Assignment 8: Summary

For my summary I chose to write a poem / lyrics to a song. I wasn't planning on doing so, actually, because I can only write poetry when I'm feeling very emotional, which means trying to force myself for an assignment is ineffective. But just knowing it was an option, over the last week, I found small bits of imagery coming to me, so I sat down this morning and wrote.

The poem would have been understandably less authentic and, well, poetic if I had tried to squeeze words like "hegemony" or "celebratory multicultural education" in it. And while I do feel all the more technical things we have learned this semester are important, the reason I feel this song can accurately show what I've learned this semester and in doing this portfolio, is because at the end of the day, I think there will always be more for us to learn about how to treat others as God would and as they need in order to grow. So it wasn't the knowledge that was important out of the things I learned. Rather, this class helped me to cultivate a disposition to look, to listen, to defend. It was this solidification of good character traits, the realization that they are important and can grow, that I sought to convey in this song. It is set to the tune of an old Celtic song I love, Carrickfergus.

Here is "Garden":

I walked in youth through a lonely garden

with mist and shadows of morning by.

I went to find a rare blue flower

that our town offered when loved ones died.

But on my way, there was much I passed over,

for my eyes saw only what they knew.

Then, as the light broke on the land behind me,

I chanced to look back for a sigh or two.

And I now saw what I’d walked over.

The garden flowers lay in sad abandon,

so many paths had beat them low.

My own trail, too, I saw had trampled

so many blossoms that reached up, below.

For I’d had eyes only for my blue flowers

and I had done as had all the rest.

So then, with tears, I stayed in the garden

to help all flowers to grow their best.

The small white bells, the vines, the grasses,

even those blue that were deformed,

these we had crushed in a rush for sameness,

but now I loved them, having been transformed.

And they sprang back, though long they’d suffered,

for once the feet of the wanderers ceased,

they all grew strong, in their way and beauty,

and with the growing, our pain was eased.

(Here is one lovely version of the tune, though with fewer verses than the original, if you'd like to hear what the lyrics are set to. If I had recording skills I would have sung it for you myself!)