Grounding Through Poetry with Sue Cunningham

In this episode, we invite you to take a deep breath and find some grounding through the power of poetry. Whether you’re navigating stress or simply feeling a bit unsteady, poetry — reading it, writing it, or even the act of writing any thoughts by hand — can offer profound moments of calm and connection.

We’re thrilled to be joined once again by Sue Cunningham, an Allender Center facilitator and licensed therapist. Sue wears many hats — poet, life and soul coach, spiritual director — and now, podcast host! Be sure to check out her newly launched podcast, Living Poetry, available wherever you listen to podcasts.

We hope this episode feels like a balm for your soul, offering beauty, healing, and practical ways to use poetry to find peace and grounding in this season.

About Our Guest:

With more than 30 years of experience, Sue Cunningham has walked alongside and listened to the stories of countless women and men across the United States and around the world. Sue is committed to discerning God’s movement, providing practical guidance in the present and God’s hope for the future. Her work centers around becoming more human and healing from trauma by engaging stories. She has a private practice, is on staff with The Allender Center, and writes poetry. Sue and her husband John live in Fresno, California, and are the parents of two adult children. You can connect with Sue at: susan-cunningham.com.

Episode Transcript:

Dan: I think it’s best to begin with what you shared with me, Rachael, at the beginning of this effort to come on this podcast.

Rachael: Which part?

Dan: Technology is not one of my great joys, and yet we wouldn’t be able to do this without the reality of technology. But I tried to get on a minute or two beforehand, and as soon as I got on, it wouldn’t let me on because I had to download something, re-download something. It’s just preposterous. I want the old, I didn’t even know what it was. What am I talking? I wanted the old Google Chrome, but I had to get the new Google Chrome and it was going to be, and it said 90 minutes. 90 minutes. So I’m going to postpone this whole time with you and our ever so special guest whom we have had on before. Sue Cunningham. Sue, I’m sorry that I’ve begun with my consternation, but we’ll get to you very quickly because I’m not the point here. But what did you say to me?

Rachael: Oh, just that part of our hope in this podcast is to offer some imagination for grounding in this season as we’re careening toward a very, I would say, scary election season once again that we find ourselves in and just the anxiety and the terror that we’re dealing with in our world. I didn’t say all those things, but I essentially said if we’re going to do a podcast on grounding for people that are in a place of a lot of dysregulation, then in some ways it’s probably a kindness and a mercy for us to feel some dysregulation as we attempt to talk about how do we find grounding in the midst of that. Is that what you’re talking about?

Dan: Well, I’m talking about this that first of all,

Rachael: So, no, all of that. No, take it or leave it of all.

Dan: There was at least a very, it was brief because I was in my panic mode.

Rachael: Oh, that you just have to update chrome.

Dan: Yeah. And you created containment. You need to update. And then you provided meaning, and it was very gracious of you because I needed the containment. But just do this and stop complaining. And this is actually a good beginning because even though compared to the polarization, the rage, the violence, the cruelty that we know in our world today, this is a fairly minor problem, but you need a bit of grounding. So yes, we are in a context in terms of this eon this particular year needing grounding, and here’s our premise. Poetry is grounding, not all poetry, but poetry that grounds you opens the door for the possibility of being in the maelstrom of the world as it is, and not either so panicking that you can’t download chrome, but on the other hand, where you’re somehow getting a center to be able to move into the world with a whole lot more than you might have if you were simply fragmenting. So with all that, to be able to say, Sue, there is no one we’d prefer to have on to help ground us with regard to poetry than one of our core resident poets, Sue Cunningham. So Sue, welcome. What do you want to say to the beginning of this conversation?

Sue: Well, what I wanted to say was when you said I wanted new, I thought you were going to say not. I wanted that you wanted the old version of Chrome. I thought you were going to say, I want the old world. I want the old time when everything worked, which of course we know is not even true. Yes.

Rachael: Fantasy.

