Monthly Archives: December 2014

Seeds Busy Becoming

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I live in longing wonder
I’m mindful I’m a seed
buried deep within time’s flower garden
and sprouting there so quiet
and working hard to flourish
while everything takes place beneath the surface.

And those who throw dirt on me?
Why, they do God the favor
of releasing me, breaking me out prison
inside that hell, that hull
that thick and clumsy null
and so I am immune to their derision!

Every single person (every single one)
is living the greatest triumph ever witnessed
while also walking thru the hardest tragedy
this world has ever seen in all its seasons.
So therefore when you stand in anybody’s presence
remember that before you run your mouth.

And let that knowledge tender
be the only hoe you handle,
the only rake you wield to labor worthy
Because you are surrounded
by seeds busy becoming
Eternal blossoms in Their Garden Sacred.

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Myths About Transition Regrets | Brynn Tannehill

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Myths About Transition Regrets | Brynn Tannehill.

Constance, I have pressed several articles by Brynn…here is another scintillating one, very informative and helpful in educating those who wish to learn.

As to those who don’t wish to learn, don’t waste your breath there, that is what I am learning!tumblr_nfyhwvKKif1sym2bco1_1280

The main reason that I am pressing this:  it gives me opportunity to talk about regret.

Regrets…oh how they haunt me.tumblr_mumeduCow21qiz3j8o1_500

I regret that some how some way I am distanced from the ones I love most (except for my baby and Them, thank GOD!).
I regret that I have a different understanding and experience of what love and relationship is than they do.
I regret that I then blame myself for this.

I regret that I no longer have any idea what it means to be a friend…the things that I think it means are so vastly different than the things that other people think it means…at least, in the language of deeds…

I regret that there are people who have turned on a dime and cut me out of their lives because they found out I am transgender…and even more who have simply faded away, carrying on as if I have died.

I regret that my pace and that of the rest of the world are so out of sync, so different.  In some ways I wander lands so free and boundless that they seem to never come to an end…and in other ways I am so chained and static and marooned behind prison walls that bar me from my true north place.

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I regret that I feel like anathema to some, and a trophy to others…these two groups are mirror images of each other…neither of them likes me, knows me, but each of them loves to have my pelt mounted to their heart’s wall.

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I regret that I am not a better person.

But transition?  Come out?  Be honest with myself and the world?

Well, I will never ever regret that, and only wish I had found my moment sooner.

God knows the timing of that moment, and just as when the Child came to us “when the moment was perfect”, so too did my moment come.

Listen to me Constance:  if you know someone who is transgender, and they have chosen transition, you can either be a cause of gratefulness, or a cause of sorrow…but your reaction and choices either way will not make them “un-transgender”.  So wouldn’t you rather have it on your eternal resume that you brought joy and gladness, kindness and comfort to the lowly and hurting

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…than have it written of you “this person kicked them when they were down, and helped them to kill themself”?

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This Advent…be a bearer of tidings…

…comfort and joy, Constance.
Comfort and Joy.

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Advent Poem: The Season of Hope

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I set off on this journey full of hope.
And wrapped in splendours of belonging here…
or there…it doesn’t really matter there or here
which far exceeds being nothing nowhere
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But as I walked the crowds all fell away
and cruel branches raked across my face
disfigured me, tattooed with brutal scars
my garments stripped and used to block the stars
and so my world grew dim and I alone
and my companions left me trapped within
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The last straw to which I desperate, clung
was dashed from my hands, hope was trashed and flung
to the four winds and blown away in dust,
left me un-moored, an object of disgust.
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But hope is funny, indomitable
and it is sneaky, looking empty, full
and when I dried my eyes, what did I see?
But hope returned to heal and rescue me.

