Please Come Home

A spotlight on Jane Cooper.

This year has felt like a turning inside out. A reckoning, which feels only appropriate since I named my most recent album exactly that, perhaps not knowing I would be led straight into one soon after releasing it. About 6 months ago, I put a post-it note on my mirror that says “it is safe here, you can come home.”

It seems rather obvious to the mind but not quite as easy for me to internalize on a deeper level. It is a message to remind me that home and refuge is not always found outside of me. Of course, there are many places in the outside world that do create a sense of home. My apartment, the stage where I perform, my songs, my friends, my family, my sweet dog Nadi…. But Frederick Buechner put it perfectly when he talks about being a place of refuge for the vulnerable parts of you that have been “othered.”

A part of you was left behind very early in your life: the part that never felt completely received. It is full of fears. Meanwhile, you grew up with many survival skills. But you want yourself to be one.

You want your Self to be one.

So this year I committed to myself that I would build the muscle of radical hospitality toward myself (a Self made up of many parts, so I must be a skilled host). As a performer I’ve come to rely a lot on the validation of others, whether I intend to or not. Naturally I have come to learn that “clap!” means “good!” If there’s always been an audience of some sort to affirm your work, who are you without one? I wrote about this at length in my post An Experiment in Presence where I actually asked the audience to withdraw applause for the night, just to see what the room felt like without immediate feedback.

I am hungry for a different kind of holding. A different kind of togetherness. A different kind of “home” that doesn’t rely on others to feel safe. This doesn’t mean we don’t need others because of course we do… but I’m focusing here on the word rely, which has a beautiful little lineage I found helpful…

relier: “bind together,” from Latin religare, from re- (expressing intensive force) + ligare “bind.”

The original sense was “gather together” later “turn to, associate with” whence “depend upon with confidence.”

What does it look like to gather together within ourselves? To bind with the fabric of our own being? To depend upon ourselves with confidence? What if we partnered with others to bring extra stability to our foundations when they shook and trembled but we did not need them to provide the entire infrastructure? Because we found that reliable architecture within.

It is certain that we thrive in relationship, but it is easy to forget that we also are relationship by nature, just take a look at the intricate systems at work within us to keep us alive! I think the language of Trinity paints a beautiful picture here for understanding our own internal world. Mind, body spirit. We are in deep conversation between these three centers and yet it can be hard to witness and pay attention to their subtle exchanges.

It is safe here, you can come home…

You can be at home in the family of moving parts that converse within your Self.

I think it is relationship that ultimately reveals us to one another and inspires us toward growth, but too often we come to define ourselves through others and at a certain point, we must hear the call to step back, recalibrate with the new information we have received (from those three living centers) and return home.

Home to me is like the womb. We couldn’t live in the literal womb forever, we had to break away in order to differentiate but the memory of home never leaves. The memory of unity. The memory of perfect holding. The memory of provision. The memory of protection. It’s etched into the cells of our being. But it’s subtle and requires deep listening. It’s often easier to find home in the arms of another, there’s a physicality and sense of completion that comes with that kind of belonging.

But my task for this year was to return to the home in my own heart — does that sound awfully cheesy? Or are we sometimes adverse to the language of self-care because of what it asks us to pay attention to? *shifty eyes*….

I vowed to return home and get the space feeling hospitable, so it can house the grand gestures of my creative pursuits, so it can sustain my dreams, so it can be a safe space for someone else to spend time in. So it can be a container for G-o-d to fill. So it can be used for service and for joy. It’s been said before but it’s worth saying again in my own way: we can only turn up to the needs of the world, when we have first come home to ourselves.
When we have said Yes and chosen to Be. Here. Now.

This Present-ness to the various parts of ourselves, is what allows us to be Present to all of those parts in each other.

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Today our spotlight is on Jane Cooper.

I’m really new to her work and actually came across the poem I’m about to share with you completely by happen stance. That seems perfect though… that her words would find me exactly where I am, recognizing me before I recognized myself.

