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I received word last week that my poem “Examen” will appear in the Spring issue of Time of Singing, A Journal of Christian Poetry. I can’t decide if my ditty is simply a morose self-portrait of a grumpy old man readying to meet his maker – or a surprisingly hopeful entreaty for one more, perhaps final, love. One thing is sure. My poem was written by a guy who has too much time on his hands, pondering the ravages of age that are manifesting themselves before his eyes. The Daily Examen is a core practice of the Jesuit religious order. It calls for prayerful reflection on the events of the day in order to detect God’s presence and discern his direction. It’s a technique formulated by St. Ignatius Loyola the founder of the Jesuits, in the sixteenth century. Here's the poem. It's not the Examen Ignatius had in mind, I know. Examen I watch my body deteriorate daily, my personal slack tide far behind, that static moment when the body ebbs and yields to inevitable decline. My face is yeasty as risen dough, and flesh slides down to turn my smile to frown. Knees that jammed my Trek up mountains are worn and weary. Equilibrium goes rogue, and I clutch handrails both up and down. Eyesight disappoints, memory humiliates me at every turn. And my feet. My feet. Spawn of an alien strain whose mildewed digits disgust even veteran mycologists. A fleshy, fragile creature now, I’m wary of falling, that unwelcome herald of death spiral. Where’s the wind that powered me when I gobbled up 26.2 miles and left the pack to chase behind? Where’s the muscled mass of me that moistened the fair sex by mere presence? Turned to sponge. Only my soul remains fixed and fresh. And I’m awake to it. Awake, also, to the expectation of seeing you soon face to face. Which calms the night and floods my day with light. I’m at that awful stage of life when family members and friends are shuffling off one by one into eternity. Like lightning bugs on a June evening, their radiance seems to last just a fleeting moment, then they recede into the dark. Before the advent of helicopter parenting, we kids were allowed to play outside until it was too dark to see a thrown Spaldeen. We were creative, and made up all sorts of ad hoc games and activities. At least in New Jersey that’s what we did. When the lightning bugs appeared, we’d catch them in our hands and – using needle and thread supplied by our unknowing mothers – we’d try to string the tortured little wretches into glowing necklaces. We wanted to keep them gleaming forever like living, luminous pearls. It never worked. (Image from original oil painting by James Coates.)

The program was titled Living With Spiritual Integrity in an Age of Fragmentation. We attendees voiced a common goal: to have a day of respite from witnessing the criminal dismantling of everything we hold dear. Our guide was Mark Kutolowski, the founder and co-director of Metanoia of Vermont. His work there focuses on recovering the Christian contemplative tradition, exploring the role of nature as a path toward deeper union with God, and fostering the connection between prayer and the body. His counsel to our group at a conference center near Hartford, Connecticut, was simple – pay attention to how Christ modeled a peaceful heart in the midst of chaos. This was counter-intuitive and difficult for my Type-A personality, which is prone to seizing a problem by the throat and shaking it until it cries “Uncle!” Remember, Mark noted, there was a reason Christ chose to be born into Roman-dominated Palestine, with all the de-humanizing treatment of the Jewish citizenry by a rapacious occupying force. To answer the pop-religion question of What Would Jesus Do (WWJD?), Mark traced how Christ did the exact opposite of what I – and you, perhaps – would do. Christ taught radical love, as in love every person who comes before you. And by the way, pray for the welfare of your enemies. Because that’s what “Love your enemies” means. Christ preached downward mobility, as in radical detachment. He urged his followers to accept suffering, as in turn the other cheek. He demonstrated utter dependence on God, as in trusting that five loaves and two fish would feed five thousand. Then He took a second look at the thou shall not list that Moses brought down from Mount Horeb. And presented His own list – thou should: · Embrace being an unimportant person · Engender gentleness · Be reconciled to, not resentful of, pain and sorrow that come your way · Live in alignment with God · Show active compassion · Free yourself from earthly comforts · Nurture a peaceful heart · Recognize that there will always be a cross to bear 

