March 7, 2025: “The Sign of Saturn,” Brokenness “Broken”

It was a cold day, but no new snow.  I just took my puppy for a last spin around the backyard, and the moon and stars looked like crystal in heavens.  When my dog barked, I thought the sky would splinter into pieces and rain down on my head.

Now that the first week of March is over and Lent has begun, I can feel the world shifting into spring mode, despite the recent blizzard.  Something ending, something beginning.  (Don’t worry.  I’m not dumb enough to think that we’re done with the white stuff,  However, the sap is starting to flow, metaphorically, at least.)

So much in this world is broken right now.  I’m not going to get political here, but most of my faithful disciples will agree with that statement.  Russia is still in Ukraine.  Trump still wants to turn Gaza into a luxury resort.  And the pope is still in the hospital.  

Yet, out of brokenness comes healing.  I truly believe that.

Sharon Olds struggles with her daughter.

The Sign of Saturn

by:  Sharon Olds

Sometimes my daughter looks at me with an
amber black look, like my father
about to pass out from disgust, and I remember
she was born under the sign of Saturn,
the father who ate his children. Sometimes
the dark, silent back of her head
reminds me of him unconscious on the couch
every night, his face turned away.
Sometimes I hear her talking to her brother
with that coldness that passed for reason in him,
that anger hardened by will, and when she rages
into her room, and slams the door,
I can see his vast blank back
when he passed out to get away from us
and lay while the bourbon turned, in his brain,
to coal. Sometimes I see that coal
ignite in her eyes. As I talk to her,
trying to persuade her toward the human, her little
clear face tilts as if she can
not hear me, as if she were listening
to the blood in her own ear, instead,
her grandfather’s voice.

Olds is writing about the brokenness of her own childhood, and I think she’s a little frightened that her daughter has inherited that brokenness.  It’s sort of the way I’m always on the look out for signs of bipolar in my son and daughter because of my wife’s mental health struggles.  

But, as I said above, brokenness begets healing, just as sure as winter begets spring.  That’s what this time of year is all about:  something beautiful pushing through the frozen earth to reach for the sun.  Hope never dies.  It just lies fallow every once in a while.

Since late November, this winter season has been difficult for me.  I’m still climbing my way out of a major depressive episode.  I have more bright days than dark days now.  I notice things like snowbanks glowing blue, clouds turning orange at sunset, my favorite songs playing on the radio.  I am surrounded by possibility, and for that I am truly grateful.

I may still be broken, but I’m on the mend.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about brokenness tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

In the poem, “For practice, let something stay broken,” Molly Tenenbaum writes, the faucet’s drip keeps you waking.  Write a poem about something that’s broken, whether a relationship or an item in your house.  What lesson can you discover from this broken item?  If you can’t think of anything broken, find something in your home you don’t need—like a chipped plate, a paper clip, a scratched frame—and break it.  Write about the experience of breaking a material item and the details of the moment, including how it felt, what it sounded like when it broke, and what it looked like in its brokenness.

Broken

by:  Martin Achatz

Linoleum on the bathroom floor

buckles, almost breathes

under my bare feet like a living

thing.  The kitchen faucet drips

unless the spigot and handle 

line up just so, one to the left

sink, one to the right, a balance

almost political between

abundant water and drought.

The lamp in the living room decides

when it wants to shine or remain

dark, the way my teenage son

waffles between loving me

and wanting me assassinated.

Joseph in the manger we display

at Christmas has lost his staff,

his decapitated head glued

back on his shoulders, hairline

scar circling his neck as if

he’s had surgery on his carotids.

So much is broken at home,

from the front porch light to 

shower drain, an endless

list of needed repairs 

that sometimes keeps me

awake, listening to make sure

the furnace kicks in on frozen

January nights.  Yet, this brokenness

reminds me that I am still

needed, that the world, however

splintered, can be fixed if

I have the correct crescent wrench

or roll of duct tape.  I guess

what I’m talking about is hope,

leaking, clogged, fractured 

hope just waiting for me

to pull out my toilet plunger

and get to work.

September 10: I Write Novels, Mr. MAGA, Selfless Love

Ford and company are still dealing with the cops who are having existential crises . . .

Ford shouted out, "Hey, listen!  I think we've got enough problems of our own having you shooting at us, so if you could avoid laying your problems on us as well, I think we'd all find it easier to cope!"

Another pause, and then the bullhorn again.

"Now see here, guy," said the voice, "you're not dealing with any dumb two-bit trigger-pumping morons with low hairlines, little piggy eyes and no conversation, we're a couple of intelligent caring guys that you'd probably quite like if you met us socially!  I don't go around gratuitously shooting people and then bragging about it afterward in seedy space-ranger bars, like some cops I could mention!  I go around shooting people gratuitously and then I agonize about it afterward for hours to my girlfriend!"

"And I write novels!" chimed in the other cop.  "Though I haven't had any of them published yet, so I better warn you, I'm in a meeeean mood!"

In a very funny way, this section illustrates a pretty important lesson.  These cops, who are trying to kill our heroes with Kill-O-Zap guns, have lives and problems and hopes and ambitions.  One has a girlfriend.  The other is a would-be novelist/writer.  Their two-dimensional character types (stupid, bloodthirsty bad guys) are battling their three-dimensional character developments.

Of course, we all go through our days judging people, putting them into categories that make sense to us.  If I see someone wearing a "Trump 2020" tee-shirt, I will make certain assumptions about that person--that he is a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.  That is before I've spoken with that person, found out that he has a mother in a nursing home and has just been diagnosed with lymphoma.  Based on my shallow first impression, I immediately dismiss Mr. MAGA, make him less than human, which is exactly the tactic Donald Trump has been using during his whole time in office.

