An Off-the-Cuff Update

And a belated intro to the current poetry series

On Monday night I met with a group of creatives at my new(ish) church here in Greensboro. It was my third time attending this monthly gathering of creators, and I have to say that the very existence of such a group has been such an unexpected delight, plus a much-needed source of support. I shared about the fact that in the past couple of weeks, since starting my poetry series, I’ve lost twenty subscribers—two (out of my original 17) paid subscribers and eighteen (out of my original 782) free subscribers. The only reason I’m aware of this trend is because every time I go to my Substack Dashboard the first thing I see are all my stats. If you were ask me how most effectively to drive creators insane, this modern emphasis on metrics would be at or near the top of my list.

Anyway, my first thought was, Wow, some people REALLY hate poetry! I pictured a percentage of readers seeing one of my new posts in their inbox going, “If it’s another freaking poem, I’m gonna lose my mind!” My second thought was, Maybe my poems suck! Then I pictured those readers going, “Who’s going to tell her?”

I have no idea if this is what’s going on, and I’m not planning to investigate. But, it did make me realize that I provided no introduction or explanation about my latest “shifting of gears.” Actually, I did so superficially on Substack Notes, but that announcement probably reached only a percentage of the few readers who even use the Substack app. Therefore, to most of you, it probably looks like I abandoned the series I began in October (“How We Know What We Know”) and started randomly writing poems for no reason. Belatedly, I will now provide an introduction to my Lenten poetry series by way of an explanation.

I tried for months to write Part 3 of the “How We Know What We Know” series but struggled to get traction. I would write, delete, rewrite, edit, walk away… wash, rinse, repeat. The difficulty of the process took me by surprise because when I started the series, I considered it a straightforward project. I knew exactly where that series was going and how it would conclude. I needed only to write out the details of the narrative involving the 2.5 months that my dad, who suffers from delusional disorder, lived with me and my family in 2014. The funny thing is that the simple outline I had in my mind didn’t end up matching the details I rediscovered when I went back and reviewed my own journal entries plus S.O.S. emails I sent to out to friends during that time. When I finished reading through all that, I thought, “Holy $*#%?! That was awful, complicated, miserable, sorrow-filled, traumatic. And SO EXHAUSTING.” I had, to a degree, forgotten—not like an amnesiac but more like a post-surgical patient who was given a nerve block.

I guess you could say that rereading my own records caused the nerve block to wear off and full sensation to return. Unfortunately, this flood of negative emotional memory was coupled with the heightened stress and conflict in the general population over the election and its outcomes in November (which my series is meant to address), then followed by the frenzied hustle and bustle of the holidays. More significantly, my aging mother who also suffers from mental health issues is in a difficult, high-needs season of life and requires emotional and logistical support on a daily basis, even from afar. Did I mention also that my daughter is now a teenager learning how to drive and how to navigate a whole new set of friendships?

Needless to say, it doesn’t take much for me to run out of RAM.

On Ash Wednesday (February 26th), I was messaging back and forth about this struggle with my friend Susanne, a nature photographer and contemplative writer. She proposed an exercise: photographing my emotions and unpacking them indirectly by discussing the photographs. The suggestion resonated with me immediately. I tried it the very next day. When I sat down to write about the photo, I found that poetry was far more accessible than prose. Trying to write prose, even about a photograph, still felt like tedious labor, whereas poetry felt more like breathing. I breathed out my first poem.

After that I thought, Why don’t I just turn this into a Lenten practice? As I walked my neighborhood and started paying attention to the things I saw, I felt a strong release of creative energy to explore all kinds of emotions and themes: sorrow, fear, beauty and ugliness juxtaposed, maintaining faith in the face of overwhelming obstacles, hope against hope, injury, envy, insecurity, disappointment, the power of perspective, struggle, becoming Christlike through suffering.

I’m now processing a lot of things I didn’t expect to process. Looking back, I’m able to see that the short season of hosting my dad ended in a very difficult place for me. There was so much I couldn’t change about him, about the family system, about the amount of suffering that people I loved could inflict on one another because of their respective fixed beliefs. And I felt profoundly pained and damaged by that powerlessness. It wasn’t long after that experience that I began to throw myself whole-heartedly into even more intense ministry work involving marginalized people and a whole lot of writing in the social justice activist space. I needed to feel like I could make something in the world better. And in that most tender period, I found my way into a world in which friends, acquaintances, and strangers constantly told me that I was indeed making the world better. It was a balm to my soul. Until it wasn’t. But that’s a story for another time.

For the remainder of Lent, which ends on April 17th, I’ll be poetically reflecting on both the lovely and hard aspects of being human in a world that, until Jesus returns, continues to ache for redemption, deliverance, and renewal. I hope it blesses you all in surprising ways, even if poetry might not be your thing. I fully intend to return to the other series after Lent. I have a feeling I’ll be in a different place then.