Zen and the Slow Earthquake—Murfin Verse Revisited Has New Relevance

 

The tsunami following the mega quake off the coast of Japan in 2011 crashes ashore.  Two huge but virtually undetected powerful silent quakes preceded the cataclysm.  

Note—Nine years ago today I posted this, which seems oddly even more relevant today.  Earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions are shaking the Pacific Rim including a .5 under sea tremor 50 miles off the coast of Fukushima, Japan where a huge tsunami destroyed the city and a nuclear reactor poisoning the Pacific Island.  That was one of three on the same day.  The dome of an undersea super volcano has also been expanding rapidly.

In 2016 a friend’s Facebook post linked to an article on Smithsonian.com about the so-called silent quakes or slip events that preceded the enormous .9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that devastated Japan in 2011.  Being a geek for such things, I read the whole article, which was pitched to the target audience of intelligent lay people.  I got about 80% of it and was prepared to act like I understood the whole shebang.  Almost as soon as I finished reading, a dim notion formed in my mind about the powerful but unnoticed phenomena.  Half an hour later out popped a poem, a minor side effect of the stealthy grinding of tectonic plates.

 

In the days preceding the tsunami two powerful creeping deep quakes along the deep Japan Trench but no one on land felt or noticed them. 

Zen and the Slow Earthquake

 

According to Smithsonian—

and who am I argue

with such lofty glossiness—

before the Big One shook Japan

a few years ago—

you  know the one

that shook like nobody’s business

for six long minutes,

unleashed a tsunami

whose water wall

swept away damn near everything,

killed tens of thousands,

and uncorked nuclear Fukushima

spewing radioactive crap

and polluting the whole damn Pacific—

before that two long, slow quakes

            crept along the Japan Trench

            under the water for days each

            as two sides of the tectonic plates

            slipped by each other in slo-mo

            like a sports replay video

            each one releasing almost as much

            energy as the big trembler

            and moving even more earth.

Yet no one on dry land felt a damn thing,

            not a one going about his or her

            humdrum business was aware,

            big wig scientists could hardly measure it

            and figured out what had happened

            only after the fact

            by pouring over printouts of data

            that no one else would ever scan.

Slip events they called them

            and said they may—or may not—

have led to the big one that

suddenly snapped things

and got everyone’s attention

and that things like that happen

along other fault lines

all over the damn world

and no one notices.

            Quiet quakes of unimaginable power indeed—

it’s like the Earth

practiced Zen.

 

—Patrick Murfin

 

Equinox Dawn—New Murfin Verse

 The doomed boxelder tree and it hale neighbor, the five-trunk silver maple.

It’s the Autumnal Equinox.  In the grey dawn yesterday morning as I went out to retrieve the newspaper from the driveway I was inspired.

Equinox Eve Morn

September 21, 2021

Murfin Estate

Crystal Lake

 

The first few leaves flutter down

            from the old, slowly dying Boxelder

            in the breaking grey light of dawn,

            most of the thinning leaves not yet turned.

 

The vigorous five-trunk silver maple

            whose crown enlaces it

            has not even begun to turn

            nor have any of the other trees

            on our small lot.

 

A wind from the far-off Lake

            breaks yesterday’s heat and humidity,

            on cue the seasons are shifting.

 

Like that old junk tree

            I can feel myself dropping my own leaves

            tentatively but surely.

 

My time, too, is slipping away.

 

—Patrick Murfin

Meditation on Saving Terror Targets—New Murfin Verse

Martha and Waitstill Sharp wave as they prepared to depart from New York to Europe in 1939.  They scarcely knew what they were in for.

Yesterday at our Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation Sunday morning Zoom service the Reverend Jenn Gracen preached on the lessons of love to be learned from the story of a Unitarian minister and his wife who left a comfortable life to go to Europe as it was teetering on the edge of World War to rescue refugees.  The story of Rev. Waitstill Sharp and his wife Martha is fairly well known among U.U.’s but may be unfamiliar to you unless you saw the PBS film by Artemis Joukowsky and Ken Burns in 2016.

Defying the Nazi's: The Sharps War was featured on PBS in 2016.

I have written previously about the couple and the film.  For a summary of the Sharp’s lives and mission see this Blog post.

But Rev. Jenn’s sermon and my recent work with The Coalition to End the ICE Contract in McHenry County moved me to once again commit poetry.

Martha Sharp, far right, and twenty seven children she shepherded from France to New York in 1940.  Most would otherwise not have survived the war.

Meditation on Saving Terror Targets

Inspired by Rev. Waitstill and Martha Sharp

and Rev. Jenn Gracen Sermon

February 28, 2021

 

Those very nice New Englanders heeded a call

            ignored by many

            and left children and comfort

            for Prague on the edge of doom.

Before they quite knew what had happened

            they were doing un-Unitarian things—

            lying to authorities, forging documents,

            laundering money, consorting with outcasts,

            playing cloak and dagger on dark rainy streets.

He did most of the paper work and keeping accounts,

            spending money, working the phone

            and playing shell games with the Gestapo.

The demure Mrs. was the secret agent

            making rendezvous, shaking tails,

            using code names and passing notes

            in invisible ink.

At the very last possible moment

            she, using documents faked and fudged by him

            got thirty-seven marked men on a train

            out of Prague on a train that

            had to cross Germany

            to get to France

            batting her pretty, innocent eyelashes

            at Nazi agents.

