The Muse of Breath

The Sister from Below is pleased to announce the publication of

Dreaming Night Terrors

Political Poems

on the eve of the 2020 Election

Who will speak truth    to the Master    of Mendacity?

“The Spirit of Elijah Cummings Speaks”

Stuck in the cloistered terror of a pandemic, it’s hard to remember the brawling days before and after the 2016 election, the furies released by the Kavanaugh hearings, our stunned grief at the death of Elijah Cummings in October 2019. That seems lifetimes ago. Yet the 2020 election, perhaps the most consequential of our lives, is looming.

Dreaming Night Terrors, is a chapbook of political poems from the time before Covid 19, before the murder of George Floyd and the protests about police brutality and American racism. Written in outrage and sorrow, these poems are Naomi Ruth Lowinsky’s offering to the spirit of Elijah Cummings. He advised us to “speak truth to abuse.” He reminded us that our resilience comes from our constitution, which is based on the separation of powers. Were he alive today he would urge us to organize, raise money, write rants, vote, do everything it’s in us to do to remove the current administration, its chaos and corruption, its mendacity, cruelty and cult of personality. This is our moment, even as we shelter in place and gather on Zoom, to defend our democracy, honor Elijah, and reclaim our responsibilities to each other and to the earth.

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The Muse of Breath

Like Emmet Till in the casket, the Floyd

image made clear no black person could be safe.

Carol Anderson

author of White Rage

NY Times Review, June 28th 2020

Emmet Till painting by Lisa Whittington

(Dreaming Night Terrors is dedicated to the spirit of my father, Edward Elias Lowinsky, whose politics were the hard-won truths of a refugee from the European slaughter of his people.)

Breath is Spirit

Father, your spirit takes over my reverie with ravenous cravings for news—of the pandemic, of the protests, of the tsunami of change that is sweeping away the world as we know it. You insist that I track the terrible stories, make something of them—poems, blogs, a chapbook. You keep disturbing my introverted sheltering in place, stirring my outrage. It’s been a half life since we talked. Come to think of it, have we ever really talked, ever really had a dialogue? You lectured. I listened. My responses were always carefully crafted not to incite your rage. My spirit hid out in your presence. Your spirit wandered off into the Beyond. I always think of Jung’s mother telling him that his father died in time for him to become himself. You did that for me, and I’m grateful. You haven’t been around me much in all those years. Why are you making such a ruckus now?

Why do you assume it’s my call? You’re the one who pulls me out of the Beyond by breathing my spirit, obsessing about words and their roots, working for musicality in your language, seeking the humanism and creativity to which I gave my last breath—finding it even in the realm of politics. You speak of spirit, yours and mine. The word spirit comes from the latin “spirere,” to breath. You have come to a place in your life where you can breathe, fully, in the presence of my spirit. Perhaps my spirit has evolved to allow you the space to breathe.

I come to remind you it’s not enough to hide out from the virus. You need to speak out about the truths the virus reveals. How is it possible that America is still such a racist nation, that unarmed black people get killed for no good reason, that black and brown people die of Covid 19 so much more frequently than do white people? Didn’t we fight for racial justice in my lifetime? What happened to Martin Luther King’s long arc of the moral universe bending toward justice? Has it been twisted backwards?

Portrait of George Floyd by Eme Freethinker

Breath is Life

Father, your great grandchildren are out in the streets protesting. They’re wearing masks and chanting George’s Floyd’s last words: “I can’t breathe” as his life was crushed out of him by a policeman’s knee. Why? Because a cashier in a store thought he was passing a forged twenty dollar bill. His image is all over the world, including in Germany. He joins the list of names, tragic names that fill me with grief and shame: Eric Garner who died in a police chokehold, saying “I can’t breathe.” Why did the police stop him? On suspicion of selling individual cigarettes illegally. Breonna Taylor, a young Emergency Medical Technician, was shot eight times in her bed in the middle of the night. The police had bad information and no warrant. Ahmoud Arbery, a young man who liked to jog to clear his mind, was gunned down by two white men. His crime? Running while black. Walter Scott, stopped on some traffic technicality, was shot in the back running away. He was unarmed. Tamir Rice, a twelve year old boy, was playing with a toy gun. Shot by police. I could go on and on. All of these people would be alive today if they were not black. A sign seen at a recent protest: “Legalize Being Black!” How can this still be happening, in the America that saved you and our family?

Have you noticed all this commotion is about breath? Covid 19 is a respiratory disease. It attacks a person’s lungs. If you’re sick with Covid you can’t breathe. Racism is a disease of the collective breath. Air is something we all share. But racism stops the oppressed from breathing freely, from living their lives with joy and purpose. If you’re black or brown you’re constantly feeling under assault. George Floyd can’t breathe. Eric Garner can’t breathe. Black and brown people can’t breathe because they are always at risk. Their spirits are crushed by the burden of such hatred, such constant danger. What did I always tell you? Eternal Vigilance is the price of liberty. What happened to your vigilance?

