Daily Archives: November 29, 2014

Every Fractured Piece

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Touch me with hands gentle,
hands giving and softly yielding
blessing and the gift of myself
known and thus received.

Touch my heart so it relaxes and unbends,
unfolds and opens up into a million
pieces interconnected and remembered
in the whorls and swirls of your fingerprint’s voice.

I will gentle grow beneath your blessing bestowed
so quiet and alert, so tender, deliberate undaunted,
and rising my heart shall release the Host from
my lips moist and moving simple in communion.

Touch me then with actions become words
and words become kisses and
kisses become kindness
incarnate in the flames so ruby red and warm

and I will then be yours, and captured
bound to you with glances and eyes flashing,
bound unto your heart with trusting hunger
and peace at last singing in every fractured piece.

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Only Winter Really Knows

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That last leaf, on that dry branch
scratching at grey skies and digging for rain,
digging in my heart for seeds of grief
buried so deep.

What is it about the last one?
Leaf, apple, pine cone?
Winds rake and tug, greedily scooping prizes
sweet, tart, bristley, floatey…

but there always are those hangers on tenacious,
and never saying die…
or is it that they cannot do it? Say die?
or even “dead”.

Is it that they refuse
to let go? Or is it
that they cannot?
Let go?

And here is the killer:  some people think they are resilient
and full of perseverance and persistence,
and some people think they are noble
and full of loyalty and loose liberty.

But I wonder if they are
just not capable, if they are
just crippled by their
inability to let go and move on?

I know how many days have come,
winds blowing, raking and pawing at me lusty,
unwanted doggy beasts, knocking me loose
and then away and disappearing.

I know how many thrusts, rooting have picked me over
and my secrets tumbling dead and colorful in air
away to dirt but I left lonely, hanging unrequited there
and flapping solitary in the winds of shame.

But there are still some (leaves, secrets, treasures)
still hanging on and unable to let go,
adorned in funeral robes dolorous
and hued in autumn splendor.

Most see them as emblems, medals,
battle spoils dearly won and worn…
but they are just proof
of my weaknesses and loss

and inability to quit,
to let go and enter
into that towering
still White transition called

Winter…

which, disguised as death
to frighten all assailants,
holds my dreams and hopes and losses
all in trust and buried deep in wombs
of merciful becoming masquerading
as cold tombs silent, dark and numbing,

Winter…

who holds my heart gripped
in her frosty kiss desperate,
longing for her last gasp
before presenting me
to the sprites of spring and then
the suns of summer.

The last one…there.
map, marking ways
hidden and secret to find
my deepest treasures,

or medal, memory of moments
living and filthy with love
long ago so bold and given over now
to the grave so lonely and cold.

I guess only Winter
really knows and will proclaim
when She calls roll and
the Final Thaw begins.

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If Privilege Was Visual, It Would Look Like This

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Constance, I am reposting this here…not written by me but definitely endorsed.

November 22, 2014 by

Originally published on Lefty Cartoons and cross-posted here.

Privilege can be near-invisible to those who have it. Without a conscious, deliberate effort to be aware of it, it’s almost never on our radars.

And because of this, being told that you benefit from systematic social favoritism can be hard to accept at first. It’s not uncommon to feel that people are telling you that your life is simple and that you don’t work for what you have.

But privilege is more complicated than that. This cartoon provides a useful visualization.

The Straight, Ablebodied, Rich, White Man’s Burden

For more information on this topic, check out the following:

Barry Deutsch is the Portland-based author and cartoonist of Ampersand, a political comic with a generally progressive sensibility. A new Ampersand comic appears in every issue of Dollars and Sense Magazine. Barry attended Oberlin College in Ohio in the late 1980s, the School of Visual Arts in New York City in the 1990s (where he took classes from comics legend Will Eisner), and graduated from Portland State University several years ago. While at PSU, his political cartoons won the Charles M. Schulz Award. His current comics project is my comic book Hereville, a fantasy adventure comic about an 11-year-old Jewish girl. Check out his blogand follow him on Twitter @barrydeutsch.

