HerStory Steps Into the Ring

by Jane Tawel

HerStory Steps Into the Ring

By Jane Tawel

May 13, 2021

And someone said that “History isn’t the story that actually happened, you know.”

“History is the story of what they want to believe.”

And all I could manage to mumble was,

“there will be wars and the rumors of wars”.

*

The newspapers had started to look almost cheery in my country;

But then I remembered that though

the civil warmongers on my shores,

had made their peace by making new confederate flags,

flags that appeared to me,

seen from the distance of my dismay,

all blackened and borrowed.

Yes, even though we had returned to the

 more boring news cycles

of mass murders, suicides and food lines,

there was always tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

creeping like creepy-crawlers into this petty place,

 helping my own country keep pace

with the rest

of the world’s civil unrest.

*

“We reign!  We reign!” the “they” in They cry,

with open mouths like empty wells,

and the deserted dry bones of accumulated wealth

feed by the waters of Babylon;

while the Desert Fathers and Mothers

weep with great heaves, weep without tears

and pray for rain.

*

Besides, I am a world-citizen, now,

pledging my allegiance

to the one cause that unifies;

the more, more, more that divides our teams into

those who have and those who have not.

“One Amazon under God,

destroying The Amazon, forsaken by Him”.

*

Yes, I too have my flag to fly,

and it is the flag of der Weltschmerz.

Oh, how I dare to be world-weary!–

with so many shoes sitting footless in my closet,

and so many feet walking shoeless

across the planet’s scorn.

Yes, my empathy and suffering in my knowledge,

is a trick worthy of a Houdini –

“Watch me! Get your cell phones out!

Observe the amazing magic tricks,

 as The Magician of Lassitude

magically frees herself

of the chains of my cognizance surrounding me!

My assisting soul has sawn

me in halves

and placed me in the locked

Box of Empathy. But Watch!

Watch as I extricate all thoughts and feelings

from the Prison of  My Pathos;

and Voila! I appear in this other

box across the stage of my existence,

in The Casket of Ennui.

(The trick is in the hidden trapdoor of absolute apathy.)

Abracadabra! Ta-Da!”

Today’s show is over, and I can sleep

in the safety of knowledge well-squandered.

*

I have joined the fantasy world-league

of those who “know” and vacillate between

hand-holding and hand-wringing.

I take a knee before

the world-weariness

of too much information,

too much knowledge,

not enough wisdom.

Thanks, in part, to the ridiculous efficiency and speed

 of the WorldWideWeb,

I have the attention span of

 a cursor that merely hovers.

And yet, daily the planet spinning

breaks my heart.

It breaks my heart, “Oh bless their little hearts!”

*

Yes, the WORLD is writ large in capital letters

and it strains and hurts my eyes,

but mostly strains and hurts what seems to be left of my heart.

I have spent the better part of my wholeness

 reading and reading

 and watching and watching;

and as The World becomes My World;

as history becomes her-story—

I am, now and then, and here and there,

putting the words down, and laying them aside,

and I am becoming.

*

I am becoming a part of his-story.

I am becoming an act-er in her-story.

I become a little Palestinian child,

a teenager from Honduras,

a Black man from Minneapolis,

a veiled woman in Afghanistan.

I am

afraid, imprisoned, beaten, and hungry.

I am the victim.

I am also the perpetrator,

afraid, imprisoned, broken, insatiable.

In this acceptance of my part in The Story,

I am becoming.

*

But growing up to be

a human being

is not easy.

And the bombs and the guns

and the guns and the bombs

keep creating zombies in us,

and we mistake our need for weapons

of words and wars

for our fears of inattention and unaffection.

*

In her-story,

I become a refugee from my own life,

and all of me, All of Us cry-out:

 “Who will write our history?

 Who will remember us?”

*

But enough about them,

Let’s get back to talking about Me.

*

Suffering alongside is a spectator sport

and I fail spectacularly at it.

I am a cheerleader for a team of

Me, Myself and I.

And therefore, the boos and hurrahs,

are equally earned by the winning and losing sides.

*

The great Operas of Life,

the dramas of the world, have been condensed

into Instagrams–

here today, gone tomorrow–

a script of just the headlines,

played by a cast of emojis.

*

And as the notes of the last aria are heard

by the player of one, myself,

and the audience of one, myself,

 the sound and fury of My World

falls on zombie ears,

 in the raped forests

and no one hears,

and there are soon no more sticks

to add to the fire.

*

I have become a sort of big brained monster,

All brain and mouth,

with no feet and hands;

not so much terrifying

for what can be sensed inside me,

but terrified of myself,

and made senseless

by what is not,

not within me.

*

I am like a desiccated tree,

cut down after history’s prime.

Nothing useful really,

no lean, strong limbs growing outward

just a trunk-ated, corpulent, pulp fiction.

I could have been hewed-down

and made into someone’s cross,

but I would have had to give up

so much of my own life-story,

that I thought it best to let others

 bear the cross to bare the myth.

