Contrast the difference a year makes… Reeling In Rome when the blow of being shunned by flesh and blood was fresh… And the next, the poem below, when I had been born from betwixt the legs of suffering, and becoming…
When you lose the rest of everything and the curb merges with the gutter, wander on down the grey road in the weak darkness, thin and sorry for its skinny powers. Like you, it has been stripped and…
Source: Morning Meditations
Things feel like silk over thistles. My heart is home, snuggled down certain and in place and yet, underneath being home, pulses pain sighs sorrow sings sadness tamborine thistles timbrel thorns cl…
Source: Reeling in Rome
I wrote this to one of my deepest loves… The day after the hardest text I ever heard. Two years later, and it’s still unclear whether this rift will ever be healed, or just stand there gaping and bloody, gawking blindly at the horror of separation…
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 you…
One last repost…it is the contrast here of the mountains and the valleys that creates the space in-between…a space that I love to write about.
Edges are not merely the furthest border of a given territory…Edges by definition are their own space, and time and place…transgender people inhabit edges in obvious given ways…but I write as I do, speak as I do so that you can tumble to the fact that all human beings live in “Edges”…
…it is what makes us human.
What are your edges? Your furthest reaches?
And what “Edge” is that place that is you?
Mama’s words to me are mine.
You told me there would be silences, differences between mountain streams and valley brooks, You told me Your flow was warm, liquid collecting of the gifts and graces of valleys. You said my bracin…
Source: Mama You Told Me
This is my naming poem. It is one of my very favorite works…I am happy with the allusions, metaphors, the techniques and inferences…the resonances in the poem and the implications of a transwoman being a “half-sister”…
Well, I just love it and I hope that you can find some resonance that echoes to your own life.
words. swallowed in medicine times but found to be only poison slow half-life killers just in time spat out in relief, in apprehension, in hope… i am jacob’s half-sister confessing her …
Source: Jacob’s Half-Sister
This is a re-post of a poem written last year…this goes out to my recent “Constances” who have come round after this poem was composed…I am so honored that you read here and I hope this poem rings a bell within.
When light fades in upside down slow burn that looks like sunset when it’s actually just God’s Hand on your heart Their dimmer switch of love spinning round on and off… brighter…
Source: Love And Breath
I have written scores of “Mama Poems”…and this one I would be proud to have in that pantheon!
Mama, help me! Please be real Mama, help me! Hold my hand This absolute brilliance To see things as they truly are is more than I can bear alone Mama, help me…help me…help me I listened…
Source: Mama, Help Me
AAAAHHH!! I had forgotten this poem! I am reposting here for new readers…
Mud-Spittled Eyes On A Rainy Fall Sunday Morning It’s the glory of eyes, being blessed to be opened with mud sweat and spit, blind eyes become other and seeing What others insist isn’t …
skeleton woman, you have come surfaced with hue and cry and thrum and waters heaving, scum rising and dead bones clicking and clickity knuckles wrapping and long dragging in the waters where your w…
Source: Skeleton Woman Come
let’s talk about our bleeding hearts, what it mean to call those bloody parts by their names… yes, here we are telling stories about them, telling stories about women and wolves. there …
Source: Of Women and Wolves
During the election I am writing mostly on Facebook…and little poetry right now. So I am gunna press some older poems for some newer readers.
I encourage you to explore the blog, for there is LOTS of poetic content!!
time is the greatest distance between two distant places… me then. me now. Today I am grateful for that excruciating powerlessness I felt over and over again and again as a young child and I…
Source: Kintsukuroi
and it is in night…
like a babe in fresh blankets
snuggled and seeing,
quiet and jumping
in jammies with footies
singing of safety,
hot chocolate and nibbles,
then raindrops on rooftops
tingtingtingthrumthrumthrum
silver tin foil lightning
slashing thru thick dark air
that quivers and tears
then closes again
with thunderclap rolling
and rain steady hissing
down quiet and soothing
and shushing and rushing
and we settle, snuggle
and Autumn is come
to quiet our soul
and gladden
our hearts
the punching of one’s own face, one’s own eyes
the throwing of sawdust at everyone
the bashing of beams against dull skull bone
the grunting, squee of rooting pigs alone
the missing of the point that TRUTH is making
the wallowing in anything that soothes
retreat into the silly absurd argue
and justice once again goes barefoot begging
and dust is waiting to be shook off hard
and sandals poised for good news feet on mountains
but walkers sit instead and argue small things
minutiae in the unconnected moments
wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up wake up
charissa tears her face with fingernails
as justice wanders barefoot, wanders begging
diogenes gives up searching, gives up hope
and so the question remains here resounding
WHO WILL STAND AGAINST INJUSTICE NOW?