It's a question of control.  Using labels, we are able to approach a person/group of people not as fellow human beings.  By doing this, we cast ourselves as somehow superior.  It's a tactic that's been used throughout history.  It's how slavery was justified in the United States.  It's how Jews were sent to concentration camps in Nazi Germany.

If you call yourself a Christian, then you know that isn't really the way Jesus Christ operated.  For me, that is one of the great lessons of the Gospels.  Christ always hangs out with people from the lowest classes.  Fishermen.  Tax collectors.  Lepers.  Samaritans.  Gentiles.  Christ--because of his God-self--didn't judge these individuals.  He met them, ate with them, visited their homes, touched their wounds, loved them, and made them whole.

And that was one of Christ's greatest gifts--the ability to see all people as children of God, worthy of love and hope.  That Christ gift is something we should all try and emulate in our day-to-day interactions.  It's the way I try to be every day of my life, some days more successfully than others.  Anger and frustration have been my companions all too frequently in the last few months.  They have become comfortable emotions for me, especially when dealing with the irrationalities of mental illness and addiction.

Tonight, I have to remind myself to be more Christ-like.  To accept and love people in my life, despite their brokenness.  Or maybe because of their brokenness.  That's a tall order, especially if that brokenness causes you pain and heartache.  And that is another of the great lessons of the Jesus narrative.  Christ gave up His life for the human race, even though those humans didn't really deserve it.  In fact, those humans were kinda assholes to Him.  But that's what selfless love is all about.  And I ain't there tonight. 

It's time for bed.  Maybe Saint Marty will do better tomorrow.  There's always hope.

A reminder from a friend:

October 3: Closer to God, Brokenness, Lisa Russ Spaar, "Rapunzel's Braid," Confessions of Saint Marty

Then, and this perked Ives' interest:  "The question we must ask of ourselves is how we can learn to see that which will allow us entry.  That state of mind, closer to God, becomes us.  That is all."

Ives attends a lecture given by a mystic named A. I. Explixa.  Ives has attended dozens of similar talks, searching for an explanation for a vision he had following a near-death experience.  He doesn't find a whole lot of answers to his questions at these presentations.  Yet, when Explixa makes the above comment, Ives somehow senses a connection with Explixa's words.  Ives comes to believe that he was granted a glimpse of the world as seen through God's eyes.

I don't understand God's mind.  On a superficial level, I get the whole idea of loving your enemies, helping the outcasts, praying all the time, laying down your life for somebody.  I was raised on all of those maxims, and I try to follow them.

But there's a whole lot that escapes me.  Like war and terrorism and genocide.  Or breast cancer and world hunger and lymphoma of the brain.  Don't get me started on Donald Trump.  I just don't understand why God allows the world to be afflicted by these terrible things.  What does humankind gain from events like the 9-11 attacks or the Holocaust?

Generally, I try to stay away from posing questions in this blog.  I'm a firm believer that, if a writer asks a question. he or she better damn well know the answer.  Tonight, however, I have no answer to that question.

Theologians would say that God didn't create or foster the brokenness of the world.  The human race is responsible for creating the mess.  Conflict in the Middle East, that's us.  Ditto the Rwandan genocide and George W. Bush presidency.  We did all of that.  It's in how we respond to these things that God comes into play.

For example, just two days ago, there was another school shooting in the United States.  A terrible loss of life.  Now, God didn't put the guns in Chris Harper-Mercer's hands.  God didn't tell him to go to that college campus and kill people.  So, where is God in this tragedy?

I don't know.  Perhaps there will be some political miracle in Washington, D. C.  Republicans and Democrats will stop pointing fingers and debating the meaning of the Second Amendment.  They will come together, say "enough is enough," and enact sensible legislation that will keep guns away from people like Chris Harper-Mercer.   They will place greater value on human life rather than political agenda.  That would be a God thing, I think.

I want to believe that, deep down, people are really good.  I want to see the Christ (or Buddha or Muhammad) in everybody.  God is unknowable, and tragedy exists everywhere.  Yet, there is also grace available.  God answers prayers.  We're just too damn impatient and strong-willed to accept His answers most of the time.  Human beings want to play God, not listen to Him.

Lisa Russ Spaar's poem for today is about a kind of grace, I think.  How an act of destruction can search for meaning, become a bird's nest.  How an old song can disappear, and a new poem emerge.  It's all in how you look at it.

Saint Marty doesn't understand God, but Saint Marty trusts Him.  That's half the battle.

Rapunzel's Braid

by:  Lisa Russ Spaar

Long after it lost its girl,
the wind kept heaving its gifts
of fragrance and leaves
and gritty drifts of snow into the tower;
the tower itself roared like an empty shell.
The birds she'd tamed returned
and returned to the sill, the room,
picking each abandoned thing
to palest hull and meal.
At first, the severed braid
writhed on the cold flags.
Like all dying things, it burned
as fiercely as possible
for attention among the torn leaves,
the rain pooled on the floor
in mirrors of the sky's taunting anarchy.
By the time the mice and squirrels and birds
began to pull it apart, its burnished river
had faded into dull snakeskin,
a slipped noose.  Still, for years afterwards,
it sought her out, strands helplessly
carried into the uplifted arms
and empty trunks of trees, into nests,
into pastures studded with animal droppings,
its song as thin as a line of ink,
its penned name fading, fading, then gone.

 Confessions of Saint Marty