Constance, if you would? Give “Calligraphic Gesture” another read? She kept kicking her footies and messing her didies until I changed her and fed her…she seems much happier now!
LOL…my way of saying I did a bit of editing…I think it sings a bit now, eh?
Still and quiet sits the morning soft in drizzle,
shadow shades shroud drowsy trees lulled by turning leaves
singing of the coming great descent…
Clouds cling low and skulk about as mists,
as fogs, as wisps and scraps of rainy lace
over Autumn’s aged hallowed face,
and she lays still,
lines, marks and comments made undone,
unmade each day one by one
until she is unmarked, undrawn,
unmasked her surface still and flat
mysterious unasked, her tranquil secrets told,
and then retracted, written and redacted
as days grow short and night walks
in smoky peace longer in the stillness,
lingers fragrant in the moment
and into morning coffee.
My mind, it too is still like Autumn,
and yearns to walk in Autumn’s graceful backwards glance,
her slippered foot fall soft and earnest in her dance,
it reaches for my heart’s desirous dipper to pour out…what?
Words…tears…love…me, yes. Me…my heart’s dipper
pours me out like waters into Water
and then those ripples run,
those ripples push like still wind against
the placid growing unmarked surface…
and I push off neat and quick and skim
across her glory fading into stillness,
my heart my skiff, my words my oars,
my poem my tribute there and gone.
My heart’s hieroglyphics stutter,
eternal and undying ’til they swoon
and into slumber they are flying
to be swallowed once more into her bosom,
until she wakes again and my heart rises up again
from deep within her waters running ever,
I wake my poem cunning, fleet and clever
to row again, to draw again
my quick calligraphic gesture
to signify eternal her bright blue
beautiful vesture
“It’s okay to live a life others don’t understand.”
— Jenna Woginrich
Constance, I like this quote. Read it carefully…
On it’s face, it is tempting to view it as a relativistic statement, which, if you have read here much, you know that I have issues with that approach. Oh it is not that I think that I have the market cornered on truth…it is just that I cannot wrap my mind around an approach that says all things are relative and there are no absolutes…or there is no absolute truth and each person’s choice is absolute truth for them…
BECAUSE..these statements both have an absolute premise as their pre-supposition.
Do you see it there? Yes? Good.
No? Well, let me help: the first statement that there are no absolutes can be rejected, because it in and of itself logically is an absolute statement…and the same with the second!
So philosophically I don’t give serious weight to anyone who says or thinks in such short cut ways…for that is what they are: short cuts to deeper and more prescient observations and the potential for wisdom gained.
I do think that what this quote is saying is far closer to where we want to go. It is basically exhorting you to understand that you are not God, the all-knowing all-encompassing author of all things and thus the only One qualified to discern ultimately, decide ultimately, and judge/rule ultimately.
And here is the kicker: as beings created in Their Image, we have a “Junior G-Man” version of this authority! It is an honor, a wonder, and a responsibility! In all ways we must emulate Them…all ways that is, but one: humbly accepting that our view is limited by the scope of our enlightened awareness and consciousness combined with what Grace They have given to each of us to be Their ambassador in our space and our time.
So that’s why I love the quote below…it saves us from hurting a lot of people…it saves us from hurting ourselves.
Blessings, Charissa
“You don’t get to decide the truth. Other people have their own experiences, just as valid. This is easy to forget. Your slice of life seems so large and unmistakeable, like a mirage of wholeness from where you stand. But it is your job to know better and not confuse your small piece for the whole, even if you sometimes forget. Life is big—much bigger than just yours. This is the only note to self: other people are real. That’s all there is to learn.”
— Frank Chimero – The Only Note To Self
OMG…I sooo love this quote. It really takes the difficulty and sacredness of establishing true heart connectedness and lends a levity to the process, it is self-deprecating and thus liberating.
Thanks Baby, thanks DDH!!
“Maybe a relationship is just two idiots who don’t know a damn thing except the fact that they’re willing to figure it out together.”
Remember “Jaws?” The movie? And that moment
when Richard Dreyfuss shouts in shocked alarm:
“We’re gonna need a bigger boat!” The sound,
his voice, the realization he was up
against something more brutal, more unknown
than they had realized…had dark suspected…
Well, I was thinking today about boats
about Mama’s Boat, Her Clipper Ship Sailing…
and She’s not limited to oceans only…
She can sail up rivers, onto trails,
trod by shaggy elk and ancient Indians…
Her Masts are tall, majestic, She sails over
Groves and Glens, She sails over vistas foul
and fair, views of beacons, of hills and lanterns
red with hateful thoughts the redder still
beneath the clingy ivy choking love.
But if She sails on stormy weather inland
from seas Pacific o’er mountains to the deserts,
or She sails in from long Atlantic shores
across those Carolinas south and north,
so fair, so foul, riddled with love and hate
like starlight thru bullet holes…glowing bright
lovers of kindness constant in that night…
Mama knows, She knows! Her boat is big enough!
Her Boat transcends the sharks of sea and land
Her nets are tensiled taut titanium
I’m safe on Her Ship “Big Billy Goat Gruff”
and trolls that lurk like land-sharks there beneath
henley flannel bridges near the mills
the waterwheels revolving in the waters
called clearwater but in fact so stagnant
infected with mosquitos like the plague
the trolls will jump and thrust, strain viciously
and find their revelation in such smallness,
their petty crooked goblin-cruel teeth,
their flat black piggy eyes that never blink,
their taste for tender flesh, for stumbled children
tripped on blocks becoming dread millstones,
they jump, show off their sleek and ugly snouts
that bristle row on row with rancid knives…
they shall find that shackles slickly slipped
over their necks and chains meant for the others
have doubled back and clicked closed there for good,
and those land-sharks, those south of Charlotte trolls
at last are cast into the slate grey sea
awaiting eager, quick to swallow up
and ne’er a trace seen e’er again of them
and thus the children run to Them so free.
I sail in a boat big enough, I sail
in Mama’s Good Ship Big Goat Gruff and Glory
and ever I will sing Her Mercy Story.
“One of the most courageous decisions you will ever make is to finally let go of whatever is hurting your heart and soul.”
— Brigitte Nicole
“If one man can destroy everything, why can’t one girl change it?”
— Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
…the application of Grace to life as depicted in words.
In life there are a number of truths to live by. Some are obvious, while others require a little bit more thoughts and life experiences. At the end of the day these are the things that make life easier, and make life more enjoyable in the long run because you’re spending less time being focused on things that shouldn’t have your attention in the first place. This is especially the case when it comes to understanding other people, especially when we’re talking about a relationship. Here are 5 pieces of wisdom that everyone should know in relationships.
If he wanted to talk to you he would, and you would be receiving more than – at best – 2 to 3 word responses. If someone cares about talking to you they will be genuinely interested in sparking, and maintaining a conversation with you. They might make it obvious that they’re trying to keep the conversation going, or maybe they won’t – but either way, the conversation is kept alive, and you’re not wondering where you stand.
This goes for friends, and potential significant others. If he says he’s too busy, or is constantly dodging hanging out with you then you should have a fairly good idea where you stand. And that might seem blunt, but ultimately it’s the truth and it isn’t a secret that people make time for others that they care about, and that they genuinely want to make time for. Don’t take it personally. Learn and grow from it.
Maybe a kiss at the end of the date, but if he’s looking for something more, or something that you are not there for – particularly a hook up – then the date was happening for the wrong reasons. Understand what you want out of a date, and keep yourself at those limits. Someone who actually cares about you will understand your own boundaries and limitations.
If you ask them what their favorite book is, and they say “none,’ or “I don’t know,” then perhaps it’s time to reevaluate what you’re doing, or who you’re investing your time in. A book tells a lot about a person’s personality, life experiences, and what they want out of life.
Ask about really bad experiences, and really great ones. Ask about regrets. Ask about their childhood. Ask the important things now and open that door before it closes. Connecting with a person goes far beyond just running through typical legs of conversation.
| — | Ijeoma Umebinyuo |
“I do believe in an everyday sort of magic—the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.”
— Charles de Lint
Constance…what a great quote.
NOW: here is Charissa’s lil pea brain whirling round and round: there is a sweet and awe inspiring privilege in being caught up in this mystery, awake. And there is no loss, is there, if that is all we have…that connectedness inexplicable and synchronicitous. If there is only that, when we die we will be glad for it and made the richer as we found courage to dive in to the Mystery, the Mystic, the Hidden and the Made Known Without Words.
But my Q: Why is there such resistance to the idea that there would be a Personal God, Infinite in power and presence and horribly wonderfully finite in its involvement with us…and that God is so personal that it chooses to manifest itself in 3 persons, so as to be available to everyone of us…and then in that availability and pursuit, in that Quest for communion with us more arduous than lovers, why cannot They be the magic, the connectedness, the whispered voice, the presence?
I have never met anyone with a problem with the God who talks to me…literally. Either they love Her-Him-Him, or they think my God is just part of me, but a creative and wonderful and fairy-tale ought to be sort of “Charissa Imagination”.
Every person I have met who has a problem with God has been raped and abused and dehumanized by a god presented by evil people wearing masks and a name that their heart violently murders in each beat.
Constance…would you do a favor for me? Would you read the quote, and then imagine, what if God was just like that, and would talk with you, dialogue with you, listen to you, and then connect you with magic?
What if….
….well, then you would have met my Mama…my beautiful and wonderful blessed Mama Holy Spirit.
Deepest love, and written in tender crushed pain right now but bleeding gratefulness to Mama, who loves me
Charissa
| — | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
Constance, I have written precisely one time on my explicit beliefs regarding sexuality and love. You can find that post at Love, In a Sexual World .
I reference that post, because it is saying very similar things to this lil quote I posted…
…the key point in this quote and the absolutely essential thing to grasp is this: sexuality is something you are given as your very own, and thus it belongs to you. It is a state of being that is held in potential, and when you choose to engage it, you forever are altered…just like when you get married, or become a parent.
Oh…marriages can end, but you will always “have been married”…children can die, but you can never “un-become” being a parent.
And to take someone’s sexuality…to let it be taken…well, that is the greatest act of theft that can occur: either the person taking it the greatest thief or the one letting it being taken the greatest thief from themself.
Recently I have been beset with acts of betrayal and broken trust. And in another place where I attempted to contact an author whose book raised many things, I found myself accused again of sin…sexual sin, mind you…simply for being open that I am transgender.
As a matter of fact, sexuality is actually one area that is pretty darn together in my life, thanks to Mama and my darling holder of my heart.
I will soon post about the awful and hateful things that were said by complete strangers…but in the meantime, seeing this quote reminded me:
teach your children that they possess the gift of the ages: their sexuality and the right of its dispensation.
Love, Charissa Grace
bleeding and cut, bruised and battered, but refusing the bribes of defeat
“Destroy the idea that men should respect women because we are their daughters, mothers, and sisters. Reinforce the idea that men should respect women because we are people.”
“Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one’s mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
| — | T.B. LaBerge |
| — | Kai, Lessons in Life #39 |
Pray that I hit the hole
when I am hurled violently,
that I roll like cats
and land softly
on paddy feet that I swim like otters
free and surf like Icarus
of the sea and waterproof
i dangle now
stuck in and out
and bleeding
upside down
and reeling
eyes throbbing red
red red red dark
today will be a birth or an
abortion a hand or a sharp knife
liberty or lambasting
and sentenced to
Kafka penitentiary
our cottage is still,
today…empty.
oh, I see the flotsam and jetsam
that jumped from the garage sales
on life’s oceans, my knick·knacks
strewn round about jousting
with your bibelots and baubles
our lace tablecloth
crawling in intricate pattern
on our lil table like a web
sprung from Oh Smart Charlotte
and laid down for our delight,
and our kettle like a bird
flown into its window-nemesis
and broken.
our hearth lays there, still…silent
and sorry ash too listless to even
puff and rise for flights of fancy
with dust motes and sunbeams.
our mittens and scarves
lay over there, forlorn,
bereft of body and they listen
to the music of clothes
piled beside railways to hell.
they are thankful for tiny tragedy,
small in scope and easily buried.
but i am still in me,
like the ashes in the hearth,
and I know that tragedy is a hologram,
from the smallest piece to the greatest
and I miss your quick warm movements
that sing without saying a word.
cottages, tables and mittens…
all hearths of sorts,
and full of empty ashes.
Constance…in light of recent events, I am continuing posting things I find germane to my current place, current state of mind, and current resolve to not accept blame for the actions of abusers…you all know the trope: “if you hadn’t done (or been, or said, or thought, or gone) X, then I would not have had to say (or be, or do, or think, or exploit you in the place you went) Y. Classic displacement of responsibility from where it rests squarely and justly onto the shoulders of the one who happened into the path of a monster for whatever reason.
I am vague about “abusers” for very good reasons of counsel…sorry, I would love nothing more than to name them publically. I might never get back what was taken from me, but they should have to wear the permanent stain of their actions like heart tattoos.
