Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text was the poem “The Decision” by Jane Hirshfield, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about a hesitation.”

More details will be posted on this session soon, so check back!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

We will be breaking with our usual schedule next week in honor of Labor Day on Monday September 7th. Please join us for our next session Monday, September 14th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

The Webinar that was mentioned during the session is tomorrow, with details as follows!

Join a conversation with Ford Foundation President Darren Walker, JD, who, at a time of rising inequality, is reimagining philanthropy less as charity than a tool to advance justice. The event is the 2020 Ewing Halsell Distinguished Lecture.

Date: Thursday, Sept. 10, 2020
Time: 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. CDT
Place: Virtual (Zoom Webinar or YouTube Live)
Free and open to all. Register at FromGenerosityToJustice.Eventbrite.com.

Mr. Walker calls for “all who work in industries that serve others and the greater good, from philanthropy to education, health care to social services” to unflinchingly examine fundamental root causes of structural inequality and consider whether their own longstanding practices reinforce it. He will detail ideas outlined in his book “From Generosity to Justice: A New Gospel of Wealth.”

The conversation will be moderated by Raul B. Rodriguez, Associate Vice President for International Affairs at Monterrey Tech in Mexico.

The Decision by Jane Hirshfield
 
There is a moment before a shape
hardens, a color sets.
Before the fixative or heat of   kiln.
The letter might still be taken
from the mailbox.
The hand held back by the elbow,
the word kept between the larynx pulse   
and the amplifying drum-skin of the room’s air.
The thorax of an ant is not as narrow.
The green coat on old copper weighs more.   
Yet something slips through it —
looks around,
sets out in the new direction, for other lands.
Not into exile, not into hope. Simply changed.
As a sandy track-rut changes when called a Silk Road:
it cannot be after turned back from.

Source: Poetry Magazine (May 2008)