We had wine
rosé wine, pink
and blushing with
laughing joy in the midst
of a light crushing.
We were in Provence,
and it was warm and sultry
but not thick or sweaty
in that yellow light seeping
out of the ruddy dirt.
It’s a long time
to where we were
from here in Salamanca,
midst minarets and tall turrets
of sandy stone…
but I can still
pour rosé in glasses,
Provence in glad glissandos
and glory.
It is the “Beyond”…that place we all know deep down in our core exists…is there.
To argue it does not exist assumes its existence in order to even have ground to stand on ontologically.
It is what I am striving to touch, pierce, and funnel back here in my poetry…and I call it “Poetry” with a capital P…and it is a place and a state and a thing and a flow all at once.
“In cultivating photography as a contemplative practice, the camera becomes a tool to develop our ability to see more deeply, clearly, and truly, beneath the surface realities of the world around us and into the sacred presence shimmering in the world.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice
look for me, search
in my solid words…
and you will miss me
in their sparkle-spazzle
and solid spunk echoes.
i’m in the spaces
in between my words
shining and shim’ring in
dance-implications,
deep in the rhythms
uneven and steady
rising and falling
walking the edges there
of what is written
and what’s merely spoken
just beyond the words
i sit in winds
and let my shawl flow
loose around me
and lifted like wings
and as it unfurls
the hard ground exhales
and i become light
as i sit in winds
my heart rises up
when liberty sings
though limbs sit so still
though limbs sit in winds
the wings of my heart
soar high as the sun
and over the moon
there, sitting in winds
The first to apologize is always the bravest.
The first to forgive is the strongest.
The first to forget is the happiest.
— unknown (via quotelounge)
“Art-making as pilgrimage helps us to understand the arts as a process of discovery about ourselves and about God. When we enter the creative process with the intention of listening for the movements of the Spirit in the midst of the work, we discover new insights about ourselves and God.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD The Self-Study Online Class ~ Pilgrimage of the Soul: An Online Art Retreat
I still struggle to dig it out,
that splinter you shoved into me,
down my throat without so much as
a shot of whiskey or
a shot in the dark.
and you are so certain, sure
of how to walk the world
and all her streets unfurled
when really you are justifying
dwelling in your fear.
But you look so damn normal and together
while I am flailing in the maelstrom of myself.
Here is what you do to me:
Idealize
Exoticize
Misunderstand
Validate
Vindicate
Vilify
Victimize
Re-traumatize
Reframe
Take out of context
Murder mysteries
You lecture me, slay me with
hidden sneers and resurrect me with
empty scripts and steal my mystery…
and mysteries become stories
and stories become reality
and stories shape the mind
that tells and gives them shape.
stories about “them”
stories about “me”
stories about “you”
stories that isolate us,
separate and set us apart
from the world at large.
You simply have no clue of how
the mind can terrify, filled up
with anguish, upset, turmoil, fury,
the mind makes meanings out of shadows
and is too easily taught
to fear what it does not know…
And that is your biggest blindest blunder:
You do not know what you do not know
and thus you fear the healthy YOP
unfurling from a set free throat!
Your mind assumes what it cannot
make out clearly or take out easily.
It’s a survival tactic.
But it inhibits you from being open to learning.
It inhibits you from being students of life.
You’d be well-served to sit your assumptions down.
I feel your fingers
in my folds and
my fine feathers
ruffling, riffing
sometimes ripping
for your pleasure
folding me and
creasing me
until I do not
recognize
the shape
I’m in.
Turning this way
twisting that way
tossing hither
touching yon
then you show me
origami, I’m your
living origami
here today and
gone tomorrow
These days I cannot tell
the difference between
Lara Croft and Laura Wilder
Didn’t they both face mummies?
Didn’t they both raid tombs?
Didn’t they both find secrets?
It’s somewhere between
prairies and pearls
that the line extends
to connect their hearts.
Ohh
how you
carry it gentle
in your faithful heart,
your treasure precious
and hidden from yourself
speak it out loud, exhale in blue
let your truth breathe, sing
of how its blood runs
true and rings with
with only ever
you
it’s that moment
when lungs forget
how to billow in
and out faithful
when air is tangible,
shimmering silvery-alive,
right before our hushed
wide eyes
that moment when
we both know finally
that love is sacred
not scared
and yet the terror
wholly holy terror
towers tall within
and all around us deep
cus if we even move
even move a muscle
(let alone a molecule)
we will fall up and in
never to return again
for there will never ever
be a back again
to come back to,
back to
Before the blizzard
sneaky beneath the rim
of the grey and trembly sky,
conditions at Stanage Edge
on Thursday were extremely
changeable and cold.
