Category Archives: Jesus

“The Art of Blessing the Day” by Marge Piercy

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The Art of Blessing the Day

This is the blessing for rain after drought:
Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,
a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.
Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.
Enter my skin, wash me for the little
chrysalis of sleep rocked in your plashing.
In the morning the world is peeled to shining.

This is the blessing for sun after long rain:
Now everything shakes itself free and rises.
The trees are bright as pushcart ices.
Every last lily opens its satin thighs.
The bees dance and roll in pollen
and the cardinal at the top of the pine
sings at full throttle, fountaining.

This is the blessing for a ripe peach:
This is luck made round. Frost can nip
the blossom, kill the bee. It can drop,
a hard green useless nut. Brown fungus,
the burrowing worm that coils in rot can
blemish it and wind crush it on the ground.
Yet this peach fills my mouth with juicy sun.

This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:
Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store
sells in January, those red things with the savor
of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.
How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,
warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.
You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.

This is the blessing for a political victory:
Although I shall not forget that things
work in increments and epicycles and sometime
leaps that half the time fall back down,
let’s not relinquish dancing while the music
fits into our hips and bounces our heels.
We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain.

The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,
the blessing for love returned, for friends’
return, for money received unexpected,
the blessing for the rising of the bread,
the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental
about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote
with no more feeling than one says gesundheit.

But the discipline of blessings is to taste
each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet
and the salty, and be glad for what does not
hurt. The art is in compressing attention
to each little and big blossom of the tree
of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,
its savor, its aroma and its use.

Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
can’t bless it, get ready to make it new.
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“All Means All”: A Meaningless Circular Statement

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I love words…they are so powerful, so magical.

They are alive, they pulse and glow and they do things and go places that you might not mean for them to do and go…and this is especially the case when we use them carelessly and just spew them out because we can.

The biggest problem we face with words is that we forget that they mean something…and when we do that, we set them free to impose a meaning in a situation that controls and distorts reality from what is consciously heard on the surface of the words.

For instance:  saying “everything is red” is a meaningless statement, by definition.  “Everything” means all conceivable existing things without exclusion”…and thus, red would not exist, because how could there be any state of being or place of perception that was other than red and thus giving meaning to red as something distinct and identifiable?

We only know red in contrast to other colors…thus, it is impossible for “everything” to be red.  The more accurate statement would be “It was red as far as the eye could see” or some variant on that approach.

Recently, I heard someone posing a so-called logical argument that “All means all”, and thus there was no need to delineate who is included in “all”…imprecise shortcut thinking that ultimately is lazy and sloppy given this society we live in where “all” has meant white anglo saxon and protestant for about 300 years.

“All” needs some defining additions, some inclusive categories, because in America (alas) we have lived in blatant contradiction to our incredible founding documents…and in the church we have followed the way of the culture and turned out the poor, the needy, the wrong colored wrong gendered wrong orientated…

So what does All mean?

Let’s define it with something that says “included in our list, but not limited to just this list”…yeah, intentionally worded in an awkward way, because there are some really beautiful crafted statements extant that can be adopted…such as the great ELCA “Reconciling In Christ” statement…it gives specificity and depth to the platitude “All means all”.

As to the fears of “being branded?”

I think it would be pretty cool to be branded with the ideals of RIC to the point that when people saw me coming they said “Omg here comes that Charissa…she is branded with the Reconciling in Christ position that all are welcome to come to Jesus!”
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Enough Water

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“A tear is enough water to float a desire to God.”
— Charles Spurgeon

Oh God it is on oceans that
I float my heart to you,
my heart tragic and Titanic
and full of broken dreams

my tears feed every ocean that
ships sail upon so free
and so, will my desires, prayers,
and longings come to Thee?

as the passenger disembarks
and clambers from the boat
so I distinguish me from my
desires, they mere ships

to sail the oceans of the heart
to catch those winds so strong
and carry me home to You, God…
for this I ever long.
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RECongress “Transgender Lives in the Church” Talk (Transcript)

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Wow.

This is one of the most amazing things I have ever read, and I cannot recommend it enough. Please please PLEASE take the time to read this.

Thank you Anna…brilliant and beautiful like you.

Afloat In Holy Black II

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in the silent frosty middle
you know the place, it dangles
from a frayed and rotted rope
by its twisted, broken neck

never climbing to the heavens
never rising, never sinking
finally to hell…suspended
still-born in the dead black moment
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struck hard by fiery unjust suffering
lightening bolts of frozen mystery
electric silence of a God
who seems to become floaty-fog…

…and go missing in that moment…
that cold and lonely hour of greatest need.
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And Defiance?
And Hope?
And Memory?
And Wrath?

Or Mercy?
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God’s absence…ever-present metronome
clicking seconds tangible
but measured in life’s lurking horrors,
haunted concentration camps

shrieking dust-wreathed empty chairs
silent tables lacking breath
just one long open exhale
lasting always occupied

by aching absence of the Loved ones
gone…just gone…replaced by absence…
lurking pervert, shadow present
of God Absent in the hanging

in the hollow hanging black…
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Or is it
Holy Black?  Yes.
Afloat in Holy Black.

In the times of Holy Black…
This Holy Black when God seems absent
in our need, we are too small,
inconsequential lost in mystery

I ask where is God? Where am I?
Where is Divine Mercy Sweet?
How can I (or anyone)
Slip that rough coarse choking rope?
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I go forward
They are not there,
backward, but
I can’t perceive Them.
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When They act on the left,
I cannot behold Them;
They turn on the right,
I cannot see Them.

And yet I find in anguished cries
against God’s absence, They are present!
Present in my blank assumption
that Their Silence equates absence

and tenacious faith in God
who seems so distant from our pain,
and silent to our acrid cries,
and absent from our acid world.
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In the face of certain suffering
how else can I affirm God’s presence
in my midst except by taking
issue with injustice in this moment

of God’s long apparent ringing absence
God’s abandonment in the midst of towering suffering?
My protest against God’s pressing pregnant silence
would be deprived of dignity and meaning

if there were no Presence behind the Silence.
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mercy and justice are enthroned
in a higher heaven still
and in this Lenten season,
in our hungry self denial
as we blindly grope around

in that towering Spiraling Darkness
of our own imperfect vision
and our wakened apprehension
of our God, we will to wrestle
with God’s absence so we can come

to experience the presence
of God in a different way
not that hanging purgatory
twisting in the idiot wind…no
Us and God…Afloat in Holy Black

“I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye has seen you.”
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It’s On…

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it’s on the naked branches
stripped bare by winter lashings
frozen crushings and dim light
dark night and the howls and owls
and the lonesome silent music
of lost longings and long waiting…
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it’s on the roof built solid
so snug against the cold
and cupping all the golden warmth
that glows inside the heart
and sings inside the soul
of Spring returning fast…
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it’s on my face that Mama splashes
all Her Love, Her Grace and Peace
She beautifies my ashes
She oils my grieving heart
She clothes me in Her Raiment
and purifies my spirit

and I sing once again
reborn and free again.
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Afloat In Holy Black

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it’s a thousand points of light
stark against the black
reflected in my eyes
refracted in my heart
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a thousand thousand times
in gold, in yellow hues
embedded in the sable soft
stuck in molassess skies

amber warm and endless sloe
i feel the tête-à-tête
vibrate around me, in me too
and I begin to know

that I will never fade, burn out
or disappear in black
for I’m a thousand points of light
afloat in Holy BlackThe stars on the ceiling of the vault. Mosaic (mid 5th)

Meditations On Suffering

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The journey difficult and hard,
black and blue and bitter cold
upon the road thru long days old
and vales of death and darkness.

