Drawing is leaning
against a pencil
until it talks.
Composing a poem is leaning
against a word
until…
it draws?
makes a picture?
until it is not
until it vanishes
and the scene
or thought, or the love
is there…is…and
the word is not
Monthly Archives: May 2014
When Comes the Done
I’m impatient!
I want The Done!
Yeah, yeah, bread must bake,
after yeast casts its spells magic,
after grain finds glory in the grind,
after the scintillating silver scythe slices,
after the struggling stalks stick out of tight earth,
after the silent seed settles in furrows,
after the rough plough rips,
after the vision.
True becomings rise
from granted goings,
so I sit, wait, and ask
that Grace keep flowing
Fragrant on the wind
In the field,
damp with dawn’s ablutions
in lakes, and mists
the wheat waves,
sways, whiles away
the time passing,
time dancing,
time light and lilting,
time ponderous and paunchy…
always the time…
And always the wheat,
ever returning to die
and rise again
and die and rise
undefeated and always
dancing its tango
with time.
And the moon watches,
and glows with delight
from dances of her own
in the bright and starry night.
She has been filled
and emptied
and filled again
these eons,
these mere minutes,
these seasons…
And always
she delights in sparking
wheat to rise,
tides to turn,
and the sun
to take heart
and shine again.
Into the field,
for the first time
in this river, this grind,
a graceful clear bright chime
blooms fertile,
lush life flourishing
midst flowy flux
and flowers poke,
they peer,
they peep out,
and then more boldly
they bloom and blossom.
At long last
the wheat connects and
the moon embraces and
the Promised Final End and Graces
of All Journeys wafts fragrant
on the wind.
Being Us Two
So it be
between
us two
a giving
be our taking
a making
our unmaking
a doing
what we undo
A fantastic and very informative essay helping to clarify gender
Constance, I think the biggest obstacle between most people and acceptance of the multiple gender expressions in our world, is ignorance.
Ignorance.
So, the most effective way to eradicate that obstacle is education. In that spirit I offer yet another reblog of a post that does a great job providing such education. As technology has advanced, the nuances of our universe are increasingly revealed…they have always been there. We have defined things by what we see, what we know…it is only natural to do this.
So…I pray that your eyes would be enlightened and your horizons expanded by the following post.
Love, Charissa
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Intersex: What is It, and What It Means for Sexuality
If some people are born neither male nor female, what does that say about our traditional views of sex and gender, and as these individuals will grow up to have sexual orientations, how can those orientations be defined? These are the questions asked by Michael Passaro in an essay which explores the possibility for a labeling system which validates and makes visible intersex individuals.
Lately I have been doing a lot of thinking about the gender and sexuality spectrum. I’ve discussed many things, from how we can and should define bisexuality, to whether sexual orientation should be a special class from other attractions. I will most likely do separate posts on each of these but one of the topics which interests me most is that of biological sex. What is sex? What are its defining characteristics? And how does it intersect with our many other characteristics and identities?
Lets start with the very basic. What is sex? Seems obvious to most. Sex is being male or female. Right? Well, yes. But maybe no. At least we can say that this is the widely understood use of the word. Let’s note that sex is not to be confused with gender. Gender is the social construct of categories of people and the behaviors and ways people are supposed to feel and relate to those categories/behaviors. But let’s explore a little bit into what it means to have a sex.
I suppose the simplest way to do this is to ask how do we know what sex you are? This is determined at birth by a doctor and is dependent on your developed sex organs. If you have a penis and testes you are male. If not, female. Simple right? We run into problem with this system when we encounter infants born with differences in their sex organs’ development so that they don’t really have a penis or a vagina or a clitoris. So which sex are these people? Well, doctors have decided in the past that they should be altered to fit into a binary system that cannot represent the form of the child.
As you can imagine, this worked for a time but soon came under scrutiny. People were slipping through the cracks. Because most of the children who were operated on were made into ‘girls’ these cracks were pushed open when people started to experience problems related to men’s health. This combined with the growing science around DNA moved sex’s definition to determined more by the the chromosomes contained within your cells.
This has led to even more interesting areas of what it means to be male or female. Almost everyone knows by the 7th grade that a female has two X chromosomes and a male has one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. However like all things in life, things aren’t this simple. There are many variations that can occur. There are people who only have one X chromosome. People who are XXY or XYY. There are XXX people and there are XXY people. What do we make of these? If DNA is the defining factor and there are so many different possibilities why do we only have 2 sexes?
Science has created a circular loop. We look at your physical characteristics at birth, and if needed we look at your DNA, but if your DNA isn’t fitting into the XX or XY categories we then look at your physical development again.
