Rick Pierce (00:04)
Hello friends, welcome to the HeartStrong Way. I'm Rick Pierce and I'm so glad to be together. Today on the HeartStrong Way is our monthly feature called Art and Heart. And I'll be joined by my friends and Art and Heart co-hosts Sandee Finley and Jenna Brack. And on today's podcast, we'll be featuring three of Jenna's original works of poetry. And to get the most from our time, you can find links to all three poems in the show notes. So with that, let's get started.
Rick Pierce (00:36)
All right, so here we are this month's episode of Art and Heart, where we look and we dive into some works of art to try to understand and see the humanity of it and make a connection to it, to the heart of it all. And this month Jenna, you are presenting your original poetry to us, which is super exciting.
and it's around the theme of surrender, right? Around the surrender, which I think is such a profoundly relatable, so on the ground for those of us walking the gritty road and where we really hang out. And so I love the topic thanks for bringing yourself, Jenna, and your work, your work represents you in so many ways and giving us a chance to
celebrate you. It's our intent. and I, we will celebrate you and your works and we will honor them by relating with them and being moved and absorbed and always really look forward to the conversation today. It's gonna be fun.
Jenna Brack (01:40)
well, thanks for that intro. You guys are the kindest audience, and I know our listeners are a kind audience also. So thank you for that.
Sandee Finley (01:44)
you
Rick Pierce (01:48)
All right. Let me do some introductions. Finley. Sandee, you presented last month. So if anybody's looking for your work, you can go to the podcast from last time.
that you did, which was delightful, mostly focusing on loss and grief. And it was super helpful. I had a couple of people who gave some comments to me about how they really enjoyed and were moved by that experience. Sandee spent 25 years teaching English speech and drama in public private homes, cool settings. She's published films and essays and currently working on a collection called Running Routes. Sandee and her husband, Greg live in Kansas City along with
their five adult children. Always a delight to have you Sandee. And Jenna as our presenter for today, Jenna is a writer, teacher and celebrator of the arts. She owns a small coaching and editing business through which she enjoys encouraging other writers. Her creative work has appeared in everyday poems, coffee and crumbs, fathoms, sunlight press, mothers always write and others. She has a master's degree in English and she currently lives as we said near Frankfurt.
Sandee Finley (02:31)
Thank you. Great.
Rick Pierce (02:56)
Germany with her family. We're gonna get going. Jenna, I'm gonna hand you the ball and we're just excited to be with you.
Jenna Brack (03:04)
all right, this is so fun. I wanted to, as we dive in, you know, I'm gonna read some poems, some original poems today. And I wanted to just say a quick note for anyone that this might be helpful for about poetry, because for the longest time, I just did not consider myself a poet in any way. And it's such a surprise to me still that I am writing poetry.
You know, I was an English major in college and I took some poetry workshops and I walked away from those just feeling really discouraged and like I wasn't getting it and then Just you know, probably about six or seven years ago really in large part to our friend Sandee here. I Picked it up for fun again. Sandee was sending out these prompts and they were just Invitations to play with language and that's really what got me started writing poetry again. And so
you know, a shout out to Sandee and her invitation there, but also to this idea of play and art as exploration, you know. So if there's anything that anyone is thinking, hey, I wish I could do that, or I don't feel like I can, there's so much richness, I think, in play in the creative life. And I have found that that was such a pathway for me to even be doing what I'm doing right now. So yeah.
I'm excited to dive in on this topic. It has been, I think, a topic that has been growing in importance for me over the last several years of my life. Not always an easy one, but something that feels invitational. And it really started with some conversations that Rick and I were having. I was introduced to Rick through therapy.
and had found myself in the counseling room kind of by surprise in the middle of a difficult season around questions I was having about vocation. And as we started talking, I came in with all these questions and I really, think what I wanted from you, Rick, were some answers, you know? And yeah. Okay, good. I'm not alone.
Rick Pierce (05:10)
You and everybody else. Tools and answers. Which is understandable. Why wouldn't you?
Sandee Finley (05:16)
Yeah. Yes.
Jenna Brack (05:19)
Yeah, it is.
Right, but instead you just so kindly hosted me by asking really good questions and I think inviting me into a process. And I think that process over time really was a process of learning to surrender and receive some things. You asked me these deeper questions about my identity and my rootedness in love and how that might actually shape some things moving forward. so.
Rick Pierce (05:38)
you
Jenna Brack (05:52)
I was frustrated for a season, but I have grown to be so thankful for the process and for those conversations. And so, you know, the definition of surrender is to cease resistance. And so it really kind of has a negative connotation, this idea of giving up to the enemy or to an opponent. really like surrender is about losing in some ways. And so
Sandee Finley (05:56)
Thank
Jenna Brack (06:20)
I have grappled with this idea because it feels like weakness in some ways. But really, I think in the story of faith and even in the creative process, I'm so interested in surrender now as a pathway to life, a letting go of control in order to receive love and trust and to live a little more freely. And so the poems that I'm bringing in here are really, they're
exploration, I suppose, of surrender in some ways that don't always feel like I'm addressing it head on. And so just an exploration of this idea of surrender and what it might mean to even grapple to surrender, I suppose.
Rick Pierce (06:58)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm. I'm gonna pause for a moment. I think the idea of exploring and being curious is one of our greatest attributes or greatest tools that we have. And it's a sign of real vulnerability and a huge sign of our maturity and our growth is the willingness and then even the desire to explore. So, man, you hooked me with explore, surrender.
Sandee Finley (07:28)
Yeah.
Rick Pierce (07:29)
Yeah, not figure out surrender. Never happens. No, never happens. So awesome. I'm excited.
Jenna Brack (07:32)
Right.
Sandee Finley (07:37)
Yeah, good.
Jenna Brack (07:39)
Well, is it okay if we dive in? All right. So this first piece is called Drop the Marbles. And it's part of a three-part series called A Study in Letting Go. And I had it featured at the Four Chapter Gallery in Kansas City in, I think, early 2022. But it came out of some work I was doing in 2021. So I want to read you part of the introduction to that.
