I hear those glowy bones glowing,
those bones of mystery-menace bright
so dark inside their red cocoon
but white unto themselves alone
and full of lively light.
The blood of bones in oceans vast,
the breathing moon’s silent contrast,
earth sweats her dew cooling and sweet,
rising to meet all thirsty feet
and bones stirring at last…
To taste again of Love’s Birthright
and resurrection echoes loud
and everything restored, made new
from glowy bones Faithful and True
Bones blazing, Bones of Light
Tag Archives: Jesus
To All From My Past Who Read Here
Hi.
If you are someone from my past and you read here, I want you to know something.
You are welcome to read here.
If you are someone from my past, and you are genuinely open to learning new things, updated understandings of the ways that technology has revealed realities regarding gender and DNA…if you are willing to meet me…Charissa Grace White…and truly receive me as you would any human being you had met and were getting to know, then you are welcome to be in contact with me.
But know that my choice to transition is not up for debate…it is made and done. To debate that with you would be as silly as debating with you whether or not it was the right thing to marry the person I chose. So I will not allow this…I will not put myself at the end of your firing range to become your scapegoat for the social ills you so deeply dread.
And finally…if you are someone who reads here while thinking of me as that freak who is a “man” but is deceived and deluded by the devil and is now under demonic influence for thinking “he is a woman”, then just GTFU…ur dum. Holding this position is like boasting about how stupid, intractable and ignorant you are of the incredible body of literature on the subject. You ought to be asking yourself why you are so deeply upset over this! Why does it bug you so much?
I am by far a better person than I ever was before…more of what people have always loved about me and less of what people have always despised about me.
Just go away if you are in that latter category…I don’t care how long I have known you. The length of time you have known me is directly proportional to the ought you are obligated to in connection with me! You ought to be more compelled to read the literature…you ought to be more compelled to know the open flower and stop worshipping the tightly closed bud.
There is a male who flat out broke off a relationship that was over 3 decades old, because I “had crossed a river he would not cross”. He has had zero contact with me since. This in spite of how his actions violate the very gospel he claims to love. This in spite of the countless hours we spent together, the countless actions of service and love and support, the walking thru darkness on his behalf…
…clearly the issue is on him.
But I bring him up to tell you that his is the party you want to go join if you are in that latter category.
I am me…free…and flying. You can fly too, if you would actually take responsibility for your choices and your failures to choose…your fate is in your choice, and may you find surrender to Love as you choose…
That Eye Unblinking (A Holden Lament)
Last year a wolverine broke loose, came slashing & gashing, ran up & down
canyons & cliffs & crittering quick up tree-trunks w/such fierce red claws…
Snarling & yowling the haunting roar raged, moaned & cursed w/such
hunger, such fury, that flurry of wood-thirsty teeth insatiable, free from hiatus
& running heart birthed straight from Their Great Altar There which purifies
all things w/Holy Fire so freeing, so cleansing…wafting austere like pure
Incense arising, in billows & plumes & ash, ASH, everywhere & in
perpetual Wednesday, marking the Cross on all things there…within.
the fire had time to make up…
One Hundred and Fifty years to turn…and it was said to be
A Great Mosaic Burn.
At last to feed its need to cleanse a forest fat w/care, beneath the watchful eye
of Moses there, beneath his rod extended, as if the sun stood still again,
& trees grew up & great in grit & girth like Children of the sun, see how fat
they had become…See them, their indifferent eyes unblinking, safe, satisfied &
self-centered & all together, such a stand of forest land, secure, untouched…
so sleepy, nodding off with rusty Time’s tock-ticking Heartbeat softly crooning
to ossified great forest stands so very grand that didn’t know they needed
Severe Mercies to come with fire and hot kisses from the Phoenix.
It had not chosen cleansing
It did not know it’s need
for resurrection, for refining
For fire comes to cleanse & make new everything it can consume
& challenge all it cannot touch to understand that TRANSFORMATION’s
the destiny of every-thing w/the courage to crawl out from underneath
the letter & run from rod & leave behind the tyranny of typical to the flames…
& walk away from Moses, into freedom in liquid-gold fireworks,
free from the cares of the world that cling so fierce & so easily entangle us,
choke our lives in hoary growth & lullabies lulling us fast to sleep,
a Sleeping Beauty Bride on her bower of soft & easy privilege.