Dan: Don’t take that away from me. Let me able to bask in my nostalgia. Yes, that’s what I want. Don’t mess with me. I got the old, it’s good.

Sue: Yes. And I think the thing that is so hard when we’re dysregulated is we can look back on what was and sort of have a revisionist history. We can kind of say, oh, remember the good old days when everything worked? Remember when we only had three channels and if we wanted to turn the channel, all we had to do was get up and switch the knob, not try and figure out the remote, all the things that can be so dysregulating in this modern world.

Dan: First of all, I want to say this is a really important focus for us to be able to come back to say language is central to grounding. Fragmentation we have talked about many times before begins to fragment the left frontal lobe. When you’re in any kind of trauma, be it your own or culturally, there is that sense of disintegration, fragmentation, and language. But we’re going to be saying particularly poetry has the potential to bring us back to a centrality, a core, something that allows us to move back into the fragmentation with perhaps just a little bit more of a covering in some sense. It’s like good poetry provides you with the kind of clothing to be able to go out into the intrepid cold at times, very rainy world with a little bit more warmth and protection. So talk first of all about you as a poet and how I just want you to begin to talk about poetry and its capacity for you to be grounding.

Sue: Okay, good. I want to just go with your metaphor. That’s a beautiful metaphor about poetry and languages like clothing we put on to warm us. That’s very poetic. And what I want to say is because poetry is that containment, you were just saying how great it was that Rachael provided containment for you. That’s what a poem can do because it’s on the page. It is condensed language and that condensing, that reducing actually in this, I think mysterious and beautiful way allows us to hold more. It seems counterintuitive. It seems like No, the more words hold more, but it’s not. It’s the fewer words actually opens it up to holding more emotion, more reflection, more curiosity and wonder and mystery.

Dan: Oh. Yes, Rachael, your thoughts?

Rachael: No, I was laughing because I was just going back to my own, what’s the word where you use a lot of language, verbose. Yeah. Sometimes I think this feels very true for me, I want to be a poet more than I often am. I turn to prose a lot more to try to find the containment. It takes so many words, and that’s not a bad thing, but exactly what you’re talking about. When you distill down to the most accurate a word that actually holds the dynamic meaning you’re trying to find, there is something just really powerful in that and really honoring because that’s a labor of excavating and just laboring to actually, and story work has a very poetic nature to it. When we’re doing work with others and people are trying to find words for a lived experience, and we often say, is that the right word? Not as a way to diminish voice, but to say, I think there’s a more true word that can even tell a deeper truth. And that that’s just where my brain was going. But also I was thinking, I’m not very poetic.

Sue: Well actually, I’m gonna take issue with that. Because what I want to say is that you’ve probably heard the little antidote. I’m sorry, this is so long I didn’t have time to write a shorter one because it is, you’re talking about Rachael, you’re talking about the labor. There is labor in condensing and reducing and getting to that essential. And I really appreciate what you’re saying about asking for the word that is closer to the bone, so to speak. That’s why when we do story work, we don’t ask participants come with a three page short story. We say reduce it down to under a thousand words. And it’s not because we want to shut people down. It’s because we know that the more they can get it to the essential, we can get closer. And that’s what happens in a poem as well.

Dan: Well, I think we think that when fragmentation occurs personally, culturally, communally, that prose will answer, which underneath that assumption is that the word will give me control. It will enable me to have the ability to be back in control when I feel so out of control. And yet as we’ll talk about poetry and metaphor and condensed language. In some ways it holds way more mystery and therefore more ambiguity. It may seem like at one level that it’s actually adding to the fragmentation because a lot of people I’ll, if I’m interacting particularly with a client and something with the realm of poetry, it comes up will be the phrase, well, it confuses me. I don’t get it. I don’t know what the meaning is, but the notion that in the middle of fragmentation, there needs to be a centering that does not involve the power and control to come back and be now in charge. But can you enter in the face of fragmentation, something of the realm of mystery, of ambiguity, and allow yourself in one sense to be centered. And again, because most poems are somewhat brief, you do have, shall we say, condensed, brief, but mysterious with a lot of potential for exploration that will not have the satisfying, I now know what he means or she means. I’m left with, wow, why am I moved by this? And on the other hand, what does it mean? And that interplay between there’s something being moved within me, yet also a curiosity that is not about how do I resolve the political morass or the relational issues, but now I’ve got something to enter. That’s way different than going through Instagrams or flipping through different, just meandering rather than in one sense, coming to be in a locale in a place which is filled by a meaning that I’m meant to at least grapple with. So I’d love to have response to, as to our meanderings in effort to try and at least set the tone for how poetry is a meaningful place to play.