now now now now now now now now now NOW???
does anyone have knees that bend or straighten
and courage to set scripture off its leash?
To stand with widow, stranger and oppressed?
Or just in filthy rags preening and dressed??
You stand condemned and lay at ease in zion
A BEAUTIFUL work by a really fine writer!! Robert Okaji!
“Onions My knife never sings but hums instead when withdrawn from its block, a metallic whisper so modest only the wielder may hear it. Or perhaps the dog, who seems to enjoy the kitchen nearly as m…”
Source: Onions
‘Once I have endeared the deity, she will love me in her heart,
the offer I bring may wholly cover my sin,
bringing sesame oil may work on my behalf in awe may I’
I hear those glowy bones glowing,
those bones of mystery-menace bright
so dark inside their red cocoon
but white unto themselves alone
and full of lively light.
The blood of bones in oceans vast,
the breathing moon’s silent contrast,
earth sweats her dew cooling and sweet,
rising to meet all thirsty feet
and bones stirring at last…
To taste again of Love’s Birthright
and resurrection echoes loud
and everything restored, made new
from glowy bones Faithful and True
Bones blazing, Bones of Light
when fireflies all held their breath
and neither glimmered nor glammered
but just held…held…
when soft tealights strung in trees
waltzed together in the breeze
soft, faint, sun-kist and sad
and you
and me
dancing into the velvet night
of hanging silks and wattled wine
and I am yours
and you are mine
It took me there, it broke me there
on a sandy sliver midst some smooth black stones
so silent, sitting at the edge of this lake longing,
this tarn quiet, dark and clear
from deep inside my mouth
I felt my wet heart rise, surge burst…
I would’ve screamed forever
idididididididididid
scream forever
but cannot get sound past the breaking
past the past and into and over
and thru
me
I’m so full (there’s more)
I can’t take any (more)
I struggle to breathe
and then I relax
into…(what?)
herherherherher
HerHerHerHerHer
HERHERHERHERHER
pushing deeper
into-from
my mouth
and I desperate while stars dance
burst, birth, explode, rip right from my heart
my lungs my breasts bright surging
glorygloryglorygloryglorygloryGLORY
I am me spread-eagled
beneath Her velvet verses,
(me)
my legs slick, straining against air surging
ebbing, words liquid raging flowing pushing
tearing thru me and me and me
quicksilver soul, a lake, a mirror
shattered by this Stone
unseemly and perfect,
Huge and Lacey
Light and Heavy
Her (r)ock
mmmmm
flung down from faraway
(who knows where?)
and into this lake
(mmmmmmmmmm)
and a million murmuring moaning circles
pushing outward sliding downward
groaning upward thru this water
sainted, and that Air, each circle
almost pulls me beneath under
I am buried living-forward
I’m resurrected dying-backward
I am stained forever always after
with that pungent glory,
with Her Glory running down
my chin and from my lips so wet
and thus I shiver deep within
all the way from my down-low throb
to the very roots of my
ecstatic shining hair
She pulls Her hand out, slowly wraps
Her arm around me…I curl up
and drift off, musky fragrances anointing,
smearing my eternal cheeks
singing in my hol(e)y heart
singing in my whol(e)y heart
singing in my holy heart
the blood and tears
of that close horizon
blinking, blinking,
dropping falling
as day fades out
and night creeps up
and what of empire…
or is it Empire
and how
it sanctifies itself
in the blood
of many martyrs
in the tears
of all the saints
and quenches
every thirst
in the wailings
of the haints
what is the holiness of Empire?