When I saw you last, father, you were curled up like a fetus in that hospital bed. Reagan was on TV, well into his dog whistle assault on the multicultural America you fought for. You were too sick to rant against him. It’s been 35 years since the cancer devoured you, since the cancer of white supremacy devoured the civil rights and liberties we had so recently achieved. I kept thinking the backlash would be over soon, the Age of Aquarius would finally begin. Our liberal America would triumph. I wasn’t vigilant enough to get it—things kept getting worse. In the ‘90s, during the democratic presidency of Bill Clinton, welfare was undermined, and mass incarceration stole black men out of their families, destroying young lives and ripping up communities. So many young fathers were in jail for meaningless, made up offenses. You can imagine what this did to their women, their children, their breath, their spirit. I didn’t understand that racism in America is systemic, and that I, even with the best of intentions, am complicit with a system which privileges me over black and brown people. I didn’t comprehend the Phantom Narratives, to borrow my friend Sam Kimbles’ phrase, that had America and me, in their grip—the ghosts of the American civil war and the ghosts of the Shoah telling competing stories. I didn’t begin to see that we were witnessing a resurrection of the chain gang, of the plantation system with slaves, until recently. I’m ashamed that it took me so long.

It takes spirit to confront unwelcome truths.

A graphic account of America's love affair with prisons

Breath is a Song

Father, you were in my dream the other night. You were so young and tender, the age you were, 33, when you got your first job in America, teaching Musicology at Black Mountain College; the age you were when I was born. We are on a fast moving train, sitting at a table in the dining car. You are headed forwards, me backwards. I’m the age I was when I visited your deathbed. There is sweetness and ease between us. We are headed South, to North Carolina. I wake to remember my favorite story of you.

Photo of Father, Mother, my baby brother, Si, and me (1946)

I was a toddler. You were recently off the boat, finding sanctuary at a small liberal arts school in the South. Like most of your colleagues, you were a refugee Jew, escaped from the Shoah. I have fleeting memories of all those European musicians, painters, weavers, Bauhaus builders in world changing times speaking many languages in the cafeteria. We were a community spat out of the mouth of Europe’s monstrous hatred of the Jews, lucky to land here on the shores of Lake Eden. But this was the South. Jim Crow reigned, which outraged you. Looked to you like how Hitler treated the Jews. You invited Roland Hayes, an African American tenor, to sing at a desegregated concert. Hayes sang the European repertoire as well as spirituals. He had been received by the crowned heads of Europe, but given little attention in America. Mother told me that you and she were afraid the Ku Klux Klan would burn Black Mountain College down. That didn’t happen. Hayes gave his breath, his great spirit, to Schubert’s “Du Bist die Rüh” and to “Go Down Moses.” That was 1945. The war was still on. Your parents had died in the year of my birth. That must have been such an assault on your breath. How did you have the chutzpah to take on segregation?

I knew I just had to keep on breathing, keep on living my life. My mother died in a concentration camp in Holland. I didn’t know what had happened to my father, though later it appeared he was in a cattle car on the way to Auschwitz when the allies bombed the train. What a terrible irony, to think my father was killed by America. My spirit rose up in fury and told me to do something! So I desegregated Black Mountain College—the first school in the South to open its doors to black people of color. I did it with the Roland Hayes concert, and with a campaign to invite black students. It was my intention to help America honor its promise. I had so much faith in America. What happened? 

Black Mountain College faculty

Breath is Inspiration

We elected a black president in 2008, with a musical name—Barack Obama. He is brilliant, eloquent, elegant—a man with a strong moral compass. He has a beautiful, high spirited wife and two lovely daughters. It was inspiring to have such a loving, admirable black family in the White House for eight years. But racism was alive and well in America and Obama had a terrible time trying to govern. The Republicans blocked him at every turn. Obama is still deeply beloved. But the backlash was the election of the anti-Obama— a blatant racist, a master of mendacity, of chaos and corruption, a demagogue, a narcissist, the crazed center of a cult of personality. He follows the playbook for dictators. His self-serving and incompetent administration has made us the laughing stock of the world, and revealed the underbelly of American racism and inequality. He has not even attempted to lead the country out of the dreadful pandemic we’re stuck in. The body counts keep growing. The numbers of the sick keep growing. Other countries refuse to let Americans in. Not that we want to travel these days.

And what are you doing, my daughter, to confront all this horror?

I am putting my poems to work for the election of a good man, a man who has a moral compass, a man who understands suffering and grief, Joe Biden. I hope the poems will inspire people to do whatever is in them to do—especially to vote to oust the worst president we’ve ever had.

Worse than Nixon? Worse than Reagan?