Insidious, institutionalized, and so deeply inculcated into our point of view societally…blaming the victim, and then comes that wonderful training in Stockholm to teach victims how to blame themselves, police themselves on behalf of the abuser.
I wrote a poem last year around this time called The Terrorist . It is making the point that emotional terrorism is just has destructive, just as death dealing as physical terrorism, and quite likely even more so, because it leaves its victim alive and violated, dehumanized and then made into the object of derision by the blame shifting that is then engaged in like a demonic game of Duck Duck Goose.
Over at Everyday Feminism you can find this article:
This contains the poem that I have taken formatting liberties with for effect…it contains it as a poetry slam short film. I encourage you to first of all watch. I also took the liberty of giving it my own title. Certainly if this is in error I will edit that ASAP, just let me know anyone…I just thought the piece I pulled for a title was apropos.
Then…after you watch…I want you to think of something. Think of someone in your life, someone in your past…the worst bully you can recall being around. Or, maybe just the most banal, the most bathetic…they are one in the same.
Try to remember what it was like when you were subject to that foul flow, puked in scalding gouts acidic and harsh…and then remember how good it felt to escape it, finally.
Then ask yourself: what became of that person? Did they go on from me to bully others? Abuse others? Are there other victims out there, and if so how are they…are they scarred like me? Worse?
And then lastly, imagine what things would have been like if you stopped the bully for good, or better yet, if someone had courageously stopped them before they got to you. Now what would the imagined future be like? Ya know, it is sorta like having your own version of “It’s a Wonderful Life” except in reverse…everyone has been living that bully’s truth which is in reality Aftermath.
I am confronted with a daunting and arduous road. Likely in this confrontation, I will be completely trashed in reputation, motivation and presentation…but maybe it will make the bully think twice next time…and maybe the sight of me publicly humiliated will somehow be the turning point that cracks a hard shell encasing a torn heart, and an enabler will be convicted to take a stand with the powerless in identification instead of taking leave in the safety of what we do now…blame the victim.
I dedicate this poem to a certain “Dick” in my life.
Charissa, clear minded and terrified
Quaking and resolved
Condemned to die and trusting Them who specialize in resurrection
Thank you. Hi, everyone.
I’m Lucy, and the title of this piece is…
Uh, the title of this piece is…
People make a big deal about eyes,
but it was really
the wrinkle in his forehead
that caught me
as he fumbled to
write down his number.
We fell in love
like children running downhill:
wind whipping past,
parading each other to our friends,
to the sky,
to the old couples we
imagined as our future selves.
When he moved in,
I swore he fused with the house.
I could hear his sigh
in the hum of my ceiling fan,
I could taste him in my coffee,
and anyone could
see him in my poetry.
The grooves in his palm
spoke of tragedies.
A frayed lifeline spread
to the pinky tip.
I traced along
those calloused patches
and kissed the scars
on his knuckles.
When you love hard enough,
you can embrace those scars.
And when you love long enough,
you excuse or even ignore
almost imperceptible
changes in the terrain:
when he gripped me a bit tighter,
a bit more often.
When “How are you?”
became “Where were you?”
In college,
I learned that in World War I,
soldiers rarely wrote about their misery.
They were living
a new kind of nightmare,
so what good were
the same old words
and metaphors?
Poets died in those trenches.
I thought of them
as I tiptoed
around the landmines
that littered our home.
When you live in a battlefield,
where do you find energy to pick up a pen?
Like a numbed soldier,
I lived from moment to moment,
and when the moments were sweet
(and many were),
I savored them because nothing
tastes as good as hope.
Because even on the bad days
when it seemed an eyelash
could set him off,
when he threatened
to leave the apartment
or this world,
still each night
he would murmur
into my ear that
these were the natural
ups and downs of love.
But there is nothing natural about war.
He was my comrade,
sinking into the trenches,
grasping at my face,
my arm,
my collarbone.
I wanted to rescue him.
If that meant
bearing his blows and
his slurred insults,
I would do it.
If I could’ve
swallowed his sadness,
I would have.
My friends considered me MIA,
but I reported for duty every day
and would’ve marched into death
if she hadn’t made me listen.
In that moment,
I realized I wasn’t his comrade,
but a prisoner of his war.
And after two years
and seven months,
I finally made
a break for it.
Some nights I find myself
clicking through old memories.
I marvel at the smiles
and the closeness and realize that
these are the images which remain
with me most vividly.
When time has had its way with me,
has softened the edges of my memory,
I’m afraid I’ll only remember his charms:
the crook of his arm,
the way he said
“Hey baby.”
I’m afraid I’ll miss these ideas of him.
But then
I remember those poets,
and how long they lived
in those trenches,
and the mornings
I spent crying
into my breakfast.
And now
when I pick up my pen,
it is heavy,
but it is firm.
I lean into it
like a staff
as I tread the ground
that hardened beneath me
the moment
I let you go.
The ink smudges my hands
like war paint.
I am bruised from battle,
but I am not
a casualty of his war.
I am free.
I am free.
I am mine.
Feminist cancels USU talk after guns allowed despite death threat | The Salt Lake Tribune.
Constance…here it is again: an attitude, a threat…and the woman blamed simply for being.
Read the link, and digest the threat, made by a man…and then consider the response made. Of course, in the name of safety, of not taking chances…right? Which is implicitly also saying that if the woman did not desire the free expression of her thoughts in a venue that had solicited her input, then none of this would have happened.
Frankly, it sticks in my craw and is not something I am swallowing or buying. And this is my position regardless of how easy or difficult my own journey is right now. Some things are never okay…no matter who says them, no matter why they are said.
I have not caused anyone to do anything simply by anything I say, do, or am…and neither does any other woman. Whoever it is that says something, does something or is something is responsible for the things they said, did, or chose.
Wisdom is key, yes. Discretion to be desired above gold…but this feminist lecturer did not cause this situation…the poor, deluded, sick bully who wrote what he wrote absolutely did.
Charissa Grace, resolute and clear minded…
thinking of justice…praying for mercy, in me and for me…and finding it so difficult to even know what humility is, let alone walking in it…
…I have come too far to be chased back to shame and silence.
Darling, are you awake? Yes?
Good…do you remember our beginning?
A little hut by the sea
wearing grey cedar shingles like feathers
ruffled in rainy winds and shot thru
with browns and blacks…
the red round rock stacked
shambling into walls that just spelled home,
nestled midst woven thatches of
marram shot thru with sedges and dandelions,
clinging to shifty sands like picnic blankets
strewn round that heart…that little hut,
our beginning kissed by windy sands
scritching out beach music
on violin decks and cello chairs of cypress.
You were a wordless humming song
and tidal in my veins you moved
in rhythm, rhyme, in time to that
strumming music tidal
joyous humming in the dancing of the waves
and sand and wind and sky.
We walked each day steady
across those shores ever reaching
to the sea and the sea ever running
back to sands and sunset ever blessing
everyday each moment with its many colored kiss
in hues of pinks and purples, oranges, yellows, hues of bliss
in reds and blues, and greys… you…
always grey lining blue of mine with you,
in silver shot straight thru
with grey shot thru my blue.
We knew each sunset,
whiled away another day
closer to that sunset last
and that final mystic gateway
at the end thru which we enter
Lone and sundered, hoping that we yet may
walk together on a new shore
where there are no sunsets because
there is only sunrise
sunrise
sunrise
yet again
and yet again…
We walk still each day,
and every sunset bows to us,
and then bows to the night,
to the next day yet born,
to the next sun yet risen,
to the next sunset kiss…
and the stars always
over head and constant,
glitter chips of always-light
against the thick and sable night,
the stars nod in return, return…
ahh…the beach at night.
Air refreshing, breezy, flexible,
runs its loving hungry fingers
thru your hair pliable
as we walk, the sand
packed and wet and clean
and time at last is friable
in the smell of salty air
its kiss brushes against you,
trailing fingers across your cheek,
over your skin, and I too brush against you
(rush within you kissing,
trailing fingers)
We are Quietness
nestled deep in certain stillness,
and snuggled yet deeper
in the steady static roar
of the ever crashing waves
and the gurgling swishy swirling
of waves playing tag
with sand and seaweed
and seagulls refereeing
crying foul foul foul
so the waves run
and retreat in laughing ripples
back to the waiting deep safety
of the vast receptive sea,
and us safely snuggled
in our you and me.
The sand is crisp and cold and damp
as we walk, you and me, our steps
singing skritch skritch skritch,
singing in time
to the cry of those legalistic gulls
and our feet slide as we move from wet to dry
and we skim across the surface
walking like penguins
so we can move thru time
and yet leave nary a trace
and you feel so safe, like you are home
and you feel so safe in my feeling that…
find safety in my adoration
and you are home…
We can see
a vast array of stars overhead,
a broad expansive sea swelling before,
and stretching there a beach, the shore
beneath our sliding skimming feet,
comprised of endless grains of sand
uncountable but having number,
speaking of the days of time
since time began…
everywhere
are unique things uncountable,
innumerable…and you:
a one off, one and done
and rendered even just that much more special
on this stage of infinince
in the midst of audience
of blank uncountable conclave.
and there upon that stage
you are all the more substantial,
present, solid, singular,
just the endless treasure of your beauty
and the vast stretch of my love
(echoing stars and sand and sea)
singing harmoniously
in the presence of this eternal array,
this echo of infinity
we’re in.
And we walk, away from our little hut,
towards our little hut, and away again,
and time is scrolling out before us,
we two, we poised to write
with heart quills dipped in love’s well,
and then time rolls back into itself
(ah, it sees its the sea,
rolling out to kiss the sand
and rolling back to dump those kisses
into waiting heart so deep)…
time rolls out day by day by day, and back again
neath the stars,
in the night,
with the wind.
I wonder in the midst
of this sandy sacred setting
which thing it is my heart echoes
as it aches and hurts so fierce,
so good as it longs, yearns
so empty and so full,
so hungry, satisfied,
so intricate, complete…
my fiery core of passion and of promise
what…
Rolls in and out in waves?
Glitters fierce like diamond stars?
Never ends like grains of sand
everywhere there’s earth?
It aches too fierce, too good,
it thrills, thrums too ferocious
to identify and focus on,
and then it gets dim and blurry
when I look at you and see the quiet
gentle fierce glad brightness
of your countenance at night that
dims the stars, and
blurs the sands, and
makes the waves stand still
breathless and in awe, and
I know then my core
is ever always you you you
we married,
long ago beside this same vast ever sea,
on the same shore of sand golden, tan
and singing to the music
laughing in the running waves
beneath the glitter gaze of stars
overhead and hanging on angel visions,
we married…
and the moon officiated,
she gloamed before us
as we walked into her temple,
her the Officiant,
the Congregant of Always and gentle love,
we walked her moonlight aisle together…
some marry on mountainsides midst craggy peaks
to the wedding songs of brooks and creeks
and others still mingle in the firelight
beneath the tall stentorian witness of deep forests
redwood and sequoia who roll out meadows
soft and green, and arrayed more beautiful and
richer than the wealth of Solomon in their dress of flowers
and stalks and stems as the birds serenade
and sing their praise to them.
we visited there, you and me,
we heard that brooky song,
we saw that craggy might,
we lay in meadow soft
resplendent in love and
we have in our many walks found that
we were foundered, mired
in swampy lowlands funky, smelly,
decomposing rotten and releasing
the last gasp of life in its methane relief
but still stinking of that unbecoming…
we have thought us lost but then discovered
that it is here that wombs become impregnate,
become renewed as elements of used-to-be-alive
stick to our skin in longing desperate clingy clutchings.
But it is back,
always to the sea,
we are drawn, we,
to that intersection
of time and truth and bright eternity
that we see tangible
and with us in the sand,
and stars and sea.
and inside us,
you and me, burns a flame we share,
yes the same one, the same blade
of those fires that we see before us
in the night and yet to rise anew
in the day yet to be born,
the echo of stars and suns,
of the moon’s desires and passions
for lovers everywhere
and the twin of driftwood fires
that we kindle every night
as our offering to beauty,
to love, to us, to light midst
the crackling shouts of wood at last
consumed and released popping up up and away
in sparky eager pieces at last
free to become the stars overhead
that driftwood prophecies of old proclaimed their fate,
and the incense of their longing
drifting around us in thick vapours
that smell of longing
at last to be fulfilled,
smelling of worship,
smelling of Mama’s breath
and the courts of the Risen Lamb,
and smelling of Us,
you and me,
and our little hut.
Constance…right now I feel pretty darn unlovely, if I am open…
struggling thru these circumstances where it is my truest and best self that I have been becoming, with soo much good and yet that is going to get me fired from my work…
or worse, leave me there after they have so deeply violated me and ripped out my guts…
I find out tomorrow…oh yes, in their exquisite torture they wish to prolong the agony, in the name of further investigation.
Q: you are a smart and perceptive person Constance…in anything I have written since post #1 have you read anything that would indicate I am a “vindictive”, “revengeful”, “bully” who uses position and power to coerce and threaten others…?????
