Pent-Up Energy

What possibilities arise when we take on rearranging world-wearied words, exhausted expressions, tiresome traditions, tedious tenets, parched principles, prosaic practices to discover, or even create, something utterly fresh, invigorating, maybe even electrifying!

In fact, perhaps the one good thing that comes out of the Catholic Church’s centuries old ban on any other than male words, expressions, traditions, tenets, principles and practices is that we of those other genders now have abundant pent-up creative energy waiting to burst through. We’ve talked here so often about the kind of unique perspectives, novel insights, revolutionary revelations our freedom from suppression could bring. It’s already happening outside where stony walls and mindsets do not prevail. But the truly exciting challenge lies inside. That’s where we have the chance to be pathbreakers and pioneers once again. Maybe we should say thank you to our tired old institution, after all.

Alas, I wax poetic (okay, and a bit hyperbolic). This time, however, I do so on purpose.

Recently I was reminded by a friend of a plane trip we took many years ago. At that time of my life, I was particularly claustrophobic. The fear of being caged within an airplane for a long overseas flight gripped me as soon as I boarded. But, because at least we would soon be moving (and all the sooner land), I could control the fear. What I believed I could not control was my terror at the thought of the plane being grounded, maybe for hours (This was happening way too often at that time), not moving, with me trapped inside. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. Worst fears: We were delayed at takeoff; we could not get off; we were to stay in our seats – no word on how long.

My dear friend – seriously, bless her, – knew of my terror (Was my stricken face a clue?) and had prepared. She took out a bag of magnetic tiles, each with a word on it, the kind you can arrange (usually on a refrigerator door) to spell out a message … or a poem! So, as we waited, we took turns drawing out random words and nestling them into stanzas. We worked long and hard, arranging and rearranging to bring forth our poems. Distracted, occupied, we let go of suppression and paralysis and created these:

            1.       

sky symphony dream

drunk with storm blood

the frantic goddess

rose from purple water

madly rawly moaning

a moon wind whispers

let’s soar away

Okay, give it a kudo or two for vivid imagery? See any hints of terror in there? And the “let’s soar away,” well, a lucky draw of words that perfectly captured our immediate plea/prayer!

But then we created this:

            2.

the woman chants

   it is out time

    watch the light

        now

see the pink shadows

in the garden of purple roses

Who would have thought we could create something so evocative? That spoke to and of us?

We were both participating in WOC at the time and thought the second poem reflected some of what we were experiencing in our work and witness there. In that poem, for instance, the woman “chants” in “out time.” She can only chant or repeat words endlessly either because she is “out” of musical “time,” i.e. rhythm; or is “out” of time literally, after centuries of her music not being wanted, not being heard. Or is she truly in “out time,” a place of collecting, creating, of watchful waiting?  And what should she watch and wait for?  The poem says the “light,” the light “now,” when the shadows are “pink,” when the “roses” are “purple,” when, startlingly, a darker flower is casting a lighter shadow upending our world – and maybe our worldview.

In nurturing me, in freeing me from fear, in creating with me freely, my friend helped bring forth something unconventional, bold, a unique way of understanding and seeing, and of going forth. That’s what pent-up creative energy released into the world can do:  produce a simple poem or, maybe, change the world.