April is for Crying (and Poetry)

my collaboration with Drew Jackson, Seattle tears, and BBQ pork

April is for crying in public, or maybe it’s just me.

Every year around this time I fly to Seattle to spend a few days with my favorite people at the Inhabit conference. As part of the Parish Collective fellowship, I’m always asked to contribute in some way. Being in that room each April, among people who see the world through the lenses of faith and place, is always meaningful and sustaining.

The part that I’m never prepared for is the crying. This year, I started tearing up within the first five minutes. It was 9am, I had no tissues. I’m not a crier! I wasn’t prepared! As I told my friend Tim, “I’m not good at crying.”

"You can bring that broken heart here."

Pastor Lauren Goldblum

“Behold, I am making all things new.”

Revelation 21:5

These fourteen words cracked me open.

What if God can make even our constantly-breaking hearts new? (This is hope.)

Today, I’m sharing my keynote collaboration with the poet, Drew Jackson. Our first planning call was what you might expect between a legit poet and Shannan Martin - long pauses, reflection, the tossing out of nouns and phrases. I walked away excited to keep quiet company with the ideas that were sparking, to just live inside them for a while. (One of my favorite parts of the writing process.)

Weeks went by, then a full month. We mulled independently and chatted a couple more times. We stood in our places, me in Goshen, Indiana and he in Brooklyn, New York, and paid attention to both the groanings and the light.

In the end, the energy we were drawn toward was the theme of “Solidarity”. What does it mean to see people in our neighborhoods, but to also stretch our vision globally, in this age of destruction in Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere?

We hoped our poetry/narrative combo would work on stage like it did in our minds.

It did.

There are no words to describe that entire morning. It was palpable and real. I wish you could hear what follows in our actual voices. I hope the words themselves are the next best thing.

---

Drew:

AMBIENT LIGHT (by Drew Jackson)

Two New York girls riding down a Georgia highway

for the first time in memory. They know they have roots here 

but have they thought of their grandmother, buried

      six feet in this red clay? Have they thought of how

she now nourishes these dogwoods and magnolias

      the way she nourished me on Grand Magnolia Dr.?

It is nighttime as we drive and they cannot see

      how this earth is different from the dark soil of North.

Maybe tomorrow when the morning star rises.

      But tonight they do not care about what is beneath 

their feet because they have been caught up

      into the heavens. Look at the stars one shouts!

We can’t see them like this back home

      says the other. Amazed and with a tinge of sadness.

Then they share with us front seaters 

      that the moon is now in its waxing gibbous phase.

As if we know what that means. As if

      we know anything at all. I want to give them

more than ambient city light. For them

      to joust with Orion and join their sister shine to Pleiades.

Jump up out the backseat and take a ride

      on Ursa Major. My loves, I want to give you the stars. 

To give you what you’ll need to live 

beneath these falling stars.

Shannan:

I awoke Easter Sunday to the dull ache of navigating the holy day without a church. For the first time, there would be no triumphant “He is risen!” echoing from the rafters of lifelong tradition. (Sending it in a text message, I discovered, is not the same.)

I threw myself into familiar work, oven space negotiated for carbs and cheese and…carbs.

I fought off sadness.

I broke a favorite dish.

I worried over the ham.

I cried, a little.

Our guests arrived, sixteen people around plastic tables with borrowed chairs. Shy and hungry. Almost-strangers who, like me, were grieving something. We kept our shoes on, made small talk, waffled between apple and cherry, then wound up having both.

Just before leaving, Whitney and Yoli huddled around me, pressing their screens into my field of vision. “These are my babies”, up the street, back in Miami, impossibly unreachable regardless of the distance. “Aren’t they gorgeous?” they asked, eyes glistening. “I miss them so much.”

We are told Resurrection is learned in a pew. I found it sitting tomb-side in my messy kitchen with other lonely women willing to see and be seen.

He is risen, indeed.

In The Cross and the Lynching Tree James Cone writes, “The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed...”

I was taught Jesus came to save me.

This necessary reframing of the Gospel, away from individual safety and toward collective liberation, changes everything. Out past the comfortable binary of individualism, the vital, messier question becomes, what is solidarity?

Some say it’s cooperation. Most say unity. Consensus is implied, compatibility assumed. But if solidarity requires agreement, or uniformity, wouldn’t this whole train be thrown from its rails?

Jesus is the perfect embodiment of solidarity. He loved the world so much, he surrendered Himself to a body, to live here, with us.

The life of Jesus was infused with the scents of perfume, yeast, and the rotting flesh of his beloved friends. It was flavored with the wine of celebration and the salt of tears. He pointed to the sky. He sermonized in spit and mud.