In hardship and travail we walk
and most of us will quit before
we reach the end, and yet that end
is still a mystery so vast…
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It strikes me that of all the ways
to make appeal to human hearts
They chose to magnify the cost
and left rewards as afterthoughts.

What exactly is Their point?
What is promised with this pain
and sacrifice…and…what?  Comes next?
More mumble mumbo turbo trouble?
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Fatigue and hardship hand in hand
in times of darkness shared in light?
Not the cheery words that humans
think they need and want, but turn from.

Jesus looked at His best friends
and told them that in this hard world
they could be promised suffering
and then He spoke a miracle:

“Have courage, My dearest friends,
faint not! For I have overcome
the world and all that is there in”
And pain’s denied sour last say!
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Somehow the Son of God joins us
within it all and thru it all
So what exactly is success?
Is it simply winning? Tell me!

Because something shines beneath!
Something lurks Gold and Beyond!
I smell victory past defeat
and virtue is its own reward.
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You Who Accuse…

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…you say that I think I can do what I want and pronounce it all forgiven by my belief in my “make-believe god”?  You say that I think I can justify whatever I want and call it a “Road to Damascus” experience?

You think wrong.

You will never know the depth of the pain and sorrow for each and every time that I have fallen short…

…and you also will never know the hurt and pain you caused me with your false accusations of abuse and physical harm, your violent anger and threats of murder…your false memories and placing words in my mouth that I never said or even thought…

You will not have a way of knowing that even in your falseness I see that as my own fault because I did not do a good enough job to birth you into wholeness and understanding of truth…and instead, you go on forever about things that are so insane as to be befuddling to me.

No.  I am blood guilty of sins of commission, and sins of omission as well.

But I place my faith and my trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ, and in His Cross…and I ask Him to see me thru.
I trust Mama to Defend me, Advocate for me, Sustain me, Console me, and Comfort me.
I will do so all of my days, no matter how good or bad I was each day, no matter how deeply I fail or how high I fly.

This will never change, though I hope and pray that I will, continually becoming more like Jesus’ Lovely Heart by the Grace of God poured out liberally.

And there are others too…who read here like Nicodemus…you from the past, who used to come out into my working environment so you could criticise me, call me unsubmitted, tell me how I had no rule over my soul, and basically oppose every thing I attempted…I know you read here and think me tragically deceived, fallen away, or (one dude, you think this) in the clutches of “sexual sin”…

you think that being transgender is an act of sexual fulfillment, which absolutely cracks me up…like, I guffaw when I consider your ignorance and assumption.

You all have missed me in the midst of your judgement.

Here is me:  this song forever, along with the other ones I have posted this morning.

If you want to understand me and be in my heart, you must understand and accept these songs.  Whether or not you adhere to the songs is not my concern…that is up to you and your own convictions and choices.  I seek to love and accept you regardless, from you who say you dreamed of murdering me for years to you who shake your head and waggle your beard because you have judged me outcast and shunned.

Sometimes I need to make these declarations.

Today is one of those days…and I am still here…like Papillon…I am still here…clinging to the precious Bleeding Side of Jesus.

 

And Gold All Underneath

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Behold, the darkness thick and lurking, growing
like ennui in my soul, in my heart doomed and waiting
in this long moment, seemingly forever
it will remain, this painted grey, this second…
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this minute is an hour is a decade
and I exist here…floating in the nothing, growing-shrinking…
it defines me as some-thing…no…as Some-one
whose breaking renders her unbreakable…
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The growing darkness lurking, insubstantial,
The river Ennui flowing out to nowhere, to everywhere
The shocking joy and wonder also shining, in
This painted grey, and gold all underneath.
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A Performance Lecture on the Theology of Gender

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I have seen this wonderful man in person and very much enjoyed his presentation.

I am posting this for anyone curious about a theological perspective about matters of gender, presented in dramatic performance and gentle words.

 

Sanctuary– For JD

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Remember Litter-Mate…the fact that they other and police you affirms your authenticity!!

 

The Song Of Loss And Gain

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Steeples and graves stand marked in memory,
by a crucifixion making way for the last to be first,
and the guilty pardoned, making way for
the creature and The Creator

(the Dying/Living One Living/Dying,
dying/living here, within me too,
I who lack in every grace
to just die already,
so full of Great
Grace to live
always)
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it’s a sign so mysterious and standing
at the core of history the core of the world.

CORE:
suffering,
death, tragedy,
and sad sorrow He
(Supremely human He)
submitted willingly hanging
doggedly broken and bleeding
holding our infirmities in
His bloody Holey Hand
(He’s Got The Hole
World In His
Hand)
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it’s a gift of forgiveness
and assurance, depiction
of the depth of divine mercy
and hope of God and us.

Is this querulous song enough
to quiet restless running thoughts
and ease unanswered questions’ ache,
that burn so cold in hearts laid low
in suffering, hearts whose hope is seized
and despair left laying in its wake
(suffering-wake)
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But we must carry willingly
defeat and thirst and emptiness
through to the end of darkness, to
the end of self, and to the world’s long waited end
bringing meaning to suffering and peace to hearts in pain

in this symphony of blood
in this song of loss and gain.
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Advent Poem: We Wait For God Comes Near

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I cannot shake this snowflake-season
and its many unexpected discordant moments
of Christmas preparation somewhere between

red hot errands at the mall

and

the soul felt its golden worth.
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But this discord can be a door to the kingdom
where Jesus is from, Jesus that Heavenly Immigrant,
Jesus that Redemptive Refugee come to our
dark little houses of trinkets and treasures
and useless electronics of technicolor
sentimental uselessness.

We wait like stones wait
(gritty and granite and grey)
to cry out in loud refrain…
we wait, we wait but we wait not
in vain and not diminished though we are
discomforted while we wait earthbound and heavy,
and grow large in excelsis deo expectations longing
1422220803140628_tallfor redemption and relief,
for peace on earth,
goodwill to all,
release from darkness
loneliness, disillusionment,
we wait for God comes near
to this world as we know it.
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Advent Poem: Seeds of Sorrow

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The end of exile and darkness
began at the manger of Jesus,
where seeds of sorrow sprouted
(sorrow Theirs and ours)
in Joyful Birth, and drawing
near to earth from heaven
as angels’ song is hushed

in holy hesitation
as Jesus Christ is born.
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He, God’s seed of sorrow sown
into the earth in Hope
of such Divine rejoicing
and harvesting of many
children returned Home
and exile at last over,
that exile self-imposed.