It is rapacious lust it is
the Power in powerful
it is everquesting MUST
transmogrification of
lovesongs into laments
and the only sacred left
bleeds and weeps
while gnashing teeth
rip tender skin
and the privileged feast
on famine
I remember your fall…silent, turning skin burning and flakes falling like snow. I remember the shaking…plumey ash (demon of dachau come home here) and more, falling forever. the ones wh…
The echoing of silence
implications of ashes
a song inside my tears
a signifying bond
the moan within my blood.
The writing of a moon
engraven on this water
and carried by the winds
into your heart…
Source: Forever In My Bones
It’s bigger than a blue canyon,
that place my orphic words live
and come down from,
a canyon with one end anchored in eternity
and one end tipping into whatever
“-ality” … “-ernity” we dwell in
right here in River City.
I reach up and pull down Words
like apples golden or ripe peaches soft
fragrant and newly fuzzy insistent
and throw them into that canyon blue
blewsy runny and streaked in greys
and oranges (like rock sunsets)
…but those words…
those words
reduce
those words
shrink
and become
small,
as small in your eyes as they
are big in my head and
what was once limitless
is now merely living
and that makes me lonely
and feeling like
I got too close to important truth
too close to your secret hiraeth heart
buried in your soul’s backyard
like some long loved lost bone…
so you just look at me funny
and shoo me away with
blinking eyes and wagging head
as if not grasping what I said,
as if not seeing my words or me.
But do you not see me
and see yourself
in the seeing of me?
You almost cried
while you were saying it!
There’s a ship inside my head
It sails upon the seas
that stretch, that roll out from my bed
to the far shore of me
sometimes that ship it runs aground
because the tide is out
and blind men, blind men think me drowned
and beached deep in their drought
But tides, well they run deep and true
they go, and then return
with golden glad tidings of you
that splash my bow, my stern
And my sails bloom, are full once more
and dance upon the breeze
I slice thru waves, I dive, I soar
set free from my dis-ease
To sail and sail, to skim beneath
the moon there in Her bliss
and I wrapped safely in Her wreath
and sainted by Her kiss…
Ahhh…there’s a ship inside my head
I sail the ancient seas
of greens, and blues, and golden-red
I sail the seas of me
and you just let that anger
fall out of your sky so deep
meteors, comets, hurtling
heating, skizzing in
and crash landing
on your fiercely beating heart
so never giving up
so never giving in
so keeping keeping on
and now so on the mend
that passing
parade of people
flashes by, spinning
roulette wheel
KLAKLAKLAK
LAKLAK
klak klak
KLAK
and in the midst but set apart
and singled out from time to time
and separated from the herd
and from the heard and from the hearing
distant from particular promise
feeling so far from God’s presence
or God’s forgiveness because something’s
blocking our view of God’s sweet mercy
I
think
it is WHITE
Double OUGHT
and the house wins again and preens
in false humility and slings
blame upon us Double Zeros
skewing vision til it seems
God has truly overlooked us and that’s not justice, it’s just us…
It’s that inconsistency between
things we thought we knew
and things we deeply feel,
and yet
Desire is our compass
bloody, steady, unblinking.
It points to our True North
and leads us home
against all odds
breathing underwater,
these ancient words waves,
and these timeless thoughts
tides, and beacons…
my breath, my lament
(like blood and oxygen)
held tight within my chest,
and crushed by the familiar
finally rushes out,
released exposed expression
of an anguished soul,
a suffocating heart
what was true for all,
of All ‘neath the sun
was not true for me,
me, here without air
cast careless away
(chummed over the side)
remnants of shame bubbling
out thru my clenched teeth
and sinking, sinking, drowning,
praying for a whale
or even just a school
of plankton-kissed bright breath
and then against my will
my chest constricts, it heaves,
and bucks…glory oh glory
at last it’s true for me
and I am, finally
breathing underwater
“Practice prudence by bringing wisdom
to our decisions and refraining from
taking unnecessary risks.
Practice justice by asking questions
about those who have less than we do,
looking for root causes of injustice
and ways we can respond.
Practice courage by considering
those places in lives where
we experience fear
and self-limitation.
