Time to Stop

May 22, 2025

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Examen

By Peter Yaremko • May 23, 2025
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.)

WWJD?

May 22, 2025
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 

The Report of My Death

May 22, 2025
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.)
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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.