Much worse. I wrote a poem during the spring of 2016 which expresses how dangerous I understood him to be even before he was elected. At the time mother was far gone into her dementia. She had no idea what was happening in the world. But the child in me yearned for her protection.

What I Want To Tell My Mama

Only she’s gone     a slight rustle of reeds
at the edge of the pond    a paw print in the mud

Sometimes she takes my hand    like a curious
two year old    tracing my veins     touching my rings

Mutti     you’ve dived down below    your German
gutterals     found your own    Ur tongue

Crim crutz
Olam Bolam

If you were who you used to be    Mama
I’d tell you about that Scary Man

that Chaos Man    with Caterwauling Hair    who beats
his chest and threatens

to drive us back
into the Tohu Bohu

He’d build a Golden Wall    high as the Great Wall
of China    Impenetrable as Negative Space

A Magnificent Wall to keep the likes of us
Refugees and our Rabble children    out

of America      Mama    he’s a Huckster
a Big Hunk of Catastrophe

Flasher Man    Slash Her Man
Hair sprayed into Caesar’s Brass Helmet

Olam Bolam
Crimini Crutz

All the ghosts we keep in the closet
rush in shrieking

“It’s the Nazis
It’s the Fascists
It’s the Cossacks
It’s the Huns
It’s Joseph McCarthy as Hair Spray Man
come to eat our young     Run!”

He is the King of the Hoax     the Prince of Evasion
Makes sausage

of our worst fears
We eat it

What he eats
is cotton candy

Rim Ram
Crimini hachts

There’s a gargantuan Wall of Broken
Glass    between his lovers    and his haters

yet we are spell bound     Mama
How can I explain

He has hula dancer fingers
He curls them

unfurls them
We watch     mesmerized

“On Day One    Hour One
You’ll all be gone    Every last one of you

                                             Enemy Aliens!”

Crimini crumini
Olam Bolam

Mama    make him
be gone…

That’s quite a language your mother developed in her dotage. Makes me think of another word that comes from the Latin, “spirare”— inspiration. Sounds like your mother was casting powerful spells.

Yes, I’ve had the same intuition about it. Speaking of inspiration, your passion for the political in its deepest, widest, most humanistic form, has inspired me to publish this little book. I want you to know, father, that I’ve dedicated my chapbook to your spirit. 

Have you ever dedicated anything to me before?

No. But this train is moving swiftly. I’m nearing the age you were when you died. I want you to know that I am your daughter, that I feel your spirit moving in me. Your passion for life, for justice, and for song inspire me in these terrible times. I’m grateful.

The Muse of St. Francis and the Turtles

Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us… 

This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her… We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.

Pope Francis Encyclical Letter Laudate Si

On Care for Our Common Home

San Pancho, a charming coastal town north of Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, has been a haven for Dan and me for fifteen years. We come for a couple of weeks in the winter, to get warm, to slow down our frenzied American minds, to open our beings to the color, music, and sensuality of a place where the tapestry of life is woven slowly, by different gods so it seems, than our own. This year especially, we were glad to get out of the US during the so–called impeachment trial, when the separation of powers was sacrificed to the growing tyranny, greed and corruption of the executive. Mexico is no example of fairness and democracy but in this little town we have found a rare blend of influences which create unusual harmony.

San Pancho is a nickname for San Francisco—the town’s official name. Its patron saint, of course, is St. Francis. Its small Catholic Church is a bastion of tradition. But the Huichol beadwork jaguars for sale in the square speak to other traditions, as does St. Francis himself; on murals all over town he is in harmony with the birds, the fish, the turtles who lay their eggs on the beach, and are protected by an environmental group— Grupo Ecológico de la Costa Verde —I call them the Turtle People, who harbor [protect the turtle] eggs until they are self sufficient hatchlings, and then in a sacred ritual, release them to the sea.

It is as though St. Francis had a vision of a place without poverty, where earth, sky, sea and their creatures live in harmony. San Pancho works at being such a place. The local people who own the stores and the restaurants go back to the four families—some say as many as ten families—who peopled the original fishing village. Many people from Mexico City and Guadalajara as well as from the US and Canada own houses here and are engaged in the community. They support the Turtle People, San Pancho Animales, which rescues animals and runs a spay and neuter clinic and Entre Amigos, which runs the recycling program, a program to help local families pay their children’s school fees and send them to college, and much more. Dan and I sponsor a youngster. Her animated drawing of land, sea, sun and birds brightens our refrigerator at home. It has been for us a blessed place, one of those magical spots that draws positive energies. But in recent years St. Francis’ vision has been threatened.

