self-blessing & the more-than-human

Galway Kinnell, “St. Francis and the Sow”
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
Galway Kinnell, “Saint Francis and the Sow” from Mortal Acts Mortal Words by Galway Kinnell. Copyright © 1980, renewed 2008 by Galway Kinnell. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
 
 
Jennifer Rahim, “Saint Francis and the Douen”
After reading Galway Kinnell
The head
sheltered by a great mushroom hat
holds the secret of all things beginning
and the wisdom of all their endings.
Hidden there
is the knowledge of mysteries unbaptised,
tiny, faceless creatures--
those knots of possibility are the dread
beneath the hat.
Hidden there
is a mouth crying in the forests,
calling the living to step
beyond the boundary of their seeing;
 
but sometimes it is necessary
to reach out and cradle the child,
and tell again in touch and sweet lullaby
of its loveliness and wonderful promise;
as Saint Francis did
when he followed the small voice
that beckoned him from the darkness,
then stooped low to where the infant sat
naked on a wet riverbank,
swaddled in the mud of all things beginning;
and reaching to take the child into his arms
he saw a face look back at him,
right there, from the water’s surface,
and in that moment’s recognition
found again the gift of self-blessing--
for all things rise to life again, from within,
in the waters of self-blessing;
so that Saint gently removed the hat
in a sun-bathed spot witnessed by the river,
the earth, the trees and the passing breeze,
and with healing touch and soft song
sang of the infant’s perfect loveliness;
from the tender head and troubled brow,
the shy, half-formed face
and the small wounded heart,
he blessed the whole length of the body;
from the upstretched arms
to the strange, backward turn of the feet,
he blessed their high intelligence
to brave the abandoned places
only to save what was theirs alone to give,
blessed again and again that perfect beauty
until the child became sunlight,
forever shining within--
of self-blessing.
Jennifer Rahim, “Saint Francis and the Douen” from Approaching Sabbaths. Copyright © 2009 by Jennifer Rahim. Reprinted with permission of Peepal Tree Press.
 
