my books…
my true treasures
faithful and constant.
always there,
waiting for me…
they never cry off
as too busy,
too tired,
too too too too…
they’re always
there always…
each time
there is something new,
something I didn’t see the first
(or second or third or fourth)
time thru…
I swear that books
write themselves,
add things based on
the currents we have
connected to them
like veins,
and what we are living
somehow informs them
and they change in accordance…
Hi Constance…so many fun holiday movies to watch!
Okay, I admit it…I am a sucker for all those cheapo ABC Family TV movies, Christmas Romances one and all…but there are some classic ones to boot. Ya know, the first 2 Home Alone movies are pretty dang good. Of course I love any version of A Christmas Carol, and it has been my life long vow since I was a 5th grader to keep Christmas better than Scrooge did, after his visitations, that is. I love A Christmas Story and my word Christmas Vacation is always always funny and poignant…way too many phrases are now part of Jane and my vernacular
“I don’t KNOW Margo!!”
And then you get to the true classics…Miracle on 34th Street, White Christmas, and others…
…and then the one.
The one that I dread. The one that has defeated me, every year since the first time that I saw it when I was about 7 or 8 years old.
It’s A Wonderful Life.
Now this is a wonderful movie, objectively speaking. No question. I have watched it at least 30 times or more…and every single goddang time…I want to die afterwards.
Why? I can hear you asking me that…why, ‘Rissa? WTF??
Well, I will confess to you why. Because I am convinced that if I ever saw what George Bailey saw…life without me ever having been born…well, I have always been certain that everything would be better and everyone around me better off. It would be the opposite of what George Bailey experienced.
I know it isn’t a rational thing to believe…I have dissected these thoughts ad infinitum, and they still kick my butt…every single freaking year.
So this year, I am going to leave the old Savings and Loan to the Baileys. I think I will watch “All I Want For Christmas” instead…or “Miracle…” Hey, it is at least bluntly honest when Susan Walker says “I believe…I believe. It’s silly but I believe!”
Breaking the Gender Covenant | On Being.
and
Gender and the Syntax of Being: Identity and Transition (a podcast)
Can I just…say…wow.
Joy Ladin has shared some incredibly important and significant ideas at the link above. I have read her book
Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey between Genders
It is incredibly moving, deafeningly poetic and lyrical, and it captured my life as very few accounts have been able to.
In the article I am linking to, I can assure you that she gets it right, and while I never was forced to break the gender covenant with my wife, it has happened to me in other areas to the extent that I can verify her words as true in my own life too.
So…Constance: it goes without saying that it is the right thing to be kind to transgender people, to be kind to everyone…but there is a deeper reason that I post this. Are you able to read this article, synthesize out of it the core issues of becoming, and then find a way to apply them into your own life and experience?
There are ways that you too are “transgender”. Oh no, I am not talking here about biology and the mind-body dichotomy. Rather, I am talking about you the spirit inside you the body, and ways that this is often just not a good fit…you yearn for something more, something beyond.
I am talking about you the entity in this world, as if you the entity is your “internal sense of gender” and the world is “your exterior genitalia”…there are times when the fit is so wrong and so alien that you feel as if you would explode.
That is the place that is of greatest interest to me, Constance…because it is in that place that you and me and all of us are on the same sojourn to congruence and wholeness.
Ya cannot stop me, Brother! 🙂 Here is a comment AND a like!
*Charissa giggles and feels good*
Like
Like
Like
Like
Like
Like
See??? Giggles!!!! Seriously, Constance check out his poem. Delicate, nuanced and thoughtful as always.
I am reblogging this wonderful quote, it really touched my heart!
❤
I remember
last Christmas,
lingering in my mind
midst memory’s fogs
and memories
…just grey mists now,
swirling and coiling
back on themselves,
roiling forward
from the past
and boiling over
into this morning,
this day…
this time sitting
in the midst of ashes
dead and flat remaining
from that cold conflagration
of becoming thru the fires
of that season.
Friends, job,
name, family,
reputation,
all consumed
by fire,
all revealed as
morsels of the moment
(that lasted 55 years and still just a moment)…
last year,
I had it all
at least in the eyes
of those who don’t matter,
I had it all…especially
the awful yawning
void of nothing
gaping inside
me, most real
inside me,
I remember
the day after Christmas
reduced me to a place
in the hills adjacent
to the place a woman
took her own life
this year,
reduced me
to screaming incoherence
because I had run out
of words to scream and
I had just begun
to scratch the surface
of what there was
to scream about,
that awful
substantial black
nothing.
that day,
it was a close matter
a razor’s edge tumble
into red greedy flames
burning long and low
all year until
they blazed in fury fanned
when smothering shrouds
were snatched away sudden
in torn and tattered strips
to consume the bribes
and chains of nothing
clothed in costumes.
This Christmas,
nothing has been exposed,
revealed as the imposter
it still masquerades as.
