Are We Running With You, Jesus?

Naropa Jack Kerouac School of Disemodied Poetic 2015

Reflections on Week Three;
"Insurgent Poetics" was the workshop I chose, lead very well by a "political poet" Mark Nowak, who directs the MFA program at Manhattanville College in Purchase NY. He is a leader of writing workshops all over the world for workers, unionists and more.

What is amazing about Naropa, the SWP, is it pushes one to think about action, transformation, change. We received a red note card as we started. On one side we were to write three issues that were really important for us today. I wrote issues of spiritual practice, racism and culture and poverty.
That was the noun side. On the verb side, action side, we were to write organizations we would go to work on these issues with.  Exciting... the rest of the week we worked on organizing and implementing these ideas. We had outlines, poetry, rants and more... there were five colleagues in the class all week.

Here is a rough draft of my Verb report working with a local community center:

A Gathering of Community Leaders and Folks at the Neshkoro Community Center

A Series of three gatherings to begin this process, two hours in length.

The Topic:

Conversations will be had, dealing with the presence of racism in our community and its relationship to our religious (spiritual) practice.

The Outcomes:

Create events, learning experiences, and practices that continually serve everyone in our community, that all feel and are welcome. That we learn to honestly talk about our feelings fears and hopes to create a more stable and welcoming community.

Those who have been invited:

Everyone in the community is welcome. We hope to have civic, religious and educational leaders, as well as members of the business community along with everyone else.

The First Session: Gathering time…

Welcoming and context for this event

Break into small groups of six to eight people lead by trained group leaders, and someone to take notes…

1.      Everyone introduce themselves and tell a brief story about thier family and their ancestors. What culture does your family come from and when did the first people arrive in North America? (give folks time to gather their thoughts)

2.      A conversation about what the group heard.

a.        Something that caught your attention about one of the stories

b.       Where were the struggles and fears?

c.        What would you call the gift of these stories? Why remember our family’s journey?

3.      Small break

4.      A conversation on how when difference entered our lives, people of different faiths, language, and cultulre. (it is important not to use the word racism but that folks are able to reflect on fear and misinformation, or cultural ways to look at things)

5.      What have we learned from this experience? (important to avoid judgement in these questions and allowing honesty and openness in the conversation)

6.      Now for some fun!

a.       Each group will create a symbol (given materials to do this)]

b.      Suggest maybe a few in the group work on a poem or a song using a well known folk tune or children’s tune

c.       If they are really a group with some drama in them, create a small skit.

Gather as a whole group, report, laugh and cry, and announce the date of the next gathering, building on the material from this event.

Bob ko shin Hanson, 07/02/2015

Here is a context Page I gave along with the plan above:

 

 

 

 Words of context

Neshkoro Community Center is a real place in a village of 452 people, including cats and dogs.

I have led three planning gatherings to help create the Neshkoro Community Center Plan about a year ago. We had 25-30 folks each time, and the plan has worked and is expanding.

I have been trained as has others in the community to lead this kind of conversation, fun event.

These events will have a broader appeal, so it will take time to get this off the ground. The plan would be to hold the first event after the harvest in mid-fall.

There are two or three other groups others and I will approach with this:  Clergy, Educational leaders, parents, and students. Possible classes on racism and poverty would be wonderful and some social studies classes already deal with some of this.

The Parliament of World Religions in Salt Lake City in mid-October is another venue. My wife and I and 15 others from our greater area will be there with 6-8 thousand others from around the world. I have registered to do a poetry workshop, and have been talking to folks about a couple of flash mobs. (Do not tell anyone)

I plan to approach the Wisconsin Council of Churches, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, the mother church leaders in the domination I am part of, and the Faith Based organizing group Wisdom in Wisconsin.

Bob ko shin Hanson, 070215 

Along with this came some poetry work as well:

 

 

Bob ko shin Hanson

July 3, 2015

 

 

 

August 22, 1940

 

HEAVY BOMBS USED

Article Details

Missile, 'Shaped like a Torpedo,' Digs a Huge Crater in One Town 13 NAZIS REPORTED BAGGED Air Ministry Suggests That Assaults in Waves Were Found Too Expensive LONDON, Thursday, Aug. 22— British fighter pilots played a desperate game of hide and seek all day yesterday with the German raiders.

My dad walked the halls of St. Mary’s Hospital, Green Bay, Wisconsin, finally the word came, Dad came into the room, immediately baptized this shoe box size man, they thought I might be dead…no kiddin’! Mom had high blood pressure until I went to college.

