…not “a strange adventure in the little world of me.”
Dear friends,
I’m about to experiment with bringing the idea of welcome (in case you haven’t caught it yet, that’s our mission distilled down to one word) into focus in an odd way. It’s a way I think all of you comprehend whether you would admit it or not: The poetic way.
T.S. Eliot called poetry “a raid on the inarticulate,” and I agree. Refuge began with an idea that barely made sense, even to us. Funny story: When I asked Dave, the owner of Clarkston Quality Motors which is where Refuge started and is today if our “grand opening” on May 15, 2015, was what he had pictured when I first asked him if we could rent his parking lot, he said, “To tell you the truth, Kitti, I had no idea what the hell you were talking about!”
Neither did we, Dave, neither did we.
And yet, as we continually boiled the ocean into our teacup (or should I say coffee mug?), figuring out who we were, why we existed, and what work we needed to perfect and repeat, a beautiful shape began to form.
Sometimes, it’s felt as if we defined Refuge by the negative space around us: the anger on both sides of “the issues,” the political furor. But the light within was so compelling that it, rather than the dark space without, defined us. Simplified language (poetry?!) is how we solidified who we were:
We work with our refugee neighbors, not for them.
We create spaces of agendaless welcome.
We urge each other to create refuge, especially for those who need it most.
Refuge, respite, welcome.
I did not write those words; we wrote them together. And they have guided us all along the way. What was inarticulate became articulate, at first by living it and then in our shared language.
The poet Scott Cairns said, “…a genuine poem is actually a place you enter and experience, a place in which you collaborate in meaning-making.”
When my husband passed away two years ago, I made my own poetic raid on the inarticulate that began and ended with me. Grief does that at first, points you inward. And then, slowly, I began to write with others in mind. I’d listen to and observe the people I love, and poetry would seep out. This is exactly what I’ve seen happen in the lives of my refugee neighbors and colleagues. Trauma closes us down, necessarily so. And then, as we learn to breathe again, the words of healing sink in and then seep out.
Lately, I’m aware of how long this takes. I fear at times I’ve staged my own raid on the inarticulate too soon, both in my own life and in the lives of my friends who need to survive (to breathe, to just be) longer than we give them.
As a reminder of where most of our refugee friends and neighbors come from and why the work of Refuge is so vital, watch this poetry reading by Bigoa Chuol. In her poem Birth Water, she says,
There is time to perish
But no time to mourn.
We have observed that our kind of welcome gives, along with other gifts, “time to mourn.” Time is essential to the rebirth of joy. And I’ve watched joy erupt when our neighbors are given the gift of time, of a job, a purpose, and a paycheck.
Poet Malcolm Guite says that he resists, “…the idea of the lonely genius in his weird, peculiar place… What does that amount to? Another strange adventure in the little world of me.”
Sure, all of our stories have elements of the strange and the solitary. But, like Guite, we want to tell the “collective stories that bind us together.”
And so, as our team puts the final flourishes on our 10-year anniversary celebration (you’ll be invited soon!), would you share your own stories of either the ways Refuge has written the poetry of meaning-making in your own heart or the ways you have written that poetry yourself?
Awaiting your stories to make our poetry even better!
Kitti
P.S. – My husband used to say he knew he had read a good poem (mine included) if it didn’t make sense. He was joking, sort of. Although something magical happens when you remove every single extraneous word from a story, it’s possible to remove clarity as well in the process. So, apologies to the prose-lovers out there who are frustrated by this email!
