The above is a quote by the poet Mary Oliver.   She is talking with Krista Tippett on the NPR program, On Being.   She said this on the morning she found out that she won the Pulitzer prize.  After hearing the news she continued on with her plan to find more shingles to buy at the dump because she needed to repair her house.  When I heard her say that I was reminded of an old poem of mine (I think I wrote it down and stored it somewhere, but  who knows what is merely written in my head and what I might find on paper (carelessly put in some box or file) entitled “Kitchen Floor Politics.”   It was written at a time when I was living in a community house with a group of people dedicated to keeping life as simple as possible and, thus, leaving room for social action and other “important” work.   For me, the advantages of living with others had to do not only with or primarily with finances, but with the nurturing relationships which I needed to remind me why I was doing what I was doing. I also know I need to be emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually fed daily.   At any rate, at that time, the house was composed of males of various ages and backgrounds.   Even though dinners were not formal affairs with polished silver and the good china, there were certain tasks which needed doing. The bills had to be paid, small repairs had to be made, groceries bought and prepared, laundry done, and some amount of cleaning done.   In terms of cleaning, there was no need of a white glove test, but I did think that when one could not walk on the kitchen floor without the grime and spilled food  reaching out to cement one to the floor and, thus, preventing one from walking, it was time to mop the floor.  Some days it seemed as if I was alone in thinking this.   At times it seemed as though my “roommates” were fairly traditional males in the respect that they were much too busy doing “important” work to worry about mundane matters.  They seemed to be waiting for the woman of the house, of which there were none, to do the mundane work of maintaining the home. To be fair, one of the men had grown up with maids, was in graduate school, and could not seem to grasp the concept that, sans maid, one had to do some menial work.   It seems easy for we men – and some women – to get so busy doing “important work” that we forget to take care of ourselves, each other, and our home (a necessary part of taking care of ourselves and each other). We expect others to do this for us. Even when there is hired help, it seems as if we wait for the women in our lives to hire and supervise “the hired help.”    Interesting enough, even in the field of human resource professionals,  we tend to  rely on woman.  A brief google search revealed the following from a 2008 study:
The Feminization of HR.
By Claude Balthazard
Thursday, March 1, 2012
In the fall of 2008, the Human Resources Professional Association in Toronto, in conjunction with its partnerCanadian HR Reporter, conducted a survey on the gender imbalance in HR.
The latest statistics at the time had suggested that 72 percent of persons employed in HR were women. The accounting profession, which had the reverse gender imbalance, had recently undertaken initiatives to recruit more women into their profession.
 
Women, even when in a relationship with another woman, know that no one is going to take care of the home and the relationships in their lives if they do not. Mary Oliver is a woman, who was not and is not wealthy, and needed to make repairs to her house.  Her partner of many means was also a woman.  They could not hire others to do the work of maintaining a home even if some of the work was traditionally  considered masculine.  Thus, even the winning of the Pulitzer prize did not take mitigate the need to get more shingles.
 
I have said that I basically do not trust  those who do not notice that the shingles need replacing, the kitchen floor mopped, the toilet paper purchased and put in the bathroom, the  refrigerator stocked, children need taken care of, and  the mood and general health of all  the family need to be noted and attended to.    This is the important work of living is it not?
 
It always amazes me that, invariably, women professionals who are parents make time for the children while often we men have been much too busy with “important work” (even when both are in the same profession).  Even  in those families where a decision has been made for the male to be the house husband and the female is  the primary wage earner, it is often the female who organizes and does much of the household work which would be expected to be done by the female if she as was the primary house person. 
 
From an early age we teach females to be caretakers. We encourage them to care for dolls, set up  and manage play houses, play house, and in other ways focus on learning to nurture.   Although this has changed and certainly in LGBT relationships it has to change, for the most part we raise boys and girls differently.    In anything, we have encouraged women to aspire to be more like we men except, at the very same time, we expect them to hold fast to a passion for nurturing.  Somehow, we seem to have often taught women to be more schizophrenic.  At the workplace, we expect them to be focused on “the important work” of making money, fighting the enemy, proving one’s mettle by working very long days, being as ruthless as ‘necessary” in competing for the prize (whatever that is)  and, on the other hand, to be this nurturing, present mom who is always available. These two roles obviously clash internally and externally.  Women may win the Pulitzer prize, but will still go buy the shingles.
 
Mary Oliver’s poems stay close to nature which, I suspect, has always kept her close to animals and the “souls” or the energy which is life.   It is not surprising that Mary Oliver reads the poems of Rumi daily.  I am reminded of this quote from Rumi, “Living things know the truth; you reap what you sow.  With life as short as a half-taken breath don’t plant anything but love.”   Then there is this poem of Rumi:
 
Only Breath
 
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion
 
or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up
 
from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,
 
am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any
 
origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.
 
I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,
 
first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.
 
From Essential Rumi
by Coleman Barks
 
Ms. Oliver  also wrote about the influence of Lucretius especially when thinking of the permanency  of energy – the fact that we never cease to be. 
 