My heart like the sky
(but ruddy red)
my heart like the sneaky storm
(but only streaked with black)
my heart like the conditions
(but never cold).
I got out of the car.
I could see rain
developing over Mam Tor
to the right
(and a few miles away).
I thought that it was only
just building up
(inside these scintillating
winds of heart and skies).
I thought I would have plenty of time
to get to the millstones,
to get back to my car
before it came
my way.
How wrong was I!
Prelude hailstones heavy,
fine mini-millstones
gristed and ground
the ice cold winds
and soon had me retreating
back to the warmth
and glad for my bare
and unfettered neck
and the leagues between me
and the deep cold black sea.
This is an area I have visited before
I’m pretty sure
I will see it again
“Christianity is often thought of as a set of principles that people struggle to follow, working their way into God’s favor by offering tokens of self-denial and obedience. Even Christians who profess a far bigger story sometimes live as if this is the reality. But such a story looks at God as we might look at a gumball machine or a bank. If the prize we seek is God, we cannot earn our way to the thing we have our eye on—no matter how many tokens we might come up with. For the shiny quarters we proudly offer, belong, in fact, to God.”
Jill Carratini
“Be. Here. This moment. Now is all there is, don’t go seeking another. Discover the sacred in your artist’s tools; they are the vessels of the altar of your own unfolding.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom
“It’s important to meet people where they are,
not where we want them to be.
There is a tendency, in many,
to re-characterize people’s experiences
without being asked.
“You tell them you are feeling badly,
they tell you all the reasons you should feel good.
You tell them you are challenged by your circumstances,
they tell you what they think you can do to make things easier.
You tell them that you have a plan to do something,
they offer up another plan for you.
There is a place for these offerings
– particularly when requested-
but often times they just make things worse.
In fact, we are more likely to arrive at the next best place on our journeys
when someone actually attunes to where we are at,
without making any effort to improve upon or re-frame it.
We don’t need to be saved- we need to be seen.
That’s the healing, right there.
I hear you,
I see you,
I honor your choices,
goes a long, long way.”
— Jeff Brown
Trusting is just such a powerful challenge
to lay down my life without knowing for sure
it will ever get picked up again…by…anyone.
a potent surrender to God (and to others)
that commends my only possession (that’s me)…
to the Hands and the Head and the Heart of all things.
A turning away from the will to possess,
from power and reflex to cling and to clutch
with brazen heart, hard face and bravado whistling…
afraid in the night of the Breaking Day Coming…
the willing embrace of a breaking that gives birth
to wholeness and health…well…trusting is just such
a challenge
Hearing
stained wooooh
strained whooosh
rise, fall, push, pull back
quieting and moaning,
crying, sobbing, groaning
creaking and repose
the wind asks…
whyyyyyyy
whoooooo
whhhyyyy
ohhhhhh
sigh
It’s that question
that drives us skimming
across Lake Life edgy
bobbing in the troughs and crests
yet never to the sandy shore
and glowy fires merry.
It’s that rough splinter
in our minds digging
all the time and all around us…
why…
why
You see
Stories are descended from
on High like waterfalls and
we are born too, like
waterfalls flying
from the stars
cascading
down to
here
into this world
starkly unique
and populated
with stories,
pregnant with
multiple meanings
(us and this world/one not one)
Here I am on the edge
of the gleaming twilight
nudging, jostling my life
in waves and I’m still wondering
what it’s all about…
I think it’s about a Splinter from
some Bloody Beam so Ancient…
Our minds are splintered, peppered,
made numb with pressing inquiry
The first thing I remember
about this world
and I pray it
may be the last
is that I am
a stranger
in it,
at once a glory
and a desolation.
That’s the only thread
of consistency I can detect
in my lakey leaky life,
alone before a mind-boggling
array of options and
burdened by both
the responsibility and the authority
to reach some conclusion
that isn’t totally and completely
rooted merely in myself
(where’s the joy in that?)
