seven-minute workout for the soul

Greetings, friends, and do you see this? "THE  ONLY 7-MINUTE WORKOUT YOU NEED"? 

 It took the pandemic for me to finally understand that body, mind and soul are one. I was brought up to believe that I was 85% brain and that God was in charge of the spiritual rest. (Many aspects of this hypothesis have been reconsidered if not totally debunked.) Lately I've been doing my best to regain the exercise habits I had in those strange days--walking, biking, stretching, and this 7-minute whirlwind (being creative with #11 because lord have mercy). 

I've learned, however, in THESE strange days, that every day is a workout for the soul. We know that to keep standing up for Liberty and Justice for All As Advertised, we have to be tough and persistent, strident when necessary, but also generous and forgiving, compassionate, but also mighty and clever and steadfast and resilient. And I don't know about you, but my resilience muscle is a little weary. Many times a day, I'm ticking along with my strong joyful resilientheart, and then I catch wind of the next outrageous headline, and I'm knocked back, flattened by the senseless cruelty that 30% of us chose. It's like this, right?

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So today I'm just going to share seven little things that I've been using as "featherweight barbells for the soul," which work as sturdy handgrips, footholds and boost-ups for when I have to haul my heart off the floor AGAIN and keep swimming, unsunk by poisonous thoughts. If these things just seem like good news to you, that works--enjoy and move on. But do think about the 7 things keeping your soul spunky and righteous, the delights that are keeping you fit for this challenge. Lie there for a minute to catch your breath, but don't lie there too long. I need you.

#1. Casual group singing.  I'm doing some and I'm watching some. Shouting "HEY HO X MUST GO" at protests is wearing a little thin for me, true as it may be. Check out DC Singalong (comes with kazoos, could be more colorful), Gaia Music Collective (my daughter sang in this one), and Pub Choir, now selling tickets for an American tour.

#2. You could give away ALLLL your money to all the good causes, so we're more planful these days and one of my regular recipients is Our Children's Trust, which supports legal challenges by youth on climate policy. This week they had a big win in Utah!

We’ve just received an opinion from the Utah Supreme Court in Natalie v. State of Utah. There are three big takeaways from the opinion:

First, the Court delivered a major win in interpreting the state’s energy policy. The ruling confirms that Utah’s energy laws do not require the state to continue to rubber stamp fossil fuel projects. The government agencies in charge of regulating fossil fuel development have full authority to deny permits and phase out fossil fuel development because of climate change to protect the health of Utah’s citizens.

Second, in the wake of our lawsuit, Utah’s legislature amended Utah’s energy policy statute in 2024 to remove the mandate for the government to promote fossil fuels. This means the case has already led to significant policy reform, with the Court ruling that the amendments mean the State can stop permitting fossil fuel development and start making energy decisions that protect the air and climate youth depend upon.

And third, the decision leaves the door open for the youth to continue their case by reworking it to challenge specific state fossil fuel activities. The Court ruled that the lower court was wrong to dismiss the case “with prejudice,” and that the Natalie plaintiffs can amend their complaint.

 

#3.  Spring keeps on springing, dammit, and everything is not white nor male nor wealthy, nor even green! Here's a quote from Nia Eshu Robinson that I found in the great book EMERGENT STRATEGY by Adrienne Maree Brown.

"If Mama Nature teaches us nothing else, she teaches us that diversity is absolutely necessary for survival. Now, she doesn’t mean some surface diversity, but a system where every single being is doing their part, pulling their weight. A homogenous, ‘gentrified’ eco-system would quickly die. If we are committed to organizing sustainable and liberating social movements, they must be diverse, pulling especially from those who are the most impacted instead of suppressing their voices or using them as props." — Nia Eshu Robinson

 

#4. strawberries; grace & forgiveness

#5. Children. I know some of you think you're not early childhood people; I know some adults think they are not children people at all. But think about how spending all your time with other knowing adults carrying all kinds of weight on their shoulders just amplifies yours. Now think how it might feel to collect and arrange some pretty nature objects with a 5-year-old who knows NONE OF THIS is going on, and then collaborate play your way to describing that arrangement as a "walnut pyramid/pinecone experiment/wonderful mandala masterpiece"! It aches when you take a step back, but while you're leaning in close, the feathers of joy are flapping wildly and you can't see or hear the devastation for a minute--and also you remember why you have to pick yourself up.

#6. Genius+patience.

#7. (you knew it was going to be) Poetry. I'm writing a poem a day for the Stafford Challenge and focusing on short forms of 1-6 lines* this month, and it turns out there is a one-line, 17-syllable form that Allen Ginsberg adapted from haiku. He called it the "American Sentence." As you can see, the one I wrote on March 7 is a lie and also the truth.

Thank you to Rose Capelli at Imagine the Possibilities, who is welcoming spring for us today with some classics for the season, for hosting. Let's go get sweaty.

*American Sentence

Walt Whitman's Couplet

haiku

monotetra

elfchen

cherita

a house for hermit crab + a bonus "if"

Greetings from a rather howling March evening! (Lion first, crab second.) It's the First Friday of the month and thus the Inklings  are busying ourselves again (again so soon) with a challenge from Molly Hogan:

Write a hermit crab poem–a poem that takes the structure of an existing text like a recipe, job application, multiple choice quiz, script, or whatever! Here's an explanation of the form and a wide variety of ideas and examples. Have fun! 

 https://jmwwblog.wordpress.com/2022/10/18/its-an-experiment-hybrid-how-tos-with-arden-hunter-hermit-crabs-part-1-of-2/ 

I briefly considered attempting to write a poem using the directions from my colonoscopy prep kit, but you'll be happy to know I found something better. Each of us probably knows a federal employee who received (and may still be receiving) the now infamous DOGE-generated "What did you do last week?" email; where I live in Silver Spring, MD, we know numerous families where BOTH adults are feds and fed up. Me too.

In the spirit of resistance and gumming up the works, perhaps you'd like (federal employee or not) to share in approx. 5 bullets what YOU did last week. If* so, try this handy online generator; I like "Salty Mode".  I put in Teacher as my Occupation and it spat out 5 satisfyingly snide comments.

Thanks to our own Margaret Simon of Reflections on the Teche for hosting today; don't forget sign up for the April Progressive Poem party and to read the hermit crab poems of the other Inklings below!

Mary Lee Hahn @ A(nother) Year of Reading 

Catherine Flynn @ Reading to the Core, if it's our lucky day

Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone

Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise

Also sending congratulations to so many of our Poetry Friday family on new anthologies recently or imminently published! One is A UNIVERSE OF RAINBOWS selected by Matt Forrest Esenwine and the other is IF I COULD CHOOSE A BEST DAY, selected by Irene Latham & Charles Waters.  I'll take this opportunity to share a poem that NEARLY made it into this If* anthology, and then didn't. I'm still proud of it, and it will be published elsewhere soon...

And now, finally, your crab, having a bright idea:

Smithsonian Magazine

and the density of history:

Flower Power by Bernie Boston, 1967