Filed under: 2025 Advent Tree | Tags: advent, Art of the Day, Faith, Hindman Settlement School, Hope, Ink, LGBTQ, Writing
My Advent Tree this year is dedicated to my writer friends and teachers. I am so grateful for all the light you shine in the darkness.
In the end, I decided I would never again be the scared boy in my story.
-Jonathan Corcoran
I did not know Jon or his work until I found myself in his creative nonfiction workshop at the Hindman Settlement School in the summer of 2024. His memoir No Son of Mine had just been released. I was nervous about my work that summer- I’d had a horrible year of being sicker longer than I ever experienced. I was exhausted, depressed, my resistance was very low and I just could not get well that year. That week was magical, the first time the sun came out for me in a long time. Jon is a fantastic teacher- kind, insightful and inspiring. He makes everyone feel welcome and listened to, you just want to hang out with him. His one-on-one conference with me was one of the most healing things I’ve experienced. I am profoundly grateful for his encouragement and understand, and his insight into what I might do with my disjointed creative life. His memoir is very powerful, and very important for those who experience the devastating alienation from their families because of their sexual orientation. And it is important for others to come to some understanding of just how devastating that is. His short story collection Rope Swing is a delight. He has just finished a novel that I am looking forward to very much.
https://jonathancorcoranwrites.com/
Filed under: 2025 Advent Tree | Tags: advent, Advent Season, Art of the Day, Faith, Hindman Settlement School, Hope, Ink, poetry, Writing
The year began with nothing but dread and did not disappoint. Each day has brought fresh blows. So much of what I believed about my country and the people in it has been washed away. So many harmed, in danger, belittled and silenced. I have felt hopeless and powerless. In the spring of 2025, my 24 year old daughter suffered a cryptogenic stroke, suddenly unable to feel anything on her entire right side, unable to find words or use them. She and I live alone together. I was able to get her to the ER at 5:30 am on a Monday morning, marking the beginning of many weeks in the hospital followed by months in rehab. She is doing well now, still in recovery, trying to regain what she has lost. Maybe she will. She has come a long way. It has been a challenge keeping my head above water in this constant inundation. Knowing that I am not alone in this does help. It also hurts too.
Reading and writing and making art have been so important this year. My communities have been even more important- my family, friends, the school and church where I work, and my writing community. Lord I am rich in a writing community. Being with them in workshops and retreats, reading their words when I am alone, sharing my words with them for advice- all of this has been a lifeboat for me. This year’s advent calendar is a celebration of them. Each day is a line or two from their work coupled with the ink of the day from the delicious Inkvent calendar I splurged on from Diamine Ink. I make an ornament with these words and hang them on my Advent Tree. I will make a post each day about their work and share where you might find more. I have so many writing friends and acquaintances that I will not be able to highlight them all in one Advent season, which grieves me. All of us are connected through the Hindman Settlement School. It is where we met, where we meet, where we teach each other and share our work. What a blessing.
Advent is my favorite time of year, a time to contemplate the darkness and the returning of the light. It is a hopeful time. Hope is what I need. Gratitude is what I have. Thank you friends for all your work and the light you bring into the world.
December 1 Celestial Skies
The terrible stars sometimes fall,
Annie Woodford
but we are asleep in the valley,
we are asleep in each other’s arms.
These lines are from the poem “Wilkes County Posada” by Annie Woodford. This poem gutted me when I read it last month in her most recent collection “Peasant” published by Pulley Press. It’s an astonishing portrait of what our immigrant neighbors are enduring, people we depend on in so many ways that we are completely ignorant of. People we vilify, imprison and deport without dignity or due process. It is absolutely the perfect beginning to the Advent season. I got the book from her when I saw her at the Appalachian Writers Workshop at Hindman Settlement School this summer. Annie is a poet from North Carolina who is quiet, unassuming and very modest. When you open her books, fierce love leaps off the page and roots you to our earth. I could not put it down. She has an excellent website where you can find out more about her and her work. “Peasant” is my favorite poetry collection of the year so far, and the year is almost over…
https://www.anniewoodfordpoet.com/
https://www.pulleypress.com/peasant
Filed under: Surviving the MAGA reign | Tags: 2024 Presidential Election, Democracy, Dorothy Allison, Faith, inspiration, life, Making art in evil times, mental health, Surviving the MAGA reign, Writing
Sunday Morning. I think it is November 10
I’ve stopped listening to the news on the radio, my morning company for decades. I’ve turned off Apple news notifications on my phone except for weather – no BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Apple News. None. I’ve called on my prodigious superpowers of living in denial and compartmentalization in order to function. I’ve fixed my attention on others, looking for the goodness and finding it. I’m looking at this little spot right here, the moment I am in- the very thin line where the sea meets the shore. If I look too far out to sea, panic rises up and I am paralyzed by it. There were moments, long moments, on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning that I thought I might be having a coronary event and truly may have been. It took all my powers election night to pull myself back from the edge- turning everything off, putting good smells in the air, lighting my bedroom ceiling with stars, turning on the soundscape of the Milky Way and crickets (shout out here to the Calm app working on overtime these days), taking melatonin, putting lavender magnesium rub on my temples, chest, belly and feet, and breathing. Counting the breaths. Slowing them. Deepening them until I could sleep. It worked. But then there was the morning.
