On Speaking Up

a writing prompt + another Jane Hirshfield poem and resource + February Writing Hour

Welcome to Writing in Company. This is a community for you, whatever your experience with writing. It’s an invitation to write about what matters—grief, gratitude, grace, and more. Each week I share some ideas and a writing prompt, meant to be jumping-off points. Use the prompts however you like—to journal, to draft a writing project, as prayer ideas, or for another creative endeavor. If this one doesn’t resonate, look back through the archive for more.

In an off-kilter world, using our words can help us stay centered and move through despair toward healing and wholeness. Writing in company with others saved me once. Let’s keep writing now, alone and together, and trust our words to help us see and say what matters.

One of my goals for this Writing in Company project is to share good resources for writers who want to explore what matters. Since you are a part of it, that means I’m making assumptions about you.

I’m assuming that you love words and poetry and writing, like I do. I’m assuming that you want to read good words and good poetry and good writing, like I do. I’m also assuming that while you may have your own sources for those, you are still eager to learn about new ones, like I am.

I am NOT assuming that you are writing in response to all those sources, including my weekly prompts. (But I hope you are writing sometimes…)

I’m also assuming that at least some of what matters to me is also what matters to you. Truth. Beauty. Love. Community. Grace. Goodness. The dignity and worth of all people. The call to care for our neighbors. And more…..

For many of my 30 years of ministry, I have operated under the generous assumption that we could profess similar faith values, even while our politics might be different. Today I no longer understand how that can be, apart from a well-developed theology of sin and brokenness. I’m watching the political dismantling of aid to our neighbors, the silencing of climate scientists, the attempted erasure of our trans family, and the terrorizing of our immigrant friends, all while trying to read Luke and Genesis and Acts and the Psalms, and I cannot reconcile it.

I’ve never been a particularly prophetic preacher or writer. I deal more in nuance, metaphor, and story, rather than in plain spoken truth to power. I overanalyze my words that get published or preached, and my heart still pounds when I share something that might be controversial or misunderstood. My ingrained middle-child, peace-keeping, conflict-avoiding, Enneagram 9 introverted self would rather be curled up in my room with a book and a snack while others argue and slam doors.

But here in my little corner of the internet, I am trying to be clearer and speak up about what matters to me. I hope and pray that the same things matter to you.

Last week I shared a poem from Jane Hirshfield about counting what remains in the middle of a fractured and broken day and world. This week I learned two more things about Jane Hirshfield. First, she’s new on Substack (welcome, Jane!) and you can find her here. Second, she founded a resource that you should know about: Poets for Science.¹

The idea began in January of 2017. That’s when scientists who worked for government agencies were first being silenced by the brand new administration. Hirshfield wrote a poem that she read at the March for Science that spring, and that poem and experience then catalyzed the creation of Poets for Science.

Now here we are in 2025, just weeks into the second term of an administration that is again silencing scientists and so many others. They think that removing words from websites and people from positions will silence history and historians, and science and scientists, and speakers/preachers/teachers/poets. It’s a destructive and dangerous move, but it can’t dim the truth. History will not be kind, and words matter even more now, including yours, mine, and Hirshfield’s.

a writing prompt

Here’s the poem Hirshfield wrote in January 2017.

On the Fifth Day

—by Jane Hirshfield

On the fifth day
the scientists who studied the rivers
were forbidden to speak
or to study the rivers.

The scientists who studied the air
were told not to speak of the air,
and the ones who worked for the farmers
were silenced,
and the ones who worked for the bees.

Someone, from deep in the Badlands,
began posting facts.

The facts were told not to speak
and were taken away.
The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.

Now it was only the rivers
that spoke of the rivers,
and only the wind that spoke of its bees,

while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees
continued to move toward their fruit.

The silence spoke loudly of silence,
and the rivers kept speaking,
of rivers, of boulders and air.

In gravity, earless and tongueless,
the untested rivers kept speaking.

Bus drivers, shelf stockers,
code writers, machinists, accountants,
lab techs, cellists kept speaking.

They spoke, the fifth day,
of silence.

Find a word, a phrase, or an image in the poem that speaks to you, and start your writing there. Or talk back to the poem or this moment in history. Keep your pen moving. Don’t let your inner editor or anyone else silence you. Your words matter.

You can hear the poet read her poem below.

February Writing Hour - Sat. Feb 22 | 4-5 pm Eastern

My next live writing hour on Zoom for paid subscribers is this Saturday. If you want to write in company with others, you are welcome to join in. You can upgrade your subscription for a month ($7) just to try it. A separate email to paid subscribers will go out with the link, or you can find it on my Substack tab called Writing Hours. Let’s write together.

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Join in the conversation with others in the comments. Tell me what you think about the prompt, or where your writing takes you.

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Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash

1. Here’s how Hirshfield describes the connection between poetry and science.

“Poetry and science are allies, not opposites.

Both are instruments of discovery, and together they make the two feet of one walking. We can only weigh the full meaning of facts by how we feel about them. Feelings are meaningful and useful to us because they emerge from the truths of this shifting, astonishing world.

Observation and imagination, the microscope and the metaphor, the sense of amazement—you need all of them to take the measure of a moment, of a life. Poetry and science each seek to ground our lives in both what exists and the sense of the large, of mystery and awe. Every scientist I know is grounded in curiosity, wonder, the spirit of exploration, the spirit of service. As is every poet.”

—Jane Hirshfield, 2017, from the Poets for Science website, where a beautiful collection of poetry lives. Add it to your resources!