I confess that the way they used those words…well it was as if they grabbed branding irons and branded the insides of my thighs and while I know in my heart that is the literal opposite of who I am, it left these severe marks…
…perhaps with Mama’s grace I can someday wear them as badges of honor, but until then the pain is nearly unbearable
Constance I left the following as a comment to encourage someone…I decided that maybe it would have value here as well…hope you like it
The ache inside, the empty chasm
looms threatening in the night
and our heart writhes, and moans in spasms
and tries to hang on tight.
The darkness hangs its cloudy veil
and lays its claim to time
and grinds all words fine, down to Braille
and it seems no reason, rhyme
Can ever answer our hurt cry
can ever heal our pain
we know from here we’re meant to fly
clean, free from death’s dark stain
Sis, take heart, we’re out here, we
survived our cross of woe
we learned to share hurt, that’s the key
to rise again and grow
My heart is with you as your heart
beats every second out
may grace and peace to you impart
deep mercies in this drought.
I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers, dear one…if you can but manage to hang on, you will be glad, one day. But now, in the hard times, the silent scream times…just hang on, and think of thousands who are with you.
Love, Charissa ❤
The raucous room and flowing wine, rollicking around us
awash in shallow social streams and plumage all fanned out
and passers by drifted in close to take a look and then they
shifted chins, rolled eyes to sit close jowl to jowl and thigh.
(Donne wasn’t talking about trans-folk when he wisely quipped
“no man is an island”, for I was life boat drifting on an endless sea and stranded,
fish below and birds above and me no water there to drink
as in the midst of many waters roiling, full of stink.)
tables full and over full, like bellies and wine glasses
which were groaning and clinking atonal and so rhythmic
choruses did echo in this gathered congregation
of the goddess Socializing and her sleazy consort mammon
who greedily devours offerings of time and treasure 
Ah, but look…and see our dingy, drifting on that desert sea, in this
oasis of walled off space, our puffed up air-filled punt
the good ship “I Alone Survived” bobbed high and pristine, clean,
midst merry chaos, swelling choruses of merely other.
perhaps we were mistaken as tee-totalers of banquets,
step children vegan and red headed in the roiling throng.
OH! the weight watchers attending but on such a strict repast
that we were tasked to come, eat food but fast the feasts of friends.
We sit alone, apart (the better to stare at you, my dear) in this overcrowded room
and overcrowded tables, one so lonely in the middle
t’was overcrowded by blank emptiness, and occupied
by someone glowing shining sparking happily becoming, but
accounted as a lost placeholder only, and the one
who loves her, sitting side by side and stark there…and alone.
This solitary desert trudge, sometimes teeming with life
and trees and nights under soft moons, but this night doors are locked,
the gates are hidden deep in mystery concealing wonder
of how a transgirl finds her way and what becomes her key
To walk amidst the forests, in the fields of human kindness, there to
forage for the herbs medicinal to cure that blindness and to
find that song, the notes to open up locked hearts, deaf ears
until that day the Other will go forth, sowing in tears…
“…Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. She who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing her sheaves with her.”
Psalms 126:5-6
*gender pronouns altered, meaning not violated)
Coming Out – Yes, it still does matter – LGBTQ Nation.
Constance…how ironic that it is “Coming Out Day” today…I post a really great article about it and while it deals with the topic of sexual orientation and being public about that, it translates perfectly over to gender orientation as well.
Salient words for me here (I substituted transgender for gay):
“Truthfully, most people believe that just saying the words “I’m transgender” means you’ve come out. In a sense it does, however, the real coming out, in my opinion, is when you look at that reflection you see in the mirror and say “I’m Transgender” and you don’t look away in shame – that’s when you’ve come out.
When you can accept yourself and love who you are and understand that the world can be cold and lonely and ignorant and intolerant – and you can still smile at your own reflection – you’ve come out.”
I have a long road ahead of me, God willing…one that I have just begun to scratch the surface of the joys and sorrows waiting.
But something is different: joys and sorrows are old acquaintences, especially the sorrows, and I walked with them in hollowness and null, void. Oh yes, They were there, are there…but:
What is different is me. Me. I am here now, and perhaps that will tip the balance in my favor at last.
“I’m skert Mama!!”
“I got this too, Baby…I got this too.”
Listen, I loved my father. It was out of that love and respect that I split in two, so I could please him. I heard his heart even thru other things. He never bullied me like what you will see in the beginning of this lil video…but he was a towering figure, and his presence was writ over my life large. When the twist at the end occurred, a torrent of tears tore loose…and I could not help but wonder what would have been…could have been. I used to mourn and grieve the amount of time I had left…before I was at last released and set free from this double crossed body, betrayed by sin and betrayed by gender..but now? I mourn and grieve the time I have lost, wishing I had those years to live proper as myself.
I mean…bff…would that particular source of weirdness and strain and uncertainty that surrounds our friendship be present if I had the right body? I don’t think so…I think that after the oddity of how we connected so deeply via writing and then fell into our future and walk our our present backwards, navigating the folds…after that was internalized, it would be a casual shrug, and we would be free to function in our world as we women always have, under the noses and before the unseeing eyes of men who comfort themselves with thoughts that we are like cackling hens and chitchatting crickets easily satisfied with baubles, shiny things and trinkets.
But for me being me…the penumbra of ignorance that surrounds me colors everything, taints everything…i think i would die if it ended up impacting you harshly and causing you trouble in your life. It haunts me, frankly, and makes me want to flee screaming in the night “unclean, unclean!” Modern day leper.
Anyway, this video is very redemptive, and gives me hope…inspiration…to keep going forward and not quit, and pray that my pain would be transformed into someone else’s power.
Bleeding and unable to staunch the flow,
Charissa Grace
O you forever listed
under some other heading
when you are listed at all
you whose addresses
when you have them
are never sold except
for another reason
something else that is
supposed to identify you
who carry no card
stating that you are—
what would it say you were
to someone turning it over
looking perhaps for
a date or for
anything to go by
you with no secret handshake
no proof of membership
no way to prove such a thing
even to yourselves
you without a word
of explanation
and only yourselves
as evidence
She walked in white
and wore a white dress simple.
she was Beauty writ so blatant and blinding
Her eyes flashed smoking, fierce she ruled that day,
her day, and as her one choice my day too
and all was bent and formed in her glance.
There was a muddy brown hillside behind the church,
slick with recent rain fallen brown and fragrant
onto October ground boasting in pumpkins and passion.
She was eager to the altar ascend, and she hiked her skirts
and then herself and up that muddy slope treacherous she
trod on hinds feet, on glory wings and she was come into her Own.
I stood fearful, clad in brown drab (and hidden inside the hole of me)
I cried out “be careful baby! omg don’t fall!”
and she turned, halfway up, left leg poised up hill,
right leg firm, rooted to the very core of the Earth (and her solid present self)
and turned loose those brown lasers on me…flayed me, saw me hiding
(but didn’t know it was me she was seeing).
Her hair moved in the dancing wind and she flung out her hand
(oh her right hand sought, kissed, and become my bridal bouquet)
and she said “Do you actually think I would Stumble on my wedding day!!??”
I wanted to fly into a million pieces, each one singing screaming crooning
blessedblessedblessedblessedblessed…I wanted to coalesce, come out,
but instead I just stood there, gaping and fearful and frozen.
Her lids lowered (that adored half mast glance), softened even
as they grew more crystal amber gold and she said
“Come on up baby, I am here always” (ohhh)
I took her hand and ascended (were my feet even on the ground?)
and we walked into that building decorated and celebratory
and got scolded by the clucking biddies cus we saw each other before…
The next time I saw her, she moved in music and light, rode waves
and walked forward to stand at my side and never go.
And then she said I did, I do, I will…then we lit Our Candle
and I was delivered to Joy forever.
Happy Anniversary my Dearest Darling
I never lived until there was you.
Love, Charissa Grace
high strung doesn’t even come close
to how high strung i really am…
but i lay like the dead lifeless,
empty inside, afraid,
seeing your departure as
the substance of my ugliness
and your withdrawal as
seceding heart to heart and
heart in heart.
anxiety is a fix-needing junkie
inside me, twitching and
twerking at the intersection
of thought and rational discourse,
wielding its squeegee
(some eldritch Excalibur)
over my heart wet and sloppy and screechy…
in its wake i am driving blind.
your hand feels absent.
my heart feels absence…
but your eyes are present,
wide in shock and gaping,
and finally open hurt outrage
asking plaintive, in naked anguish
what does it all mean, the cumulative
crowd of days and throng of years
in the long lost land called trans.
(and we didn’t even know
we were living there!)
your god-damned beautiful
perfumed forehead
(smelling always of heaven’s bakeries hot and warm
and working for that Feasting Day Coming)
it’s furrowed, that one line
near your left eye (silver-grey sea)
jumps up, twists and shouts
“this is not about you!
why is it always about you!
no it is not about you!”
you move off
like clouds racing the wind
black and billowy
to the mountains
to rain there on naked rock,
but I dwell
in the valley lonesome
and shadow deep
and dream of days
past and uncertain
to ever be days to come,
days of waffle weekends,
movies and popcorn (make my day)
chocolate and coffee…
and I am missing
long hours of talk
at the beach
in the wind, and later
at the fire
over wine…and later still
at hearts bonded deep
and words not needed
and action (then, now, coming)
rendered irrelevant.
I will indeed again
confess my love for you,
my desire for your company
and time and song
…and seeing…
oh to learn to be
grown women together,
all the while being informed
by the girls we were without knowing
and without needing to know
as long as we knew
how to remember wonder…
but you will never read this
(you never come here, why would you?)
so i can paint with fingers, feelings
and this canvas of grace
showing every clumsy stroke,
every wrong move
public and on display
and maybe
(Mama be gracious)
someday these words will be etched,
stained crimson on my crystal heart shattered
and each piece shouting love love love,
will sing to you of
all i thought
all i felt
all i forgot
all i am
all my love
Constance, this article is really good. Pass it along, please.
Sorry for my terse prose…I am feeling a bit down.
Running to Mama…Charissa Grace
Originally published on The Huffington Post and cross-posted here with the author’s permission.
Recently, a video about a transgender child in California named Ryland Whittington went viral. It is beautiful and moving and shows the power of unconditional parental love.
Sadly, like every other conversation about transgender children, the comments section was often unkind. Scanning the comments, I saw the same poorly thought-out ideas keep popping up. Many of them were similar to things said about transgender adults, but others were particular to transgender children.
I think it’s time to put these misconceptions to bed.
The overwhelming consensus of the psychological community is that gender identity is formed by the age of two or three. The consensus of the medical community is that sexual dimorphism of the brain occurs in utero as a result of exposure, or lack thereof, to androgens.
In other words, gender identity and expression are determined before a child is even born. It is only at two or three that they can express it.
Even those psychologists who push for “reparative therapy” to “normalize” gender non-conforming children acknowledge that if a child is still asserting a particular gender identity at the age of six, the odds of it changing are exceedingly small.
In utero, the reproductive organs develop and differentiate earlier than the brain does. When the brain later develops in ways that typically differentiate between male and female, it is based on whether or not the androgens are present and received.
Usually, because the gonads are already in place and producing minute amounts of hormones, this differentiation allows the brain development to match the typical pattern. When something (such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals) interferes with this process, you can get a mismatch between phenotypes.
A person’s sense of self and their gender identity and expression are based on what’s between their ears. Who you are as a person is defined by gray matter, not by genitalia.
Usually this line of attack is meant to imply that the children grew up in a broken home, or that somehow the parents were gender non-conforming or ultra-liberal or somehow encouraged it.
I have spoken with many parents of transgender kids who live in conservative, religious, two-parent military families with both parents filling stereotypical gender roles.
Wayne Maines became an advocate for his transgender daughter and transgender children nationwide despite previously having a very conservative philosophy and values that suggested that transgender children did not exist. Watching his child grow, he could not deny the fact that she was indeed a girl, not a boy.
But these stories are all anecdotal. Let’s see what research has to say about the matter:
“There is no proof that postnatal social environment has any crucial effect on gender identity or sexual orientation.”
Next.
Let’s look at two of the most famous case studies of trying to “fix” gender non-conforming children. There was George Reker’s case study of “Kirk,” and then there was the case of David Reimer, who was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision.
In both cases, trying to cram these children into a box they didn’t fit in ended up killing them.
Nearly every parent of a transgender child I have met has told me that they reached a point of acceptance when they realized that they had a choice: either accept their child or lose them altogether.
We’ve already discussed that this isn’t a fantasy; there are biological origins, and simply identifying as male or female is not abnormal. However, this reminds me of nothing so much as the same sort of ill-considered opinions that people have about raising other special-needs children.
It also bears repeating that the majority of parents who have children who have socially transitioned reached a point where they feared for their child’s life. Suicidal ideation is common even in very young in transgender children.
I cannot say this more plainly: You do not have a right to question or judge a parent’s decisions when they fear for their child’s life.
Individuals saying this sort of thing may have demonstrated some cross-gender behaviors but not a persistent cross-gender identity.
This is a key difference between the two, and such comparisons represent a false analogy.
This is another form of blaming the victim. Shouldn’t we focus on preventing bullying rather than making the victim conform? We do not accept that forcing kids to act “less gay” is right. We don’t like the idea that avoiding being raped is the victim’s responsibility.
The parents of transgender and gender non-conforming children aren’t to blame if their children are bullied. More often than not, they are already doing everything they can to keep their child alive and happy.
If blame is to fall anywhere, it more rightly belongs on those doing the bullying and on school administrators who allow it to happen.
No. Doctors are prescribing Lupron, which blocks the onset of puberty. This drug is already being used on children who aren’t transgender to prevent precocious puberty.
The reason that doctors block puberty in transgender children is that forcing a transgender child to go through the wrong puberty is more or less irreversible, does permanent harm in terms of ongoing dysphoria, and results in greater difficulty living in their target gender.
For children who haven’t undergone any sort of medical treatment, they transition back socially. However, after age six to eight, this becomes very uncommon. If they are on Lupron, they stop taking it, and puberty proceeds as normal, just as it would for a child who had been given it to stop precocious puberty.
According to Dr. Norman Spack, who specializes in this field:
“[A]t the time that puberty begins — that means between about age 10 to 12 in girls, 12 to 14 in boys, with breast budding or two- to three-times increase in the gonads in the case of genetic males — by that particular point, the child who says they are in the absolute wrong body is almost certain to be transgender and is extremely unlikely to change those feelings, no matter how anybody tries reparative therapy or any other noxious things.”
At the age of 15 or 16, if the child is still asserting a cross-gender identity, there is almost zero chance that this will change. Then, and only then, are cross-gender hormones administered.
In short, the medical and mental-health protocols are designed to only take permanent medical steps after everything possible has been done to ensure that this is the correct course of treatment. Until that point, everything is reversible.
Along the way, however, steps are being taken to minimize potential harm to the patient whether or not they are transgender.
By that time it is too late. Puberty has already given them a body that can’t be easily fixed.
Medical science can attempt to mitigate the harm, but at that point it is expensive and painful, and the results only partially compensate for the effects of going through the wrong puberty.
In short, forcing them to wait can (and often does) cause massive, irreparable harm.
No. No. And a thousand times no. I have met the parents of gender non-conforming kids. These kids may express themselves differently but do not have a cross-gender identification (e.g.: they are a boy who identifies as a boy but likes things that are gender-stereotyped as more feminine).
I absolutely do not want children who are simply gender non-conforming going down a medical track.
What parents of transgender and gender non-conforming children want is the same thing that every other parent wants: for their children to be happy, safe, loved, and protected.
If medical care will help their children go out into the world with every chance of achieving their potential and having a fulfilling life, then they will fight tooth and nail for it.
It’s what any good parent would do.
Brynn Tannehill is originally from Phoenix, Ariz. She graduated from the Naval Academy with a B.S. in computer science in 1997. She earned her Naval Aviator wings in 1999 and flew SH-60B helicopters and P-3C maritime patrol aircraft during three deployments between 2000 and 2004. She served as a campaign analyst while deployed overseas to 5th Fleet Headquarters in Bahrain from 2005 to 2006. In 2008 Brynn earned a M.S. in Operations Research from the Air Force Institute of Technology and transferred from active duty to the Naval Reserves. In 2008 Brynn began working as a senior defense research scientist in private industry. She left the drilling reserves and began transition in 2010. Since then she has written for OutServe magazine, The New Civil Rights Movement, and Queer Mental Health as a blogger and featured columnist. Brynn and her wife Janis currently live in Xenia, Ohio, with their three children. Follow her on Twitter @BrynnTannehill.
Things feel like silk over thistles.
My heart is home, snuggled down
certain…in place…and yet underneath
being home pulses pain, sighs and sorrow,
sings sadness…tambourine thistles,
timbrel thorns tipped with sting and with sticker
tipped with grief for the meanness released
in this world, cacophonous, clanging
macabre symphony wailing and keening
and it easily pierces my thin certain silk
it is here, in this place…home…
where I am snuggled down certain…
…it’s here too, crept ‘neath walls of love
we raised higher (longer) than the Dragon
and broader than the Icy Bear.
…meanness dissolved…
(become smoke from cauldrons stirred
by darkness and tended by sneaking death)
crept under, around, thru, in vapors
breathed in gasps, poisonous, choking
off health, flowing life from even the elect
(oh Mama, could it be? Say it isn’t so!)
me and my heart met and we mingled
and made our nest in walls of love,
in temple tones, rhythms so homey
and consecrated with Sacred Love…
but cuckoos crept in on the croaking
raucous dissonant din of black crows,
under safe and the sacred, they sought to steal, thieving
and taking goodness and life, and leaving our chicks
(our heart our heart our heart our heart)
torn and rent by meanness and scratched by claws
and marred and us
(married)
hands fluttering, hands wringing…hands empty
I am reeling here, snuggled down solid
I am reeling…tipping to and fro,
rocking…keening
as I look and long for that imagined future
we dreamed of for our dearest chicklings
(because my own, miscarried misshapen,
deadly-still and sightless in Gaza)
as I look and I long but I see only smoke
and haze, and I hear only laughing, gibbering
vaporous voices blown off cold cauldrons,
stirred by stale darkness, filled with green poison and
witches brew swirling and reeling…
reeling like me.
Mama…oh Mama do You see?
do you hear me here, bereft,
weeping in Ramah with Rachel
for my hatchlings hounded, harried,
torn and carried away
on torrents in time, in tears,
to tarry, to tarry, reeling in Rome
when they should be settled
joyous in Jerusalem
and glad singing.
Oh Mama…oh Mama
(my face slick with tears and my heart reeling in Rome).
Dear Constance…I have a heavy heart today, and my eyes are red and throbbing from weeping.
The second wave of “loving wounds from friends” is occurring. I got a letter in the mail from a man I spoke with several weeks ago, one whom I have known for years and had thought was open and interested in my fate.
Well, the letter showed that while he thinks of himself as a friend (and make no mistake, he truly thinks he is “doing the right thing”), he does not believe that I am of my right mind and walking properly with the Lord. He makes this clear.
And I am so conflicted! Because on the one hand I know that it is not man who grants righteousness or will be able to ultimately label me, but God who has given me righteousness as a free gift and my beloved Advocate the Holy Spirit (whom I adore and love to call Mama…a poetic, intimate and informal expression of heart connection that is underlaid by foundational theological teaching and underpinnings)…and yet on the other hand to be told by someone that I have known for over 35 years, lived with for a few of those, and then worked with for our entire working career, someone who has not been intimately involved in my life for the last 25, has rarely come to the house, did not check in when Dad died, failed to notice my rampant and extreme despair, to be told that I am under a spirit of deception and not rightly choosing for life…
…well it is shattering in a lot of ways.
I am going to post the letter here with my reply…and my comments to you all here, not anywhere else (My comments are indented and in blue). I am deeply convicted that Mama does not want me to argue about this with people. If they are open to learning what being transgender is and is not, then I will spend whatever time it takes…but if they want to “a priori” judge me as wrong and in sin simply for choosing transition, then it is pointless to argue, for the evidences that I have biblically and scientifically and philosophically are moot to them! They have already made up their minds based on feelings, cultural traditions, and a few verses wrenched from context to bolster their weak arguments.
I think what breaks me most…shakes me most…is the awareness that this same process is going to keep happening. And it is painful.
I could take the easy road…simply post “No Trespassing” and let them talk…but then again, how does that potentially educate? How does that maintain openness to relationship on my part? How does that lend any legitimacy to gender transition as a Christian?
I think that I am called to a higher purpose than just transition, and “fixing myself”…I think that I am called to speak for those who cannot speak, to run for those who cannot walk, and to stand for those who would shatter in the wind. So many individuals who are trans are so very broken, outcast, alienated…and I…true child of blessing and privilege even though I suffered as trans…I am relatively whole, and gifted with writing skills and speaking abilities.
No…I do think Mama has a different road for me, a road that will end up on the mountain top, but only via the lowly and lonesome valleys of the shadow of death. I hear Her singing to me “You gotta walk that lonesome valley…”
As you read below, I am going to add in comments of things I would have said, could have said but chose not to. Perhaps this intimate look into the life of a transgender Christian woman who is in the trench warfare that only Christians seem to be able to wage with such exquisitely kind cruelty will illuminate to you ways in which you may have failed to truly love your neighbor…or barring that will inspire you to simply “not go there”…to the correcting stool…at least not until you have walked side by side with someone for at least a hundred hours for every minute you plan to correct.
Interesting how Jesus spent very little time correcting anyone…oh wait! Except for the religious leaders and power mongers who corrected everyone else and were the final arbiters of who was holy and who was not!
I am still Charissa Grace. I am still seeking to do justice, and now in particular I am with all my being hungry to love mercy…but I am so sorrowful, how do I know if I am walking humbly? Well…Mama knows, She knows…so Ima stay close to Her always.
*****Handwritten letter to me dated October 4th, 2014*****
I want to write this to you in order to respond to our conversation that we had on your front porch on Sunday afternoon three weeks ago. My thoughts have taken awhile to distill within me but I believe that they have settled into an understandable form.
My heart is heavy as I write this and just as it has been since I was made aware of your public display of being transgender on a Monday morning as I was (Charissa comments: insert work activity here). From that shock I have been praying and have arrived at these few points that I hope you will be able to receive not as arrows of judgement or religious diatribe but as my response and call to Truth.
Interesting to see here that the very first things he communicates to me put the onus on me to “receive”…rather than the onus on him to speak edifying and encouragingly. He has done no study since we talked, asked no questions, or really even interacted with me at all.
An arrow of judgment is when we infer a heart condition based on an outward manifestation of behavior. You have judged someone when you think you know who they are based on what you have seen them do, or fail to do, with no other evidence. Jesus called it taking a speck out of someone’s eye when the speck remover’s eyes were full of logs.
A religious diatribe is when a deeply held belief is held over or against someone who is seen as violating that belief or invalidating that belief, and the said diatribe will not have any authoritative teaching accompanying it…it will simply be an emotionally laden coercion moment. Sometimes religious diatribes will be accompanied by some form of authority, but nearly every time they will be things taken out of context or twisted to serve the purpose of the one making it.
The goal of both of these forms of interaction is to control another person.
For me personally, you have crossed over a river which I will not be crossing.
This comment was confusing to me…is he telling me that he will not be transitioning beside me? Um, duh? Who would want to transition if they were fully themself? Or, is he telling me that we will no longer be friends, associates? And also, why will he not cross? Because he is happy as the gender he is? (again, duh)…or because I am in sin and he does not want to be sullied? Which is antithetical to the example that we have in Jesus by the way, who came in the flesh when we were yet dead in our sins and active enemies of God.
And now I am aware that you made that decision some time ago and I was not aware of it. And I have not ever been aware of your struggle with gender. My shock and surprise indicates a weakness of relationship and lack of transparency and openness that I assumed had existed in the past and present between us. Neither of us am I blaming for the weakness but I am sharing a feeling of loss because of the way I ended up finding out about your life change.
I simply must explain here…this man has not been a true part of my life on any consistent basis that would earn him any authority to speak like this to me. He was not there when my dad suffered…he was not there when my children went thru various trials…he was not there when I wanted to kill myself…he didn’t hear me when at work I tried to talk to him about the despair that overwhelmed me…
…and of course, he was not there when I at last admitted what I am. Because how could I dare talking to anyone about it? Seriously…look at the response he is having. Tell me how that makes him a safe place to pour out my heart and make my very core vulnerable at the most defenseless time of my life?
Weakness of relationship…lack of transparency and openness…assumed existed in the past and currently present.
Hmmm…first off, notice the assumption there, that everyone be all up in everyone else’s business. Somehow either he or I owed the other one this “transparency” simply because we had history and were both Christians. There is a devious and poison doctrine that got loose in the church in the 70s, and it assumes a heavy authoritarian leader to whom all others are “submitted to” and demands an accountability to that leader, or group of leaders. This was most clearly seen in the Shepherding Movement and in the teachings of a man named Bob Mumford among other men. As time passed, it was repudiated but managed to metastasize and mutate and the authority figure became something seemingly more benign called various things like “accountability partner” or other similar names.
While there is definite wisdom and benefit in having someone close that you trust who is there for you and who knows all about you, this practice usually devolves into various forms of bondage and control in its best forms and flat out spiritual abuse in its worst. Deep study of New Testament behavioral codes place about 99.9999% of the emphasis on removing specks from ones’ own eyes, and looking for ways to defer to others with them being more important than one’s self.
If you had shared your struggle and the reality of what you were dealing with in your heart with me or someone, perhaps things would be different. I am hoping that I would have cared enough to pray and help carry that burden to the Lord.
As I made clear when we talked, during the time he knew me most, I had no conscious idea that the source of my despair was gender dysphoria…and yes, as a victim of that Christian culture during those years, I had “accountability partners” who knew that I wrestled fiercely with depression and despair, and they had affirmed the nobility of this struggle.
I also had one friend in particular that I was open about gender feelings with, though we did not know at the time what the dealio was.
He ignores the presence of my amazing spouse and her complete sharing of my horror, her encouragement…and then he says he is currently hoping he would have cared enough to pray and help carry that burden to the Lord…WHAAAAAaaaa???????????
Did I read that right? Let me see if I am tracking: so far I have been warned that there are arrows coming and words that may be resembling religious diatribe…I have been told that I am across a river that he will not be crossing…he has implied that I have been secretive and dissembling over the years and has flat out stated that I had not shared my struggle…
…and then turns around to say that he is currently hoping that he would have cared enough…
Here is an idea: how about caring enough now, enough to be around me and see for himself that I am still the very same person I always was but more whole and healthy? How about getting over the fear that I am perishing, and getting over himself that he is somehow the knight riding in on the charger to save the day, and simply coming along side me as a friend with no agenda but to love me?
I have a few things to ask you to consider and to see my understanding of things.
OOoohh…his understanding…okay, I thought, here is where I will see some information, indication that he studied a bit on this…alas I was sadly disappointed. His understanding is just that: what he thinks in himself, and for reasons either explained poorly, weakly, or not at all.
First I am concerned that you have made these life changing decisions without any submitted relationship and dialogue with the people in the Body of Christ closest to you and who have known you. Any one of us becomes vulnerable without being in submitted relationships that are mutually held in open and honest accountable communication. Is there anyone you trust that could say “(Charissa comments: he used my deathname here) don’t go this way your (sic) making a mistake” and you would wait and not keep going? Left to ourselves we are alone.
Where do I start on that? See, the term “submitted relationship”…that is code, and means that anytime you want to do something you have to run it by other people, especially if it is something unusual. It is not enough to be submitted to God, and daily seeking Them, daily being in the word looking for guidance…it is not enough to be submitted to one’s spouse, and together daily seeking God in prayer together. No…there is a different dynamic, one in which someone else…a human being(s)…serves as an intermediary between you and God.
Hear me…there is nothing inherently wrong with doing just that…but neither is there anything inherently wrong in not doing that. A Christian who considers God’s word authoritative would search scripture for any broad stroke parameters that would include or preclude the considered direction, and if it was not prohibited would then pray and ask for guidance and insight regarding a looming decision. They would also consult with the people any such decision would directly affect, so as to defer to them humbly and understand the impact a chosen course may have on them. Then they would consider any science, technology, teachings etc that would further illuminate the possible outcomes of a choice…special attention would be given to any testimony of people who had experienced similar things.
Ideally, if one wanted to, they would share this with the people who are rooted and woven into their hearts and souls, just out of friendship. There is wisdom in counsel, and counsel from those who truly know you is priceless.
If the considered action was clearly prohibited by scripture, the counselours would be sure to point that out…but if it wasn’t…if it was a matter of choice…free will…then the preferred course of action might or might not be received, and it might or might not end up profitable…but it would not a priori be a matter of sin or rebellion or deception!!
It would simply be a choice, one if made foolishly would result in a bad end, but a bad end not due to inherent sinful action simply because it was different than the “submitted relationship” people want.
In my own case, by the time I actually confronted my being transgender, I had also pretty much divested myself of all controlling relationships and was seeking to draw close to God everyday. In fact, as depression tore at me, and dysphoria grew worse, there was not really anyone I trusted who would not immediately say I was under demonic attack or try to “buck me up”. It was insulting and hurtful that they would think that I had not already recited every encouraging verse in the bible…I know them all, literally…it was painful that they would think me vulnerable to demonic influence given that I was daily interacting with God and crying out desperately for help.
Besides, I do think there are quite a few theological issues involved with another modern doctrine that I find specious (the notion that a believer can be demonized after they have been united with the Spirit of God) a doctrine built on a few instances from the days of Jesus in the flesh. New Testament teaching regarding who controls one’s body, and who lives in that body when relationship with God is sought is full and pretty directive so as to infer that wrongs and sins would be the responsibility of an individual free will choice to deviate from clearly stated scriptural exhortations which are properly understood contextually and culturally.
I was deeply saddened when I read his rhetoric, that were I to confide my journey in someone trusted their immediate response would be to warn me of error and then I would be bound to cease and desist. It revealed that he considers transition to be wrong and a mistake and sinful in and of itself…but without any biblical edict whatsoever, no scriptural authority at all, and absolutely zero examination of the science side of things to see if my decision is sound medically and practically.
Tragically, such an attitude does indeed preclude him as a potential consultant for life matters, for in taking the next steps after examining God’s word, I discovered that there are a plethora of wise reasons to embrace transition…and in light of no forbidding authoritative bible teaching, and nothing checking me in daily prayer, and nothing checking my spouse, and the presence of positive affirmation of this course via wholeness and health and a more robust and joyful life experience, transition seems to me to very much be an answer to prayer.
There are three things that are alarm bells to me that I have been considering since our conversation that day.
One is the feminizing of the Holy Spirit. As we talked you referenced the Holy Spirit as “She” and “Her”. And you mentioned that you were now most often talking with Her (the Holy Spirit) and not the Father or the Lord Jesus. I do not see this sexual gender in the persons of the Godhead. Feminine attributes yes but not the exclusivity of specific sexual gender. I believe even our personal dialogue with God should be in accord with God’s word about Himself in scripture.
Okay…stop right there. First off, I did make it clear to him that I use those words for the Holy Spirit as part of my own personal relationship with the Holy Spirit…but I want to make a stronger point:
There is an assumed perverting of who God is by “feminizing” the Holy Spirit! Do you see that? As if calling the Holy Spirit the feminine expression of the Godhead to us somehow dirties God, and that only masculine descriptions are legitimate descriptions of God! What if over the years we have lost touch with the overall richness of the expression of God, and that restoring feminine pronouns to talking about God is needed and in order? I won’t bore you with the specifics, but just for example, one of God’s best names in the Old Testament is “El Shaddai” which means among other things “many breasted God”.
Really?? So we are to imagine a masculine god with many breasts? Or are we directed to instead consider a nursing mother dog, who has multiple food sources for multiple puppies, and the message is that God will nurture you and care for you like a mama dog her puppies! What is so bad about God having feminine attributes? And talking to God using feminine names? Is God that small and small hearted that God would shut His ears to avoid being besmirched?
I see arguments regularly which assure us that God is beyond and/or above gender…and thus saying “She” is inappropriate…
but the fact remains that “He” is still considered “appropriate” and correct!!! What a freaking contradiction!! If God is “beyond gender”, then logic tells us that either ANY pronoun is inappropriate, OR that God is big enough to not be offended by ANY pronoun one uses.
Frankly, I find anyone getting offended at the use of She for God is simply manifesting the internalized misogyny bequeathed them by the evils of the patriarchal paradigm that has imprisoned us all.
Also, notice how he characterizes gender as “sexual gender”…and that is one of the huge issues is that people reflexively associate sexuality and gender. It was telling to me that he did not have the wherewithal to simply say “gender”.
Here is the kicker: God made humans in Their Image: male and female, which means that God is possessing qualities that we see revealed in male and female humans (and countless other ones I am certain)…but we are only permitted to use the male ones to talk about or to God, or God will get offended and smite us? Or somehow if I talk with the Holy Spirit and use “Mama” and “Her” as I do, then I will be ignored and even worse turned over to evil spirits and deceived? That simply doesn’t make any sense at all, either logically or theologically…and it certainly assumes a very mean view of the Nature of God.
“God’s word about Himself in Scripture…”
I dare you to make a study of divine gender terms in the old testament…
Secondly I cannot agree with what you are doing with the body God gave you. I know you know 1 Corinthians 6 well but it does make clear that our bodies are not our own to do with as we please. They are made for God and belong to Him. Making such severe changes as you feel compelled to do and are doing certainly muddies the waters if not plain challenging the Lordship of Christ and His ownership of you.
*Charissa face-palms here* Constance, you can explore that chapter for your ownself. Volumes are written that explain proper exegesis of it…in a nutshell, it is addressing visiting harlots for sexual contact, and even more specifically as a carry over from the kind of religious practice of that day which involved sympathetic magic, and sex in temples with priests and priestesses as acts of worship of the gods of the various cultures who required such activity.
The apostle is teaching that you belong to a collective spiritual entity called the Body of Christ if you are a Christian, and as such you are not to unite yourself with anyone or anything that would lay claim to that allegiance.
It also easily generalizes over to sexual conduct and the use of the body…but to say that these verses prohibit anything specifically other than sexual acts deemed to be illicit and out of bounds is ludicrous!
Can you see how one could use this verse by itself as an arrow to seek to enforce control of anyone for doing or being anything? It could apply to those who seek to keep others from piercing, or getting tattoos, it could apply to those who seek to enforce eating rules, or activities deemed harmful to the body such as professional football, it could be used to prohibit someone from getting surgery on a cleft palate, or on a leaky heart valve, or the removal of cancer-ridden breasts, and it goes on and on and on…(as an aside, I do indeed view my unwanted and wrong genitalia as a sort of “cancer to my soul, to my heart”).
No, Constance…we can be guided by what is specifically addressed, whether to do or to not do…and then we are in the wonderful arena of maturing in relationship, sharpening our ears, and growing in wisdom as we walk, doing our best to be kind, listen to Mama (Holy Spirit…just listen!), and apply the wisdom we have gleaned. At the end of the day, the one and only measure of the success of that is how much our heart looks like Jesus at the end of the quest.
The third alarm for me is your decision to change your own name. This is very troubling to me and I am feeling strongly that this will be a point of departure from which any return will be most difficult. The authority to name belongs to God and our parents not to ourselves. To rename yourself seems to me to be a very serious thing to consider doing.
*Double face palm* First of all, I do believe that I was directed by the Holy Spirit to take this step, both in the name I settled on and the process of doing it.
Having said that, I would again encourage you to read every instance of a name change, and you will see that my friend has revealed his own belief and preference, but has not given any evidence to back that up. I would give my evidence, but I am sure I would bore you more than I have already!
The last thing I have to share is one I know personally very well. It is that it is definitely possible to be displaying the “fruits of the Spirit” and yet at the same time be deceived and strongly influenced by a spirit of the enemy. This was me and my life for quite a few years.
Classic double bind here. My only defense is that the fruits of the Spirit are in my life and growingly so…and Jesus said that we would know them by their fruits…I deny that I am deceived. The fruits of deception are not there. There is no teaching that I would be distorting or seeking a way around regarding transition! This is just an agenda driven double bind, and leaves me no way to “prove” I am not deceived.
I lead (sic) worship, was kind gentle, loving, patient, and joyful in varying degrees. Yet I was being deceived and influenced by a spirit that held me addicted and subject to pornography and the selfishness of sexual sin. It was not until the day I repented and confessed with as complete a transparency as I knew that Jesus delivered me through His Spirit. That spirit left and never returned. But in retrospect, I was deceived even while displaying some good spiritual fruit.
Ok, Constance…I was privy to this time. I can tell you that there is a very different take on these events, but in the interest of confidentiality, I am remaining silent on that.
I do want to point out an obvious issue, though: Sexual sin, sexual immorality, and pornography by extension are all things that are directly addressed with biblical teaching. As such, it would not be up to any one individual to decide for themselves what was right and what was not if they wanted to remain true to the core of what being a Christian is…
This is a huge difference between what and how the bible speaks in these areas, and what and how the bible is silent in transgender areas in general and transition issues in specific.
I can also assure you, that if one is capable of reading the bible, practicing the things being practiced, and having a “clear conscience”, that this is far more a signal of a so called spirit of deception.
I tend to view it far more practically…anything we feel bad about that we keep doing will eventually de-sensitize us to its harmful impact. It is not so much a spirit, as it is a habit of our heart and thus a tremendous bondage that we soon are in thrall to. In this case, there was never a pretense that such activity was okay or sanctioned. There was no open display of this unashamedly, such as when I dress as myself freely and without sin, but rather it was hidden behavior, with great planning and scheming and sneaking around at work to keep it hidden and thus available for indulgence. There was no knowledge by other people who had a stake in the relational implications…
In short, there was nothing whatsoever in common with his situation and my situation. I find no scriptural prohibition or direction, on either gender change or transition. I have been open completely with my spouse, from the first day of our marriage til now, and she has been fully in the know and walking united with me in love. We have studied out every bit of information we can find for over 18 months. I have a fabulous therapist, to pursue all avenues. I have not “consulted” people from my past…frankly what happened this time was exactly what I thought would happen if I tried to.
At every turn, doors opened…this was after we started asking for doors to either open or shut as a partial way to receive guidance…
Classic double bind again, right? 
Now I am praying for you.
(Now? NOW??? How does one take this?)
I would love to see you take time to get a second opinion.
What he is referring to is the counseling approach called reparative therapy. Basically this is a belief that all issues we have are due to experiential wounds we have endured. The assumption here is that I am transgender due to things that happened to me after I was born, and if I got healed of those wounds, my issues would resolve and disappear.
As a former counselour, uncertified but very active and informed and pretty good one, I can assure you that all the techniques there are to be healed of past wounds I have embraced…inner healing, deliverance, inviting the presence of the Holy Spirit to heal…what ever you have, I have tried it…and while there has been wonderful healing from wounds, and true growth and health, my dysphoria was never addressed, and since I had no idea there was such a thing as dysphoria, I was left feeling abandoned and condemned, not good enough.
The general literature regarding the reparative therapy approach is mixed at best and fruitless at worse. It has no great success rate, any more so than any therapeutic approach.
What does have a solid track record is transition. The results of transition are measurable improvements in mental health, quality of life, and general well being. If you wish, do a google search and discover on your won.
I am sure your counselor is caring and inciteful (sic) but without the presence of the Holy Spirit in prayer even she is unable to bring the depth of healing that is needed. Relief possibly but probably not wholeness.
Again…notice the assumption? That healing is what is needed (does a cleft palate need “healing”, or surgery?), that I am broken and not whole, and if I was whole I would not be transgender.
I don’t accept this. I say that as I get the hormones my brain and mind need I am growing into wholeness like any other woman. Any one of you, Constance, if you began to have your body flooded with hormones that contradicted your own internal sense of gender and self, why you would find yourself dysphoric. It is that simple!
And the clear inference that I am seeking relief…oh Constance, while I am so blessedly becoming right, there is no sense of relief when people that have known me for over 35 years begin to speak this way to me. And the prospect of more looms…
Lastly, the assumption that my counselor isn’t a christian and that the Holy Spirit is not big enough to use any means and/or tool to accomplish the will of God…
Your childhood stories are hurtful and I know the wounds are real. I just can’t see the path you are choosing as leading to real true restoration for these woundings. There is a dissonance that is unavoidable and hard to make peace with in this gender switch.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I want to restate that “real true restoration” is good, necessary to every human being, and unless accompanied by the proper sex hormones needed for that person is powerless to address gender dysphoria.
Evidence? Buehler? Buehler? Dissonance with what? Unavoidable where?
Get this: I AM NOT MAKING A GENDER SWITCH!!!!!!!
I am embracing the miracle of modern technology that allows my body to grow into my already innate sense of who I am, what I am…Charissa, a woman, and lover of God and people.
You have in so many ways been a faithful and generous friend. There is a scripture stating “faithful are the wounds of a friend”.
I could enumerate them, the ways that I have been a faithful and generous friend…I won’t. Rather, I want to take a look at how in the midst of all the verses about friendship he chose to talk about that one which discusses wounding. I agree with the verse…the wounds of a friend are faithful…but now we must establish what a friend is, does, looks like, acts like, etc. Sadly, it is my far more common experience to be a good friend to others than have them be a good friend to me…that is changing, thanks DDH!!!
If my writing has caused any more “wounding” please forgive me and know I am speaking from a heart that loves you and truth too much to remain silent.
You will take note of his assertion that he loves me and loves truth too much to remain silent…so let’s look at a few things there…first of all truth. What truth has he shown that he loves that I am not also loving? What truth has he laid out there as true truth that is authoritative and I am bound as a professing Christian to embrace? I contend he has not done this.
Thus, the truth he loves is his own truth. And wowsa do we all love our own truth, yes?
Next, I want to mention that he says that he cannot remain silent because of loving truth too much to do so. Quite simply this is an inversion of New Testament behavior in situations where there is no authoritative guide from scripture to give specific help…in those causes we are exhorted to put our sister, our brother and their own needs and wants over our own. Philippians 2 speaks well about this, and many other places do too…it is the habit of “Preferring others over ourselves”
Lastly, he claims he loves me too much to be silent. I am not rhetorical here. Where is the love again? Where has it been? What does it look like? Since we spoke last, where is the evidence of such deep love? And what will be the path going forward?
In faith.
Always your friend,
XXXX
Wow…just wow. So now comes my response. I kept it short and sweet. You will notice that I did not include a word of what I have written to you, as I truly think it would be fighting a tar baby. His mind is made up, and his heart is closed up…
…but I have written to you, Constance, because you just might read this, and get it in a new way, and be kind to someone and save their life…you just might be that cup of cold water to that one person who needs it or dies. And you just might find that I am speaking truth regarding the absolute certainty that God loves transgender people and is far more interested in their heart and character than They are their gender!
Dear XXXX…
Thank you for taking the time to write your letter. I appreciated how you characterized my “public display of being transgender”…that statement is accurate in each respect: display, and being.
Please know I receive your intention and desire for my best. Your arguments are very familiar to me, things I have asked myself and worked through until I was at peace in a biblical sense. I spent sleepless nights in thought and prayer. I counted the cost of gender transition, such as I understood it to be. I am capable of engaging on these matters with eloquence in depth, detail and evidence.
However, I disagree with your conclusions, and I think the most fruitful option is to refrain from defending myself in a debate that is not likely to touch the heart. I do not think there is anything I can say that would cause you to feel better or rest easy in knowing that I am still okay with God and God okay with me.
I choose to be silent because I believe this best sets the stage for the possibility of continued whole relationship. I have found the courage and the grace to simply stand in the face of charges and accusations. Those things say more about the ones who make them than they do about me…as time passes, God will be shown true.
I know my hope lies in a life exonerated in choosing eternal transition from works to Grace and death to Life…my gender transition is very much a subset of that. I walk unashamed and covered in the precious blood of Jesus which is my birthright as God’s offspring…for I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until That Day.
I want to state for the record that I am submitted to God, to Jane, and to trusted friends. To the very best of my knowledge I am not in rebellion and I utterly reject the assertion from both you and George that I am under a spirit of deception. I stand with a clean heart and conscience before God and man, and daily welcome the Holy Spirit in all of the Holy Spirit’s Divine Wisdom, counsel, conviction, and comfort.
I do want to say I am sorry to you for being so informal, poetic and intimate regarding what you called the feminizing of the Holy Spirit. This verbiage is to me in my heart and soul a prayer and relational “shortcut”. I was open with you that way in the spirit of our history together. I assumed you would recall my being a student of the word, committed to fidelity, one who has sought to be a workman approved…in these areas of my life, along with the bedrock areas of Christian Faith and Dogma, nothing has changed!
Our conversation was about the issues of being, gender and me, not about the nature of God, the use of gender referencing God and what we should or should not call Them. It was sloppy of me to add the burden to your heart of unnecessarily using feminine pronouns for the Holy Spirit and unwittingly placing a stumbling block before you. Please forgive me that unwise conflating of 2 things, either of which would be “an issue” by itself.
I will close by saying thank you for your letter, and that I will always do my best to be myself with you, open hearted and grateful to know you. It is my prayer that the Holy Spirit will manifest the will of the Father for us and bear the fruit in us and through us commensurate with that Life.
Remaining silent in Hope, refraining from speech on most of these things in Faith, and deferring to the Holy Spirit in all of them in Love…especially Love…
Charissa Grace White
*********************
If you are still here after all this, you are diehard indeed!! Thank you for reading.
Charissa Grace, who is heavy hearted, mourning, and still not ashamed of myself, of the Gospel, or of God in whom I put my Hope.
UPDATE: 2 years later…this individual has not had any contact with me whatsoever…has not spoken one word to me.
This man who claimed to be a friend, and a follower of Jesus, whose professed life mission is to seek and save “the lost” has not even seen me since then or in any way, shape, or form even sought me out.
This says less about him as a person and MORE about the horrible lies and bondages he lives under inside his evangelical ghetto.
It has been painful escaping…I rejoice for the pain…and the gain.
UPDATE: 3 years later…still not one word from the dude. What a Christlike witness…HAH!!
I was wanting to “do some work” in our garden, right?
cus relationships need nurturing, tending, (like gardens)
flower gardens, vegetable gardens, forest gardens
wild and austere and magisterial…and because our “us” is alive and well,
growing and thriving as time measures us, draws wavery lines on today
to show where we were tomorrow.
The warm air hung, lingering under October’s indulgent gaze
and I worked in joy and freedom, gardening there in our
common garden on the border of our homes abutted,
at lyric and language and Poetry writ large
with scrawling free hands in rows and stands
of flowery run-ons and adverby-veggies
then I felt a small shadow but I didn’t look, smiling beneath
my broad yellow straw hat, knowing you were near,
shinnied up that chestnut tree so shady and strong
to spy on me your sister, working on us and love…
…this was another of your mischievous games, one of your plays,
jotted sprawling on the backs of your kisses in the giddy ink of your giggles
and blown my way on ladybug wings and bumble bee songs
and spiderweb parachutes dewy and rich…
I know you have lines for me, but it is up to me to know them first,
say them careful to not actually know them, lest they fall
like broken bells unmelodious! And so I sang as I dug into us,
our sandy loamy we…
“I love how you understand that
uncertain restlessness at the crux of my soul!
it drives me to create, to throw the deck into the air
and reshuffle everything…
…ah, uncertain restlessness…
which makes me listen to winds differently
and hear those old feet echoing down
the long hallways of ancient seasons
long passed, and buried in that hollow echo,
the ringing harmony of many songs entwined there,
in that windy, sighing passage…
“I love also, how you know beneath
that crux I am restlessly certain,
and look at light askance and akimbo
and peer into hearts, searching for
that vitality emerging, defining itself
midst those hearts finally grown weary enough,
tired enough of doing what they are doing
to realize at last that they all along
have aggregated unwittingly and carefully
the resources of resurrection
and destiny at last arrived
and called by name and new life.
“But we, Sacred we by all means must not drift unwittingly
to lilypad patterns of musts and shoulds and oughts
but love freely instead on the high seas
of experience and understanding…and gardening,
always gardening and plucking Poems…
Of this I am sure and certain.”
I heard the silent smothering of giggles
and felt the choking swallowing of snickers
as you lurked there in the branches over head,
hung in mid air loving and tricky…
and then I smelled forever,
I smelled the incense sacred
that you always burn for us to us,
always. I smelled rosemary and sage
remembrance and wisdom,
love and long life,
loyalty and esteem,
fidelity and yes,
(on the other side)
immortality…
Cus I was wanting to do some work in our garden.
(October 7th, 2014)
I always feel so restored to myself when we talk…and that is a miracle
Bless you!
love, me
| — | Nayyirah Waheed |
comments trail behind
lazy thoughts stirred up by winds of words,
steamed up in waters of many poems
the entire history of a bee
follows it to every flower
and leaves its traces there
but the flower feels just the feet
and the breeze of tiny wings
and rejoices in the intimate kiss
of the lil buzzy bee
i guess comments
are sorta like that bee, right?
oh! well
hmm…maybe they are
more like the flower stirred
by the bee’s poetic kiss?
fragrance flying and petals sighing
and green leaves rejoicing
that God made bees
I have seen deep rivers,
tasted long deep wells…
I have sensed some deeper places
underneath that
bedrock scoured,
bedrock bathed,
bedrock carved
in bass basalt and blurry
with water movement.
those rivers run, flow
in clear water,
in cool water,
in living water
come down brilliant from stars
in drops of crystal light,
in flakes of liquid gentle night.
that water primal, original
and not yet tasted with achy teeth…
that water drained pure
and drawn from veins of gods good
but long ago forgotten gods
with whole hearts soaked, besotten
by longings large and looming….
well that water is
right there!
you can cast down buckets
on lines of hope
long and strong,
vibrant with purpose,
but those rivers open
only to the meek,
to the lowly,
to they who know
the password is sorrow,
sorrow…
I admit I’ve been biting my tongue
for some time now, I’ve been
waiting and wanting,
longing to pour my heart
out to you, to bleed on you and you
not wipe it away in shame
but instead you’d
dip low,
dip graceful,
dip soft
beneath the silver surface
into crystal waters running
and draw up healing blood of gods,
lift out liquid songs of stars sprung up
and out again to fly.
I admit it has occurred to me,
maybe you are water…
no, waters
(cus the “S” softens the syllable
and adds a blurry velvet to the word),
maybe you are stone,
are bedrock, are riverbanks blurry,
overlaid with warm velvet,
with steel over that and under,
and blurry velvet inside again
ever singing of snuggles and tickles
and of sorrows too…
yes, I think that’s it…that’s you…
and in this fading light of day
washing over your face
(like water)
in blues and blues and blues
I receive this treasure unto my heart,
breath held for something coming,
breath released for something here,
breath given for deep rivers,
and I wait for that bedrock sunset
writ large in red and banked in blue
there, just beyond that deep horizon.
Kate Von Roeder Death: Transgender Woman Leaves Heartbreaking Suicide Note On Facebook.
Constance…I’m shattered.
This was me…very nearly me.