 
POETIC THEMES
            If you came to classes this week you'll know much of our somatic play has come from study I'm doing in a collaborative I'm working with, convened by Bayo Akomolafe, whose thinking about embodiment, non-identity, and activism is at the heart of my learning right now. Last week, in addition to Bayo, three teachers offered their resistance the thrall of "wellness culture" and the boundaries of the individual self:
-V (formerly Eve Ensler) reframed trauma as a portal in discussing her book, "Apology," written from the perspective of her abusive father.
-Sophie Strand troubled our cultural approach to healing, reading from the book she's writing at the moment, a meditation on the importance of decay, composting, and death to our cultural moment.
-Marinés Cordoso, a somatics teacher from Mexico, guided improvisatory movement that transformed us from rain droplets to a bag of water hanging from the sky to a seed to a flower and back to fluid. What interests me about this work is the invitation to question simple notions of identity, wellness, and healing, instead acknowledging how the soma is constantly in flux. For example: at least half of the cells in our body are microbes that influence our brain and our immune function... these "foreign" residents in our body contribute more gene functions than our own genome! We hold otherness inside the boundaries of what we've assumed to be our "self" - for example, DNA can be incorporated from lovers (terrifyingly for some of us- eek) or from our mothers (look up feto-maternal microchimerism)... we're a monstrous, chimeric mash-mash of us and not us, human and the more-than-human. And we are all on our way to somewhere and something else.
         This week's short practice video lingers with "Saint Francis and the Douen," using the warm-up technique to Marinés Cordoso's transformations. It is a practice, like the poem, about expanding and the boundaries of self and body to encompass the more-than-human. It tapped into (haha) the body as a way of opening us to be opened further, becoming something rich and strange. I hope you dig it. And here's a bit more from Thinking Feelingly, about the relationship of that poem to its source, "St. Francis and the Sow."
      Yom Kippur marks a return to innate goodness, casting off whatever detracts from that natural state. Many synagogues mark this time of purification with the blessing of animals, as with the concurrent (and much less important) Christian holiday of St. Francis Day. Galway Kinnell’s “St. Francis and the Sow” re-minds us of the bud of goodness in all things, the opportunity for flowering at any point, and the potential for self-blessing that is only impeded when we forget our true nature. He intentionally mishmashes the wrinkled brow of a pig with the more enigmatic “brow” of a flower-bud—one that “stands for all things.” The pure physicality of every earthy blessing is one hundred percent that of God, as Quakers say—even the curl of the tail is spiritual! The celebration of fleshiness in fodder and slops and earthen snout and spurting teats offers a nice balance to the practice of fasting this week. At the same time, the poem takes us in through the flesh to the center of our core, dropping through “the hard spininess spiked out from the spine / down through the great broken heart.” Blessings of earth are told through these touching words. At the center of each of us is the great broken heart we share with Kinnell’s sweet, lovely sow. And if we can touch it, the promise is that we will remember our loveliness and the world will come back to color. Blessings of earth indeed.
            Jennifer Rahim’s haunting rendering of the poem is not so simple. The Douen, a mythological figure from Trinidad and Tobego folklore, is a creepy figure with backward feet and knees, no distinguishable facial features except for a mouth, and a big, floppy hat. Said to embody the wandering souls of children that were not christened before death, they lure unsuspecting children deep into the forest until they are lost. These liminal creatures are figured as more mischievous than evil—they are, after all, innocent—but they double as a warning to kids not to wander after strangers and to parents to be sure to baptize their children. This lends something more sinister to the poem’s act of blessing, as part of a colonial history of control, domination, and cultural genocide. These slip-slidey nuances extend our sense of who and what these creatures really represent, with their “high intelligence / to brave the abandoned places / only to save what was theirs alone to give.” The celebration of resistance to imperialism seemingly implied here lends a fuller scope and thrust to the poem, “calling the living to step / beyond the boundary of their seeing.” I mean, who is redeemed here, after all? Rahim troubles the waters in the scene of baptism: surely the face the Saint perceives at the riverbank is his own? The pronouns get, so to speak, muddy: “reaching to take the child into his arms, / he saw his face look back at him, / right there, from the water’s surface.” This is a “moment of recognition,” not the discovery of an “other”—and what Saint Francis “found again” is a gift of self blessing. Even so, the child is the focus of the poem, from the first lines describing its head and the secrets, knowledge, and wisdom held there, to the last lines bursting into sunlight. Rahim lures us into the wilderness with these uncertainties, which is maybe the only place from which to begin to see things differently.
            When we return, the familiar is suddenly layered with deeper, fuller meaning, whether it is the postcolonial current or the kerfuffling of the human with the more-than-human. As we are touched we might consider the nuance of what, precisely, is being recuperated in the blessing. In this sun-bathed spot by the river, with its breeze and trees and earth, we witness a co-mingling transformation... someone who might or might not be a saint, and a banished, exiled creature, who is changed into actual sunlight. The poem touches this child so gently, sings the song of healing so softly, that we can almost feel the infant’s “tender head and troubled brow / the shy, half-formed face / and the small wounded heart.” All these wounds, going back for generations... Blessings of earth on sow, and Saint, and Douen, and us all.
 ​

PRACTICE
          Here's a simple self-blessing practice. The progress of touch in both poems, from the brow down the length of the body, lends itself to a physical practice that might fall in the interstices between penance and self-forgiveness. You could begin by just holding a fingertip to the “troubled brow,” behind which churn all the horrors in your personal and ancestral history. If that sensitive spot between the eyebrows awakens you to feeling, you might, like the Douen, reach your “upstretched arms” overhead (perhaps with palms touching, if it feels organic to you), and draw them in slow motion down to the crown of the head, micromillimeter by micromillimeter. When your prayer hands hover just over your “tender head,” you’ll feel the warmth of the scalp and the tickle of hair, and you might have the impression of the head lifting toward the hands. Spend some time perching the hands on the crown before moving down to the addled forehead, then the “small wounded heart,” and then down the “whole length of the body” with a lingering touch anywhere along the central axis of the torso that feels especially tender or resonant. To emphasize your grounding in earth, “swaddled in the mud of all things beginning,” like the full prostrations only practiced on Yom Kippur, you might close each pass by folding forward. Bowing to the mystery.