Constance…most of you who are public followers of Grace Notes are cis-gender humans. Some of you are trans (thanks for the support, family!! 🙂 ), and as transgender humans you are intimately acquainted with the entity that dysphoria is, and you know that thoughts of suicide or talk of it is often our most noble and courageous act of the day, because we are speaking about it rather than…
But I want to talk to you Constance (and you lurkers, too…yes, you are there), you cis-gender humans, so blessed to be non-itchy in your skin and of limber-lung to draw in draughts of refreshing air…you live in a homogenous world…a world that sniks together and is of a piece. And where it doesn’t, it doesn’t in the same places as other humans and so you find an identity and community in that.
You don’t understand how alienation from yourself puts you at a distance from everyone else and everything else…always.
Because dysphoria is like missing pieces in a mosaic of being.
You say to yourself that you are shattered too, and you are…but your pieces are present, and as you glue them back together they form a sort of whole once again…whereas the dysphoric person diligently and urgently works daily to reassemble the shattered image into a whole, only to discover that the crucial core is absent…and the middle is void.
We are separated from you always…as if you are on the shore of the sea and we across on the opposite shore and lacking the voices of whales to sing to you across the leagues and the deep.
So there is that.
This morning I am mindful of dysphoria and the gulf that it is around me, alas, and the challenge that it presents me in my quest to be a yielded vessel yielding blessing…I am mindful that there is also, somewhere packed in all of this, an opportunity to know and understand Their perspective and methods as Gulf-Breechers and Core-Restorers…perhaps this is my destiny, to be a restorer of the breach and a crosser of the gulf.
But in this mindful place, I have been remembering the words that a man spoke to me last summer, upon being let into my secret world of confusion and horror, that world of the transgender person caught between body and brain. He is a man who has in the past been very open in expressing admiration for me, as a child of God, as a communicator of Grace, and as a caretaker of my children. He has said toweringly complimentary things to me, things that I felt were far too idealized and simply did not adequately assess how flawed I am, what a failure I am…
…but he had said them, spoken of my impact on himself and those around me.
On that soft and lazy August Saturday, by the waters of a small man-made lake (which seems appropriate), we spoke, and I shared with him the struggle of dysphoria and how suicide is as constant companion as the sensation of choking is to the asthmatic.
He burst out in a fit of passion “Don’t you dare off yourself! It would falsify everything you taught me, and all you stand for!” And he went on to talk about how negatively it would affect him, and how he would lose heart and likely not have belief anymore that what I taught meant anything worth trusting.
That is what I am thinking about this morning…how easily and how often my situation is somehow twisted around and becomes all about the other person. It was like another situation where I had been accosted by a long standing acquaintance (whom I would have called a friend, but now realize that was me putting my view of what a friend is on someone who sees it vastly different) who demanded an explanation for “why you have been seen around town dressed as a woman!!” (quelle horreur!!)…and since he had that place in my heart of “friend”, I gave the full account, but only half-way. He cut me off because “he was overwhelmed and couldn’t take anymore of this”. And then he looked at me in sheer misery and said “What am I going to tell my children??!!”
See? All about him. His place, and his burden…as if that question needed any other answer than tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and begin to study these things together to help out a people in chains.
Well…that is a very similar response this other man by the lake had, regarding discovering my daily battle with dark thoughts. His burden placed on me was that if I were to ever choose to not be here any longer then I would be the cause of his faith being weakened and diminished and his life harmed.
Since that time, I have spoken to this man two times, once a day or two after a big crisis that was brewing, and then again at the end of October 2014.
Twice.
And since then, nothing…and I get that there are complicating reasons for that, not the least of which is my transition and he is a man. Very few men have been “man enough” to handle my transition with anything other than rejection at best, and murderous, venomous looks at worst (and those looks threaten far worse is coming).
Constance…is this not something close to suicide? Friendshipicide? Is not this towering silence some sort of death? Does it not underline and highlight the gulf between us, because really all that changed was his understanding that he was interacting with a woman?
And those words ring in my heart, part of the voices that circle me like wolves and nip and slash and bleed me out…
“…it would falsify everything you taught me…”
Well, I don’t know if it would or wouldn’t. Things are true and worthy of living regardless of the source one receives them from. But I know that this staggering abandonment does indeed make me mindful of how those words are true from my perspective. Apparently, I am no longer those “three C’s” to him…Child, Communicator, Caretaker. Now, I am simply “It which must be avoided, lest whatever ails it somehow infect me”.
As to the other man…that was the last time we spoke, in September, with a terse letter being the final salvo and manifesto of that declaration of war religion has filed on me…and sadly, I have reason to know the sense of duty fulfilled and integrity maintained, and sweet sadness at doing the “hard but right thing” which follows the writing and delivering of such a letter…
…it is such an awful feedback loop of legalism and lies and lack of life (death).
It is difficult being the friend or relative of a transgender person. You get caught up in the punishments they are meted for their gender-crimes. You get branded with the Scarlet TL to match their Scarlet T (“tranny-lover” and “tranny”)…
…and you get confronted again and again and again with that gulf uncrossable, that breech unbridgeable, and the dysphoric human’s many-sided and alienated existence when you yourself live in a world where such concepts as sides and incongruency are understood in the brain alone and denied in the bones, those non-dysphoric congruent bones.
I am watching “Romeo and Juliet” right now, the 1954 version directed by Renato Castellani (huge giggles here, ddh)…this play has long been my very favorite Shakespearean play (followed closely by Henry the 5th). It is tragically striking, how I am in one being a Montague and Capulet, and both Romeo and Juliet…it is in a sense a tableau of dysphoria and the solution is inferred in the tragic ending…only loving acceptance and dogged commitment can validate a life and overcome abandonment.
And there is a timeless line (distinct from the rest of that genius’s timeless lines):
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
I am still whatever Rose I was…and still stink of whatever stench emanated from me under the old costume I sported. I still live in the dysphoric House of Mirrors, and sides all around me with everyone else there and me here…I am still “Fortune’s Fool”.
…and as to men? “Friends”…well, there is this, from the mouth of Juliet’s Nurse:
There’s no trust,
No faith, no honesty in men. All perjured,
All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.
Ah, where’s my man?—Give me some aqua vitae.—
These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old.
But we shouldn’t be pressuring people to come out. Instead, we should be challenging the expectation that others are entitled to our identities.
No one should be demanding that people take on the risks of coming out. No one except you can make that decision. Your identity is yours, and no one else owns it.
You don’t owe anyone anything – especially not people who are ignoring your personal autonomy and safety by demanding that you come out.
Constance…I face a lot of challenges in life that are in addition to the ones faced by all people simply as a condition of being in this world. If you have read here for awhile, you are acquainted with the gamut of these, and if you are new, well have a gander at the other posts ;-)…giggle.
My point is that it is the additional ones that kill. They are like the difference between running a marathon, and running one chased by dogs, and running one when you aren’t fast enough to keep from getting nipped numerous times on the run. And it is the nips that bleed, get infected, and drain…of vitality, of energy, and eventually of hope.
Right now the hardest of these challenges for me is that of making myself known to other people that are of utmost importance to me. They are mourning what they perceive as the loss of the person they knew, rather than perceiving it as the loss of the explanatory narrative that stitched together our common history.
For a whole host of reasons, some of them spiritual, some of them developmental, and most of them cultural/paradigm related, the onus and burden falls squarely on me in this process…to be the bigger person…to walk the second mile, or the third or the fourth, or however many miles must be walked…to turn the other cheek again and again and again…
My own identity is in need of justification, of proving, of validating, and the ways I respond either contribute to or detract from my right to be.
Judgement is passed on the narrative that I have, as it compares to the narrative that was.
Again…I get it. Fairness is not the operative determinant. But I want it to be understood: this is a costly gift, and gift I do think it is. It is not something that I owe…to anyone except myself whom I owe the debt of authenticity inner and outward. I think that my perspective on things is equally valid, is equally valuable and to be treasured. The “things I have lost” or the sense that “what I thought I had never existed” is just as real, as vibrant and legitimate for me as it is for anyone else who feels like they are being robbed.
Let me state it baldly: anything they are “robbed of” wasn’t real in the first place.
How about this: instead of the point of view that “a father I thought I had is now dead and replaced by you”, how about this: “I have a father who just happens to be a woman, and the idea I held that my father was also a male was an incorrect one. I am fortunate to be able to have this inaccurate understanding corrected while there is still time and life remaining to know this person that I valued and treasured as a father!”
Because this is my story…my history. I fathered four people…as a woman who inhabits a body that is biologically male. And as far as I am aware, my children always felt that I was a good dad to them, valuable in the love, acceptance and counsel that I offered them. And I am still here! The same person with the same ideas and same truths (and some newly understood ones too).
Perhaps instead of me saying over and over again I am sorry I am sorry…I am sorry for being…I am sorry for wanting to be, needing to be…maybe it could be thought about that a different sorry could be said…I am sorry that I held onto my own belief and insistence that a father has to be spiritually and biologically male and only that…I am sorry that I invalidated the lives and efforts of the millions of women who “fathered” young boys into men because there was no one else there.
I am posting this link, because it gets to a lot of the reasons why there is so much gravity behind the other narrative, the one that requires me to justify my right to exist, my right to pursue congruency, my right to be free from suicidal ideation, my right to feel okay about the truth that I did the best I could and while not a perfect parent did a pretty adequate job even compared to a cis-male…and as a transgender woman serving in the role of father and not knowing, well maybe I did an admirable job.
and maybe I suck. but I suck based on what I did and didn’t do, not based on whether I identfy as male or female…others who are insisting with actions that the actual measure of my being is in that identification are the ones who must grapple with the suckitude they frolic in!
Read the article…acquaint yourself with the myths…and then divest yourself of them for some clearer, more objective standards that we will all, together, be held accountable to…how we love one another, how we forgive one another, whether we divorce and separate ourselves or remain connected…those are things that will endure long after gender identification falls away as not needed.
We start this life with such bright expectation,
each sunrise morn of discovery and
each eventide of hope, our lifetime passes
and time flows like tides constantly in waves
that wash in over us, the same and ceaseless
yet we, in ever-new anticipation
that this new day is diff’rent, something yet
to be discovered in the shell-pink dawn,
we lift our hearts up cheery with bright song.But there are ashes from the desperate fires that we assemble in the long sloe nights so cold upon those yawning yearning shores, when stars hide behind black clouds of unknowing and oceans hide in mists of dank despair,
and we are forced to burn all our Hosannas, those palms fronds of our hopes so optimistic waved innocent and arrogant and prideful because we hadn’t seen the moon’s dark side.We built frail fires from those brittle branches and clutched at weak warmth, bathed in dim wan light and marked ourselves with those imposéd ashes and mourned those days we sang triumphantly unknowing of the coming loss of all our innocence in suffering…
and sorrowing…
and death and…
Ashes…ashes…
we all fall down…
and we are mindful of our common crown,
our destiny of dust wreathed round our foreheads,
that destiny of dust around our hearts,
that destiny of dust from which we came
and thus departed
that destiny of dust and our return…
to dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
dust returned…And it is only at this place, in ashes after our hopes and dreams have burned to ash and we have lost our hope and optimism that we can finally see that stony path
and squinting, see the bloody foot-print outlines left by the One who goes before our hearts, the One who walks the Via Dolorosa the One who, living, there lays down His Life,
the One who shows the way of self-denial the way of sacrifice, relinquishment entirely unnatural, the opposite of every longing of our liquid hearts that wants to feast upon self-preservation and turn from bitter cups of self-denial…And we must choose the place that we will walk: the ceaseless shores of our naked ambition and never finding ending place, or home? Or…walk the path of ashes with this Shepherd and lose our lives completely to His care and thus spring from the ashes like a phoenix leaps from the golden flames to live anew!
See, ashes are the opposite of owning
the mirror image of self-preservation,
the sign-post of the way of life He offers,
the insignia of the lifestyle that He models,
the mark He makes forever on His own
writ large in His own blood mixed with the ashes
of hopes consumed and dreams become dry dust!
This is the downward journey to the highest place victorious,
the deeps of Sabbath Rest and Victory Won.Regardless of the gods you say you follow, we all share in a common destiny: “From dust you’ve come, to dust you shall return”.
Like Him, we too shall die, Life’s pressing question becomes…how shall we live? How shall our lives this day respond to death’s reality,
and answer to Life’s strident invitation
to leave all of our privilege and status,
and turn from lives marked for success and promise,
and turn from some potential undefined,
and turn from false things that we think are true,
and let go of wealth, power and consumption,
and deny that false god: accomplishment
and dare to love our enemies with candor
and dare embrace the heady risk of peace without one stray thought of self-preservation, take courage to live for the sake of others
and for the sake of Him who shows this way,
the way thru death, the way of blood and ashes,
will we walk in valiant hope in dust and ashes?
We can sing our songs
of life in dust and ashes
and thus return to God
our dust redeemed.