Read her note…I have felt, said and lived
every.
single.
one.
of.
those.
things.
I beg you, please, show mercy to all around you, especially the most broken.
Charissa…emblem of Mama’s love
photo of Kate Von Roeder
A Transgender Activist on the Authenticity of ‘Transparent | Indiewire.
Constance…this will give you a very good insight into the daily life of a transitioning transgender person…especially one going from male to female (I can only assume about the female to male, but suspect that it is largely a commonly held experience).
Salient quote:
“…It’s not a man coming out as a woman. It is a transgender woman who is coming out. There’s a line in the beginning of the second episode where Jeffrey Tambor’s character, Maura, is talking to her eldest daughter. The daughter asks, “Does this mean you’re going to be dressing up like a woman?” And Maura replies, “My whole life I’ve been dressing up like a man.” That isthe distinguishing reality for trans people…”
(photo from the new Amazon series “Transparent”)
after your dead leaves magnetic and alchemal
drew from you those vapours and fumes
our Mama gathered each bitter sprout one and all
burned them in fiery plumes
i cried for you, with you, sharing your sorrow
and burden inside of my heart
and then found a leaf from the tree of tomorrow
and wrote there with tears a fresh start
i give it to you, now, here, wet and made clean
and waiting the touch of your pen
that will write of promises aquamarine
Made by Mama, kissed with Her Amen.
and worry not that your inkwell might run dry
for I will my tears shed for thee
and there you may dip your quill, write, and then fly
to your Mama-promised destiny
and i? i will walk in the forests and trees
in fall, i’ll catch every fallen leaf
and i’ll gather them precious, add my tears as keys
and i’ll Sister-stand there, stark relief
so write on these leaves with your heart and your soul
and when they are filled up, write some more
and our Mama will faithfully there make you whole
from your leaves to your pen to your core.
i love you, dear sister and friend,
me, your ever faithful bringer of tear-washed leaves
“Nothing in the world smells as good as the person you love.”
Welp…it seems that the obligatory post has thrust itself forward, or rather time has thrust it forward as it rolls on. Today is the date of my first blog post here, one year ago.
Grace Notes is One Year Old.
It’s funny…way back then, I hardly knew what to write about, I hardly knew anything, really (now, I don’t know much more, but I much more know what I don’t yet know).
I knew that my life had been shattering inside…
I knew that I had admitted, out-loud with words, the deepest secret of my life, one that I had kept even from myself…
I knew that I wanted to die, but could not bear the thought of my darling finding me, or worse yet, not finding me…
I knew that I did not know who I was, and yet I knew very well who I wasn’t…
I knew that I had to get some help, and had searched the internet for counselours in my area…
…and that was it. I sat down, a year ago, and asked Mama (Who at that time was still Lady Grace to me…I had not yet given up deep enough to discover the surface of the depths of Her Great Love Personally for me…for me.)…
It was early, at the usual times I have been haunted since I can remember, and I was up…coping…just coping, using all the ways I had developed over years to push the pain down, to put up some sort of layer between my insides which thrum to even the slightest breeze and jangle with the unfathomable ways of others who say and do things that literally flummox me.
I said out loud, “Lady Grace, here I sit in the night, awake again (naturally)…what in the world shall I call my blog?
You know that feeling when you undress for bed, and the room is cold and you know that under the blankets will be cold too but will warm quickly, and so the moment you are undressed you just snik straight into bed quick as can be lickity-brindle? And then the first rush of cold covers, followed by that delicious bloom of warmth and you have never felt so snuggly-cozy?
Well, that was what it was like when the title, in whole cloth, snikked into my mind and was bracingly clear and then started to glow warm…as I saw it, and then began to love it…Charissa’s Grace Notes: Transitioning from works to Grace and death to Life.
And in that year…
I survived a family member not speaking to me for 4 months (4 months!!! I freaking thought I would die!! How do you go 4 months and not talk to someone you love? Heck, I would talk to my bff every 4 minutes if we lived in paradise lol!!)…
I survived major betrayal and blame shifting at work…from multiple sources (and I was not even close to being out then)…
I survived suicidal feelings that got so strong and scary that I made an attempt, until She snatched me up (thank you Mama)…and Constance, I think about that day, that horrible day of weeping until I was dry and still couldn’t stop crying, and how words lost their power and I was reduced to literal babbling in the woods as I thought to myself I am insane, I am truly having a mental breakdown, and how close, how awfully close I was…
and if I had, none of the poetry that I wrote would be now…I would not know my bff, or my Sissa Kat…my darling would still be unsparkly and shriveled inside and utterly shattered…
I walked into a wonder-ful moment when Mama showed up…and that I will keep to myself…
Somehow someway I began to grasp that I am worth something, not a monster or pervert of freak (yeah, those words will likely echo in klaxon intrusion til I am resurrected and set free)…
I discovered that I am a real person, always have been, and have been fighting for the life of the “man” that I portrayed for all those years and I developed a “resilience” (thanks for that word bff) that simply would not give in…I found me…
I found out that I am sort of a cool person at times, and have something to offer thru my poems…
I found the courage to start transition!! The courage to tell Dr. Jessie (who laughed and rejoiced and said “Oh thank God you finally figured this out, we here knew 6 months ago!)…
I started going to a spoken word poetry group in Portland, one that I didn’t know a soul there, and no one knew me either…and I went there as me…me…Charissa Grace, and in faith I spoke my self to them, my name to them…and they received me, and once in a while they think my poems are good…
I wrote 2 very significant (to me…it didn’t create much of a furor to anyone else) poems…they marked some sort of a turning for me somehow…I think it was after my HRT had had a chance to extinguish the testosterone poisoning I had suffered from for 54 years…
Those were written at the end of the first quarter of the year, and in hindsight I see that quarter was a detox time…detoxing from the awful assaults death made on me the year before, and the year before, and the year before…the declarations there in those 2 poems are still ringing…
I began to dress as me, out of town and openly, and how can I ever ever ever find the words to tell what that is like, because as you read if you are cis-gender you literally lack the ground of (non)-being to feel this. If you dressed up as the gender you are not, and went about, seriously, for a day or two…then you would know just a poor facsimile of what dysphoria is…well I began to experience time lived in a non-dysphoric experience…
I further integrated, and regained a ton of childhood memories…and Mama showed me the true reality of “that event”…the one that tore me in two for the next 5 decades…and though I cannot unhear that woman shrieking in fearful angry horror and I will never not hear the epithets she hurled into my fabric, I at last can hear Mama, and Her whispered words tenderly telling me who I am…and She knows cus She is the One who made me…
I began to spontaneously sing worship and praise songs again…and I was shocked when one day I heard myself, and knew I had been singing over an hour and not even knowing that I had…
I began to pray again…oh I had always “prayed” cus that is what a good christian does, right? Pays the Lord their bribes? (Yes, I went there…and if you are honest you will admit that you have done this, bribed God with your deeds and prayers…)…but I began to pray for real again, pouring out my momentary heart (and ddh you think I talk a lot to you…giggle! Mama knows…)…
I rode bike with my darling…together…and those times are better than all of my years of riding alone…
…and thru all of that…I wrote here, most everyday, but not always…and I began to discover I have a voice, and a name…
…and 4 days ago, that name became legal…all things are made new, the old has passed away behind me.
Along the way people connected to this blog, and it tickles me that there are actually people who follow these mewlings and musings…and tickles me even more when I see blogs that have thousands of followers!! LOLOL!!! How the freak does that even happen, since I really don’t get it how I have any followers at all??? But really? The only followers that matter are the ones who read each post, and invest it with life, dress them up and let them live far beyond the page…to you is my blood grateful thank you!
And I am still Charissa Grace…God’s Grateful Gleam of Grace displayed…if She and They love me, I know They love you as well and more so.
| — | Starra Neely Blade |
snikked back up deep in rocky crevice thirsty
i wait there for the changing sea…for she
has danced again away from me across
the wet sand brown and just becoming tan,
and finally white as all its moisture fades
again in fickle flight of waves gone running
out out away, entranced, infatuated
by soft moonlight and warden gravity,
eternity’s twin engine sirens singing.
i wait, desperate, grinding gritty dread
into the chalky powder of mere sadness
so i can mix it with my tears and drink,
and try to disappear it dust to dust…
but my thirst can’t be quenched here on the edge
of deserts where sunlicks lash my quick feet
and scorch my liquid heart, fall like whiplash
upon my salty soul to feed that thirst.
the desert creeps in sideways, snaking, slith’ring
thru hot sands, then across the wet seaweed,
chasing the sea as she cavorts and dances,
as she asunder runs, her lacey skirts
bounce briny, lift, swooning in moon-lorn longing,
her green eternal ever yearning quest.
the desert hisses its hot joy in radiant
baking waves of heat and takes another
worn sodden sandy vassel wet and cool
relief falls into sizzling fiery thrall.
i wait for the sea…pine for her cold droughts,
her rhythmic waves, relief washed over me
like heav’n’s promise…then i can wait no longer
as sun beats down with eager lusty limbs
on my rock, me within my crusty shell
I bake on edge…as if t’were damned in hell.
i peek slow, take a spattering face-full
of sand surfing on winds and sizzle sun,
and then i slide out skitter-quick and sideways
toward briny ocean of such cool relief,
zigging towards bright sunlight dazzle-zagging
and zagging when the desert dapple-zigs,
in fits and starts i make my way cross edges
on edges…the edge…of sand…and sun…and…sea…
i live in these long edges…on the edges
and i am never sure if i am running
from fro or running to but does it matter?
still in edges, on edge, to and fro.
i finally draw close to those briny blessings
i once again feel her quick liquid life
so cool in pulses, pounding sand and driving
cool water deep inside me once again
to baptize my dry well springs in her depths,
and there i feel her washings o’er me…
she recovers from her sweet tide enchantment
to the soft moon and moon-swung gravity
Thus writ in circles large and sung in cycles
cross every edge…the sun, and sand, and me.
she runs her musky liquid fingers gentle
thru my lank hair and kisses my hot brow
with lips that speak of depths unspoken, hidden,
buried within her vast oceanic self,
and deep within her womb of seaweed life
her friendly waves wash warm and reassuring
but then her hunger wakes and eagerly
she reaches for my depths with her cold waters
that always live beneath that dancing surface
and i can feel her kisses and her yearning
as she my hot soul drinks like her lifeblood
that runs in waves and time right to the edge
of sun and sand and sea, and yes, of me.
i founder in her fathoms and her caverns
and pull away before i sink and drown
alas! i must away with me or perish
and ever be her hollow lifeless crown.
so desperate i slide, i bounce, i skitter
away and to the right, no to the left
until i find again my crevice rocky
and safe there, on the edge and yet bereft
of sun, or sand, or sea, i haunt the edge
yes, i live in the edges ever…edges
the singer said the first cut was the deepest,
well she was sadly falsely optimistic
for i am cut when she goes gallivanting
and cut again when she returns so thirsty
and overwhelming in her vast expanse
that stands against the sun, against the sand
and lives there with her edges pulling me
and pushing me too back across the sand
until the sun is threatened with my dance
and pushes me away with one hot glance.
under the sun, on sand, and kissed by sea
…i live in the edges…bound…and free
OMG…Constance, I am hunting back thru the archives at Gracenotes, and I just found something I wrote back in May that would have been PERFECT for last Friday when I had that 4 hour ordeal…I am excerpting it here for you…
Hi Constance…
…a quick note this morning to comment on some thing on my heart.
I know a lot of people over the years who are very drawn to me because I am open about the relationship Father, Jesus and Lady Grace have forged with me. They get all the credit, for this is true: there is none righteous, not one who has even sought after God! That means that if you are in relationship with Them, it is Their doing, and none of your own, save the assent of your will.
And in the openness of our relationship, these individuals find a self-affirmation of their own faith, relationship, etc.
But here is the kicker: I am also open about my struggles, my failures and flaws. I put on no religious airs, and when They expose any that have crept in quietly when pride was crooning its deadly lullaby, I renounce those pretentions as quick as I can. I try to boast in my weakness, and not in my strength, as Father promises that the Strength of Jesus is made perfect in my weakness.
So…it is just a matter of time before the people who are drawn to me are repelled by my lack of performance, my lack of keeping up the appearance and doing the things that signal that I am “orthodox”, saying the things that signal I am “safe”, and practicing the things that signal I am “one of us”. Soon, there are judgements, accusations, demands that I toe the line and not use my freedom to “make them stumble”.
Huh? I thought Paul was talking about someone who was weak in conscience and in their relationship, who might fall away completely from the life of someone strong in the faith, so the strong one should bear with the weak one patiently. These people twist that word, are strong in their conscience and faith, and boast that nothing could pull them away.
No…they are simply using faith words to try to keep me in the christian gulag that they run. And, as I know in my deepest knower that my Hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ Blood and Righteousness, and that all other ground is sinking sand, I regretfully, but purposefully ignore them, and thus end up branded a heretic.
You know the old maxim: if you don’t tick like I tick, you’re a heretic!