Advent Poem: Holy Wassail Wine

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God,
rest Ye…

here in the midst
of the mess and the malls
and the masses of middling
and the muddles of mercy
needed, so badly needed.
pdx streets
Let nothing

Masquerade as something
filling hearts so full
(of nothing…nuffin)
that they “feel full”
and still hunger for
bread become stone
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For
Jesus Christ was
born upon this day,

again in the sound of muzak
again in the tread of tired
tramping feet tiptoeing
around grapes of wrath
unstored in stores
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again…be born
again upon
This Day

O tidings of comfort and joy!
For the final word
is not dismay
and darkness shall not
have the final say!
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here is joy
enfleshed,
mingled with
sorrow like
Holy Wassail Wine
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Advent Poem: Who Can Say?

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So long ago and far away
e’en though the miles are under one
and echo still in wonderment
we trimmed a tree with love and grace
and feasted on such shining face
that echoed 4 in that bright place…

and in my heart I live there still
and see the shine and smell the green
and on those wings I rise and thrill
above these deserts low and mean
while angels gather near the earth
and I wait for the Baby’s birth

and understand this thing…at last
I am here to see the sights
and feel the joy and hear the song
I’m here at last…it was sooo long
and who can say what’s best, and true
to be locked up and yet have you

or be bereft of everyone
and have the birth of me be done?
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Advent Poem: Unfeigned Without Reserve

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In the midst
of this storm
of pain
these clouds
of hurt
these winds
of death

I stand and on
You do I call
and ever trust
and ever long

For You to bring
Your peace on earth
and those who call
upon Your Name

to lay down useless weapons grim

And lift their hearts
to Light again

and love unfeigned
without reserve

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My Baby Loves God Like A Boss!

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My Baby loves God like a boss!

She ain’t no red-light winker
or Fleet Street wanker
when it comes to
loving Them, HELL NO…

She’s a street walking swinger
as long as that street glows golden
and is called The Way, or just plain
Beautiful, or if that street is a market

and she will buy Their wares…
pearls here, pears there,
peas and poultry right next
to peace and praise…

Ahhh…

My Baby loves God…loves God like a boss!!
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Advent Poem: This Waiting Time

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Sometimes frost grips limbs
once lean and limber in the wind
now long grown stiff and creaky
and I hear them crack and groan
in those sticky clutching fingers
cold and frosty, fingers
cold and frosty.
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Sometimes ennui (cold)
grips my soul (grown old)
and in its grip I groan
(groan old) and my soul
(my waiting soul) runs
around my heart and
around my heart

as the clock’s tail
ticks and twitches, chases
its tail like a cat relentless,
(useless) and that (waiting)
that frosty cold difficulty of waiting
remains there clinging tightly
in the fading day.
But Advent…

Advent
Advent comes again
and gives her gift.
In the cold and dead of winter,
trauma seems to sting much deeper,
and healing for the broken parts
of my life…and the people that I love?
Seems so much harder to obtain…
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When it comes to these things
things so staggering and important,
healing, peace and goodness
on the earth, freedom from suffering,
well…waiting is hard, so hard and painful.

But in these moments I’m remembering
I’m troubled in soul and looking
for something transcendent, greater
than the hurt and pain and suffering,
something, someOne warm enough
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persistent, faithful, warm enough

to breathe on us
to break the ice
and give us life
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Long familiar sweet hymns play
wherever I go, I remember
I am poor, imperfect, waiting for
the God Who comes down,
Comes Down, God With Us
Emmanuel! Hosanna!
In the Highest Holy Fire!
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and I feel again
the gentle nudge
of a knock deep
at the door
of my small
and icy lonely
heart.
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Advent is the time of waiting
waiting for the One (the One)
Who embraced body, embraced sorrow
Came to show us all the fullness
of just being home, present, and real.

And we are long reminded in
our cold dolorous longing
what we’re longing for actually
a Who, Who, Who we long for,
God…always coming nearer to us.
tumblr_nxyvx0qB8d1sbg1lmo1_500I have found a place
inside (in Advent, inside you)
that place where once
you die, you…
you come Alive…
A place where pain
and pleasure weigh out
just the same
and all that’s left
is only Love,
tumblr_nveprpyg6U1tdo940o1_1280And every sorrow touched
by the wild gold Promise
that in this very place
(of waiting)
Jesus has been born
(is born)
and will be born
again and again,
and again
breaking thru
tumblr_nvtonjz7IJ1qam6uto1_1280that icy grip
thawing out
our longing hearts,
melting all
our sin and deaths
so we can
laugh again.

If It Were Not

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I remember a time
when it seemed
quite obvious to me
that God was
what I wanted.

God-shaped vacuums
hearts restless til
they rest in God
the Holy God of faith.

But did I dare to sit
before this God
without this mask

(the one I didn’t know I wore)

is this longing
in and of itself
an assurance
of God’s presence?

What would longing be
if it were not?
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Advent Poem: To Go To Bethlehem

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Uncanny, peculiar,
uncomfortably strange,
I tend my fires and tell my story…
tumblr_n40izwKWgH1s5neh1o1_1280the story of
this quirky girl
overly-intelligent
and stuck in time
that is not time, so
unreconciled to time
so bound up in its realm.
tumblr_n5np124LJd1s5neh1o1_500I am strapped there
on Your wrist (watch)
a condor in a cage
passing from quick present
to some furious future
and thus so fast becoming
dim, and dark, and past
and wondering if I amtumblr_n3ng7oK9xj1s5neh1o1_1280ever?  present?
ever a moment?
ever a significant occasion
or an immeasurable quality?

I want real time!tumblr_nyhnrwYzEl1qllucco2_1280time which breaks through
with a shock of joy
like a leap into Crater Lake
on a snowy New Year’s morning,
time where we are completely
un-self conscious and far more
real in some eternal now
I thirst for a moment jeweled!
tumblr_nycmluCX5a1qat5pio1_500a moment
so sweet or magnified
it seems to stop time
but doesn’t because time
becomes a point so limply moot
and thus no longer dirty moat
between me and my true self
tumblr_mz5pbxrvwe1slvh08o2_1280And here I sit, beside time’s bonfire
tumblr_nvpeukM0QC1u7b31go1_1280and sparks fly up
and away so quick
to join the stars
and glimmer and
I poke at this fire
hot and tender
and tend it…
with my tinder636e5f6d27dbf806212c969a3560ca33and wonder how to be
here in this already
and not yet, between
That Eternal Now
and this one,
and the One
Who There Inhabits?tumblr_nxgij6jzXP1rnl2wvo1_1280wonder how to be aware
of life while I am living it?

wonder how to limp courageous
and relinquish all control
of self and self awareness?

wonder how to laugh courageous
and look for glory
in the storied
wonder of the ordinary?

wonder how to live courageous
and be surprised by One
who dares draw near?

wonder how to love courageous
and take off rings and watches?
tumblr_n1uzzfw14n1s5neh1o2_1280
I burn calendars and open
my heart uncanny,
strange peculiar…
tumblr_nfi2j2A3Sf1t043jao1_500to see eternity in
the midst of time
to go to Bethlehem
today and everyday
in this time and place

where glimpses of the eternal
come quiet, unexpectedly
they come and they upset
our every notion static about time
and all we discover there within.
and in the east her long shroud trailing
I open
my Uncanny Peculiar
Uncomfortably Strange Heart
to the story of All and Ever
ending Never

I choose
to live somewhere between
the already and not yet,
caught and held
by the One who
dwells within Outside.
tumblr_ny2xn8zBkj1trdezwo1_540And so the fire burns away the moments
And we must choose our portion:
whether here we tarry or if
we choose to journey
Pregnant by some God

To Go To Bethlehem
tumblr_nygiapTyw51qat5pio1_1280

My Peculiar Love, Arise!