This woman is never going to be seen by the eyes of this paradigm. It ain’t gonna happen. Too many layers of judgment, too much weight of assumption, and not enough understanding of the nature of gender orientation and where it resides in a human being.I am never going to be “pretty” in the sense of how human eyes grown in the world in which I live perceive beauty. My only possibilities for beauty lie within my soul…in my heart…in my spirit…in that inner life that my spirituality and theology teach me is the truest reality anyway and the only one that extends eternally.
Mama, please give me a hunger for true things that outweighs the longings that plague me, that cry out from each and every chromosome that finds itself at odds with the spiritual DNA that flows from (what, my brain? My soul? My heart?) me…
I close with this quote I ran across, and make it my goal…kindness, good humored, smart, and strong of heart.
“We get so worried about being pretty. Let’s be pretty kind. Pretty funny. Pretty smart. Pretty strong.”
Constance, I think I have posted about this previously, but I think this layout here is succinct, accessible, and easy to digest. Ya know, I have been thinking about the backflips that some people do, the contortions they knot themselves in so that they can preserve a way of thinking about a topic and not have to deal with changing a point of view…
…sadly, they place that point of view over a person far too often, and end up contributing to a tragedy.
It really is the ultimate in idolatry…a human life slain on the altar of the idol of their point of view.
Thank God there are parents like these, who understand the appropriate reaction to the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance.
Ryland’s story is real for people all over the globe. Please listen to your children. Be understanding and accepting. If only Leelah Alcorn could have known such understanding parents. Stop trans discrimination.
Messy houses filled with secret staircases
leading neither up nor down and built of starved excuses
stellar and extending to the past and to the future
as a hedge to make secure our souls against their cold inflation.Idols stand resplendent in their regal good deed rags atop secure safe mantels stolid, still in false security within these homes of disarray and all the forlorn deeds of our own self-besotted hands.
No corner is untouched or deemed untouchable,
no conclusion inescapable, for we did soon discover, no–we were shown–these messes low and broken,
jangly jagged in the pieces of our ruined hostile hovels.This is that tableau displayed of our lost searéd conscience, disembodied, floating room to room and deeply mourning what’s been lost, and worse, abandoned in the losing of idealism’s living throbbing shine.
And our hearts, once lifted up and strong
are finally unadorned and brought down low,
so broken, so contrite and finally open to this Living Invitation
to be drawn at last into a bigger Story…to be remade and molded, gripped and filled, to be enfolded in the new creation by a Mercy Stark and so unyielding, by a Love Severe and so unwieldy in our messy rooms and serial sin-stained walls and monstrous ways of utter horror.
It takes a broken body and it takes a different stain,
one indelible and permanent, scarlet red and bloody glowing
in the darkness of our tragedy’s pretentious phony triumph…
see the Hand that rips our masks away to make us whole again!Eat and drink, remember! Then forget the past and rest within those ruins at last cleansed and emptied of their wreck, delivered of the dreck and durm und strang of fallen souls, set free of weights unbearable, interminable, mighty, proud and fell and flawed and haughty.
And then, look…out there, thru yon window broken, there!
Behind that dingy jagged pane of brittle separation,
see the Cross so Stark, transcendent, final ever resting place
of all our sin and wrong, and also Final ever new beginning
of this race, we human butterflies set free from chrysalises left behind,
discarded casually forever…yet never left for death to feed upon or to devour,
for they will someday be raised again to catch up with us and to be made one again…to be made whole… again…at last…again… amen, again… amen.
Faith: the substance of things hoped for
(not wished for, God Forbid!)
the evidence of things not seen.
Those were words that controlled us,
an electric fence to wandering minds
and to our quaking bodies.
The pastor oft repeated them
because he was afraid of loss
and overthrow of his control.But we were young and sang “We will not fathom a defeat; we will not even think about a death of any kind.”
a theology that’s bold enough
to voice a serious objection
to the status quo of fear
and to the slavery it breeds.
We took our crowbars optimistic
to that verse, we treated it
as if it pertained just to us,
jarred loose so juicy from its story
and community in history.Once loose, we used it as a tool to pry history from its flesh, from its life pained, pulsing in time.
We used that verse
like a two dollar whore,
distorted it, individualized it
into half truth to keep ourselves
from considering anything less,
or contemplating anything more.
Our God,
more slot machine than Sovereign,
each prayer a greedy pull
upon Their Heart but for our lust
and we there, fake, beatific as if
answers were dependent on our shining phony faces
smiling dutifully in Canaan but saddened by the selfishness
that haunted in our hollows.
we needed a miracle
that would erase life
as it had become,
misshapen and ungainly
grovelling neath
our gaudy costume faces
we needed a death
that would restore us
a healing to deliver us
and language that was steady
not the dodgy bob and weaving
of a fickle weak theology
of self and self fulfilmentit was the language of lament that cut us open swift and true, gave us honest prayers and angry prayers
grief stricken, low and lowly and we, finally laid low by loss at last found the road Beautiful, the road bloody and difficult, the way of just the Cross.
Our confidently spoken truths
were just too good by half
and thus just mere half truths
that couldn’t go one pace beyond
into the place of fiery testing.
Thank God we got delivered
by gradual and sudden
loss that transforms everything
and quickly sobers up the dreamers
drunk upon communion wine.
We got our invitation and
we broke past that temptation
just to tarry in the safe and feast
on fat and easy answers…
we pressed straight thru to honesty
and wrestling with the mystery
of our Christ Crucified and big enough for everyone,
finally became big enough to die to self and small enough to live here now
in stark repudiation
of our youthful indiscretions
so full and yet so empty.
We dwell now midst the paradox
of Living, Reigning Savior
in this woeful place of dying
we set our dark face like flint to walk
in living faith straight into ever after…
“…the self-awareness, inner resolve, and resilience a successful transition requires, the way in which it both evinces a desire for authenticity and is inseparable from such desire in other aspects of one’s life, is a relatively reliable predictor of an extraordinary person.
Being trans doesn’t make you strong, or gleam, but it is one hell of a crucible to forged in.”
Quote by “SmartAssJen”, a transwoman of extraordinary intelligence and substance
Greys, silvers soft and tinged with gold
and washed out pinks bleed from my heart
as I sit on the dock and look out on the lake
in longing, in lingering longing.
I wash across the sky so blue,
soft blue, robin’s egg unbreakable
and endless in blue, endless in echo
of my longing soul, lingering.
lingering.
yeah, that’s me,
and always has been.
on the edges sitting,
living inside my longing
bleeding, rising, blossoming.I cannot fly like birds
so instead I send me up up
tinging, coloring, rising
grey and silver and pink
against blue, and over blue too.
The edge of sky and land,
the edge of land and water,
the edge of water and sky,
it is at this nexus that I sit…I.
Without wings, without boats.
But I have my inner cello, strings taut and tuned just so, I have my song of greys and pinks sprung from my silver bow.
So I will sit, here in this meeting
of sky and lake, land and song,
and play my tune across bright waters
that glow and glisten under skies
of blue tinged silver, shot with grey
and gleaming pink into the glowing night.
… I am alive, and fiercely, joyously and gratefully so.
I remember 31 years ago, at 800 PM, and though others mourn and lament my failures, I rejoice and am glad in this day, every year before and every year since.
Cus I am not dead.
I am just no longer a caterpillar.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly. Love, Charissa
Constance, we are slowly discovering the biology that underlays gender orientation. This is a process inevitable, and limited only by the edge of technological advancement.
Most importantly, it is the same curve of advancement that has existed for other things that were once considered evil, the results of demons, etc. and are now seen as the reality they have always been.
In a generation or two, we will look back on those who thing that gender variance is a moral evil, failure or choice as the beknighted ignoramuses that they in fact truly are. They will be in the same drawer of history that contains those who opposed the civil rights movement, those who owned slaves and used the Bible to justify it, those who thought that epileptics were possessed by demons rather than simply the denizens inside a chemically unbalanced brain.
I have tried and tried and tried, over and over, to show you in everyway possible and all the ways you judge yourself and your own righteousness that my gender orientation does not impute to me any greater or lesser moral evil! Because it is not a matter of inherent morality! Anymore than your own gender adds any sort of moral texture to your own spirituality!
Isaiah 58 comes to mind as a pretty good list of things that would actually be far more pleasing to God than writing letters to people that boast about rivers that you will not cross or that conflate your own sexual proclivities and addictions with my gender orientation!
Directly speaking, I strongly exhort you to have the faith of your convictions and humble yourself and simply love. Cross rivers. Swim oceans.
But have a care not to make your converts twice as fit for hell as you are yourself.
Constance, I hope this morning finds you well. I also hope you will read Susan’s article in response to a letter she received on her blog.
I am posting it here because of the relevance of the attitudes of the correctors…not necessarily as a comment on the issue itself.
You see, I too have been victimized by people who say things like those referred to in this article: I have had it hurled into my face by those who tell me with a straight face that it is their obligation to out me to others and comment on my transition to them (before I even have the chance myself to say a word to people who are unaware of my choice and the journey to that choice)…and then comes the coup de gras: “If I don’t take this stand then your blood is on my head!”
Did you catch that? I am deprived of my own chance to speak for myself in the name of being “loved”, and then told that the one “loving” me with such betrayal is doing so to avoid having my “guilt” attributed to them!!
So love is involved…but it is not love of me…it is also not love of the person they are gossipping about me to (yes, it is gossip)…the “love” that is in operation here is the love of self, which is idolatry.
Christians who violate other people in the name of love are simply practicing the sin of idolatry.
Susan comments very well on this subject…take a look.
And then consider a novel thought: allowing God to be God and the One and Only True Knower of the Hearts of Human kind, and taking your place on level ground the moral equal of ones that you have judged and judge wrongly.
Due to harsh circumstances both in my own life and in the life of my truest friend, I have been thinking a lot about death…
…what is death?
Is death the loss of animation, the exit of that ineffable spark undefinable? Is it the fleeing of warmth and movement?
Or is it something more, something deeper and more final, more tragic and fatal?
Back up, waaaay back to when I was around 25 years old and torn asunder from myself and tromping all over me with the jackboots of performance and despair…at that time I considered that the days I had on this earth were a prison sentence that I had to serve before I was finally released through death and reunited with God.
I was living to die.
And in a very real and primal sense, I was already dead and just didn’t have the good grace to realize it and lay down somewhere.
But now? Oh Constance, these days I endure “death” in so many ways…but it is in my deepest desire to live at last, so I am dying to live. I have “died” in the workplace. I have died to ever being able to go back and get a do-over.
And I have “died” to people…this is what grieves me most deeply as it is now that I am finally and fully alive and awake!
So I ask you: does the declaration of others make me dead? People who have not talked to me in forever? People who resent me because in their hearts, I Charissa have killed their friend, their relative…
And yet they refuse to really know me, to taste my life and see that the Lord is good, good to me and thru me…
When someone doesn’t care deeply enough to experience my life, why are they so driven to declare me dead?
Honestly, it feels to me like they are the ones who are dead…they are dead to their responsibilities to the living. They are dead in their hearts which should be tender and lively and rejoicing in good…at least it feels like that.
My very best dearest friend is facing death right now, stark and real. Not some romanticised falsely tragic vision of death placed in service of a world view that is dedicated to self, but real, ugly, stinky, terrifying death carrying with it all of the ultimate and final separation that is the true horror called death.
I am sure she would get my heart cry: dying to live rather than living to die.
I am thinking of her, as I was struggling with these ideas, and sending her all my love, and every single molecule of life I can channel from the Life Giver Themself!
Bad news swirls stark,
cold leaves on carny winds
and in this rising tide
I fear the ship is sinking.
I am choking on those
gall-soaked fingers of despair
jammed down my raw wracked throat
while I wretch and wrench
and heave to summon optimism,
that phantom failed-familiar. I do all I can to bail the rising water,
even as I wrestle against fear and anxiety.
It’s in these times that sadness overwhelms me
in a blurry growing storm of weary longing,
a tragic tide of lonely isolation
sweeping deep over me, drowning me!
I have befriended long lament
and I take comfort in loud cries
and blasting mourning echoes throughout time
and history in crying, captured true in poems, songs
and statements of lament, a dolor
that submerges hope and quenches dreams.
I groan in deepest cries of agony, of anger and confusion,
of disorientation, of sorrow, grief, and protest
that linger as mere echoes of a long ago lamenter of every human loss:
“Harvest is past, summer is ended, and we are not saved.
For the brokenness of the daughter of my people
I am broken; I mourn, dismay has taken hold of me.
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored?” But now I face realities that feel completely overwhelming:
illness, death and loss and being ever on the losing end of things
and that through no fault of my own but always in last place or left behind.
My cry of pain is this:
my deepest acknowledgment I am still not home,
here divided from my body and my own deepest desires
found in my dearest relationships.
I am separated and long for utter restoration
in this overwhelming sorrow…
I find myself within this crucible of transformation
and discover that the waters of despair that seek to drown
and overwhelm can become waters of
glad cleansing and repair.
lament may yet have
its own way of transformation.
“For if the Lord causes grief, then They will have compassion according to Their abundant lovingkindness.”
Landscape of Disruption and thick Decadence
washing ever over me in those thin emerald waves
teal and deep blue, muddy yellow and tan.