Rick Pierce (07:41)
do it.
Jenna Brack (08:09)
little collection and then I'll jump into the poem. And this introduction, this did come directly out of a conversation that Rick and I had. So you'll hear that referenced here in the introduction.
In late spring 2021, I found myself completely overcome, unable to move forward. In a conversation with my counselor during that season, I expressed I had been carrying questions that seemed unanswerable. I feel like I'm holding all these marbles against my chest or maybe inside a giant colander, but I can't hold them all. Pieces keep falling on the floor. Rick looked at me through the Zoom screen. Drop the marbles, he said.
That phrase has become increasingly curious to me as I've tried to understand it. What does it mean to open my hands and release the tensions and fears I have been carrying, especially those that were never mine to hold in the first place? None of us wants to lose our marbles, of course, but on the journey of faith, losing is often a path toward life. Although that idea is not compelling to me on the surface, letting go has started to sound promising, if only as a means to relief.
Perhaps it really is better to release what I cannot hold rather than continuing the exhausting process of trying.
So here is the poem, it's called Drop the Marks.
Rick Pierce (09:36)
Mm.
Jenna Brack (09:39)
But they feel so cool and glassy against my chest. Trinkets I have cradled, called a comfort, rolled synoptically across my tangled mind through troubled nights, playthings for children, becoming my burden. What if I let them all go? Hear them thunderclap against wooden planks, scatter in every direction past my bare feet.
Rain clouds spitting blue beads across the living room, dew of color turning to mist disappearing beneath the area rug, behind the couch, beyond my own willingness to find them, hold them, love them. If I leave them, will anyone else ever find them? Will they ever find me?
Sandee Finley (10:38)
Jenna, when I'm listening to you read that, the thing, particularly when you share the introduction, is I love how the poem feels like a conversation, even beginning with the title. So the title is actually that, know, drop the marbles. And then, so I don't know, I just love the fact that even when, I I love it when I'm listening to you read it, but even when I'm not listening to you read it and I'm reading it, it reads like a conversation.
Rick Pierce (10:39)
No, baby.
Sandee Finley (11:04)
And I just love that so much. just makes it even, I don't know, it's just really special. also really love when poets have a title that's more than just a placeholder, but actually interacts with the piece itself. And I think that you do that in a really beautiful way.
Jenna Brack (11:21)
Yeah, thanks, Sandee. I remember starting the poem with butt. It felt a little bit awkward, but also right because there was this resistance. Like, drop the marbles, but I don't want to.
Sandee Finley (11:36)
can just hear you saying, but they feel so cool.
Rick Pierce (11:40)
Yeah, seriously. Yeah, that whole first section where you say, know, again, for the listener, it went past pretty, it may have gone pretty quickly, but you're saying they feel so great, like Sandee says, they feel so cool and glassy against me. Trinkets that I've cradled them, they've been a comfort to me. They've been something that has been in my mind
Jenna Brack (11:41)
Yes, thank you.
Rick Pierce (12:09)
through the troubled nights.
What's the what's the burden of them? Because they're meant to be a play thing. They're meant to be something sort of simple or something like that.
Jenna Brack (12:20)
Yeah, it's such a good question. And I think in the season that I wrote this, I was feeling really burdened by a lot of things. so it was almost, I'm trying to think, like coming out of that season, I just had so many tensions. Like I was kind of trying to be all the things to all the people. There was a lot I was trying to figure out. And so it was about this idea that they were.
Rick Pierce (12:45)
Mm.
Jenna Brack (12:48)
too heavy, heavier than they were designed to be. Like they should have felt light, like a thing that a child might play with, these concerns, but they had become a heavy burden for me to carry.
Rick Pierce (12:52)
Mm.
you
Yeah, I guess that was interesting to me because I loved the imagery, by the way, of the marbles. I've always loved the imagery of the marbles that you used. But it's so interesting that they seem childlike, but they're far from childish. They're very adult, you know, these things. And the language that almost looks at them and says, you know, these should be sort of childlike.
These should be sort of simple. I should be able to hold these marbles, play with marbles. It shouldn't be that big of deal. Like I just thought it was so interesting that you had referenced them as like something sort of playful, without getting, too specific into like what were your marbles, but help me understand what do you think marbles has come to represent?
Jenna Brack (13:48)
Yeah, I mean, I think they represent expectations of myself and of others, expectations of me. I think they represent some form of control. So they might change in different circumstances, but that is usually what I'm taking on is like something that really I should just, I don't need to be carrying that around.
Rick Pierce (14:00)
Mm-hmm.
Sandee Finley (14:06)
Mm-hmm.
Rick Pierce (14:11)
Okay.
Mm. Mm. Mm.
Jenna Brack (14:16)
I should be free from that, or I want to be more free. And I don't know, I think, I didn't put this in an introduction, but one of the things I did while I wrote this poem is I walked around my house actually dropping marbles on the floor. And it really helped me a lot to just gather them close to my chest as I had been feeling and then.
Rick Pierce (14:29)
Thank
Sandee Finley (14:31)
Okay.
Jenna Brack (14:41)
let them go everywhere around my house and they made a huge mess. We were still finding them when we moved out of that house actually. And I could never have gotten all of them back together, know, in one fell swoop because they really did scatter everywhere. And so it was kind of this image to me and I still imagine it sometimes when I'm carrying a lot of burdens that I think are not probably all mine to carry. I'll imagine dropping those marbles in my house in Kansas City and just letting them go where they will go.
Rick Pierce (14:53)
Bye.
Yeah.
I think you're like, really trying to be...
Jenna Brack (15:09)
see what happens.
Sandee Finley (15:11)
think, you know, like one of the things that strikes me when Rick mentioned imagery, that was something that I had jotted down because the the imagery is so like you can, like as a reader, you can feel the coolness of them. You can, you know, hear them. You can see the colors. And I think the fact that marbles are something particularly like,
I feel like in my generation, people played with marbles a lot and collected marbles. So it's something that adults can really connect to easily. But the way that you kind of added to that, just, I don't know. I mean, I can imagine you now, like literally carrying them around your house. don't know. So that what you did as you were writing the poem really shows up to me and just the ways that just the beautiful imagery. I can, this is a very tactile poem, you know? what I'm looking for, but you know,
Rick Pierce (15:38)
shit.
Mm.
now.
Sandee Finley (16:01)
can see it, you can hear it, you can feel it. And I think that's one of the things that makes it so. But if you're looking at it, you use some space after the first stanza
Rick Pierce (16:05)
makes sense.
Sandee Finley (16:12)
space both horizontally and vertically. And I find that really interesting. mean, I a lot of poets do that almost every time they write a poem, they use space in that way. I don't think you typically use that in like a ton of your poetry. I think it's so effective here and it even like the space between the words feels like, or that silence feels like, it makes you hear it more, you know, and see it more. can you talk a little bit about like your decision,
Was it like that to begin with or did that come as you were rewriting it?
Jenna Brack (16:44)
No, it wasn't like that in the beginning. And then I shared it in a workshop and someone said, wouldn't it be cool if there was a scattering effect in this poem? And I thought, what a brilliant idea. So I borrowed that from one of my workshop partners there. And it did change the feeling of the poem in that second half.
Sandee Finley (16:57)
huh. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Rick Pierce (17:06)
As I read about the marbles, I was thinking about my own life, I was thinking about your life, I was thinking about other people's lives, and all that marbles is sort of representative of, I love that in your work, it's representative of something for you, right? Something of like, this is probably something of control.
in my world and what if I was to sort of let go of control, you know, and, and, parenthetically as a counselor, when someone says, said, I remember you said this, I kind of cringe a little bit like, man, what did I say? And to say, drop the marbles, something in me kind of goes as a, as an invitation, what would it be like to drop the marbles? You know, cause there's another part that
Sandee Finley (17:49)
Thank you.
Rick Pierce (18:00)
Marbles could be identified by so many things for different people. Marbles can be control. Marbles can be sort of just your sense of suffering in the world. It can be your grief. It can be your loss. It can be your sadness. It can be your heart circumstances. It can be so many things that are sort of piling up that are collecting and collecting and collecting. And there's some seasons
that you have this profound gathering of marbles. And then the question is something of like, my word, how do I make it with these marbles? How do I sort of survive this experience that I'm in? And there is something about the wanting to sort of let them go and surrender. I hear that and I'm with you in that.
As soon as I say it, there's some things that there's this dicey nature of like, we can't just sort of let go of all the marbles.
You know what I mean? I don't want take away from the work because it's lovely and beautiful. And there's some complexity that comes in and maybe others would feel that too. That says, even though the challenge, the challenge is to seek to surrender, to seek to let go, And how difficult it is to do that. And it took me to the end of the poem where you were saying,
What if I do let go of these things that have become a comfort to me or an identity to me or a means of getting seen or a means of getting noticed or a means of feeling some control, even worrying about it and fretting is control in its own right. And what if I give it up? And you poignantly said, if I gave it up, if I let them fall, will
Will someone still see the marbles? Will someone still see all that it identifies as? Will someone see my pain? Will someone see my grief? Will someone see my loneliness? Will someone see my needs? If I don't have them right up here, you know, to be seen, I could probably talk for hours about this particular piece.
I keep thinking about it over and over and over again. I guess that's sort of the beauty of art and literature is it sits in our soul and we have to muck about and wonder about it.
Jenna Brack (20:26)
Yeah, thanks for narrating that. I, as you're talking, I was reminded that marbles never actually fall in the poem. It's really a question about what will happen if. And so it is, especially in the space I was in, I was dealing with a lot of pretty intense anxiety in that season when we had this conversation. And by the way, you only ever said it very invitationally, just to clarify.
Sandee Finley (20:37)
Bye.
Rick Pierce (20:40)
Hmm.
Phew.
Sandee Finley (20:54)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jenna Brack (20:56)
was not an instruction as much as like, you know, what would happen? And I think that I was in a place where maybe I wasn't even fully ready to let them go when I wrote this, but I wanted, I really wanted to because I wanted some relief. And so this poem was an exercise in the exploration of letting a few things go.
Rick Pierce (21:07)
Hmm. Hmm.
Hmm.
Sandee Finley (21:21)
And I love like, Jenna, if you look at the first several lines, they feel so cool against my chest. I've cradled, I've called them a comfort. I've rolled them some synaptically across my tangled mind. Like none of those verbs are like harsh or, know, there's something, it starts out like there's some, like there's a, it started out like a gentleness, you know, I mean, and so I love the juxtaposition.
Rick Pierce (21:42)
enough.
Sandee Finley (21:51)
of, I mean, it would have been easier, I think, would have been an easy way out just to like use kind of harsh, strong verbs, you know, more like clutching instead of cradling, you know, or pound, I don't know. And so I love that there's just something about that, that it's really strong, you know, active verbs, but also kind of gentle and then sort of that realization that even that kind of
what feels gentle and gathering can become a weight for us.
You know, I don't know. So I just have really been like circling all of your verbs and the choices that you made there. And it just feels, I don't know, it feels, and I've read this poem before several times and every time I read it, I find something else. And even when Rick was talking about the questions at the end, I think every time I read it, I read the questions differently.
Rick Pierce (22:50)
Hmm.
Sandee Finley (22:51)
Like the last question, will they ever find me? Like, what does that mean for the, you know, I mean, someone could read it. Are you talking about like the people? mean, I take it as the marbles, all those things, are they going to find you? And is that, I mean, that could be seen as like a, you know, a scary thing. Like they're always going to come back, but it also could be like, I'm dropping things that feel like they're part of my identity. So if I drop them, will they come back to me? Those things that I want to hang on to, you know? And so those questions.