I, and many others, propose that there is a false sense of security in there being only two sexes. Anne Fausto-Sterling, a professor in biology and gender studies at Brown University, put forward that there could be as many as 5 different sex classifications (in a thought experiment). There is growing recognition in the scientific field that intersex is a legitimate claim against a binary understanding of sex. Germany and Australia have officially recognized that sex may not necessarily be only male and female. Australia allows for a sex “X” and Germany allows for children to be born with an indeterminate sex (to be determined at a later time).
There are many issues to deal with for intersex individuals. Issues of gender, issues of recognition, issues of bodily integrity and many more. All of these are best addressed by those who are directly affected by such things. So I would like to look at what this means for the rest of us who are (think we are) conventionally sexed. What does this mean for our understanding of sexuality?
The most glaring complication is what this means for our understanding of sexual orientation. In general sexual orientations are in relation to one’s self and the object of desire. Namely, if they are your sex, or the ‘opposite’. This is complicated when we talk about sexual orientation in terms of gender instead of sex but let’s focus on sex. Because now we do not have a binary what does it mean to be ‘heterosexual’? What is the opposite of male? What is the opposite of intersex? This is further complicated dependent on the number of sexes we allow. Can only some people be heterosexual then?
A further complexity arises when we look at what it means to be bi/pansexual. Again, operating under the assumption of sex as the object of sexual orientation, bisexual and pansexuality are the same (because traditionally there is only two sexes). However with the introduction of intersex this changes. Do we then interpret bisexual to mean two sexes? Do we adopt the view of many bisexual activists and say its attraction to one’s own sex and others? Maybe this would depend too on how many sexes we deem there to be.
Lets assume there are 3 (male, female, and intersex). Is a bisexual person still the same as a pansexual one? A person who is attracted to their own sex and others? Or is it a person attracted to two sexes? Many people might say the latter. To those I raise this question: Suppose I am a male, and I am attracted to females, and attracted to intersex individuals. BUT let us also say that I am only attracted to intersex people who resemble females. What is my sexual orientation? I seem to be bisexual. Because technically I am attracted to two sexes. However, am I really attracted to intersex people or am I actually attracted to their female-ness? It seems inaccurate to say that I am attracted to intersex people as a whole because its really only some.
This seems to justify breaking sex down further than only 3 sexes. Lets say we adopt the 5 sex system put forward by Fausto-Sterling (or even more sexes). Now how do we deal with the bi/pansexuality issue? Does/should bisexuality apply to those who are attracted to 2, 3, 4 sexes (and on and on)? Or ought we have trisexuals, quadsexuals, etc.? I’m not sure.
For clarity’s sake maybe classification ought be specific to the number of sexes you are attracted to. But is it the same for a male to be attracted to a female and a male as it is for a female to be attracted to females and female-presenting intersex? I’m not sure. Maybe we ought overhaul our entire classification system? Maybe the number is not the important bit but the specific sexes we are attracted to. Is it better to have a more complicated but also more comprehensive/accurate system?
Its clear that the system that we have doesn’t work. We can’t decide how to determine sex, let alone tell how many there are. The current binary places people into tiny boxes and clearly others many. It has been used to justify altering infants bodies unnecessarily, not only dangerous for the child then but then altering their entire life (forcing them to take hormones and still have the risk of medical complications later). As for sexual orientations – as a classification system we need to make a judgment call as to what it is that is important. Is the defining characteristic the number of sexes your attracted to? Or is the sex of the person important? If all we want is simplicity then clearly numbers is the way to go but I would question the value of a classification system that doesn’t accurately reflect the diversity that exists.
Read more about sexuality here.
This essay was originally published at Issues of Humanity. Republished with Permission. Image via Shutterstock.
What I Want To Say
It’s as simple as it can be.
I’ll leave the clothes off my words
and address you nakedly as anyone can
each one was perfect–
that is what I want to say–
perfect
the perfection found
only in Loving.
Do you understand?
It seems against everything we know and
It seems against everything we believe and
It is true.
To say “I love you” is a humiliation
It is the Absolute Narrowing of Possibilities
And everyone, down to
the last person
Dreads it…and wants it…
For only in narrowing is found
Endless Widening Freedom
Love, in a sexual world.
Constance…I am finally ready to write about love and sex.
Yep…if you are offended by the mere mention of such things, you should probably skip this post. I knew a lot of christian folk who actually thought sex was a nuisance at best, and dangerously distasteful at worst. Somehow, someway, one of the most incredible processes They created, if not THE most incredible act of all time, became “dirty”, “shameful”, and downright distracting.
Here is a pretty accurate rod of discernment: if something is simultaneously hated and feared and attacked by christians in general while being venerated, exaggerated and obsessed with by the world at large, the odds are very good that we are seeing the polluting of something originally designed to be a high and awesome thing.
Now…I want to be totally clear: I do firmly believe that the highest and best expression of sexual union is in a monogamous relationship where the partners are committed for life. I truly believe that when two people make love, there is a transaction emotionally, mentally, and spiritually that melds them together in some unique and irreproducible way. There is a joining, a union that is one that should make us feel a hushed awe that such a thing could occur: that I am still in a separate and distinct body from my beloved, and yet something of her somehow someway has melded in me!! I also believe that They created sex for far more than mere procreation. There are deep and mystical truths that await the lovers who commit to travelling down Love’s Road of Sacrifice. They made it pleasant, fun, enjoyable. They hooked up our brain chemistry to change in reaction to sexual activity, they hooked up our hearts to immediately think love in association with sex. I do not believe it is sinful to talk of sex anymore than it is to talk of cows: the sinfulness enters in through how we talk about either thing.
Growing up, of course I experienced sexual feelings, although they were sometimes pretty confusing for me, and I even had a few girlfriends with whom I was physical and made out…didn’t go “all the way”, but too far down the way, in hindsight. But I was by no means a sex-driven person, and I was flummoxed in the locker room listening to the guys talk about sex in ways that I didn’t even know of, let alone enter my mind!
I met my darling, and I was so incredibly blessed to find a genuine lover of God who matched up with the principles I held. We married, and our marriage was a wonderland for us each. We were hungry for one another with love’s appetite, and sexuality was like our spoon to feed each other. I cannot recall even one time when either of us denied the other if they needed the release, the comfort, or just the very humorous amazing wonder that making love is!
During the time we were growing up, sexuality and its expression in our culture changed dramatically. There were a lot of oppressions, a lot of things wrong, and in the effort to get free of those things, things got unmoored…and drifted out to sea…until, we are where we are now.
(Remember Constance, this is not a rant against sex! lol)
Venereal diseases are on the rise, and harder to cure. Unwanted pregnancies result in brokenness and or death. Hearts, spirits and psyches are fractured regularly.
And now…young people don’t even have the thrill of dating anymore, but instead “hook-up”.
Porn is virtually everywhere (I actually literally mean virtually). Any of you could stop reading here, go to google, type one word and BAM! Whatever you would imagine is most likely just a click away. It’s so different than a generation ago, when there was little accessibility and virtually no anonymity.
Throw in all the issues of becoming as a human being, growing up and developing, wrestling with our separation and alienation bred by the brokenness of this world, throw in gender issues, or existential issues, or grudges against God due to the foolish and hateful activity of people taking the Father’s good Name in vain…and you have a real witches brew which is such a draught as to poison anyone.
But…….
….maybe……
…………………..just maybe……
we might reach a tipping point the other way. Let me explain.
When I was in college, I worked in the KMART deli, and scooped ice cream. I was allowed to eat as much as I wanted. And after about 10 days, I did not eat ice cream until I had been away from that job a good 2 months!! It was so common, so pervasive, that I was hungry for something different!
I am hoping that something similar would happen to us culturally. How many different pictures can there be of a woman’s body, of a man’s body, and of the finite number of ways those biological organisms can combine? Surely it gets boring eventually? Surely there is the cry rising in the heart, “There must be MORE than this!”? Surely there is an acknowledgement of the increasingly fractured essence we see in so many these days?
Constance, I would gently propose that even some of you have wounds, scars and terrible memories and burdens that were a result of sexual experience that was not of the highest and best?
But here is one of the core things I wanted to get to: as my transition progresses, my libido has fallen way off, and I want to tell you: it has not made one bit of difference in our relationship! We were soo fortunate in that our foundation was first, last, and always love. I feel a closeness and intimacy and adoration for my baby such as I have never known could go so deep, and climb so high.
It is as if the very best aspects of sexuality have been distilled down and filtered out, and we can drink the “essence of Union”.
If either of us wanted, we would do our dead level best to satisfy the other…but we are both deeply contented and flourishing in love.
The message in the culture these days is that this is a state of affairs which ought to be corrected! If you aren’t having sex and lots of it all the time you just ain’t with it, according to that message. And if you are like me…sob…you are to be pitied deeply! “Poor thing! Get some Viagra, some Cialis …get a new car and new clothes and a new sexual partner!”
I rejoice that I have been given such a tremendous gift…the most amazing person anyone could want…and also the gift of my gender sorting taking place in a context completely free of sexuality or sexual desire. It lends a clarity and depth of insight which would otherwise be covered up.
Here is a gentle nudge: clear your mind and heart of the constant clamoring regarding sex. Once clear, set it on higher things, like love, joy patience, peace and pursue serving some other person with your life, with no expectation or requirement of payment.
You will be amazed at how things change…
With tender care and love,
Charissa
“Wadded with stupidity?”
“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.”
George Eliot, Middlemarch, (London: Penguin, 1994),
Do you find this quote describing you at all? Once in a while? Frequently? All the time? Never?
I know that Mary Anne Evans, writing under a male pen name (a different post altogether!!!), describes a dilemma for us, and I think everyone knows, knows it deep down inside…feels it.
Here is the dilemma: if you allow yourself to really see…if you are living so as to strengthen and establish eyes of the heart and soul that truly see, then all the wonder and glory and brokenness and tragedy and beauty swells in sound and presence so as to be a magnificent and overwhelming symphonic tide! Standing on the beach of perception, and staring out at that vast and glorious sea, every living thing a player in the cosmic orchestra. But, this life is costly, often lonely, and can be overwhelming, especially without companionship…and companionship worthy of the challenge, and not “crabs in the bucket” who will pull you back down into the miasma with them.
The alternative: choose to not be overwhelmed by simply stuffing “cultural cotton” in your ears! Music, video-oriented media, fashion, objects, hobbies, the list goes on…even friends and family can serve to “dull the roar”.
Sadly, you do indeed become spiritually blind, spiritually deaf, and thus inevitably spiritually dumb, …and then you walk, the living dead thru a wonder world, having eyes and not seeing, and ears and not hearing, and a tongue stilled from the soul’s truest longing to sing in gratitude and wonder at the living and vital home we have been given.
I think that Ms Evans was a bit cynical, and who could blame her given the sorts of barriers and prison walls she was thrust into as a woman in that time…I’m not so sure that we “wad ourselves with stupidity”…but I do think that she accurately describes the results, when we choose not to engage our world with living hearts and souls: we become stupid in the older sense of the word, and stumble zombie-like thru our days, miserable and hungry and desperate to consume anything that looks living, only to infect that with our death, instead of being infused with its life.
No wonder zombie themes are so huge in our culture right now!
Here is an exhortation: take a chance, and make a change…if you need to. Set your heart on higher things, and actively seek to see, to hear, and then finally to speak! Ask someone to work within you…She has many names, and will never turn away a true request made with humble heart. And then practice some form of expression as your outlet.
Hey…why do you think I love poetry so much? This whole thing is one Amazing and Wonderful Poem!
Blessings to you this day, and oodles of love, peace and joy as always shmeared with mounds of Grace!
Charissa
Between the Porch and the Altar (Scripture song, 1992)
One thing I used to love to do is take a passage of scripture that got into my heart and took up haunting residence there, and turn it into a song. Often times, I tried to make these songs something that most people found current to their situation, or the situation of the body of believers at that time.
There is a creative art to first hearing the melody, and then to making words in English that fit the meaning of the passage with integrity.
Often, the end result was that there would be free singing at the end, and it was remarkable how often coherent, meaningful and very touching moments occurred with this, as the one with the impromptu song would sing, and the group would then echo call and response style.
This is one of those songs, taken from a highly prophetic and symbolic book, the book of Joel, and it is chapter 2:1-12)
Even now return to the Lord with weeping,
and rend your hearts and not your garments.
Come and sanctify the congregation,
and assemble the elders and gather the children
and the nursing babes…
and cry out to Him…
Let the Bridegroom rise from His holy mountain
Let the bride arise from her bridal chamber
Let the priests who pour out their lives before Him
Weep between the porch and the altar, crying,
“Spare Thy people Lord…
Show us mercy Lord…”
Bridge:
Oh God of mercy please hear our cry!
Do not forget our desperation!
Why should the nations mock “Where is your god?”
Oh Jesus, we cry out to You
Chorus:
Between the porch and the altar,
We consecrate our hearts!
Between the porch and the altar,
Pour Your love over us in the Beauties of Holiness!
Pour Your love over us in the Beauties of Holiness!
Lord, we come before You by Your LovingKindness,
And we seek You boldly in abundant Grace.
May Your Blood Atonement make us clean and holy,
For we long to see You face to Face
We are hungry Lord…
For our husband Lord…
And the King will sing to His chosen people
“I will send you grain, and new wine and oil.
I will pour My Spirit out in fullness,
And remove the stigma from My Bride
I will dwell with her…
In her very midst…”
Bridge & Chorus
Wasted For You (worship chorus 1995)
(Back in 1995, I was a full time worship leader for the body of believers that I was attending…the place where I taught, led, and tried best I could to serve. This is a chorus I wrote in those days, to try to indicate a total resolve to follow Jesus where He led, regardless of the cost or place.
Little did I know that the journey would lead here!! Honestly, back then if someone had told me the road would lead to a discovery that I was a transgender person, I would have thought they were crazy! See, I was like most people…I thought that being transgender meant being sexually interested in dressing as a woman and having homosexual activity with another man.
I was totally ignorant, but in my own “righteousness” and view of anyone different, I automatically assumed that A: they were “weird” and B: they were sinful. Oh, and of course I “loved” them…Hah!
