[S]ometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness.
Excerpt from poem Saint Francis and the Sow by
Galway Kinnell (1927-2014) Pulitzer Prize poet.
“I love the idea of reteaching because sometimes we forget we’re lovely. We forget our faces, our bellies, our hungers. We forget and we need to be retaught and Galway, in his much longer poem, starts by saying:
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness
I love the sense of looking at everything as something that could or might flower and maybe it is going to become something else. Galway tells us that the bud stands for all things, even those things that don’t flower, for everything flowers from within of self-blessing. ‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘it’s necessary to reteach a thing it’s loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it, in touch and in words it is lovely, until it flowers again of self-blessing.’ We must reteach each other so to know ourselves and to begin to flower. This thing that looks like a problem is part of our power, our beauty, and our intelligence.”
David Bedrick, J.D., Dipl. PW author of
You Can’t Judge A Book By Its Cover:
17 Women’s Stories Of Hunger, Body Shame And Redemption