So…that wouldn’t be so bad in itself…in many ways we are known by our enemies as much as our friends.
…
Dearest Christendom dweller…you who sits back and reflexively filters every word thru your fruit detector lenses and doctrinal code breakers, and then marks red lines in your mind all over everything that doesn’t match up with your current understanding of the magisterial magnificent word of God…you will not like me when I tell you that you are in greater deception than the ones you judge!
You are in greater judgement than the ones you have consigned to your “love” (the affectations of behaviour that you manifest towards those you dislike or disapprove of or judge but know that they “need to know Jesus” so you will essentially brown-nose them into the kingdom)!!
Oh, oh how my heart longs for the day when we would take our eyes off each other, quit inspecting each other’s fruit as if we are Jesus, and simply open our hearts in joy and allow Perfect Love to fill us…to overflowing…and eventually to flooding the lives of those around us.
Constance…it is so simple and pure, really…just be kind…just do justice…just love mercy…just show compassion always…just let the abundant exceedingly great and abounding Grace make a “Grace-mess” everywhere.
…
Sorry Constance…that has been brewing in me for a good while. Some email comments, and some other things I had to write out of my heart so they wouldn’t fester.
Your regularly scheduled mewlings will commence after She feeds me this morning! 🙂
Love always, with the Magnificent Love of Father shown in Jesus and revealed by Lady Grace…
Charissa Grace, the glad, golden and grateful (and sometimes defiant) daughter of Them
Whooaa…can you believe that I am sometimes defiant?? Moi??? giggles
well…it is not uncommon for me to be ahead of myself a half a year or more!!
Do justice
Love mercy
Walk humbly
Charissa
Dear Constance…
I was made aware of a fairly profound article today on the subject of forgiveness. What make this article scintillating is it is taking a very “outlaw” position that runs directly counter to our cultural assumptions surrounding the topic of forgiveness: what it is, who should give it, who deserves it.
Her take is that there is a coercion of forgiveness present in our culture that is in a sense just worthless cheap grace. She examines the rise of those cultural assumptions and exposes the underlying flaws in them. Then, she talks about some of the ways that people respond when she shares her ideas, and in the process gives a lot to think about.
Constance, I am posting this because in many ways it mirrors my own thinking on this topic. I think I differ just a bit, but that is due to axiomatic beginnings underlying my position, rather than any disagreement with the substance of what she writes. But I would like to take the occasion of her thoughtful and provoking article to codify some of my own thinking on the subject.
First of all, the concept of forgiveness and what it is has been trashed thoroughly over the years and passing styles and fashions of thought and belief. It has also been forced down our throat in such a way that it literally devalues the person being asked to forgive…all in the name of setting them free. When a person can do the most heinous act, commit egregious violation and abuse, and then turn around and demand to be forgiven by the one they have wounded it is akin to giving them a free pass to another form of rape!
No…forgiveness is nothing that can ever be demanded! No one has the right to be forgiven. Get that! No one has the right to be forgiven!
Anything you have a right to is in the field of Justice. Anything you have no rights to but deeply desire is in the field of Mercy. Any attempt to grasp which is which and when to give either or both is in the field of Humility.
Look familiar? I thought so.
So…forgiveness. Basically this is the decision and declaration by a person who has been violated in any way shape or form that they willingly choose to relinquish their right for justice and their right to be repaid what was taken from them and restored to a place of integration and wholeness. There are any number of violations and any number of redresses for them…and there are some that literally cannot ever be repaid. In our reality you always…and I mean that…you always have a right to be repaid when you are wronged.
You need to understand that if you choose to forgive (which means simply saying “you don’t owe me anything, now or ever”), you are intentioning to forgo any claim to redress and restitution. You need to know in your heart why you are choosing this option. You need to know that you will likely hurt and ache for a long long time, even if you forgive and usually especially if you forgive. Forgiveness is a sacrifice, and sacrifice always…always involves suffering.
Do you see how this is something that cannot (literally) be coerced from you? Because if you are guilted into it, or coerced into it then no matter what you have mouthed, you have not forgiven (and I am not assuming that as a value here, just stating what is and isn’t). You have granted another the opportunity to “get away with something”, and this is horrible for them!! Oh yeah. You think it is bad if you confront someone, that it might cause hard feelings? Think about the condition that results in letting someone get away with something, which further emboldens them, lets them sink deeper into their places of being violators…
What is crucial here is to understand the core, the absolute essence of what you do and why you do it when you forgive. That is a journey only you can make. There are sources to consult that will help guide you…there are powers that will assist you should you decide that the sacrifice of forgiveness is one that you choose to make…but it is only genuine if you walk that lonesome valley every last inch yourself, right there in the shadow of death, and then emerge on your own terms.
I want to share with you my own position on this topic. Of course you can expect that as best as I have been able to figure out, I have sought to base my thinking on the life and example of Jesus, Who is God Incarnate to me, and thus as an example is an easily seen picture of the Creator’s desire for the ways in which we “do relationship”…and also on the further writings in the New Testament which I believe to have been inspired in the heart of the author by Lady Grace, and then written out and set in counter-balance with other writings so that there is a dynamic tension which would always drive us to the Person of God and keep us from the horror of a behavioural code which would doom us all.
I think there are 2 very important sub-categories to the general act called “forgiveness”
The first one I call “Universal Forgiveness”.
What this refers to is the state of being that all humans are currently in due to the Crucifixion that hangs in the very center of the Universe and
penetrates/intersects/pierces every reality and every time and every culture and every experience.
In this Highly Exalted and Ultimate Act, all things have been set up for the opportunity to find wholeness once again…the chance to be made brand new! Not just a “re-run” or a do-over”, but the chance to actually become something you never were before!
This state of forgiveness has nothing to do with any decision that anyone makes but The One who was crucified. Makes sense, it is consistent with what I had said earlier about the essence of forgiveness. If you never know about it, it is still done, and you are still poised for the full freedom that its embrace entails. If you know all about it, but reject it as unnecessary, it changes nothing about it. And, if you fully embrace it and receive, it still changes nothing!
It simply changed the climate once for all in the entire Universe! His words “Forgive them Father, they know not what they do”…they echo into all of our dark and ignorant, benighted nooks and crannies! But those words themselves have nothing to do with the fate of a violator in and of themselves! They are not a free pass, a get out of jail free card.
There remains the question: if indeed this Action IS, then there are results assumed, demands implied, or consequences ready to unfold depending on anyone’s choice of what to do about this deed, if anything…and that is where we get to the second sub-category, and it is in this category that I think the author of this article has a powerful and cogent offering to us.
The second category is what I call “Personal Forgiveness”.
Think of Scrooge McDuck’s treasure vault, okay? All the gold, the jewels, the dollar bills, the wealth just spewing out everywhere. Now think of the key to that door being available…all you have to do is go ask the authority who watches over the vault if they would give you the key. Whether or not you do that is your choice…but here is what happens…ask not and you need to go round up your own treasure. Ask…and it is yours for the taking, as much as you need!
But you have to ask.
Similarly, if you desire personal forgiveness in the broad sense of the word for all the wrongs and bent of your being, you must ask the One who has the treasure and the key.
If you do ask, it comes to you with a couple of rules:
first is that you are receiving freely, there is no price you can pay that is enough to cover the cost…it is free…and as a free gift you are then bound to give freely as well.
And the second is that from that day forward, however and in what manner you choose to forgive others you are setting the measure for your own forgiveness process. Again know that I am asserting that based on my understanding of the words of Jesus. You will have to decide if it has any merit on your own.
Now, and this is crucial to get: as you choose to grant forgiveness, your forgiveness will function in both the “Universal” arena and the “Personal” area. That point is the absolute key to a clear heart in your decisions about forgiveness.
Now it is time to explore the process on our end personally…let me take you through my own decision matrix, okay?
There was a situation that I am thinking of in which I was deeply violated, actually spiritually ganged up on by a group of men in the “Name of Jesus” (of course, isn’t it always?)…I left that meeting torn up inside, literally mauled and torn apart, and each one of them had taken their turn at me. I was absolutely completely totally innocent of the charges. But how does one prove a negative? Right? If it did not diminish the horror and evil of actual physical rape, I would call it a spiritual rape.
As I drove home, barely able to see from the tears and sorrow and hurt of violation, I was talking to Them, for They knew of my innocence! And I was running thru the matrix, and ultimately was able to choose to forgive, and by that I meant in the Universal sense…they did not know what they thought they knew. I chose that they did not owe me anything before God for what had occurred.
I never ever told them of this…nothing is quite so smarmy and sickening as the so called saint who comes back and boasts odiously “I forgive you”, when in fact you haven’t asked for forgiveness and maybe you don’t need forgiveness! Maybe they are just offended right?
No, I never said a word, but inside my own heart, still hurt and torn (and was for months after) I declared that they did not owe me. I did so because I felt that to be the authentic loving thing to do, and because I know…I know what a generous measure I need for forgiveness in my own life! I want to over-forgive rather than under-forgive!
But I never ever brought it up with those men. And there is not one of them that I ever tried to be close to or spend time with or give access to my heart to. Why would I? They were violators…but worse…they were unrepentant!
After several weeks, one of them finally pulled his head and came to me. Stupid me, I thought he had come to repent, and my heart leapt in joy at the chance to truly forgive a truly repentant heart.
See, repentance is not “just being sorry”. It is not mere remorse, not mere apology. No, repentance is when you know…you know what you have done, and there has been a deep and fundamental sorrow over that act accompanied by a total determination to do whatever is necessary to repair and restore the person hurt. Repentance is when you have the revelation that what you did was wrong, period. Full stop. End of story. There is no justification, no excuse, no explanation…there is only:
“I hurt you terribly, and I was sooo deeply wrong! I grieve over what I have done and will do my best to learn from this and ask for help in becoming a different and better person. Should you ever decide to give me the opportunity to repair and restore our friendship it will be far greater than I deserve. In the meantime, I withdraw to give you space to make the best decision for you, and just know I will be refining everyday, seeking to become better.”
Or words to that effect.
Sigh…as I look back I see how this was a difficult thing for me to learn…the presence of an apology does not indicate a truly repentant heart. It is one of the ways that we empower abusive people in our relationships, this notion that an apology is the purchase medium and forgiveness is the commodity, and if you don’t “sell a forgiveness to them” then you are the one with the problem, you are the one with the issue. That is a lie.
The only condition under which you are obligated to even take a LOOK at the possibility to give forgiveness in this category of “Personal Forgiveness” is a repentant heart making no demands whatsoever and determined to do whatever is already possible to do to repair and restore.
But no…he had gotten wind that I was hurt, and so he came and demanded I forgive him…said that he had a right to be forgiven!! OMFG!! (and I almost said that outloud on the spot!!) He violated me, and then demanded his right for forgiveness.
I tried to explain to him the need for repentance, for recognition and understanding of the essential wrong and violation…his reply? “Just tell me the magic words and I will say them, okay?”
Well, needless to say, I didn’t say to him “I forgive you”. The mere saying of those words would have been meaningless! There was nothing to forgive and no way to forgive because the required cognizance on his part was absent.
I had already forgiven in the Universal sense of declaring they owed me nothing…but in the personal sense, there was no platform for the forgiveness to take place, because the repentance aspect was missing.
Chew on these things for awhile…and in the mean time I will confess that I have been steeped in the Coerced Forgiveness culture, and I think that I experienced some of the wounds I did to help develop these current understandings. Before I conclude, I will refer you to a beautiful post on forgiveness, which I think contains the elements that I refer to above…it is over at Dani’s blog “Blooming Spiders” (yaaay Dani!)…
…and then I will confess here my recent guilt of “demanding forgiveness”. It happened last year, around this time. I very foolishly shared some incredibly explosive news with someone I love deeper than life itself, and my timing was atrocious! Totally self centered, completely shared out of desperation and insecurity and a deep need for this person’s love and approval. She has always secretly been my hero, and it has at times been hard for us because we are a lot alike. Well, she was hurt, scared, upset, angry, felt I had taken from her the aspect of choice, stripped her of any power to listen with strength and offer me the benefits of who she is. I demanded…
…and she was not wanting to interact with me. Understandably so, I see that now. But at the time I was soo wracked with the guilt and horror at my poor choices and clumsy stomping around…and I was also terrified during this time that I would lose my family like what happens to the vast majority of transgender people. I wanted some reassurance, I wanted restoration myself…but no. Instead of waiting, patiently and penitently enduring, I demanded!
Dearest Lil Red Songbird…I was wrong. I am so sorry for my demands…my insistences…the ways I unwittingly sought to coerce you…and while we have long resolved the original issue I want you to know that I carry that hurt everyday, as a reminder to be careful and wise, and openhanded with power.
Okay, without further ado, head over to Stir Journal and check out a very powerful and provoking piece of writing.
In a life commitment to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly…
Charissa Grace
PS: I have a poem on this stuff: Gifts You Give Yourself . Perhaps it is helpful? perhaps not…
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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