That Absent God so silent and so cruel
had made a move, become the Supreme Fool
and suffered as a lost and lonely peasant
and in absence became Supremely Present

It’s Here, in this fog, everything in shroud
Listen, hear that coming footfall loud
Lion, Lamb and Baby through the smoke
Paying every Promise that They Spoke
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There…wet…thin…starving and alone
that’s me abandoned wet, drenched to the bone
and nothing beautiful, nothing of worth…
to this manger…that’s me…comes Christmas birth

And so I will press on, and I will grope
thru deep darkness in this season of hope.
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Advent Poem: The Season of Reunion

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To a meeting long destined,
long remembered and yet
ironically never lived…

well, that is not quite true,
my Heart, T’was lived
repeatedly apart…
you in your chamber,
in the air…and me?
Marooned and shipwrecked
here!

Nothing to give except this scrap
of paper brittle…it’s a map
to an island lost at sea
X marks the spot to look
for me!

Yes?  You know where to dig, right?

in the hubbub, hullabaloo,
Reunion waits for me and you…
That towering act of redemption
Resounds throughout all of creation.

so with that in mind…

a perfect advent season
would involve this place
that has this room,
and other corners
full of cushions
and spice piney boughs
(and incense heart bows),
and it would be

a small place so large

where we
would sit,
and sip

(coffee, tea,
you and me, and
writing…writing…

of what could be,
should be
will be

and writing…),

silence would be
such sweet symphony
as voices ancestral
and ancient and future
speak in silken tones sonorous
and thunderous tenors trumpeting,
the old grandmother clock
slowly keeping time

(I am so grateful
for grandmother
who keeps time,
she saves it up

for us, dear)…

and then this room unfolds in space
to wonders in this magic place
of fireplaces stoked with wood
and laughter warm and food so good
and families mingled full and wild
and always watching is the Child
who designated you and me
and whom we love, and that big tree
there, frosted perfect with excess
surrounded with the gifts to bless
each other and to bless Them too

Reunion there…of me and you.

This is my heart’s Christmas wish
Reunion is it’s serving dish.

Love you…me

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Advent Poem: The Season of Enough

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It’s the season to journey
to places we know so well
but haven’t been to…

…and now it is time
in this never enough world
to declare the season has come:
it’s the season of enough!

ENOUGH!

Enough of the certified baby so boring,
our “gentle Lord Jesus so meek mild and timid”,
enough of that muffled mage soft-spoken and sage
who wouldn’t say shit even if He’d a mouthful!

Enough of the small household pet of the pious and pompous,
confined to the shelf there beside the wood stove, sat right next to the Hummels
and rolling His eyes to the heavens above, just hanging from
that jeweled crucifix so goddam decorative!

A God
shouldered It’s Way
into the world that day!

A God,
rough and roaring
and wrapped in the skin
of a baby asleep, hidden
here in our world,
stepping down out of Heaven
and into a stable
so filthy and smelly
and lowing with cattle
and held in the arms
of an unmarried mother
who everyone thought
was a loose filthy whore!

This God is glowing and rippling with Power,
pregnant with Presence and poised there with Promise,
This is the Lion come down with sheathed claws
and become the White Lamb with the Lion’s Red Heart
fairly roaring with passion to blow away lies
and to shatter injustice, whip greedy backsides
and to plunder oppressors so Liberty Lives!

Open your ears to the central lone question
of Advent…concealed in this Lion Heart wrapped in a baby…
do we need deliverance?  do we even want it?
do we even know what deliverance is?
do we have a lingering longing for something,
the chance to start fresh, to be granted “do overs”
A Miracle Mulligan of Christmas Mercy
wrapped in the Mystery of the Great Lion
who’s wrapped in those swaddling clothes in that manger
and lying so meek and so quiet, so LOUD
in the silence surrounding this moment of presence
when everything holds its breath
watching…watching…
waiting…waiting…

for the kind of thoughts that expose deception,
and pierce every darkness, shatter hearts of iron
and rewrite the stories of sorrow and loss
into tales of glad tidings and mercy majestic
and Mystery stripped down
and become enough.

Enough.  Yes.