Carry a sense of strength
to whatever life brings us
and a willingness to go
into unknown places
for the sake of growing closer
to God and to our
own deep desires.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD Desert Mothers and Fathers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings Annotated and Explained
Which of these practices (prudence, justice, courage, a sense of strength) do you most want to nurture in yourself?
I am Charissa Grace
and not your dumb head case
I’ll muss your hair, throw off your pace
and maybe even kiss your face
I overflow permitted banks
and needle apoplectic cranks
cus I unsettle everything
I am wild WILD WILD thus I sing
of mountains dancing, winds untamed
and my heart free in Mama’s Name
“Edge places fascinate us, because at heart we too are seeking the edges, the places of risk and unknowing. We long to embrace our own wildness. We feel alive when we live from our wild hearts, breaking out of the boxes of convention and expectation, and growing in trust of ourselves and the deep wisdom that emerges from our bodies and the world around us.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD The Self-Study Online Class ~ Earth as Soul Care Matrix: The Wild Heart of Ministry
Where are the edge places in your life? Where are the places of risk and unknowingness where you experience both fear and joyful anticipation simultaneously? How might you set your wild heart free?
But the BIGGER joke?
Good people…people who KNOW BETTER…are gunna vote for him.
The man is an open racist. He is an even more open buffoon. He is a demagogue of the most base and common order.
I truly cannot discern which troubles my heart more: the horror of his never ending race to the bottom of the ass of the electorate where he emanates as the methane emissions of a people group who are sick with internalized racism…or that people themselves who would stand with UNBLINKING EYES and assure you they are on the side of the angels and love Jesus with all their hearts…and then unflinching and without a SCOSH of a troubled heart vote for someone who epitomizes the worst and most base of Americanism, that virulent pseudo-christianity, that poisonous vile pollution of the pure Word of Christ in the name of a country, a kingdom of the world.
This isn’t a “Republican vs Democrat” issue. I have never ever in my lifetime felt that the candidate who opposed the one I wanted as President was metaphorically “of the devil”…
…but I truly, literally do so think about Donald Trump.
They coulda offered Jeb Bush…McCain…Romney…heck, I MIGHT have even voted for Jeb! At least the man has governed, at least he comes from a family that has experience in how to be on the world stage and in the forum of nations…
But they gave up TRUMP…who is the crudest, most base of all the candidates in the race, and who ate them up and excreted even more hate and turmoil! And then…to BALANCE the ticket, they put PENCE there…yunno…the man who as governor of his state backed and supported STATE SANCTIONED DISCRIMINATION in the guise and the precious name of JESUS!!!????
It leaves me feeling utterly helpless…limp with fury and seething with longing to make my words spiritual Q-Tips to swab out the tickled ears of the deaf and to open the eyes of the WILLFULLY BLIND with their heads so far up their own spiritual behinds they are staring out of their own mouths at the world.
The conservatism I used to adhere to was, at least I THOUGHT it was, more noble than this…honorable…dip your beak into Barry Goldwater’s book “The Conscience of a Conservative”…
How ANYONE can hear what Trump spews day after day and not want to vomit, to weep and tear ones clothes is utterly bewildering to me.
It can only be done by “not-think”…and while I truly do not think Trump will be elected, I absolutely guarantee this: if he does get elected, and you voted for him, you will find yourself sitting in the aftermath of the tragedy that will go down, and your spiritual ancestors from Germany in the 30s will haunt you like Marley haunted Scrooge…and you will BEG that it is not too late to right the wrongs…because for them?? How do you make up for the literal slaughter of millions of Image-Bearers?
I offer this Psalm this morning as the only way I can find peace in this place…this place of sorrow and utter bewilderment that there is a gulf between me and so many I know think themselves the apple of God’s eye who are gunna vote for this demonic buffoon.
Psalm 63
New King James Version
A Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah.
O God, You are my God;
Early will I seek You;
My soul thirsts for You;
My flesh longs for You
In a dry and thirsty land
Where there is no water.
So I have looked for You in the sanctuary,
To see Your power and Your glory.
Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips shall praise You.
Thus I will bless You while I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.
My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness,
And my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips.
When I remember You on my bed,
I meditate on You in the night watches.
Because You have been my help,
Therefore in the shadow of Your wings I will rejoice.