Rick Pierce (23:11)
Hmm.
Sandee Finley (23:19)
I I think every time someone reads this, and I'm assuming for you, as the years go on, those questions will land a little differently for you, maybe.
Jenna Brack (23:30)
Such a powerful insight. Thank you, Sandee.
Rick Pierce (23:33)
Yeah, yeah. And I just encourage the listener, the viewer to look in the show notes and get the actual, so you can watch it and absorb the poetry and see all that we're talking about because it is quite profound. So Sandee, would you maybe take us out from this poem and...
Read it once again for us in a different voice, in your voice.
Sandee Finley (24:01)
Drop the marbles, but they feel so cool and glassy against my chest. Trinkets I have cradled, called a comfort, rolled synaptically across my tangled mind through terrible nights. Playthings for children, becoming my burden. What if I let them all go? Hear them thunderclap against wooden planks, scatter in every direction past my bare feet. Rain clouds spitting blue beads across the living room.
dew of color turning to mist disappearing beneath the area rug behind the couch beyond my own willingness to find them hold them or love them if I leave them will anyone else ever find them will they ever find me
Rick Pierce (24:49)
Hmm. Hmm.
Thanks Jenna.
Jenna Brack (24:55)
Yeah, thank you friends for just illuminating so much. think I don't always know all of what's hiding in my own work. And so I just I love this conversation and how you are able to draw things out that maybe I haven't seen or haven't seen in its fullness yet. So thank you. This next one, I almost didn't choose it because at first glance, I thought it wasn't directly connected to the concept of surrender.
Rick Pierce (25:12)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that.
Jenna Brack (25:25)
And then as I looked at it again, I realized it really was about this struggle to accept some things. so it's about a seemingly very mundane event. And so I will not give a lot of context. I'll just jump right in here. This is called Scrawling.
I approach the divine in scrawling lament, my complaints stacking up like the towering dishes, mud soaked shoes, dirty socks playing hide and seek in every corner. Plus all these words I am piling up aimlessly, invisibly, a constant exercise and picking up where nothing is ever properly put away. Until something red begins flying outside my window, a distraction.
and announcement unavoidable against the backdrop of white houses, snow-hued rooftops, graying sky. My neighbor, standing at her upstairs window, shakes a bed covering into the air. Colorful duvet, smock of brilliance in red, orange, pink, waving my direction like a flag. And when I return to the page, I have lost my lament.
For I have witnessed the invisible becoming visible, luminous and surprising as a sunrise.
Sandee Finley (26:48)
Once again, I'm just struck by just on the purely like poetic level, just the imagery. And particularly in this one, the colors, because you have red and orange and pink, but those are set against the gray sky and the white houses and the snow-hued rooftop. So there's this
Rick Pierce (26:49)
Thank
Sandee Finley (27:07)
all this muted color and then there's this flash of red. just that is just beautiful. I mean, just beautiful writing.
Rick Pierce (27:16)
I agree. let me narrate again, maybe for myself and for listeners, you know, I think of the beginning as, by the way, I had to look up scrawling. So for the listener, I approached the divine in scrawling lament, which is a lovely first line and sets the stage, I approach God.
Sandee Finley (27:31)
Okay.
Rick Pierce (27:35)
with my quick writing, you know, I don't want to say frantic, but there is sort of like a, maybe a bit of it, maybe a touch of that frantic, lament. And then you talk about all the mundane-ness of life, all the things, the constant, and yet not productive feels like thorns and thistles
And then there's this flash of red, that comes in. And this reorientation that takes place from how you were experiencing lament So what are you seeing? What's the shift that you experience that you're writing about?
Jenna Brack (28:10)
Yeah, I mean, this really did come out of this moment of frustration that I was having sitting on my couch and then this sort of just utter surprise of seeing my neighbor shaking her duvet out of the window, which I have seen her do a few other times since, but had not until that moment and just how beautiful it was. I really was so stunned.
by how beautiful that simple moment was. And that beauty interrupted this lament that I was healing about my own invisible mundane work and was not seen as beautiful in any way. And so, yeah, that, and it's fun that you noticed the color, Sandee, because that's so much of what I remember about that moment is that that day felt very gray. Everything,
Rick Pierce (28:38)
Mm.
Hmm.
Jenna Brack (29:03)
of in the backdrop of my window it was white houses and gray sky and a little bit of snow and then all of a sudden just this flash of color that interrupted I think the lament that I was placing on the page at that moment.
Sandee Finley (29:25)
I also really noticed that when you're talking about things that you're comparing the laments to now, the, I mean, literally and figuratively, the towering dishes, the shoes, all that feels very, it kind of feels, even though it's building up, there's something kind of stagnant about it. I mean, it's just there. And then, so you have this fluidity of this duvet that just sort of like,
Rick Pierce (29:49)
Yeah. Yeah.
Sandee Finley (29:53)
Well, so there's movement and like at first that you feel stuck and then there's this movement, not just the color, but the actual movement. And, you know, I mean, I run the danger because, I know you so well, I know you're writing so well that I'm always, know, like putting things in that may or may not be something that's there. But I was thinking about even the fabrics. mean, you know, it was a literal duvet, but then you chose smock and flag.
And I thought from a feminine perspective, thinking about a smock can be lots of different things. And so I don't know, there was something about the feminine quality of those fabrics. But then I was also thinking, and this is maybe just me, I don't know, the movement of the fabrics, starts out being a duvet, which basically really represents household, I mean, the house. I think of a bedspread, I mean, that's what it is. And then you kind of move to like,
a smock and like a smock can be something that like an artist wears, you know, so we're kind of moving into this. And then the flag, like there is that sense of like a flag, you you think of someone waving a flag when they're surrendering, but then you think there's also this flag of, there's a flag, I mean, there's that surrender, but that freedom that comes with it. So it didn't feel like you're waving the white flag. It felt like you were like,
you were surrendering but not giving up, which I think kind of goes back to what you were saying in the first poem that sometimes surrendering, you you have felt like that's giving in and instead it's like a movement towards like freedom. anyway, so just those fabrics and the choices that you made in those felt like a narrative too.