This is the season of Enough.

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Who Is Constace? (Giggles)

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Okay…so I periodically get asked who is this Constace I am always writing to??

It is you, silly goose!  Giggle…no, sere…

Okay, there is a term called “Constant Reader”, yes?  So I think of Constant Reader as being named “Constance”…hence the moniker.

PSA:  Use of the name Constance is not to be construed as discriminatory to the name Gertrude!

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Conversation, Dialogue, and Speech

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Constance…I think this is soo salient and has huge implications.  I want to encourage you to read this and consider it carefully, especially if you blog.

I would add this question:  What is conversation?  How does it relate to the quote below?  What is dialogue?  Are conversation and dialogue the same thing?

Where does correspondence fit into all this?

I have some thoughts about dialogue and especially correspondence.  I am old enough to have had pen-pals when I was a child and even all the way up through adulthood (when it became correspondence).  I think that dialogue is a sustained conversation that occurs over time, and that the key to fruitful dialogue leading to growing and thriving relationship is EFFORT.

Effort.

Having a relationship of any kind that is meaningful and more than just a surface association takes time.

It takes investment!  Investment of self…investment of energy…investment of time.  Time is really all we have, no?  Thus, the spending of time on someone is in some measure the true indicator of our heart.  Of course, this is given the context the relationship occurs in…obvi relationships that include distance or some form of separation as a component have to take those factors into consideration.

But once they are accounted for:  distance, daily routine and commitments that are not possible to alter, etc. well, then it comes down to investing one’s self or not, and that is what takes a conversation into a dialogue and a dialogue into a relationship and a relationship into a friendship and a friendship into love…agape love, romantic love, platonic love, brotherly love, whatever…love.  Where the other person matters to you more than you matter to yourself.

Anyway, please read the quote below and perhaps begin to actively position your online presence in such a way as to be strengthening things that remain instead of pass away faster than a deleted email.

And to those of you that I correspond, I am deeply thankful and grateful for you all!  🙂

“The great benefit of speech has been that it’s contextual.

It’s spoken to a particular person in a particular place at a particular time.

The great danger of writing is that it deprives speech of context.

It allows the illusion that something true in the particular can be universal. Literature and philosophy have been struggling with this tension of writing since its dawn, but its benefits and power are too great to ignore and writing has developed into a unique skill, generating great art and social movements based in finding the universal in the particular.

The problem of social media today is that it can’t sustain the inevitable issues caused when speech is treated as writing.

Social media masquerades as speech, invites the sharing of the particular, but is treated as writing. It is deprived of context, the speaker and listener removed from all that would make the act meaningful in the particular and left unable to bear the weight of the universal.”

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I was touched by this

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Dear Constace…any of you struggle with self-loathing?  Oh I know, we all at times don’t like ourselves, but that is different.  I struggle with self-loathing…a lot.  Self-Loathing is when you know better cognitively, you recognize that the feelings you have about yourself are inaccurate and not true in any external objective sense, but the feelings themselves just don’t care!  They exist anyway, no matter what you tell them or believe.

Usually the best I can get by myself is a compromise:  I will ignore you (the feelings) and you (the feelings) will hate me and we will just walk thru the day that way.  And silence…well silence is like gasoline to self-loathing because it feeds the feelings and the feelings get control and feed the wrong thoughts which feed the feelings and before you know it I am in internal 5 alarm fire and human emotional conflagration.

But there is a wild card:  Love.  Love can break the back of the feelings and make them go away, whether it be the words of my baby or my bestie or even a stray compliment from a total stranger.

And Mama…She has saved the day so often.

Well, I saw this lil quote and it made me smile, cus yeah…this works too!  Thanks Darling!!!

please
tell me which part of yourself
you hate the most
so I know exactly where to plant my lips
every time I see you

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California Department of Education Lies, Does Not Investigate LGBTQ Bullying

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I cannot even begin to speak of how I feel after reading this. Thank yous to Lori for finding her voice to write about what I felt frozen by.