Reblogging this from online

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Constance…I want you to read this.  I want you to feel this.
I want you to imagine the horror, if you are a man that is…women know already.
But all around the world…that revelation that I spoke of on Thanksgiving, the raising of human consciousness so that more of God can be received and understood…it is happening.
Here is a clue:  the using of women as objects for any reason whatsoever is anathema in the heart of God.  The reducing of woman to anything less than the crowning event of all creation and her fashioning from living flesh as significant beyond words (as opposed to men, made from dirt), and her role, vital and irreplaceable…anything other than that is not blessed by God.  Eventually, the daughters of Eve will dawn in Day…and the world will rejoice and be glad.
 A feminist group based in Guangzhou staged an online protest against the sexual exploitation of women in the workplace. The sign reads: "My vagina does not come free with my labor."

A feminist group based in Guangzhou, China staged an online protest against the sexual exploitation of women in the workplace, revealing a photograph with a message boldly written in red on a whiteboard behind them: “My vagina does not come free with my labor.” More words were written on the women’s thighs, reiterating: “Not freebies.”

The campaign was in response to a recent fatal rape case involving a 20-year-old woman at a state-owned company who was asked by her boss to a dinner. She was sexually assaulted by her boss’s friend and died as a result of her injuries.“Don’t ask your staff to provide part-time escort services. Women should only be asked to provide knowledge or technical skills in the workplace, but not other things,” says Ye Haiyan, an advocate of women’s and children’s rights.

Read more via The New York Times.

This is me…

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this is me, inside my heart, my soul cupped in my hands
and lifted high in graceful beauty unto heavenly lands,
this is my spirit, beautiful and yielded in my place
on sacred prayer mat made of love and tears and joy and grace.

but this is that me, seen, encountered, clumsy in this world,
the way i am perceived and felt, the heated judgments hurled,
hard and horned, coarse and dull, imprisoned in my place,
of silence, sorrow, empty house, tears always on my face.

Bisonbulle(Bison Bull)

May I Forget To Breathe Again

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it’s been 25 years, every one a chapter in a book
filled with pages written in words
of surprise and heavenly gifts everyday.

i remember the first, that morning walk,
clammy fog swirling round my face
while inner fogs cleared.

breezes of heaven blew bright and fresh
teaching me to unwrap carefully, faithfully
everyday and hearing that free giggle/laugh.

and then i unveiled me (alas), to us all (me included)
and discovered that i had unwrapped that gift and was done…finished
and revealing my own irrelevance, current, future.

another chapter ended yesterday, another one begun,
passing and being born without a word from me (1st time ever),
at least, not one outloud, lest the universe take offense in silence.

but i remembered, all day long.  i always do, you know.
and i sang, i cried, my tears washed my love
so my love could clean hold you secret and unseen.

i am sorry, love…i am.  i know i was ruination,
a blight on years meant to resonate and not
rot in futile failed half-built huts.

but i will never sorrow o’er that day, that moment
when Heaven spoke and told me of Their gift,
and my heart was blessed forever after.

i remembered, all day long…and sang.
If i ever forget, may my hand forget to live,
and may i forget to breathe again.

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“Random Acts of Kindness” are an impossibility, so just be kind!!

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Constance…I FUME over the classification of these acts of kindness OR ANY ACT OF KINDNESS as random.

NO!

If there is anything random, Evil is what strikes in this way…seemingly no rhyme, no reason…no thought, sentientness or awareness or planning, or the most crucial element…choice.

We…humans…image-bearers, signifiers and signified both…we have choice, and thus have power over the forces that move and kill on random tides flowing.

The reason that you and I feel that welling lovely pain in our hearts as we read of what people have done is because they have chosen to value a greater good to the highest degree, and made the heart choice to be the love in this world and to do this to whomever was in their path regardless of knowing them or not…

…but not random.  No.

Kindness is the very breath of God.

Love, Charissa

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Let love be your guide, intentionally considered, liberally practiced.