I’ve gotten lots of reactions to my blog last week about death. People asking if my health is okay. Daughter sending me teardrop emojis. A friend writing: “At least your brain appears to still be functioning pretty well.” It’s understandable. Our entire being is oriented toward preserving our life, and every living creature, from flea to falcon, will fight like crazy to stay alive in the face of death. But we don’t think or talk about our dying very much. We shun that. We take out a life insurance policy and prepare a will, maybe, and consider ourselves prepared. All of which is foolish. We all seem to assume we’ll live to 70, 80, 90 or beyond. Most people do not. Yet we are convinced our own death is far, far away in an unknowable future shrouded in mists. Thomas Merton, the renowned Trappist monk, author, and mystic, wrote this in his journal in March 1966: “Thinking about life and death – and how impossible it is to grasp the idea that one must die. And what to do to get ready for it! When it comes to setting my house in order, I seem to have no ideas at all.” Less than three years later Merton would be dead, accidentally electrocuted by a toppled floor fan as he stepped from the shower. I am already past the average life expectancy for American men. Every day that I continue in this dimension is a cherry on the sundae of my life. But my attitude remains convinced that my passing is far in the future. My head swirls with projects I want to finish: a novel that’s under way, a memoir in the form of a book-length poem, a volume of my collected haiku. I want to expand my teaching of poetry as a tool for emotional healing. For almost three years I’ve worked with patients and their caregivers in Manhattan to guide them in writing poetry to address the stresses of cancer treatment. Last autumn I launched a day-long program at a Connecticut retreat and conference center along the same lines – how to write poetry to alleviate emotional trauma. I will conduct a second program next week. A group in Washington has booked me to do a program via Zoom this summer about writing poetry to move toward a more peaceful mindset in the face of chaotic current events. As a result I’ve caught myself negotiating with God. How about “maybe ten more years to finish all this?” Then what, Peter? You’ll be ready to lie down and breath your last? On June 1, 1897, the New York Herald reported Mark Twain to be “grievously ill and possibly dying. Worse still, we are told that his brilliant intellect is shattered and that he is sorely in need of money.” Twain was in London at the time, covering Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee for the New York Journal. The following day, the Journal skewered the Herald‘s account as false and offered Twain’s denial: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” I can relate. (Image: “Death and Life” by Gustav Klimt, 1910.)

Once again we celebrate National Poetry Month during these mellowing days of April. Once again many don’t understand why. Here’s why. Last week I gathered with twenty people at a Connecticut conference center to guide a day of writing and sharing poetry to heal emotional trauma. Participants came from as far as New Zealand. They were highly engaged, participated eagerly in writing about and sharing their feelings and experiences, and several acknowledged breakthroughs over emotional issues they’d been struggling with. All done with a lot of laughter. It was not so much an academic program as a contemplative one. Not a lesson in writing better, but writing to make yourself feel better. It was the second such program I have led, in addition to the weekly session I offer at the American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge in New York City. I also hold a Zoom meeting each Thursday evening for cancer patients who can’t travel. Why? Here’s some of the research into the health benefits of reading and writing poetry: The Journal of Consciousness Studies says poetry sparks emotional response similar to the way re react to music. Contemplating a poem’s word pictures and layers of meaning activates some of the same areas that help us interpret everyday reality. A study by the Max Planck Institute: Every participant claimed to feel chills at some point when reading poems, and about forty percent showed visible goose bumps. While listening to poems they found particularly evocative, participants subconsciously anticipated the coming emotional arousal in a way that was neurologically similar to the anticipation of unwrapping a chocolate bar. A study of hospitalized children finds that providing opportunities for them to read and write poetry reduces fear, sadness, anger, worry, and fatigue. Beyond the science, what about the art of poetry? Poetry itself dates back to the Gilgamesh verses of the late second millennium BCE. But the world’s first author is acknowledged to be a Mesopotamian priestess, named Enheduanna, who lived in the twenty-third century BCE. She composed works of literature that included forty-two hymns. The Torah, written about 1500 BCE, depicts Adam’s first words as poetry: Here at last the bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called woman, for she was drawn forth from man. Poetry is in itself a way of thinking about the world and making sense of it. Poem comes from the Greek, meaning a “thing made.” A poet was defined as “a maker.” We “make” a thing out of words, out of language. We write a poem to make a story out of our experiences and feelings. It’s a way to use words instead of pictures to freeze that fleeting moment in time when the universe causes us to pause in awe. Poetry, in other words, is a way to stop time. The terse, three-line haiku form of Japanese poetry arrests incidents that seem to interrupt the flow of time. Like flashes of lightning, haiku dispel darkness for a moment. For example, the haiku I wrote when I left home to drive to Vermont to experience the eclipse last year. Capturing in poetry the first minutes of an ordinary road trip caused me to put a name on how short our lives on this planet are: off chasing the sun final eclipse of my life all is brevity Poetry has reverberated down through eons of recorded history because it forces us to notice the little things that help us make sense of the big things. A great poem, Robert Frost said, ends in a “momentary stay against confusion.” A momentary stay against confusion. Because a poem, even if it lasts a thousand years, is all about the present – all about time. Ursula K. Le Guin is known best as a sci-fi novelist. She also wrote eleven books of poetry, including her Hymn to Time: Time says “Let there be” every moment and instantly there is space and the radiance of each bright galaxy. And eyes beholding radiance. And the gnats’ flickering dance. And the seas’ expanse. And death, and chance. Time makes room for going and coming home and in time’s womb begins all ending. Time is being and being time, it is all one thing, the shining, the seeing, the dark abounding. People have credited poetry not only with changing their lives, but also saving it. One is Kevin Powers, who wrote in The New York Times how poetry kept him from suicide. This is the place poetry occupies in our lives. This is what we celebrate this month. And why.