My soul follows close behind You;
Your right hand upholds me.
But those who seek my life, to destroy it,
Shall go into the lower parts of the earth.
They shall fall by the sword;
They shall be a portion for jackals.
But the king shall rejoice in God;
Everyone who swears by Him shall glory;
But the mouth of those who speak lies shall be stopped.
She paces Pharaoh’s estate,
marble steps, the bristling tops of trees.
She is restless in her routine.
Couples arrive. She scans their faces,
and the oil stains under the Pharaoh’s SUV.
Every day the headlines scream
plagues, locusts. Another naked child explodes
himself in the market, a frog croaks,
startles soldiers armed to the teeth.
Asiya sits at Pharaoh’s dinner table
with the neo-conservatives nightly.
Why do they hate us? A mystery.
Asiya twitches, passes the pâté.
That they slave to build us pyramids
is only free market forces at play.
The salmon is delicious. We
are entitled to the treasures
of the desert, and to dine in peace.
Asiya fidgets with her blue earring,
lapis lazuli. What is wrong with me,
she thinks. She slips away from husband,
guests, to the back porch by herself,
and scans the blue shining serpentine
river for a twitch, a movement,
for a basket in the reeds.
– From “Hagar Poems” by Mohja Kahf
Hi.
If you are someone from my past and you read here, I want you to know something.
You are welcome to read here.
If you are someone from my past, and you are genuinely open to learning new things, updated understandings of the ways that technology has revealed realities regarding gender and DNA…if you are willing to meet me…Charissa Grace White…and truly receive me as you would any human being you had met and were getting to know, then you are welcome to be in contact with me.
But know that my choice to transition is not up for debate…it is made and done. To debate that with you would be as silly as debating with you whether or not it was the right thing to marry the person I chose. So I will not allow this…I will not put myself at the end of your firing range to become your scapegoat for the social ills you so deeply dread.
And finally…if you are someone who reads here while thinking of me as that freak who is a “man” but is deceived and deluded by the devil and is now under demonic influence for thinking “he is a woman”, then just GTFU…ur dum. Holding this position is like boasting about how stupid, intractable and ignorant you are of the incredible body of literature on the subject. You ought to be asking yourself why you are so deeply upset over this! Why does it bug you so much?
I am by far a better person than I ever was before…more of what people have always loved about me and less of what people have always despised about me.
Just go away if you are in that latter category…I don’t care how long I have known you. The length of time you have known me is directly proportional to the ought you are obligated to in connection with me! You ought to be more compelled to read the literature…you ought to be more compelled to know the open flower and stop worshipping the tightly closed bud.
There is a male who flat out broke off a relationship that was over 3 decades old, because I “had crossed a river he would not cross”. He has had zero contact with me since. This in spite of how his actions violate the very gospel he claims to love. This in spite of the countless hours we spent together, the countless actions of service and love and support, the walking thru darkness on his behalf…
…clearly the issue is on him.
But I bring him up to tell you that his is the party you want to go join if you are in that latter category.
I am me…free…and flying. You can fly too, if you would actually take responsibility for your choices and your failures to choose…your fate is in your choice, and may you find surrender to Love as you choose…
I take a picture
(absurd,
when you
think about it)
(take)
(a picture)
I capture
something
(the shutter shudders)
(the lens blinks)
and a reduction
becomes a memory
Last year a wolverine broke loose, came slashing & gashing, ran up & down
canyons & cliffs & crittering quick up tree-trunks w/such fierce red claws…
Snarling & yowling the haunting roar raged, moaned & cursed w/such
hunger, such fury, that flurry of wood-thirsty teeth insatiable, free from hiatus
& running heart birthed straight from Their Great Altar There which purifies
all things w/Holy Fire so freeing, so cleansing…wafting austere like pure
Incense arising, in billows & plumes & ash, ASH, everywhere & in
perpetual Wednesday, marking the Cross on all things there…within.
the fire had time to make up…
One Hundred and Fifty years to turn…and it was said to be
A Great Mosaic Burn.