The visible manifestation of that threat is an ugly block of condominiums plopped down on the beach by some developer from another country, against the will of the townspeople and against the law of Mexico, which claims the beach for the people. This monster is in total disharmony with its environment—the palapa covered restaurants, the ocean, the surfers, the frigates high in the sky and a skedaddle of pelicans (sometimes 13 at a time) skimming the waves with their wings, who make Dan and me gasp with pleasure. We are, as is our ritual, on the beach to watch the sunset. But even more, we are here to participate in a demonstration against the monster, Punta Paraìso (Point Paradise), held in synchrony with a release of turtle hatchlings. What a scene this is:

A band of drummers, the Batalá Mundo, associated with the international samba reggae group begun in Brazil, wearing red, white and black clothing, beat their red, white and black drums ferociously, joyously, fiercely, shaking their drumsticks in the air like fists, clearly enjoying the threatening sound they make.

A tall, gaunt St. Francis, towers above it all, looking as though he’s been painted by El Greco, casting his sorrow like a shadow on the people, mystifying the children who approach him warily.

Saint Francis by El Greco

St. Francis is mourning our beautiful beach, the beach that belongs to the dogs who leap and run, to the laughing babies in their daddy’s arms, to the mother who pulls out her breast to nurse her newborn, to the vendors selling sweets, snacks, beaded earrings in vibrant colors, to the turtle hatchlings crawling over each other in two plastic pails, in a rush to get back to the sea, to the children with awed faces reaching into the pails—“can we hold them?”— to the people on their knees in the sand shaping large turtles —offerings to that great animal spirit of peace, patience, endurance and harmony among all forms of life—sacred to San Pancho, sacred to St. Francis.

The surf roars, the sun gets lost behind a cloud, is reflected in the sea. St. Francis dances with the children in front of the big monster building and its effigy—a piñata—which the children will soon destroy with fierce sticks.

The newcomers who bought condos stand on their decks, taking photos of the angry crowd. Did they know what they were getting into? St. Francis speaks for peace but knows that fierceness is required to stand up to the forces of greed, corruption and the desecration of our earth, our sea, our sky.

The drums beat. The crowd shouts “Playas Libra! No a Punta Paraìso!” (Free the Beaches. No to Point Paradise!) TV cameras are the eyes of the world as St. Francis hugs Turtle. A drone hovers over the monster looking like a huge mosquito. Our friend Bill, who lives here, who works hard for the people and the animals of San Pancho, tells us that somewhere, in a courtroom, the monster is on trial. Bill is hopeful.

Seems it takes the endurance of Turtle to defeat a monster. The children keep banging on the piñata. The drums keep on drumming. The hatchlings keep crawling over one another. The Turtle People keep admiring them, enchanted by their fragile beauty. St. Francis keeps shaking his mournful head as the sun slips out of the cloud and spreads rays of glory down to the horizon, creating a pyramid that becomes a circle of light at the horizon. Soon the sun will go down, the children will break up the monster piñata; releasing candy for all. When will the hatchlings be released?

Seems it takes the patience of Turtle to wait for the right time. The keeper of the hatchlings explains: “We need to wait for the end of twilight, when there is almost no light, to let them go, or the fish swimming below them will see their silhouettes and eat them up.” None of us want that to happen. Soon, the keeper of the hatchlings will mark out a space in the wet sand. No one may cross this line—this belongs to the babies. Soon we will watch him, who brings the love of St. Francis to these creatures, release them out of the plastic pails in the near dark. We strain to see them, such tiny beings, heading into the surf. We Turtle People gasp, cry out with joy when a wave comes to carry these babies home. Our babies, our brother turtles, as our sister the sickle moon drifts across the sky, carrying the vision of St Francis—all creatures are kin, pelicans and turtles, dogs and the buyers of condominiums, drummers of Batalia Mundo, mothers and fathers of baby humans, we are all brothers and sisters, all hatchlings of the universe.

The Muse of St. Francis and the Turtles

Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us… 

This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her… We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.

Pope Francis Encyclical Letter Laudate Si

On Care for Our Common Home

San Pancho, a charming coastal town north of Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, has been a haven for Dan and me for fifteen years. We come for a couple of weeks in the winter, to get warm, to slow down our frenzied American minds, to open our beings to the color, music, and sensuality of a place where the tapestry of life is woven slowly, by different gods so it seems, than our own. This year especially, we were glad to get out of the US during the so–called impeachment trial, when the separation of powers was sacrificed to the growing tyranny, greed and corruption of the executive. Mexico is no example of fairness and democracy but in this little town we have found a rare blend of influences which create unusual harmony.

San Pancho is a nickname for San Francisco—the town’s official name. Its patron saint, of course, is St. Francis. Its small Catholic Church is a bastion of tradition. But the Huichol beadwork jaguars for sale in the square speak to other traditions, as does St. Francis himself; on murals all over town he is in harmony with the birds, the fish, the turtles who lay their eggs on the beach, and are protected by an environmental group— Grupo Ecológico de la Costa Verde —I call them the Turtle People, who harbor [protect the turtle] eggs until they are self sufficient hatchlings, and then in a sacred ritual, release them to the sea.

