(and for all our schools)
So much depends
upon
a brown door,
hollow,
framed with glass
windows,
between the gun &
children
It’s not enough.
Do something.
Sincerely,
Heather Peters Candela Teacher and Parent
The boys and I didn’t go to the game last night. We stayed home to recover from a short week that wound up being waaaaaaay long. Between the school-shooting horrors, a problematic medical finding, and some soft-lockdown stressors, the boys and I needed a quiet night.
I only wish my husband could have had that luxury. But he was in Calhoun helping commandeer a decided victory. He’s tired. God knows he is. He got home at 1:00 AM after a loooooong night.
While we were in the comfort of our home all-night-long – eating chicken nuggets and milk shakes.
And it does not escape me that there is a football coach from Winder, Georgia who will never return to the comfort of his home or the comfort of his wife and kids. Nor will they ever be wrapped in the comfort of his strong arms.
When the scores scrolled across the screen last night, the games in Barrow County — followed by the chillingly understated CANCELED — left me feeling hollow and sick and furious and afraid and fed up. And guilty.
I felt guilty that we were home safe and sound and four people from Winder are not. Guilty that my husband is still on the sidelines doing what he loves, while another wife’s husband is not. Guilty for thanking God it wasn’t our school. Guilty that our sons have parents who love them and shelter them, who clothe and feed them. Who don’t lock them out of the house at night. Who don’t buy them assault rifles for Christmas. Who don’t leave our weapons out and unsecured. Who don’t need FBI agents to tell us to do so in the first place.
I’m so tired of all these feelings. So tired of feeling hollow and sick and furious and afraid and fed up and guilty all at the same time.
But I don’t know how to make any of it better. I know what the problems are.
We have a mental health problem. We do.
We have a parenting problem. We do.
We have a gun problem. We do.
We have huge deficits and we have huge surpluses… and that creates a very big problem.
But y’all… teachers are not the solution. We aren’t. We can’t be.
We can’t be counselors. We can’t replace parents. And we can’t combat guns.
Our job is to love and educate the children of our country.
But somebody’s got to help us keep them alive. Somebody’s got to help keep us alive.
Somebody help.
We’re sending out an SOS. Please save our schools.
Fast and furious
Apollo’s gold Bugatti
banks chlorine blue sky
asphalt, a stovetop,
boils order to turbulence,
air rifts in ribbons
lawns, deep-fryer crisp,
once locust feast, now famine,
amber waste of grain
poolside barbecues
swim-suited shish ka barbies
rotate in the heat
collarbones glisten
sweat stipples bellies, arms, breasts
salt crusted temples
silk Bernini saints
cut from farinaceous clouds
clot in curdled air
sunsets melt so fast
ice cream too, fireflies blink and
summer’s gone away
But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. Genesis 19:26
Scrolling social media
I see the headline --
Salted Watermelon:
the “New” Viral Trend.
I roll my eyes,
toss thoughts
like spilled salt…
back to the ice-cold
flesh of my childhood,
to the grosgrain-ribboned rounds,
chilled with river rock,
freshly fished from
glittering undercurrents
and displayed,
gravid & sweating,
on weathered pine planks
bleached as the afternoon sun.
Thwump
goes the blade, sharp
and curved for cleaving,
heavy in my father’s right hand,
parting the Red Sea and
spilling juice and seeds
in abundance, driving
wedges wide and deep
as the smiles on our faces,
the shade in Mother’s gazes
as she administers
the covenant of salt,
eyes glittering
with undercurrents,
hands chapped as weathered planks
when
she upends the yellow-skirted,
umbrella-girded maiden
trapped in her canister,
salt like tears raining down,
before she turns, before she
leaves him, this
bold salty beacon,
guiding us beyond silence
and taut apron strings.
By Heather Peters Candela
Don't trust a religion
that makes you abandon
your kids
-- "Daughters of the Cult" docuseries
I often tell people I was raised in a cult. It explains a bit about who I am, why I am how I am, and gives me some sense of control over a past that was beyond my control. But every now and then, I question the validity of my claim.
Was I really raised in a cult? Or am I just being melodramatic? Just villainizing a faith that I didn’t agree with? Remembering my teenage years and romanticizing typical teenage rebellious behavior as prompted by something more sinister? Was the Fellowship that radically different from any other random, nondenominational, fundamentalist, evangelical, Pentecostal, roaming hotel-conference-room-meeting-place church body? I mean, did it really do me or any other members any harm?
Well, it did do what the Daughters of the Cult said so plainly in their documentary. It did cause two intelligent, God-fearing adults to give up their daughter in favor of their faith. It made my parents abandon me.
I was driven, at sixteen, under cover of night, to a house twelve hours and two states away, and deposited on the doorstep of a grandmother (who I really didn’t know that well since we’d pretty much quit visiting except for every few years because of... religion) because the elders didn’t like that I wouldn’t change my ways.
