Credo: I believe in the power of words

And in the power of examining our beliefs

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Hello dear readers!

In my last newsletter I mentioned the idea of writing credo (I believe) statements and the power of closely identifying and then declaring what we believe in. I believe in research, generosity and the power of sharing good words written by other people. So here I want to highlight some credo poems and statements written by other people.

Credos don’t have to be a full list of everything you believe in. That would be overwhelming. The word is sometimes associated with faith statements such as the Nicene Creed or Maimonides’s 13 Principles of Faith, but they can be entirely secular. You can have many separate statements, written as a response to how you walk through the world encountering different challenges and joys. There are many examples to choose from, so I have chosen ones whose sentiments mirror my own current feelings and thoughts today. For space and copyright reasons, some are only quoted in part but the reference to the full version is given. Please do read that full version so you can see things in context.

I hope these credo examples will inspire you either to adopt their words or to write your own. (Or indeed to make visual art that represents your thoughts). I hope they give you strength in these difficult global times. These examples are polished and literary in tone but yours can be just as powerful as a series of rough sentences scrawled on the back of a shopping list with a kid’s crayon. Or a voice note to yourself. Just take time to dig deep to the bottom of your heart to find not what you think you should believe, not what others are pressuring you to believe, but what you do believe. Find a way to capture the belief that makes you feel solid and hopeful. Go past ugly thoughts toward beauty. Dig under fear to hope.

Credos to keep you alive in times of desperate unfairness

Maybe you will write your credo as a declaration both a determination of your decision to live righteously and with kindness and as a call on others to do the same. Maybe that belief will be something that keeps you sane in hard times

This poem by Alfred Kreymbourg resonates with me. By way of context Kreymbourg in 1915 wrote a fictional account of an encounter with a prostitute called Edna: The Girl of the Street. This was his first published work and meant as a commentary on the evils of prostitution. When the State was unable to distinguish between fiction and fact, his publisher was charged with obscenity offences. One might think that fear of such events reoccurring would mark the end of his literary career, but no. He went on to write poetry, an autobiography, and several puppet and radio plays.

His words ring with the tenacity of the narrator of the poem to hold on to both his humanity, his ability to love, and his creative power even as he brushed with a will to die.

The secondary benefit of a credo like this, if released into the wild, is that it acts as an anchor for other people who feel a similar desperation at the unfairness of the world. That itself is a declaration of the will to live described in this poem. Having felt that similar desperation, I remain very grateful for his words, written so long ago. Can you gift the world a similar long-lasting credo of hope?

Credo

I sing the will to love:

the will that carves the will to live,

the will that saps the will to hurt,

the will that kills the will to die;

the will that made and keeps you warm,

the will that points your eyes ahead,

the will that makes you give, not get,

a give and get that tell us what you are:

how much a god, how much a human.

I call on you to live the will to love.

Credos to argue with untruths

A starting point for a credo could be a statement made by someone else that you disagree with. To avoid simply writing an argument, elevate the credo by using similes and metaphors.

In his poem Credo, Andrew Zawacki uses a nature theme to discuss two opposing viewpoints about the way the world works.

It begins

You say wind is only wind

& carries nothing nervous

in its teeth.

I do not believe it.

I have seen leaves desist

from moving

although the branches

move, & I

believe a cyclone has secrets

the weather is ignorant of.

I believe

in the violence of not knowing….

The whole poem can, like any good poem be read with different lenses, but in it, I see a shared despair at the failure of the fictive ‘you’ he is addressing to see the reality of the destruction in the world. Once again in the teeth of this desperation, lies a quiet determination of a creator to create with words. Because that is how writers are made to be. The only way we can live fully is to use our gifts.

…..I believe in disquiet,

the pressure it plies, believe a cloud

to govern the limits of night.

I say I,

but little is left to say it, much less

mean it--

& yet I do…..

Credos to find answers.

A credo doesn’t even have to use the word ‘believe’. It can be grounded in one or two very specific real-life experiences.

In her poem Credo, Christine Stewart–Nunez writes about watching her preschool child who “stunned/ by/the science museum/sticks his hand /into a glacier, /the chunk /a broken testimony, /the history /of/a world dissolving...” and who sings about the Armadillo in his ‘Louis Armstrong voice…at four years old, an armor-clad mammal his muse.” She combines the antics of this child with her adult observations on the architecture of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao and Peter Eisenman’s House 11a.

The theme that binds the two together is the way they both look at details, note the range of variations and differences in the world, and treasure them. Then by so doing she glimpses answers

….A range and scope of fractals
inspire awe, a cascade of never-ending
wonder at both
connections and aberrations as
well
as places of perfect order and broken patterns. When
I consider what we
may be reduced-sized copies of, I grapple
with insight;
it hovers in physics and biology, the shapes of letters,
the magic of new languages,
the mystery of cells and synapses, the music
of my sons’ voices,
the geometries of buildings and trees.
Sometimes
I glimpse an answer, something like seeing starlight years after
the star dies, supernovas….

Can you write from the concrete observations in your life to at least find your way in the direction of where answers lie even if you cannot quite grasp hold of a full understanding of why your world, your country, and your life are so broken? Can you balance that brokenness with a recognition of the connections that do still exist?

A credo for connecting self with the higher powers

Whatever your faith, or whether you prefer not to use that word at all, we all have some sense (even a tentative one) of what is higher than us in the world. A credo can help you connect those esoteric beliefs with the way that we should behave or in what we should trust.

Rabbi Rachel Barenblatt of the Velveteen Rabbi blog (surely still the best blog title ever) has a post about her own credo which starts: