Mark Scandrette

lonely-highways.mp3

25th-and-shotwell.mp3

you-said.mp3

spring-blossoms.mp3

We returned yesterday from our second annual silent retreat in Kirkwood. Since I generally talk 16 hours a day, it was quite refreshing to be forced into silence and a bit of solitude. The weekend was a good time to refocus and reflect on my priorities and goals. Somehow this year I would like to live with a greater sense of center, even when I am active and life is full. Here’s a poem I wrote about an experience I had this weekend:

Cautiously I step
onto the frozen crust
of deep packed snow.

Once or twice I hesitate
falling through up to my waste
Slowly learning to plant my feet
like stairs along the slope.

Past the fur trees I ascend
climbing a wall up toward the sky
on a path that goes on endlessly
My heart pounds
and my lungs labor
in the thin Sierra Nevada air.

At the top of the ridge
the wind howls through the stone crevaces
as I inch my way up towards the pinnacle
clawing through the snow
my hands scrape against the jagged ledge

I stop to catch my breath and notice
that I am at the top of the world!
with a three-hundred-sixty degree view
of surrounding mountains
stretching out in every direction
along the horizon.

I make my bed in the black lava
slowly removing my clothes
pressing my body against the warm ancient flow.

A top this perch I lay amidst snowdrifts
exposed to the sky
the sun beating down on my face
–and to shield my eyes from the brightness
I turn my head
gazing toward the mesa
on the far side of the valley

Hours pass like minutes
Nothing visible changes
until a cloud rolls by
veiling the mountain in cold blue shadows
that make my skin prickle

I look up at the swirling mist dancing above me
and wonder, “How long has it been?”
“Months? Years? A decade?”

This afternoon I will be still
sitting in silence, watching,
Remembering how small I am
in the vast expanse
of earth, sky and eternity
Bathed in the tempermental radiance of your wild.

There was an early March heat wave
the year I turned sixteen
And on my birthday
my friend Erich and I
Built a fire
And took our shirts off
to bath in the sunlight
Along the banks of the Mississippi

From noon to sundown
we were Tom Sawyer and huckleberry Finn
Camping out along the mythic river
The white sand beach
Was bright and warm
and our minds swam
With the hopes and dreams of growing manhood
bathed in the confidence of new found strength,
first loves and an aching search for identity
By the end of the afternoon
We felt the sting of sunburn on uur acne pocked faces, arms and shoulders
as we walked back toward the small house
Where we were still our mothers boys

In four months time I would move away
And we would begin to loose the tender magic of our adolescent friendship:
Our shared secrets,
earnest discoveries and virginal innocence.
Erich would go bald prematurely, become a nurse,
move to Chicago, marry a woman named Lisa,
and complain about Candida infections and New Age conspiracies
I would settle in California– a world away
Where the ties of our kinship, shared geography and religion quickly unraveled—lost in the tangled fragments of a mobile society.

Twenty years later
On this same day
The weather is unseasonably warm again
And my face stings again with the surprising kiss of early spring sunshine
I feel the strength of my youth slowly fading,
But Life still feels mostly brand new,
bursting forth with possibilities
And the Mississippi still flows
swiftly following its course
down past St. Louis to New Orleans,
and out into the gulf of Mexico
and up into the circulating breeze of the moist ocean air that I breath
on this warm March evening.

The summer and fall were marked by violence in our neighborhood. In mid August Adam and Dan, two of our housemates, were the first on the scene of a homicide across the street in Garfield Park. A group of kids from the projects were taunting people in the park. A man stepped in to deescalate the situation. Two boys, approximately 10 and 12 years old went home and got a gun and came back and shot the man in the head. This incident prompted a group of us to initiate Barrio Libre: a grass roots neighborhood advocacy project aimed at curbing violence by addressing blight and encouraging neighbors to take greater ownership for the conditions in our community. OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: What we do matters has been the tag line for this project, which included a poster campaign, neighborhood trash pick-up, attendance at police meetings, and graffiti removal. One night a group of us went out to pick up trash and to pray for peace, and I wrote the following poem:

25th and Shotwell
25th and Treat
25th and Portrero
24th and Mission, Capp, Shotwell, Folsom, Harrison, York
Harrison and 24th
Treat and 25th
Around the corner, down the street, outside my door
These are the places
I can remember off the top of my head
Where brothers, sons, daughters sisters
Were found dead
Shot down in retaliation drive bys
While wearing blue or red

We hear the sirens
and we turn our heads
When the gunshots wake us
And We rise from our beds

A mother weeps
His sister cries
as the mass is sung
Before the blood has dried
In the cracks along these sidewalks

They say He was a street soldier
But why couldn’t he have been older?
What revolution, good cause or war did he loose his life for?