Life itself is its own exile,
and its own inevitability,
but that does not lessen our grief
or alter the fact of us in the whirring
midst of that sighing windy whyyyyy
Life became history and history
becomes legend and legend
begat myth and myth begets
merging slowly with unknowing
and unknowing bemoans
“it was all forgotten…”
(which infers remembering)
“real but forgotten”
(real and forgotten)
and passed and past…
but the echoes
the echoes
echoes
the echoes of our distant past
and our essential vital nature
still call out to us in wind,
in wind and waves
in dreams.
And They are calling us in wind,
in wind and waves
in…
These Forgotten Stories Haunting
I am sharing this for those of you who love God dearly, and yet still struggle with NT teaching (actually lack thereof) regarding sexual orientation. You KNOW deep in your bones that you are wrong to conflate someone’s state of being with someone’s behavior…and yet you live in such fear that somehow God will punish YOU if you are not mean and nasty to someone who’s being is something that you do not believe can be.
Here is the problematic passage, out of 1 Corinthians chapter 6, a passage in which Paul is speaking prescriptively to a body of believers who were so caught up in judging one another’s activities that he had to castigate them for their reprehensible hatred. He moves to a rather broad net of behaviors that he casts, designed to cover every single person who may think they had standing to boast of their own righteousness, and then he begins to teach about how the behavior of each can bring dishonor to the entire body of Christ, as we are all together comprising the Temple of Holy Spirit…and then he concludes with a discussion of the topic of sexual immorality (which he leaves remarkably undefined btw, but would most certainly include the sexual behavior of heterosexually oriented human beings.).
My purpose here is not to break down the mistranslation into English that happened during the translating of the KJV in 1612…there are scholars who understand the nuances of the Greek text far better than I. Rest assured that with a bit of Google-fu you can locate many articles that will help you become informed.
{UPDATE: Here is a great one that did not exist when I originally published this post…
My quest to find the word ‘homosexual’ in the Bible }
LAY ALL THAT ASIDE FOR A MOMENT THOUGH…
Here is the reality of what goes on: Cis-het Christian who lives in fear that you will offend God if you do not hate and reject LGTBQ-oriented human beings, I am talking to you!!
Here is the passage:
“9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals,[a] nor sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.”
Now, let’s see: I spot behaviors in this passage, behaviors that all focus on choices of the will…choices to commit various sexual sins (still not talking about orientations), choices to break commitments made to God and to other human beings (adultery and idolatry, which is a VERY tricky and subtle fault), choices to be envious that result in theft and coveting other people’s possessions, choices to become drunk and pursue a lifestyle of choice to indulge escaping from mature and fruitful living, choices to speak with anger and intense hatred in bitter speech to other human beings (yunno, like the comment section of articles), choices to THREATEN PEOPLE INTO DOING WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO…like the shunning that YOU REGULARLY DO to those whose ORIENTATIONS are imagined by you to be behavioral choices…
and yet somehow, ALL of the above choices you extend Grace and Mercy to, and almost all of those choices you have almost certainly been blood-guilty of yourself!! But you sit cheek and jowl in the pew with your fellow “unrighteous” and allow for yourselves and your cohorts in unrighteousness to participate in the Righteousness of Jesus and thus not only be forgiven, but in your mind EXCUSED from scrutiny…and you are content with the understanding that each person must scrutinize themselves with God (oh wait: Paul said that he did not judge even himself, for God is Judge)…
…and like electric barbwire your eyes SEIZE those English words about homosexual behavior that is the equivalent of a heterosexual choice that is unbalanced and abusive (which is what is being called out by Paul, btw!! Any sexual relationship that is exploitative and destructive to either partner is wrong, regardless of sexual orientation!)…and you make them into your scapegoats, and you WRITE OFF ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS WITH YOUR FAT BUTTS FIRMLY IN THE SEAT OF JUDGEMENT!!
You know this is wrong…you F**KING KNOW that it is WRONG! So you make up platitudes about how you love the sinners but hate the sins…yeah I call supreme bull shit on that one! Because if you did? You would extend to EVERYONE the exact same pass you give first yourself and then everyone else YOU deem is worthy of it.
You need to repent, and I mean right now, and climb down out of the judgement seat and work on taking the friggin LOGS out of your eyes that you have been beating God’s little lambs with incessantly!!
The irony is that Paul ends that passage with words about the works of Jesus to wash, sanctify and justify whosoever will believe in Jesus, and goes on to say that ALL THINGS ARE LAWFUL!!! And yes, all things are not helpful and many things are indeed harmful.