It is as though St. Francis had a vision of a place without poverty, where earth, sky, sea and their creatures live in harmony. San Pancho works at being such a place. The local people who own the stores and the restaurants go back to the four families—some say as many as ten families—who peopled the original fishing village. Many people from Mexico City and Guadalajara as well as from the US and Canada own houses here and are engaged in the community. They support the Turtle People, San Pancho Animales, which rescues animals and runs a spay and neuter clinic and Entre Amigos, which runs the recycling program, a program to help local families pay their children’s school fees and send them to college, and much more. Dan and I sponsor a youngster. Her animated drawing of land, sea, sun and birds brightens our refrigerator at home. It has been for us a blessed place, one of those magical spots that draws positive energies. But in recent years St. Francis’ vision has been threatened.

The visible manifestation of that threat is an ugly block of condominiums plopped down on the beach by some developer from another country, against the will of the townspeople and against the law of Mexico, which claims the beach for the people. This monster is in total disharmony with its environment—the palapa covered restaurants, the ocean, the surfers, the frigates high in the sky and a skedaddle of pelicans (sometimes 13 at a time) skimming the waves with their wings, who make Dan and me gasp with pleasure. We are, as is our ritual, on the beach to watch the sunset. But even more, we are here to participate in a demonstration against the monster, Punta Paraìso (Point Paradise), held in synchrony with a release of turtle hatchlings. What a scene this is:

A band of drummers, the Batalá Mundo, associated with the international samba reggae group begun in Brazil, wearing red, white and black clothing, beat their red, white and black drums ferociously, joyously, fiercely, shaking their drumsticks in the air like fists, clearly enjoying the threatening sound they make.

A tall, gaunt St. Francis, towers above it all, looking as though he’s been painted by El Greco, casting his sorrow like a shadow on the people, mystifying the children who approach him warily.

Saint Francis by El Greco

St. Francis is mourning our beautiful beach, the beach that belongs to the dogs who leap and run, to the laughing babies in their daddy’s arms, to the mother who pulls out her breast to nurse her newborn, to the vendors selling sweets, snacks, beaded earrings in vibrant colors, to the turtle hatchlings crawling over each other in two plastic pails, in a rush to get back to the sea, to the children with awed faces reaching into the pails—“can we hold them?”— to the people on their knees in the sand shaping large turtles —offerings to that great animal spirit of peace, patience, endurance and harmony among all forms of life—sacred to San Pancho, sacred to St. Francis.

The surf roars, the sun gets lost behind a cloud, is reflected in the sea. St. Francis dances with the children in front of the big monster building and its effigy—a piñata—which the children will soon destroy with fierce sticks.

The newcomers who bought condos stand on their decks, taking photos of the angry crowd. Did they know what they were getting into? St. Francis speaks for peace but knows that fierceness is required to stand up to the forces of greed, corruption and the desecration of our earth, our sea, our sky.

The drums beat. The crowd shouts “Playas Libra! No a Punta Paraìso!” (Free the Beaches. No to Point Paradise!) TV cameras are the eyes of the world as St. Francis hugs Turtle. A drone hovers over the monster looking like a huge mosquito. Our friend Bill, who lives here, who works hard for the people and the animals of San Pancho, tells us that somewhere, in a courtroom, the monster is on trial. Bill is hopeful.

Seems it takes the endurance of Turtle to defeat a monster. The children keep banging on the piñata. The drums keep on drumming. The hatchlings keep crawling over one another. The Turtle People keep admiring them, enchanted by their fragile beauty. St. Francis keeps shaking his mournful head as the sun slips out of the cloud and spreads rays of glory down to the horizon, creating a pyramid that becomes a circle of light at the horizon. Soon the sun will go down, the children will break up the monster piñata; releasing candy for all. When will the hatchlings be released?

Seems it takes the patience of Turtle to wait for the right time. The keeper of the hatchlings explains: “We need to wait for the end of twilight, when there is almost no light, to let them go, or the fish swimming below them will see their silhouettes and eat them up.” None of us want that to happen. Soon, the keeper of the hatchlings will mark out a space in the wet sand. No one may cross this line—this belongs to the babies. Soon we will watch him, who brings the love of St. Francis to these creatures, release them out of the plastic pails in the near dark. We strain to see them, such tiny beings, heading into the surf. We Turtle People gasp, cry out with joy when a wave comes to carry these babies home. Our babies, our brother turtles, as our sister the sickle moon drifts across the sky, carrying the vision of St Francis—all creatures are kin, pelicans and turtles, dogs and the buyers of condominiums, drummers of Batalia Mundo, mothers and fathers of baby humans, we are all brothers and sisters, all hatchlings of the universe.

The Muse of Elijah

Our children are the living messengers we send into a future we will never see.