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Look up, arise
my Peculiar Love!

You tumble still
wracking rocks
wrenching ravines
clawing cliffs
and scratching
with nails broken
and bloodied in the plunge.

No…I have not left
your side, your side
(it’s only bruised, Love)
so vulnerable to that lance
and the stinky rough
warhands of that coward
masquerading as a shepherd
covering for a rapist

And on that note remember
He who lays by your side
He who took the lance
He who went all the way
coming to common terms
with loss
blind as wind…

But I float now…see?
You will too soon…

And this is waiting…
there…and so I lay these words of care
upon your lips like mountain blood
white and clear and clean and cold
to slake your thirst with sop
(not hyssop)
of beauty, healing, Promise…

Oh my Love…my Love Peculiar
the day will come to
Arise

and join me in the Liberty
you prophesied when you spied
your baby’s heart eternal.

The Truth About Transgender Suicide | Brynn Tannehill

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“Suicidal behaviors in LGBT populations appear to be related to “minority stress”, which stems from the cultural and social prejudice attached to minority sexual orientation and gender identity.

“This stress includes individual experiences of prejudice or discrimination, such as family rejection, harassment, bullying, violence, and victimization. Increasingly recognized as an aspect of minority stress is “institutional discrimination” resulting from laws and public policies that create inequities or omit LGBT people from benefits and protections afforded others.

“Individual and institutional discrimination have been found to be associated with social isolation, low self-esteem, negative sexual/gender identity, and depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders.

“These negative outcomes, rather than minority sexual orientation or gender identity per se, appear to be the key risk factors for LGBT suicidal ideation and behavior.”

Source: The Truth About Transgender Suicide | Brynn Tannehill

This.

I am sharing this truly scintillating essay, and the pull quote above is the core for me.

I just wanna say that I was raised white…but I was…raised white. Fortunately for me, I was never inculcated with racist bull shit, to the point that in college in the 80s I had a dear friend literally shock me when he told me I was the least racist person he had ever met…and yes, I did hear and note his use of the word “least”…which said volumes to me but in a language that I could not decipher or understand.

Well…since coming to terms with myself and understanding my gender journey, my life has changed in shattering ways, stunning and transcendent ways…but most importantly of all I was delivered from the ocean at last…

and became aware of so much that I never knew, could never see, even as a fish in the sea has no clue that it is in the sea.

I understand the comment of my friend now…”least racist”.

I wish I had the words and ways to let my friends, acquaintances and loved ones who are subject to that which they are subject to for the absolute worst and most insignificant of reasons KNOW that I get it now…

Oh, I will NEVER get it for the reason that they are made subject, anymore than any cis-gender person will ever “get it” in any way other than developing a deep and sincere sympathy and resolute commitment to love and live that love…

But I do get it now, the persecution, the othering, the abuse, the hatred and the fucking demonic unreasoning irrational stupidity of those besotted and drunk on the luck of the draw and the fate of biology.

My friends, and you know who you are…this post is for you…may I always find the joy I have found in solidarity with you and the love of your deep suns of being that shine undefeated and undefeatable! May I always have the heart, the eyes to see and to be inspired time and again with your indomitable spirit, will, but most of all your LOVE which just fucking never quits, CAN never quit.

You have no idea, the moments you have dragged me thru…you bearing the hate directed at you due to skin and me bearing the hate directed at me due to a variation on skin but essentially a common thing we walk in…times I was on the way out, and I would read sumfin, hear sumfin, think of sumfin…and be inspired and lifted up in your heart of hearts.

Now? I can at least have the means to find the remaining privilege I have and divest myself of it intentionally…it doesn’t always go, it is stuck to my skin color…but at last it is not stuck to me.

I regret only that it took as long as it did for my understanding and seeing eyes to catch up to what my heart must have known for my friend to tell me what he told me. We intersect…and for the rest of my days on earth I am expanding that intersection with every ounce of love, faith, hope, grace and mercy that is mine.

To the rest of my friends: please take it in faith that your privilege is there, is stuck to you, and is a legacy that you can use if you will but set your heart in a frame of humility and ask that your eyes be opened…hopefully you will gain insight without experiencing it being ripped away…but if that is what it takes, it is better that this occur rather than go thru your life blind while thinking you see.tumblr_lh6nzks1YS1qgnixvo1_1280

Grace In The Gulf

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It is in that gulf
that vast distance
between

that meadow hanging
on the wondrous mountainside
beautiful for situation

and cupping the wind
in its song-chamber bowl
and sounding like angels

and that desert looming
that desperate dryness
and filled with the winds

and the wails of the desolate
and the bleach-ed dry bones
that confound Ezekiel

That gulf is witness
and proof of the Heart
that freely pours Grace

until it is full,
that emptiness stark
repulsive in being

Charissa the Graceful
Full, overflowing
and liberal of gesture

Charissa Bereft
and so empty and jagged
and a curse on the lips

Both of us Mama’s Girl
One speaks of Grace Given
One speaks of Grace Needed

Lord
In Your Mercy
Hear my prayertumblr_nxpoelGzkM1thfeewo1_500

This Knowable And Yet Unseen Fine Line

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What is this mystery
that imbues us with mercies,
that makes us worthy?

What Hand unbridles us,
makes us like fire
sweeping quick and inexorable
across dry crackly pampas?

Is calculated bravery even that?

Calculated?
Brave?

Or is it that opening,
limitless in love,
that casual bravery that
sets apart stark and unique
and truly free?b1673501d5fca66b3e993d2bc501e1e0The bright light and sounding fury
of your sharp inhalation as you stand
just on the verge of this blessed virgin
landscape, uncharted territory and at last
without a method for its mapping!

Your miraculous secrets
can now be made known,
open to the depths
of your deep core!
God,
the planet’s very core
trembles at the prospect
of you unearthing your mysterious you!

Face them down, confront them,
hair gleaming in the moon,
eyes ferocious, feminine
in the sun and perfect chaos
of a new creation being born!!
Image 001Wreak havoc in the hearts of those
who fear lord foul and want to break you open…
they only serve The Sacred Heart
which alone can touch you only
with the Mercies and the Grace!
They hate what they cannot control
and deem you far too much
but I ask them how could you
ever be too much
or anything but
too much

when you can fly above
those lofty snow-graced peaks
and you can warm those
star-kissed ocean-swept
beaches and speak to trees
in profound whispers in
the dead of night
or in the desert
at dawn?c50b02754305b6be20888171bf70747bChange and transformation beats,
a drum within your soul,
that elegantly crafted
straightforward chorus
and procession of passion
and purpose and melty-love!

The notion of you resurrected
sends battalions bowing, backwards
and rejoicing that they caught sight of you
there beside our Sister Joan
and the silver noble mantleb5473fdc349efbc7662f819b33488761
she wraps you both within!

