By Anna Blaedel
I still remember a poemprayer by Ted Loder I first encountered on a retreat sometime toward the end of high school. I prayed it regularly, for years:
Empower me to be a bold participant, rather than a timid saint in waiting in the difficult ordinariness of now; to exercise the authority of honesty, rather than to defer to power, or deceive to get it; to influence someone for justice, rather than impress anyone for gain and, by grace, to find treasures of joy, of friendship, of peace hidden in the fields of the daily you give me to plow.
The words remain etched in my memory. This prayer fueled my early theological imagination and shaped my understanding of what it means to live faithfully, in devotion, aligned with Spirit. Somewhere over the years, without realizing it, I shifted from singular to plural pronouns: empower us to be bold participants, rather than timid saints in waiting…
I thought of this poemprayer again recently when I returned to one of Naomi Shihab Nye’s poems, Hidden:
If you place a fern
under a stone
the next day it will be
nearly invisible
as if the stone
has swallowed it.
If you tuck the name of a loved one
under your tongue too long
without speaking it
it becomes blood
sigh
the little sucked-in breath of air
hiding everywhere
beneath your words.
No one sees
the fuel that feeds you.
For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to what is hidden, invisible. I love tucking and squirreling and hiding things away. Love notes, lines of poems, the names of loved ones uttered in prayer. I feel the presence of so much more than I can see. There are so many treasures, hidden in the daily. In the aliveness around us. In the encounters between us. In the love making us. In the earth sheltering us. In the possibilities rising within us.
Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, however, helps me remember that hiding can cost us treasures, too. Love can be lost, when we keep truths tucked under our tongues too long. Covered over, under pressure, without access to what fuels it, a fern–or any living thing–can disappear so quickly, swallowed. We cannot afford to forget that which is hidden; remembering it can be the fuel that feeds us.
Last Friday evening, I walked to our public library for a teach in about Palestine. I arrived to find a seat saved for me by a dear friend, and a room crowded with faces that are becoming familiar from being in movement together. The Palestinian-American engineer, fueled by love for her family in the West Bank. The Jewish student, fueled by stories of family members who survived the Holocaust and promised Never Again For Anyone. The Quaker peace activist, fueled by radicalizing her retirement community. The student organizer, fueled by love for Black people, and solidarity that becomes collective liberation. The Jewish poet, fueled by disentangling Judaism from Zionism. The Palestinian biochemist, fueled by grief and fear and rage and deep love running through it all. The family of Sudanese refugees, fueled by dreams of survival, not just their own.
All of us, fueled by the desire to be bold participants, rather than timid saints in waiting, when the cost of waiting is genocide, mass death, loss on scales and registers we will never be able to fully see or comprehend.
It matters, what remains hidden, and why. It matters, who we remember and who we do not. It matters, what we keep tucked under our tongues too long, and what we speak.
Yazzan, an 8 year old child from Gaza, the son of a poet who managed to flee to Cairo, wants to go back home because his friends are there, and he wants to play with them. Concern for them fuels him. Every day he speaks the names of loved ones, asking if they have medicine, clothes, food.
Plestia Alaqad, a journalist from Gaza, fueled by making visible what, at least in the US, we “don’t see on tv: Children holding limbs of their parents or siblings. Girls who got their periods for the first time with no pads, painkillers, and not even a mother to look after them. Fathers spending hours and hours a day in search for some water or food for their children. Parents sleeping hungry because they would rather their kids or children eat the limited amount of food they were able to find. Elderly wishing to get killed rather than getting displaced yet another time. Welcome to our lives in Palestine.”
Bisan Owda, a journalist and filmmaker in Gaza, fueled by a longing to live, and the urgent knowledge that every day without a ceasefire, every US-made bomb, every Israeli tank, every hospital and house and school destroyed swallows precious life, as well as her chance of surviving. Over 30,000 dead, over 100 days of catastrophic assault. “If I do not survive this,” she recently said, “if I die, get killed, am murdered: Just remember me. Remember my cause. Remember my people. Remember why we are fighting, why we are here.”
Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian poet, fueled by remembering: “What’s here is something that we are still building. Something we cannot yet see, because we are a part of it.”
Bold participants, rather than timid saints in waiting.
Remember what fuels us.
Dreams of a world where Khan Younis is not besieged and Gaza is not swallowed and Ramallah is not inundated by settler violence. Commitments to uprooting antisemitism, Islamophobia, Christian Zionism, militarism, colonialism, occupation, policing, war. Longing for not only the release of all hostages and prisoners, but a world where no one is imprisoned, or taken hostage; where everyone has the food, medicine, shelter, and love they need. Our need for each other, for a free Palestine, and for a world where all can live free, from every river, to every sea.
Empower us to be bold participants, rather than timid saints in waiting…exercising the authority of honesty, rather than deferring to power…influencing someone for justice, rather than impressing anyone for gain…finding hidden treasures of joy, friendship, and peace, the fuel that feeds us, in the the difficult ordinariness of now…May it be so.
Anna Blaedel (they/them) is co-director and co-founder at enfleshed, where they tend to the theopoetic intersections of spiritual, academic, and activist engagement. Anna chaplains University of Iowa students, and is a doctoral candidate in Theological and Philosophical Studies at Drew University’s Graduate Division on Religion. Waking before dawn, lingering in poetry, being an aunt, retreating to the woods or their basement woodshop, tending the garden, sharing silence, and feeding people delicious food are some of Anna’s favorite things.