If you read this, and then go on business as usual, you need to realize: there may be someone in your circle of influence who is either bullying or bullied.

Your involvement could make all the difference.

We feel the tragic nature of these sorts of things because someone unique, utterly precious and beyond priceless has been snuffed out. But the same principle holds the other way: you…you yourself are unique, and have a power and a voice that impacts the universe.

But only if you use it. If you don’t, well we all know the black tide that seeks to erode everything and pull it into itself and its seething mass of hurt and horror.

raisingmyrainbow's avatarRaising My Rainbow

Ronin-cheerleader.jpg.pagespeed.ce.3GDLKTtQ8BRqgOhqwhHY Ronin Shimizu

Like my son, Ronin Shimizu was a young boy living in California. He was a cheerleader, like my son hopes to be one day. Ronin is described as positive and happy, like my son is often described. He endured bullying because he liked something that some people is “only for girls.” Sadly, my son knows exactly how that feels.

Last week, 12-year-old Ronin decided to end the bullying by ending his life.

I worry every day that my son will have this too in common with Ronin. Because the group of kids like Ronin and my son have the highest rate of suicide attempts in the world.

The articles about Ronin’s death report that in the years leading up to his suicide, Ronin’s parents made multiple complaints to his school about the homophobic and gender-based bullying their son was experiencing. The school’s response was inadequate and the bullying…

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Aromas of Christmas

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Steeping on the stove top and smelling of the magic of Christmas 🎄. Skootch over, evil witches with your vile brews!

Ours conjures love and joy and wassail too!

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Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa

Charissa and Jane make Christmas Cookies

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And not a SPECK of anything but LOOOOOOVVVVVVVEEEEE!

(and sugar Lololol!)

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Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa

That Gift Gone Awry

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She packed it, after all…after
we had eaten the pie,
fresh from the oven and then
cutting that gift gone awry.

she put it in its covering and heart
full of glad good cheer
so it was hurtful to her too
when touched with doubt and fear.

It helped a bit to know
that I was not the only one
and makes it easier to let go,
let yesterday be done.

Copying A Post Here of A VERY Strong Poem

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My friend Frederic over at Poems & poèmes has written an incredible poem that I simply had to share here with you!  For some reason the reblog option is not available, so I am linking to it and also copying it for you below.  Please visit over at Frederic’s blog, and keep him in your heart…I know that I have him in my heart everyday, especially when he is “walking the black dog”.

Frederic…hang in there.  Regardless of the pain, our enduring and rising up each day is our best resistance against it and those who cause it.

Blessings and Grace,
Charissa

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Agonies

Posted on December 6, 2014 by

Don’t ask
the doe
wolves
bit and killed
to show

compassion

love them all
it’s the same old tune every time
but I fear
they were fully aware
of what they did

and I’m sorry to confess

I do not
love
them
at
all

 let me say a little black prayer

o fair Fatality
may
wolves
suffer
agonies!
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Gustave Courbet, the Dead Doe – Image source

Leaning Hard Against That Night

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icicles hung glittering clear,
they shot diamonds, mercury bright
and gleams refracting morning light
they hid the horrid crime that happened
in the cold and dark black night…icicle

how can people do it, say it?
well, last night the deed was done
beneath clouds scuttering wet and rainy
(like my covers wet with tears,)

it will be done again you know,
but only lonely dead will weep
and they are dead…so that leaves just
the children crying in the cold
and hungry violence of the night.

that hand groped blind and deaf, and reached
for icicles hung in the dark,
all light drained dry and swallowed down
fear’s greedy gullet, sucked into
the belly of the raving beast. IMG_6829

that tongue, fearsome and cleaved in twain
and mute, waggling helplessly
between those fearful gnashing teeth
it fluttered, spit, stuttered and hit
with lies, with bitter accusations
comforting and crooning.