Jane Cooper was born on October 9, 1924 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and was raised in Jacksonville, Florida. She wrote many poems and kept meticulous journals which became foundational to some of her later works, including an essay she wrote called:

“Nothing Has Been Used in the Manufacture of This Poetry That Could Have Been Used in the Manufacture of Bread.”

I’ve never read this essay but boy am I going to. What a perfectly confusing, weird and intriguing title. Evidently it is based off a Parisian post-war sign. Which clarifies even less for me and only intrigues me further.

I remember the urgency I felt when I first read her poem “Please Come Home.” The sense that I had been procrastinating from this great task of returning. Like a prodigal daughter (you haven’t heard that one before!) running back to my family of origin.

It’s curious that we all came from a belly isn’t it? Literally. The belly is, of course, also home to the gut. Or the first brain, as it is sometimes called. The intelligence center. I like the idea of returning to the gut. The place from whence I came. The place where I digest my food for Gods sake. The gut decides what to keep and what to reject as a primary function. But we’re so slow to trust it sometimes. Such a smart belly.

A return to the womb, a return to the places of refuge in myself that I forget are there, the primal urges that I mistrust, trading my intuition for the certainty of others because it feels firmer and more reliable.

There is nothing more reliable than the place in you where G-o-d speaks.

Open the door, go into your inner room…

This poem by Jane Cooper is for anyone who is also in a season of return to the Ground of Being.

I’m thankful she turned up on my periphery and got me seeing afresh… Sometimes you just need someone to come along and “kink your think.” To shake up the dust on your mental mantelpiece (that was a hot mouthful) so it resettles into new allergy-triggering configurations. The poets are wonderful like that.

Poetry is a way of giving people more life, a more vivid awareness of the exact moment they are living through — first a sensuous awareness, then a historical one. What else can so clearly tell us who we are, while telling us more than we knew? The true poem is almost without signature. It is a living experience in which we, poet and reader, participate together. A partnership. A means of practicing freedom.
— Jane Cooper

Maybe a good poem is like a good lens clean on the reading glasses of your Life.
Perhaps it brings everything into focus. Or perhaps it blurs everything into a sacred obscurity just like those optical illusions where you squint your eyes and suddenly a new shape emerges out of the blur! It was there the whole time, under your nose, yours for the taking if you’ll be so brave to assume that the way you’re looking at it isn’t the only way to see it.

it begins again
as a miracle, that is
a change in perception

- Jane Cooper

Perhaps take a moment siting in silence after reading this poem to see what arises inside that brilliant homebound vessel of yours.

Photo by Spencer Ostrander

Please Come Home

by Jane Cooper

Please come home.
Please come home.

Find the place where your feet know where to walk
And follow your own trail home.

Please come home.
Please come home into your own body,
Your own vessel, your own earth.

Please come home into each and every cell,
And fully into the space that surrounds you…
Please come home.

Please come home to trusting yourself,
And your instincts and your ways and your knowings,
And even the particular quirks of your personality.
Please come home.

Please come home and once you are firmly there,
Please stay home awhile and come to a deep rest within.

Please treasure your home. Please love and embrace your home.
Please get a deep, deep sense of what it’s like to be truly home.

Please come home.
Please come home.

And when you’re really, really ready,
And there’s a detectable urge on the out-breath, then please come out.
Please come home and please come forward.

Please express who you are to us, and please trust us
To see you and hear you and touch you
And recognize you as best we can.

Please come home. Please come home and let us know
All the nooks and crannies that are calling to be seen.
Please come home, and let us know the More
That is there that wants to come out.

Please come home.
Please come home.

For you belong here now.
You belong among us.
Please inhabit your place fully so we can learn from you,
From your voice and your ways and your presence.

Please come home.
Please come home.

And when you feel yourself home, please welcome us too,
For we too forget that we belong and are welcome,
And that we are called to express fully who we are.
Please come home. Please come home.

You and you and you and me.
Please come home.
Please come home.

Thank you, Earth, for welcoming us.
And thank you touch of eyes and ears and skin,
Touch of love for welcoming us.
May we wake up and remember who we truly are.

Please come home.
Please come home.
Please come home.

Till next time,