It’s only been a little over two years since I started this
path of writing poetry. I write, of course, about things that register with me,
usually in some emotional way: growing up gay in the time and place I did, my
mother and her death, getting older, being more aware of impermanence, my meditation
practice, my long term relationship, etc. When the Catholic Church sexual abuse
scandal first started getting widespread media attention, I did not know what
to make of it. It felt disturbing and close to home, but I didn’t quite know
how. I knew that a teacher at my all-boys Catholic high school had molested one
of the only friends with whom I have stayed in touch over the decades. I did
not know how else it all had touched me. I had not explored how growing up in the
environment that “housed” such abuse may have affected me, even though I was not
sexually abused in any physical way. I started learning a lot, and wrestling
with lots of my own feelings.
I discovered that one of the parish priests who trained me
as an altar boy, and with whom I often served Mass, was a perpetrator. I read some
documents about his particular case that the courts forced my old diocese to
release. I recalled some of his verbal
behavior with me in the confessional that I am now pretty sure fits the
category of abusive. I recalled a conversation with my mother that was about
him. On Calvary Hill is about all
that. It is the second poem that has made it to press about sexual abuse in the
Catholic Church. It is in five parts, two of which are “found poems” with wording
taken directly from all those documents. That poem will be out soon, with eight
other poems, in the July 2014 edition of Assaracus:
A Journal of Gay Poetry.
New Verse News in
February of this year, published
Defrocking.
NVN is an online journal and you can find my poem here:
http://newversenews.blogspot.com/2014/02/defrocking.html.
In many ways, it has a similar focus to
On Calvary Hill, but not as much of a
narrative poem, more political, and mostly has an angry and sarcastic edge.
I have other poems in various stages that focus on sexual
abuse in the Catholic Church. I hope that one or two of them will see the light
day in publication. I am making this blog entry because I spent some time today
working on one of those poems. I am often as left in a certain mental and emotional
space after working on writing in the area. I thought sharing that might be of
some use to others. I feel some anger, often less at individuals and more at
the Church culture and system. I feel sorta sick to my stomach too and like I
want to take a shower and get clean. But in the middle of all that, I feel
better about myself—I often do when writing anything personal—like I am
affirming that what I have experienced and have to say is indeed viable, real,
worthy. When writing in this area, it feels like that sense of affirmation
holds some extra power. I think for me it is saying that even though my damage
was “collateral” so to speak, I too survived growing up Catholic at a time when
sexual abuse was hidden but pervasive.
It feels good to say, hopefully with some poetic grace and power—all
that was pretty sick stuff and that’s where I spent a lot of my boyhood.
I did another contemplative photograph walk Sunday in downtown Kalamazoo. It is a great place to walk and see. And I do feel the practice part of this activity--the focusing on what is in front me in a much fuller way than my monkey mind usually allows. During this walk, the shadows were amazing. And seeing them, one at time, did bring me to a place I know occasionally in meditation.
I have an old friend who was diagnosed with a fairly serious cancer. We haven't seen each other much in the three decades I have known her, so I can't say we are close. But I have always registered pretty strongly with the way she sees the world and what "right action" is for us human beings. She is doing an amazing job of writing about her experiences with her illness and treatment. She is experiencing impermanence, and the related sanctity of being in the present moment, in a larger way than I ever. I am inspired (and a bit frightened) by what she has been sharing so eloquently.
.JPG)