Oh Ship Graceful!
You with the stubborn faith
and ridiculous courage to dare
the tempestuous seas of transformation!

Oh you dark and light pulsing!

Oh you unstoppable hurricane spinning!

Oh you warm rain and gentle embrace
glowing with Mama’s swaying rhythms
and untameable electricity and containing
the very formula for birth!

Let your passion become elixir,
life-force, fuel of legions of the lost
destined to be found!

Let jewels drip from your lips
to the mouths of we your sisters
and send us sailing on clouds
and lay us basking in light!

Let your heart be a home
and golden chamber
of comfort soft
and yet unyielding!
But now, sit in deserts
and wrap yourself in silence
while your spirit howls at the moon
and sings the songs of freedom
from the palace of yourself
restored to you.

Let your temple you
be that magnetic masterpiece
of completely unconscionable strength
and grace and majesty untwisting time
with every bump of your Holy Hips,
every twist of your spine fro and to.

And do not neglect your softness
at the heart of you, of your force.
Carry yourself like breezes in sweet meadows,
swaying like the willows in joyful moving hymns.f7e25dc7979f521a11c72e4d682257f6Remember to be small
when you speak stars
from your very lips.

You are a walking
breathing, living
temple in whom
our Mama
dwells
and
beautifies
so stark and lovely
that the very stones
give up their tears that
lay so petrified and still!f4c2fcbd902e9591ccb29be508b5d1eaAnd so…sister exhale gently.
Let your lungs blow ancient magic
and conjure blooming flowers in the exhalations.

You are Mama’s Girl and are becoming
as a goddess by comparison to the dead
who shovel shit upon their brethren
dead and buried.

This is my solemn promise and exhortation,
I who have dwelt a season at the heart of a scream
and now stand ever in the Red Wonder of Her Heart…

join me here…
the water is just fine
in this knowable and yet
unseen fine line.c224a8d81d3e2f32afa2f3931428ca2b

 

The Future of JP

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a heart that’s purged is empty
and yet full all at once.

stuff and nonsense banished
pomp and pretense vanished

and only there remains
windows stained and clear

and incense in the air
and just the cross…just there.

Only Different Now

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Be yourself only
different now
somehow
with all
that
grief.tumblr_mubepqA5O41qznczoo1_500In case you ever
thought that
you were just
a being, just
a humble
presencetumblr_lx4e3kosSN1qzwaddo1_1280you are not just
anything, you
mean something,
more than that
you mean
everything,tumblr_mplmt2mrm41rfp1lho1_r2_500because everything that
means something
beats inside
of you.Image 003

Irrevocably Loved By God

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there dogwood lingers
lost in long and cooling nights
side by side with sassafras
brooding over browning grass

and sumac stands
with red oak and sheds
leaves in broad daylight
while maples paint

in crimsons, scarlets, purples
yellow brush upon the air
and splashed across
the transom of my heart.tumblr_nxd364udX81qat5pio1_500winds and rain come now
and colors muddle, fade to dull
and make their ready to fall down
into the soil dark that croons

and calls them to their fall.
and I am shattered in this fade
of yellow birch and maple red
the flower of spring is there unmade

and frost laments now come in lace
and nibble at my tender face
and precious profound beauty
here and gone and metumblr_nx6vxz9xeX1rum5sfo1_1280that hardest of hues to hold
as my life falls in leaves of days
is here and gone in just a wink
and nothing gold can stand untouched

and how is it, Eternal One
can love so strong and fierce this shade
who passes from the day to night
and fades into the mists?tumblr_nwyhsqnAN61rf0rtjo1_1280

 

 

A Prayer For Healing

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Into the compassionate womb of your Love, Oh God
I bring my deepest needs, my strongest hopes, my greatest fears.
Give me tears for my grief, a voice that I might cry out unto You.
Give me words, that I might say what is most in my heart.
Give me courage, that I might always seek the healing You have to give.
Let me always offer my suffering to you, so that if healing does not come,
wisdom, justice, and compassion maybe its fruit.
A life offered to You, Abba God.
Amentumblr_nx9k8eT4EU1uufoudo1_1280

I Love Mama’s Hands

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I love Mama’s Beautiful Hands
so dirty with me, with us.

I love that She is not distant from me
But draws close and plunges to muss

My hair, my heart, my head and my soul
She molds and She mushes and messes

And then She will wash me and clean me right up
And put pleats in my Lonely Tresses

Evangelicalism, You Have Traumatized Me. – The Gay Post-Evangical

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Source: Evangelicalism, You Have Traumatized Me. – The Gay Post-Evangical

I am pressing this post…it is by way of confession for me.  I have done these things to people back in the old days…mostly in the early 90s, and my thinking well on the path of evolving and transforming by the late 90s…but I did them.

Said them.

Thanks be to our God of Love and Grace that They opened the eyes of my heart.

Someone I love deeply recently told me that they will never forgive me for those things said then…no matter that they ignore so much else.  They told me that I was not allowed to change my mind or views and that they would despise me forever if I tried to “claim” a road to Damascus experience and now “get off scot-free”.  They were cruel, intentionally so, and consigned me to their dungeon of never having status as a free person ever again.

Well…that was tough to read, and the choices that they make do not dictate my future nor deny me the grace of growing and changing and evolving.

But even if I spent my whole life in their dungeon, it would not make “right” the things I said and lived in those times…I truly thought I was saying and doing the right thing.

I was wrong.

In the spirit of forgetting what lies behind and pressing onward to the glory of God in Christ, I am rejoicing that I still have some years to help the ones in my life now who I have the chance to show grace to.

May any who read this who have been wounded and othered by the likes of such as I once was find healing in my confession…and may the ones who say they will never forgive quickly find opportunity to change their own views…it will broaden their forgiveness qualifications most helpfully, and empower them to forgive themselves.

 

Grace Upon Grace

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open me to new ways
of looking at old wounds
without examining them.

give me grace to recreate
loving space and mercy great
for childhood, home and family.

nourish me, here, I belong
and have a place to call my home
me…I am my home now…and so is She.tumblr_nlr3sqnQ9Z1u3p11io1_1280and old familiar fretty ways
so curious and strange
may they grow cold with un-use.

no more shall I be trapped
in ancient fear and panic
a creature of their whims

but asking Them to help,
to break that siege on me
and lend Their power pure.

I know now,
there is another way,
kinder, gentler, simpler.
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Morning Meditations

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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 hollowed out by pillars
of strange orange man-made lights
that pulse to rhythms eldritch
and out of whack.

Turn left at the golden arches
and meander downhill toward
that weedy field of thistles and look
beneath its frosty veil for the path, no…
the part traversing that bristly mane
low and lurking deep in the foot
of the silent graveyard speaking so insistent
of what it cannot say.untitled_by_beyondimpression-d86j5snHead to the pylon, pushing thru the wild roses
and brambles and you can find me, sleeping and still,
swathed in brilliant reds that have been infected with
the sicknesses of too much and too little.

Cast-off Goodwill wannabes swaddle me
in the mangy light so far away from even
Bethlehem let alone a stable, and I struggle
to stay beneath the thready stream of thin sleep
doled out to me like penitentiary-gruel
to dulled-out dwellers in the dimness
that masquerades as just desserts deep-deserved.