SO much has changed, and Jesus and Grace did indeed take me up on my bold words. I never knew how much pain and wrenching would be involved in such a revelation as They brought…and I also could not even imagine the liberty and healing that has resulted.
The good fruits in me are wonderful, and they in essence build my trust, to issue another bold proclamation to surrender even more…and that is scary, because the last one was so difficult, that the thought of something else like that makes me quail!
But here is the truth: I would rather die running towards Them instead of running away.
I hope that the next phase involves opportunities to tell people about the real People I know…the real Father and Jesus and Mama…the tender and loving and humorous and creative and accepting and teaching and transforming Beings that They have been for me.
Constance…please, if you are not used to reading about God, or talking about who they are, or if you have past wounds, bad experiences or pollutions from people who took Their Name in vain, give what I have to say about Them a chance.
I assure you: if They accept the likes of me, they will accept anybody!!)
There’s a cry in my spirit, an unquenchable flame.
I’ve been captured by Jesus, and I will never be the same!
I’ve been branded forever. I’ve been cut to the core.
By the Lion of Judah, shaken by His Mighty Roar!
So I will spend every moment, and I will waste all my wealth,
Jesus, come break me open, and pour me out for Yourself.
For I have burned all my bridges. I’m past the point of no return…
Jesus, let me be, yielded totally, and wasted for You.
Descant: I want to be wasted for you Lord (repeat)
Watchman’s Duty (Song 1982, when I was trying to be scary and significant! lol)
Was walkin down an alleyway and darkness gathered round,
I spied a slicked down rebel and he looked me up and down.
He had the cut of one who’d slashed all ties with the old ways,
He looked at me like a rattlesnake appraising new found prey.
Suddenly he waved at me with something cold and black!
I turned around and I was face to face with a modern maniac!
His pistol whispered in my ear of burning funeral pyres,
And then he pulled the trigger! But the weapon didn’t fire!
Chorus:
I’m standin on the city wall and I see war at hand
It won’t be some forsaken spot, it’s here in our homeland.
I blow the trumpet’s warning loud, this moment you must seize!
Cus violence is like VD it’s a sociable disease!
The man, he stepped back with a laugh that didn’t reach his eyes.
He said he was just practicing for the coming dark’s demise.
He said “This life is war, and you will learn that war is Hell.”
To hear him talk you’d never guess that we was all livin so well.
“World War 2 has never stopped!” he cried in desperation.
“This so called peace you hide behind has just been intermission!” He said
“Shoot or be shot! Survival of the fittest, you ain’t got a choice!”
I might be wrong, but I think there was panic in his voice.
Chorus:
Then the man he walked away and left me on that street,
a vicarious participant in his desperate retreat.
I put aside all lesser things to face the alley’s mouth.
Somehow I knew it’d do no good to migrate further south.
Seven days went by before I saw that man again.
This time he was the newspaper’s hot front page specimen.
The headlines screamed into my eyes “MAN MURDERS SOCIALITE”
Then the column droned out horrors of that fateful night.
With loaded gun he’d followed a girl home from a restaurant.
Then he shoved her to the ground, his face twisted and gaunt!
He shot her in the back one time, she gave a piercing cry,
She sat up gasping–then she fell–in pain she bled and died!
I testified at the man’s trial to a room of fearful folk
I said “His act was one of hate–it’s time that you awoke!
And looked around, your affluence is but a dinosaur
Cus many here among us seem to think that life is war!”
Chorus:
And I’m standin on the city wall and I see war around me!
It ain’t in some forsaken spot, it’s here in my own family!
Battle lines are being drawn, you must prepare to fight,
For mercy, justice, love and truth…….
……or we’ll just fade into the night…….
(painting by Kristen Beck: please support her however you can!)
Grand Mall Seizure (from my “punk rock phase, 1982)
I was rambling thru the mall on the move to avoid them storefront snares.
Watchin people cruisin by me wearin those “as advertised” hypnotic stares.
Some of them looked like machines, and some of them were worn out by their Calvin Klein jeans
But me I just kept runnin from that sugar coated FM radio blair.
I fought thru hordes of folk who’d tear the shirt off your back over in Sears.
A bunch of bargain basement bounty hunters gibbering like a flock of auctioneers.
I saw a girl who looked like she was panicking, then I discovered that she was just a manikin!
A plastic Venus Fly Trap catchin human flies to feed her profiteers!
Chorus:
They were the victims of a Grand Mall Seizure!
Epileptic captives of a false scheme of leisure!
If you worship them golden gods of pleasure,
you gotta swallow your tongue and start doin’
The Grand Mall Seizure!
See that red faced man a-hustlin by moppin his forehead with his handkerchief?
He don’t know where he’s goin he’s just like a lemming leapin offa cliff!
