HerStory Steps Into the Ring

By Jane Tawel

May 13, 2021

And someone said that “History isn’t the story that actually happened, you know.”

“History is the story of what they want to believe.”

And all I could manage to mumble was,

“there will be wars and the rumors of wars”.

*

The newspapers had started to look almost cheery in my country;

But then I remembered that though

the civil warmongers on my shores,

had made their peace by making new confederate flags,

flags that appeared to me,

seen from the distance of my dismay,

all blackened and borrowed.

…

I Will (Try to) Not Be Proud of People I Love

First in a Series of Incremental Sight-Changes : How to Be Proud, Without Being Prideful

By Jane Tawel

May 8, 2021

About a year ago, I began to recognize this phrase I said to people I was close to, and that I said to them fairly often I think, as something that I assumed was true, but in actuality was an off-brand. The phrase is: “I am proud of you”, and I said it as something that seemed good but was, in fact a trued line that had gone…

What We Had and Have

Transformations: What We Had and Have

By Jane Tawel

May 1, 2021

*

There are things that transform,

Sometimes, good, sometimes bad.

And one thing that can change us

are things we have had;

like a memory,

a story,

or that one special look

from a person that loved us,

or a scene in its glory,

or a place we once lived,

or the self we forgive.

*

In past things that have happened

and are seared into our minds,

are the things in the present the soul longs to find —

a meaning and truth to help light The…

Yes. As an American I am completely and utterly baffled as well. My son was just graded down on a paper on the comparison of crime statistics between some European countries and America, when he added the cultural difference between them of gun rights and ownership and murders and crimes committed with guns. Graded a whole letter grade down because despite statistics, the professor gave the irrational but strange American mindset slogan of the infamous NRA defense, "people kill, not guns". So, my son learned in American education that it is better to tow the party line of America than…

When I Killed God

By Jane Tawel

April 24, 2021

*

While it’s true that as a child,

there were incidents, bad things that happened against my will,

(because of course, a child is born with a soul, but not a will);

and while my exposure to events I accidently lived,

were pale in comparison to those children over there,

that child that lives in a different yard than I did;

it was still a thing that happened to me early on,

that some adults who thought they loved me,

killed God.

In fact, like you maybe,

I still have…

I will not take my privilege today to co-op someone else’s pain or another community’s long struggle. I will, however, “be with” those focused on another attempt in our struggle for justice and righteousness in this nation. I am “holding my breath” today awaiting with heavy heart, justice for the ones who “cannot breathe”. I am saddened and afraid and trying to truly feel, truly empathize with those who know what it is like to wait on yet another verdict for those whose breath, dignity, and very lives have been taken from them. I will feel the guilt of my…

I Don’t Know Who I Could Be

A Poem

By Jane Tawel

April 19, 2021

I don’t know who I’d be, if I stopped unforgiving.

I don’t know who I’d be, if I spent less time worrying.

And who would I be if I didn’t care to keep up my grades,

but instead, judged not, either self or you?

If winning was an illusion I left behind like a broken toy,

might I know the terrible, fearsome freedom of joy?

*

I rarely know who I am, except as a passing glance,

a whirl of motion, unsteadied by a center…

I am finally “growing up” maybe? I didn’t know it but I began learning this at Wheaton College under both the spiritual and theater /acting guidance of Dr. James Young — Jimma, as he was called. I shared this today with the folks who were part of that world-changing time of mine today in a group called “Workout”, and thought someone in my other “worlds” might need to hear this today.

In that theatre group, after warming up with yoga exercises ( back before any one in America knew anything about yoga but weird theatre people!), we would often do…