from George Fox to oracle

 

of an early student, Jessica Harris

a former student, and good friend,

comes over and visits for an hour and a half,

she tells us of her love for Brooklyn, for New York,

and for the life she has created there,

she lives with gusto,

with an easy calmness to it all:

she has evolved both professional and personal ways of being,

she readily connects with and appreciates other people,

out of whole cloth she has built a commercially viable persona of oracle,

with a wig, and a costume, she gives herself to audiences,

there people type questions,

and she pulls forth answers

that make sense to her and them,

all based on her intuitive grasp 

of how the questions came forth,

plus her reading of the body and spirit of the questioner,

Jessica loves the psychological,

the way the human spirit craves to make sense of it all,

she then ventures a response,

less enigmatic than the Delphic oracle might have given,

and she, and the questioner can both be happy with the telling,

the work entertains, and pay the bills,

in her own personal questions to understand

how to be,

what to do,

she wants to parallel Buddha

in how to meditate,

in how to both embrace this life

and to go beyond it to what is even more real

than our sensations,

all the glue that grabs at us

to stick to our moments,

rather than to transcend them,

thus she seeks the reality that is more real

than the ephemeral of the sweet taste,

of moments we can easily know,

Jessica is happy with herself,

with the choices she has made,

with the joy of following her own heart

into knowing what to do, how to be,

as she gets ready to drive away,

she comments: 

"How Friends School of me to have followed my own leading!

and to have created my own reality,"

it works, because it is real

to who she knows herself to be,

how wonderful that the world, plus her creative work,

allows such a path to be revealed, and followed.

by Henry H. Walker

July 7, ‘26

of Mt. LeConte 34 years ago

 

Veils Part

A rocky overlook called Myrtle Point

At the east end of a smoky mountain named LeConte,

I sit alone as day breaks

Inside a blanket of grey fog

The world soft and warm and closed around me

The covers pulled up so I can't see

Sky or vista or valleys or colors of the rising sun,

I pull into myself and find the way out

To loving this moment, this place for what it is

Not for what I want it to be,

I quake with peace and do not begrudge the mist its day,

I seethe with joy and seek to appreciate the moment

For all that it is worth

For we humans can never know how long

Our moments on Earth will last,

The wind picks up to a rushing roar, taking m breath away

For all at once the valley appears below me

Green trees and heath balds and distance

Sharply real, framed by racing grey mist

That swirls the view away

Only to unveil blue sky and white clouds above

Only to veil it all again,

My pulse quickens, my arms outstretch,

I shiver, I sob, I cry out to the heavens

In joy and awe and fear

And the world outside is revealed again--

Ridge and valley leaping into being

And I am not protected,

I am open to glory too much to hold,

I look downwind into the valley

And watch clear cold air give birth

To slate-grey wisps and billows of cloud

That race up at me, over and through me, and beyond,

For a brief moment even the silver-white

Circle of the sun appears,

I am blessed with spectacle, with a grand command performance

That dwarfs me in its majesty,

The world shrinks into a small island lost in cloud

Then expands in a wrenching moment of inspiration, of illumination,

I shiver from the cold and the glory

From a transcendence that dwarfs my frail body

From a transcendence that pulls me out into greatness.

by Henry H. Walker

August 2, ‘92

For Clarence

Katherine Watson Farmer

 

I recently found this tribute to Katherine Watson Farmer, written maybe 35 years ago.

Farewell, Katherine

Ah, the joy of getting to know another

To touch and be touched

To feel the same pulse

Throb so gently, so deeply in another

And to reach out, every sense tender

To hear the beat that drives every heart

That holds us one in life's sweet dream,

We are each stewards of

A grandness that greens the Earth

And we do well to remember our frailness

As we hold for awhile a bit of God in our souls,

Katherine, you and I shared a place first

A center in the forest, a spell by a creek,

And from that common center

We found encircling thoughts and feelings

That could resonate across a generation--

And we touched, and our families touched,

And we were the better for breaking down

The barriers that sought to wall us separate,

You painted a milkweed pod a bursting

With little seeds tethered to fairy balloons

Ready to launch into tomorrow,

You are gone, seeds you loved and let go

Live on, and I feel I have more to share

From having known and loved you.

Fare well.

by Henry H. Walker

circa 1990

honoring my father's sister

 Maybe 35 years ago I wrote this poem.  Just found it recently.