But his point is that the Work of Christ is GREATER THAN all human behavior and renders judgement of one another as not only null and void but likely a far more insidious and poisonous sin than any of the listed behaviors.
Humans are born, created in Their Image and given a certain being. Among the aspects of that being are our sexuality and our gender…and each of those aspects together with EVERY OTHER GIVEN ASPECT OF OUR BEING is to be brought to our Precious Lord and presented to Them as our suitable offering of Love, and then LIVED OUT as THEY lead us, according to the LIFE that is in THEM and thus flowing into and through US!
Our gender orientations can thus be reflections of the glory of God and mirrors pointing to Their Love and Grace.
Our sexual choices and behaviors can thus be reflections of the glory of God and mirrors pointing to Their Love and Faithfulness!!
And GOD FORBID that we take any aspect of our given beings and use it as a club on someone else’s precious head!
“20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body[c] and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
I can guarantee you, however, that your current inner judging of the LGTBQ community is a leprotic infection deep in your soul and in actuality you heap up for yourself such a severe measure by which you shall soon be judged.
May God be true, and love win.
I want my poetry to convey the Beauty behind the beauty.
I want to tell you of the Heart behind the core.
I want to show you the Sacred pulsing in all profane.
I want to show you the Meaning midst the random.
It isn’t enough to be pretty.
It isn’t enough to rub noses in ugly.
I want to scratch you…permanently…that you would ever then Bleed Desire and Longing for that Sacred Heart, that eternal Blood of the Diving running thru everything…always.
Beautiful and Meaningful.
Write that on my tombstone…but only if it’s True.
“When you are triggered, it can feel like moving a mountain to soothe the pathways of abandonment, and to stay embodied to the energy as it surges through your belly and nervous system.Something is longing to be met, that is for sure. An avalanche of previously disowned feeling, emotion, and sensation, seeking some sort of completion that was not available at an earlier time.
It may seem that there is no way for you to close the loop, that it’s just too much. Open your heart into the too-much-ness, slowly, for very short periods of time, and then rest. Even for just a couple of seconds, use your presence to touch what is emerging – just enough to light up a new path, but not so much that you overwhelm or re-traumatize yourself.
Soften into your belly, into the panic, and take pause from the ancient belief that you must quickly understand, shift, or transform your immediate experience. See that there is nothing to ‘heal,’ but only something to hold. Offer sanctuary for the movement of life as it washes through you, and it will integrate and liberate on its own. Care for yourself in new and wild ways.
To provide a home for sacred metabolization is one of the greatest gifts of love that you can give – not just to yourself but to those around you. To reclaim embodied responsibility for the orphaned pieces of your psyche and soma is not easy and requires a lot of practice. But more than anything, it demands an unconditional commitment to seeing the entirety of your inner experience as worthy, as valid, and as the very seeds of the path forming around you.
Despite how difficult it can be, the fruits of this work are infinite, they are eternal, and to do this may be why you have come here: To make an offering to a weary world, and to do whatever you can to help others, to rest in their majestic true nature.”
One thing I catch a lot of grief for: I have not travelled internationally. There are a lot of complicated small reasons, and one large one…namely, that activity is the purvey of the privileged and powerful and wealthy, and I am none of those things.
I also am a bit nervous about it, so there is that.
But other than Mexico (Tijuana) and Canada (various provinces), I have only travelled the USA.
But in my region? Likely I know the roads better than most people and areas intimately and in detail…and it never ceases to amaze how there are discoverable territories right here under our noses while we fly across oceans to skim the surface of a place and then think we are seasoned travellers and oh so chic and diverse…
Here is a quote that sorta sums up what I am driving at:
“There is also a deeper, archetypal layer to [Brendan’s] journey, which resonates with our own inner Pilgrim—the part of ourselves drawn to make long voyages in search of something for which we long. This is the inward geography of the journey, and one where we may physically travel only a few feet or miles, but where the soul moves in astronomical measure.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD Illuminating the Way: Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics
I am tired of the surface and the shit, I am tired of facades and phoniness
I am leaving for the day, into myself. If you wanna know where, listen to this and follow the clues
see it standing there
feet in lavender and
head touching the washed
blue sky breathing in
the scents of grapes
and souls
a winery, a church
one and the same
the place of crushing
and filtration,
fermentation
maturation
the small and winding road
leads to the cavernous
inside, beams like
the bones inside Jonah’s Whale
and all swallowed within
who wish to become whole
but only in the crush
the broken shattering
can true wholeness emerge
in scents of lavender
and notes of bloody grapes
clothe me in clouds
wreathe me in smoke
let the fresh breath(e)
of the deep Universe
touch my dry skin
and let me drink deep
the water of Life
from the Wellspring
of Love
i find myself constantly
bending over backwards
to become the table
the banquet feasting table
that my enemies
come and sit down to
a meal that I serve up
before they rise and run
at me with their sharp spears
i stand watching
that train rushing
flying by fast
and furious
ethereal
everyone on it is thin,
transparent and afraid
to just step off and grow
thick and green and
gravitational
spinning across
the blooming sky
and singing in
the solid dirt
there are the ones who claw
fierce at the universe
the way an anteater
claws at a log trying
to scratch out beauty in
small ant-squiggle pieces
about Twenty-Four hours
long, each one that long
then there are those who breathe,
who open their eyes and
breathe and blink in wonder
and awe because of what
they see made beautiful
in the seeing, in breathing
in of every breath breathed.