Your streets of light and music,
aimless, drifting bacchanalia bright and colorful
snaking through the throngs teaming
and strong smell of no limits but your streets
of cluttered trash and timorous times and eyes looking
pleading pits of hopeless wincing and no pity present,
just despair metastasizing monstrous and insidious
You never knew me. You looked at my surface
you thought me shallow and giddy.
You missed that shredding heart tested. Yes! I said it! Tested in your dismissive glance.Well, my glance is not shallow or naive, my heart is shrewd and assessing and my eyes are clear and courageous in the maelstrom of fear and fascination as I walk your streets… and they walk me as well
streets of flowers and perfume, streets of plenty piled perfect,
exquisite in their rich opulent promises
and other streets too, decorated
with tarp-roofed hovels masquerading as houses
and sex-crazed humans masquerading as homes
and lost souls writhing in streets with no roof at all.And you distrusted me! You called me threatening and treacherous, and your gimlet eye wide and white glinting with ignorance and fear but really just too damn lazy to make the effort to climb inside this sleek white skin God borned me in, this suburban Illinois pelt from streets with singular but uniformly similar looking roofed houses, with more than enough food, clothing, and resources to meet needs and wants… no. You never looked deeper. You never gave me a second glance. Oh Brazil, I never had a freaking chance!
You are too comfortable in your schizophrenic status quo to see me, different on the inside than I am on the outside, too confident you are one and known… to yourself and others… keep telling yourself that comforting untruth.
but you are just like me
and you don’t even know it!
You never knew it.
Will you ever?
Know it?You with your rivers merry and feeding your heartland and used for all things at once? bathing…defecating…washing…drinking… (and I am the polluted one?)
You with your monkeys quick and mischievous
and your giant wads of sloth hung lazy in the lush trees
verdant and slow…unaware, unaffected, unbothered…
You…pet monkeys and parrots in the midst of poverty and pleasures
and the never ending search for food or other treasure
in dirt and filth, in gold and glitter.Oh Brazil! You never knew me! You never tasted the blood I gave you in laughter and singing and abounding smiles, in unspeakable desolation and despair, shriven of hope for a moment and too close to the cold… I bled while you merely blinked blankly.
Well, I survived, no thanks to you.
I moved on before you could fall from trees
or sneak in windows or bite my soft arms
with hard beaks and bright feathers.
Oh, you left your forever marks
but I am still myself within my pulsing heart,
I am still and always will be red…
red red RED against the backdrop of your
splashy showy palette…and you so puzzled in my singularity.
Well I like it, red…I like me! And I walk on
my head held high and face into the wind
and I am unencumbered by your war and free
but alas for you, Brazil, alas!
Though I know you, you never knew me.
Constance…let these words sink deeply into your heart…an imagined conversation between a pastor and Jesus on the day they meet. Powerful, poignant, and painful.
Reader…go to this link. Read. And then I beg you to stop throwing around your theology like a boomerang, one that always returns to you with blood on it. When you catch that boomerang well the blood is on your hands. Simplify your complex need to judge and categorize and rend your heart and not your garment. Repent of your passive aggressive ways, and stop speaking death in the name of speaking the truth in love.
Just love. In truth. And leave the speaking to Mama.
Do justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa Grace
Oh Constance…what a poignant and well written post awaits you behind the above link! Please head over and read it, and while you do, keep in mind something:
As John Pavlovitz says, it is no longer possible for you to bury your head in the sand of platitudes and assumptions about what it means to be gay or lesbian or transgender and be in love with God all at once.
Let me be clear with you all: my gender journey is not like the one that gay and lesbian christians are on, in that my journey is not about who I feel sexual attraction to, but rather it is an adventure that involves living out my female being in this body that is biologically male…okay? It is important you know that.
I also want to again reiterate and confess something: much to my great sorrow, before I was personally confronted by Mama about my gender identity, in inescapable ways, before that incredible and sacred day? Well, I really didn’t do a whole lot more than mouth platitudes myself. I didn’t really think about it much. Oh, I have talked with many gay men who have sought me out to confide in me…but while I was kind and loving to them? I really had nothing to offer other than the same old junk that I had been taught myself.
I was not capable of walking in their shoes! I had no true empathy with their plight and path. And thus I had no true motivation to really discover what their life is!
We made friends with a lesbian couple who have become very dear friends…in fact, they were the first people I came out to…but even in that friendship, I still didn’t know.
Well, I do now.
I do…cus I get it now, I get the same discrimination. I get the same hatred. I get the same rejection. I get judged the same way with virtually the same judgments. I pay some of the same prices, and I pay additional different ones.
But besides that? What I got was a huge dose of Humble Pie from Them…because it was so absolutely clear to me that I had not been truly like Jesus when I thought I was being like Him. I was so blinded by my own arrogant preening righteousness. I was so certain that the people that I talked to were just trying “to justify their sin”…as if every single other f***king christian in history hasn’t done the same g*dd*m thing!!
Every. Single. One.
Friend…you who “prays for me, that I will be delivered from this deception”, you should rend your own hearts and pray for yourself, that God would send you to Damascus and perhaps knock you off your ass and the scales from your eyes.
You just don’t know. You think you do…but you don’t.
People deal with all matters of interaction with God in all manner of ways…and you aren’t qualified to pass muster on them. But you are qualified to lay down your weapons, lay down your platitudes and easy caricature-arguments, and simply love…lift…and laugh.
Point to Jesus, not at sin. Point to the Cross and not to anything else. And then actually spend some time with people. Go to the Gay Christian Network Conference…Go to a Reconciling in Christ Meeting…Go to a welcoming of LGTBQ church…talk to the clergy…talk to the congregants…listen…listen.
In this morning mist and cold,
wet sand twixt my toes and me
and gritty ‘neath my knobby knees
I remember beginnings
of this moment long ago
and culminating in this now.
I woke then, to find my heart
had been torn open, then ripped from
my heaving chest in one harsh yank
and there were towels and pads all round
me there beneath those storm cloud words
still ringing
“Clean yourself up and go outside and play!”Those long years ago I learned
to cry silent and hide my tears… on the insides of my cheeks
where they would run back down to pool
inside that empty place my heart
used to be. It used to be.
I wandered and I found places
that I could pour me out…I don’t know
what hurt more: the emptiness
just pouring out or all those tears…
running down and drowning me.
So I lay me amidst the flowers
in lush grass meadows green and there
learned to abide, endure, persist…
and yearn. Oh how I learned to yearn. But that was then, and here, now…these
long years later and miles travelled
down time’s trail…I stirred myself up
from underneath my soft blankets
and threw on my big boots and coat.
But I left my cane behind…
limps are irrelevant when we
are down on our knees, Yes? They are. I walked the old beach access road
but my achy and empty core
walked contrary, backwards in time
to take on shape, substance and form,
becoming in the memories
the who I should have been back then
instead of this hollow and shipwrecked
me here, kneeling in this moment…
and I dreamed of what never was,
and sang of all that should have been. Then I arrived at ocean’s edge
and just in time…because the wedge
of memory, the urge to jump
had become great. And so I stood
and let my tears run down the outside
of my cheeks while waiting for
the sun to walk its path to stand
on the far edge of the horizon
and then to jump into the sky
and make its run once more across the void,
once more across the void. The sun, the sand, the sea
…and me…
stood there where they met.
My eyes roved o’er the curved and graceful
backs of waves swimming in droves
while songs abound until they found
that old wreck stubborn run aground on rocks, foolhardy in its heedless
balderdashy thrust against
the foghorn blast and lighthouse beacon.Still there, rusty, sodden, and yet
not much worse for wear…not much.
Its familiar hollow hull
echoed my own empty hollow
chest…my locked up knees began
to tire, then give way at last…and
that is how I got here,
in the sand,
on my knees…
and waiting.and in that place my heart should burn
inside at last I felt the rising
of a voice or was it something else?
the rising of a tide? A fountain? No, a mountain? Mmm… A spring
welling up in supplication all my yearns found wing and from
my lips they flew into the heavens,
beyond that marching willful sun
to land at last safe
there in Mama’s lap.
And now…now.
Kneeled here…I listen.
I listen for the Word come down
to take up residence within
my empty chest, to become…yes
a presence Present, to have become
substantial substance and I think
maybe I can become a host
to the Host.
Regardless…kneeled here,
I cast it all away to Her
and let myself diminish, grow less
and become more.
And I am grateful for Her answer
in the graceful break of waves
and the ever rushing sound
of Her forever Kiss
Lately I have been waking and finding myself more rested…spiritually, emotionally, and physically. There are a lot of ways that dysphoria burdened me…a lot of ways. For years I didn’t know what dysphoria was and thus attributed so much of the trauma I lived as just being a function of being me.
It was the primary thing that drove me…straight past religion and into the arms of the God behind the curtain of religion that humans have erected. If it were not for Them, Their love, acceptance, and encouragement, I would have long ago despaired and taken my own life.
Then I began to face my gender issues, get educated on what they were (and weren’t), and the relationship between me and Them blossomed and flourished even more…depths and heights I had no idea of…and the sense of destiny and mission and purpose began to take shape and form! No longer was I here merely to serve out a life sentence in the penitentiary of this flesh, just slogging thru until release. No. I had been formed and fashioned in just such a precise and intricate way so as to be in this place at this time to help set other captives free, to break down walls of oppression and to be part of that rolling river of justice, that mighty stream of righteousness to all peoples.
So that was cool.
But these mornings…finding this new place of peace, liberty…I think it is a deeper connection to God that is derived from congruence and alignment of brain and body due to the HRT that I have been doing…there are fewer filters and a wider open field to run in. And for the last few years, the Person of God I have been encountering most is the Blessed Holy Spirit, the One I affectionately call Mama.
*Oh, and to you, prisoner of patriarchy, who rebuked me for “feminizing God and reducing His Divinity”? To you I say don’t go away mad, just go away…you who “masculinize God, and reduce Their Divinity” The Bible teaches that God created man in Their Image, male and female, and it is very broad in how this is worded, indicating that not only are there some humans assigned to biologically female bodies, and some humans assigned to biologically male bodies, but also that each human being made is both male and female in their creation…because each one is in the Image of God. This would by inference prove that God Themselves transcend gender, as the origin and agency of the creation of human beings! So again…just go away. I don’t receive your judgment and your fear. Perhaps if you just stop, exhale yourself out of yourself so you are at last empty, you may find a humble path to repentance for doing the very things you judge me guilty of. Then inhale the God…who made you…and me…and owns us both.*
Mama…I have written poems about Her, and I urge you to search the blog for the word Mama, and check them out. I rather like them. Mama is so incredible and, well, I am not gonna try to describe Her.
The reason for this post is because a lot of you have been in contact with me and have indicated you would actually show interest in and desire to be in relationship with a God like Mama…but that She is different than the god they were taught of as children when they attended church. That god they want nothing to do with! And who could blame them?
Well, I want to invite you to try out something: I would like to invite you to talk to Her. She was telling me in my heart that She will talk to anyone who approaches Her with an open heart and humble spirit (that means a spirit that knows that it doesn’t know but would love to be taught). And She said to suggest this to you:
If you would like to know Mama…then talk to Her and simply say “Mama, the One that Charissa talks about…I would like to start a dialogue with You. I will show up everyday at the time and place that is established, and I will literally talk with You just as I would my bestie when we go out to coffee.”
If you do this…She will not disappoint, though She will indeed surprise and confound, often times will bring things to you that may make you uncomfortable or downright angry! I know this for a fact from experience. But hang in there, stay present, and above all, be honest. If you get mad, tell Her. Speak from your innermost core…hey, She is God and already knows what is there anyway, so you might as well. I have said literally the worst things I have ever said to anyone to my Mama in those moments…but I didn’t stop there, for She talks back, yeah? She will bring thoughts, new understandings, revelations…
…and awakenings. Spiritual awakenings.
Spiritual awakenings are such a crucial component of being in this life, and they are common to nearly every religious experience and cultural expression. They share a lot of common factors in spite of the various trails that people walk to arrive in them. Here are some components of them:
☾Increased tendency to let things happen rather than making them happen ☾Feelings of being connected to others and nature ☾Overwhelming episodes of appreciation ☾A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears of past experience ☾A loss of the ability to worry ☾A loss of interest in conflict ☾A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others ☾A loss of interest in judging others ☾A loss of interest in judging self ☾Gaining the ability to love without expecting anything in return ☾To be so strong that nothing disturbs your peace of mind.
I saw that list this morning, and I wanted to share it with you, but with the Charissa-twist that comes with my connection to Mama:
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have an increased tendency to let things happen rather than making them happen. ☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have feelings of being connected to others and creation ☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I experience overwhelming episodes of appreciation ☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears of past experience ☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a loss of the ability to worry ☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a loss of interest in conflict ☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others ☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a loss of interest in judging others ☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a loss of interest in judging self ☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I am gaining the ability to love without expecting anything in return ☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I am so strong that nothing disturbs your peace of mind
(I was trying to make a rainbow, by the way lol!!)
My point is this: Spiritual Awakening is not an experience…it is a state of being that can be entered into through relationship with a Person…through Mama.