Feel that moist air clinging to your cheeks
like my fingers used to cling to those faces
cherubic and innocent and unaware of the plague
awaiting outside the place we all used to live.tumblr_nvjxog2KC61u9koqpo1_1280Smell that rank faint scent that lives only
at the foot of graveyards and only creeps
out in the dead of night…and take a deep breath,
for that breath is your inheritance now, in this
long first night in the fake wilds beneath
the petty-coats of this town but no longer with
a place to call home, or even a cover to keep out
the creeping dread of realization that this will happen

over and over and over and over and over and…tumblr_n6myj3d0Re1s2fme1o1_r2_500

you can curl up behind me and we can spoon and
maybe our touch will lure the moon over
the crouched hump of the bridge that sings once
in a while with the passing of scrabbling
metal beasts scurrying thru this place
on the way to nowhere.

Or if that small comfort is too slow and uncertain,
trek across the creek and look under the bridge
by the trestle beams so dark and still and
certain of their strength.

They sweat in cold beads
and if you stick out your tongue
you can trap a few drops there and here
that will cool your ravaged hot throat torn
with such thirsty longing for what used to be…

and if you stick out your arm, well then
swift flows the river current for those
who would brave the rapids and ravages
of those waters.

But then again, you may as well
take the shortcut, up the twisty hill
and lay down amidst the still stone angels
and the lumpy skeletal headboards
amidst the sighing dead awaiting
for the Rising Morning…

I live here now, in this red infected light
of lone loss and dewy violet memory and
I’ve learned to thrive off things despised,
I’ve learned to sift the dregs and love
the cast-off lees and living here
wrapped so warm in Autumn Leaves
and with The Least of These…

I think I prefer authentic life even
in light somewhat diseased rather
than the full on blind brilliance
of that time past asleep in true light
but wasted light streaming on by
while my eyes were shut and sealed
and my heart full of things I knew
that just weren’t so.

Wander on
down the grey road,
for I am waiting
here.tumblr_nvl3hgGvBu1ty8kogo1_1280

Mud-Spittled Eyes On A Rainy Fall Sunday Morning

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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 there while
It pulses bright-brilliant
and shining with Glory…
the eyes tell the story,
it’s the glory of eyes.tumblr_nva9hadhu81s5neh1o1_400And the glory of hearts,
jumpstarted by Pain
descended from heaven
to bleed on the earth?
It’s the glory of hearts
to demand that blind eyes
become windows of wonder,
pried savagely open to
that fire Burning
Behind the Beyond!tumblr_nusim8RlO41t5g5c1o1_540And thus all my ancient
inadequate questions
about life and death
shall be visible now
in my yearning mortality,
here in the midst
of the dark and the light
all surrounded by Light
and glowing with Glory
 and glad in the grime.tumblr_nv7dargLvS1tv3g49o1_1280And the Kingdom come in
looks into my  heart-windows
thru mud-spittled eyes
at this Mystery Landscape
this Numinous-Journey
of Startling Story
(we are Their Mystery,
we’re Their Fire Burning,
we’re Their Numinous
 Shocking Startling Story!)georgia-o-keeffe-goat-s-horn-with-redThat’s the Crux of it!
That’s the Implicative Crossroad
where heaven meets earth
and earth defines heaven
and we’re given eyes
(our very own crossroads)
to see things Beyond us
True things and Real
even though there are
tears in these

Mud-Spittled Eyes
on a Rainy Fall Sunday
Morningtumblr_nv6jw4o23E1rr74i9o1_1280

 

Like Mama

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and i must find the courage
to smear me on the world
like oranges on the morning
smeared on the fingertips
that pry with nails sharp

i must be resolved
to be spread thick and creamy
on hearts so dry and crumbly
and tasteless in their leaven
like butter sweet and saltytumblr_nqkwd8yiUl1rb2p37o1_1280i wanna be like Mama
so generous of spirit
so purposeful of heart
so resolute of vision
so loving in the tumult

let me light the longing twig
let me quench the burning branch
flame to tinder tender
and rain to thirsty flames
and known by Mama’s Nametumblr_nuj67qgboo1ufutspo1_540

A Treasure Made Trinket

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i clothe myself in wonder
for you, wrap myself in night
i am your pirate plunder
you can have without a fight

the milky way my shining sash
the moon my pendant true
and cricket song my lingerie
i give myself to you

you there, so strong, so brilliant
straightforward as blazing suns
your ready laugh, your brewing storms
the way your rivers run

from mountains high, jagged austere
you flow into the sea
for you i wait, indigo here
for you to give you me

we…night and day bonded and true
and joy our wonder-fates
you wrapping me, me inside you
Eternity awaits
tumblr_nkw43yNglr1th6k9do1_1280

It’s In Rivers (My “Work” Response In Godly Play Training”

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Yesterday I did a training for a method of faith formation in children called “Godly Play”.  What happens is that you hear/see a bible story and then you do “work” related to processing the meaning of it.

The story I heard was that of Abram and Sarai…and when asked where I saw myself in the story it was immediately evident that I was with Sarai…in the back…in laughter…before seeing the promise come true.

Obvi I made a poem…but the opportunity to do it the way I did was SOOO freaking gratifying.

I hope you enjoy it

It’s In Rivers

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The Crucible of Grace

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If you seek to extend grace and love to cover over a multitude of sins, the worst thing you can do is undercut that extension by talking about it and pointing it out.  Right?

This weekend has been excruciating, because the long-awaited and much dreaded article outing me to the entire world was published.  And I am letting it stand uncommented on, because the person who wrote it apparently needs this as they deal, process, and move forward in becoming.tumblr_nj9hjr55am1sodq0ro1_1280But it is awful having my voice stolen from me…it is awful being portrayed as a cruel caricature of who I am and who I was…it is tragic to see the consequences of what I chose and lived twisted so tragically as life spins on by and the gravity of the Fall pulls everything to that fierce collision with nothingness…and it is heartbreaking to see the person that I literally would instantly die for, right now this moment, if it would restore them to wholeness, flail around trying to recover their bearings and watch as they grapple with emotions and choices and basically just suffer a sort of death process.

The place this article was published did not contact me (though if they had, I would have said to go ahead…my loved one needs to speak unfettered)…the things that were written, well let’s just say that one person’s account sounds right until another person in a situation gives their lived experience, and then things are usually a lot more complicated and delicate in determining “what happened”.tumblr_n892glA3he1rmz4wdo1_1280Mostly what happened?  The binary.  The binary punished me from the beginning of my life, it trapped my parents into seeing me as someone I wasn’t…it tore my soul in half and left the only option forward for me a dissociation from self and adopting performance as my currency and agency in the world…it left a bloody gaping void within me that never ever could heal, and in which the Love of God was sufficient, but only just…it led to the birth of children who deserved more and got less in spite of me trying to give them everything…

What happened was a flawed imperfect person full of hope and love and wanting only to have kids and love them and raise them up into life did her best in the skin and role of a man…and is now vilified and excoriated for this…what happened is that I was born in a time and place and culture, and practiced the things that I thought were right and true and proper, and those so at odds with what I know now, what I matured into, grew into, and yet how does that undo things that happened 30 years ago?tumblr_nrqhpzN6nu1s5u2cno1_500And what happened was so much pain in my decision to transition that an entire narrative had to shift to account for the horror and the loss of a father…and I read of things, and am painted in ways that just do not match up with what I lived, what I remember, what emails and letters say to me, what other people who knew us and were around us a lot recall…

What happened was my dysphoria and depression and despair did indeed affect my heart and soul, and that affected everyone around me, and likely was the metaphorical equivalent to belts and abuse so does it really even matter if I never did the actual things I am accused of doing?  Actually no…it doesn’t matter that I never did them, because it is clear to me that I was them…poisonous, toxic, radioactive, damned for being absent and cursed for being present and above all accountable for every last ill in those lives so precious to me.