*

I am become a wealthy mirage

built blithely in an arid place.

I steal my living water from

those who can’t afford to say no.

Nothing really Real can grow here.

Nothing is within me that can reach higher,

reach lower,

move along the ground,

or go forth and touch.

*

I am evolved into

 a large, rather flaccid, but very intelligent worm,

writhing in the mud

of so much awareness.

*

But I, worm-like,

somehow….

even with the brain of an invertebrate,

and the heartlessness of a jelly fish,

and the soullessness of a First World Zombie….

slight miracle though it may be–

I, a worm,

still have enough offered grace

from Mother Earth;

and enough offered love

from Father-Creator;

and within me there is still

a small faint pulse coursing through me,

and written upon the faint stirrings of my soul,

lives The Message from and Messiah of the Divine.

*

And the worms

long for the sweet rains to come.

No one gets to own or package the rain,

Not even American Amazonians.

*

*

In this precious last moment,

the last of its kind,

the whole world breathes

 in universal prayer

for rain.

“Come rains, that flow, freely on all.

Come Living Water, that frees every soul.

Come Holy Spirit, the Answer to Why.

Come rain, Come shine, for even a worm like I.”

*

“I Pledge Allegiance to the Planet,

One Planet Under God”.

And I pray.

I pray to the God of the World,

Whose love falls on the good and the evil,

and Whose grace

rains down from a Loving Hand.

“Dear God, please make me care.”

*

I pray for what I cannot see,

for waters to fall and rise,

cleansing and reviving;

flooding history again,

creating a need for an ark.

“And I know you said You wouldn’t do it again,

but please, Great Spirit, we need more rainbows”.

*

Without first death,

there is no life.

May my thirst for myself

dry up and die,

So that I may partake

in my soul’s parching,

and in the great need

and the greater need for sharing

and giving of Living Water.

May I learn to wash the dirty feet

and walk alongside in others’ footsteps

In the steps of her-story,

arm in arm with his-story,

on the tide of the rising action

and falling action

of your-story, and mine.

Let us stop marching and begin The Great Dance.

*

Lover of Our Souls,

Create in us new hearts

to live each others’ stories

in truth and love.

Let us bow our heads,

and lift our faces

to the Heavens and hope for rain,

and then stop talking and get to work;

sowing and planting,

gathering water and wheat,

rice and beans

and leaves and flowers;

 gleaning

with plenty to share,

provisions for all,

Living Water by the bucketfuls,

given from hearts, not brains,

given with love, not the fears of not enough;

shared with the Wisdom,

hoped for in The Past, and

 passed down from Our Future.

*

Let us change Earth’s Story’s end,

not hoarding the histrionics of a history

we have re-written for our own benefit

but for A Story we never fully understand,

but believe in and try to live out  anyway.

*

Let us change the ending of our World’s Story,

re-created and re-crafted

by open hands reached out;

hands of mercy and grace,

shedding tears and giving blood,

dancing in circles, and holding each other,

raising voices in psalms of ascension.

*

Let us make history

not in wars but in service,

not in greed but in meeting need,

not in hatred, but in love,

not in destruction, but in creation,

not in the lies worthy of our news,

but in the truth worthy of our legacy.

*

God, let me lift my face from my world’s news

from my worm’s viewpoint

from the ground to the Heavens.

Lift my face to get a glimpse

of what You see,

to the World’s Newness,

the World’s Treasure,

sought, not found,

 like the best kind of secret

hidden in Divine Presence.

*

Creator, thank you for another day,

to feel the sun on my face,

and wait in hope

for the rain to fall upon the Earth,

rain for even a worm like I.

*

© Jane Tawel 2021

NOTE: The metaphor of being a worm is not for everyone. There are as indicated in the above musing, far too many people who are made to feel like they are nothing but “worker-worms”, so to speak. But the metaphor of being a worm was helpful for me. It comes perhaps originally from an old hymn that I used to sing in the churches of the Midwest where I grew up and began to grow into what I hope is an ever evolving faith and worldview.  I want to become more. Well, that is it, I guess, just “more”.

The following words to the hymn by Isaac Watts called out to me today from the hallows of history. Today –What and Who calls out to you, like a Parent to Her child, asking:

“Will you represent?”

Alas and Did My Savior Bleed, by Isaac Watts (c. 1707)

Alas, and did my Savior bleed
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?

Was it for sins that I had done
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity, grace unknown
And love beyond degree.

My God, why would You shed Your blood
So pure and undefiled
To make a sinful one like me
Your chosen, precious child?

Well might the sun in darkness hide
And shut His glories in
When Christ, the mighty Maker, died
For man, the creature’s, sin.

Thus might I hide my blushing face
While His dear cross appears
Dissolve my heart in thankfulness
And melt my eyes to tears.

My God, why would You shed Your blood
So pure and undefiled
To make a sinful one like me
Your chosen, precious child?

(c) Hymn by Isaac Watts

(c) Jane Tawel 2021