I had a friend who thought he’d fallen in love. He told his wife about it, thinking that would be the end of it and he would be on the midnight train to Georgia and a new life with the replacement soulmate. ‘Twas not to be.  The wife wanted to save the marriage and she dragged him to counseling, where my friend was advised that “love is a decision.” The revelation caused him to dump the girlfriend and stick with the wife, to whom he had vowed unceasing fidelity. Of course, there’s no happy ever-after except in fairy tales, and the wife, rightfully considering herself betrayed, eventually took a lover by way of recompense. Her affair lasted years, unbeknownst to my friend, now a cuckold. Then there’s the matter of The Reverend Thomas Merton, the celebrity Trappist monk who authored some seventy books of a spiritual/theological/philosophical nature in addition to his memoir, which is still selling in the millions decades after his death. It seems that monk Merton, who is referred to as a mystic these days, began an affaire de cœur with a student nurse in April 1966 while recovering from back surgery in a Louisville hospital. The couple’s ardor lasted only a few intense months. Merton says there was no consummation of passion, and he broke it off and recommitted himself to his vows in June 1966. The reason I bring all this to your attention is not to denigrate the otherwise admirable memory of Merton. Instead, I find myself befuddled. Why? Because in his journal of April 14,1966, Merton wrote: “One thing has suddenly hit me—that nothing counts except love.” I wondered why it took this man twenty-five years of eremitical monastic life to reach this conclusion. I assumed that by love he was referring to God, of whom Gospel writer John proclaimed, “God is love.” Silly me. I hadn’t connected the dots. April 1966 was when Merton’s obsession with his nurse began. Was what “suddenly” hit him in his fifties an infatuation with a woman decades younger than he? I laid Merton’s experience against my friend’s cuckoldry, and I have come to question if love is, in fact, a decision – or an unintended consequence of the seething sack of chemicals we call our body. How else to explain the famous, but accurate, reference to “the seven-year itch?” The phrase can be traced to a 1952 play of the same name. It was popularized by a movie starring Marilyn Monroe. In a study by Wright State University, an assessment of almost one hundred couples found there were two normal periods of marital decline (measured by passion, satisfaction with the relationship, amount of shared activity, and agreement between the partners). The research concluded that while the vast majority of marriages begin with a bang – a period of two to three years – this declines as the couple settles into life together. Not that they’re unhappy. Their hormones are simply regulating as the union becomes routine. This leads to the first period of decline – after about four years of marriage. Another period of decline follows about year eight. The good news? If a couple survives both of these declines, their risk of divorcing dwindles with every year of marriage after that. These findings match studies on divorce: most common in the first two years of marriage and again between the fifth and eighth year. Enough of all this befuddlement. I have to make a decision about what I should believe concerning the nature of love. I’m going with Eric Fromm’s theory, expounded in his classic work, The Art of Loving . Love is neither feeling nor decision: “Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice.” There. That settles it.

Here’s some news that really isn’t news: a recent national survey by Ohio State University says forty-five percent of us are stressed by news or social media. Of this number, sixteen percent feel stressed every day . And we’ve slipped to our lowest ranking ever in the World Happiness Report. So I’m happy to do my part in helping heal this sorry situation by conducting a free Zoom workshop in June – on writing poetry as a tool to cultivate inner peace. Verses of Peace is one in a series offered by the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace. Called Disarming Our Hearts , the series explores how we can cultivate peace within ourselves and bring it into the world. Each workshop, presentation, and retreat in the series features speakers from different backgrounds who bring insights into what it means to “be peace” in a way that transforms not only our own hearts but also our communities. The series is offered at no cost. The Sisters fund all their programs through donations. My two-hour Zoom program will be held from 9 P.M to 11 P.M Eastern time on June 18. The primary audience is a gathering in Bellevue, Washington, but the program is open to anybody who’d like to tune in. This won’t be like the English class you suffered through in high school. I promise. Nor is it an academic seminar that tries to teach you to craft the perfect poem. Verses of Peace is about feeling better, not writing better – a contemplative opportunity to explore healing poems that are easy-to-understand, beautiful, and uplifting. Our focus is on how famous writers have used poetry to achieve a more peaceful mindset. We’ll talk about what poetry is all about, and participants will be guided in writing their own healing poems and sharing insights. No prerequisites, no writing experience needed, and no critiques. Here's what some prior participants have said about my poetry classes: "I so enjoyed your class last week. I have been writing poems and one haiku. Your class has opened a new world to me, and I'm so appreciative.” -- Mike “Your classes provided a very positive experience, opening up the possibility of using poetry to deal with the complex emotions felt by cancer patients. I will treasure these memories in the future, and plan to continue on this path of self-discovery and appreciation for everyday life.” -- John "Thank you for sharing your experience with us and sharing your passion for expressive writing. You have a gift for teaching and getting your point across in a special way.” -- Martha Verses of Peace will be a safe space for participants to express their feelings without judgment and find comfort by using words as a path toward peace through the healing energy of poetry. Here’s the link for more information and to register . For those of you who don’t know me – or might want to recommend the workshop to your friends who don’t know me – I’m a former journalist, corporate executive, and owner of a corporate communications agency. I’ve authored four non-fiction books and a novel, write poetry that appears in numerous literary magazines, and publish a weekly blog. In conjunction with the American Cancer Society for the past three years, I’ve been teaching patients and caregivers to write poetry to better manage the trauma of a cancer diagnosis, and I lead day-long retreats exploring healing poetry.