—Elijah Cummings

What Did You Do in 2019?

I will fight to the death to make sure everyone gets their right to vote, because it is the essence of our democracy.
—Elijah Cummings

On October 17th 2019, I woke to the news that Elijah Cummings had died. No! That can’t be true. My heart was filled with panic. I hadn’t realized how important this congressman—this chair of the Oversight Committee investigating our President—was to me until that moment. I hadn’t realized that Elijah Cummings was, for me, the point of the America’s moral compass. Nor had I realized that my hope that my children and grandchildren would continue to live and vote in a democracy rested on Elijah Cummings’ integrity and courage.

I can see Elijah Cummings’ smiling face; I can hear his booming voice taking on the Acting Homeland Security Secretary about the conditions in which children are being kept at the border. The Acting Secretary, one Kevin McAleenan, looks uncomfortable. He says: “We’re doing our level best.” Elijah’s voice rises: “What does that mean, when a child is sitting in its own feces? Come on, man! This is the United States of America!” I hear his moral clarity when, it seems a lifetime ago, in Feb. 2019, he turns into a spiritual counselor for Michael Cohen during Cohen’s testimony against his former boss, the President. Here’s Cummings speaking to Cohen: “Hopefully, this portion of your destiny will lead to a better Michael Cohen, a better Donald Trump, a better United States of America, a better world.” I see his tired face, after hours of testimony, telling reporters, “This is a fight for the soul of our democracy.” I hear his prophetic remarks spanning the realms: “When we’re dancing with the angels the question will be asked, ‘What did you do in 2019 to keep our democracy safe?’” I hadn’t realized that Elijah Cummings was the one I’d been trusting with America’s soul, until he died, and left the work to all of us.

Those who were close to him, Nancy Pelosi, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Kweisi Mfome, Barack Obama, knew he’d been ill for a long time. His wife, Maya, said he was diagnosed with a rare deadly cancer—given six months to live—twenty–five years ago. Those who were close to him knew he came from poverty, that his parents had been sharecroppers, that as a child he’d been put in a special education class, told he’d never be able to read or write. The man was a miracle. Some say an angel.

I Am Freddie Gray

Does Anyone Hear Us Pray
4 Michael Brown or Freddie Gray?
—Prince, “Baltimore”

Freddie Gray

In March of 2016, over half a year before the election, Elijah gave a talk to the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy called “The Fierce Urgency of Now.” He spoke of Freddie Gray, a 25 year old who died after having been given such a “rough ride” in police custody, that his spine was severed and he died. The Grand Jury indicted three police officers on manslaughter charges, and added a second degree count of “depraved-heart murder” for the driver. “Depraved-heart murder.” That says it all. And yet all the officers were acquitted. The people of Baltimore expressed their rage on the day of Gray’s funeral, April 28, 2015. Elijah spoke at the funeral. He saw press from all over the country and the world, and he asked: “You see him now, but did you see him when he lived? Did you see the little boy who sat in the first grade trying to learn to read, but he couldn’t because his body was filled with lead? Did you see him in the fourth grade when he still couldn’t read, and was beginning to get in trouble?” That night Elijah went to Howard University, to give a lecture with Elizabeth Warren, on a Middle Class Prosperity Project. He received a text: “Your city is on fire!” He rushed back to do his best to calm Baltimore. “People were hollering and screaming, throwing rocks, very upset over Freddie Gray.”

At the Taubman Center Elijah told a story of the moment he understood who Freddie Gray was to him. During an interview on CNN he was asked, “How do you deal with these people?” Elijah responded “What people?” The interviewer said, “You know, like Freddie Gray.” Elijah turns to his audience, says: “I’ll never forget it. I had tears running down my cheeks on National TV. And I said ‘I am Freddie Gray. I am the little boy who sat in the classroom probably filled with lead. I am him, who was put in a school system—in the black community we had nine classrooms and one bathroom and about 300 feet away the white school had sixty classrooms and a whole lot of bathrooms… I think of Freddie Gray every day… We have to look at this moment with the fierce urgency of now… When people get to a point where they lose hope there’s a problem. When people are trying to cut off votes, to cut off people’s voices…there’s something wrong with that picture. We all have to speak out… We have a duty to provide our children with a democracy… They’ll take the vote away from African–Americans today. They’ll take it away from Hispanics tomorrow. They’ll take it away from somebody else and the next thing you know you won’t have a democracy.”

Prophet Elijah

The Cup of Elijah

Nothing great has ever been accomplished without passion and patience. Rooted in the same Latin word, “pati,” (to suffer, to endure) passion and patience touch the two poles of the key element in a life that matters: commitment.
—Edward Elias Lowinsky

In the Jewish tradition Elijah is a prophet who stands up to demagogues. He is an angel of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. His work is to protect the needy and the oppressed, to ward off evil. He sees through illusions. At Passover we pour him a cup of wine, and open the door so that he may come to us, bringing his courage and wisdom.