How am I to get through the coming years? Complete disengagement is not possible, not as someone dedicated to bringing whatever goodness I can to the world. I cannot betray myself. But neither can I be a force for good if I am paralyzed by anxiety or made evil with fury at my fellow citizens. I must face that the times are calling on me to be an alchemist. I must work harder than I have ever worked to transform heartbreak, fear and fury into Love. I must take care of myself, put my oxygen mask on first. I must love my life and the lives of others with everything I have. Loving others does mean engaging in the politics of our time, engaging in society. This is hard for me, I am wired to withdraw and disappear when I am hurt. I am wired not to admit I am in pain, not to even consider that I might need help. I’ve already been in hiding for years, so coming into the light feeling skinless will require courage and faith that I’m not sure I have. Guess I’ll find out. A plan helps. Being my own gatekeeper, helps. Limiting social media and the news, being very very careful not to feed the furious fires has given me some peace this week. Writing helps. Seeing my fellow teachers and colleagues dressed in black, walking like the undead this week has helped. I am not alone in my world. I have to find a way forward. I have to somehow engage in the struggle.
The great Dorothy Allison passed this last week. She spoke for so many who have been silenced, who believed they had no voice.
“We have lost the imagination for what our real lives have been or continue to be, what happens when we go home and close the door on the outside world. Since so many would like us to never mention anything unsettling anyway, the impulse to be quiet, the impulse to deny and pretend, becomes very strong. But the artist knows all about that impulse. The artist knows that it must be resisted. Art is not meant to be polite, secret, coded, or timid. Art is the sphere in which that impulse to hide and lie is the most dangerous. In art, transgression is holy, revelation a sacrament, and pursuing one’s personal truth the only sure validation.”
Dorothy Allison, 1949-2024
Filed under: Faith, Surviving the MAGA reign, Teaching | Tags: 2024 Presidential Election, Abide No Hatred, Democracy, Faith, Hope, inspiration, Kamala Harris, poetry, Surviving Trump, Writing
November 6. I can’t even write words. I am absolutely destroyed. Panic is pummeling my poor heart, it can’t keep its own rhythm. The best I can do is remember to breathe. All day long. I will breathe.
November 7 Instead I will write of 7th grader Coleman checking to see if I’m alright, his kind smile in the hall. I will write about the smell of rain after a long time without it. Of the cookbook I pre-ordered months ago and that was just delivered last night “Comfort Bakes”, just when I needed it. I will write of the middle school Duloc performers in the all-school musical Shrek and how they killed it in rehearsal, how on task they were and how much they remembered from their last rehearsal over a week ago. How much they have grown in so short a time. I will write of how 5th grade Liam managed to cut his clothes to actual ribbons while making shadow puppets in drama class without anyone seeing until too late and how his mother, when told, just smiled and shook her head ‘I’m not surprised. He’s unmedicated today because we ran out last night’. I will write of the positive energy, vision and material help of Ash, my parent volunteer costume coordinator who is moving mountains for the 117 costumes we need for Shrek. I will write of how astonishing it is to have so much help from so many different quarters, All I had to do was ask, all I had to do was say what I needed. I will write of my daughter’s tears, and her friend Anna’s and those of my very dear and thoughtful high school drama students- I find hope in their tears, knowing that their fears, sorrow and anger will become action in time. I will write of how much better I feel not having news alerts ping through constantly on my phone. I can be in control of what I read, listen to, react to. I can remember to breathe. I can be joyful, sitting on the front porch of the school telling stories to the 6th graders turning cartwheels as they wait to be picked up from rehearsal.
I will gather sweetness. I will savor it. It’s all I can do this day.
I tell you: Suns exist.
