesmerizing as the ensemble is, the set, perhaps, is the real star of the show. Lit and designed by Keith Parham and John Culbert, the cast moves continually up and down the set and through the rows of tarp-covered audience seats, a reminder of our pandemic world, but also a comment on the harshness of the play’s inevitable tragic conclusion. Every minute of the play grips the audience and is worth the proverbial price of admission. Get your tickets before December 5th to experience this stunning rendering of Shakespeare’s classic tale of jealousy and revenge.

While nothing takes the place of live theatre or music, paying for individual streaming plays or subscribing to organizations like National Theatre Live @ Home can scratch the itch for live theatre while also supporting the writers, actors, directors, designers, and musicians we desperately need when we’re quarantined or otherwise homebound. I didn’t get a review out fast enough to support the American Players Theatre’s five-actor romp through Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew (it was dazzling—sorry you missed it). But keep an eye out for more streaming options from this Spring Green, Wisconsin-based theatre. Next up for APT is the holiday classic, Gift of the Magi. And stay tuned for my upcoming year-end wrap-up of the best in streaming theatre. For now, drop what you’re doing, scroll back to the top, and get your tickets now for Chicago’s Court Theatre production of Shakespeare’s Othello.