Rick Pierce (31:31)
Mm.
Jenna Brack (31:32)
thank you, Sandee. There's so many good things you drew out there, like the movement. actually hadn't even thought about that and certainly hadn't thought about it as deeply as what you just took us into. So I so appreciate that.
Rick Pierce (31:46)
Yeah. So when you're writing that, mean, the words you're choosing, I mean, you must have tremendous intentionality of the words you're choosing. mean, they are very pointed. I mean, this colorful, devious smock of brilliance, red, orange, pink, waving my direction like a flag, like what Sandee's saying. I mean, it's such a stark contrast, right, to the gray of the mundane, you know.
And I guess everybody, I think I do. I think most listeners would just tremendously relate with the gray and the mundane. You know, it feels like most of our life is spent in that ordinary time kind of season, you know, of the, of the sort of slugging it out. And then sometimes we have these really splashes of color, right? You know, where the thing that we couldn't see invisible becomes known to us.
and seen to us and then something shifts. Something happens inside of us. You write it in this work as I've lost my lament. I'm read that very poetically. You can elaborate on it, but as a reader, I'm reading it very poetically to say that the lament of the moment is now shifted. You know, it's how I read that, Perhaps not really lost, but
not the same, right? So that's the part where I guess I'm still wondering like what's your, what did you experience? What did you shift to when the invisible became visible in that way when you went from gray to color?
Jenna Brack (33:29)
Yeah, these are such good questions. And I was actually journaling in this moment that turned into poetry, but I was feeling so invisible. I feel like that was the lament. Like my work feels invisible. I'm just frustrated because it's never ending. Feels like I do these things over and over again, right? And then I do them again and I do them again and nothing.
Rick Pierce (33:51)
Hmm.
Jenna Brack (33:57)
is coming of them, I suppose. And so I don't know if this is answering your question, but I did feel like I couldn't even, I was so distracted by this beautiful, surprising thing that happened out my window that I really couldn't even go back to complaining. So I had to start writing about something else because I just felt, I felt seen in a way, I think that like this prayerful lament had actually been answered in
Rick Pierce (33:59)
Right?
Yeah.
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
Jenna Brack (34:26)
some sense of this quiet, invisible work sometimes is really beautiful and you're just not seeing it like that.
Rick Pierce (34:33)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess to me when I saw the color, sorry, Sandee, when I saw when I saw the color to me, the color symbol was symbolic, you know, and it was symbolic of to me, it was I would say what we sort of crave, you know, something of the chosen and prized, the love the scene, the known the that you're not alone. It's not you're not just in a gray. There is color.
You're not just in mundane that has no purpose and no value. That's not real. That's all you can see right now, but that is not the full truth. It's only this one camera lens of the shot. And so let's pull in another camera and God graciously and all as he does, he surprises you with beauty. And all of sudden beauty sort of, you know, crashes onto the scene as it were, you know.
and things are not the same. It's a watershed moment. so sometimes they just, we stumble upon beauty, know, or God just sort of pushes it into our purview. But I think then our maturity as I've come to see it more and more is that I need to be cultivating and seeing and looking for and noticing and being curious of, you know,
what's true of that experience of the beauty and then to be able to say, and I don't wanna go too long here, but then to see, my word, that orange, that flag, that duvet cover, that beauty is actually in me. God's kingdom, God's abiding, the glory of him is in me. And so now I'm coming to actually sort of notice, ooh, how could I do actually carry that with me everywhere?
I loved again, I'm to say that every time, sorry, but I loved the imagery and where it took me. helped me see my mundane grayness of life, which I happen to be living in long stretches of mundane grayness of life. So I super associate with that and the craving to be able to sort of see something of that orange. But I have a tendency to want to manufacture those, those oranges, you know, or those bright colors is what I mean in that space.
I'm working hard at not just cultivating for myself, which is my control mechanism. So I love, thank you so much for it. It was great in the mainstream.
Sandee Finley (37:02)
was thinking too, like along the same lines, Rick, that it's like this great gift of God to like have this, you know, this duvet come out and you see it. I think it's also a really great gift and it's God even saying like, Jenna, look what you saw. Like you could have just seen the red duvet and just thought, my neighbors, but like you paid attention, you saw it. So that's even like to me, like God's affirmation, like Jenna, look what you can see.
Rick Pierce (37:23)
nice.
Sandee Finley (37:31)
Look what you can see in the mundane. mean, in the middle, like you see this, not everyone's gonna see that red DeVay and have that, you know? And so, but in this moment, that just feels like an affirmation of God to like, look how I've wired you, you know? I've created you. And I was also the... no, no.
Rick Pierce (37:38)
Hmm.
Yeah. So brilliant. Sandee, that's brilliant. Thanks for that. That's really lovely. Like I've given you eyes to see, I'm going to call the duvet the good news. I've given you eyes to see the good news and to drink it in and be impacted and affected. what a, what a nice, good, gracious gift. And you have it. Wow.
Sandee Finley (37:57)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. And this also, to me, it's like how good poetry rewards rereading. Because again, I've read this poem and it did speak that to me until just now. You know, and so I hope that invites listeners to just, you know, just the more you read, mean, reading the same thing, you just, I don't know, I feel like there's more, if it's really good writing or good art, whatever, there's more, there's more depth.
Rick Pierce (38:21)
Mm-hmm.
Sandee Finley (38:35)
and it's going to continue to pay us benefits. One last thing I was going to say too is on the last part where you say, I've lost my lament. It feels like to me, like in that phrase, you've shifted from lamenting to seeing and praising, but then also there's a sense that this poem is bearing witness to the lament.