At last to feed its need to cleanse a forest fat w/care, beneath the watchful eye
of Moses there, beneath his rod extended, as if the sun stood still again,
& trees grew up & great in grit & girth like Children of the sun, see how fat
they had become…See them, their indifferent eyes unblinking, safe, satisfied &
self-centered & all together, such a stand of forest land, secure, untouched…
so sleepy, nodding off with rusty Time’s tock-ticking Heartbeat softly crooning
to ossified great forest stands so very grand that didn’t know they needed
Severe Mercies to come with fire and hot kisses from the Phoenix.
It had not chosen cleansing
It did not know it’s need
for resurrection, for refining
For fire comes to cleanse & make new everything it can consume
& challenge all it cannot touch to understand that TRANSFORMATION’s
the destiny of every-thing w/the courage to crawl out from underneath
the letter & run from rod & leave behind the tyranny of typical to the flames…
& walk away from Moses, into freedom in liquid-gold fireworks,
free from the cares of the world that cling so fierce & so easily entangle us,
choke our lives in hoary growth & lullabies lulling us fast to sleep,
a Sleeping Beauty Bride on her bower of soft & easy privilege.
She like an eye unblinking
safe in her cloister so fair
deaf to Her loud Divine Dare.
And (just like that forest or Sleeping Bride) there amidst that red hot bloody
conflagration set another eye, a forest eye, unblinking sightless eye & woke up
wide awake in terror tribulation, hushed in dread anticipation & fear & with
helpless petitions arising, not like incense but like signals…smoke signals…
to Moses? To God? To the Universe Fire come down to feed? Protected by
roads cut w/care & foresight, that Eye Unblinking sat there in fright…
& Holden its breath, leaning against a wolverine dread come at last to
consume the dead, to rip that forest wide open, slash woods to crimson rags
dripping bloody w/flame & red flurries…
wrapped in silver sheets reflective, shiny
(or were they merely space age burial shrouds?)
It never blinked, that Eye, & all was shrouded safe, cocooned within
& underneath the rod & the Letter, striding secure thru the Red Sea Fire
escaping the sharp teeth of wolverine the Eye remained preserved amidst
a work that renovates the face & gives a skin-deep makeover, but leaves
the sleepy years untouched & undisturbed on laurels long gone brown
with age & loss of life though all appearances would say that Holden is
alive & well & safe from that destructive hell of fire & fear…yet none
could name that something still so desperately needed a root canal of flame!
for all the Who’s in Holden sigh
for yesteryear, forgetting that it’s
the thief that steals tomorrow.
And this year, one yr later in the same Unblinking Eye I rolled in on waves
& wind (Charissa means “Grace” but named “Char”-issa, “Ashy-one”) seeking
to drink of the life that flows thru a village untouched by anything
that fell outside Mosaic burn no longer shrouded outside but just maybe
mummy rags still wrapped so tightly around a heart perhaps long grown
so slack so sleek & o so fat just like that forest was last yr before God gave
a wolverine to rage, feed, cleanse, renew…I saw History on display, windfall
fruit rife on the ground & satisfaction ruled the day, familiarity won the race
and wore her shiny tangy plumy purple tinsel crown…
Golden Apples, everywhere and casual and everyone was on the in,
societal, and fire roads cut secure and ohh soo straight.
So I said Hi and reached w/blinking eyes that squint into the light,
oft times in fright of storms & lightning flashing forth…& found
my blinking words rebuffed by cool & hooded eyes that had seen it all,
eyes satisfied & cynical cus been there done that, ho-hum…done much worse
I ran aground on fire roads & that Moses curse of long ago still Holden Court
over long hearts that found consuming fire fearful, dreadful & to be avoided
at all costs by any means…& thus she stands this very day…Holden Village
on cusp of…petrification?…or on that hot edge of the Phoenix Way!
Holden, Eye Unblinking, ensconsed
in the forest, last year just as this one,
in a forest cleansed to living bone, and Holden?
I heard the Spirit resounding The Word that Fire must fall on a village that
mirrors the forest that kneels all around, She said that She has a fiery crown
& Holden is that forest fat & ready for Refiner’s Fire, Cleansing Burn that
resurrects those vital dry bones waiting but she must choose that fate & blink
Yes, we must welcome Fire Fate from God & let the dead wood burn,
& blaze, & feed Mosaic Ways to the flame & trust the Good God of the Fire
to keep her safe underneath Their Name & resurrected, cleansed, renewed
& ever delivered from stain & shame!