those who seek to consume
beauty and thus embody it
are doomed to dissolution
for flowers fade and wither
and end up burned and gone
but those who simply look
and look again in wonder
will find the Beauty flowing
within their eversouls
made beautiful
made beautiful
Medicine Woman Trust
yourself with tenderness
softer than snowfall
and give yourself
the gift of grace
like tender moonglow
peeking thru
the darkest clouds
Medicine Woman Heal
in the shining
pregnant present
by walking thru
your shadow
hollow past
unafraid to
look into the heart
of this becoming
Medicine Woman Imagine
your glittering goals, resources
diamonds, move toward them
in waves, sails raised
in those winds
creativity your calling
and your deepest well
Medicine Woman Celebrate
your Holy Years believing
your inner self, remember
your outer self as well
is beautiful like trees
that dance in glory time
with hands raised to the sky
in greens touching the Blue
Medicine Woman Love
yourself like mountains
love the clouds, the sun
and value vital friendships
of other truest women
all of your Bright Days
Nomad…such
a lonesome word
a wanderer, thru cold
crowded tangy deserts
drifting, homeless thru
fudgy thick neighborhoods
traveler in time and yet never
home in any singular moment.
Feeling like
the darkened sky
could swallow me up
in seconds, under silent stars,
I feel the same way “Nomad” sounds
I am a wanderer,
a refugee in this
gulag archipelago
of google connection,
a stranger in a homeland,
a foreign and yet familiar land.
I have a suspicion
we are living but
as aliens estranged, from
our thin past, from
our strained culture, from
our oh so tragic country, from
our neighbors (as ourselves), from
our friends and family, from
our deepest self
and from God.
Nomad…
walking in the silence
of an anguished lonely prayer,
lost in the distraction that
constricts and consumes years,
hopes and dreams annulled
by all that alienation welling up
within us…and yet…
*there is always an “and yet”*
and yet we wait
estranged and encouraged
in hope that all is not yet
as it will be, we wait in hope
Hoping in that blue Promise
that promises are real and full
and yet we wait
and know that Nomad
can only mean there is a home
we wander from and
wonder back home to.
open up your gates, gates of old, gates so strong
filigree and delicate gold, interlaced with song
let the daylight in, let it shine, let it in
thru those sacred living gates so old and strong.
I am waiting outside, by the barn, barn so red
under skies of tepid grey deep scriven with true blue
you can come to me, thru the gates, out to me
or I can enter in and come to you
elaborate
intricate
wrought
invested
imposing
it’s still just
a brutal lock
and my subjugation
your only key
i long for it
the feel of that
soft silk, hot
from the press
smelling of spice
and hints of
far away orange
scrawling over scarlet
the summer breeze
which sings of forever
but implies coming sorrow
and hear it
there in around
the dry and straining
vines digging in
stealthy red earth
jory loam and chocolate
windblown loess laurelwood
and long
i sit long
for it,
that wind
from the back
of forever
and here and gone.
we soared high on currents,
uplifts unseen by human eyes
but oh so visible to us,
we dancers in the skies…
ever young and long did we thus fly
until we tired and we had need of
landing, resting, manna sweet to feed our
honking hearts, our silky souls to
take wing once again, in skies…
we thought forever we would fly
until that day the clarion calls they sounded
and the promises of haven-rest resounded
to our ears, our listening ears though with our eyes
we saw nothing but blind…blinds…we just saw blind
and swooping sounds from where?
and so we flew, we glided lower, lower
and so the guns did bloom and boom
and shot us from the keening clenching air
in lead-packed punches to the breast…
that took away our very breath
until we died, and dogs ran at us hard
to carry us triumphantly back into Massa’s yard
we, feathers fouled in blood, in gore, in mud
our necks floppy and broken in that flood…
of death that finally claimed us as its prey.