I never really understood before why God’s answer to the horror of the Fall was to come as Jesus to this world, and suffer and die…I do now though.  Because there are no words that I can say that would explain it, justify it, make it right, make it better, disappear it…all I could do would be to simply die in their place…tumblr_nu4nj5Mkg51rdq2opo1_1280…and if I could do that, I would want it to happen hidden, without anyone knowing, and the provision of that death simply being wholeness and happiness for my hearts…

I love you, hearts…I will grieve until the day grief itself is satisfied and all things are made new.  Say on.  Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you must.

I only ask Mama, please hold me close and sustain me in Your Love.

So Shocked

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There is a man I know of…very intelligent.  Studies lots of things, but most particularly studies things that can be used as tools to dismantle the faulty thinking or lack of thinking by people who are professed christians but likely are unable to articulate their faith and what it really means to them.

From the heights to the depths and the breadth of what he can conceive of in his mind, he sits, comfortable and relaxed, a man’splainin’ fool.  He can fight off any attack…he can account for anything encountered…

…inside the sphere he grants and allows.

But there is an outside.  And of this place no mind can conceive, and of the Being that inhabits this place that is no place, well…it is gonna be such a shock when we are given eyes to see, and faces to be seen…

It’s a good thing They are benevolent!

Giggles…

I am mindful of The Last Battle and the dwarves inside that dark shed who do not and cannot know of “an outside”.

Hey…I have glimmers only, but really I have NO IDEA what that outside is because the glimmers I have are by definition intelligible to me and thus derivative of my own interior experience.

But it’s there…and the stick fighting approach to encountering Them on That Day will be comically irrelevant.

So Shocked.tumblr_ns4smo9CMS1qg4kx9o1_1280

Miracles of Modern Medicine

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This used to be me…it isn’t anymore.

HRT works.  My brain is soo much happier.

Constance, it is something so simple, and yet so profound.

I am glad I made it, and I am thankful to those who valued and recognized the essential me regardless of container/package.

And those of you who didn’t…wow.  I don’t know whether I should pity you more, or those in your life who are similarly falsely assessed.  That must really suck.

I am free…and oh God the flying!

 

I Think It’s Memory

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There’s deep green truth
in the spectral grey heart
of this ghastly pale notion
haunting our desperate minds:
our own truest blue heart
is most deeply discovered
in desperate ragged edges,
jagged, sharp, contrasted,
in tight precipice moments
(both high, and oh so low).tumblr_nr3s43ffiK1rn12zko1_500It’s on those thresholds,
in those moments
of “life”, of dismal death,
weighted and full moments
where indecision and decision
wrestle for supremacy,
where comfort lulls,
boredom deceives,
and indifference dulls…tumblr_nqy1drd2ru1qc6wuio8_r1_1280Tell me, what’s the essence of a heart
delivered from this life lived badly
to a certain death well-died?
And there and back again
into life lived and risen
from the bony spectral grip
of that small death called
cowardice?

Iris Fox ©2013 Gretchen Powers all rights reserved

Iris Fox ©2013 Gretchen Powers all rights reserved

I think it’s memory,

(and of course courage
to forget what is dead
and press on in pursuit
of those matters that matter)

to bravely (courage)
recall (re-member)
those things long ago
when first love was
fresh, free, fragrant…
that gives us perspective
to risk a decent death
and choose to lay down all
in hopes that we will rise
before the Great Rising.tumblr_np4plshztV1tv3g49o1_1280It’s when we remember
in poised precipice moments
that we can see most clearly
how our affections flow
and what and who we are…

But:

what we remember deeply,
all that we have ingrained
into identity assumed
(like costumes for the play)
it’s far more likely we’ll recall
when crisis, pain or comfort make it
hard to remember anything,
the deep memory will hold against
temptation of forgetfulness in
“the Forgetful Green.”tumblr_nq9w38M1RM1qat5pio1_500If we refuse to actively remember
the story in which we participate,

(moments where God
has acted mightily,
the times humanity
has learned in tears
of reality and immortality,
of the autonomy of God
even in this)

then in sickness and in health
undoubtedly we will forget
that memory even is a thing
in this world that’s forgotten
and bids us forget as well.tumblr_nmlz7sSJYH1u3o58go1_540Lay aside the panaceas, cure alls,
life supports, and take up courage
to embrace a good death given
Die a Decent Death, in faith
that such thing does exist!

What is a good death?
The question’s asked and answered
by people who mourn and lament,
who weep at gravesides lingering,
who live and die and live as those
who follow That One gone before
in boldness and then risen high
above the false finale of
the gasping gaping grave!

A decent death, a certain hope…

I think it’s memory…
I think it’s memory.tumblr_mnjid9PJp21ry9w1bo1_500

 

40 questions for Christians who oppose marriage equality (GUEST COMMENTARY) – Corner of Church and State

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40 questions for Christians who oppose marriage equality (GUEST COMMENTARY) – Corner of Church and State.

A VERY interesting and thought provoking article and series of questions…Reader, this is posted more for you than anyone else.  See if you can hold your need to “binary-ize” things into your “either-or” world view…just for a second or two.

I am less interested in answering the question of right and wrong at this point, and more interested in asking what kind of heart are you showing, advocating, and modeling by your current approaches to relationship with LGTBQ people?

I mean…33 plus years of relationship was over in the flick of a heartswitch and the drop of an envelope in a mail-slot…

Boom.

My life has gone on.  No…more accurately, my life has finally begun and I have been blooming and growing spiritually and emotionally and growing more healthy physically.  The loss of relationship has in my case been a very healthy pruning in that so many new people have come into my life bringing messages to me like I have rarely experienced in my past years done in the dungeons of christendom.

But I do think about you, Reader…and the life you live of inspection and constant lifting of yourself and others into scales that are not even accurate…

…and I encourage you to read these questions and ponder them…

because to answer them and be challenged by them will require you to change your lifestyle, spend your time differently, and draw your boundaries very different!

You never know…you just may find that the river you say I have crossed that you won’t be crossing is the River of Life and that what matters is the water, and not the bank you stand on…as if that matters…as if you could really make that claim, that your bank is “the bank”…as if that pleases God who left heaven and took on the form of a bondslave…

…and as if that River of Life doesn’t have twists and turns to the human eye that could end up with us actually still “on the same side” (cus that’s a thing in this divisive binary world, being on the same side is far more important than belonging to Jesus *SARCASM*) and you not even realize it.