She like an eye unblinking
safe in her cloister so fair
deaf to Her loud Divine Dare.
And (just like that forest or Sleeping Bride) there amidst that red hot bloody
conflagration set another eye, a forest eye, unblinking sightless eye & woke up
wide awake in terror tribulation, hushed in dread anticipation & fear & with
helpless petitions arising, not like incense but like signals…smoke signals…
to Moses? To God? To the Universe Fire come down to feed? Protected by
roads cut w/care & foresight, that Eye Unblinking sat there in fright…
& Holden its breath, leaning against a wolverine dread come at last to
consume the dead, to rip that forest wide open, slash woods to crimson rags
dripping bloody w/flame & red flurries…
wrapped in silver sheets reflective, shiny
(or were they merely space age burial shrouds?)
It never blinked, that Eye, & all was shrouded safe, cocooned within
& underneath the rod & the Letter, striding secure thru the Red Sea Fire
escaping the sharp teeth of wolverine the Eye remained preserved amidst
a work that renovates the face & gives a skin-deep makeover, but leaves
the sleepy years untouched & undisturbed on laurels long gone brown
with age & loss of life though all appearances would say that Holden is
alive & well & safe from that destructive hell of fire & fear…yet none
could name that something still so desperately needed a root canal of flame!
for all the Who’s in Holden sigh
for yesteryear, forgetting that it’s
the thief that steals tomorrow.
And this year, one yr later in the same Unblinking Eye I rolled in on waves
& wind (Charissa means “Grace” but named “Char”-issa, “Ashy-one”) seeking
to drink of the life that flows thru a village untouched by anything
that fell outside Mosaic burn no longer shrouded outside but just maybe
mummy rags still wrapped so tightly around a heart perhaps long grown
so slack so sleek & o so fat just like that forest was last yr before God gave
a wolverine to rage, feed, cleanse, renew…I saw History on display, windfall
fruit rife on the ground & satisfaction ruled the day, familiarity won the race
and wore her shiny tangy plumy purple tinsel crown…
Golden Apples, everywhere and casual and everyone was on the in,
societal, and fire roads cut secure and ohh soo straight.
So I said Hi and reached w/blinking eyes that squint into the light,
oft times in fright of storms & lightning flashing forth…& found
my blinking words rebuffed by cool & hooded eyes that had seen it all,
eyes satisfied & cynical cus been there done that, ho-hum…done much worse
I ran aground on fire roads & that Moses curse of long ago still Holden Court
over long hearts that found consuming fire fearful, dreadful & to be avoided
at all costs by any means…& thus she stands this very day…Holden Village
on cusp of…petrification?…or on that hot edge of the Phoenix Way!
Holden, Eye Unblinking, ensconsed
in the forest, last year just as this one,
in a forest cleansed to living bone, and Holden?
I heard the Spirit resounding The Word that Fire must fall on a village that
mirrors the forest that kneels all around, She said that She has a fiery crown
& Holden is that forest fat & ready for Refiner’s Fire, Cleansing Burn that
resurrects those vital dry bones waiting but she must choose that fate & blink
Yes, we must welcome Fire Fate from God & let the dead wood burn,
& blaze, & feed Mosaic Ways to the flame & trust the Good God of the Fire
to keep her safe underneath Their Name & resurrected, cleansed, renewed
& ever delivered from stain & shame!
Let the rod be cast into the fire hot and be consumed!
For Moses died on Southside, short of Zion is his tomb!
And find us Lovely on the Northside, once again the Spirit’s womb!
Letter cannot take us there, nor blaze of past great glory fair
We must eradicate those roads of preservation that we wear!
They trap and capture us and cut us off from Grace unhindered
so we, like the forest, turn dull and dry, reduced to deadwood’s kindred!
I see Holden cleansed by Fire, and crying Holy tears when Holy
Spirit has free reign again to fall in fires that restore
and interrupt Sleeping Beauty’s snore and dead trees gone,
that speck removed and blinking eyes await the Dawn!