That woman eatin chocolate Lady Fingers? She has forgotten she has value, not a memory lingers,
Of a time when humankind was more than micro-chip computer hieroglyph!
Can’t you see that you been mauled by them big boys up on Madison Avenue!!??
They pulled them alligator t-shirts over your eyes with their magical television voodoo.
You swallowed their bait hook line and sinker, and you been duped cus you refuse to BE A THINKER!
And you ain’t really in a mall at all, you’re in Consumer City Zoo!! And you’re the victim of a
Chorus
The “Ditz” Factor: Loving Liberty
I am a huge ditz these days…and loving it! I mean, the last several weeks has been nearly a laugh a minute for my baby and me as I forget things, or fail to see an obvious joke or factor, and then repeat it…you know what I mean, don’t you?
The ditz factor
What I used to tease her over, and she is not a ditz very often, just once in awhile.
She thinks payback is sweet, and she is right! Because this is something that never. could. happen. before.
Nope…never a ditz. Why?
Vigilance.
Self check, 60 times a minute, 60 minutes an hour, and 24 hours a day.
I had no idea how deeply and firmly I had me by the throat, choking down everything that might get me in trouble, that might get me called names again that scarred my memory forever like burns…I had developed these elaborate means by which to censor myself, and do it all unseen or “unknown”.
Except my baby knew…because I was not happy at the core, and I was not full at the core, and I wanted to not be without any good reason at all. It is only because of the Love of the Father, and Jesus and Lady Grace that I am here at all, and that is a pure fact. I find myself well within the 41% of all transgender people who consider suicide strongly, and yet by Their grace alone, not in the larger statistic of those who follow through.
So now? My estradiol works a wonder war on my poverty of soul, as it connects my body and my soul/mind/heart.
At last my brain is finding congruence and affirmation (slowly) whenever it talks to my body in their own talky language…they don’t fight and argue and separate anymore.
So I don’t check. Double check. Triple think. And the ditz factor climbs…I do theorize that the estradiol snickers as it runs around and lights the “ditz onboard” lamps in my soul. My baby says she laughs more now than in all the years combined (and I did make her laugh lots then, cus I figured that it was the least I could do for her, and it covered the sorrow in my core).
And the love keeps flowing, the light keeps growing, and my heart keeps knowing that
I am Charissa Grace, and I am under the Mercy and I’m okay.
Song for the Prodigals: Back in Your Love
When the dark night surrounds me, and I can’t find my way thru
Across the breakers like a beacon–You call my name and bring me back to You.
In the raging storm You calm me, with a pure love like I never knew,
Like a tree, You give me shelter, You comfort me and bring me back to You
Chorus
Back to Your Love, Back to Your Light
Back to Your arms, You make it all right!
Back in Your Love, Back in Your Light,
Back in Your arms, You make it all right
when I come back to you.
In the heart ache, in the sorrow, it seems like there ain’t nothin true,
And I can’t even face tomorrow, but there ain’t nothin else to do.
That’s when Your sweet sweet love comes tumbling down, tumbling down,
to resurrect me from the tomb
You light the flames of Holy Passion, and then You draw me ever back to You. (Chorus)
Coming Back Home (A country lament, sung waltz-style. Summer 1997)
(written while studying the parable of the prodigal son…we are all that prodigal, profligately wasteful. But the worst thing is that some end up being the older brother…prideful and haughty and stingy with love and grace and forgiveness.
And who would I aspire to be like? The one heart here that is tender and kind and generous.)
I’ve been on the road such a dusty long time,
felt the heat of the sun fill my head with cold chimes.
And freedom ain’t all that its’s cracked up to be,
cuz Your tough tender heart’s far away, far from me.
And I’m longing to see You, and look in Your face,
and listen to Your laughter filling my lonely place.
But I’m on my own now, so I howl at the moon,
and remember when You told me ’bout the dish and the spoon.
I’ve made lotsa money, but not many friends.
It’s a hard thing to figure–where one starts and one ends.
The wind blows so lonesome thru a heart I thought free,
and it rattles the memories of You loving me.
So I cling to the hope of Your welcome to me,
and I’d rather be Your slave than be lost but free!
So Master…no…Father…I surrender to You,
and I’m coming back home, I surrender to you.
Like A Seal Upon Your Heart (a song of Devotion, April 1993)
(This is a simple chorus, a song of devotion. I wrote this for our home group, and we would sing it as I strummed the guitar and led the chorus. I can’t play any longer, as the arthritis plays hell in my hands…but when I found this, jotted down on the back of an old church bulletin, it was indeed a pearl saved by Mama, and given back to me.
The interesting task of processing these all now, looking back with eyes that know my tender woman’s soul trapped inside this testosterone ravaged body, well, so far it has had the effect of helping me to embrace that I was not insane then, however crazy I felt.