I am empty of screams
but full of me and
ready to receive
the Promise of words
to give voice to
what’s unspeakable, unnameable,
to dress that wound
infected with nothing
and salve it with
the scratchy tickle of truth
and set free we
shadowbound to be
our shining selves,
casting shadows
instead of being flat
and cast by them.
It is the season of emptiness, and places
prepared by pain are hungry
for the Presence
and the Promise
that only emptiness contains.
“Grandpa! Please, please tell us a story,” the young children exclaimed.
They were seated in the lap of a man who had seen many, many years. His gnarled, rough hands were like the branches of an oak tree, and his hair was thick and full, and white as snow. His face was a harvest apple in January—wrinkled and browned, but sweet to the taste. He was old as the hills and yet his eyes…full of light and joy, tears and grief, brokenness made whole… they made this old trooper seem like an eager child on Christmas Eve! He gazed down at his grandchildren, Young Frederick on his right knee, Sweet Caroline on his left.
“So!” he boomed. “‘Tis a story you be wanting, is it my sprites? Well then! ‘Tis a story you’ll be getting, only then you’ll have to run off to your beds! For tomorrow we celebrate HIS birthday, and GLORY what a celebration we’ll have, eh? Frederick, throw some more wood on that fire whilst Sweet Caroline and I scoot closer to it.”
Frederick jumped down to obey. The old man rose with his granddaughter under one arm like a kitten, and with a casual flick of his wrist he tossed his huge oaken chair about three feet closer to the fire, like it was made of twigs. He sat down, and Sweet Caroline squirmed up his chest and wormed her arms around his corded neck. “Grandpa,” she said with a solemn face, “Tell us about your journey. Tell us about Him.”
“Yeah!” Frederick chimed in excitedly as he launched himself upon his grandpa. “Tell us about when you were The Light King, and when you went to see Him when He came, and about Gillae and Brownie and—“
“Whoa, slow down my bumpkins,” interrupted the old man. “You’ve heard that story so many times it must be nearly worn out from the telling! Surely you’d rather hear about how your papa, the King, killed the ugly dragon, Ba’alzamon,
or about how he rescued the beautiful Princess Katherine
and made her his Queen and your mother?”
“NO GRANDPA!” they shouted in concert.
“Tomorrow ‘s the Day–—His day and it’s your day too,” said Frederick.
“Yes, Grandpa,” said Sweet Caroline. “It’s my favorite story, to hear how you met Him and everything. Please, Grandpa, oh please?”
The old man sat looking back and forth between them as if caught deep in indecision. He glared at them in mock irritation while delight danced in his eyes. The children sat in suspense, hardly daring to breathe, hearts straining with desire to hear the magical story.
Sweet Caroline looked at Frederick, and had a giggling fit. Frederick shushed her with an agonized frown and the darkness of the night pressed in through the windows as they huddled close to the fire. The room was full of lamps, all of them unlit and dormant. The fire popped and crackled fiercely. The old man drew in a deep breath, held it, just to build the suspense and then exhaled in mock resignation and secret gladness.
“Oh very well you smooth talkers. The tale is yours for the telling.” Frederick let out a whoop and Sweet Caroline accompanied him with gleeful clapping. “I swear! You two could talk an elephant out of his trunk while making him feel he was the talk of the town for the bargain! Okay then—gather close and settle in, and you shall hear the telling of
THE HEALING OF THE LIGHT KING
He took a deep breath, and began…
For Part Two, click HERE
Hi Constance…so last year at Christmas time, I published here a long original Christmas story, called
Clicking on the link will take you to the post in its entirety.
This is the Christmas story written from the perspective of one of the 3 Kings who goes on a journey with the other two, following that brilliant steady star that had appeared. But the king is dying, from some ailment unknown, and so brings along the supplies needed to bury him in the likely event that he died on the way. And if he made it, well, he would make those burial spices his gift to the royal personage that the star in the heavens spoke of. After all, the spices were quite valuable.
Along the way, the king is abandoned by his companions when he has a seizure and they think he has died, and he is discovered laying unconscious in the fields of some shepherds. They have just experienced some extraordinary events of an unprecedented nature and as they share these things with the king, they discover that their destination is the same place, the same Person, and so they set off travelling together.
They meet this Person, and something astounding happens to the King…and he Becomes…
…well, you will just have to read it to find out, now won’t you?
Here is the killer to me though: this story moves me as much as anything I have written…ever.
And yet only one person pushed “like”. And historically? Other than when I read it out-loud to my kids when they were little, I have never received any sort of response to it!! No response of any kind. Not one time has anyone said “omg that is the most boring stupid thing I have ever read”…or “omg that was delightful!”
Nothing.
I even solicited input from readers a few days after posting it here…and what is totes ironic is that the post soliciting comment got a few likes. Apparently, my plea for feedback was more interesting than the story itself! But as per usual, no comments on the story.
