In-Versing Your Life

We start with the nursery rhymes fewer children hear now, and the genius inside them. Poor Tired Tim, a sad poem read again and again in that classroom, was a wonderful one for a girl not allowed to talk about her feelings. All it takes is somebody who loves something.

Then the screens, the speed and AI: kids born on fire. This Woman's Path, a poem of ours, takes the country road beside the superhighway, soft and slow geared. Less roadkill.

Poems come after walks, past lakes, trees and purple vetch full of bumblebees. City sidewalks do nothing for the brain.

Carl Sandburg, a Swede in Chicago and the first poet we read who did not rhyme, was a mentor we never met. Robert Bly, a poet met many times, sent back a first manuscript of nature poems asking, where are you in it?

The second half gets to who writes the best poems: the youngest children, and the ones who have been hurt. Teach a child to be a poet and you can beat AI, in a way. Life is a circle walked together, not a ladder, and most of it is lived in the gray.

We end with poetry therapy, helping children and adults pull their feelings out through poems. A sixteen-year-old who had just had a baby wrote that she used to be a beautiful flower, but now she was a stem. The room called her a poet, and she lifted her head.

Take a walk. Choose something from outside you in nature, and then complete these lines.

I used to be …
(Complete that line.)
But now I am …
(Now complete that one.)

Chapters:

• (00:00) - A classroom near the Saint Croix River

Tired Tim - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3753.html.images

The Peace of Wild Things - https://onbeing.org/poetry/the-peace-of-wild-things/

Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City - https://whitmanarchive.org/about/archive/wwa-2000-to-2007/published/LG/1871/poems/28.html

People Like Us - https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26196-selected-poems

Bob Dylan has decided not to come to Stockholm - https://www.svenskaakademien.se/en/press/bob-dylan-has-decided-not-to-come-to-stockholm

New Jersey homeowner calls cops on Bob Dylan - https://abcnews.com/GMA/jersey-homeowner-calls-cops-bob-dylan/story?id=8331830

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45521/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud

Renascence - https://gutenberg.org/files/109/109-h/109-h.htm

Mother to Son - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47559/mother-to-son

Connect with Cynthia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthiagustavson/

Connect with Kent on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentgustavson/

In-Versing Your Life is a Podcasts That Matter production: https://podcaststhatmatter.org

🗳️ Elections are close and people find it harder to talk to one another. 0:43
🧐 Looking through different lenses showed me something different. 1:34
👂 'Sound principles' a poem from 'Please Use This for Children and Not for War and Guns' book. 2:46
🧠 What kind of lenses had people who made fun of smart girls? 5:06
🧨 Why are we so divided and have so different lenses to look at the world? 6:27
🕶️ All the lenses we need to get rid of. 7:55
📖 Poem 'Number Three' from a book 'Between Tahlequah and Tulsa' 9:16
⛩️ When you live in different places. you have to remove lenses to understand a different culture and people. 13:09
📝Poetry assignment: think about the lenses you wear and if those are stopping you understand people around you and vice versa. 13:53
🗣️ Try using awareness of lenses in and try to talk with someone that you couldn't talk to before.15:29

🏙️ 00:15 There is always somebody to help you in Tulsa.

🐦 01:06 Canada geese's community spirit is strong.

🪁 01:53 Poem: "Migration"

💞 04:15 The poem is based on a true story - wild geese sacrifice for the one who is not as strong.

♿ 04:55 Mr. Gustavson, who is in a wheelchair, is often helped by others, too.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 05:36 "And that's what I wish for you, that you have a community."

⛑️ 05:59 "We need one another. We need to care for one another."

🧒 06:20 Visit Cynthia at http://cynthiagustavson.com  and find out more about her book, Please Use This for Children and Not for War and Guns, at https://cynthiagustavson.com/2020/08/15/please-use-this-for-children-not-for-war-and-guns/

✝️ 00:15 There are funerals where nobody shows up and funerals where there are many friends and relatives.