My father, Edward E. Lowinsky, was named Elias (the Latinate form of Elijah) at his birth. The family story is that his mother was concerned about his safety, bearing such a Jewish name in Germany. So he became Edward E. My father had a prophetic temperament, which he passed down to me. He came from a refugee Jewish family—they were illegal aliens. Born in Stuttgart, in 1908, his parents had fled the pogroms in Odessa. My father fled Germany in 1932 for Holland, and then fled Holland in 1938, with his bride, her sisters and parents, headed for America. But the United States was not welcoming Jewish refugees. The family had to stay in Cuba for 20 months until, with false passports—illegal aliens— they arrived in America.

My father never told me about his false passport, or how he became a legal immigrant. The news of his statelessness came long after his death and explained much to me about why my father watched the political scene so intensely, as do I. He called out the dangers he foresaw. His concerns were much like those of Elijah Cummings: racism, anti-Semitism, dangers to the constitution. He wrote thunderous letters to the New York Times when events alarmed him. Often, they were published. He told us children: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” He has been rolling over in his grave, causing earthquakes in my soul, since the election of 2016. He would have loved Elijah Cummings. In the light of Elijah Cumming’s death my father’s spirit—with whom I have had a tumultuous relationship—he was an old school patriarch—has come to me in his most luminous form.

Edward Elias Lowinsky [photo by Nikki Arai]

Our Still Small Voice

We should hear our Elijah in the quiet times, in the morning, when we get discouraged—our Elijah should be our still small voice.
—Bill Clinton

My daughter told me I had to watch Elijah Cummings’ funeral. She said it was deeply moving, and strangely healing in our difficult times. And so it was that Dan and I sat down one evening and began to watch the funeral on YouTube. My daughter was right, as she usually is. It is a long funeral—took three evenings to watch—but engaging and powerful. It filled us with the dramatis personae of the political dramas that have shaped our land for over a generation, and with the spirit of “our Elijah” in the voices and stories of those who knew him well. I can’t do justice to all of the speakers. I’ve chosen a few that illuminate “our Elijah” for me.

Hillary Clinton

I have often marveled at the power of a good memorial—at how much I learn that I never knew about the deceased. Watching this event I marveled also at how much I learned about the speakers—public people I thought I knew well. But I didn’t know that Hillary Clinton could turn into an eloquent Baptist preacher, telling gospel stories about a man who had so deeply influenced her, and supported her in difficult times. She said: “It’s no coincidence that our Elijah shared a name with an Old Testament prophet, whose name meant, in Hebrew, ‘The Lord is My God,’ who used the wisdom and power God gave him to uphold the moral law. Like the prophet our Elijah could call down fire from heaven. Like that Old Testament prophet he stood up against the corrupt leadership of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.”

Bill Clinton and Elijah Cummings

I didn’t know, or had forgotten, how funny and wise Bill Clinton could be. He told a story about being part of a “get out the vote” effort in Elijah’s church, the very church—New Psalmist—which hosted the funeral, shortly before his election to the presidency. He said: “Talk about a lousy deal. I had to follow Elijah Cummings. At least I’m getting up ahead of you, President Obama, today. In my old age I’m the warm up act.” Bill, another gospel speaking preacher, told us that “our Elijah mirrored the life of Isaiah, to whom the Lord said: ‘Who should I send, and who will go for me?’ And Isaiah said: ‘Here Am I, Lord. Send me.’ Elijah Cummings spent a whole life saying ‘Send me.’”

Elijah at the Cave

Bill told the story of the prophet Elijah in a cave, in a lost and troubled time in his life, when he felt his work had been fruitless. “And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and a strong wind rent the mountains…but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a small still voice.” The Lord was in that small still voice. Bill ended his talk advising “We should hear our Elijah in the quiet times, in the morning, when we get discouraged—our Elijah should be our still small voice.”

Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama

Though I know a lot about Nancy Pelosi, our congresswoman from San Francisco and our current Speaker of the House, I didn’t know about her close friendship with “our darling Elijah.” They go way back in their kinship and love of Baltimore. She was raised there in a political family—her brother and father had both been mayors of the city. “Elijah was my Baltimore brother in Congress.” She spoke of the high standard he set for himself. “That’s why I called him the North Star of Congress, our guiding light.” She spoke of his fight against gun violence, and for a bill that would limit the amount people can be charged for prescription drugs—HR3, The Elijah Cummings Low Cost Drug Act.” Write your Congress People!

Kweisi Mfume

I didn’t know much about Kweisi Mfume except that he had been a congressman from Maryland and the head of the NAACP. Turns out he and Elijah had been political buddies since the ‘70s. They had a teasing relationship about who would die first. Kweisi, being three years older, claimed that status. Elijah won the bet. Kweisi said “Elijah Cummings was the twentieth century manifestation of a people who had suffered, endured and survived through centuries of slavery, oppression, depravation, degradation, denial and disprivilege.”