Hey, I can deal with being told that I sucked and just am a very bad writer…I can deal with hearing that the story needs work and were I to ever get any feedback on it I would work it in rewrite until it sang. But apparently it isn’t even bad enough to create even that reaction!! Giggles…now that is bad!!
Well…screw all that. I like the story. It is fabulous, imaginative, inclusive of diverse elements and taps into the Mythos of Christmas. It touches on the Mystery of it, the Magic of it, and the Majesty of it. Whether or not I wrote it very well has nothing to do with the story and what I saw when it came to me.
Maybe the problem is that it is a bit long? It takes a while to read it. I have heard that the modern mind has a short attention span (makes me so G Damn happy that Tolkien did not write in our day, or I likely would never have read TLOTR because no one would have published it!), and that is one way that I am very much not like modern minds, for mine is convoluted, complex, intricate…my thoughts and ideas take notions, nudges and knowings and weave them carefully. And of course then there is the whole issue of being guilty of producing too much content.
Whatever. I am who I am. I am what I am, and I am not going to apologize for that, any more than the mighty Mississippi apologizes for feeding the sea. I like the story so…
…so this year, I am going to re-post it here, but just a little bit each day.
Maybe it’s good…maybe it isn’t…who really knows? But between now and Christmas, I will dribble it out here. And if you want more? Well that is the cool thing about blogs…you can go back in time!
Merry Charissa-mas!
“Flowers grow back, even
After they are stepped on.
So will I.”
“Go where you are celebrated – not tolerated.
If they can’t see your true value and worth,
then it’s time for a new start.”
There are a number of ways that this is applicable for me…this is a good reminder for me in terms of friendships. So often I have felt like some people see being friends with me as a job or burden to be endured…and I think that I am worth more than that.
I think that maybe being friends with me is an honor and something to be treasured…at least, that is the idea that I am toying with.
Those who think otherwise, or give off that impression, well I think I can safely just invite them to move along, nothing for them to see here.
I am sick and tired of feeling guilty for being who I am.
I’m homesick for a Blue Place
that might not be real…
but I know it is.
It has to be!
It floats here,
Azure in my silver
longing heart unsinkable
and it’s scarlet voice calls
from Beyond into beyond,
to that Place
I have never been
but can describe
oh so very well,
down to tittery wine
that brings all joy
but never leaves
hangovers in its wake
and the drippy bread that breaks
crusty with truthful crunch
and fills you up
without filling you out.
Slow down, to open
quick windows of awareness
and be of thick spiritual health.
Find jubilant quiet Mystery
inside stillness’s expectant embrace,
the only Place that God’s own Face
can safely show Itself, It’s Grace.
God’s Grace, God’s Face,
an infant among us…
Good God with us
(a freaking BABY??!!??!)…
a disruptive Mystery
wedged into reality
and stuck in the craw of dismay.
Where only They can fit.
But Mystery, even a disruptive one
(no…especially a disruptive one!!)
is well worth
stillness,
wonder,
contemplation.
This Mystery is rich enough
to make us stop and wait,
and is poor enough
to catch out all pretenders
greedy for gain alone
and thus lost of soul.
God has stepped into our world
to dig us out of every prison
we disguised as snug burrows
and cozy hobbit holes.
Listen.
If you cannot hear it
you will miss it.
Make room.
Divest yourself
of lists and budgets
and endless holiday labor
and fretful commotion and
freeze-dried contentment.
Contemplate
empty your heart
and your hands of stuff,
of chaos, of injustice and
hatred, death and despair.
It’s the season of Expectancy
so heavy in the air, and that is
miracle enough, from there…
from Blue…and from Beyond.
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.
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!
The main reason that I am pressing this: it gives me opportunity to talk about regret.
Regrets…oh how they haunt me.
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.
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.
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
…than have it written of you “this person kicked them when they were down, and helped them to kill themself”?
This Advent…be a bearer of tidings…
…comfort and joy, Constance.
Comfort and Joy.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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!
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.”
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
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.
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…
View original post 637 more words
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!
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
And not a SPECK of anything but LOOOOOOVVVVVVVEEEEE!
(and sugar Lololol!)
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
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.
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
***** ***** *****
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!
Gustave Courbet, the Dead Doe – Image source
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…
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. 
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 tattooing
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
there, around my neck
choking me in its fat fist
branding me unclean
The curse is in the word, and words like it…not in my being who and what I am.
“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!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A true artist
gives their all,
even on the parts
you barely see…
especially there.
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
I 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…
View original post 557 more words
“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
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.
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.
Constance, I am reposting this here…not written by me but definitely endorsed.
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.
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.
| — | Selected Poems (1965-1975) (Margaret Atwood) |
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.
Drone-selfie of climbers on the summit of the Matterhorn
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.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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