A photo of Alice Walker's Poem "Reassurance" on the Berkeley Poetry Walk
To Read this series from the start, please visit this #31 Days Link after you have read this essay.
It was early June I first read Alice Walker’s Poem, “Reassurance.” I didn’t read it in the conventional way, in a book, I read it on the sidewalk. Berkeley’s version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame is a Poetry Walk, with famous and not-so-famous poems lining the sidewalk on Addison Street between Shattuck and Milvia. I was convinced it wouldn’t be all that great, after all, I bet there would be more male poets than women, I thought.
I walked down Addison street looking at my feet, reading. Laughing, crying, photographing.
I was moved, I was delighted. Through some of the poetry, I was changed.
I felt passion well up in each step I took.
Alice
Walker’s poem was the one I have held onto that Summer as I waited for
yet another life transition involving my children. It was an emotional rollercoaster time for me, but living and loving the questions helped me approach my challenges not with hyper-accentuated fear, instead it was with relative ease and passion.
I have spent much of the Summer in a fairly even keeled manner but lately I have felt emotionally rocked and rolled.
Rainer Rilke's original quote goes like this: “Have patience toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and books written in a foreign language. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now.”
Rainer Rilke
Here are a couple questions I poked, prodded and lived with passion, because my children are one of the most strong and continual source of passion in my life.
“What can I do, as a mother, to help my children through transitions?”
I did all I possibly could, short of being a helicopter parent which I won’t do.
“What can I do, as a mother, to feel peace with whatever happens to either of them, since it their path is their path and my path is my path and I can’t walk their path for them?”
There is a question I continue to live and love.
How may I effectively encourage Emma, Samuel and Katherine to fully live their life path?
Again, this is a question to continue loving and living with passion, everyday, no matter how grown up my children get!
And now, you:
What questions will you begin asking, living and loving without concerning yourselves with "the" answer? Remember, the reality is there are many possible answers, even when we base our living on one particular philosophy
Sometimes we will pick ourselves up and brush our selves off over and over again as we live the question and falter. This doesn't mean to stop living and loving the question, it means to live it and love it slightly differently.
Add a lot of cool content
Day 2/31 - A Passionate Attitude
Day 3/31 - Choice + Intentional Action
Day 4/31 - Passionate Detachment
Day 5/31 - Curiosity & Passion
Day 6 - Creating a Monthly Theme
This post was inspired by the #31Days challenge on TheNester.com
So far it has been a wonderful experience of creativity and community. I hope you will continue to follow along on my adventure AND the adventures of others.
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Julie
Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her
word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown
Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different
social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus
particularly enticing.
Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot
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