If you put your soul against this oar with me,
the power that made the universe will enter your sinew
from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm
that lives in us.

Excerpt from That Lives In Us by ~Rumi

The Oar

As this academic year dies, there is life emerging from the ground and the trees. It is springtime. It always feels like something is dying to me as an academic year comes to an end. I am exhausted by the mad rush to get everything done. Everyone one of us is on edge because there are endings. We want to make sure those endings are marked meaningfully. It is emotional. Feelings of joy and sadness. There is a mixture of death and life emerging.

In my front yard, there is a blooming tree. Right now, on its branches there are bright pink petals with little bits of white. It seems less than a week ago—there was no life. The tree was barren and then what seems like out of nowhere---it suddenly blooms. This is my sixth spring in this house and each year, I feel like that tree looks back at me when I gaze at it and it winks and then smiles. It is as if it is saying—'you thought I was not going to come to life again. Surprise!’  Out of the brown of winter emerges these colorful flowers and green leaves on trees.

I start each class by saying to the students “I know exactly where we are going and I have no idea where we will end up”.  It is true--I never know. I do know that it will be a mixture of the ugly and the beautiful. I ask them to trust me. Even though this school year is ending with its regular and pandemic pressures of high-stakes meetings and the intensity of culminating assignments, still beauty emerged. The students put their hands on the oar with me and went into their own souls.  They did not become me; they became more themselves.

In the death, all of the death, I feel a synergy.  I see life emerging. I see daffodils dancing in the wind.  I noticed them each year and it brightens my day.  This pandemic year though I watched spring grow. I mean really watched it.

That Lives In Us

~Rumi

If you put your hands on this oar with me,
they will never harm another, and they will come to find
they hold everything you want.

If you put your hands on this oar with me, they would no longer
lift anything to your
mouth that might wound your precious land –
that sacred earth that is your body.

If you put your soul against this oar with me,
the power that made the universe will enter your sinew
from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm
that lives in us.

Exuberant is existence, time a husk.
When the moment cracks open, ecstasy leaps out and devours space;
love goes mad with the blessings, like my words give.

Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and the future?
The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities
will find no rest.

Be kind to yourself, dear – to our innocent follies.
Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.

You will come to see that all evolves us.

Bio

Sherry K. Watt is a professor at the University of Iowa in the Higher Education and Student Affairs program.  Sherry is a facilitator prepared by the Center for Courage and Renewal. She is an editor and chapter author of a book entitled Designing Transformative Multicultural Initiatives: Theoretical Foundations, Practical Applications and Facilitator Considerations (2015). She has over 25 years of experience in designing and leading educational experiences that involve strategies to engage participants in dialogue that is meaningful, passionate, and self-awakening. Sherry and her research team are working on two forthcoming books that focus on sharing research and practice on ‘ways of being’ in difficult dialogues that examine social oppression (racism, sexism, heterosexism, etc.) and that inspire thoughtful, humanizing action.