Back in America by the skin of their teeth

            they played with the children

            who hardly knew them

            and then were sent back to Europe at war.

They made her way to Vichy France

            and she came out with twenty-seven Jewish girls,

            leading them on foot across the Pyrenees

            neutral but hostile Spain

            and eventually to New York

            on an ocean liner that narrowly avoided

            being sunk by a U-boat.

 

That’s the tale we’ve been told.

            We wonder if we could have done it.

            we wonder if we even should—

            their own children, after all,

            were scarred

            and their marriage shattered.

 

There is still plenty of horror in the world

            yet who is dashing off to Kurdistan

            to defy Syrians and Turks,

            to bloody Yemen where our drones rain death,

            or to a dozen other would-be holocausts

            in the making.

 

What if we didn’t even need to leave the county,

            our own warm beds,

            the bosoms of our families?

 

What if we sheltered the undocumented

            and despised,

            confronted ICE raids,

            freed children from cages,

            brick by brick             

and bar by bar

            tore down that

            concentration camp

            just down the street?

 

What if….

 

—Patrick Murfin 

Demonstrators surrounded this ICE immigrant detention center.  We have our very own in the McHenry County Jail.

Space on the Ofrenda—Murfin Verse for Días de los Muertos

Note—Even amid the Coronavirus pandemic with its soaring death toll and sturm und drang of the election, the drumbeat of Blacks murdered by police continues.  Those of us in McHenry County take note of the near-by Waukegan killing of Marcellis Stinnette and the wounding of his girlfriend Tafara Williams.  It brings to mind a Días de los Muertos service four years ago at my church.

That Sunday we, as was then our custom, we observed Días de los Muertos—Days of the Dead—at Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry, Illinois.  We began more than a decade earlier in our old church building in Woodstock primarily as a way to honor and connect with McHenry County’s large Mexican and Mexican American community with which we were deeply engaged in social justice work.  Elaborate care was taken to explain the cultural and religious roots of the observance, describe the customs, and create our own ofrenda—the altar to the dead.  To complete the experience, members and friends were invited to add photos and memorabilia of their own dearly departed to the altar and share a comment or memory.

Over the years as we became used to it, less time was spent each year connecting the holiday to its roots.  After all, we knew the story by now, didn’t we?  Despite the traditional Mexican decorations—the sugar skulls, papel picado cut-out tissue banners, votive and other candles, and marigold blooms—more and more the services concentrated on honoring the memories of our own dead—a kind of therapeutic and cathartic sharing that brought tears to our eyes and perhaps a faint glimpse of mortality.

The ofendra at the Tree of Life UU Congregation.

Many Unitarian Universalist congregations have adopted similar annual observances.  We have discussed before the controversies and challenges of cultural appropriation or a sincere yearning to learn and grow through wide varieties of spiritual practice.  We will leave that aside in the present case.

I had planned to bring a photo of my father that year, but it was a groggy Sunday morning for me after sacrificing sleep to watch my beloved Cubs lose a World Series Game and then working my usual overnight shift at the gas station/convenience store down the road.  I was half way to McHenry before I realized that I left my picture beside my computer in the study.   Oh well, I thought.  This year I will just sit back and listen.

And so I did.  As usual the photos, trinkets, and momentous to lay on the ofrenda were accompanied by touching, wistful, tragic, and even funny memories.  But as the parade to the altar continued my mind drifted to those unmemorialized—those beyond our immediate circles and family.  Perhaps it was because that year, thankfully, I had no new loss of my own to process.  I mentally peered over the horizon.

Almost without realizing it, I found myself moving to the pulpit.  As if another voice was speaking through my body, I said something like this, laid single marigold blossom, and retreated in surprised silence to my seat.

Later, at home, I tried to form what I said into a poem. 

 

Space on the Ofrenda for the Dead Who Didn’t Matter

November 1, 2016

 

What can I lay upon the ofrenda

            for the Day of the Dead        

            when I do not know a favorite food,

            have a fond story to tell,

            memory to share,

            faded photo in a tarnished frame,

            when I have already

            forgotten the name?

 

Not someone I should care about,

            no kin or clansman,

            no old romance or childhood pal

            no skin off our noses

            alive or dead,

            strangers to the party for the dead

            on our altar and shrine.

 

No one, after all, who really mattered

            We are assured           

            if a stray thought wanders

            off the reservation      

            and feels a moment of

            undeserved connection.

 

That guy, the fat father, car broken down

            on a nice White road,

            a real bad dude

            to a cop in a helicopter.

 

Or the other one reading in his own car

            in his own parking lot,

            some kind of disabled head case,

            drilled as his wife screamed

            “He doesn’t have a gun.”

 

Or that Native American girl

            in her own apartment with her           

            four year old child,

            sad and suicidal

            and obliged in an instant.

 

None of them mattered,

            no concern of mine, yours or anyone,

            all deserving to die

            at righteous, blameless hands

            for being Black or Brown

            and a fill-in-the blank threat.

 

I have already forgotten their names,

            if they had one,

            and there will be others

            to temporarily take their places.

 

Why crowd our gay ofrenda

            for the likes of them?

 

Well, if I really must,

            just one marigold

            over there behind

            Auntie’s teapot

            and grandpa’s airplane bottle

            of Jack Daniels.

 

And keep quiet about it.

 

—Patrick Murfin