A slow gentle snow
falls on cherry blossoms, falls
to the constant dirt
“play it close to the vest”
came the granite words beating
against my face cascading
on craggy cliffsides or was it
like cannons booming and crashing,
coinvesting indifference and distant
assumption, consumption and
constant presumption?
I couldn’t tell which was true
which one was stronger,
the smug or the deaf or
the dumb, cus they had
no ears, not that they
wanted to hear my voice
or my heart or my soul
desperate, traumatized, hurt…
But they certainly had words, oh yes,
and their unctuous tones quickly
said everything I was supposed to know
and nothing else…nothing else.
Close…play… “it”…vests…
what are vests?
And what does it mean
to play close…to a vest?
The vestiary vague and looming
is that closet where play can
be kept oh so close to the vest
(or costumes donned for cover)
The vestibule tells a different story
than the vestiges of vestiaires
that peek out from under those
fanciful covers…it looks so calm.
Which place is the womb
of a travesty played out, and
which one can make someone
divest a warm heart for stone?
Vests…what are they…hmmm…
There is gravest…that might be worth
playing close to, since crisis might
confront the bravest…in gravest?
But just the naivest? Well,
easy to push, just invest all
your privilege/position in triplicate!
And no one will ever be wiser!
I think vestal virgin
might be the best vest
as they cultivate flames
and harvest the fire
To keep the community
safe and secure well,
that vest I definitely
can play oh so very close…
play…is that a joke?
it…the most common term for me.
close…near, or shut off?
to the vest…I ask again which one?
Vests and me do not really
know about one another
Not the stars,
in all their splendour
but THAT the stars
are perceived AS splendour
THAT the stars release in us
ineffable numinosity
why?
ahhh…the wonder, the Wonder
the Door to the Outside
thru which we enter
Inside at last
you do your best
to deny me but when
you can’t, you would rather
use me than see me
you don’t even know
you are not aware
of how much is denied me
already forever
the body, the flesh
the flesh become word
the love of my own kind
her intimate touch, and
what I’ll have never,
well is it offset
by what I do have…
and just what is that?
rejection by children?
gaslighting my past?
shunning me, shutting me
outside my group?
you pigs called “big men”
I am not like you
though cursed with your flesh
my heart never yours
and you princesses, women
my soul…same as yours
but my body a charnel house,
nothing in common
locked out of inside
locked in from outside
why do I linger?
why…I’m a why
“I feel you in my bones. Your silence screams in my ears.”
| — | Jean-Paul Sartre |
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“In folkloric terms, animal horns on a female figure indicate healing and shamanic powers, as well as the ability to cross boundaries – between the human world to the Wilderness World (as the Yaqui call the spirit realm), between male and female, between animal and human. If a painter or writer is to be guided by her Muse, then she must be able to negotiate boundary crossings.
“The figure is wounded, as many of my figures are, to acknowledge the difficult passages of life rather than to fear, repress or ignore them; to celebrate the strength and wisdom that comes from hard experience. Clothes half-on, half-off her body indicate a state of transformation – she is either shedding her human consciousness or returning to it from a primal animal state.”
painting by Terri Windling
i wonder what my heart looks like
after the washing away of all
the filings, the shavings
replete with scents of
graphite and wood
and scryed metal
filigreed and
final?
i wonder
if it’s beautiful,
if it’s a testimony
to something? To someone?
In the midst of loss and abandonment
of everything by everyone I love and held
close and dear, I wonder if God abandons me, here?
The loneliness of exile echoes
the darkness of captivity
and always the marking,
the marking of the prisoner
and the marking by a prisoner
and the markings
Of a God who cannot forget
and cannot be forgotten.