the disembodied hand snapped off
that cold icicle, that one that
the red light of Mars’ distant eye
unblinking, licked, caressed and sharpened,

then the hand floated across
the room so dark and thick with terror,
while some choked disembodied voice
muttered Mene, Mene, Teqel, Upharsin
and I knew I was a wall
and it the hungry writer, and
then it fell in fierce red streaks,
such icy strokes of death tattooingbloody_icicle_by_achmedxd-d37863p

“unclean!”     “beware!”     “mind-whore!”

my blood was its gory ink
and my heart was its inkwell, screaming
as it wrote again, again,
it wrote again, til I drained dry,
lay still, eyes glassed and blindly staring
at the black sky spinning, fading
from my view while that night faded
into grey dawn streaked with crimson
bursting full into today.

I woke up and found my face
was wet, and thank god it was just
my tears and not my blood, but wait…
my eyes were caked, dry, rimed with salt
and sleep…the clammy wet was really
that icicle and the secret
kill it keeps inside its melty
hungry heart so ravenous
and never satisfied or sated,
just drunk on my blood and terror,
drunk on me, so feared and hated.
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i died last night…but in my dreams,
so there is not a corpse remaining
and the murder weapon melted
(they always do in dreams, you know)
and so the killer walks the earth
so smug and lily pure and knowing
that the sprawling feast is now
secure and safe and once again

the killer sings out

“all is well inside the city!”

walls so high, so white, so white,
just like the cliffs of Dover standing,
leaning hard into that night.

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The Language Lost Forever

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older than language and deeper than words.
our bodies speak a language
long lost, misunderstood.

but still it’s spoken (though unknown)
in body on body (rain on stone)
in lips on lips (sun on snow).

we don’t remember
this language, yet we
cannot ever just forget it.

and so we let someone love us
(or what we think is love, anyway)
and speak what no one really knows.

In flaw on feature,
fail on feelings
and smile on what’s broken.

then sunlight enters thru the window
broken jagged
in the morning

lighting up the world
inside us, and the language
lost forever

sings here once again.

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ghosts of christmases past

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just an ember
in the ashes
in the hearth
in the midst
of a fireplace

cooling off
stones grown cold
in the midst
of a big
empty room

full of sheeted
furniture still
petrified ghosts
frozen in the chill
of indifferent interest

and neglect so still
in the midst
of a house
full of voices
merely echoes

of those voices
long ago
when the ghosts
were thawed and human
and limber in

the room so warm
the fire bright
the stones so hot
and embers glowing
and their skin shining

and their bones throbbing
like maps of knowing
to the way that heaven
felt back then
and where they’d gone

and where they’d been.

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Advent Questions

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Where is the promise and news of The Coming?
Where are the answers we need?
Where is the end of suffering and fighting?
Where is the peacemaker’s pen?

When will we find deep reconciliation?
When will our cynical lies
Cease and desist so true transformation
Delivers from deadly despair?

Is there a hope in remembering Advent?
Waiting for God to show up?
Is there a reason to watch and to wait
For a God who arrives in disguise?

Advent proclaims God is born in the manger
Of waiting for Them to appear,
But as what? A King Mighty?  A Warrior?  A Sovereign?
A helpless baby laid there?

Shall we accept Advent’s great Invitation
And wait for this God to draw near?
Shall we allow our masks to fall away
And lift up hearts and our faces bare?

Dare we celebrate Christmas instead of consuming
like ravenous wolves on a Kill?
Will we with shepherds and Kings and with peasants
kneel and beseech the Babe there?

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Letting Go At Last

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raindrops slide,
stop, tremble
and then let go and run
down the window
in surrender
to the relief
of turning loose
their death grip
on the window pane.

beyond that
water-veined glass
tall trees lean
into the wind and then
whip away in relief
to give up and be ravaged
in smacks of wet windy
winter lips kissing in
moaning fury.

on the sill, here
with me inside
tendrils trail up
up and away,
straining against
the heat and reaching
into the cool air relief
bringing great incense
of smoky espresso promise.

and I relax,
letting go at last
like the rain
on the window,
like the tree
in the wind,
like the steam
in the air
just letting go.