Let the rod be cast into the fire hot and be consumed!
For Moses died on Southside, short of Zion is his tomb!
And find us Lovely on the Northside, once again the Spirit’s womb!
Letter cannot take us there, nor blaze of past great glory fair
We must eradicate those roads of preservation that we wear!
They trap and capture us and cut us off from Grace unhindered
so we, like the forest, turn dull and dry, reduced to deadwood’s kindred!
I see Holden cleansed by Fire, and crying Holy tears when Holy
Spirit has free reign again to fall in fires that restore
and interrupt Sleeping Beauty’s snore and dead trees gone,
that speck removed and blinking eyes await the Dawn!
And animals can come again now welcomed
and bathe released in Grace and Precious Holden,
His Eye now blinking free and shining fair in Jesus’ Face.
Oh Holy Lightning Strike like Griffin Swift
upon this yearning heart in desperate need
of Your Mercy Severe, Your Holy Gift
Give us Grace to Find the Phoenix-Way!
To rise in faith from Ashes and from death
to self and self reliance, come what may!
On resurrection wings and Spirit’s breath
alive again and all is well this night
that breaks and shatters with the rising dawn…
and not a single fire road in sight,
and what will be well it shall simply be
and what will not be well it will be gone!
Come Holy Fire, we answer Your Call!
and All Reborn, and Love is All in All,
“Someday…someday the snow will fall!”
Shine into the darkness
of brooding quiet forces
that do not want you there.
Radiate into those shadow grey spaces
that don’t claim the name of place
and thus do not receive or comprehend you…
shine on loudly into that sinister lurk.
Your bones deeply grasp
their independence from person,
place or thing…they embody
the stringy collaboration
with you and you alone.
They do not need anything’s
skunky permission to be
or to do or to sing into the
communion of the stars
of courage and anthemic
soaring adoration of LIVE!
Some would shine like the sun…
but you, like the moon
are magnanimous and magical
in your mystery and simplicity
and your goodness and gift radiates
in glowy glimmers and clear silver
beams bouncing off soft evening meadows.
They wait for morning, in
that sinister lurk, that cold
and sinister lurk, while you
mount up…big, bony,
beaming gentle in the soft
beautiful night…
that sable cotton brilliant
and gentle.
I wrote this last year related to the events current…and this morning I am struck in how all that has changed is the temperature…which has gone up and up and up…
…and half our nation has lined up behind the likes of someone who truly believes they can simply fire the rest of the world…
I think your heart is called by canyons,
you find them, or…do they find you?
But all across creation’s face
the creases, clefts give you their Grace.
You have left labors to themselves
and sweat and tears behind.
You put your nose into the wind
and cleared your clever mind
And headed west, west, west of West
to canyons once again…
but these are running, bloody, wet
with nature’s life blood pure
So sit…it’s called a river out here
but you know its bone-truths
It’s really still a canyon dear
So be renewed…be clear
At last we finally
have come down to it,
perched here on this edge
of sun-bleached splintery white planks
and darkly stained with shadows and blood.
I hear the wind winding
thru the distant trees wistful,
insistent and full of desire for
golden times long past and golden
songs sung oh so long ago.
It saws its way, the wind, it saws.
Forth and back, across again
that one long thin strand fixed just so
to that grey ancient, heavy beam
that I can barely see because
history’s speck embedded
in my eyes and clawing,
scratching them
and clouding my ocular
true blue vision.