We hear the sirens
and we turn our heads
When the gunshots wake us
And We rise from our beds

After the candles and trinkets have been swept way
We try to forget about the violence which overshadows this day
But tonight, under the street lights, I will remember and pray

Peace to the immigrant child
Hope to all those in exile
Love to fatherless children
Waiting to born into the family of the kingdom of love

In each session of REDISCOVERING CREATIVITY we have been inviting participants to explore a theological concept through a creative medium (drawing, painting, music, pantomime, etc.) This past week we did several poetry exercises. We each had 10 minutes to write on a certain theme– and then we shared our poems with one another. I love this kind of speed-creating. And sometimes the results are surprisingly beautiful or insightful. Below are the exercises and my two poems. We found it helpful to have ambiant music playing in the background.

Gratitude & Abundance

Consider how the Maker lavishes you with abundance and generosity. What experiences and sensations are you most grateful for? What objects or activities do you most closely associate with the wonder of living in God’s world? Jot words and phases as they come to mind and weave a simple poem stringing words and sensations together. 

What moves me?
-Babies and that fresh innocent fragrance
The ocean just before sunset
Birds flying in formation
above wet sand reflecting like glass

What moves me?
Unlikely heroes who exercise strength despite all odds
A Strong black woman—leading with quiet confidence
New immigrants working hard to make a better life
For themselves and their children

She is Fridah Kahlo as a waitress:
Compact, articulate, with friendly brown eyes.
And she speaks the language she is just learning
With perfect diction—
her head full of memories of Mexico City
and the family and friends she has left behind

What moves me?
The laughter of children. Chocolate.
Full-bodied fruit forward inky wines
That climax with a long velvet finish.
The warmth of my wife as she lays beside me
Curled up to conform to the shape of my body touching hers.

What moves me?
Dance music. Thunderstorms. Spring rain. Grilled meats.
Flamenco music. The chime of church bells. The smell of fresh laundry.
Early morning coffee and the gift of eternal presence.

Moving on from your traps & Saboteurs

Each of us has ways of limiting, trapping or sabotaging God’s generativity and freedom in our lives. What would you tell your internal captor if you had the courage to move on from the habits and thought patterns that trap your generativity and freedom? Write a poem of complaint in which you acknowledge that you have been held captive AND confront the saboteur within. Its time to fight. Tell your shadow self its over and you are moving on.

You Bastard!
How long you have kept me from my true destiny
Tying me up and pulling me down
Into a dungeon of worry and anxiety
And an unyielding sense that my efforts are never good enough
–because reality never conforms to your distorted view of perfection
that masquerades as the ultimate goodness.

Dark phantom of my mind,
Haunting me with doubts about my worth and capabilities.
I am that prince that you seek to cage
Because when I am released I will hunt you down
And exterminate every pretense of diminished self
That feigns humility and shallow holiness.
The true self does not wrap my intestines in knots.
You are the cramping, the indigestion, the gas, the headaches,
The sleepless nights that have robbed me
of my true freedom,
Child wonder
Lucidity
And the breath of mystery that is beyond words.
I say be gone.
I will arise to embrace my rightful place
As a child of the beloved.

My world is small–
An old house in a city made of mold
A woman I have known since childhood
who is as much a sister as my lover
Three children now almost the age we were
who only know me as their father.
Dirty streets and buildings sinking
into the ground–
minerals returning
to the place where they
once lay buried.

In my body I read the signs decay:
The gray of beard stubble
creases on my face
and even plumbing problems
like an old house with broken clay pipes
underneath a weakened foundation.

I’m getting older– am I any wiser?
Or will I die the old fool,
surrounded by the skeletons
of past achievements
propped up in a chair
watching the food channel
with someone wiping the drool
from my silent mouth and vacant mind?

How much of what I’ve done
will matter anymore?
Maybe all that really matters
is this one single moment.

The coastal fog seeps
into the river valley
and clings to the fir trees and winter grasses
making dry scorched earth a wonderland.
The frozen mist makes the ordinary spectacular.
Ditches, abandon cars and shanty houses
covered in crystal white frost
belong together
a fleeting post card picture of order and beauty
made visible by the Oregon solstice wet chill.