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My Tender Misty Heart

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Tender is the misty forest, full of frost, full of frost
Glowing in the velvet night and crystal air, crystal air
I walk silent, carrying my globes of hope, globes of light
In the misty forest tender, full of frost and air.Image 001

Shadows track beside me here as I walk in the trees
Leaving traces of their fear, and their hate, always near.
Gibbering and whispering their lies and pain, lies and pain
Stalking me, looking for my heart so red and near.

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They believe my globes of hope are poisonous, full of death,
They imagine machinations sinister, scheming loss
They crown me with bitter loathing hateful spite, in this night
Waving branches dead and stark, their signposts of despair.

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I know what is in my heart, in my globes, globes of light.
I know why I walk the tender misty forest, forest night.
I am warm, and my head held high as I walk, as I walk.
Nothing can defeat or harm my tender misty heart.

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Blow A Kiss To The Ocean (For ddh and lil mama)

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Blow a kiss to the ocean for me, for I am far from there,
Behind the moon and under hills I sojourn while I stare
Inside my heart (where you reside regardless of the miles
that yawn between us vast), for just a glimpse of your glad smiles,
Please…Blow a Kiss to the ocean for me, so far…and yet so near.

The ocean sings and shouts in steady thundering loud voice
And yet it also whispers to the ones that make the choice
to listen with their bones and answer with their ruddy heart
that yearns to cast off every weight and burden and depart
for destinations where there is no sorrow, shame, or fear.

You there, at the ocean, me, across that vast expanse
and laboring in desert sands, I listen…for your glance
my way, and I yearn for the sound, the smell of what will be
when I can fly across the sky and land there, at the sea.
But for now, please…Blow a kiss to the ocean…just for me.

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The Tranny-curse (haiku)

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there, around my neck

choking me in its fat fist

branding me unclean

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The curse is in the word, and words like it…not in my being who and what I am.

Khalil Gibran Just Beat Me UP!!

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“God Said
‘Love Your Enemy’
And I Obeyed Him
And Loved Myself.”

— خليل جبران ‎
Khalil Gibran

Umm…okay so my face just got slapped big time, yes?  How about you?  Do you struggle as I with self-loathing and self-hatred (and not the holy, good kind)?

Jesus said to love your neighbor as you love yourself…so if I cannot love myself then what kind of pathetic love will have for my neighbor.

It is quite likely that self-loathing is merely a manifestation of pride and the old original bugaboo of self-worship.

Hmm…another thing to consider during Advent Waiting!

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Advent Musings: Waiting

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Waiting…it seems that we spend an awful lot of time doing it, don’t we?

If you experience what I do then you too feel the weight of waiting that is imposed on us from the outside by external forces of various kinds.

I have to wait for the sun to rise
I have to wait for the coffee to brew.
I have to wait to read those magic words, hear that lilting quick voice.
I have to wait for pending actions that deeply affect my future.
I have to wait for the bus.
I have to wait for the doctor.
I have to wait for word from the four corners of my heart.

And then there are other kinds of waiting:

I have to wait for transition to show the outsides what’s inside.
I have to wait as others process my life transitions in their own terms.
I have to wait for the words to come, from my muse and her well.
I have to wait for answers to various correspondences.
I have to wait for almost everyone else, for I move at a pace different.

Waiting is an activity that is seemingly aimless…
and when viewed in light of time,
waiting is a doing.

Generally we feel a sense of something we call “restlessness”…
expressed by pacing back and forth, drumming our fingers, bobbing our knee up and down,
sighing heavily or groaning to release frustration as time drags its feet
…and seemingly mocks us by slowing down even further.

