Practice Saying This Out-loud: “I Was Wrong”.

Practice Saying This Out-loud: “I Was Wrong”

A poem

By Jane Tawel

January 15, 2021

*

It’s best to start by practicing.

It makes it much less challenging,

than when you find you’re scrambling,

to just admit you’re wrong.

So, spend a little bit of time

Indulging me in musing rhyme.

I’ll tell you just a thing or two,

‘bout what I’ve learned, and what to do.

Just think of this as my word-song,

‘bout how to just admit we’re wrong.

*

The sin that humans first found trying,

which led them to the art of lying,

was when the truth they tried to…

The Idols

by Jane Tawel

January 7, 2021

I never understood how people could worship foolish looking, or stupid, or downright evil idols instead of the true God. I looked at history, both Biblical and not, and thought, well people are smarter now, people are better now, and surely people know about Jesus now, so idol-worship is over, right? I never understood how people could sacrifice their own children on the alter of nationalism or class- privilege or misguided entitlement in order to feel like they were going to be taken care of by the gods who merely laughed and ate their babies. I never really understood how people could do violence, not to get the bread they needed to survive or to fight for their rights or justice, but to placate a human-being they had made into a god — like a pharaoh, or a fuhrer or a president on his way out. I never really got how the Christ could say “people will claim they know me, but I sadly will have to say, ‘I never knew you’”. Then 2016 happened in this country, and then 2017, and 2018, and 2019, and 2020, and then yesterday happened, and that finally confirmed it; I think I understand. …

You Can’t Take “It” With You; But You Can Pass It On

By Jane Tawel

January 1, 2021

So, this is what the start of a new year looks like and frankly I am unimpressed. We woke up today, thinking somehow the worst year on record for most of us would be immediately left behind. We all had such high hopes for 2021, because let’s face it, anything had to be better than 2020. And yet is it? Is it really? And then it hit me that every year we go into the start of this new day as if suddenly we are going to make big changes, keep inspired resolutions, be all that we can be, and just do it — and yet, today is merely the start to a new year because we say it is. Many other cultures choose different days to reboot, to restart, to call it on the last year, and call out hopes for a new beginning. And while I felt a deep sense of both ennui and sorrow today when I realized that nothing much had changed — I was still living in a world of raging dictators and raging viruses and rushing humans and roaring need and of course, worst of all my own peccadilloes and broken pieces. But at the same time, by being a day like any other, it meant that I could choose to make it a new start for myself no matter what the date said. …

Creating

A Poem by Jane Tawel

December 28, 2020

*

I love to poke the “create” button.

Such chutzpah to think I have that gift.

And while I watch the swirling rainbow,

While waiting, not with patience,

But with expectant need

I think of the Greats, and trembling yearn

To hide behind their shadows once again.

And then I dare anyway.

*

To take a flutter at this desk,

Is rather like a gamble,

Where I am always betting against the house.

I hope my tics and tells won’t distract

From thoughts that try to cheat me from my life.

I let the chips fall where they may…

Firsts For Me this Christmas Pandemic Season

By Jane Tawel

December 22, 2020

There are going to be a lot of family firsts this year, most of them foisted on us, or chosen by us for the newest “reason for the season” ; the reason being The 2020 Worldwide Pandemic. I was lying in bed this morning at 3:30 a.m. deciding whether or not to get up AGAIN! to let-out the old senile barking -for -no- reason Daisy the Dog and then wondering afterwards whether I should just stay up or try to fall back to sleep before starting my at-home temp job answering phones and taking payments for grumbling scared people (who just don’t have quite enough this year to make those payments but if they don’t they lose their job but I usually end up after we hang up feeling that at least they reached me and I am a good listener and empathizer so there’s that, so….) …