AROHO Speaks, Writer to Writer: Interview with Mary Johnson





Photo by Jamie Clifford

I've had the continued fun and luxury of interviewing the women of AROHO (specifically from the group attending last year's summer 2011 retreat). Here's a look at the intense but rewarding journey Mary Johnson has taken not only with AROHO (as Creative Director), but with the publication of her book, An Unquenchable Thirst: Following Mother Teresa in Search of Love, Service, and an Authentic Life.  I've pulled out a couple of questions midstream, hoping to entice you to check out the rest.

Do you feel Unquenchable Thirst has given you a greater ability to leverage influence on behalf of sisters inside the church system, for example, in terms of the current conflict facing the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) you outline in the article published at the Huffington Post (sisters “underfire for radical feminism” for issues regarding birth control and marriage)?

Certainly my experience as a sister for twenty years gives me an insider perspective that allows me to understand what’s going on behind all the jargon. And my position now as an outsider means that I can say what I think without fear of retaliation. As I’ve watched the drama unfold, I feel very closely involved. When I was a sister I couldn’t speak my mind and hope that anyone would hear.

An influential sister--someone who had read my book and loved it--recently told me that sisters have been heartened by my articles, and that makes me feel good. Another told me that it’s important that the Vatican not be allowed to continue to operate in the dark, and I’m happy to shed what light I can. These sisters are being attacked for thinking seriously about important issues and sometimes coming to conclusions that differ from those expressed by the hierarchy. I think they ought to be applauded for their commitment and courage.

Thinking back to the 2011 AROHO retreat, can you tell us about an idea, exercise or conversation that had either an identifiable impact upon your writing habits or became a finished piece of writing or one in process?

Bhanu Kapil’s question, “What is the cause of the suffering of your mother?” continues to resonate with me. What is the cause of the suffering of my sister, my mother, that woman behind the counter, that character in a novel? What can we do to accompany and alleviate that suffering? When is my sister’s suffering oppression and when is it opportunity? Read more here at AROHO Speaks.

Further Reading:

Here's an additional reverie I wrote about the experience of personally connecting with Mary's book:

The Salve of Secrets

And a post about a poetry intersection between Mother Teresa and Lady Diana I share with one of my writing buddies, Liz Brennan:

Mother Teresa meets Lady Di

Perhaps, Maybe: The End and The Search with Liz Brennan

Our latest collaboration, The End, appears on Elizabeth's Perhaps, Maybe blog. I hope you'll enjoy it, the text version, and that you'll enjoy it again as the three-d version, here, as a live micro-reading (recorded still very much under siege of mosquitoes, and beneath the canopy of the family redwoods, on my back deck). 

Since we are both poets, of course, the end doubles as a beginning (for nothing incites, invigorates, or inspires a poet more than a shut door).

Earlier this month, I failed to post a link to The Search, another one of our collaborations. Are you in search of  ideas? Love? Both? ...Neither? Let me know...

Photo by Robyn Beattie.

Beauty to Memory: A Micro Reading

Neither the mosquitoes (skimming our arms in droves) nor the chill (brought on by the sun's fair clip at descent) deterred our first tiny recording session. Liz's husband came to the rescue with four yellow rockets of incense (which he tucked in disarray into the perimeter of our wicker table) providing enough cover for us to record our collaboration, "Beauty to Memory" while the feral cats romped in the knee high grass.

Transformative Blogging for Women Bloggers

Thinking about finally getting around to launching your blog? Or want to spruce up your existing blog, recalibrate, re-invigorate? We will cast a large net and write fiercely and freely and eventually winnow down to crafted posts. Come join a growing group of like-minded women in a supportive, dynamic on-line classroom setting (offered through Story Circle Network--members and non-members welcome). Starts next Monday, May 14, 2012. Visit here for course description and testimonials: Transformative Blogging.

Strange Attractors: Absence of Presence and A Choice of Wings live at Perhaps Maybe

I mentioned last post my writing companion Liz Brennan and I decided to collaborate, using her mobius strip format, call and response, each of us positing a “perhaps” stanza and each of us answering with a “maybe” stanza. Here are another set of prose poetry collaborations (parked on Liz's blog):

1) Absence of Presence: Perhaps it is the absence of presence that leads us to question the coin….

2) A Choice of Wings: Perhaps chivalry, hive and liver belong in the same vase on a fur-lined mantle.

And I can’t help but invite you down this rabbit hole, come with me…

In the poem, “A Choice of Wings” the phrase “three-winged birds with indigo feet” found its way to the page. Liz, large of heart and granting me far more intentional acuity than was present, looked up “three winged birds” and here’s what she found: a woman run company using an image of three wings, bearing a link to an interview with author Margaret Wheatley, which lead Liz to find, and hand me, Leadership and the New Science: Learning about Organization from an Orderly Universe.

