Mama Monday- Post Election Edition

In addition to things that I posted yesterday, here are some poems that Catherine White shared with me today.... 

💙💗 

CONTINUE

-Maya Angelou 

My wish for you
Is that you continue
         Continue
To be who and how you are
To astonish a mean world
With your acts of kindness
         Continue
To allow humor to lighten the burden
Of your tender heart
         Continue
In a society dark with cruelty
To let the people hear the grandeur
Of God in the peals of your laughter
          Continue
To let your eloquence
Elevate the people to heights
They had only imagined
         Continue
To remind the people that
Each is as good as the other
And that no one is beneath
Nor above you
        Continue
To remember your own young years
And look with favor upon the lost
And the least and the lonely
        Continue
To put the mantle of your protection
Around the bodies of
The young and defenseless
        Continue
To take the hand of the despised
And diseased and walk proudly with them
In the high street
Some might see you and
Be encouraged to do likewise
         Continue
To plant a public kiss of concern
On the cheek of the sick
And the aged and infirm
And count that as a
Natural action to be expected
         Continue
To let gratitude be the pillow
Upon which you kneel to
Say your nightly prayer
And let faith be the bridge
You build to overcome evil
And welcome good
       Continue

To ignore no vision
Which comes to enlarge your range
And increase your spirit
       Continue
To dare to love deeply
And risk everything
For the good thing
       Continue
To float
Happily in the sea of infinite substance
Which set aside riches for you
Before you had a name
       Continue
And by doing so
You and your work
Will be able to continue
Eternally

💙💗 

HOLDING VIGIL
Alison Luterman

My cousin asks if I can describe this moment,

the heaviness of it, like sitting outside

the operating room while someone you love

is in surgery and you’re on those awful plastic chairs

eating flaming Doritos from the vending machine

which is the only thing that seems appealing to you, dinner-wise,

waiting for the moment when the doctor will come out

in her scrubs and face-mask, which she’ll pull down

to tell you whether your beloved will live or not. That’s how it feels

as the hours tick by, and everyone I care about

is texting me with the same cold lump of dread in their throat

asking if I’m okay, telling me how scared they are.

I suppose in that way this is a moment of unity,

the fact that we are all waiting in the same

hospital corridor, for the same patient, who is on life support,

and we’re asking each other, Will he wake up?

Will she be herself? And we’re taking turns holding vigil,

as families do, and bringing each other coffee

from the cafeteria, and some of us think she’s gonna make it

while others are already planning what they’ll wear to the funeral,

which is also what happens at times like these,

and I tell my cousin I don’t think I can describe this moment,

heavier than plutonium, but on the other hand,

in the grand scheme of things, I mean the whole sweep

of human history, a soap bubble, because empires

are always rising and falling, and whole civilizations

die, they do, they get wiped out, this happens

all the time, it’s just a shock when it happens to your civilization,

your country, when it’s someone from your family on the respirator,

and I don’t ask her how she’s sleeping, or what she thinks about

when she wakes at three in the morning,

cause she’s got two daughters, and that’s the thing,

it’s not just us older people, forget about us, we had our day

and we burned right through it, gasoline, fast food,

cheap clothing, but right now I’m talking about the babies,

and not just the human ones, but also the turtles and owls

and white tigers, the Redwoods, the ozone layer,

the icebergs for the love of God—every single

blessed being on the face of this earth

is holding its breath in this moment,

and if you’re asking, can I describe that, Cousin,

then I’ve gotta say no, no one could describe it

we all just have to live through it,

holding each other’s hands.

💙💗 

from Barbara Kingsolver

Truth and love have been smacked down, so many more times in history before today.
Truth, because it’s often inconvenient, and love because it is vulnerable.
But truth is like gravity, and carbon, and the sun behind an eclipse: it’s still there.
And love stays alive if you tend it like a flame.
If you feel crushed by unkindness today, it’s a time for grieving, reaching out to loved ones,
noticing one bright color somewhere in the day.
Remembering what there is to love.
Starting with the immediate, the place and people we can tend ourselves, and make safe.
We can’t save everything all at once, but it’s still worth saving something.
Because there are so many of us to do it.
And we are all still here today, exactly as we were yesterday.
Like gravity, and carbon, and the sun behind an eclipse.