And now, since I have taught that things cannot
Be born from nothing, nor the same, when born,
To nothing be recalled, doubt not my words,
Because our eyes no primal germs perceive;
From “on The nature of Things” by Lucretius as translated by William,E. Leonard
 
It seems to be that poets, as do other artists, remind us of what is true; of what is essential.  It is not that the cleanliness of the kitchen floor is in and of itself important. It is not as if replacing the shingles on a house, which is very temporary in the scheme of things, is important.  They are important only in the context of creating a home which says welcome home, you are important, you are part of something; you are.  We find these truths in Mary Oliver’s poem, Wild Geese:
 
Wild Geese
 
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting 
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
 
from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
published by Atlantic Monthly Press
© Mary Oliver
 
Written October 17, 2015

Kitchen Floor Politics

At some point in my past, I think I coined the term kitchen floor politics. I say that I think I coined it because I know, at this age, that I might not be remembering accurately. I could have borrowed it from someone else.  At any rate, for me the term came out my experience of living in community with other folks who were interested in sharing money, ideas, and friendship while we sought to do our part to create a more just and loving community.  Although these were rich experiences, it sometimes seemed as if some of us were very articulate when it came to the rhetoric of creating a world in which each person was treated with love and respect.  When it came to how we lived and took care of each other we seemed to often be much too busy with “important matters” to tend to the daily tasks of maintaining a home or noticing when one of us was having a difficult time.  The symbol for this seeming inability to practice what we so eloquently articulated came to be for me the status of the kitchen floor. Did anyone notice that the kitchen floor needed mopped, the garbage taken out, the bills paid, the tears of a housemate wiped or a child needed attention?  In other words, it seemed to me that the real struggle for us was learning to live as if we valued each other.  Too often it seemed as if the women and  “gay men’ were the ones who seemed to notice that we needed to move beyond rhetoric if our words were to mean anything.   The term kitchen floor politics came to symbolize whether or not someone was trustworthy as a partner in keeping the machinery of a home operating for everyone, including the children.

I still find that it is often the women and a few men in my life who notice when the mundane tasks of life need some attention.  For example, at the YMCA there is one man who always seems to be the one trainer who notices that the paper towel dispenser is empty, the sanitized container needs refilling or some piece of equipment needs to be put back where it belongs so that no one trips over it or cannot locate it.    Actually, I have a number of male and female friends who are very good at noticing when something or someone needs attention.  I am very grateful for these people in my life.  I also, however, continue to be aware that it is often the women I know who are doing the tedious work of committees, taking care of aging or sick relatives, sending birthday cards or otherwise doing those tasks which nurture others or make it possible for the “important work” to get done”.   In some ways it seems as if we men, as a whole, but with wonderful exceptions, have a lot to learn. Perhaps if we were the ones who had to live with a pregnancy, birth a child and nurse a child we would be more attuned to the practical tasks which make it possible for “important” work to get done. Perhaps!  Perhaps not!  Having just said this even my women friends who are not carried and birthed a child seems tuned in to the practical needs of those around them.

I was thinking of this while working out at the gym Sunday morning and listening to a 2010 interview Krista Tippett on “On Being” did with Elizabeth Alexander, the poet and scholar.   Some of you might best know Mrs. Alexander as the person who wrote and delivered the poem for the inauguration of President Barrack Obama in 2009.  

A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration

By Elizabeth Alexander

Each day we go about our business,

Walking past each other, catching each other’s

Eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is

Noise and bramble, thorn and din, each

One of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning

a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,

repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,

With a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,

With cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky.

A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words

Spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,

Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark

The will of some one and then others, who said

I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.

We need to find a place where we are safe.

We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.

Sing the names of the dead, who brought us here,

Who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

Picked the cotton and the lettuce, built

Brick by brick the glittering edifices

They would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.

Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,

The figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,

Others by first do no harm or take no more

Than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,

Love that casts a widening pool of light,

Love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,

Any thing can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

Praise song for walking forward in that light.

Praise song for walking forward in that light.

Ms. Alexander says it so much better than I could.  She reminds us that love is a verb and not a noun.  She reminds us that we must pick the cotton, built a home brick by brick, mop the kitchen floor, shop for groceries, darn the socks (does anyone still do this?), keep track of birthdays and send a card or pick up the phone, wipe the tears, celebrate the victories, and share the grief.

It is not surprising that during that same interview Ms. Alexander remembered a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, “Kitehenette building”

We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,

Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong

Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.”

But could a dream send up through onion fumes

Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes

And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,

Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms

Even if we were willing to let it in,

Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,

Anticipate a message, let it begin?

We wonder. But not well! Not for a minute!

Since Number five is out of the bathroom now,

We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.

I must admit that I had not heard this poem of Ms. Brooks previously. I am delighted that this gift simple made an unexpected appearance.

Just this past Saturday I sent in my entry for the September 11 sermon contest which Trinity Church in New York City is sponsoring. The assigned title is reconciliation. For me the challenge of the sermon was acknowledging the horror of the events of September 11, 2001 while, at the same time, allowing for the possibility of the miracle of reconciliation.  Although I did not think of it until I heard Mrs. Alexander and Ms.Brooks speaking through their poems, reconciliation is much like a poem.  It is that miracle which, without much ado, arrives in the midst of living “life”. It is that dream made manifest.

Sunday morning I had a message from a good friend who has struggled with addiction. He told me that he has been having a difficult time the past couple of days but he is using his spiritual tools to do what he needs to do.  This is a miracle. Today his life today is a poem well lived.

Ms. Alexander mentioned that the brevity and the succinctness of the poem made it possible for busy women to give voice to their experiences, hopes and dreams (my words).  Much like the quilt which takes material which is already present and which is also something this is needed for survival, women learned to use the canvas of the quilt to create art that often male artists later put on canvases and for which they got the credit.

It seems that poems sometimes have to wonder around for a bit, but often unlike prose, they sneak in between the seemingly, mundane smells and sounds of life.  They give voice to her grief, our joys and are amazing ability to dream – to make love manifest.

Thanks to all the women in my life and particularly to Ms. Alexander and Ms. Brooks.