Oh no…you don’t have to enter into connection with Her…there are many beings out there to connect to and not all of them good…but I am in relationship with Her, and I can testify of Her goodness, Her faithfulness, Her steadfast unending love and acceptance, Her humor and fierce sense of Justice, Her unending Tender Mercies…
Good Morning Constance! 🙂 I hope all is well in your life today. If you are facing obstacles, may our wonderful God provide you with the Grace needed to transform obstacle into opportunity, resulting in the joy of having overcome.
I am linking to this article today, because I think there are many people who read here who are allies, but still learning how to demonstrate that alliance in fruitful and effective ways. It is simple and direct without being buffoonish and reductionist.
Please take these things seriously…they matter to us. I will never forget how small I felt when I was told by someone who claimed to love me that they refused to compromise their faith and they were compelled by their conviction towards God to tell everyone they interacted with about me and that they considered me disobedient to God and in sin and deception because I had decided to transition.
To this day, I can feel that sharp sting, followed by that numbing zing like powerless electricity thru my bones…not good for anything but hurting…
I think the thing that really strikes me is how many things are done in God’s Name that are really a mere reflection of an individual’s own attempts to prove to themselves or to others that they are really and truly a Christian. In my case, it was as if this person was worried that someone would think ill of them if they did not make sure and let everyone know first of all that I was transitioning and second of all that they “knew” that I was “sinning”, but most importantly that they themself had sought to warn me and were thus the heroic rescuer who had valiantly attempted to save me…and their efforts were “unsuccessful” but only because of my deceived, rebellious and unsubmitted state.
That interaction left its marks. It showed me, sadly, that love is too often only word deep, and is forced into the template of self and put under the pressure of self-serving agendas, and what is extruded from that certainly is not love. And it is interesting that I have not heard from that person since…I think primarily because they were “shaking the dust off of their shoes” after warning me of what was going to happen to me: I was going to be outed at their own discretion, and then each person that I was outed to was going to be fed a version of me that came from another person…not from me.
But God is faithful…God is good. They have added people into my lives of such amazing quality and genuine heart! I have acquaintances now who I see a lot, present in my life and feeding in encouragement, truth, goodness, and love.
So it is not really so much about me, whatever “ruination” is come my way reputation-wise…but rather, it is about the words said about someone to someone else and then repeated again and repeated again take on a “telephone game” quality. Eventually they will come to someone who has gender issues themself or knows someone who does…and the full implication will communicate to them that they are not okay and loved, valued in and of themselves for who they are…and bam.
Another Leelah Alcorn.
Another statistic.
Another life tragically lost…
…and in the name of “love”.
So: head on over, read…get educated…and resolve in your heart that God is God and you are not, and that loving someone with kindness in word and deed is never going to sully Them or yourself. This would be the “walk humbly part.”
It falls, from Your clay-smeared hands.
Casual, elegant and of a piece, unassuming yet so present.
The door swings open and music
swirls out of the depths of symphonies
not yet written but already played.
Beauty tears at my heart, wanting to drink
its tax of tears and collect its
payment of my pounding pulse
and my nose red with glory
and unruly, running to beat the band.
Oh Mama, that delicate wonder
that traboccant thunder, clapping
for Your willowy way so lithe
and lean, spare but not stingy
and always sticky with goodness!
You make me ache so, inside!
How is it that You can tear me open
and I don’t even know, until I am
bleeding moonlight and bathing
in velvet night?
Alas, for my wounded heart!
Pincushion for Your Arrows of Light
so precise and knowing, and each one
tipped with Deep Desire
so strong, so sweet, so savory!
I wanna be like You when I grow up, Mama!
I wanna inhabit my self as You do Yours,
I wanna see around corners and behind curtains
without going there or raising them
and giving up the game!
Sink into my bones, infiltrate them!
Permeate me with You, every pore
a thirsty throat to drink You in and then
becoming places which pour You out
on thirsty ground and suffering hearts so poor.
Let me know Your rhythms,
Let me hear Your yearns!
Let me be disciplined, but unrestrained!
And above all, let me know Your heart
and this knowing shape my own forever.
Good Morning Constance! 🙂 Once again I want to thank you for being here, on Charissa’s Grace Notes with me, and journeying in your own ways from works and death to Grace and Life…your presence here, your comments, your shared humanity brings me hope and adds ammunition for those lonely times in the night when all are sleeping, all is still, and I watch…awake on the walls. ❤ Thank you ❤
So the link above is from an interesting blog that is worth perusing. It lists several suggestions for Christian people to love and serve in ways consistent with the gospel, and likely far more congruent with the heart of Jesus Himself, the Great Friend of Sinners.
We have all heard the old saw “love the sinner and hate the sin”…heck, prolly a whole lot of people who read here have even said that. I have before…much to my great regret…I have indeed. When I did, I didn’t really realize what that said and implied about the person I was speaking to…and even worse what it said and implied about my own heart and self evaluation.
Alas…what I and others were usually saying is we think the loving thing to do is make sure the person knows they are a sinner. And quite simply, this is just not the way that Jesus did things…oh wait! There were times that He outright called people out on their sins! I forgot about those!
Yeah…it was to the Pharisees! Ya know those folks of that day who were the ones who loved to point out how everyone else was a sinner! He ripped them a new one over and over and over again because who they were in their own eyes was more important than who their neighbor is in God’s eyes…and that is fatal.
Of course I am not advocating “loving sin” by opposing the use of that phrase! Don’t be ridiculous! What I am saying is you ought to major in people, and minor in sin management. After all, your skills at sin management must suck, or Jesus would not have felt the need to descend from His state in Heaven, take on human flesh, and then suffer and die for you (ya know, a sinner). Right? If you were capable of managing sin, well then He would have just encouraged and taught you until you got it right!
Jesus never said “love the sinner but hate the sin”, and no one believes that meant that Jesus was compromising, prevaricating, or condoning anything evil. No…Jesus understands one crucial thing:
Saying Yes to Love is far more effective and powerful than saying No to sin.
The true YES renders the no moot.
And that brings me to why I link to this article, because if we are going to discard futile harmful platitudes, then how to we pick up effective and edifying alternatives?
They list a dozen, and they are “process oriented” and not items that you can check off on your daily righteousness list.
They demand that you see the people in your life as your moral equals.
They demand that you give the people in your life the same standing as worthy of God’s love as you have.
They demand that you understand that your perspective is extremely limited and insufficient by definition, as you are a very finite, very imperfect, and very limited being.
As you go, take with you my lil motto that I have pulled from Micah 6. It is a superb guide for keeping it simple and loving. And it has an order of listing for a reason.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
“On a scale of 1 to 10,
how would you rate
your pain today?”
attempts to understand
and manage dirty pain
only cause more
pain (slivers and shards growing like crystals)
that daily dun-brown inquiry
into ourselves seizes us,
the hot buzz sting
of the growing awareness
of mortality….
aggravates deeply (pain)
more than I could say
and redly amplifies
the original stark question.
what if you answer 10
at 3 AM
but by the afternoon…
what then?
what of the futile measurement?
what of the meaningless guess
and what of the meaning-haunted guesser?
adding mortal insult
to immortal injury (pain).
Morality whispers of a wrongness
to pain
but I have wondered why
we think pain recognizes morality.
That’s the real question, innit?
Why we think there are
floors and ceilings
in the house of pain.
So in the hard and hopeless
of the darkness before dawn
we sit between these moments
when all things are defined
and that infernal scale
is shattered by the triumph
of pain held to the standard
at last made manifest
revealed first on a cross
and then revealed
set free
of scales, of measurements,
of guesses in the night, while
golgotha gasps and grasps
futilely at our cloaks
that we have shed as winter
surrenders to Sweet Spring.
‘it’s like a roller coaster!” she said.
her eyes caught the dim light, dark light
that swam in that murky place
awash in muddy music
and clattery chattery din,
they reflected it back
changed and amplified,
pure and clarified
and charged with
that thrill of being alive,
that thrill of being.“ya gotta let go!” she went on. my heart was stirred by her words, like a drink sitting and then a straw just hops into the drink and rattles and revolves and churns the spirits and icecubes until it refreshes and is spritely and cries out for lips on its rim…and sips…yeah…
my heart was ready to be sipped.
“just raise your arms
while you drop and scream
your fool head off
in joyful terror midst the fall!”
and her smile, so lovely to us all
sitting entranced and inspired
must have been so fell, so grim
so terrifying to the forces of hell
that lurked nibbling at the edges
and stealing bites of hearts and souls
with electric metered music teeth
and measured shot-glass jaws.
“cus you’re gonna be held in place
and when you’re done you’ll be
so glad you did…raise your arms!”
and then she tossed her head back
just a couple inches
but whole tides turned on that sweep
like the moon across benighted skies
tugs whole oceans below in some
heavenly waltz or dosie-do!
her name was Terri
her name is Terri
and i was forever encouraged
in the meeting…and for me the word
terrify
will ever have layers and connotations
because of her,
towering red and turning
the dim to shiny from the inside out
her there across from me
and shiny red and clear all at once
amidst the dim and the dark and the din.
she leaned forward and laughed
a brilliant smile into my soul
and I felt Mama kiss the world
and rested in the moment
a little bit more whole.
aienkien (A form of Japanese Proverb) 合縁奇縁 [あいえんきえん, aien kien] shared bond, mysterious bond (lit.: shared/mutual fate/destiny/bond, strange/mysterious fate/destiny/bond. This phrase is a classical yojijukugo (a four-character idiom in the style of classical Chinese) used to refer to the mysteries of attraction and relationships between men and women; perhaps also between men and men, or women and women, though no such usage has been seen classically).
shared bonds mysterious
played out in fates mutual,
proclaimed by destiny
destiny conquered, that is!
400 years and dead silence
under the sun, inside
the ruin and run
of life lived praying
to a “no comment” God.my faith persists 合縁奇縁! my faith like white blood cells spawning from my bones and then devouring anything they deem dangerous to destiny… and then dying in the James Dean Code of live fast and die young.
In the 400 years.
Of Silence.
Under the sun.I felt it like bones, the silence! I felt it like bones, my faith! And I knew it like I know my bones aienkien…合縁奇縁
And from here and now,
after the Word spoken
400 years seems like seconds.
But what about the people
who lived then, under that sun
and were 合縁奇縁
by history
by destiny
by bond?Whole lives lived and not a word! not a finger! lifted to lay them down gentle in the bluebells of a warm midnight! God sat in Heaven like Summer and said nothing like Winter.
Silence…400 years…and people
living whole lives from gun to tape
and not one word in
aienkien 合縁奇縁 .So when was it enough? The silence? How much is enough! Did God finally see people yearning like kindling yearns to be tossed into the fire and be consumed and become flame, become heat, become smoke rising and fragrant and free?
I’ll never know here. Now. But I sense somehow that Silence has its languages that speaking knows not of, verbs that act in stillness not moving and speak to a people
Almost every night of my life since I was around 4 I wake up in the night, and I am petrified. Skert stiff, and I mean that literally. I don’t know why. And inner voices that say horrible things that crush…flat, inflectionless, as if I am so worthless that those voices will not even waste their powers on one as meritless as I. No need to tell you what they say.
In 1966 I was exposed to a horror movie that really hooked into my dysphoria and an extremely traumatic event that had taken place a few months earlier, and since then, I have bad dreams, too.
That’s a lot of years.
That’s a lot of fears.
That’s a lot of tears.
As I grew, I discovered that talking with God helped…some. And after I had grown some more, I learned to recognize Their voice back to me…each one distinct and each one full of Love.
Well, if you have been reading here lately you know that I have been in a rough patch. A bit challenging in fact. And those voices? The ones that say crushing and horrible things? They have utilized the raw materials in my life of trial, betrayal, abandonment, loss, and sorrow, and added that weight and depth and breadth to their curses…and I could not escape their toxin. I had to just listen…and endure.
Until last night…after waking, freezing, cramping, clenching, crying…and ripping apart again…
I heard my Mama’s voice quiet and sure, certain underneath the Mordor doom-drums and orc snarls…and we talked. A long time.
At the end, She exhorted me to write some of what She told me…here on Grace Notes…as a faith step and an exercise…an attempt to call myself into fullness and being, because I have languished for so many years encased in roles, expectations and binary bondages. I have even torn myself in two in my desperate attempt to perform and thus be worthy of love and acceptance…and so all those voices whispering all those years are like a gravitational pull to be overcome.
So here is a bit of what Mama told me…translated from spirit/soul/heart talk to written words:
I am Charissa Grace, and I am not the person everyone thought me to be (including myself).
I am made sensitive and tender…so I feel the pains and sorrows and hurts and worries of everything and everyone around me…in the same way that a tuning fork hit with vibrations will itself vibrate in frequency, or a crystal goblet will sound when it is circled with a finger.
It is not a function of something wrong in me when I feel all of that…it is a function of how my Mama created me, and so I am to stop calling myself names and blaming myself for things that are not my fault…they are simply the things that I feel because of how I am made by Her.
I am made to drink cups and drain dregs…many of them bitter and some sweet.
I am made to transform things…to catalyze their becoming into who and what they are destined to be, but I myself am not made a part of that…rather I remain apart…alone, and in my Mama’s Hands.
