Words from the Heart

While summer and fall play tag with each other, it is difficult to think about November. However, the mid-autumn season of gratitude and poem-ing will soon be upon us. Once again, I am taking up the challenge to write 30 Poems in November!   This is the major fundraiser for Center for New Americans were I teach English as a second language to adult immigrants and refugees. The event is community-based. Poets from 5 to 95 write poems everyday in November with others pledging their support for the writers. During December, there is a celebration at Smith College's Poetry Center, where poets read one of the poems they have written and attendees can sign up for copies of the anthology that is put together from poems written during November. This year, I will be focusing my poems on the journey of the immigrants and refugees. I will write about their hopes, dreams, struggles, joys and pain.  I will write about my own family's journeys that make me a third generation Ame...

Photo Credit: Google Public Domain Photo Ten years ago, when I began this blog, I explained that as a writer and educator words had power - the power to heal, the power to raise up and the power to destroy. Over the past year or more, the rhetoric that has been loosed in this country has become increasingly hateful, damaging and destructive. The power behind the words used in the press, in politics and in every day life comes from the privilege of being American. Yet, many of the same people claiming to be "true" Americans have never read the two documents this country is based on, nor do they know the men who wrote the words that we live by. The Declaration of Independence is a work of fearless resistance by a committee of five Founding Fathers - Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, John Adams and Robert R. Livingston. Thomas Jefferson is considered the architect of this document. A talented writer, Jefferson was influence, like all writers, by the w...

Public Domain through Google images: https://goo.gl/images/fBtskB I was asked why I am attending the Sister March in Greenfield today, the day of the Women's March on Washington.  Why???? I am marching to honor all the fearless and fierce women who came before me.  Women from my own family who survived the tyranny of hate in countries far from here. Women from my own family that survived poverty and pain.   Women from my own family who stood for suffrage, so that I might vote.   Women in my own family who climbed Martin's mountain hand in hand with other Women - Women of color - so that their children and their children's children could live together in freedom and equality.  I am marching for my daughters and my granchildren because we are still not totally free and equality is still not found everywhere. I march for all the Women around the world that have been abused, oppressed, hated and tormented.  The Women of the world for whom fear beco...

  The recent controversy over the Coca-Cola commercial in which people across this diverse country sang, America the Beautiful , in their native languages has spurred me to write.  As an educator and as an ordained minister, I feel called to point a few things out. First, the attitude that if you live in America then you should speak the language of the country is a bit skewed.  "America" is vast, consisting of North, Central and South.  The "native" language of this vast land is Native American in its various dialects.  Quite honestly, I only know a handful of people who speak Native American. I come by this knowledge through the privilege of an education in Boston schools, which at the time I went to them were not considered to be the cream of academia.  However, I had amazingly dedicated teachers who informed my awareness that we - those of European roots - were not "native" to this land we call The United States. To be honest, I think the fact ...

Image via Wikipedia We are a land of immigrants.  This is an important fact to remember.  This is a land where our forefathers and foremothers came to escape political, religious and academic persecution.  But, lest we forget, this is also the land were some of our ancestors were forced to come in chains.  Ripped from their homes, their families, their lives. Many of our loved ones spent years of persecution here, in this land of the Free, at the hands of those who had just escaped the tyranny of their homelands. Lest we forget, there are also those of us with ancestors who called this land home, long before the Europeans came.  We knew the greatness of this land of Plenty.  We talked to the Great Spirit and gave thanks daily for the blessings.  We thanked our four-legged, winged and finned brothers and sisters for sharing them selves with us; we thanked Mother Earth for the blessings of the earth; and we protected and respected the silent Ones who gr...

  Words from the Heart was begun several years ago because of my deep belief that language is a powerful tool for creating change, healing and enlightening others.  Writing, for me, has always been a way around being told that I couldn't do something.  You see, confession time here, I hate being told that I can't do something.   Is it any wonder, then, that observing Banned Book Week is something I relish?  If you want me to read a book, tell me that it is banned.  I will be at the bookstore as soon as I can to get it. Recently, I purchased the book, Quest for the Living God by Elizabeth Johnson.  More than likely, I would never have read it if I hadn't found an article about how the Catholic Church banned the book.   After reading the article, I looked the author up.  I found out that she is a nun, theologian, writer and professor.  What, I wondered, is so awful, so sinful about her book that the church feels the need to ...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife Fifty years ago, I was a tween enamored with our new president.  At age eleven, events in the world have the potential to shape your outlook on life. The words, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your county," informed my dedication to social justice and peace work.  It also informed my philosophy for life in general.   Ask not what your family can do for you, but what you can do for your family, or your church, or your school or your community.  After fifty years following a worn path to equality, peace, and justice, I have come to believe, to know that if we are ever to get to the end of the road, if are ever to enter the Promised Land, then it will be through thinking and doing for others. Our leaders in Congress need to look at JFK's speech, actively listening to the words and applying them to their lives.  The US is being strangled by partisan politics.  Our senators and representa...

I remember as a girl hearing the adults talking about a Fellini movie that was "Banned in Boston!" When I asked my mother what it means to be "Banned in Boston," she explained that the Boston diocese of the Catholic Church had forbidden people from seeing the movie.  She went on to explain that this upset her because it took away her freedom to decide for herself if something was appropriate or good or worth her time. Momma was a very progressive thinker for her day  She was a civil right activist long before the term was in daily life.   In the recent issue of the AARP Bulletin, there is a full-page listing of books that are banned in schools and libraries across the country.  To me, this seems unbelievable, especially when I read the list of books.  I can understand not allowing porn into a school library, but The Diary of Anne Frank or Fahrenheit 451 ? I read Anne Frank as a young girl in Junior High.  It opened my eyes to how someone could fa...

But for the grace of God... Some sixty years ago, my Dad was aboard a destroyer in the South Pacific dodging incoming kamikazes. He was told by his CO to run down the deck for the fire hose. He went immediately, reaching the hose just as a plane crashed into the deck exactly at the place where his CO and he were standing minutes before. They never found the CO's body. In those few minutes, the lives of my Dad, his children and his children's children - ad infinitum - could have been lost forever. The first time I realized how tenuous this life was, was the Memorial Day when I was around 10. Mom told me this story for the first time. Dad didn't talk about the war, much. But, on this day, he added details that made my young mind grasp the enormity of the situation. Had he hesitated to obey orders, if his CO had ordered one of the other men, if the pilot had moved the throttle a hair one way or the other, I would not be memorializing my Dad on my blog. I would not be here...