Soulful Friday
What touched my soul this week.
Today when I was reading our local newspaper I ran across an article written by a guest columnist.
He was writing about feeling numb and useless; about feeling down and not caring around anything.
He described it as feeling numb from Morphine.
He described this with a Latin word
ACCIDIA-meaning to fall below expectations, not give a damn about anything in one's life.
Depression
The events across our country and our world can cause these feelings.
He writes, it is ok to feel this way.
But one must seek ways to come out of this.
This was only the second time in my life I had heard this word.
25 years ago.
25 years ago.
25 years ago I wrote a poem, I had just had a hysterectomy and was laid up at home recovering.
I became depressed.
I went on retreat about that time to a farm called Orbis in Indiana.
The leader was a spiritual adviser with a practice in the city.
A master's degree in counseling.
The retreat was held at a farm in the country that she shared with her sister, a retired medical technician.
The fresh air, home grown food, the vegetarian cooking and exercise returned me to health.
Physically and emotionally.
We each were sent into the private woods of the farm, alone for an hour and asked to write a poem while there.
This was at the very beginning of the retreat.
Below is what I wrote. When I showed her my poem,
after we returned, this is the name she suggested.
Accides*
Our story is true
Our story is old
Our true story has never been told
of woman's joy
of woman's pain
The true story is they are one and the same
Our children come
Our children go
What they need from us now
is not what they needed so long ago
They need our strength, our courage,
our joy
our pain
Our lovers will die
Our beauty will fade
We will be left with what only we have made
And what will we have to give back to Him and to
them
An empty shell of skin and bones
NO! ( shout it out)
NO! (shout it out)
NO! (shout it out)
But
A blossom
A lotus
A rose, so full and so sweet that nothing of this earth
From its destiny could keep
We will give back this woman as He intended
her to be
The nurturer of His creation
Co-creators shaped by His gifts of Joy and Pain
We must learn and teach they are
one and the same.
And that dear woman is the true story
*Accides, means to fail to be all you can be.
Peggy Jones 1995/ copywrited
When I read the above poem at our
Poet's Supper back in 1995, no one had heard the word
accides before.
In the group was a high school teacher of literature,
A professor of religion at the college, a reporter that had relocated from New York City and leader for our little
get togethers.
Was I making up a word.
I framed the poem and forgot about it and never heard the word again, until today.
I have an idea of what to do with it now.
Don't fret over things, in time they will come together.
Don't fret over things, in time they will come together.
25 years later wisdom comes to me.
1 comment:
What an intense poem! You are very creative in so many ways...writing, art, crafting. I am thrilled to hear that wisdom comes to us eventually.
Post a Comment