But as I stand here, on the edge
of gone for good at last, and I
behold the hushed and held tense breath
of the gawking crowd…I remember
Tuscany and us
when we were young and ageless
and we ran the fields like wild-fire
in joy and wreck-less free abandon…
we ran…and ran…and
free we ran…
I recall vineyard embrace, green
in the cool night sprawled beneath
the glitter-glare of celestial songs
taken form and sight in night
and flying, shooting, never landing
never ending, never…
except in our hearts,
our ageless hearts,
we Lords of Tuscany,
we Ladies of the Meadow
And time it stood still while we swirled
and then somehow twas we stood still
and everything turned round about us
til somehow…now…
here at the end
in the hangman’s
clutching final
noose as the reaper
plays along upon
his shimmer-scythey harp
and the rope
relentless quivers
and croons and
begs me to
forget…
But I remember
Gold and Fire
and glowing embers
in you…
and in me…
We Ladies of the Meadow
We Lords of Tuscany
“Humility invites us to let go of our hold on productivity as the measure of our worth and discover the deeper value of who we are.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD Creative Flourishing in the Heart of the Desert: A Self-Study Online Retreat with Hildegard of Bingen
Who might you become if you stopped defining yourself in terms of what you do, and how productive you are?
the cuckoo clock so pasty white, so dull
ticktocks its hands to point at the orange cull
and jumps out crazy, chiming, shrieking shrill
the wall is trembling in its echoes still
CUCKOO CUCKOO CUCKOO CUCKOO
and reason is a stranger, quite alone
*trumped* by gibbering stupid wallowing fear,
as the clock strikes 13 past 13, I hear
the slouching shambling hungry beast come near…
and something, something, something, something, something
is very very very very wrong
in this world
so off kilter
going
gone
“Sometimes when we return to our practice after having left it for several days (or weeks, months, years) we often have a deeper appreciation for what we have lost than if we had not strayed. Beginning again is essential. We fall away, we lose our will to persevere for so many reasons.
“The problem is not with the waning of our inner fire and perseverance, but with not returning again at all.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD The Self-Study Online Class ~ Pilgrimage of the Soul: An Online Art Retreat
The next time you fall away from your practice whatever it is,
can you remember to remain open and compassionate to yourself
and simply begin again, without criticism or judgement?
“When we remember the sacred dimension of the world, we are freed from a life lived primarily from a materialistic perspective, where consumption becomes the primary goal. We no longer need to dominate and acquire more and more.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD The Self-Study Online Class ~ Earth as Soul Care Matrix: The Wild Heart of Ministry
I lit myself on fire last night, so deep within the forest green, deep in the dark, and black with night, this full night of birth and dreams and true becoming in earth brand new.I found the center…
Source: In Flames And Becoming (For Charissa, on her first birthday)
I find this quote significant for me on this day. Thanks to the best gifts in the world: the soul friends who have joined my journey…Gifts of Healing Presence from God to cleanse and heal the horrors of abandonment by unfaithful and fearful humans who even after 3 decades did not have the wherewithal to go the distance.
There are several significant people who walk with me, both in person and online…both groups are not large but wow are they substantive…thank you for walking me into me. ❤
July 13, 2016
“The tradition of soul friend reinforces the communal and corporate nature of Celtic spirituality and the dangers of traveling the spiritual path alone. A soul friend helps to offer us the courage needed to say yes to the big dreams being birthed in us. They help us to gain clarity over places of self-deception and denial.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD
Can
you swallow
the bitter pill?
The pill that’s come
to dull our conscience,
cushion comfort, corners
nipped just so, sides longer
than tops and bottoms,
that exquisite little
emerald coffin-
shaped bitter
little
pill?
Life’s
fragility, life’s
impermanence,
life’s intertwinement
with imperfection and
disappointment—bitter
medicines (or are they drugs)
a realization of dread and
despair. I wonder if those
crooning songs seduce,
induce indulgence
in an orgy of
escape into
the haze
of
narcissism…
or if they masquerade as friends to draw close,
sidling up so near to shove those pills dry
down our throats in rough and rooting
thrusting fingers ripping without a
drink to help them go down and
we, our own spoonful of sugar…
until we lie in thrall to
those fell jailers…no
enthralled to
no one but
ourself
that bitter
little
pill
It takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak.
— David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
and now it all melts
under falling skies
skies weeping
bleeding
it’s the shining blood of stars
dropping and everything
spinning and melting
down under just
one touch
one
touch of that stricken star’s
living draining dying
diamond
blood
and I wait
in mourning
hoping against
hope for morning
but know it in my bones
that everything’s sadly
melting, falling so fast
in slow motion away
swirling down to
that tragic
running
ruin
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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