expressing yourself in a time of fear

How do you express yourself in a time of fear? What do you say when your world has been broken apart by official pronouncements of us vs. them, and the them is really us? How do you catch courage? How do you listen and understand and hope when you feel that all hope has fled? What do you say when reality hurts and when the world, as you once knew it, lies in jagged pieces at your feet?

Does pain cause us to grow or to shrink away? I think of my friend Mandy’s wise words about the people we encounter on our life’s journey: “Everyone we meet is our teacher and we are theirs, we grow in wisdom through our ability to engage with others.”

Can we, as Kathy Kelly says, catch courage from each other?

The terrifying events and the shocking violence, caused by human beings, rock me to my core. They have shaken my belief in the kindness of people. But I refuse to despair because despairing is a type of giving up, and I’m not ready for that. Today, I wrote a pantoum, which is a really cool poetic form, to express the terror felt on a dark winter’s day in a home that no longer feels like home, in a place of safety where there is none. Although the story that I present is fiction, the events that it describes have happened over and over again in different formats.

Broken Gnome

A lonely gnome sits forgotten
in a desolate pile of snow.
Beneath stormy black clouds,
birds, large and small, frantically flee.

In a desolate pile of snow,
a tiny human seeks safety.
Birds, large and small, frantically flee
as the frightened child sits, watching.

A tiny human seeks safety
from violence produced by men.
As a frightened child sits, watching,
feeling his mother's silent screams.

From violence produced by men,
feeling the anger of hard hearts
a boy sees his mom's silent screams
as he hugs that small, lonely gnome.

Feeling the anger of hard hearts,
a lone boy watches history unfold.
As he hugs that small, lonely gnome,
he observes the dark clouds descend.

A  boy sees history unfolding
as he spots his parents taken.
He watches the dark clouds descend
On the place that used to be home.

He observes his parents taken
by faceless men wielding weapons,
from the place that used to be home,
from the place that felt like safety.

Faceless men wielding large weapons
grab the shaking terrified boy 
from the place that felt like safety.
As his helpless chained parents watch.

Grabbing a terrified small boy
away from a snowy garden
men make his chained parents watch.
Kidnappers in dark uniforms.

Away from a snowy garden,
a broken gnome lies in pieces.
Kidnappers in dark uniforms
report capture of terrorists.