I am precious to Her, and She watches over me in such Joyous Jealousy, having purposed to allow me to experience pain in order for Her good riches to be birthed into this world.
I am Mama’s womb of Life…having no womb of my own and born so barren and lonely. She intentionally formed me intricate, delicate and robust, so easily woken but desperately determined to hang on…hang on…hang on.
I am Her Instrument and She delights in my unique and utterly singular voice, and so She tunes me…constantly…to be sure I am in tune to Her song, Her heart…She tightens me, She loosens me.
Above all…I am not evil. I am not “wrong” or “null” or “nothing” or a “monster” or a “freak”. What I endure is a function of Her goodness and intention and not a function of my flawed-ness and failures, and there are many of those by the way…flaws and failures. But to Her they are akin to the chiseled away wood or stone…they are like the clay She pushes away as She makes me into Her Own.
I am the daughter of Holy Spirit, Great Lady Grace…my Big Mama…and I am good. She has said it and my Precious Merciful Jesus has made it true in His own Love dripped completely over me and washing totally thru me cleansing me and making me Their Righteousness.
I will live, and still pine and long…grieve and mourn…but I will also see the Dawn morning by morning and I will keen under Her loving caresses to my hair and cheeks as She wipes away travail and gives…
…gives me Beauty for ashes…and the Oil of Joy for mourning…and She clothes me in Songs of Praise glorious and radiant and She disappears the spirits of heaviness…as She plants me in Her Own Orchards of Righteousness and calls me Her Very Own…and I will indeed day by day glorify Her Name and call Her good and only good as She brings me to the Father of Lights from Whom every good and perfect gift comes.
I am a prophetic declaration to a world that is spiritually cross-borned, just as I am physically thus. Yes, each and everyone of us is “transgender”…walking around with this knowing inside us that we were not destined for death and dissolution and destruction, knowing that we are victims of time, knowing that who we are in our hearts is somehow choked down and held down and thrown down by something that ought not be…
…and so as I live and love, as I trust and talk, as I weep and write, I am becoming a living word of love to whoever will listen, and let their own hearts awaken the dawn.
These things I say in faith…believe me, they are not said in boast, or even really anything that I think about myself. But I do know that I have heard from my Mama…and these sorts of things, the things I have written here? They aren’t even remotely like anything the voices have ever cursed at me, and like nothing I tell myself…wait, correction: told myself…so I know that they must be Her.
Mama said She was so thrilled when I picked out the name double-grace…She promises She will make good on it.
I am Charissa Grace, and I am in my Mama’s Hands. May my song ever be sweet and my tune ever triumphal, even in tears.
believe in a virgin birth?
implausible, absurd, immature!
a miracle problematic and troubling!!
inconvenient, that! disruptive!
Why, I don’t prefer it!
go walk on water, or multiply yeasty slices!
but inside…my body…my body…MY body!?!?
Nay! Do as You please with Yours but
git Yer greezy paws offn mine!
(it’s my precious!)
what’s that? why not?
Why not this birth inconvenient and impractical?
Why…because there is no mystery about this whole mess!!
Simply:
somehow, somewhere, sometime, someway
there was a soup
(not mine, I assure you, and whose?
well that ain’t my department!!)
a group of molecules
(from somewhere, sometime, someplace)
got together without knowing
(because: before knowing, ya ken?)
they just got together and became self-replicating
(i don’t know about that…
but we have that problem yet today:
self replication…ah self, you cursed demon!)
Hmmm…this sounds ummm,
well, I don’t want to be a smart ass
but I will risk becoming a talking donkey
and ask you:
If there was a Virgin Birth, what happened?
Molecules insensate unknowing
tasting soup without primordial tastebuds
and becoming out of nowhere
the Bread of Life?
And that’s different…how?
(except it excludes Love, oh such Love contained therein!)
Our smartest blindest tell us this:
‘…the universe can and will create itself from nothing.
Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something
rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.’
(ima duck my head now and giggle!
and the tome called The Grand Design…
design…
by a not-Who
in a not-Where
for a not-Reason
but Grand.
and Design.
lol…molecules just laffed out loud)
Look: this never happens, not anywhere.
So, accepting that mystery, well then
we’re all the same and somewhere we leap
in faith.
‘Cept I leap at Mama…not molecules.
I eat of Miracles, not primal soup,
but I will dunk such Living Bread
as given to me
into the cup of suffering
for the sake of Love
and a Baby
born of a virgin
and my Mama dancing.
1
All the world is hushed and still,
waiting under heavy burdens
white and grim and unrelenting,
groaning, crushed and disillusioned,
longing for redemption, peace,
goodwill and aching for release
from darkness, loneliness and death,2
and outrage…OUTRAGE
seething in this Silent Night
that echoes with Death’s violation
and defilement of our dreams
and destiny…such desecration…
Death so vicious and relentless
in its Never ending hungry lusty rusty horror.
3
He came small and vulnerable
to bear the scars of our outrage,
came near enough to prove He’d stay,
regardless…Closer
than we realize or can imagine
in this night so long and lonely Small He came to us, undignified and oh so tiny.4
That nearness, Love Personified
The Incarnation towers tall
Mysterious, absurd and all the while
Undignified, God’s Trump card (HIM)
played foolishly and weak
upon the table of the strong
confounding all the worldly wise, so clever and austere.
5
Dignified? Undignified!
when Love became personified,
“Immanuel Undignified and one of us” (and yet still outside twisty time)
approaching us as one of us,
held guilty and responsible
accused of shattering religion! Such a glory crime!
6
And dwelling here in innocence and staying in our sorrow cold
but not to merely dispel shadows or resolve conundrums, no!
Bearing our humanity, and present with us in the midst of darkness,
Oh The Truest Light, The Deepest Joy, The Most Glad Heart
Fulfilling All Expectancy when every hope will come to pass!
Submitting to a grisly death to hold the whole world in His Heart that
He had held dear in His Hand to mediate our case to God…
7
The Child did Bleed, the Child did Die, and we?
With gratitude we enter, invitation tightly clutched to aching breast…
we kneel hushed and astonished safe and sound as we are changed
by this Child’s Gift (or is the Child Himself the gift that’s given?)
Invited to approach and revel, knowing what we’ve always known
is finally here and shining present, Sacred Heart Alive Forever
in the season of fulfillment pure and everlasting.
For Part TWO, click HERE ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
The kings stayed with us three days, and I was determined to accompany them despite being in no condition to make such an arduous journey. We had no idea where we were going, or how far it was. All we had was a new star that the Star King said sang to him to follow until it stopped where the Mighty One was. I would most likely die before I returned and yet…I knew in my heart of hearts that I was destined for such a quest.
And so we set out that fateful morning so long ago. The Star King had a big barrel of frankincense to give to the Mighty One. The Mountain King had a big chest of gold to give to Him. ‘What will you give Him?’ they asked me. I laughed in mirthless despair. What could such as I give to such as Him?I would most likely be dead before we found Him, but I said, if I was not dead, then I would give Him myself. HA, HA—a joke on the Mighty One—a dead King as a gift. So, I loaded my pack animals with food, water, and a large trunk full of burial spice—myrrh. It would most likely be used on me before we arrived, but if not, then I would complete the joke and give it to the Mighty One in the face of death, as a down payment for his dead King. My subjects lined the roadway and cheered us—some in jest and some in sorrow. Deep inside it was like everyone knew I was not coming back alive.
We traveled for months, following that star, and I grew weaker and weaker, and my dreams more and more terrible. I saw each blow of the whip and heard each gasp from His mouth. I saw each drop of living blood fall, liquid ruby light. I saw each time He was hit. I saw every crystal tear drop, and I saw the hammer fall time and again as it drove the nails through Him and stuck Him to the stake. I saw Him dropped into the earth like a broken sword in the midst of an empty grave. I needed constant care but death like the tide just kept creeping closer and closer.
Finally one night, in the dreams, I held onto the King of Lights as He was drawn down. Deeper and deeper into the teeth of the darkness I was pulled, but still I held on, down into such hell itself. The pressure and sorrow and grief and the undead dark were overwhelming and again, in shame and despair I had to let go and seek the light of the world I knew. But I couldn’t find my way back. I was lost, and in the darkness, I wandered alone. The Star King and the Mountain King thought me dead and left me with all that I brought.
And I lay, I know not how long.
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
For Part TWO, click HERE
I set off on this journey full of hope.
And wrapped in splendours of belonging here…
or there…it doesn’t really matter there or here
which far exceeds being nothing nowhere But as I walked the crowds all fell away
and cruel branches raked across my face
disfigured me, tattooed with brutal scars
my garments stripped and used to block the stars
and so my world grew dim and I alone
and my companions left me trapped within The last straw to which I desperate, clung
was dashed from my hands, hope was trashed and flung
to the four winds and blown away in dust,
left me un-moored, an object of disgust.
But hope is funny, indomitable
and it is sneaky, looking empty, full
and when I dried my eyes, what did I see?
But hope returned to heal and rescue me.
That Absent God so silent and so cruel
had made a move, become the Supreme Fool
and suffered as a lost and lonely peasant
and in absence became Supremely Present
It’s Here, in this fog, everything in shroud
Listen, hear that coming footfall loud
Lion, Lamb and Baby through the smoke
Paying every Promise that They Spoke There…wet…thin…starving and alone
that’s me abandoned wet, drenched to the bone
and nothing beautiful, nothing of worth…
to this manger…that’s me…comes Christmas birth
And so I will press on, and I will grope
thru deep darkness in this season of hope.
Waiting…it seems that we spend an awful lot of time doing it, don’t we?
If you experience what I do then you too feel the weight of waiting that is imposed on us from the outside by external forces of various kinds.
I have to wait for the sun to rise
I have to wait for the coffee to brew.
I have to wait to read those magic words, hear that lilting quick voice.
I have to wait for pending actions that deeply affect my future.
I have to wait for the bus.
I have to wait for the doctor.
I have to wait for word from the four corners of my heart.
And then there are other kinds of waiting:
I have to wait for transition to show the outsides what’s inside.
I have to wait as others process my life transitions in their own terms.
I have to wait for the words to come, from my muse and her well.
I have to wait for answers to various correspondences.
I have to wait for almost everyone else, for I move at a pace different.
Waiting is an activity that is seemingly aimless…
and when viewed in light of time,
waiting is a doing.
Generally we feel a sense of something we call “restlessness”…
expressed by pacing back and forth, drumming our fingers, bobbing our knee up and down,
sighing heavily or groaning to release frustration as time drags its feet
…and seemingly mocks us by slowing down even further.
Or…we might simply languish and wallow in something we call “listlessness”, that slouching, slack-jawed, mind-numbed escape from doing which is, in and of itself a doing…as inertia takes us over, drags at all our metabolisms and slows things down even further…and then time becomes a marathoner…
…and we are in lockstep with time, we the unwilling competitor, our leg tied to time’s in a three-legged race being dragged to…where? Another spate of waiting?
Sadly, this doing (as all doings do) ends up as a becoming (as all people end up too)…
…a becoming anxious, or cynical, or harriedandindifferent, or discouragedanddespairing.
All too often we are blinded to the simple blazing truth:
Becoming is always the result of time passing,
and there is no choice about this, becoming… but rather only the choice of what it is we will become.
And it is in this choice, what it is that we will become, that we discover:
there is another way, another point of view from which to understand “waiting”…
…and it is from that place that we fully grasp the way in which waiting becomes a state of being, an intentionedchoice of the heart and spirit, rather than the doing I mentioned earlier.
It is in this intentional, chosen state that we find things like patience, discipline, self-control and emotional maturity answer the call like warriors answer the summon of their sovereign.
For patience is a state of being as well, yes? (Impatience is just “doing’s” word that describes chafing against time’s leg as we are dragged along, gimpy in that awkward infernal race to nowhere). Discipline is also a state of being, along with self-control, emotional maturity…all of these qualities are fruits that grow from the root of the choice of intentionality to wait.
There is an assumption that underlays the choice to be “waiting”. It is the assumption that our choices have consequences of becoming…and those consequences manifest in process as a function of time passing. And this assumption has its own treasures to give us in the moment, treasures that inform our choice, empower our choice, and then become an actual living part of our choice.
Faith.
Hope.
Love.
Those qualities are enduring and never fail, and ultimately they triumph over all the activity of doing for the sake of the expediency of the moment. They are the antithesis of busy-work and the resulting chaos surrounding frantic activity in the name of “doing something”. They are the good hard work of intentional being.
Advent is a season that comes each year, and it opens its heart to us, to the exhortation there, it whispers to us…each year…
…wait…
…wait…
…WAIT…
and as that insistent cry emanates forth it carries upon its wings great gifts of stillness, reflection…honest longing in the dark with true vital hope of longing fulfilled, joy in the anticipation of immanent manifestation of what is, but hidden…emerging from what conceals and is seen…just like a wrapped gift (and ponder for a moment that metaphor of a wrapped gift…yes?)…which finds its true purpose in the unwrapping as much as in the preparation and gifting of it.