We don’t want you to conform, we want you to change was one of the last things I heard before falling under their attack. And just what exactly were my ways that needed changing? Well..
I loved to read Agatha Christie mysteries.
I loved to write my own mysteries set back in Jane Austen’s day.
I loved to watch Humphrey Bogart black-and-white films.
I loved the Dallas Cowboys and hung their clippings on my school cubby walls.
I loved my friends in the fold, the only friends I was allowed to have.
I loved to watch the neighborhood kids come and go and play kick ball and drive their cars.
I loved to sneak and listen to Casey Kasum’s American Top 40 countdown.
But I did not love the endless church meetings hosted so many days and nights of the week.
I was terrified of “deliverance,” the laying-on of hands to cast off demons.
I was terrified of the speaking in tongues, which would go on for hours and render up prophecies.
I was terrified of the prophecies, so often targeting “sinners” like me.
I was terrified of not being allowed to go to college because advanced education “ruins” a good woman.
I was terrified of serving in another elder’s home until I was fit to have a husband of my own.
I was terrified of the bearded elders who targeted me, who wanted me spineless and weak.
I was terrified of being controlled like I was already being controlled for the rest of my life.
But I had no independence, no autonomy, zero self-governance:
My writing was censored, my storyline controlled – the preacher can’t be the killer, I was told.
My Cowboys scrapbook was removed – football isn’t feminine, I was told.
My friends and I were separated by the headmaster at school – bad influences, I was told.
My top 40 music was taken away -- secular humanism would destroy me, I was told.
My life was not mine for the choosing – I must give my life up to their keeping, I was told.
My body and mind were possessed by demons -- I must be delivered, I was told.
So I fought being possessed by the Fellowship the only way I could, by maintaining a tenuous emotional distance between them and me. I was scared and alone with an innate understanding of what is right and what is wrong – and everything around me felt so very, very wrong.
Am I being less-than-truthful about who I was and what I was really like? Maybe. Because by the end, I did try to escape my invisible shackles by being rebellious. I snuck out my window to see what happens outside the iron fist of the Fellowship’s rule by talking to a couple of neighbors a couple of times. Just how evil is it, the outside world? I wanted to know.
I did this twice -- that’s the God’s-honest truth. And the second time, a neighbor drove me a couple blocks away after our garage door opened and my father came searching for his wayward daughter. If I’d been caught with that neighbor, there would have been hell to pay. There definitely was hell to pay in the form of a whipping afterwards. But before that, my neighbor talked to me about how to get help, how his parents could help, how there were agencies that could help me get out. But by the next week, I was gone. So yes, I was rebellious and obstinate. I was saved from a cult by the skin of my tenacity to hold out, to reject its tactics, until finally I was dispossessed by the Fellowship -- or as the Daughters of the Cult documentary calls it, abandoned by my parents because of their religion. Does that make The Fellowship a cult? Was it harmful? There weren't sexual crimes that I know of, unless you consider the subjugation and control of women a sexual crime. There wasn't violence that I know of, beyond the tying and beating of children naked on chairs, and the stripping of members' voices and rights, and the traumatizing deliverance of demons inside living rooms and conference rooms and office conferences. There was definitely control. There was definitely isolation from outside influences. There was definitely zero tolerance for the questioning of leadership. There was definitely an eternal quest to win favor from higher-ups, and there was a definite hierarchical pyramid structure. Service and obedience and unquestioning loyalty were demanded at all times. And the Fellowship definitely did me harm. Without a doubt I suffer from PTSD. I was exposed to mind and body control tactics for a prolonged period of time, with those tactics getting much more targeted and intense as I matured. As a result, I vigorously avoid things that remind me of that traumatizing time: I resist organized religion and often spiral into feelings of shame and blame when I walk into a house of worship. The sounds of speaking in tongues sends my hair standing on end and my stomach in knots. I resist conflict and confrontation because I have a fear of being abandoned if I dare disagree. I don’t let a lot of people get too close to me. I don't trust a lot of people’s motivations. Sometimes I see them for who they truly are -- and sometimes I likely project old patterns and behaviors onto people without warrant. I am completely and unequivocally afraid of films about demon possession. And I am completely and unequivocally drawn to cult documentaries and docuseries, even when I can’t sleep for days afterwards. Even when they stir up the feelings of shame and anger and blame and fear of my past. Because I am always looking for affirmation and for permission to exorcise past demons from my life. That's also why I write, and why I'm so profoundly and exquisitely attuned to pattern recognition... and why my hackles rise whenever I sense danger on any personal, political, pedagogical, theological, patriarchal, or societal front. So maybe that means the Fellowship did me harm. Or maybe that means the Fellowship did me some favors. Or maybe that means it did a bit of both. Regardless, I’m pretty sure it means I was raised in a cult.
silver tinsel sliding from angel palms
to slicken evergreens and other greens,
white oaks, red maples, hydrangea-blue poms,
my vision rapt with heaven’s garland strings --
When ribbons of rain thin as fishing line fall
from hosts of rods in the sky, casting, catching
rainbows in their threaded, shimmering haul,
my pulse entangled and splashing --
When champagne streamers spill from glistening,
sun-scented fountains, filling the tender
flower flutes with honeyed nectar, fizzing
my soul – sublime-stoked, I seize the ember.
