Wednesday, May 17, 2023:
The Standing People: Poetry and Song Circle, 7 p.m.
“I think that I shall never see
a poem lovely as a tree.”
And yet it seems quite clear to me
the savage state of forestry
calls forth a forceful poetry.
A poem that halts the human hand
that wields the ax and saws the stand,
a poem that mourns the martyrs of the land,
the slaughter of the standing folk,
whose gift of life we daily breathe.
We grieve to see the forests fade
that once half the Earth did gird.
Greed grinds the garden to wasteland,
invades the planet’s lungs for lumber.
But perhaps a word, a phrase,
a pen untamed, an effort made
to praise, to raise anew our love,
respect and gratitude, for the tree,
is cause enough for poetry.
Ever since Gutenberg invented the printing press, around 1450, people have increasingly been able to enjoy collections of poetry printed on paper bound into books. These precious books started as trees or hemp. Today, as the impromptu introductory “poem” suggests, our trees are threatened by our corporate extraction economic model in a process that is as baffling as it is insane, as the steady removal of trees is causing numerous critical environmental challenges and contributing significantly to climate change. No trees = no oxygen = no humans.
Accordingly, I thought it timely to dedicate a Poetry and Song Circle to trees and what they mean to us. As I will be facilitating this session on May 17, I will inflict those who wish to join with two of my poems that reflect on the question of trees. If the theme inspires you, bring a poem or song about trees. Of course, you may wish to bring a song, or a paean of praise for a bush, shrub or flower, a liana or a blade of grass. Or you may just wish to listen.
Facilitators: Hendrik de Pagter and Chris Bullock. Zoom host: Barry Hunt. Coordinator: Chris Bullock. Description: Hendrik de Pagter.
This session is on Zoom. Click on the Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89978468045?pwd=QnU2OUNqTng2eGozZVE2S0dmczlUUT09
Wednesday April 19 at 7.00 PM
Do you have favourite childhood poems, songs, Mother Goose, Dennis Lee, Shel Silverstein, Robert Louis Stevenson….which still inhabit your memory with joy, sorrow, fear, love or other strong emotions?
Most of us were fortunate as children to have been read poems or sang songs or we have shared them with children or have written a child’s poem or song.
They were the foundation of our vast adult literacy skills! They afford us new pleasures, rich memories and surprising profundities when we revisit them as adults!
Come and join our friendly Circle with a few of your beloved, hated or humorous children’s poems or songs. Share them with us or simply come to listen or comment and be nourished!
Our Facilitators on this fun evening are Pat Miller, Barry Hunt and Hendrik de Pagter.
Zoom host is Barry Hunt.
This session is on Zoom. Click on this Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88558394754?pwd=VVVIOSs3bDZ0MVdtUzZETjQzb3l1Zz09
Wednesday, March 22, 2023: Let us Praise: Poetry and Song Circle, 7 p.m.
What’s owed to the Ode? How can we celebrate that wonderful line of praise poems that stretches from ancient Greece , with its Horation and Pindaric odes written in very formal patterns, right through to our times, where poets write odes to a village movie theatre or to their favourite pair of socks (Pablo Neruda), to hymens and tampons (Sharon Olds) , and to the tortillas a young boy’s Mexican mother makes for him (Gary Soto). Odes can be fun, as in “Ode to La Tortilla,” melancholy, as in John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” or “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” or can have the odd tenderness which Sharon Olds brings to the most challenging and risky subjects. But praise connects us to the world, and opens our hearts to it, and praise poems, whatever their tone, are poems of connection.
If praise in poems or songs inspires you, bring one to the Circle. But, of course, as always, you are welcome to bring in something on a totally different topic, or just to come to listen and be nourished.
Facilitators: Hendrik de Pagter and Chris Bullock. Zoom host: Barry Hunt. Coordinator: Chris Bullock. Description copy editing: Hendrik de Pagter.
This session is on Zoom. Click on the Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82053901017?pwd=YWVHczhaWk5vVnhpbHp3R01EQml2QT09
Wednesday, February 22, 2023: The Yearning for Paradise: Poetry and Song Circle, 7 p.m.
February inspires any number of poetic topics. It contains Valentine’s Day, inspiring thoughts about love, perennially a favourite topic. February is mostly under the influence of Aquarius, and thus inspires thoughts about the waters of change. But this month, with its endlessly cloudy or wet days, somehow inspires thoughts of Paradise, as a desirable alternative location, and the Age of Aquarius, immortalized in Hair: the American Tribal Love Rock Musical (1968) seemed a time when paradise was almost at hand.
Many poets and songwriters have been inspired by the topic of paradise, though, interestingly—and something for us to talk about—it mostly (though not exclusively) seems to be the loss of paradise that inspires them more than paradise itself, and this applies even to Christians committed to the notion of heaven. The great example here is John Milton whose “Paradise Lost” is much more celebrated than his tepid “Paradise Regained.” In our own times, the (sadly recently deceased) singer-songwriter John Prine’s fine song “Paradise” is about the elimination of the town of the same name where his father grew up. William Butler Yeats’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” is about the paradisial island he left behind in childhood, and so is the Caribbean/Harlem writer Claude McKay’s “When Dawn Comes to the City.”
If you’re inspired by any aspect of this yearning for paradise, bring a poem, song or reading inspired by this focus. But, of course, as always, you are welcome to bring in something on a totally different topic—such as those other February topics– or just to come to listen and be nourished.
Facilitators: Hendrik de Pagter and Chris Bullock. Zoom host: Barry Hunt. Coordinator: Chris Bullock. Description copy editing: Hendrik de Pagter.
This session is on Zoom. Click on the Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81633518994?pwd=Uyt2Zi9pOXNsQjhBeXk1UXQ5bENqQT09
MID-WEEK MEDITATION
Brian Martin has offered to facilitate a Meditation on Zoom for our church members and interested friends.
It will be on Tuesday evenings from 7:15 to 8:00 pm.
It will be on the church Zoom channel for peoples’ convenience. (See our website) or click : https://us04web.zoom.us/j/765216352?pwd=eVVTYjMzREVhSSt4eU9tZWlVN0Erdz09
The meditation will be three-fold in nature: a guided process followed by an opportunity to share and concluding with a healing exercise.
I will offer it for an initial 4 weeks starting January 24th to gauge the interest level.
If interest is strong enough I am open to continuing it beyond the month.
Please sign in on Zoom before 7:15 as late comers will not be admitted once the meditation starts.
Wednesday, January 18, 2023: The World We’re In, The World We Envision: Poetry and Song Circle, 7 p.m.
How new does the New Year feel to you? For some people, there is a great gap between the world they live in and the world they’d like to live in.
For others, the present is just what it is. For others still, there are glimpses of a deeper, fuller world, glimpses of newness–within everyday life. Poems have been written from all these different points of view, and other points of view too, on the relationship between worlds of actuality and worlds that can be imagined. If this relationship is a topic that inspires you, then bring a poem or song –your own or someone else’s—that has something to say about it.
But, of course, as always, you are welcome to bring in something on a totally different topic, or just to come to listen and be nourished.
Facilitators: Hendrik de Pagter and Chris Bullock. Zoom host: Barry Hunt. Coordinator: Chris Bullock. Description copy editing: Hendrik de Pagter.
This session is on Zoom. Click on the Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82566834912?pwd=WW51N2JZcGNUV1dvTG9zRnh4UGJKdz09