You know, so like you're not, you're not minimizing where you were, you know, but you're, you're shifting, but you're also bearing witness to like, this is a real, this is a really hard place to be. And this is really where I was. So even in the poem, even though you've shifted or lost a lament, you're still being respectful and you know, to your own, to your own feelings and lament in that moment.
Rick Pierce (39:06)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
Jenna Brack (39:30)
Wow, mean, your responses make me feel seen all over again, you know? And so I just am so grateful for your engagement with the poem.
Sandee Finley (39:35)
Thank
Rick Pierce (39:40)
Did you, yeah, I wish I was so much more of a writer. So I'm always intrigued what it's like to be the writer. know, did you, did you have, did you sort of know while you were writing it, what, you know, sort of the largeness of the scope of this simple experience that you're, that you're capturing?
Jenna Brack (39:59)
No, I usually have an idea, but I almost am always writing my way into meaning and into understanding. So actually this started as a micro essay. I was in a micro essay workshop and I needed to write about a moment in a hundred words or something. And I thought that moment really stood out to me and I put it in prose and then later felt like, this would just be better captured. I think in the poetic form, sort of a more lyrical form.
Rick Pierce (40:01)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
you
Hmm.
Jenna Brack (40:29)
And I think even the invisible becoming visible, you know, I'm just regularly surprised by my own work. It helps me understand things. I think that's one reason to do it. And so I, yeah, I didn't set out to necessarily say all of what I said here, but it was, it is fun to discover along the way that these moments have more meaning than perhaps we see on the surface.
Rick Pierce (40:43)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that's delightful. All right, so how about I'll read this one as our way of sort of honoring and moving on to the next. Scrawling. I approach the divine in scrawling lament, my complaints stacking up like the towering dishes, mud soaked shoes, dirty socks playing hide and seek in every corner. Plus all these words I am
piling up aimlessly invisibly, a constant exercise in picking up where nothing is ever properly put away. Until something red begins flying outside my window, a distraction, an announcement unavoidable against the backdrop of white houses, snow-hued rooftops, graying sky.
My neighbor standing at her upstairs window shakes a bed covering into the air. Colorful duvet, smock of brilliance in red, orange, pink, waving my direction like a flag. And when I returned to the page, I have lost my lament, for I have witnessed the invisible becoming visible, luminous and surprising as a sunrise.
Jenna Brack (42:21)
So fun to hear you all read this in your voices. Thank you, Rick. That was a treat. All right, this last poem is the most recently written of the three. Just last month, I crossed into a new decade. I think I'm young in this room, but my kids think I am very old. And they have been teasing me about it.
Rick Pierce (42:32)
So, yeah.
Sandee Finley (42:43)
Ha ha ha ha!
Rick Pierce (42:45)
You're not that young in this room.
Jenna Brack (42:48)
Okay, well I don't know, I was just guessing.
Rick Pierce (42:51)
You are. You are. I lament.
Sandee Finley (42:53)
You
Jenna Brack (42:55)
But this is one of the tensions, I think, of the age that I am. My friend Amy Messenger, I've heard her say, and I don't think this is original to her, but she's the one I heard say it, so I'll give her the credit. She's also a beautiful songwriter and poet, but she said, the 40s are the old age of your youth and the youth of your old age. And so I've been so intrigued by this commingling of the two.
this old age and youth together and this shifting point even between the two of them. And so as I've been thinking about that image of youth alongside old age, I came across this tree in Colmar, France, which is just across the border from where we are. I was there with my husband having a little birthday celebration actually. And there was this tree and it was a mix of both.
the green of spring and summer and the yellow of fall. And that inspired this poem. It is also partially inspired by a Wendell Berry poem in his Sabbath's collection. The title is after a line, I'll just redo Wendell Berry's line here. He says, he is a tree of sorts rooted in the dark, aspiring to the light, dependent on both. And so,
This poem is called A Tree of Sort from Kolmar in October.
An Alsatian tree rooted along the eastern silhouette of France near the edge of a square, planted in tidy row with others of her kind. She stands along the Place de la Cateigerelle, the age-old arches of St. Martin's on one side, pink and blue cafe facades and half-timbered buildings on the other. Beneath her, tourists pass with their cameras, searching, always searching.
though not for her. From her quiet place, roots tucked beneath cobblestones, the tree is changing. Half her leaves have already brightened into tiny suns, while others remain green, not yet turned, vert et jaune coexisting together. This is her surrendering season. She will eventually ripen, let it all go.
Rick Pierce (44:56)
Hmm.
Thank
Jenna Brack (45:23)
Even in this timeless village, years still move forward, carrying on in one direction. But for now, she hovers on the border between warmth and cold, possibility and loss,
Rick Pierce (45:27)
Thank
Jenna Brack (45:37)
carrying the stories of both new and old along her arms.
Rick Pierce (45:42)
walk us through this, Jenna, walk us through your piece here. This whole beginning section, kind of what were you trying to tell us? What were you trying to say to us through this?
Jenna Brack (45:54)
Yeah, I think in the first stanza, I was thinking about place and even this idea that this tree is rooted in a place, which happens to be the Alsace region of France by this square and then kind of moving into the next stanza, she's actually near the cathedral. This really beautiful old...
Rick Pierce (46:10)
Yeah.
Jenna Brack (46:23)
wonderful building and in this lovely, just absolutely adorable town of Colmar. She has this really lovely location, all these half-timbered buildings. And at the same time, I think she's also unseen in some ways. She's in this row with others, kind of there for ornamentation, perhaps landscaping. The tourists are walking by, not really paying any attention.
Rick Pierce (46:25)
Hmm.
Yes.
Yes.
Mm.
Jenna Brack (46:53)
So I kind of wanted to just capture the tree in her element, I suppose, or in her place where she was.
Sandee Finley (47:03)
Mm-hmm.