Advent imbues anticipation! Advent focuses time and puts it to work stoking the fires of faith, hope, joy, love as we sense the arrival of that miracle our hearts all know lurks just outside this skein of time, practicing its own waiting for the miracle moment of emergence, of catalytic manifestation and the redemption of yet another investment of waiting.
So how about it Constance? This Advent season, this time of preparation…will you receive the precious gift of waiting, with Her mighty warriors of being? Or will you hide yourself in busy-ness, rushing around, and re-wrapping a gift given in your own papers of cynicism and ribbons of refusal…and end up fed up and waiting anyway, just waiting for Christmas to be over, instead of for Christmas to come?
Remember: Divine Silence is not Divine Inactivity and Indifference!
A miracle is upon us…it is every year (in fact, it is everyday).
And thus we are gifted with great opportunity to wait for the Christ who comes each year in the same way and in brand new ways unexpected and greatly needed, and the Christ comes to be the Answer to our heart, not to do the things we think we need done.
But to see Him, to catch a glimpse of Him as He comes…ahh, that vision comes to those who wait…
wait on the Lord oh my soul, be strong and let your heart take courage, for they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength! They shall rise up on wings, like eagles, and shall run and not grow weary and then walk and not faint! And they shall see the goodness of God in the land of the living.
me? well, I been well
but still and always how I am
cus who I am.
you know.
sometimes I think how you flutter inside
your heart and your breath there, racing the moon
around the night sky ablaze in fiery contest
between her jewels and her sable coat
sometimes I get a glimpse of that goblet
there on your nightstand
after you’ve been in your cups
and I ken the vintage and varietal
cus you do drain what is opened to you
(a bit too much, darling, a bit too earnest and compelled)
and when it is joyous red I sip too and laugh in your rest
but when it is dull brown and rust and no diamonds
well, then I sit beside you as you sleep, those miles away
and you there still torn open and seeping your value priceless
and that goblet stinky, forceful, insisting on being drained
but only sipped from and then denied unbearable…but present still lurking.
sigh.
you toss, and then I see your shuttered eyes glimmer
and then your loss leaks, wells up and thru limpid lids
squeezed tightly against remembering ever but driven and compelled
by memory’s tortured brew…alas, that goblet…and you
I snatch up that cup (this cup is passed to me, dear)
and to my tender lips I raise it up and press it hard against them
(ah, it burns so hot, it aches so frozen and immobile)
and down I drink the bitter draughts so tragic for you, so tragic in you…
but inside me they find a resting place
to be changed and sweetened, then expelled
out thru my eyes so tender and so kind
and filled with teary balm of sorrows healed
I catch them, the tears, one by one, in that rank glass
that goblet graveolent and grim, musty and mephitic
and loathsome in its unwashed remembers and never can forgets
and while you sleep my tears work a washing wonder
and then the cup do I return and place beside your bed
and just in time, for whimpering you thrash about and grope
wanting to forget, needing to remember, your heart stuck in December
another drink to drug you, goad your hurt and to falsely sustain you
but to your lips my tears transformed within the cup
into a sleepy healing vintage of AD 33
and hale and healthy once again
my tears…my heart…
and your eyes flutter in relief,
and your chest heaves, and sighs
and fall at long last do you from that cliff
and into Her soft stark healing embrace
and as I look, I see your face grow placid
peace in rivers breathed and mercy streaming
and then you rest and restoration reaching
to touch your troubled brow and make you whole again.
so.
you got broke, yes? torn.
cus that’s just how this world…yeah.
you know.
love.
just one heart torn willingly and glad
cus that’s just Love and constant
ya know?
sleep now, you will awake, and breath so lightly
and know that all is Love Redeemed and Lifted,
scars are left as medals, evil works are sifted
and what remains becomes
the makings of many poems
of Life Divinely Gifted.
Constance…I am in tears right now (I know, I know, I can hear you sigh and hear your eyes roll and say “What’s new, Charissa!!” giggle…always in tears)…
but it is true, I am. Because this devotion by Margaret Manning is about grace. And as you know, I picked that for my real name. Charissa…grace. Grace…grace.
Grace for me has always been about the power to do what God requires. It is the power given freely to us, and it is given to us regardless of what we “deserve”. And this power has two vital expressions: the power to overcome the challenges we face in our lives, and the power to be forgiven for the ways we fall short morally and spiritually, for the times we hide and cower in fear instead of walking with our heads high and our eyes clear, for the times we are petty and cruel, or mean and insensitive, or dull and totally unaware of our blundering tromping of toes and hurting of hearts…
Grace. A golden coin with a Heads and a Tails, spent as needed, and replaced as soon as it is spent.
Wanna hear something amazing about Grace? A writer long ago was inspired by Mama to tell us this: everywhere sin is and triumphs, Grace is as well, and is there in quantities and amounts that increase in availability exponentially relative to the presence of sin in those moments and places! If there are 10 “sin units”, then there are 10 x 10 Grace units! If there are a hundred sin, there is a hundred times hundred grace…and so on! The more sin there is, the more grace there is too…but not just coin by coin, but gold mine of grace for farthing of sin and diamond mine of grace for shilling of sin!!!
It’s just like light: the greater the darkness, the more power even one tiny light has!
But Margaret brought out something that was soo salient to me right now, right here…in the midst of extreme anxiety and distress and inner turmoil that really pushes hard against me to give up and leave forever…she spoke of Grace as a way of life! OH! How my spirit BURNS with those words!!!!
Grace…as a way of life. The way of Grace.
And that is why I am crying. In the midst of all the absolute falling apart of everything (except for me and my darling, ddh, and a few friends who know who they are cus I told them), I found myself looking at the betrayal, the accusation, the defamation, abandonment, judgement and malicious savage written and verbal attacks…looking at all that I “once had” disappear and in its place piles of pain and heaps of hatred…I had fixed my eyes on that.
But Constance…am I not gifted with opportunity most miraculous and glorious? Seriously: for one who has prayed for decades to be a person of grace and mercy, how can this come to pass without opportunity? And thus the onslaught…yes?
Grace as a way of life…the way of Grace. Because of her article, my eyes are lifted up again and onto the source of Grace, the one who’s Name is Grace.
Here is the takeaway for me, to whet your appetite:
If the grace-full life of Christ is the intended goal for those who claim to follow him, each day presents the opportunity to practice—to grow in the very grace Christ embodies. Instead of fear, there is empathy and hope. Instead of pride, there is humility and hospitality. Instead of bitterness and resentment, there is forgiveness and laying down one’s life. There is always a choice. And thankfully, there is always one who extends flawlessly the very grace we need ourselves.
I am in the oven.
Baking in the heat.
But I am also becoming a loaf of the bread of Grace.
May Grace ever abound in me and thru me and add to the superabounding of grace wherever wrong is present.
Constance, I am posting here a speech given by Debi Jackson…it speaks for itself very well. Debi is a woman who loves God, loves people, and has a transgender daughter whom she is championing in a way that I am totally certain makes Mama proud.
Please check it out and let your heart be encouraged that hate can never ever conquer.
Debi…from me my deepest thank you’s and admirations for making a way for your child.
I wander this world ghost-like
in poetic places, like a phantom
passing thru unseen, unfelt.
I wonder in the presence all around…I see, I feel…
I dwell in mists, resarciate revelation,
in the clear and frosty glow of iridescent knowings
and I vibrate with the rhythms and the meters of forever…
and yet…and yet…and yet I have no body to encounter anything.
How it is that I cannot touch that rock, that tree, that river?
Oh it’s not for lack of trying! No, it’s not for lack of crying out
until my throat is torn and sundered by the torrents of
poetic whispers midst the thunder booming in the heart beat of the ocean!
Blue and silver tinged in crimson rushing furious from deep
inside my belly and into the deserts stretched around me desolate…
and bleeding wet across the dry rocks stacked in careless ruination
like a giant game of pick-up sticks, I flow…
I water this ground thirsty, this land burnt and deaf and hungry!
I see dwellers in the dust and so I run to them
in glad and eager assignations, to speak waters cold and clear
in dulcet tones delightful…but I’m stunned, disheartened and confused
because my waters glad, my torrents true blue in their striking mercies
simply pass right thru them, as if they were ghostly manes,
mere spirit rivers, haunted waters!
I have no solid being in this non poetic world!
I am eidolic without body! I am eidolon!
And I rush at them in hot frustration, I fly at them with fists poetic
windmilling the haunted air like stinging butterflies and then
I see that glass jaw of untruth just jutting forth in pride,
I see those flabby dull and paunchy souls and rain down blows
like honey bees dive bombing wooly bears below…
and stand and watch in horror as my fists, my quick poetic fists
of thunder-boom and stormy rant
(and lightning laced with baby breath and MamaSong)
just pass right thru…without a trace.
That’s when it hits me, I’m the phantom in this place!
I’m a ghost poetic without body,
save my words which have no presence
save their spectral wraithy breeze
as they pass thru the dwellers in the land of Nod!
And then I weep, and see my tear drops fall straight thru the carmine earth
and out the other side to float in space like stars unhinged from Mama’s eyes.
…But once in a while I hurt my hand!
Because I see that tree, that rock,
that mountain, that sea and I swing
with all my might so desperate
to make contact, connect but glum
expecting that it will be just
another sickening stomach churning
free-fall thru and without touching
anything that makes a difference
and gives me substantial presence
that I yearn for unrequited,
always unrequited…
…Once in a while…BAM! That tree is THERE!
And oh, that mountain in the air hits back with all its mountain might
and I break open and pour poetry from knuckles
barked and ripped and dripping bloody meaning.
So I walk, proceed with caution and with people,
careful not to punch with fists, but swing with kisses blown poetic
and with whispers strewn so pretty in the paths of maybe-solid
peace that feet can walk upon and crush the petals
of my life poetic, thus releasing such sweet fragrance
of that Mystery Lurking Beyond Wonders.
And while I walk, I have been wondering…
what if I am not a ghost? What if I am real, and walk
a world of trees so solid, mountains stark and clouds so soft,
so touchable and trembling singable and trodable
in skies so blue and thick with skin like opal seas?
What if it’s not me the wraith but everything around me
that’s unsound and apparitional, haunted, insubstantial?
What if I’m the solid one and live inside a singing body
solid and substantial in its meter, rhyme and rhythm?
What if I walk a world of ghosts within this body poetic,
and with dactylic soul still singing ever in exquisite
anapestic harmony and twine my song with river-chorus
in the currents of the Milky Way so high and flowing ever
from my Mama’s ruby loving lips?
What if it’s because my fists’ poetic swinging, punching,
on the rocks relentless pounding on the trees
until they gain their being solid and substantial,
bit by bit and flake by swing, whiff by hook they reel
into reality and become present, incarnated to wear atoms
for their royal robes piled high and gold with poems now glorified?
What if my words, passing thru them like the winds wind thru tree branches
leaving something solid, something real that feels good to inhabit,
what if my heart poetry is giving walls and floors and roofs and doors
to enter in and stay and take on body, soul, and spirit?
I am a ghost poetic,
I’m a poem in a ghost world.
I am a song unseen and spectral,
I am heard in opened ears.
I am a difference that I long for
and a solid longed for morsel.
I’m a river in the desert
and a cool cup of sweet water
and a riddle-paradox
of ghost-words become manifest
and incarnated in the bloody
hearts of listeners and hungry
mouths of singers
and the happy souls
of Mama’s children.
Constance, this devotional is by my favorite devotional writer Jill Carattini, and rather than copy and past it I decided to press it…
…and then copy out a poem here that she quotes. I was stunned by this poem…and Constance? You think I write poems?? *charissa laffs and shakes her head in wonder at the thought*
No, dear Constance…this is what a real poem, a grown up poem looks like!! Just wow.
Still falls the Rain— Dark as the world of man, black as our loss— Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails Upon the Cross.
Still falls the Rain With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat In the Potter’s Field, and the sound of the impious feet
On the Tomb: Still falls the Rain
In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.
Still falls the Rain At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross. Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us— On Dives and on Lazarus: Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.
Still falls the Rain— Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man’s wounded Side: He bears in His Heart all wounds,—those of the light that died, The last faint spark In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark, The wounds of the baited bear— The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat On his helpless flesh… the tears of the hunted hare.
Still falls the Rain— Then— O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune— See, see where Christ’s blood streames in the firmament: It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree
Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart That holds the fires of the world,—dark-smirched with pain As Caesar’s laurel crown.
Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man Was once a child who among beasts has lain— “Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee.”
I do shed tears, these days
(and nights…it is strange to wake
and find the wet residue of sorrows
dried and digging at the corners of my eyes),
I also shed dreams too
(like tears).
I dreamed, last night
(last night…it is strange to wake
and find the dry remnants of dreams
moist and pressed, pushing into the spaces between me and my pillow),
I also shed tears too
(like dreams).
I think…yes.