The three wings appear on the cover, reminiscent of Ariadne’s thread, the nested string (all one?) coheres as a shape to the mind’s eye, though with space between each layer (solid when viewed from a distance like Saturn’s rings). Wheatley writes about this three-winged image in the context of positive restructuring of organizational process (business, institutions, etc., in Leadership and the New Science) via messy (but ultimately productive) collaborative processes in which each member of the organization brings their skills to the table.

A few lines from the paragraph of text beneath the image inside the book read, “Three-Winged Bird: A chaotic Strange Attractor: This image records the journey of a system in chaos…Chaotic strange attractors reveal the order inherent in chaotic systems, order that is only visible over time and history—" Mario Markus and Benno Hess, Max-Planck Institute, Dortmund, Germany.

Could we stop there? Of course  not…so Liz generously placed additionally into my hands, a second book (written by Wheatley and Myron Keller-Rogers) titled a simpler way. The book opens with images of light and dark, shadow and sun, outlines of children cartwheeling on the ocean shore, the zig and zag of a thicket of zebras from an aerie’s eye view, the close up of the tines of the underside of a mushroom.

Prose follows, though I’d argue the book is more like a prose poem. Wheatley and Keller-Rogers marry image with idea, positing that we might have Darwin’s assumptions backwards, that we in fact live in a world that supports surivival of the widest diversity, not survival of the fittest after all. Doesn’t that drop your shoulders down away from your neck? No need to strive. Just be. True? My body says, yes, yes and yes.

Beauty to Memory and The Scarf Prose Poetry Collaboration with Liz Brennan live at Perhaps, Maybe

Poet Liz Brennan (who I’m happy to claim as my writing buddy for the last five plus years) and I have finally gotten around to collaborating with poetry, thanks to Liz’s gentle invitation and perseverance (I’m eternally grateful as I’ve been suffering from a poetry lull, having allowed the hats of editing, blogging, interviewing, teaching, to eclipse the midnight muse).

Liz’s blog reminds me of a mobius strip; she’s arrived at an ingenious structure, each week posting a tiny prose poem that begins, Perhaps….Followed by a second prose poem that begins, Maybe…

Here are our first two collaborations, with others in the wings:

Beauty to Memory

The Scarf  (here, the obsession with Amelia Earhart—how could it not—goes on, so if you liked this poem and you haven’t seen the photo poem montage yet—a prior collaboration with photographer Robyn Beattie, check it out here: Amelia

Rescue of Ophelia and Nefertiti Among Us live at Stone Canoe, Online

Painting by Christine DeCamp

I’m happy to announce two poems up at Stone Canoe, Online. I’ve given you the url to the table of contents, in hopes you’ll give the whole line-up a read, for such line gems buried in the poems of my fellow contributors as “the sculpted mothers/who stood on the lawn amid maple leaves/ in fetal denial” (Nikolae Babuts, Lockerbie), “farm roads are clothes on other people” (Paul Doty, Pink Barn Eye), “jonquiled moon” (Gayle Elen Harvey, In Praise of the Dark), “Color your hair, darling, if you must” (Jay Rogoff, Dyeing), “calling the girl I was” (Kathleen Tenpas, The Calling), “Often I’m as helpless as a sleeping cowboy” (Thom Ward, And There is Beauty in Cracked Sidewalks).


Poem 1: The Rescue of Ophelia was inspired by one of Christine DeCamp’s paintings. I lived with the image in my house for several years before writing the poem (an earlier blogpost chronicles this process). Between then and now, DeCamp embarked on the journey of creating her own tarot deck. Ophelia now features as one of these cards. Visit DeCamp’s site to learn more about this beautiful project.

Poem 2: Nefertiti Among Us under-girds a parallel project as well. Robyn Beattie and I are fast at work making the companion photo poem montage, featuring Steve Pryputniewicz on the piano with another Bela Bartok selection and as always, Robyn’s mesmerizing and intricate photographs (featured in our three prior movies).

The print version of Stone Canoe just arrived in my mailbox; last weekend waiting for my daughter to emerge from an Easter Egg hunt, I sprawled out in the grass under a no-cloud sky and immersed myself in a rich field of poems, interrupted only by the occasional misjudged hops over my midriff (the two sons, 6 and 9, heavy enough now to efficiently knock the wind out squarely out of me…"just…let me…

…finish…this stanza…")

(after I’d said to my husband, “Why don’t you put away the iphone and just Be With Us…”

…the 6 year old slyly remarked, “Mom, why don’t you put away that book…and…

 …just Be With Us…”)