I freely admit that it was lil songs like this that were all that kept me going.)
Set me like a seal on Your heart. Wear me like a ring on Your finger.
Give to me Your love that is stronger than death,
and set me like a seal upon Your heart. (Chorus)
Carve Your Name into my heart. Write upon my life with Your finger.
Hold me to the cross my love, and pierce my ear forever,
and carve Your Name into my heart. (Chorus)
Let me know the beating of Your heart. I will give my life for Your pleasure.
There is nothing in this world that I desire more,
than just to know the beating of Your heart. (Chorus)
Chorus
For I love you, I love you!
With all my heart, with all my heart,
Yes I love you, I love you,my Beloved, I love you
The Wings of His Desire (A song, written in 1997 for a famous friend)
Well I see that you been walkin cuz that Cadillac broke down
But the desert won’t surrender for a dollar or a crown,
And the crowd is back the road a-piece just a-waitin for a ride, while you are
Fixing your eyes on the sky
lookin for that fiery chariot ride
to come and take you sailin’ on the wings of His desire.
The glitter and the grime have blurred the boundaries of truth
In that ghost town full of souls who search for fountains full of youth,
And the flashback memories of the branding iron’s searing sneer
Haunt your spirit like a curse
from a Pharisee’s gold-lined purse, and your heart is
Longing for the wings of His desire.
Hey Friend! Don’t you realise that He held you up to them, like a mirror!
Yeah, it’s you they stoned but it’s them they hate!
The stench of their hypocrisy just chokes their life away…
Hey Friend! Don’t you realise that He holds you in His Arms, you are His child!
Yeah it’s you that He was crucified for and ever does the sweet perfume
of His love fill the air you breathe…
So remember this sage fool’s advice as your pilgrimage unfolds
Let down your hair, Rapunzel! Cast away that pot of fool’s gold!
For angels cannot suffer, but they can’t taste of love’s sweet wine, and it is
Better that you have your being, spun out like a precious tapestry
Suspended on the wings of His desire.
Hey Friend! Lift up your eyes again and let the wind blow back your hair
Take courage once again for the stones they throw in a twinkling will
become the bricks of His steadfast love for you…
And the songs of praise shall rise again like a golden phoenix from the flame
And the prophet’s mantle will again rest on your shoulders like His Name
And it is better that you have your being, sung like a precious melody
And it is better that you have your being, sung like a precious melody
And sheltered by the wings of His desire.
Summer 1997
Oregon
“Do not despise your past, Charissa”
These words have been echoing thru my heart for the last several days. Mama has been digging, turning over ground long gone fallow. She has taken me back…over old sermon notes, thru old class outlines and conference messages and topics. I am remembering so many things, and most of all…
…I am remembering the songs.
Yeah. I was a songwriter. Big surprise to you all over here, right???? LOLOL!
I would imagine I have written well over a thousand songs, or more, if you include worship choruses and what not.
I only have a few dozen laying around now, and so many forgotten, gone into the history of my walk of devotion along with the yesterdays and yesteryears. They are all part of the “us” that They and I are now, in the same way that the food you ate when you were 5, and 15, is still a part of you.
But I sense a purpose in all this:
Mama does not like Her daughter to be divided, has never liked the dissociation that I was forced to adopt. And now that I am set free, She is bound and determined to bring all those things that were good materials and lay them in a work basket…and teach me to weave. She and I will weave them into our relationship. She says She will strip away my shame, my self loathing, and my sorrow and despair.
So for a while there will be appearances here in the blog of old simple songs…old funny songs…strange things…outlines of talks and homilies…whatever I think is still of value to anyone other than myself. I think that sometimes I might try to turn them into poems…who knows?
One thing is for certain: you are gonna get a glimpse into a heart…a heart that They chose to be involved with, and one that in its towering imperfection loves them as my only true light, life and hope…a hope certain and sure, and not merely wishful wistful thinking.
Love, Charissa
River (1982)
(This will be the last of several posts of old old OLD poems!! I marvel at the changes, the reductions and growths, the increases and diminishments, and always that distant empty place in the poems that is no longer there in what I write…sooo strange to me, these words so familiar and yet as if written by a stranger. And so I was…a stranger.)
the river in its abundance
all about us, as we stood
on a warm rock to wash
slowly
smoothing with long
sliding strokes
our soapy hands along each other’s
slippery cool bodies
quiet and slow in the midst of
the quick of the
sounding river
Our hands were flames
stealing upon quickened flesh until
no part of us
but was
sleek and
on fire
Notes on the Third Year (1984)
(note: this poem is the genesis poem of a previously posted poem
My what a vast and measureless way we have traveled…and still here, in the present, and in our love!)