God carves with the sword of sorrows
baptised in great inkwells of Shalom
and my heart Their Ready Slate
God mixes beauty and ashes and oil
and Shalom is Their medium and message
(my heart torn and bloody)
and gift of peace, God’s offering
of well-being, God’s great good news
and saving salutation…
and I never need to hold it
because God writes it into me
to make it me, and make me it,
to hold it, smell it and to taste it,
to be gathered in forever
and delivered from all grieving…
I wonder what it looks like
my heart within my soul?
here in the neck,
in the in-between
the glass on top
and the globe
on the bottom
amidst the slide
of sand but where
it bottlenecks up
in the illusion
of steady and still
blissfully pretending
that it is not
trickling
grain
by
grain
I try to figure out
what’s going on
out there beyond,
on the other side
of the impassable wall.
Here among the ruins
of ancient times and places
I pick the flowers that grow
merry and brief and oblivious
to the faded splendour hinted
in the wreckage of time’s passing
grain
by
grain
are the flowers
the same as the sands
(I wonder this),
do they know they will also
become ruins?
Or do they know some
secret, have they some
nepenthe,
some salve,
some balmy medicine
for sorrow to aid in forgetting
pain and suffering?
i pick flowers
among the ruins
and long grief
is an altar hungry
for expiations that
are never enough
and yet still offered
grain
by
grain
“I still care about you a lot and I’d be a liar
if I said that I don’t miss you, but I just don’t
know if you’re what I want anymore. Maybe
you still are, but maybe I’m just a sucker that
can’t figure out how to let things go.”
…Welcome! 🙂
“Constance” refers to “Constant Reader.”
Do not take a post or two as emblematic of the entire blog…I post what is in my heart and on my mind, so to get a good understanding you will need to browse around…utilize the calendar feature at the bottom of the page and you can jump back and bounce around.
BLESSINGS!!!
it is high above the smoke, the noxious fumes,
stench belched from bulls and bullies, flesh and steel
above the ego faces that still shield
the hearts and empty hovels lurking there
you know, that land of dreams that nightmare breeds
to stalk the streets where zombies walk in peace
that feeding ground of brains not being used
that parched and soulless place of no relief
lead me higher, sit me in the dirt
at least I feel vibrations of real life
in every grain of sand and pebble hard
and hold me, till I know that I’m alright
three women
are left widows
Ruth
Naomi
Orpah
(hers a different story)
one left (missing tooth in the wind’s mouth)
one bereft (missing river in the bank) and
one rooted in the cleft (present)
Naomi without water
on fire with despair
Ruth without a plan
on fire in the air
choosing simply never leaving
just simply remaining…
there
no matter what the cost
allegiance to the weakest
boasting in the vulnerable
feeding the dessicated
and comforting the desperate
and calming those who rave
when women stand together
for the sake of one
no matter what the cost
they stand, they hold…they save
it reminds me of the marvel
the wonder and the mystery
of Jesus in humanity
at home in shared adversity…
we all of us “Naomis”
As Jesus walked among us
“the very least of these”
and chose to share our horror
and chose to face our death
and bears now on His body
the marks of His great love
He shows God’s solidarity
He is our loving Ruth
the difference between living and dying
can be found in the difference between
the Grand Canyon and the Milky Way
Another way to say it is
mutual dependence
Living Mutual Dependence Dying
We need the solidarity of the reaching skies
in swathes of silk and shades of grey
to close that gap completely
all the way
Solidarity…
Mutual Dependence…
trump cards over torture and unbridled ego…
habits that engulf so many with such ease and lack of effort
Adversity sometimes coaxes out
the best and the most beautiful
in human beings but only if
the sky can partner them
thru the gap
between
that unrelieved thirst
that threatens to engulf
and the utter madness
of misdirected sanity.
Ah…and the skies like banners unfurl
The Difference Between
The route left the Côte d’Azur
at the golden height of Autumn
in the silver splendor sun
on the silky stretch of sand
Parallel lines
stretching out
Jews Christians
wealthy workers
old young
Oppression Resistance
never meeting until
the chain connects
in commitment,
in the blood of
one another
The tracks are different than normal tracks
Those will never meet, but these meet
in the meat and the smoke and the ash heaps
Of Auschwitz
In Dachau
Thru Treblinka
To Birkenau
A Train that left in Autumn arrived in Hell
A Train in Winter fueled with horror.
A Train Running Silent, Death Shark
along those metal tracks, sparks flying
whistle silent
and my trauma rides there too
cold in the shiver-cold cars packed
with the bodies and the empty eyes
and the ever playing rape and violation
as I follow my own tracks to my own connections
to face down dead flat eyes and masquerade eye lashes
that blink furiously to bat the truth away
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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