 

May 27, 1958

EISENHOWER BARS GENERAL TAX CUT

Article Details

ASKS EXTENSIONS Urges Congress Keep Excise and Corporation Income Levies Without Change

4 FRENCH WARSHIPS SAIL TO ALGERIA

Article Details

CARRIER AT BONE,  ALGIERS, May 26 — Four French warships, including the aircraft carrier La Fayette, have entered Algerian ports and their officers will obey the orders of Admiral Philippe-Marie Auboyneau, it was announced here tonight.

 

Fifty Eight bright seniors walk across the stage in a packed humid gym graduating high school. We just gathered to celebrate our seventy fifth. Only 20 or so were there, but we are still able to put our feet on the ground each morning, even in Boulder CO.

 

June 10, 1962

 

It was Sunday, under the sign of Gemini. The US president was John F. Kennedy (Democratic). In that special week of June people in US were listening to I Can't Stop Loving You by Ray Charles. In UK Good Luck Charm by Elvis Presley was in the top 5 hits. Advise & Consent, directed by Otto Preminger, was one of the most viewed movies released in 1962. Graduation time at St. Olaf College, the class of ’62. Now it’s time to start growing up Bob.

 

1968, Milwaukee

Saved my Life…but little justice

 

“Marches are a form of public demonstration that activists commonly use to express displeasure with or support of certain conditions or practices.”  

We always met at St. Boniface for a rally.

Really it was a Mass with no questions asked.

This night the# 100, buses took us to Wisconsin Ave.

Marching along, a glass hit the street.

It was thrown from one of the hotels, all hell broke loose.

1968, things went a different way

 

I was trapped by a large cop, in a store entry way,

windows broken, a large cop was beating on young lady

for reminding him of his mother and white heritage.

Do I jump on the cops back to stop him from beating the teen,

or take something from the store window?

 

1968, sacred

I was very sacred.

Suddenly a young Commando takes my arm,

“come on brother, keep moving”

He disengages the young lady, 

we marched on.

Open Housing Law passed later but little change even now…

 

1877-1991 Japan memories

 

What did you say, sugar?

I had only been in Oubari a week or so

Sent to the store for sugar

I was a bit nervous, not scared…

I had been to the local market in this village

High in the mountains of Hokkaido before,

Always with someone who knew some Japanese,

This time, I was alone…

I loved going into this market, it had everything you would ever need to

Live high in the mountains, in a closed down coal mining village

The smells of food, oil, machinery, everything were wonderful…

So I bought the sugar after a real search,

And some help, from a kind elderly man,

I took my sugar home, feeling real good about my venture

But, it was salt,

Do you understand everything, I sure don’t….

 

1989, Tennessee

 

The Royal Arch, gives racial lessons

You know that yellow arch that seems to be everywhere,

I have seen them on a remote island in Okinawa.

This one was eastern Tennessee.

 

 

 

On a trip with my 10 year old daughter,

who happens to be African-American. 

When I got back from the rest room,

Adia said in a quiet yet somewhat tense voice

 “those people don’t like black people”

 

I can only imagine what they said,

or what she heard at her early age.

I know this was not the last time in her life,

she is now a single mom of two,

I am sure thinks about what they hear.

Racism, privilege, white privilege and

power over others are powerful barriers in our time.

It is 2015, still quite the same. 

 

2015

Tiananmen Square An ancient place

A forbidden Palace

Where common folks were not allowed to go

 

Yet today, as we walk there

Watched by so many eyes

The spirit of the students still present

Remembering their bravery for justice

The spirits of those killed

And those in jail and hiding still,

 

Standing where the tank was stopped by one student

We never seem to learn

I bought my Mao Hat there…freedom of sorts

But still no voice for all in China…

 

The ancient voices cry

The way of the Tao

The teachings of Confucius

The Dharma of the Buddha

Silenced by bullets and fear

 

Tiananmen Square

A relic of other times

A place of mourning

A call for peace….

 

For an old man, three and a half miles of walking,

Remembering, wondering, when des this walk end…

 

 

 

 

 

 

2015

 

Naropa

 

She’s a real poet

He’s a real pet

I’m just a poet

Does one need to even think that way?

That’s a good one,

That’s a bad one,

 

A kind of poetry snobbery?

 

PEN American Center: "I define poetry as celebration and confrontation. When we witness something, are we responsible for what we witness? That's an on-going existential question. Perhaps we are and perhaps there's a kind of daring, a kind of necessary energetic questioning. Because often I say it's not what we know, it's what we can risk discovering."―Yusef Komunyaka

 

Speak up

Speak out

Warrior Poets!

 Ko shin, Bob Hanson, Final Assignment Week Three

 The value of this kind of training cannot be measured I believe. I look forward next week and the leadership of Fred Moten.

 

I hope if anyone reads this you will make some comments, love to have conversation about how we move this universe to a better place....

 

 

 

 

 

 

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