And animals can come again now welcomed
and bathe released in Grace and Precious Holden,
His Eye now blinking free and shining fair in Jesus’ Face.
Oh Holy Lightning Strike like Griffin Swift
upon this yearning heart in desperate need
of Your Mercy Severe, Your Holy Gift
Give us Grace to Find the Phoenix-Way!
To rise in faith from Ashes and from death
to self and self reliance, come what may!
On resurrection wings and Spirit’s breath
alive again and all is well this night
that breaks and shatters with the rising dawn…
and not a single fire road in sight,
and what will be well it shall simply be
and what will not be well it will be gone!
Come Holy Fire, we answer Your Call!
and All Reborn, and Love is All in All,
“Someday…someday the snow will fall!”
Taking Communion At Pride
In the 57 years I have spent on this planet, I have taken communion tens of thousands of times.
The most recent of those times was at Pride in Portland Oregon on June 19th, 2016…served to me by Pat Christiansen while a gypsy troupe danced to insistent almost militant drumming behind us…
I closed my eyes as I took the elements, just as I always do, and looked to Them to see Them, to taste and SEE that the Lord is good…and I saw the Sacred Flaming Heart Icon…pulsing…beating…THROBBING…in time to the militant drums, and I was certain that this is the heart of the Risen Lord who wears the Two Edged Sword and Eyes like Fire…
The Heart was pulsing…pulsing…PULSING…
There was a frame around the Heart, and it was getting bigger…and it was pushing against the frame.
The frame began to splinter…and then at last, the Heart gave a MIGHTY PULSE and burst the frame, shattered it and splintered it, and then grew bigger and bigger until it utterly enveloped me and I knew it was off to the far reaches of everywhere.
The nightclub’s name is Pulse. The city is Orlando…which means “Famous Land, Land of Renown” and lesser meanings of Times of Importance.
I find the entire experience prophetic and insistent…and I wonder…
…are you going to stay inside the frame? The Heart has left, departed…gone outside the city gates.
Are you going to sit and imagine Jesus coming to earth to kick ass on all the people you do not like…yunno, sort of like the Pharisees did and when Messiah showed up and punched them square in the conscience they got so mad they killed Him?
Or are you going to understand that God is stirred in Mercy and Compassion to the point that those things become the consuming fire of Light and Love and each thing they touch responds according to its matrix of being…if it is true it becomes pure and if it is not it simply is consumed.
Stand with The Sacred Pulsing Heart. The time is now.
If you wanna be in the “next move of God”, it isn’t with the so-called prophets and evangelists who seek after gold dust and commit adultery on a mass scale while the crowd has what amounts to a spiritual cluster-fuck.
No…it is in the highways and byways, where Mama compels to come in, and the Heart races to rush out.
Bullets Flying Everyday
Nightmares.
That’s how I have been…lately. See, someone asked me “How have you been doing, lately?”
Nightmares.
It was a common question asked in a common way. When I answered that Orlando had really shattered me, she shrugged and said that the world was going to hell in a handbasket and that we just had to deal with it.
Indifference mixed with derision that I was “emotional” and “unprofessional”.
And I flinched under a fresh hail of words which might end up being something else…let me explain.
Here is why I have had these nightmares of being chased, being hunted and slaughtered, being tortured and tormented and left to suffer and die:
Because this man took action in the real world as an avatar of what our culture throws every single day…words.
Every.
Single.
Day.
As you read here…people from all walks of life…you statistically are cis-normative and as such you swim thru the waters of our culture with the current, finding it easy to slip and slide thru waves of words which wash over you and pass downstream without even a scratch.
But that is not the case for me…for millions in the LGTBQIA community…for tens of millions of others who are not privileged…and ultimately, it is not the case for you.
Every day words are slung around by trigger tongues shot from missile silo hearts loaded with radioactive fissionable words and those words destroy over and over and over. But bodies do not drop to the ground right away and we think that there is no effect.
I have read hundreds of so-called christian messages that say God hates LGTBQIA people, that God is punishing us for what we have “sown” (but it is implied that God doesn’t punish a cis-normie cus they are not … what?). I have read people who are celebrating and saying they wish he would have killed more people.