Sue: Yeah. Well, I wanted to respond to what you were saying about how I write poetry or what poetry’s like. I think part of what you’re naming is to go to the page, and I’ve had to learn this really the hard way. If I go to the page saying, want to write a poem about this, then the mystery’s gone. It’s not interesting. It’s not going to move. And there’s that one quote that’s like, no tears for the writer, no tears for the reader. If my best poems are when I am exploring on the page, when I am naming a mystery and being willing to kind of let go. You were talking about control. Part of writing a poem I think is letting go of control and letting that discovery, letting the turn come, letting it surprise you kind of, I thought I was going this way, but now this is a sharp left or a sharp right or I did not see this coming. That actually makes a really surprising and moving poem.

Dan: Part of my question of where this is going, I also want people, and we’ll say a little bit more later, you have developed an ability to work in realms. I mean, you’re a brilliant therapist, a brilliant spiritual director. You’re also a brilliant poet and teacher. And in that gifting of so many realms, you have been people look at your name for other podcasts. We’ve been talking with you about poetry and trauma, poetry and needing something other than mere prose in our lives. And I’m just thrilled that you’ve started a new podcast. Again, it’s one of those where I’m so honored to have been a guest, but I’m far more intrigued to be a listener called Living Poetry. So before we jump into some poems, I just want you to talk a little bit about why you’ve started the podcast and how is that related to your sense of calling and your invitation to other people’s sense of calling?

Sue: Well, it’s funny because talk about surprise. If you would’ve asked me even six months ago, how would you like to start a podcast? I would’ve been like, no thanks. I’m not looking at that. I’m not interested in necessarily, but through a funny set of circumstances, I was faced with this question, if I was going to start a podcast, what would it be about? And it just allowed me to dream. And so I thought, well, you know what I’d like to do? I’d like to get a bunch of interesting people and ask them to bring their favorite poem. And then we’ll use that poem as this portal into a conversation about the very things you’re talking about, what moves you, what grabs you. And when you read a poem, the beautiful thing about it is you can read the same poem a hundred times and feel something different every time. A different word will jump out at you, a metaphor, because it’s based on where you are in that day at that time. And I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to just talk about life and whatever the poem stirs? So that’s what… I ran it by a couple people, you being one of them and you’re like, yeah, I think try it. Go for it. I thought, okay, I’ll just try it. I don’t know what this is going to be. It has been so much fun to have you already on, Rachael, you are coming up next in a couple of weeks. And I’m so excited because people, especially people who have been like, oh, I don’t get poetry. Just like what you’re saying, oh, I hate poetry. Oh my gosh, I had the worst experience, which I find is a lot of people, maybe most people’s experience. And so it just kind of allows us to say, let’s just sit back and hear what would happen if we listened to each other, the way we listened to a poem and the way we approach a poem, which is usually with curiosity, which is usually like, I don’t know, I’m in the process of exploration and discovering. There’s this German philosopher that I know Dan, Arthur Schopenhauer, and he says, did I say it right?