To Aunt Reba

Ah, Aunt Reba,

I remember you well

from my earliest years,

the memories all wrapped-up

with sand and sun and shell,

every newborn summer at Edisto

where the heaps of food

only paled beside

the loving hospitality

you heaped upon us--

I learned the best of the South those summers,

the South of open arms and hearts

the treasuring of family

the joy of settling into the

warmth of air and spirit,

I always loved your eyes

when they smiled and your face beamed

like a Low Country sunrise,

as I've grown older

I've learned to appreciate

your strong will

that made the most out

of the cards life dealt you:

the tough times, the sacrifices,

the prices you had to pay

for all you had,

for all you were,

You came at life

with a fire in your soul,

with steel up your backbone,

with love in every fiber of your being,

I honor you for who you were

and you still live deep within me,

I miss you already,

I love you, Aunt Reba.

by Henry H. Walker

circa 1990

what the whole requires

 a job description?

my brother was a brilliant administrator,

his care of his workers, outstanding,

when he died, they lined the streets of Cartersville

to honor his passing,

yet he asserted that he hated job descriptions,

because they easily morphed

into settling for the lesser in what one can do,

in who one is as part of the larger whole,

when I started at Carolina Friends School,

I felt a calling to the students,

to the school, to the future,

an imperative to do whatever needed doing,

whether in my own classes,

with my own students,

or in the larger whole

where a piece of trash might need

to be picked up, a colleague helped,

where an emergency might need somebody, me?

to deal with the snake,

to find a way forward

when the inevitable glitch manifested,

a snowy walkway to be cleaned,

in the last decades more of the staff

that have come to CFS

seem to have narrowed what they feel called to do

and have sought extra compensation

for any of their work beyond the minimum

their self-definition of their job details,

I am now retired

so my job description is non-existent,

the question: "What is your role at the school?"

worth a belly laugh,

yet I still feel the imperative

of helping create and maintain a school

so that the best within the students

can be seen, helped to develop,

so that the best of the potential CFS community

can be allowed and helped

to come into the fullness of what is possible,

such an open-ended charge can be a lot,

yet anything less is too little

for what the great work of a school demands.

by Henry H. Walker

July 23, ‘26

a cautionary tale

The Odyssey, Reimagined

for centuries Western civilization has read The Odyssey

not as a cautionary tale

but rather as a blueprint for how to live your life,

particularly as part of an imperialistic tradition,

manifesting your destiny:

refuse to allow limitation,

instead, use effort and will to overcome and dominate,

it reduces the male to a stereotype:

don't rest until you subdue your rival,

prove your worth,

be superior to another,

whatever the cost,

whatever the consequences,

the Trojan War wrapped up in nobility of purpose,

while probably based on potential economic advantage,

the Greek defeat of the Trojans a paradigm,

the Romans used that paradigm

to take from other countries,

so that their success was zero-sum,

any addition based on the subtraction from another,

gender not only binary but determinative,

a leader should use his aggression

and change the world to suit him,

no matter the costs,

not to make the world better

but to make the world dance to your whims,

like in those old cowboy movies

where the gunslinger would force somebody to "dance"

by firing shots near their feet,

I taught The Odyssey to eighth graders for decades

in hope that my students could realize and grasp

a narrative that still drives many in this Western world,

all based on a favorite story the Greeks told themselves,

misogyny underlies much of the basic story,

just as it still does in this culture,

with men as the ones to act

and women judged by their faithfulness and subservience,

the Earth Mothers who dominated before Zeus 

were shackled into subservience,

though the god Helen

is almost unique in expressing 

how the Greeks knew deep down

the truth of the importance of the female living her power,

even in their male-dominated pantheon,

Christopher Nolan took the charge from this epic story

and created a version of it to share with us in 2026 CE,

the power of the story still partly in the action sequences,

still partly in the fantastic that challenges our hero,

and though he overcomes them,

Nolan makes sure Odysseus notices the prices he pays,

Nolan wants Odysseus, his protagonist, to be a hero,

but a hero who deeply knows his flaws,

the deaths he feels forced to allow, to even encourage,

his love of home, of partner, of offspring, primal,

but his delight in his own cleverness equally primal,

and disastrous in its consequence,

in the horror that his directed victory at Troy releases,

the human cost of a victory that feels Pyrrhic to him,

as were the protracted mis-adventures on the way home,

where many of his men die, and he is responsible,

in the book Homer often stresses

the value of welcoming the stranger,

going out of your way to treat them as special,

and as much to be treasured as family and friend,

when the Cyclops, the Laistrygonians, Circe,

treat Odysseus and his men as if they are ancient equivalents

of modern day American ICE agents,

there is contempt for such treatment in book and now movie,

his wife and son suffer as the suitors of Penelope

seek her hand and the power inherent 

in being the male in charge of Ithaca,

when the suitors belittle and hurt Odysseus as a beggar,

Homer sets up how they deserve a harsh consequence,

Odysseus returns, and rights the scales,

but at what cost to his soul?

when the Greeks choose to view the stranger

as fodder for their own needs,

Nolan reminds us of the reality of the Zeus laws as to the stranger,

and of how easily the Greeks, and modern day America,

can choose not to follow it,

failing to follow either Zeus, or Jesus, or our own hearts,

as to those who are not already family or friends,

Nolan ends the movie with son Telemachus, King of Ithaca,

and Odysseus and Penelope off on a sail into the West,

maybe echoing such a journey from Tolkien's mythic telling

of endings which are really not final,

Christopher Nolan challenges us

to notice how our stories drive us,

and of the price we pay with our moments

when we assert our will,

and have to deal with the reckoning that  ensues,

The Odyssey is a cautionary tale.

by Henry H. Walker

July 31, ‘26