Burning, I haggle with poetry’s muse,
drunk and in debt to ephemeral views.
That groundhog is cute,
I say. He’s covered in bugs,
you say. No that’s layers
of fur, I say. They’ve got two. And look how he holds up his cute little paws — those tiny front paws — like a toddler in prayer. He’s nibbling a nut, just look at those teeth, his gold chicklet teeth and that slack-bottomed jaw. Watch him whittle his food. Get a load of that nose as it twitches and stills, watch his wobble turn stone at first sign of threat. He’s so cute! I go on. Get a load of that bod, that pudge full of pudding, that folds like dough. It can twist all around to that itch on his back, to that two-coated stubbed silver fur on his back – see that weak-whispered chin of his going to town? He’s the cutest, I say. But you say, so unmoved,
Your pudge pudding boy
just ate bugs off his back. That itch –?
that nut –? Both were bugs.
The aspens at the cross-roads talk together
with their dark wet gold out,
bartering with the wind
over the pond’s reflective mirror — bruised
azure acrylic, butterscotch glass, anyone’s flesh-tone, chrome.
Listen You.
Who disappeared into those shadows?
Joined at the spine with death and life?
Unravelling like smooth threads?
Listen to the rhythmic thumping inside water,
like black birds pushing against the glass
to know the reasons why and the answers to and the
words frothing out merciless and angry:
You can’t abandon your history
and it won’t abandon you.
Down over the rocks, an explosion, a discovery
of the torched & reckless hour
in this carved gold of shifting faces:
tree limbs, tiny veins of burnt leaves and a scorched coil of greasy hemp,
scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the lingering smell
of gasoline,
thick glass blood cells, a throat slit pouring silk
whirled in the ochre light —
the light of truth.
His head is a rose being burned alive.
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf,
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
and the small wings
unfold from the fabric of night,
bound up at length for harvesting,
darkness after it, dark riddled through it.
Manna does not fall.
Saviors do not save.
The earth drinks men and their loves
like wine.
Souls which are planted . . . continue growing . . . until generations
will tell tales of having met someone who knew.
The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves,
and all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth —
it’s breaking apart, it’s turning over, it’s pushing up.
Listen You, if no one else,
Can you feel the ground rumble under your feet?
Back through the brindled understory
etched in wood…
You can’t abandon your history
and it won’t abandon you.
SOURCES: The Brindled Understory Cento is comprised entirely of lines borrowed from the following poets (in order of appearance): Edward Thomas; Roger Reeves; Lynda Hull; Jill McDonough; Tino Villanueva; Adrienne Rich; Sonia Sanchez; Anne Sexton; Brian-Komei-Dempster; Lucille Clifton; Margaret Walker; David Bottoms; Jake Adam York; Mary Oliver; Lynda Hull; Sonia Sanchez; Richard Wright; Robin Glow; Jane Kenyon; Nikki Giovanni; Roger Reeves; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Mary Oliver; Jake Adam York; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Daisy Fried; Lenelle Moise; Yehuda Amichai; Nikki Giovanni; Sylvia Plath; Philip Levine; Anne Waldman; Tino Villanueva; Anne Waldman; Donovan Kuhio Colleps; Laura Da’; Jake Adam York
Juneteenth is an important day in America’s history, not only for ancestors of enslaved people to celebrate emancipation, but as a reminder for the rest of us that it hasn’t always been about freedom and justice for all in this country…
and to warn us that unless we understand and own our country’s past injustices, we might get there again.
A date on a calendar is not enough to ensure we don’t. A “Happy Juneteenth” is not enough.
Maybe the best way is to walk a mile in the shoes of those who’ve been there. Read or watch or visit places that tell their stories. Hear and understand.
This book. This one in my picture. Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward. The title is a line from Dante’s Inferno where Virgil becomes Dante’s tour guide through hell – and that is what this book will do for you.
It will take you on a tour through an enslaved woman’s hell. You will inhabit the mind and body of Annis. You will feel her pain, her hunger, her suffering, her horrors.
It’s hard reading. Brutal.
But imagine living it.
Juneteenth deserves to be recognized. But even more, it deserves to be understood.
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