Dan: Yeah. He was not fond of him, but…

Sue: I know most people I know, I know. But he said something I think so brilliant that I heard from someone many years ago, and his line is, treat a work of art like you would a prince, let it speak to you first. And so I’ve had that rolling around in my head for a couple of decades and I thought, well, what if we flipped it? What if we approached each other the way we would approach a work of art or the way we would approach a poem, especially one that you don’t understand. Hopefully you would have curiosity. Hopefully you would have reverence and honor. And so that is, I thought, like you said, in these turbulent times, I thought, wouldn’t that be great if we could learn to treat each other with that kind of curiosity and honor, especially when we don’t get it?

Dan: Oh, again, it would change the fundamental structure of so much of our antipathy to have that as a beginning point. And so at least to be able to underscore that the podcast living poetry is an invitation to a conversation using the text of one’s favorite poem or poetry, and then having the conversation not only about the poem, but why the person’s moved by the poem. And I mean, that’s in-storied art in a way that embodies something of the wonder of what we were made to know and to be part of. So all I can say is it is very worth listening to.

Sue: I’m so glad and I appreciate all the plugs. The thing that I wanted to say that is really surprising is so many people have said to me, oh Sue, this is so you, this is so you and I was like, oh, really? I guess because I find it easy and fun and exciting, and you were talking about calling, I wouldn’t have thought is my calling to start a podcast, but I am delighted that it’s kind of integrating all the realms of my life and work. So I’m kind of just waiting to see where it goes, honestly.

Dan: Well, it’s great. So let’s replicate a little bit of the podcast by taking us into a poem that I have found very grounding. Is that fair?

Sue: Great. I love it. Yes, go for it. Okay,

Dan: First of all, I don’t know the dude, I just love his poetry Balakian. And again, you don’t need to know people to know people or at least to have that sense of, oh my gosh, would it be fun to be able to sit down with a person who’s written this and begin the process of exploring? Because all creation comes from personhood and personhood is reflected in something of that creation. So I’m going to read a poem and yeah, it’s not too long, but probably because it’s longer than a verse or two. It’s one where you go, oh, go look this up. It’s called Here and Now. I found it in something called the Ozone Journal.

“The day comes in strips of yellow glass over trees. When I tell you the day is a poem, I’m only talking to you and only the sky is listening, the sky is listening. The sky is as hopeful as I am walking into the pomegranate seeds of the wind that whips up by the sea wall. If you want the poem to take on everything, walk into a hackberry tree, then walk out beyond the sea wall. I’m not far from a room where Van Gogh was a patient, his head on a pillow, hearing the menstrual careen off the sea wall, hearing the fathers leaves, pelt the sarcophagi, and here and now the air of the tepidarium kiss my jaw and pigeons, ghosting in the blue, loved me for a second before the wind broke branches and guttered into the river. What questions can I ask you? How will the sky answer the wind? The dawn isn’t heartbreaking and the world isn’t full of love.”

All I can do is go, who is this man? What has he seen? What has he suffered? What joy has he known and what world where blue, the pigeons ghosting in the blue love me for a second. Anyway, again, part of the question I think for any of us is why does something ground us? This poem may not ground you and I’m not asking for it to do so I found in the midst of some of the upheaval of the last few weeks, his work, this poem in particular, a kind of, oh, there’s something calling me back home.

Sue: Well, is that what you would say grounding means to you? Because I think we do have to say, what do you mean by grounding? And if you say something that calls me home, something that allows me to come home to myself, what do you mean?

Dan: Something that allows me to give up raw certainty and something that in some degree settles me in the presence of intrigue and mystery. I need to be bathed in brutal beauty for me to feel at home and that this poem does so.

Sue: Rachael, does this poem have that effect on you? First of all, I want to say this poem is by Peter Balakian. He is a Pulitzer Prize winner for his volume of poetry called Ozone Journal. So this volume where you found this poem won the Pulitzer Prize. So you have chosen well, and I am delighted that I had the privilege of meeting Peter this past summer.

Dan: How cool is that.

Sue: I know. I know. It was one of my most favorite moments and maybe we’ll talk a little bit more about that. But Rachael, I would love to hear from you either what grounding means to you or as you listen to Dan read this and what’s come to you, is it grounding for you as well?