Rick Pierce (47:03)
Yeah, Yeah, from what you're writing, I was picturing sort of this very, very romantic picture right in France, in Comar, and there's tidy row and square and all of this sort of a similar kind and the age old arches of St. Martin.
Jenna Brack (47:14)
Once.
Rick Pierce (47:26)
on one side and the cafes, the French cafes on the other side. And there's tourists, so everybody's interested and wants to see this place. all these things are so lovely and just a very romantic scene. And here she is and she's not the cathedral. She's not the cafe. She's not these other things that the tourists, they didn't come to see her
And so she doesn't have the same sort of, I just thought about like, she doesn't sort of have the same kind of appeal. I don't know, allure, shine, something along those lines. I don't want to be harsh to her at all. But that's the part that I was resonating with, you know, as I was reading the beginning portions of this. And when you said that line,
Jenna Brack (48:01)
Yeah.
Rick Pierce (48:15)
You know, there's all the tourists pass with their cameras, looking, searching, searching, searching, looking, looking, wanting to see, wanting to grab, wanting to absorb something of beauty, something of wonder and sparkle and shine We love winners. We love the really good things. And, and then your lion says, always searching though, not for her. Right. How easy to connect.
to that line. That's what I felt like, my word, how easy to connect, though not for her. And it just reminded me of sort of there's the unseen experience. There's a natural competition to life amongst weak human love.
Sandee Finley (48:58)
Mm-hmm.
Rick Pierce (49:00)
you know, amongst conditionalities of who's gonna get it, who's not, who's gonna be seen, who's not gonna be seen. And it's just that great conditionality. And here she lives in the conditional world. And who is she going to be? You know, in that way. I thought that was a marvelous, the imagery again, you're very, very good at painting a picture.
Sandee Finley (49:27)
for me specifically, something that I'm like, I'm in a Bible study right now and this poem spoke to what I had just been working on this week. We're reading through Acts and the teacher is talking about how when Jesus comes and God is a God of celebration and how the kingdom or the kingdom of celebration invades the empire of entertainment. And so even this felt like a picture of that.
Rick Pierce (49:33)
Hmm.
You
Mmm.
Sandee Finley (49:55)
You know, like this celebrate, I mean, they're celebrating this, but like, So even that, you know, just kind of where I am right now in my own study, but that spoke to me, like, this is now like a picture for me when I'm, even thinking about those juxtapositioning those two thoughts. You know, I also love Jenna. I know I've talked a lot about verbs this time.
Rick Pierce (50:10)
Hmm.
Sandee Finley (50:19)
In the beginning, I just love the sense that the verbs that you use are like towards you are they're active verbs, but they're passive towards you, you you or the tree, you know, I mean, the tree's been planted, the tree is rooted. So those are, you know, there's that grounding. then as you then because of those, right, because of those, that foundation, then we're able to see her actually move into
her surrendering season, which then becomes more of you know, active as she is letting things fall and changing. So I loved that kind of move in the verbs there.
Rick Pierce (50:58)
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
Jenna Brack (51:02)
Yeah, and both of you, so much insight. Thank you for all your noticing of these details.
Rick Pierce (51:07)
So this is the surrendering season she will eventually ripen and here you were at your 40th birthday. Help us understand something of how are you this tree as it were? How does this picture you? What did you learn about that?
Jenna Brack (51:28)
Yeah, you know, it's funny. I was wondering to myself, is the tree fully metaphorical or, you know, I think there are ways in which she is metaphorical and there are other ways in which I'm not sure. You know, so I'm making this discovery, like I said, as I'm writing, but one of the things that, you know, I'm working with here is my own surrendering.
Right? Like in this season that I'm in, I think of learning to surrender and hoping that I might in some beautiful directions. And then also, I think in a bigger picture, you know, being in the middle of life, you do know that eventually there is going to be an ultimate giving up. Like this life on earth isn't forever. And so there's a little bit of grappling with that.
Rick Pierce (51:56)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Jenna Brack (52:25)
youth turning into older age, eventually she'll, this tree will give over to winter all the way. And we could call winter season so many things, but the great wintering I think is death. And so there's a little bit of a grief here of knowing that the life, the new life doesn't last forever.
Sandee Finley (52:51)
Mm-hmm.
Jenna Brack (52:51)
but she's still got it right now. She has both. So there's an autumn season of life for all of us, but there's still this newness, this being made new. And I think that's the thing that has, I've been thinking about a lot is what does the new life look like in the passage of time? So.
Rick Pierce (52:53)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Sandee Finley (53:15)
Mm-hmm.
Jenna Brack (53:15)
I don't know if that answered your question, Rick, but those are some of the things I thinking about as I was writing this poem.
Rick Pierce (53:21)
Yeah, yeah. The imagery of just sort of moving and transitioning and that time moves in one direction as you say in your line, you know, and you can't stop it. You can't move backwards from it. It is inevitable. We are getting older. Our children are getting older. It's that same notion of like, I can't control the leaves from not falling. I can't control my kids from
not getting another year older every single time. You know, and then what will that mean? And I can't control where they're going to move to. And I can't control how my body is going to respond as best as we may try. I just can't. And so we get more vulnerable year day after day, year after year, we get more and more vulnerable. And then there's something about maybe coming to a spot you have to grapple. We have to grapple. I have to grapple with my vulnerability.
and the losing of leaves. And there's a lot of ways to grapple with the loss. And you're taking us to a place of, as opposed to control and holding onto the marbles and never letting anything fall and controlling bad things from happening by promoting only the good and avoiding the bad or through worry or through fretting, all these ways of control.
which are so normal for me and for you all, that we just want that in. It's a lovely thing to want the control, but the means that we go to try to fight the bad, to fight the death, fight the loss, fight the bad things from happening. the chronic nature of control winds up being far more painful than the actual acute experiences themselves, you know, is what.