Filed under: Faith, memory memorabilia re-membering, Teaching | Tags: Faith, Jesus, spirituality, Unitarian Universalism
Dear Reverend,
Not for the first time have I come out of a worship planning meeting troubled and puzzled. I’ve been thinking about it for days now and need to put some thoughts down on paper so I can look at them and share them with you, if you don’t mind. What I am troubled by is the dismissive and even belittling tone of the comments made by worship ministry members about the Christian tradition, specifically Easter and Christmas Eve Vespers. I have heard these remarks before, in other meetings and in the halls, often accompanied by a knowing laugh as if to say ‘Yes, well, we know better than to believe in all that’ and I have to say it hurts my heart and makes me sad. I don’t believe those remarks are consciously made to make anyone feel bad, but that’s just it, isn’t it? Isn’t this an inclusive community, isn’t the Unitarian church consciously welcoming everyone? All faiths and beliefs and lack of beliefs are welcome here, except those who follow the teachings of Jesus? I am puzzled. Remarks made by the Worship Ministry on Wednesday seemed to suggest that the inclusion of the Gospel stories at Vespers is done only to placate those who ought to know better and that’s plenty of Jesus for the whole year. It is an attitude of superiority that makes me very uncomfortable.
At the same time, I am grateful for the discomfort because it leads me to reflect on my own beliefs and I am surprised at my own warmth of feeling for Jesus and his teachings. I have been a spiritual seeker since I was a child, first embracing the teachings of Jesus in an almost progressive Presbyterian church. I went on to absorb lots of teachings from varying faith traditions, making it a point to attend different services whenever I could- from Pentcostal revivals in Eastern Kentucky to Sikh Gurdwaras in New Mexico. I’ve studied Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism and Sikhism academically as well as spiritually. In my mid-fifties now, I suppose I’m more of a Sikh than anything (the word even means ‘seeker’), I embrace Guru Nanak’s teaching that all rivers lead to the ocean. Every morning before dawn, I practice my sadhana with Kundalini yoga and meditations with Sikh prayers. But I also observe Christian liturgical holidays and have found the richness of biblical scripture to be an endless source of reflection and inspiration.
I also understand the frustration many people feel with the seeming nonsense of a lot of Christian churches- the holding on to the ancient patriarchal language and dogma, the outrageously ornate and cryptic masses, the ‘my way or the highway’ road to salvation, the unforgivable use of cherry-picked scripture to judge and condemn others. Every time I attend a Catholic mass and the priest, all decked out in gilded glory, ponces over to the golden garage to get out the host to share exclusively with Catholics in good standing, it takes everything I’ve got not to stand and shout with my finger in the air “I protest!” I feel so very angry. And I cannot help imagining the dismay of Jesus if he were to walk into such a spectacle. I imagine him saying ‘This isn’t what I meant at all’. But see, maybe I’m guilty of fashioning Jesus in my own image just as others do. I could be totally wrong about what he meant when he broke bread with his friends the night before his betrayal. Whatever he may have meant, the communion I shared with my church in Chicago, the small but mighty Wellington Avenue United Church of Christ, was so powerful, so dear, so transformative that I crave it still and judge other communions by its standard.
I understand having opinions about the way the image and the words of Jesus have been used and abused over the centuries. I certainly have my own. I also have my own relationship to his image and words. To me, he was one of the ultimate teachers, a powerful yogi, so connected to the source of spirit that others were healed simply by being in his presence. He was a rebel. He embraced those who were outcast and considered unclean, not just with his words but with his body. He was a person of action, he made his words manifest. Love one another. Don’t judge each other. Don’t tolerate hypocrites and those who profit off the needs of others. Like a great work of art, his life and death raise far more questions than they answer. That’s why I like observing the liturgical year, taking time to ponder these things over and over, holding them up in the light to look at them from a new stage in my life. Take Easter Sunday. I never could reconcile the Easter bunny with the betrayal, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. It’s an awkward fit, this trying to piggyback the ancient church’s idea of what Jesus’s death meant on top of the even more ancient pagan rites of spring. Frankly, I like thinking about them both. It’s easy to embrace the pagan rites- thank you Earth! Not so easy to stomach the insistence of certain Christian churches that ‘Jesus died for your sins, so either you’re scott-free or you owe Him, depending on how we feel about you’. Of course, it’s not so simplistic, it’s a huge question to ponder. What did he die for? One way I have thought about it is that he died because of the sins of those around him. He allowed it to happen, did not run away from it. He used his own suffering, his own life, to expose those sins for what they were. Jesus, the ultimate performance artist. For me the greatest miracle is that at the peak of his suffering, he forgave everyone, he asked God to forgive them. And in doing so, freed his own spirit. It is hard, so hard, to truly forgive injury and wrong. Am I capable of that kind of forgiveness? I don’t know. It’s why I celebrate Easter, so I can think about it.
Remarks that dismiss the richness of Christian teachings are thoughtless, I think, and they can alienate congregation members who have their own relationship to them. Such a mindset doesn’t serve anyone. Yes, Unitarian Universalism is a thinking, rational faith, but I don’t believe we have to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Thank you Reverend, for reading all of this, I’ve enjoyed thinking about it. I’ll continue to keep my mouth shut in worship planning meetings as best I can, but the day may come when I stand up with my finger in the air and say “I protest!” Perhaps I am a protestant after all.
The Fox at Dawn 