I dreamed that I walked lands crying
and my tears fell on red sands glistening
(my tears glistening, not the sands, they lay leering, skulking, glaring flat and angry).
my tears
(the ones in my dreams, the ones with no shadow)
my tears on red sands sizzled
because I had no shadow, they had no shadow
(the tears and me, not the sands and dreams)
and then in that glaring sun unbridled, that staring star unfiltered
they (my tears) became pearls
of white
and ivory
and pink
(like the armpits of abalones, who also learned to live without shadows)
they
(my tears, not the abalones, or the red sands, or the shadows)
became pearls of My Mother, the Mother of Pearls
(born of tears shed on red sands glaring, tears glistening and without shadow)
and then I saw, Her (not shadows or sands) walking there,
sowing in tears and reaping in pearls with nary a diamond in sight
(because diamonds have shadows and slinky songs and glittery platinum brittle best friends)
and She turned to me, She bid me pick them up
(the pearls, not sands and shadows)
and take…eat…and I did and where they lay the sand was gone
(like shadows flee daylight)
and green grass jumped lush into my eyes with verdant glee!
And the pearls tasted like honey
(and clear thirst-quenching shadow-clearing life)
and the pearls became glory within me
and I rose up on glory, I rose up in glory,
glory within me and glory in the air
(and the pearls of my Mother, not the sands and shadows)
and I saw my shadow, distant and crumpled and pinned to the ground
for always by arrows and spears and the knives
of those children of red sand and shadows.
And just as I began to wake
I realized that ever would they gather there,
around that shadow pinned and empty of all save their vitriol and hate
while I walked free but achy across the red sands, with no shadow
between me and that stark sun except for the glory
that’s given by pearls plucked from green grass so verdant
that used to be red sand hot
on which was shed precious
tears without shadow.
So I wake, each time
(not to day, not in night, I wake to me)
I wake and realize I do not need a shadow
to stand between me and the sun and some something
to tell me that I am, I am.
I just need those tears
shed on sands red and glaring
become pearls from my Mother
to wrap me in glory and glory wrapped in me
and no shadow
my shadow forever
They stood there,
silhouetted against the sunrise
and rifles aimed, at me
silhouetted against the velvet dark
of dawning and birth and being,
silhouetted against that red brick wall.
21 guns, barrels like unblinking eyes,
black, flat depths unblinking too
and peering from their graves
in grim unfeeling determination
to put me in my place,
put me in my grave,
put me back with them.
There are 3 bullets among them,
the 21 guns staring unblinking and grim,
and they comfort themselves with lies
that they do not know who has the bullets…
but I do, I know, I see
the silver winking bright
in the unblinking barrels
once (Father!)
twice (Forgive them!)
thrice (They know not what they do!)
And then the lightning struck
in those volleys of thunder raining down
over my ears as my eyes went bright
and my vision streaked red and silver
in terror and tragic tremour and
violent shuddery release.
It knocked me out of my shoes
and pinned my shadow against that
smooth red brick wall, now pitted
three times pitiless and gaping,
and I felt funny somehow, floating there,
hanging light and airy, somehow too light
without my shadow, crumpled
and remaining nailed
to brick and beam
by palm and palm and foot
and those empty shoes, kicked akimbo
by my eager rushing exit from that place.
Right under their noses!
I rose up unseen
while they stared on
in horror and resignation
except for the three
who leered in hungry glee
and desperate jealous lusty thirst.
But for just a bit, I stayed,
to move from gun to gun
and kiss the barrels each one cold
(and 3 so hot and acrid)
and then I began to rise and leave,
when I heard some flat dead zombie voice say
“get that thing out of here and clean this mess up”.
I saw that it was one of them,
a former being who was
a current corporate walking dead
(but hey, see this company credit card?)
and dressed
in shoes and sunglasses
and lumpy
in the dawn’s early light
and I couldn’t tell
what was more offensive:
my shoes skewed
sideways and useless
or my shadow
pinned and unmoving?
I shed one celestial tear
and rose up on the sound
of 21 flat cracks still ringing
and I leapt graceful
on feet bare and light
from sounds of wrong
to sounds of ever right
and found my wings
midst the flurry of sound and fury
and flew away for good
to a 21 gun salute.
Hanging here,
this moment,
this drifty-floaty
timeless moment,
timeless
like the moment just before
a leaf decides to let go
but the tree doesn’t yet know it,
so it waits, the leaf, it waits
to leave and never return.
It’s this moment, still,
between determined faith and action,
between sharp heart felt questions
(like whether Godlovesme ortolerates me, or caresor hearsmy prayers or is even near?)
and dark deep-felt screaming
despair unquestioning running
ragged and burning in flames
undulating from faith to action
shoving hard against paralysis.
This drifty floaty
timeless moment
lingers, lurches,
lunges, becomes
that drifty floaty
timeless movement
torn loose,
tossed down
spinning down
pinwheeling down
and it drops, it drifts,
it breaks and crashes, it dashes
into a thousand brilliant colors
and a million diamond drops
each and everyone shouting forever
I was!
I was, in my birth,
and I am!
I am in my courage
and I will be!
I will be
in the sea
and its salty desire, in the dirt
and its brown gritty tang,
in tree roots drawn up liquid again
from the ground to the limbs thru the leaves there to breathe
and to fly up and shine
in the glowing deep night
in the twinkle and tingling cold there to
glitter and shimmer like silver elixir
for seraphim thirsty in splendour…
slaking the thirst of angels…
stoking desire in God…
then, now
someday, now,
hanging in this moment
midst the fragrances of hope
and stormy lightning-strike ozone
stark and fresh and scintillating
in the stillness of the moment,
of the drifty-floaty moment
before movement,
Okay, I just bawled my way thru this story…Oh Mama, please bless this woman for her faithful love of her son and of you. Please honor her for praying that prayer “Change my heart”, instead of wreaking havoc by climbing up on the throne and trying to change everything and everyone else!
all was hushed and quiet, so still that the fiercely beaten air fanned by that ruby throated hummingbird became a hurricane. her breath was fast and furious in crimson jeweled puffs darting, diving streaky panting gasps, her wings whirring, fluttering frantic roaring in the looming silence, in my towering still moment me so quiet here, so settled and so solid that Nia-gara Herself would whimper and under her breath would mumble terse and choked, reduced to churny tumble.
then a solitary cricket just erupted into singing and then nothing dared to stir dared draw breath or dared to move…
and there, in this space of cricket clamour, in the hurricane of hummingbird winds blowing but so far away on lost lamenting shores (in the edges, in the edges) and an instant comes, arrives
when a wave is born and rises up no longer sea but now itself and knowing time and longing to emerge and run forever to the moon and to the shore…
this kinetic stillness stretches in this intersecting moment touching time and touching timeless
from the whirring wings aflutter and the cricket in the gutter and Niagara’s jealous mutter
to this wave leapt up from clutter hanging on that crucifix there not yet broken by its futile try
to fly across the endless sky to kiss the moon and touch her golden placid face…
the moment…the wave
hanging
no more sea from which it heaved but not yet broken and unbalanced, not yet shattered on the edges
not yet fractured there forever to be that wave again… …never…
that one moment of moon passion and that rushing exaltation (in the eye, in the song, in the mutter of this matter)
and then the moment shatters and foretells a falling future and the wave loses its option has no way to retain wholeness and just slide back unobtrusive to the silver sea unbroken there to merge again with nothing and unknowing.
and the hummingbird is stricken in the sound and in the breaking of a moment and a wave in a hurricane of movement midst the singing of the cricket and the mutter of that falls and it darts away, is gone, trailing airy sangre breaths and the cricket falls asleep and Niagara is emboldened to again assert Her tumble and the hurricane is gone, yes the moment it has broken and the Voice of God has spoken in the quiet, in the mist.
but for me, well moments still string together into prayer beads slipping smoothly thru my fingers as I mutter like Niagara and I sing the cricket song with my hurricane-heart flutter, wings a-beating with such longing for another rising moment to arrive and to break over me in knowing soft moon passion and a promise of redemption and release to finally rise and fly away, my spirit panting in red puffs and exaltation when I reach the shore so broken I can be no more there broken…
until then, well I will live, midst the whirring, in the singing thru the muttering in the breaking on the shores of Golden Morning.
Constance, in general, I think that the stuff I am posting below is pretty good stuff…certainly my baby and me have experienced fruit in all of these ways and areas. And it is a good friendship guide as well, filtered for the obvi romance stuff.
So what about it? How are your relationships? Maybe this guide can help…and if you find a trouble spot, maybe you can isolate it and then dress it so it heals. Hey, when you get a sliver, just take the dang thing out, right??!!??? No need to cut off the finger!
27 Signs of a Good Relationship
We’ve all asked ourselves the same question at least once in our life: “Is this relationship going the way I want it to?” Finding someone unique, someone who stands head and shoulders above all those who came before can be an exciting prospect. It’s all too easy to cling to the hope that the special someone you’ve been seeing is actually the one you’ve been looking for, and sometimes it is necessary to think logically about what that person offers, and how both partners behave when in each other’s company. Here are 30 signs of a good relationship.
#1 You can be yourself
In daily life, we put up walls to block out the people around us, and it can be difficult to let our guard down once we find someone we genuinely want to spend time with. Often, relationship woes are the result of this internal struggle. Being yourself is one of the toughest things to do- not only in relationships but in everyday situations. We sabotage our own chances of relationship success when we shy away from being ourselves, and the mark of a great relationship is one in which both partners don’t even feel the need to alter anything about themselves.
#2 You are able to tell them everything
If a couple meets for the first time and they are comfortable enough, they often get a crazy, sudden urge to come clean and reveal all of their dirty little secrets. At some point, both partners will have to decide whether or not to succumb to this urge, and the choice they make can have a huge impact on the relationship. The type of impact it has can tell you a lot about the nature of the relationship. If both partners are able to open up to each other and reveal things about themselves that they wouldn’t dream of telling anyone else, it is an extremely positive sign. It means that they both genuinely want to be with each other no matter what. The mark of a great relationship is one in which both partners don’t even think twice about it, they “come clean” with each other, about anything and everything.
#3 Strong emotional connection
A strong emotional connection with someone is hard to describe in words, everyone experiences it in a different way and everyone thinks they understand it. It can elude many, slipping out of one’s grasp easily, and there are many things which masquerade as a truly strong emotional connection. But nothing comes close to the real thing and when you have it, you know deep down that it’s real. This is an essential part of every good relationship. If both partners aren’t fully committed to each other and don’t truly care about each other, then it is a waste of time for both parties involved.
#4 They’ve been through a lot together
Sometimes a person’s true qualities are revealed when they are faced with serious, perilous situations. Sooner or later, a couple will be faced with such a situation, and the way that situation impacts their relationship is a sign of how strong the connection is. Sometimes a couple already has a long history of hijinks together, even before the relationship began, as in couples who have known each other since early childhood. In any case, shared experiences between the two partners strengthen the relationship immensely, especially if they are success stories.
#5 They’ve rarely fought as in really fighting; their arguments are usually playful and helps build their relationship
Fighting is never a good sign, but sometimes it is necessary, and never is it a good idea to keep concerns bottled up without expressing them. Communication is key in any relationship. It is imperative, however, that the need to express oneself does not overstep the boundaries of communication into physical violence. People who truly care about each other do not inflict pain on one another. In some relationships, levels of passion run so high that people are driven to do wild, uncontrollable things. Sometimes this is unavoidable, although still completely inexcusable. As long as there is no violence or abuse whatsoever, a fight can actually build tighter bonds and prove to both partners that intensity is present in the relationship.
#6 They both can trust each other
Trust is a crucial part of any relationship. One could even go as far as to say it is the foundation of a good relationship. Without trust, both partners will be fighting an uphill battle until they resolve this part of the puzzle. Trusting someone means believing in someone, it means casting aside all doubts and diving headfirst into the unknown. This is one of the hardest things to do in any relationship, because it means risking everything. That is why only the strongest of relationships exhibit true trust, because both partners risk betrayal and heartbreak when they put their trust into someone, but they do it anyway out of complete faith in their partner.
#7 They sleep together
Sleeping together is an essential part of a healthy relationship, and has been proven to provide many health benefits. It has been shown that sleeping together reduces stress in the human body by reducing blood pressure. It also has been observed that people who sleep together get a better sleep and an improved immune system. It is a way for the two partners to reaffirm their interest in each other, reassuring themselves that there is still life in the relationship. If a couple is sleeping together, it signifies a strong emotional bond, trust, and true unbridled passion.
#8 They get each other
Communication is a key part of any relationship, but it is also necessary that the message itself is understood. There must be some level of empathy between two partners, and the mark of a great relationship is one in which couples can finish each other’s sentences and put themselves in each other’s shoes. Sometimes this can manifest in an eery, almost telepathic connection between two people, in other situations it can be more of an unspoken understanding. If at least a basic level of understanding is maintained between two partners in a relationship, unnecessary misunderstandings and worries can be avoided entirely. A mark of a great relationship is one in which a couple is crystal clear about each other’s feelings at any given time.
#9 They take care of each other
When a couple are in a loving relationship, they are completely devoted to one another, each hopelessly dependant on the other. In a way it weakens them both, and in a way it makes them both stronger. They cease to be two individuals and become one whole. They take care of each other because if one partner is suffering, the other feels it as if the pain were their own. Indeed, it is almost as if they both exist as a single body, and one does not allow harm to come to one’s own body. It is a mark of great endearment when both partners take it upon themselves to look out for each other and put their partner’s best interests first.