I think we come to find perhaps into our 40s, 50s and 60s. And I think it's a brilliant picture of what will we do when there is the inevitable loss, And you lead us to this place at the end of your work that says, she's learning to try to live in the liminal space.
She's learning to live in the in-between, the already but not yet, the hot and the cold, the old and the young, the child and the adult. And she's kind of becoming not just one thing, a black and white, somewhat one-dimensional youthful version, perhaps of herself. but she's becoming far more complex. Yeah.
And so therefore not demanding it has to be hot or has to be cold in order for her to be okay. And she's learning that her health or vitality perhaps is far, far more rooted, not in her leaves.
Maybe in her root system,
Jenna Brack (56:19)
one of the phrases you just said there is that you said the chronic experience of control. And yeah, I mean, when you think about a tree, it is it goes through this surrendering season every year. It's necessary for the new life. And it's very cyclical. And so that makes me think about the
Rick Pierce (56:34)
Yeah.
Jenna Brack (56:43)
pain that it is over time to continue to try to hold on when what needs to happen is some letting go and embracing a different way, perhaps.
Rick Pierce (56:55)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sandee Finley (56:58)
You know, one thing, Jenna, that I thought, a quick question I thought was so interesting on the last part where you're using the opposites, warm and cold and new and old, but you use possibility and loss. And I think, an easy thing would be to use, if you think of loss, you think of the opposite of that often would be gain or something. So I love that it's possibility, but I kind of wondered what was it that like, how do you choose that particular word there as the?
opposite of loss.
Jenna Brack (57:27)
I think I've been thinking a lot about how new stories, really by nature, I think they have to start in the soil of grief and loss. Like every new beginning is a letting go of something else. So to move to Germany, we had to say goodbye to our friends. To step into my 40s, I have to say goodbye to my 30s.
but possibility can be on the other side of that, right? The new thing is also there to be embraced. And so it's like stewarding the grief alongside the hope. And I think hope speaks to that idea of possibility.
Rick Pierce (57:57)
Mm.
Sandee Finley (58:03)
I love that.
Rick Pierce (58:05)
Yeah, Yeah, there's something about the maturity of living in life as it really is. Living in life as it really is, feeling life as it is, living in the reality of losing leaves, of winter seasons, of suffering seasons, of grief times. And I think
My tendency, our tendency as humans, is to try to control what we're afraid of and we resist, as you've said. And so your, beautiful invitation to explore surrender, to explore the idea of what if you lived in life as it is and you found sort of a deeper rooted self?
the roots that go underneath the cobblestone, that can reach below the difficult things and find that the greatest nutrients, the greatest bits of life, sustenance for life is something about in sort of the sturdy ground beneath us, you know, not in the controlling of how much wind or how much rain or who's going to do water, who's going to say what.
So to me, that's what I've sort of gathered from the imagery you've given to me, which again, said it so many times because it's so true. The imagery that you provide to me, to us is truly a gift. It really is. If people receive the gift, it's there for the receiving. The colorful duvets are there.
Sandee Finley (59:31)
Mm-hmm.
Jenna Brack (59:44)
thank you both for your words and your seeing. I think it's such a gift to have people see the words, but also the story that is hiding in the words, as you said there, Rick, and to enhance meaning in this art by really seeing.
Rick Pierce (59:47)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Mm.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Jenna Brack (1:00:07)
what's there and what's beneath the surface perhaps, you know, to see what's down there beneath the cobblestones and realize there's more going on. I really appreciate both of you.
Rick Pierce (1:00:08)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Hmm hmm hmm me too. Yeah
Sandee Finley (1:00:20)
Yeah, I'd like to just kind of end with speaking a little bit about the, the reciprocity or the community of art,
I just like, for me, it's been like one of the great gifts, a greater gift in my older life actually than I probably had in my younger life in lots of ways. And I just am so thankful for that I've realized there's so many things that I I need people walking with me.
through counseling, through all the things. And in this creative, I was kind of a lone ranger a lot when it came to my art, because I just liked what I did, I guess, I don't know. And gosh, God has changed my sometimes it's collaborating, and sometimes it's just sharing and giving each other back and forth, and having a safe person or people that you know you can share stuff with, you good feedback. I just...
love that we've been gifted that.
Rick Pierce (1:01:11)
Yeah, And I think oftentimes when like when we start our process of dialoguing about these pieces, where we start and where we end are very different to me. I start with some understanding, some awareness, some bits of, you know, receiving. then as we go through it as a community, I feel so enriched,
I'm walking away and I hope maybe a listener's walking away with these images, these pictures of holding onto the marbles and the fear of letting go. What will that look like? Will I be loved? Will I be seen if I let go? Or what's the imagery and the meaning of my marbles of control And then the imagery of the mundane, the gray and the mundane that you let us into and this beauty.
of the good news that splashes into our world and how it shapes us and it changes us. And then finally this unbelievably helpful picture of the tree, and all of the beauty in her transition and what will be life for her as she goes through the grieving losses and the inability to control the leaves from falling.
everybody, every human can relate with there's leaves falling and I can't control the leaves from falling. You know, and if you don't relate with the fact that you can't control the leaves from falling, then like book a session with Sandee or something. No, get in a community where people can give me some feedback, some kind, gracious feedback. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you for that.
So Sandee and Jenna, thank you so much for our time today. It's always a delight to be with you, Jenna, again, thanks for sharing your soul with us, your heart, your creative the beauty that you bring into the world. And Sandee, thank you for all your amazing insights, the things that I would never have eyes or questions for,
Rick Pierce (1:03:08)
Well, friends, want to thank you for watching and listening to The HeartStrong Way, where I believe your deepest strength of heart comes not from performance or control, but by being chosen and prized just as we are. My thanks to my co-hosts of Art in Heart, Jenna and Sandee. My thanks also to my dear friend, Jay Fowler, for our podcast music, which you can find his music on Spotify. So,
Until we meet again on The HeartStrong Way, be loved and love well.
