Dear friends of Refuge,
The following poem was prompted by conversations I’ve had with many of you. As I’ve struggled to make sense of the tension between my own grief at
losing my dearest love, Bill, and the vein of joy that remains in my life even now, I’ve also doubled down on my resolve to think more deeply about the wider world. A world that is perpetually at war and seems crouched at our doorsteps these days in the form of internet speech.
I wrestle, as I believe you do, too, with how to approach the cacophony of voices that seem bent on war–war against immigrants and refugees, war against conservatives, war against liberals (which am I? I have no idea!), war against those who support Gaza or those who support Israel, against Russians, against Muslims or Christians or Hindus or Buddhists (there are countries where each of these wars rage daily), wars that wage between small factions of the powerful and create a mass exodus of people harmed by that power. I even wrestle with war within my own conscience. I know burying my head in the sand is not the answer, but I also don’t want to succumb to the current sound of fury. It’s easy to think I must dish out equal fury in my refusal to engage.
A book title sparked me to think about refusals and the ways in which we make them. I hope you hear the following in the encouraging voice I mean it to have:
I Cheerfully Refuse
(With apologies to Leif Enger,
whose book by the same title
isn’t about the subject of this poem at all)
I cheerfully refuse
to pretend I can do
more than I can do.
I have only
so much time,
so much capacity,
so much energy,
(and my “so much”
is shrinking,
not to extinction,
but noticeably,
and is therefore
so much
more precious).
I cheerfully refuse
to expend any
of this capacity
making war,
war within my own soul
or yours.
War is the enemy,
not the people who
wage it, and so
I cheerfully refuse
the fundamentalist
playbook used
by sides.
I cheerfully refuse
the accusation
that by being
a generalist
on the side of
humanity instead
of human constructs
places me
in the middle
and means
I am spineless,
side-less,
powerless,
living inside
an echo chamber.
I cheerfully refuse
to ignore
the complexities
inherent in the pursuit
of simplicity,
and I cheerfully refuse
the premise
that I am sidestepping
toil and adversity.
(I may be cheerful,
but I am resolute,
and I pay
a certain price for this,
a cost that mere words
don’t usually exact.)
I cheerfully refuse
to expend my corpus
of diminished competence
on causes and
inflammatory words
and cancellations
instead of on
people whose existence
is proved to me daily
by empirical evidence,
having gazed into
the singular prism of
a pair of eyes
and having listened
to the matchless
waves of sound
one voice can send
to my tender eardrums.
And having done
this research,
I cheerfully refuse
to spend
whatever is leftover
on anything,
singular or
collective—
questionable
or not—
unless I
can be sure
it will
bring peace.
Finally,
I refuse to
define peace
by any means
except love.
(Note to Leif Enger: I bought your book, and I am enjoying it!)
With much gratitude,
Kitti
P.S – Photo from our Coffee Summit last night at Portrait Coffee. We ended with a hilarious exercise in eye contact!
P.P.S. – If you want to donate something fun that will make our race even MORE FUN, check out Refuge Run to Brew Hope Amazon Wishlist where the highest-priced item is just $34.99!