Or…we might simply languish and wallow in something we call “listlessness”, that slouching, slack-jawed, mind-numbed escape from doing which is, in and of itself a doing…as inertia takes us over, drags at all our metabolisms and slows things down even further…and then time becomes a marathoner…

…and we are in lockstep with time, we the unwilling competitor, our leg tied to time’s in a three-legged race being dragged to…where?  Another spate of waiting?the_swamp_by_alterlier-d77yfk0

Sadly, this doing (as all doings do) ends up as a becoming (as all people end up too)…

…a becoming anxious, or cynical, or harried and indifferent, or discouraged and despairing.

All too often we are blinded to the simple blazing truth:

Becoming is always the result of time passing,
and there is no choice about this, becoming…
but rather only the choice of what it is we will become.

And it is in this choice, what it is that we will become, that we discover:

there is another way, another point of view from which to understand “waiting”…

…and it is from that place that we fully grasp the way in which waiting becomes a state of being, an intentioned choice of the heart and spirit, rather than the doing I mentioned earlier.

It is in this intentional, chosen state that we find things like patience, discipline, self-control and emotional maturity answer the call like warriors answer the summon of their sovereign.

For patience is a state of being as well, yes? (Impatience is just “doing’s” word that describes chafing against time’s leg as we are dragged along, gimpy in that awkward infernal race to nowhere).  Discipline is also a state of being, along with self-control, emotional maturity…all of these qualities are fruits that grow from the root of the choice of intentionality to wait.tumblr_nfnh9sG9rP1s5bltvo1_500

There is an assumption that underlays the choice to be “waiting”.  It is the assumption that our choices have consequences of becoming…and those consequences manifest in process as a function of time passing.  And this assumption has its own treasures to give us in the moment, treasures that inform our choice, empower our choice, and then become an actual living part of our choice.

Faith.
Hope.
Love.

Those qualities are enduring and never fail, and ultimately they triumph over all the activity of doing for the sake of the expediency of the moment.  They are the antithesis of busy-work and the resulting chaos surrounding frantic activity in the name of “doing something”.  They are the good hard work of intentional being.

Advent is a season that comes each year, and it opens its heart to us, to the exhortation there, it whispers to us…each year…

…wait…
…wait…
…WAIT…

and as that insistent cry emanates forth it carries upon its wings great gifts of stillness, reflection…honest longing in the dark with true vital hope of longing fulfilled, joy in the anticipation of immanent manifestation of what is, but hidden…emerging from what conceals and is seen…just like a wrapped gift (and ponder for a moment that metaphor of a wrapped gift…yes?)…which finds its true purpose in the unwrapping as much as in the preparation and gifting of it.

Advent imbues anticipation!  Advent focuses time and puts it to work stoking the fires of faith, hope, joy, love as we sense the arrival of that miracle our hearts all know lurks just outside this skein of time, practicing its own waiting for the miracle moment of emergence, of catalytic manifestation and the redemption of yet another investment of waiting.tumblr_n4vu3uBqkq1tv616mo1_1280

So how about it Constance?  This Advent season, this time of preparation…will you receive the precious gift of waiting, with Her mighty warriors of being?  Or will you hide yourself in busy-ness, rushing around, and re-wrapping a gift given in your own papers of cynicism and ribbons of refusal…and end up fed up and waiting anyway, just waiting for Christmas to be over, instead of for Christmas to come?

Remember:  Divine Silence is not Divine Inactivity and Indifference!

A miracle is upon us…it is every year (in fact, it is everyday).

And thus we are gifted with great opportunity to wait for the Christ who comes each year in the same way and in brand new ways unexpected and greatly needed, and the Christ comes to be the Answer to our heart, not to do the things we think we need done.

But to see Him, to catch a glimpse of Him as He comes…ahh, that vision comes to those who wait…

wait on the Lord oh my soul, be strong and let your heart take courage, for they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength!  They shall rise up on wings, like eagles, and shall run and not grow weary and then walk and not faint!  And they shall see the goodness of God in the land of the living.