Rachael: That’s a great question. I feel like there’s such an ache in this poem. So I think part of what compels me to it is that sense of what does this mean and what is here? I think in some ways what feels grounding is some of the truth telling that’s a little bit heartbreaking. The invitation to, I mean, full disclosure, part of me is like, am I even hearing this poem accurately? What do I know? But when I hear something like you want, how does he say, if you want the poem to take on everything, some sense of it can’t take on everything. That line Dan sounded a lot like you. I was like, yeah, I could see how you’re finding resonance here, but that line, the world isn’t full of love. I think what’s interesting is the poetry, I’m finding really, there have been seasons where the poetry I need is something like Mary Oliver’s When I Am Among the Trees, right? I find a certain kind of piece in not the certainty, but the kind of perseverance and beauty and steadfastness of these trees. I think in this particular season that feels more escapist to me. I’m not saying if that’s grounding to someone else that’s escapist, it’s just I’m needing, like when I was in first grade, my first grade teacher, Mrs. Hidary read A Wrinkle in Time to us, and some people would find that story really scary because it is pretty terrifying. A little child has to enter another dimension to go try to save her little brother and finds her father, but has to contend with a really evil person and has creature beastly creatures that are helping her. That story was very grounding for me in first grade because it was a big enough container for some of the chaos of my own world. So I find myself back in a season because there is a lot of heartbreak in the world that is not being fully named as heartbreak or there’s a lot of disinformation and spinning of the truth, and that’s not a new thing in our world, but it’s just a little bit amped up right now. And so I find when a poem is a big enough container to tell the truth of the horror and the terror, but also ask us to hold onto something of beauty and goodness that actually is really grounding to me. I would imagine for some people that would not feel grounding, that would feel like, don’t ask me to sit here. So that’s a good question. I like your question. What is grounding?

Sue: Well, I think that this poem starts out in a way, and this is a new poem to me, and even though I’ve had this volume, and I’ve read various different ones, I haven’t spent a lot of time with this one, but this poem is asking something of you as far as truth, because the first line is the day comes in strips of yellow glass over trees. And if you say, well, is that true? Is it true that the day comes in strips of yellow glass over trees? That’s not true. You’re not going to find poetry grounding because you’re asking it to do something that’s not intended to do. Poetry asks you to say, will you sit in silence? Will you sit like the prince and let the prince speak to you first? Will you be quiet? Will you sit in silence? One of the ways I think of grounding is allowing there to be silence. Will you allow something to speak to you first? And so when the poem asks me to buy into a day that comes in strips of yellow glass over trees, I can use my imagination and I can say, alright, yeah, that is true. I can find true in that. And then when I tell you the day is a poem, I’m only talking to you and only the sky is listening. Now I’m drawn in and I’m curious. I don’t know what’s coming next, but I’m game. And that’s I think part of the posture of being able to be grounded by poetry is to be willing to let go of the thing that you think you know as we’ve been talking about, and allow someone else’s voice to come in. Mary Oliver also says this in one of her other poems. She says, allowing another voice to speak, getting out of maybe our own heads and allowing someone else to come in and invite us to a deeper place.

Dan: Well, I’m curious, Rachael, if there’s any poetry that you want to bring in. I appreciate that this wouldn’t be where your heart would go, but you see how this would be grounding, which is now the intersection between Balakian’s brilliance. But you’re reading me as I’m reading this poem. So part of what I think you do, Sue, so brilliantly in the podcast is you’re reading people reading a poem and reading something of the reality of what’s around us. So I’m curious, Rachael, is there anything that comes to you with regard to what’s grounding in your own poetic world?