I have considered writing you
anonymous love letters,
fearing that my voice has grown
so familiar you will no longer hear it;
fearing that I talk too much
or that you listen with one ear (how silly of me!),
fearing that when I sing my best
there is no sound in the air;
fearing that you consider me the world’s
most accomplished maker of amazing,
silent, useless faces…
Three years in the making–Dear Collaborator!
This should be a love story!
Yes, it is.
It really is.
Haiku #9 (1981)
face in quiet night
softly holds the fire glow
in her smoky eyes
catching her portrait
in gold-glist’ning harvest moon
her very essence
she smiles quietly
lovely effortlessly free
laughing in the night
The Simplicity (1981)
I hide behind the simple things
(not the easy) so you’ll find me;
If you don’t find me, you’ll find the things.
You’ll touch what my hand has touched,
our hand prints will merge…
the august moon glitters
in the kitchen
like a tin-plated pot
(it does this because of what I’m saying to you)
it lights up the empty house
and the house’s kneeling silence,
always the silence remains kneeling.
Every Word is a doorway
to a meeting–one oft cancelled–
and that’s when a word is true:
when it insists on the meeting.
Rhythm (1981)
In bed, half asleep
I listen to you moving
“to and fro” around.
Hardly Poetic
Hardly the Grace of gesture
(or is it the gesture of grace?)
Still,
they are rhythms, and yours.
Clean, efficient, with a style
I’ve come to recognize
They Move Me More Than The Sound of Many Poems.
Lesson (1979)
One thing I have learned…
to be content
with the
size
of truth
Janet Mock: Why I Asked Alicia Menendez about her vagina, & other invasive questions
Alicia Menendez Interview: Trans People & Media’s Invasive Questions | Janet Mock.
Janet Mock is amazing! While she is physically beautiful, and incredibly blessed in that she was far less ravaged by Testosterone than many of us, the fact is it is her mind, her heart and soul, and her indomitable spirit that make her beautiful.
I love that she is so courageous and following her dream, and I love even more that she feels a sense of mission for the entire TG community, and to humanity in general. When people who have influence, like her, intentionally take steps to challenge the current paradigm, and then to educate and inform as well, it makes a way for everyone to gain access to greater liberty to actualize themselves as well.
Flipping the script: such a good way to really drive home awareness. Try it yourself after you read this and watch the video…put yourself into the space of a transgender person. Walk around an entire day dressed wrong and see how you feel (warning: it won’t feel good!! Lol!)
Blessings and Joy,
Charissa
Gender Performance: The TransAdvocate interviews Judith Butler | The TransAdvocate
Gender Performance: The TransAdvocate interviews Judith Butler | The TransAdvocate.
I want to be sure to reblog this…Judith Butler is a very important voice for us, and I am wanting to place this article here for you to dip into, and also for myself to refer to later…
See…my oldest had apparently studied her in college and had long held positions similar to Judith’s. He told me that for years he wondered how to bring the topic up to me!! LOLOLOL!!
So anyway, thanks Son!
I love you and thanks Constance for showing up everyday
What Cis Folk Have In Common With Trans* Folk — Everyday Feminism
What Cis Folk Have In Common With Trans* Folk — Everyday Feminism.
Constance, I signed up for this newsletter a week ago or so. I have been thrilled with the articles they have been sending. They are accessible to a broader audience than some of the other things I have read lately that, while extremely cogent and thoughtful, are nevertheless a bit more esoteric in that an understanding of some more uncommon philosophers is almost mandatory to truly comprehend and apply the thinking to lifestyle changes.
(Whew! What a run-on sentence! Giggle…that is the epitome of what happens in my brain as I wade thru those articles! 🙂 )
But on Everyday Feminism, the content is pitched a bit more at the generic level, the introductory level, and thus more accessible. This article in particular was quite helpful to me.
See, I am still learning about myself…I always knew what I was, even while I dwelt long in the land of Nod (disassociated), but I am just now knowing who I am! And I read the words of others who have long practise and great facility with these concepts, words, and are adept at translating them into a broader commonality, and I find my awareness and understanding growing well.
Please give it a read…there are very likely transgender people in your life, and you do not even know…heck they might not even know (consciously)!! In your jobs, in your schools, in your churches, and in your own families. We are not sexual deviants or perverts, we are humans, and we have been, for whatever reason anyone has been, created thus.
Love and prayers, Charissa
What Cis Folk Have In Common With Trans* Folk — Everyday Feminism.
How Two Young Feminists Are Using Radical Feminism To Pave A New Way Forward
Hi Constance…a ton of stuff to chew on here. I am slowly working my way through this, and as I get acquainted with terminology and connect up the abstract ideas with how they have played out in real terms, I … Continue reading
Dreams of Resurrection
dreams are like roses,
giving up treasure
in intricate fragrant
delicate layers.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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