This interview between John Fox and Louise Prochaska is taken from the essay John wrote in September discussing Cultivating Goodwill and Democracy Through Poetry and Poem-Making, an in-person poetic medicine retreat offered in August, 2024. John spoke with three of the participants from the two-day event to allow them to share their personal experiences of the impact of working together in community to listen, write, and bear witness to themselves and to each other. You can read John's full essay with all three interviews included here.
“When I liberate myself, I liberate others. If you don’t speak out ain’t nobody going to speak out for you.”
Fannie Lou Hamer
Note from John Fox: I began, perhaps somewhat prosaically, by asking Louise what her definition of democracy is. I say prosaic but actually this question and her response was helpful, helpful as the solid foundation is for a good home:
Louise Prochaska: Any political process must be based on respect. Respect for members, for your adversaries, respect for them as persons, as thinking individuals who desire the greater good—not just good for themselves—they desire the institutions to work for the greater good of everyone. That is what democracy is. Democracy puts that responsibility into the hands of the people and their elected officials.
JF: Rather than having a fixed notion does a healthy democracy include being willing to learn?
LP: Everybody in that room could be an aspect of myself and I was surprised by that. Wow! All of these energies are within me, and I need to shut my brain off and sit with those other parts of myself.
JF: Is this an aspect of democracy? Are you doing breakthrough work—by realizing that these other people are aspects of yourself? Is this a spiritual dimension of democracy that poetry opens a door to?
LP: Ah! Yes! When we talk about democracy—one gift, a democratic action, is to for me say to you, “John I see this in you. I see something you do not see.”
Most of us need another person to help us reach deeper, to discover the deeper truth. Listening to the other members of our retreat circle evoked so much—including anger and assertiveness—we expressed our lives, without having to list accomplishments.
Through their unique power and giftedness, each person can make the world better. This is what the democratic process should be: allowing and inviting persons to step more fully into the public sphere—no matter what their economic, physical, intellectual, social, and cultural situation is.”
JF: What drew you to attend Cultivating Goodwill and Democracy?
LP: I knew I came initially because of you, John. One blessing, benefit, richness that I did not expect—I was enriched by the experience and the activism of the other members. I didn’t realize there was an African-American communication network, and I would like to get in contact with that network. That was an eye-opener for me.
I learned there is a lot of action and communication going on amongst people who want to improve our city. In my position as a leader at The Community of Saint Peter, I want to be more connected with that network.”
JF Note: Louise became more vulnerable in why the retreat touched her:
LP: On a personal level, as I expressed in my poem My Brainy Self, I am very good at making things happen, making decisions, getting people to volunteer, accomplishing things—but I need to love my inner self more.
Your prompts and the quiet time gave me the invitation to appreciate my inner self that I do not give time to come to the surface.
By listening to other people, who responded to me with such love, the attention other participants gave to me, helped me give attention to my deeper self. I wrote this poem:
Dear Brainy Self,
We have been like conjoined twins, sharing one body.
Whenever I am addressed or have a goal,
You wake up and finish the task with precision.
But I get silenced, I hide
While you get the praise and accept the next job!
Can we agree to pause next time
And let our shared feeling-self radiate too?
You are so quick and eager to win, but
PLEASE, PAUSE, and invite us to FEEL
With soft edges and warm love.
When you asked my neighbor, the woman sitting next to me, to turn and speak my poem to me, I was very moved. It brought me to tears. A person across the room watching this told me that my face changed as I listened. That lady who spoke my poem that my inner self listened to, spoken to my brainy self, and I heard it as she said the poem, and I felt loved. I felt connected in those moments to that deeper self.
It was your insight or instinct to have her read my poem to me. This experience worked its magic.”
JF Note: I said our conversations were free-wheeling. Louise spoke with passion about how the retreat helped her discover a clearer distinction between her talent as a teacher, which she expressed for five decades, and her gift that is more and more coming to the fore—to be someone called to provide rescue—to provide safety and refuge to all kinds of creatures in need of rescue. The sense of delight on Louise’s face as she said this was…delightful.
Our conversation began to close on a note of an important reflection on democracy in her 80th year. What she said brought us full circle in this interview:
LP: Our democracy needs to honor elders. Our culture crowns 20 somethings. They are not yet ready to be crowned! Older cultures, indigenous cultures…the people with the greatest respect are the elders who have lived through life. Elders who know, who give value, who tell the stories of the tribe and pass those stories on.
JF: And, finally, returning to her attention to the deep self and its relationship to democracy:
LP: That deeper self is the seedbed of our gifts. Your gift is your whole, deepest self, but we are often afraid to allow that deeper self to be heard and seen. In a cultivated spirit of goodwill and democracy, that is what we need.
Louise Prochaska is a recently retired professor of theology and Women’s Studies at Notre Dame College in Cleveland, OH. She earned a master’s degree in English from Indiana University and a doctoral degree in moral theology from the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN. Her professional focus has been teaching theology, New Testament, world religions, and social issues at the undergraduate level. She has written a book that is the culmination of more than 35 years of teaching both in high school and college. On a personal level, Louise finds joy in creating art pieces using a variety of media, cooking for family and friends, savoring the spiritual and cultural riches in foreign lands, volunteering, and finally, meditating in her garden.
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