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Just Because He Breathes: Learning to Truly Love Our Gay Son | Linda Robertson

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Just Because He Breathes: Learning to Truly Love Our Gay Son | Linda Robertson.

Crying so hard that it took this sacrifice:  this child sacrifice in order for

these pitiable people to realize something about God…

He does not ever require us to sacrifice our children to Him, because He has already given Jesus to us who chose to be our sacrifice of love.

Listen…make it really easy:  you are not God.  Thus, your one and only job here  in the earth is to Love Them, Love your neighbor, and be kind.  Believe it or not, God really can get thru to people…way better than you can.

And pray that it doesn’t take something like this for you to see clearly.

 

Radio Silence (by anon., guest poster on Grace Notes)

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Dear Constance…I was graced today with the cry of a heart great.  A heart beautiful, a heart that can be held in a hand but not contained by the sea.

This heart sent me this poem, this offering of love, longing, sorrow and pain.  Such is the way of life.  Such is often the way of a world broken and not as it should be.

So…read please?  And feel it.  And then know that the “ought not to be” is proof that One Day comes…and a righting of all wrongs, and a healing of all wounds and Restoration of the Breach will be, will be, will be…

 

I die a little every day
With you so far away
Three months it’s been since I talked to you,
And two months for your sister too
Big brother says he can’t do it
and the youngest seems oblivious
And so I die a little every day
and you so far away

Daily each of you will do
whatever it is you do
you eat, you sleep, you work or play
but I hear not a word
you say it’s too hard to talk about
and that you hate being on the phone
I call it radio silence
and each day when
there has been
not a word, not an email, not a message
death takes another nibble

Today I die a little more
I see no end in sight
i thought that if I acted cool,
you possibly, you could you might
return to me, to us and then
you’d share your life ,your love again
and some “boring” daily doings.
But instead I feel the deadness grow
in the place where you once lived.
And so
I die a little every day
With you so far away.

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IRISH THANKSGIVING

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I am stunned by this poem.
The beauty, the longing, it tears at my heart with the things that were, and no longer can be, the things that are and soon will be the things that were and can no longer can be…

and hidden there, in the borders between the words…the things that are Coming.

Please, Constance, read this slow and savor it…and then again. Melissa, I am so very grateful for this poem.
Much love and much respect!
Charissa

Melissa Shaw-Smith's avatarMelissa Shaw-Smith

DSCF9559I step from one world into another
Like a bather setting my toe in the icy Atlantic on a June day.
It is a painful transition
And yet once the gut is sucked in with a sharp inhale of breath
My horizon shifts and it is palatable.

I step into the damp air of an Irish morning,
Tang of salt and mud off the Shannon estuary,
Strong whiff of cow manure. I know I’m home.

The navy suit and general greyness of the men at the passport desks is expected.
One takes my passport and in a the soft Galway accent—
you would be forgiven for thinking the fella had a marble rolling around in his mouth
says to me, Ah you must be David and Sally’s daughter. Tell your parents I was asking for them.

I am at once comfortable with the scale of things:
Four steps to the…

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This Blessed Longing

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“The celebration of Advent is possible
only to those who are troubled in soul,
who know themselves to be poor and imperfect,
who look forward to something greater to come.

“For these, it is enough
to wait in humble fear
until the Holy One Himself
comes down to us, God
in the child in the manger.

“God comes.
The Lord Jesus comes.
Christmas comes.
Christians rejoice!

“When once again
Christmas comes and
we hear the familiar carols and
sing the Christmas hymns,
something happens to us…

“The hardest heart is softened.
We recall our own childhood.
We feel again how we then felt,
especially if we were
separated from a mother.

“A kind of homesickness
comes over us
for past times,
distant places,
and yes, a blessed longing
for a world without violence
or hardness of heart.

“But there is something more—
a longing for the safe lodging
of the everlasting Father.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, December 2, 1928

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