⛪ 01:23 Not all the relatives could get to the funeral of Cynthia's Dad because the church was full.

🥀 01:54 "Loss has so many ramifications to it."

📖 01:58 Cynthia introduces a poem from her therapy book "In-Versing Your Life", which can also be found in her e-book, "I Don't Write Love Poems"

🌧️️02:25 Poem: "Loss"

🩹 04:07 We have to learn to live through the loss, it's inevitable.

🧶 04:54 Small losses help us deal with major losses.

🔗 05:37 Visit Cynthia and find out more about her books, at https://cynthiagustavson.com/books-music/

🏥 00:15 Both Cynthia's mother and sister are breast cancer survivors. She wrote a poem about that.

📕 01:06 The poem can be found in the book "Re-Versing Your Pain"

👩‍⚕️ 01:27 Poem: "Double Helix Twisting"

👙 07:56 Remember to check yourself regularly!

🌱 08:15 Visit Cynthia at http://cynthiagustavson.com  and find out more about her books, at https://www.bloomingtwig.com/Authors/Cynthia-Gustavson.

🍁 00:15 It's a privilege to live out at the lake house. It is so quiet and the fall is beautiful.

⛰️ 00:38 Cynthia talks about what inspired her book, "Between Tahlequah and Tulsa."

🧅 01:14 Poem: "Number Two"

🙃 03:10 Do you think that you are approaching things from upside down?

🎯 03:39 Are you direct when you want something?

👁️ 04:01 What are you hungry for?

🤗 04:25 Think about the time when what you had was enough in your life.

📚 05:10 Watch for Cynthia's new book and, in the meantime, visit her at http://cynthiagustavson.com  and find out more about her other books, at https://www.bloomingtwig.com/Authors/Cynthia-Gustavson.

🥶 00:15 Cynthia muses about how it finally got cold in Oklahoma.

🧭 00:51 Today's poem is a new one, exploring the symbolism of the sides of the world using the "grid".

🌐 01:38 The "grid" exists everywhere - you always know the sides of the world.

️🎙️ 02:00 Poem: "The Grid"

🧩 03:10 This week's question: how do you see the entire world through the grid of your first home? 

‍ 🏫 04:17  "...as we get older, the only way that we learn something new..."

❔ 05:10 Is that working for you?

📲 06:02 Visit Cynthia at 

http://cynthiagustavson.com  and find out more about her book, Bully! The Big Book About Bullies and the Bullied, at https://www.bloomingtwig.com/Authors/Cynthia-Gustavson.

😇 What makes us change from day to day?  0:57
😮 The whole concept of change is about nurture. 1:44
🎙️ Cynthia reads a poem 2:43
🪕 Music has always been a big part of Cynthia's life. 6:02
🎶 Music her Dad played opened a door to a whole another world to Cynthia. 7:18
🤔 What heritage did you own that made you different from other people? 9:41
🤔 Who or what shaped you as a teenager? 11:10
🌳 Each decade brings fresh changes—positive and negative. 12:53
🦄 'I used to be, but now I am' exercise. 16:00
🌷 'I used to be a flower but now I'm a broken stem.' 17:15
💟  I am now, but I will be. 19:03
https://cynthiagustavson.com/books-music/

🧩 Poetry is a puzzle, and I make up my rules. 01:14
📖 A poem from the book "Conversing with God, poetry for pastoral counseling and spiritual direction." 2:05
🐦 About the poem  Catbird 1609 C 2:24
😊 Cynthia reads a poem. 3:54
🤓 Birds are so programmed. 5:40
🌱 Exercise: What is growing on my soil? 7:20
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Are our siblings growing in the same soil as we are? 10:04
🤩 Exercise: using your name as an acrostic poem to describe yourself. 14:29

🥇Cynthia's first poem was published in a national publication in 1984. 0:14

😇Dialysis is a poem of hope. 0:59

🎙️Cyntia reads the poem Dialysis. 2:54

🍂Enjoy the colors of autumn. 3:48

https://cynthiagustavson.com/books-music/