Jesus looked out at the tired, the poor and powerless, the ones with nothing to offer, and saw them with compassion.

His life was tuned to the rhythm of ordinary, relentless, togetherness. Slow and often boring.

He shows us a way of being that it so basic, we risk missing its magic.

Eight days after the worst, best Easter, I wandered outside to view the solar eclipse at 97.8%. It looked like a regular, overcast day. Only when I pressed paper glasses to my face was I able to see what was happening.

Neighbors gathered, sharing the sacred. We threw our heads back, letting smallness wash over us. We gasped at the ground beneath our feet, smeared with mercurial shadows. A young dad wearing a welder’s mask gazed upward while his little boys ran circles and squealed. Two men arrived home from work just in time. Their longing to be join in bridged our language barrier. I passed them my glasses and we stood together in the middle of the street, laughing at the sky.

We were smaller than we had imagined, yet part of something bigger. We were human, together, “caught up into the heavens,” as Drew said. (?)

For a moment we shared a common lens, along with oxygen, awe, and the longest-running art installation stretched wide around us, blinking back.

Drew:

Shannan:

The way of Jesus is the way of solidarity, which is first a story of seeing.

We can’t have solidarity without love

We can’t love what we don’t know

We can’t know what we don’t see

So, we become beginners in the spiritual practice of attentiveness.

We look down at the good earth that holds us.

We look up to the cosmos, remembering the sky belongs to everyone.

We look out at our neighbors, searching for the overlooked, the forgotten, the pummeled and discarded. We stretch our vision past borders and barriers, recognizing each person in our field of vision as a catchlight of God’s presence.

True solidarity moves us to embodied action, but it begins with seeing and naming what is.

Today, I see rainy day gratitude for my cozy home and unsheltered friends waiting it out under bridges and awnings. I see the unpredictability of spring, with its carnival trees, and the promise of summer. This is the day of famine and feasts. Of bombs and cosmic feats. Of Cowboys and Poets¹ (and arguing about both on the internet.) A man yawns in a courtroom.² A child practices piano. A mom boils pasta for dinner. This is the day of bombs, half a world away, and blackberry pie brought by a neighbor.

Beauty and terror. We carry it all. We carry it together.

This is the only way.

Drew:

STARS OVER GAZA (by Drew Jackson)

The clouds are thick tonight

though the sky is clear

in my corner of the world.

That I can sit quietly

and ponder the sky

and see the stars

haunts me.

There is a child somewhere

gazing into a smoke-filled sky

hoping the bright light

catching their eye

is unlike the stars

that have fallen to the ground

night after night.

---

All Things Drew Jackson:

I’ve followed Drew’s work for years and hold him in the highest regard, as a poet and thinker, but also as a human. Get acquainted with him!

Buy³ Drew’s poetry:

Touch the Earth by Drew Jackson

God Speaks Through Wombs by Drew Jackson

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This + That

:: If you care about the intersection of faith and the neighborhood, Parish Collective is the community you didn’t know you needed! Join us.

:: One of the best parts of Parish Collective gatherings is the live band. Listen on Spotify!

:: You know I can’t leave you without some food. I’ve got your backs!

BBQ Pork Bowls

I signed up to take a meal to another family this week and though modern wisdom tells us not to test a new recipe when the stakes are high, I operate from retro wisdom and throw caution to the wind. This was a winner! Find a pork butt or shoulder and slow-cook it with a jar of chopped pepperoncini and juice (my roast filled the slow cooker. Use half the jar if your roast is smaller) until the meat is falling apart, along with a bit of broth, salt, and some garlic and chopped onion or shallot.

Drain and shred the pork, then add some extra flavor with cumin, paprika, garlic powder, more S&P, whatever. It was still a bit bland for me, so I stirred together a quick BBQ drizzle, using cider vinegar, mustard, hot sauce, and brown sugar.

Meanwhile, cook some white rice using half water and half drippings from the meat.

Serve the shredded pork over the rice, along with shredded lettuce (or some type of slaw would also be delicious), shredded cheese, pickled onions and/or jalapenos if you have them, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, your secret recipe closer, BBQ Ranch, which consists of bottled barbecue sauce mixed with bottled ranch dressing, at whatever proportion you prefer. DIG IN!

1. The people who got this reference in real time have my whole heart. Current favorites: Bodyguard (Cowboys) and Cassandra (Poets). What are yours?

2. Ibid. Which is to say, see above. (This reference was a slight slow burn, but once the first person laughed, a bunch of others followed. Cheers to trusting our audience!

3. Here at The Soup, we support local bookstores by using Bookshop affiliate links.