I was moved by his prayerful words: “Let us use this passage to recommit ourselves to sharing Elijah’s dream, also the dream of Martin Luther King and Fanny Lou Hamer, the dream of Dubois, Tubman and Douglas. Also the dream of all of those nameless and faceless sharecroppers of his father’s generation who laid their bodies down on plantations all over this country so that young Elijahs could run across them and get to the Promised Land.”

Barack Obama and Elijah Cummings

I know a lot about Barack Obama. I have missed his calm grace, his thoughtful interiority, his elegant use of language in our nasty rancorous vulgar talk times. What a pleasure to hear and see him speak, using his own eloquent voice to invoke the spirit of Elijah Cummings. Here is some of what he said: “The seed on good soil. Elijah Cummings came from good soil. In this sturdy frame goodness took root. His parents were sharecroppers from the South. Picked tobacco and strawberries, and then sought something better in the city of South Baltimore. Robert worked shifts at a plant and Ruth cleaned other people’s homes. They became parents of seven, preachers to a small flock. I remember I had the pleasure of meeting his mother, Ruth, and she told me she prayed for me everyday, and I knew it was true and I felt better for it. Sometimes people say they’re praying for you and you don’t know…They might be praying about you.” (This was greeted with laughter and applause.) 

Obama went on to speak truth, in his subtle, no drama way, to the bullying and lying spirit of our times. He said: “Being a strong man includes being kind. There’s nothing weak about kindness and compassion…You’re not a sucker to have integrity and to treat others with respect. And Obama reminded us of Elijah’s frequent admonition that our time is too short not to fight for what is true and what is best for America…Elijah has harvested all that he could. And the Lord has now called him home. It now falls on each of us to continue his work.”

Elijah Ascending

A Poem for Our Elijah

The Fierce Urgency of Now
—Elijah Cummings

The Muse came to me in the night like a wrestling angel in the form of Elijah Cummings, in the form of Elias Lowinsky, and insisted I find words for the passion I felt that morning, hearing of Elijah Cummings’ death, for the passion expressed by all the speakers at his funeral, for the passion of his people and my people, words for the “fierce urgency of Now.” She gave me this poem and insisted I send it out into the world. I hope that you who are moved by it will send it on. That is one small thing we can do in 2019.

The Muse came to me in the night like a wrestling angel in the form of Elijah Cummings, in the form of Elias Lowinsky, and insisted I find words for the passion I felt that morning, hearing of Elijah Cummings’ death, for the passion expressed by all the speakers at his funeral, for the passion of his people and my people, words for the “fierce urgency of Now.” She gave me this poem and insisted I send it out into the world. I hope that you who are moved by it will send it on. That is one small thing we can do in 2019.

The Spirit of Elijah Speaks
October 17th, 2019

Open the door      I’m here to haunt    the House
I didn’t mean to leave you all    in the lurch
Covenants broken    The Constitution    under siege
My time has expired      I beg you    guard this moment

I didn’t mean to leave you all    in the lurch
Been signing subpoenas    to the end    of my breath
My time has expired      I beg you    guard this moment
What will you do    to protect    our democracy?

Been signing subpoenas    to the end    of my breath
Was called to earth    to speak truth    to abuse
What will you do    to protect    our democracy?
I come from sharecroppers      from the land    on which our ancestors    were slaves

Was called to earth    to speak truth    to abuse
Became Master of the House    and Chair    of Oversight
I come from sharecroppers      from the land    on which our ancestors    were slaves
Was shown the glory    of the separation    of powers

Became Master of the House    and Chair    of Oversight
Thou shalt not separate children    from parents    seeking asylum
Behold the glory    of the separation    of powers
Thou shalt not arouse the crowd’s    bad blood    high dudgeon

Thou shalt not separate children    in cages    leave them sitting    in feces
We’re better than that
Thou shalt not arouse the crowd’s    bad blood    high dudgeon
Who will speak truth    to the Master    of Mendacity?

We’re better than that
He has slandered    the people    of my home city    Baltimore
Who will speak truth    to the Master    of Mendacity?
You’ve got only    one life     and within you    a small    still    voice

He has slandered    the people    of my home city    Baltimore
The Forefathers warned us      Beware of demagogues
Does he ever listen    to that small    still    voice?
Look in the mirror    poet    that haunt    in your eyes    is the spirit    of your father

This demagogue     this walking catastrophe    has roused me    from the dead
Look in the mirror    America     that haunt in your eyes    is me     your ancestral refugee
Never break your covenant    with Lady Liberty     I beg you      Guard    The Constitution
My name is Elijah      Open the door

Elijah as Fire