Alderperson Denise Fenton's (District 6) Invocation At 08/17/2022 Common Council Meeting

Mayor Woodford: Tonight's invocation will be delivered by Alder Fenton.

Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6): Good evening. My original plan when I requested tonight's invocation was to commemorate the anniversary of the 19th Amendment on Friday and Women's Equality Day on the 26th of this month. But events of the past week have changed my mind.

I sat down to write and everything demanded to be heard—museums and parks and mental health and gun violence and internet trolls and being afraid and being angry. Clearly impossible. So it seems like a good idea to leave it to Ellen Kort.

Advice To Beginners from her 2010 collection "If I Had My Life To Do Over Again"

Begin. Keep on beginning. Nibble on everything.
Take a hike. Teach yourself to whistle. Lie.
The older you get the more they'll want your stories.
Make them up. Talk to stones. Short-out electric
fences. Swim with the sea turtles into the moon.
Drink wild geranium tea. Everything that happens
will happen and none of us will be safe from it.
Pull up anchors. Sit close to the god of night.
Lie still in a stream and breathe water. Climb to the
top of the highest tree until you come to the branch
where the blue heron sleeps. Eat poems for breakfast.
Wear them on your forehead. Lick the mountain's
bare shoulder. Measure the color of days
around your mother's death. Put your hands over
your face and listen to what they tell you.