Rachael: Yeah, sure. I was thinking about this because I mean, I’m in full on and the world is on fire. I have two teenagers who are very full busy athletic school lives, and I have a toddler who keeps me right there on the edge of language. If you can remember what it was like having a right there on the edge of language. So much fragmentation, but so much goodness of beauty. And a friend sent this to me, just I saw this thought of you, and this is from the poet Nikita Gill, and she shared this on National Poetry Day just on Instagram. It’s very simple, and I think that’s grounding to me right now, simplicity, because I don’t have as much time to wait and be silent as I want. There’s a lot of noise in this brain, a lot of movement, but it’s a very simple poem.

“Everything is on fire, but everyone I love is doing beautiful things and trying to make life worth living. And I know I don’t have to believe in everything, but I believe in that.”

And in some ways she’s referring to all that’s happening in Gaza and Lebanon in the Middle East and what’s being said, what’s not being said, what’s being provided, what’s not being stopped, just action. And I think I needed that simple reminder. I mean, in some ways a toddler will draw you to that because how dare… James Baldwin puts a lot of language to this. We can’t give up hope when there are children in the world. What are we doing for them? And there was something deeply grounding for me about this acknowledgement like everything is on fire. You’re not crazy. Everything is on fire. And. People I love are doing beautiful things to try to make it different. And even if I don’t know what to believe in or where to look, there is some hope I can find in that. And I think in a very similar way when I look at my children, there’s still enough innocence there, enough terror. They’re smart kiddos. They see the world on fire too. And if you ask young people their fears, I was not afraid of climate change. I was not afraid of getting shot in school. Their fears that they put words to it, like school art projects are very different than my childhood fears. And yet they are still living into possibility. And so this was grounding to me in that there is more for us to do even when the world is on fire and we’re not alone. I think that was the piece I needed to, sometimes it can feel so isolating when the goodness or possibility feels like a drop in the ocean, but to remember there are multiple people and just the way our media shapes us right now, it’s just social media, news, media. It’s just very terrifying and polarizing and fragmenting and very little focus on who are the people doing beautiful things even still.

Sue: Yeah, I think that’s why we need lots of voices and lots of different kinds of poetry. There’s protest poetry, there’s poetry that’s heartwarming. There’s all kinds of different voices, and we need different things at different times. So to hear the truth of the world is on fire and to have some relief come to you to say, okay, as long as someone will tell the truth, then I can find my way. It is, it’s very hopeful and a very different way than being able to say the world isn’t full of love. That’s a different kind of truth that provides a different kind of containment or attunement. It’s both. And we need both for not only different seasons of our lives, but different moods and different days that we have with different things that are confronting us. So I really appreciate the way each of you were saying. What is grabbing you in this moment today.

Dan: Well, as we invite people, not just to your podcast, but into their own reading, I also want to go, one of the things that I needed to do as I read Peter’s work was to actually write some of his words in my journal, and I don’t know why, but this phrase, “hearing the fathers leaves, pelt their sarcophagi” was like, I’m like, okay, I’m kind of like the art history back. Oh, Gauguin, La Danse, Fauvism, 1905, 10, 15, I don’t know, but early twenties, I got to stop and go, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I know by exploring it, I’m not going to come to, oh, I know now, but what does the image, what the metaphor hold for me? Not merely what did he mean, but what does it mean for me to engage that image? And part of the power of poetry, part of the power of scripture is the power metaphor, the power of words that require you to not read quickly, but to linger. And even as you put it, Rachael, you don’t have much time, but my bet is the poem that you just read has been in your mind as you’re doing things and it lingers. At times I felt like as I read this many, many, many moons ago, at times I felt like this poem was stalking me. And yet over time it became a stranger that I wanted to walk with, not somebody who’s going to harm. But why did that one particular set of words stay with me? And I find that very few people write, not just write poetry, but write words that stick with them in a way in which now you’ve concretized it and there is something neurologic about this. When we begin to write, our brains begin to operate in a different way, different than typing out literally pen, paper, journal, holding that and then having the focus that what is moving for me in these mere words? And I think it’s important not only to write what others have written that hold something meaningful for you, even if you don’t know the meaning on the other hand, to then begin to go, what can I bring? And I think that’s where you were saying earlier, so important not to write a poem. I’m going to write a poem about the chaos of our current day. If you’re feeling chaos, what are two or three words? What is a sentence? What is a phrase that will help you in one sense, back to the word language helps us ground in the midst of language being lost. So talk a little bit about writing.

Sue: Well, I was just going to say that when we put a pen or a pencil in our hand and actually put it to the page, we open up a part of our brain that is different than like you’re saying from a computer or a phone or a remote. We’re actually tapping into someplace. And so even if you don’t even know what you want to say, just the fact of writing. And sometimes people do these exercises that are called free writes, and you just maybe read a poem and maybe you find a word, maybe you don’t know what Fauvism is, and it actually is French for “wild beast”. So maybe you’re like, I didn’t know that, but now I’m going to write about anything that comes to my mind when I think about Wild Beast. Or when I think about, not far from Van Gogh’s room, and you think, what happened to Van Gogh? And you look that up and you find out, oh my gosh, he was in serious distress. And you put it on the page, your own reflections, your own thoughts, your own questions, and not to find any conclusions, not to find any answers or certainty. You’re not writing a report, you’re just exploring. And those explorations bring up images. So we might say, what is it like, Dan, if we were getting into this, I’d want to ask you what’s it like? What is the image or the metaphor or the picture that you think about when you think about leaves pelting, the sarcophagi. Now we’re in Egypt, I thought we were in France. What is the picture of what it’s like? And then that’ll tell you something about you and your imagination.

Dan: And again, without going into a lot of details, the images that came when I began, I wrote the words out and then I’m pondering why, why, why? And what came pretty quickly was where my grandmothers interned, her coffin, the trees around it. And I just burst into tears when I put words to that. And I’m like, I’m not doing well. Oh my gosh. You have come back to your grandmother.

Sue: And what’s the emotion? What’s the emotion? I see your tears, Dan. What is the emotion that you’re feeling?

Dan: Oh, just such gratitude to Balakian. Thank you. Thank you. I did not think that in the midst of whatever chaos I felt in that point of contact that you would bring me back to my grandmother. Thanks for bringing me back home. I needed a taste of home before I return into a world where I feel very much like a stranger. Somehow being able to hold her grave, her presence, the trees around it is enough to be able to go this good woman who I still believe is deeply alive is rooting me on. And I will not succumb. I will not succumb. Though I know it’s true. The world is not full of love. I do believe the living God, father, son, and Holy Spirit permeate the world. And therefore, though the world is thoughtful of love, it is full of a different kind of love, inviting me to a different kind of redemption. And this crazy period is not going to take me out. I will keep talking and I will keep reading, and I will keep writing.

Sue: Yes. Yes.

Dan: Well, thank you. Thank you for taking us into these grounds and further to say, folks can find your new and lovely podcast at Living Poetry on any of the wonderful technological grounds.

Sue: Yes. If you can use your technology, you can find it. And I want to say, Rachael, don’t forget to listen to your episode. And Rachael’s episode is coming up where she brings a beautifully grounding and really amazing poem, and we have a wonderful conversation.

Rachael: Well, and just before we go, go, I was just curious, Sue, whether you read us something or even just share with us what poetry is grounding to you this day?

Sue: Oh my goodness. Okay. Okay, I will. I’ve been actually using this poem with my spiritual direction clients, and I’ll read it as we’re talking about fall. And this is very grounding and let me find it. And here, and it is by Rainer Maria Rilke.

Dan: Oh yay.

Sue: And it is called Autumn. 

“The leaves are falling. Falling as if from far up as if orchards were dying high in space, each leaf falls as if it were motioning. No. And tonight the heavy earth is falling away from all other stars in the loneliness. We are all falling. This hand here is falling. And look at the other one. It’s in them all. And yet there is someone whose hands infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.” 

That’s autumn by Rainier Maria Wilke.

Dan: Well, no way to end other than to again say Sue. Thank you.

Sue: Thank you both. This is so much fun. Thank you both.