#10 They can rely on each other
A couple’s trust is truly tested when the need arises for one to come to the other’s aid in times of dire need. Actions speak louder than words. It is one thing to claim devotion to someone, and another thing altogether to actually follow through with it. Even the most unreliable, forgetful and inconsistent person will still pull themselves together for someone they truly care about. A mark of a great relationship is one where a couple has no doubts about putting their fate in each other’s hands, because both partners will always deal with their own needs and desires only after the one they care about is satisfied.
#11 They don’t really keep secrets
A great couple is always confident that they will have a strong connection no matter what. Fear of rejection and abandonment can sometimes lead to one partner keeping secrets from another. This fear is understandable, because one partner doesn’t want to lose the other, but in the end it will always be detrimental to the relationship. People who truly care about each other cannot stand to feel the guilt that arises after the deception of one another. When a couple keep absolutely no secrets from each other, it is a sign that they truly have faith in the strength of their relationship.
#15 They commit to each other
Unless two partners are truly committed to each other, their efforts to please each other will undoubtedly be half-hearted. To be considered a great relationship, a couple must be overjoyed by the feeling of causing each other comfort and pleasure. It must be a top priority. Commitment can also mean being unafraid to shoulder increased responsibilities and taking more serious steps forward in the relationship, like moving in together or having a child. Commitment is present in every great relationship, and it means that a couple is devoted to making each other happy and plans to continue doing so for a long-term period of time.
#16 They have pure love
Ghandi once said that the strongest example of love on this earth is the love between a brother and a sister. A brother and sister have pure love, they care about each other and it simply because they care about each other, there is no other factor involved. Pure love is not loving someone because they are pretty, rich, famous or visually appealing. It is the love of who a person is, plain and simple. It is the intrinsic value of a person’s soul which inspires true love. Great couples have a strong emotional connection with each other based on who they are, not what they are.
#17 They don’t really need others to validate their relationship meaning approval from friends/family
In the classic tale of Romeo and Juliet, two lovers from rival families fall in love and although their relationship is ultimately doomed, this is a great example of how two people who are truly passionate about each other will always find a way to be with each other, no matter what they risk and no matter who objects. A truly great couple will never put the wishes and opinions of their friends and family above their own and those of their partner. It a great sign when two people in a relationship overcome the opinions and objections of the people around them and persevere through faith in one another.
#18 They sacrifice for each other
A willingness to change things about one’s self, and to make concessions in order to please one’s partner is a sign that the relationship is a strong one. One should not feel the need to become a vastly different person in order to please one’s partner, or to spend lots of money on them, but in a great relationship both partners are willing to make sacrifices for each other. Sometimes this can end up improving both partners’ lives, especially if one is forced to give up a bad habit to please the other. A couple’s willingness to put their own needs after each other’s is a sign of a great relationship.
#19 They don’t focus on the past and when they do it’s more a matter of something they’ve accomplished
Couples who are truly content with each other’s company will always remain positive, no matter what has happened in the past. In a great relationship, two partners who are in good health will always be happy with the fact that they are together, and right then in that moment, that is all that matters. They count it as a miracle and a blessing that they have each other, and that feeling is so sweet that it makes them focus only on the here and now, the present. Often in great relationships couples are proud of the long road that it took to get them where they are, and count the path that lays behind them as further testament to the strength of their bond.
#20 They don’t expect each other to always be strong
A truly great couple can break down and cry together without fear of losing face. Neither partners tries to uphold a facade of being a superman or woman, they accept each other’s humanity and realize that life has its struggles, and that we all can feel low sometimes. A couple who truly care about each other doesn’t lose respect for one another when they see each other suffering, instead they try to understand it and help them through it. A mark of a great relationship is one where both partners have experienced firsthand each other’s weaknesses, and they have persevered with each other’s help.
#21 They ‘ve thought about as far as if their significant other is not around, they wouldn’t want to be around too.
Couple who are truly serious about each other often think about what kind of effect the loss of their partner could have on them. It is almost unthinkable for both partners in a great relationship to have to go through the pain of losing each other, it is not something that they even want to think about. This is because in a great relationship, both partners are such a huge part of each other’s lives that without each other’s presence their lives would be empty and meaningless. the acceptance of this sad truth is one of the things which makes a great relationship.
#22 They both appreciate each other’s flaws and bring out the best of them
It is often said that people are attracted by good qualities in other people which remind them of their own good qualities. On the other hand it is also said that people are repulsed by bad qualities that they observe in others which remind them of qualities they don’t like about themselves. In a truly great relationship, both partners are able to put these feelings aside, and instead focus on simply who that person is at their core, rather than what that person reminds them of. If in fact partners in a good relationship remind each other of their own flaws, this feeling is not met with reluctance but acceptance, and it can even inspire both parties to improve themselves and accept their own flaws.
#23 They don’t really try to make you jealous.
If someone feels the need to make their partner feel jealous, it is sometimes because they are not sure whether or not that person cares about them, and wants to see how much their partner will suffer after seeing them acting intimate or friendly with someone else. Other times, it is simply because they want to see their partner suffer and squirm. Either way, this behavior is not a hallmark of a good, functional relationship. A great couple is truly confident that they are desired by each other, and doesn’t feel the need to reaffirm this fact or prove it to anyone.
#24 They don’t take each other for granted; meaning each moment is something they appreciate.
One doesn’t simply get bored of a genuinely meaningful relationship. When two partners are truly captivated by each other, everything seems new and meaningful, nothing is routine. If the passion fades with time and a couple feels like they are just going through the motions, then the relationship is not a truly worthwhile one. In a great relationship, a couple may come to assume that they will always be together. Too often however, is the assumption made that this enables partners in the relationship to get away with all manner of wrongdoings and still be able to count on the one they care about to still devote themselves to the relationship. Truly great couples do not take the affection of their partners for granted, and will never abuse their partner’s trust.
#25 They feel like life is worth while
As long as two partners with a strong connection are in a relationship, life will always be worth living to both of them. If one feels dissatisfied or unhappy with their life and is currently in a relationship with someone, then the person they are in a relationship with isn’t someone they truly enjoy spending time with. A couple in a great relationship could be completely broke, going through the worst spell of bad luck imaginable and still love life, because in spite of all their difficulties they still have each other.
#26 They help each other stay grounded
Couples with a strong attraction to each other sometimes experience the strange phenomenon of being reminded of their true self when in each other’s company. It comes as a kind of heavy realization, that a couple only feels like they can truly be themselves when in each other’s company. Indeed, it can feel as though one’s whole life previous to meeting one’s partner was merely a false prelude to one’s true life. The mark of a truly great relationship is one where both partners feel at peace with themselves, each other, and the world around them when they are in each other’s company.
#27 They constantly empower each other
Couples that have a strong connection beleive in each other. Partners that are in great relationships never belittle or patronize each other, they take each other seriously. They might playfully tease each other or joke around, but it never becomes mean or distasteful. They are constantly encouraging each other to succeed and to try things which they might not believe they are capable of. A mark of a truly great relationship is one where each partner never looks down on the other. When people truly care about each other they compliment each other and constantly reassure one another of their potential
Constance…I have no words to express what this means to me…what is being said to me…both in the post and in the comments. I simply will repost this, and let you know something: each of you is a potential ally in someone’s life. I an so very blessed to have the one that I do, and she knows how I feel, who I am, and our welcoming, beckoning road…and thus for me to say anything more is inappropriate, in that the only legit words for to say are uh-MAZED and broken thank yous…55 years of loneliness is a long time.
You don’t get to decide the truth. Other people have their own experiences, just as valid. This is easy to forget. Your slice of life seems so large and unmistakable, like a mirage of wholeness from where you stand. But it is your job to know better and not confuse your small piece for the whole, even if you sometimes forget. Life is big—much bigger than just yours. This is the only note to self: other people are real. That’s all there is to learn.
— Frank Chimero – The Only Note To Self
At an event earlier this month, I sat reading over the only flyer available: an advertisement for The New Three Tenors. As I glanced over the neon page, I saw two sandled feet standing inches from where I sat. I found the feet peculiar, noting that the toes weren’t bare but layered with seamed stockings, and…
“If one man can destroy everything, why can’t one girl change it?”
— Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
“I do believe in an everyday sort of magic—the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.”
— Charles de Lint
Constance…what a great quote.
NOW: here is Charissa’s lil pea brain whirling round and round: there is a sweet and awe inspiring privilege in being caught up in this mystery, awake. And there is no loss, is there, if that is all we have…that connectedness inexplicable and synchronicitous. If there is only that, when we die we will be glad for it and made the richer as we found courage to dive in to the Mystery, the Mystic, the Hidden and the Made Known Without Words.
But my Q: Why is there such resistance to the idea that there would be a Personal God, Infinite in power and presence and horribly wonderfully finite in its involvement with us…and that God is so personal that it chooses to manifest itself in 3 persons, so as to be available to everyone of us…and then in that availability and pursuit, in that Quest for communion with us more arduous than lovers, why cannot They be the magic, the connectedness, the whispered voice, the presence?
I have never met anyone with a problem with the God who talks to me…literally. Either they love Her-Him-Him, or they think my God is just part of me, but a creative and wonderful and fairy-tale ought to be sort of “Charissa Imagination”.
Every person I have met who has a problem with God has been raped and abused and dehumanized by a god presented by evil people wearing masks and a name that their heart violently murders in each beat.
Constance…would you do a favor for me? Would you read the quote, and then imagine, what if God was just like that, and would talk with you, dialogue with you, listen to you, and then connect you with magic?
What if….
….well, then you would have met my Mama…my beautiful and wonderful blessed Mama Holy Spirit.
Deepest love, and written in tender crushed pain right now but bleeding gratefulness to Mama, who loves me
Listen, I loved my father. It was out of that love and respect that I split in two, so I could please him. I heard his heart even thru other things. He never bullied me like what you will see in the beginning of this lil video…but he was a towering figure, and his presence was writ over my life large. When the twist at the end occurred, a torrent of tears tore loose…and I could not help but wonder what would have been…could have been. I used to mourn and grieve the amount of time I had left…before I was at last released and set free from this double crossed body, betrayed by sin and betrayed by gender..but now? I mourn and grieve the time I have lost, wishing I had those years to live proper as myself.
I mean…bff…would that particular source of weirdness and strain and uncertainty that surrounds our friendship be present if I had the right body? I don’t think so…I think that after the oddity of how we connected so deeply via writing and then fell into our future and walk our our present backwards, navigating the folds…after that was internalized, it would be a casual shrug, and we would be free to function in our world as we women always have, under the noses and before the unseeing eyes of men who comfort themselves with thoughts that we are like cackling hens and chitchatting crickets easily satisfied with baubles, shiny things and trinkets.
But for me being me…the penumbra of ignorance that surrounds me colors everything, taints everything…i think i would die if it ended up impacting you harshly and causing you trouble in your life. It haunts me, frankly, and makes me want to flee screaming in the night “unclean, unclean!” Modern day leper.
Anyway, this video is very redemptive, and gives me hope…inspiration…to keep going forward and not quit, and pray that my pain would be transformed into someone else’s power.
But there are ashes from the desperate fires
We built frail fires from those brittle branches
And it is only at this place, in ashes
And we must choose the place that we will walk:
Regardless of the gods you say you follow,
I am never going to be “pretty” in the sense of how human eyes grown in the world in which I live perceive beauty. My only possibilities for beauty lie within my soul…in my heart…in my spirit…in that inner life that my spirituality and theology teach me is the truest reality anyway and the only one that extends eternally.
Idols stand resplendent in their regal good deed rags
This is that tableau displayed of our lost searéd conscience,
to be remade and molded, gripped and filled, to be enfolded
Eat and drink, remember! Then forget the past and rest within those ruins
to be made whole…
But we were young and sang
Once loose, we used it as a tool
it was the language of lament that cut us open swift and true,
I cannot fly like birds
… I am alive, and fiercely, joyously and gratefully so.
I do all I can to bail the rising water,
I groan in deepest cries of agony, of anger and confusion,
But now I face realities that feel completely overwhelming:
Well, my glance is not shallow or naive,
And you distrusted me!
You with your rivers merry and feeding your heartland
Oh Brazil! You never knew me!
Those long years ago I learned
But that was then, and here, now…these
I walked the old beach access road
Then I arrived at ocean’s edge
The sun, the sand, the sea
Still there, rusty, sodden, and yet
and in that place my heart should burn
“ya gotta let go!” she went on.
my faith persists 合縁奇縁!
I felt it like bones, the silence!
Whole lives lived and
So when was it enough? The silence?
I’ll never know here.
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5
I would most likely be dead before we found Him, but I said, if I was not dead, then I would give Him myself. HA, HA—a joke on the Mighty One—a dead King as a gift. So, I loaded my pack animals with food, water, and a large trunk full of burial spice—myrrh. It would most likely be used on me before we arrived, but if not, then I would complete the joke and give it to the Mighty One in the face of death, as a down payment for his dead King. My subjects lined the roadway and cheered us—some in jest and some in sorrow. Deep inside it was like everyone knew I was not coming back alive.
I do shed tears, these days
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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