One road warrior friend developed a fear of flying after giving birth. Another friend who thought nothing of driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and back for an evening of craps has come down with agoraphobia. I might be the next to succumb to an adult-onset anxiety disorder. I’ve noticed that I become housebound too easily, sometimes spending an entire week alone in my apartment – and enjoying it. I either have a social anxiety disorder (SAD) or I’m an off-the-chart introvert. People with SAD can display an assortment of symptoms:  · Fearing situations where you don't know other people · Worrying that you'll be judged · Fear of being embarrassed or humiliated · Thinking others will notice your anxiety · Dreading upcoming social events This hit home last week as I dined alone over a plate of Spicy Buffalo Tofu at Claire’s Corner Copia, our neighborhood vegetarian bistro. It was Friday evening and the place was boisterous with Yale students exuding springtime joie de vivre . I was feeling anxious. Ill at ease. Out of place. Worrying I was being observed with curiosity. As I tucked into my tofu, I performed a mental checklist of social situations that I fear. All of them grow out of my solo life as a single man: · Eating out · Shopping · Vacationing · Parties of any kind, cocktail to dinner Where has this come from? Psychologists tell us social anxiety disorder results from a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Genetic? Yes, that makes sense, because my mother feared everything, down to shunning strange foods – like shrimp. Among the environmental factors? How about: · Having an overly critical, controlling, or protective parent · Being bullied or teased as a child · Family conflict · A shy, timid, or withdrawn temperament as a child Bingo! I plead guilty to all the above. My mother walked me to and from school until I was in the fourth grade, much to my embarrassment. I was teased and nicknamed for my buck teeth. My father physically abused my mother in front of me. And I definitely was a shy, timid kid. I thought I had outgrown or resolved all that negativity. After I left the Catholic seminary as a young man, I found I got along easily with women. Braces took care of my dental malocclusion. And I worked as a newspaper reporter – hardly a job for a shy, timid person. Throughout my career, I dealt easily with corporate movers and shakers and with famous celebrities, entertainers, and assorted A-listers. Even today, leading poetry workshops, I can command a roomful of strangers for the entire day – and win a round of applause at the end. I don’t say all this to toot my own horn, but to explain why I’m baffled that I suddenly feel anxious in many social situations. My guess is that my wife of fifty years was a buffer of sorts. With her death, I now socially sink or swim on my own. At my age, I still have a lot of growing up ahead of me.

In honor of Mother's Day, a story about a gift that one mother left to her children. In 2016 my younger daughter, Julie, celebrated her first birthday since losing her mother to breast cancer. Julie wrote this brief remembrance in her honor, which I posted in 2016. I was struck by the idea that, yes, each of us reaches a point in our lives when no one remains to remember the day we were born—what the weather was like, what time we arrived, what Mom was doing when the birth pangs began. I invite you to recall the story of your own children’s birth and consider leaving them the gift of remembrance that my wife, Jo Anne, bequeathed. A year ago, Mom called to wish me a happy birthday, as usual. And she started telling me the story of the day I was born: how she was at Woolworth’s on a beautiful spring-like day (like today), buying buttons for a sweater she had just finished knitting, and felt a little something like she’d need to go to the hospital soon. She waited for Dad to come home from work, and made all the arrangements for someone to watch Wendy while Dad took her to the hospital. And just a little while later, there I was. And I started to tease her, telling the story along with her, because she’d told me the same story every year, on my birthday. Then she told me why she kept telling the story: because when Grandpa had died (many years after Nana), she felt that no one in the world was left to remember the day she was born. And she wanted me to remember “my story." I felt about yay-big for teasing . . . because I finally understood why she told the story to me over and over. Today, I missed hearing my story.  (Top image: Julie and her mom at one of our New Year’s Eve celebrations. Bottom image: The ladies in my life – Julie, Jo Anne, Wendy.)