Just let go.

The list is getting sooo long, and the burden is getting sooo ponderous, all the things you must inspect and check and ascertain…how bout just letting all that go, and simply doing this:  Loving the Lord your God with all your heart, and loving your neighbor as yourself with something more than a letter that slashed and burned and then preened like Little Jack Horner…
Victo-Ngai-19

I Fly Steady On

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Past Lady Liberty, looming silent still
thru slant snow, icy, cold,
frozen feet firmly planted
atop the broken chains
of captives loosed, unbound.

Past her seeming sightless eyes
fixed on an end unseen (as yet)
by mortal eye, and unfelt by
frozen human hearts transfixed,
addicted to poisonous demon draughts,
dolorous naughts of racism,
oppression,
of hate.

I fly steady on…I fly.
My breath a billows sucking air
frozen cold in sips so sharp
in hurty breaths  constricted, choked,
and exhalations honk their way
from my leaping, working chest
tugging me on towards Her Light,
into Liberty’s coming sun.

Follow…follow past frozen
Liberty so stark and solitary
standing witness silent
but never mute!

Follow me bravely
and let your frozen breath
be transformed into
HONKS of freedom
to the ones enslaved
still by fear and hatred.

I fly on, true.
I fly on.
NatureEarthflight_NYC_geese_tx800

Catacombs and Caverns

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I heard caverns deep behind your words of wonder.
I heard water dripping softly from wet ceilings
in those hollow places that you talked
so gingerly around…I heard your words resound,
your words of wonder…

in catacombs within so dark with dying
and dismal longing smothering and sighing,
the death to self and terrible becoming
in places of deep grief and self-discovery
those spaces once full, quick became so hollow…

I hear your hollow places faintly filling
with sorrow bleeding, and thus filled becoming
drained, emptied in the lonely tearful crying
that hallows fearful places looming darkly,
places of slow death so severely emptied,tumblr_nqq99nTys31qccgmso1_1280

bereavement fresh yet ancient,
everlasting and then grief become
dark resurrection hinted at
in every birth brand new,
in every dying….

I found your trails familiar, well worn, hidden
so deep within the kidneys of your words
and yet those trails well known in rising darkness,
(a left at that root ragged there, then quickly
around that rugged rock jutting sharp right here).

I have been walking word roads too, becoming
and finding that my caverns dark and thrumming
catacombs full, then empty, full then empty
more times than I can count or e’en remember
and I wonder in such a holy horror

when my wonder became wander…wander…wander!
Yet I am here!  Alive and breathing! Singing!
I’m here to tell you, it gets better, Darling
But only on this singular condition:
the losing of your everything in dyingtumblr_nqg1jqI8y51tw3geao1_400

and thus it is
you can be born
again and live
so lively new,
again.

Today, as I sit, listening to your heart, Dear
I look back at what I have lost…oh my God!
The stuff of Titans, losses heaped and horded,
my trinkets, treasures tossed, honors awarded
all tumbled in the twilight, gleaming dully

in the hot noon listless sun, laying there lifeless
and in the evening gloaming calling mutely
midst catacomb become my living darkness,
that cavern now my womb filling with wonder
all finally lost…and now?  And now…The finding…tumblr_n1joa8cesG1qm86t3o1_500

truly nothing
can compare
to the all surpassing
wonder of a world
made brand new

and my
Catacombs and Caverns
filled forever,
never failing, filled
and brand new

every morning,
every mourning
every warning
made brand new
and full of wonder
full of wander
full of You.
tumblr_nq5t0x2gLp1u1sz1oo1_1280

To The One Who Seeks My Faith’s Tender Throat With Teeth

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I will never turn back.

I will never not Love God…why do you keep making that a condition?

When God has chosen (for what reason I know not, certainly not based on any merit I have, being the worst example of a human being that has walked the planet) to reveal Themselves, Their Beauty, well…

…the one to whom the revelation is given is slain forever…wounded forever and will forever bleed

love

and love

and love and love and love.

This is not about me, or about righteousness…it is about adoration.

I shall always always love Them, for They are Good and Kind, Clean and Pure, and have no shadow or smell of evil in Them.

If me renouncing Them is a condition for you, then you might as well go rave at Kilauea, go worship Krakatoa (if you can find him, blown apart in his own powerous pouty poofery)!  Go lay hands on gouts of liquid rock, let them run through your fingers and clench down their flow and see what happens…

your flesh will not burn nor melt neath their heat…for you are ice and icy, austere in your inviolate Olympus of self, and I find myself cast out of your heaven and consigned to your outer darkness midst the sound of your gnashing teeth…tumblr_noypg7Py1z1s5u2cno1_500But you have thrust me deeper into that side pierced and bleeding…you have pushed my face into His Heart Bloody with Boundless Love…you have cast me on my Mama’s Breast (the one for me, contained in Her deeps, She:  El Shaddai, the Many Breasted One with place for whosoever will…even you, dearest, even you…no…especially you).

I am my Beloveds’ and They are mine…it is by Their Hand and Word and what can I do?

To even renounce is to affirm for I use the Voice They gift to utter forth a word and thus it turns and leads me home again…

I will never

EVER

turn from Them, for with Them have I trusted my soul and I shall seek Them all the days of my life.

And the rest of you…who think that I have fallen into “sin”, into “sexual perversion”, into (you don’t even know, you just “know” it’s bad and tragic)…to the rest of you?

I cannot convey to you how truly irrelevant to life and love your gossip and gibbering is.  It is as consequential to me and my fate in the Hands of the Lord God Almighty as a flea is to the ocean.

I love Jesus and follow Him, for He has accepted me and declared me His own and worthy.
I love Holy Spirit, blessed Holy Spirit, my Mama who calls me Her own and instructs me in Her way.
I love Father…who is good and kind and generous and forgiving and always always smiling on me in the darkness.

I care not if you read this and judge me…don’t you get it yet?  My faith is not about you, and it never will be.  It just isn’t.  I no longer live to try and impress you, or please you, or deserve you.

I do not require you to say or do or believe or be like me in order to connect and laugh and love and live…why do you lay such requirement on me?  Because you will never get it.

I will never leave Them.  Never.

Found, at last, and in Them I shall dwell forever.

*All others, forgive this lil soliloquy…it is not for you unless you know it is…nothing to see here, move along quick*
tumblr_nqhszkTp2l1s43ozwo1_500

Silences and Storms

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…and as these moments roll along
across the mountains, over hills
and I listen to soft windsong
because your voice has grown so still

and time passes, by waterfalls
while clouds grow black and threatening
and sulfurous gouts of thunder roll
and lightning graphs your fearsome name

it’s silences and storms these days
my heart is torn in these two ways
the words I need, you fail to speak
the words that kill…they slice my cheek

and also cheek I turn to you
and that one, that one, then…adieu
i find myself alone, just me
winds, waterfalls have set me free

to see you in your silent tower
and you in thorny violent bower
and you who will not talk at all…
it’s you who’s deaf to Love’s pure call

I’ll sit me here in peace, just so
and breathe the earth’s exhales, and know
I’m fine in Jesus’ nail scarred hand
And marked forever with Grace’s Brand