In a strange way, I think this man was more honest about things than the vast majority of haters, because he actually did it: he actually took instruments of death, and looked human beings in the eye, and shot them down in hatred, in horror, in fear.
But you? You who use your words everyday on others and shoot them dead in the heart? You who sit three thousand miles away and use words to hurt and silence and kill? You who cast stoney words? You who use chemical weapons of mass destruction in the name of “hating sin” and call that “loving the sinner”?
You are him. And anytime, anywhere, any of us indulge our evil and hating hearts with our words?
We are making our Our Own Private Orlando. Our own little abattoir of blood and bone and terror.
I read a FB friend who was so eager to decry the so-called terrorists of radical Islam that she momentarily forgot to carry the slaughtered in her heart…a gentle and indirect prompt stirred her, thank God and to her credit she took down the post and remembered the true enemy…but I tell you this:
Every single slur, every single sarcastic remark, every single angry slam, every single troll comment is a bullet.
And I have nightmares because all this man did was precipitate into the physical world the death and destruction and rape and violence and horror and rage that surrounds me, assaults me, overwhelms me every single day.
Yes…I remember the days before I came to myself…and I was like any other typical white privileged christian who thought they did not hate anyone and yet made casual callous jokes and had no awareness of anyone different than me as a hurting human being…and I will always bleed over those years of blindness, for they indeed qualify me as chief of sinners.
But no more…and now I can see how each and every time christians say that God is punishing the LGTBQIA community with actions like this, and that God is angry and pissed off because They feel mocked and thus slap us down, and that we are reaping what we have sown when in fact we had nuffin to do with how we are made…each time this is the attitude? They have made the sacrifice of Love that Jesus made for us on the cross null and void…
…and they nail us up there…and they nail their shadow and sin there…and they are the ones who vent their wrath and fear and loathing…on us there…and they have made Jesus sacrifice to be in vain.
What I am trying to say is this:
Each and every time you speak in insensitivity, unawareness, privilege, hatred, anger, prejudice, and judgement?
You are the Butcher of your Own Private Orlando and the hearers of your words your victim.
I am gonna go out to the world today and walk in that hail of bullets, that storm of bullets flying everyday.
And when I show how they wound me? I am gonna be the one jeered at, the one others recoil from with the forked fingers thrust at me with the christian evil eye ward…
When you stop killing with your words, creatures like that killer will not have nearly the power waiting to channel as an avatar of a culture of hate.
Nightmares.
I am having nightmares.
I am a pincushion of death-words thrust into me…
Let us wake one another up, for the hour is getting late.
I Await Your Sacred Steps
I dashed this off…
well, actually it just
shouldered its way
from my soul
and forced me open
and muscled forth.
No…
it is not polished,
or even much good,
but it is insistent
that it wants to be…
just as it is…
unfettered,
untamed,
unedited…
on fire and fierce.
let its blood
trickle across your tongue,
down your throat to infuse
you with starfire unquenchable,
with the seeds of birth that come
when nebulas collapse
so that new stars
can be born.
Will you let
something new
and unkillable
catch fire
in you today!!??
Will you rise
up unshakeable
though ye tremble,
undefeatable though
ye weep?
Yea, weep
and mourn,
grieve and wail
on the mountains…
and drink this philter
as you pour your tears
like rain upon these bloody
sands so desperately needing
the touch of falling stars to ignite
the birth of light again in this dark night!
Carry this fire inside
you, Prometheus returning
to those gods weak and beaten
and frightened in a pulsing night
cowering before their creatures
unfettered and held hostage
to hate and darkness…
bind it to your forehead
bright diadem of Hope
and going past the fallen
crumbled thrones of old gods
doddering and wetting the bed
of their comfort and ease…
and hail
to the Halls
of the Risen Lamb
slain and shining ever
in Love, our Sun/Son/Lion!!!
We march
on Saturday.
We march
on Sunday.
Friday,
though you be bitter
and seem so final,
you are nuffin to me!
I have fought
thru 5 decades
of Fridays
to get to this
time and place.
And
I see
Abraham shining…
I see
Martin and Martin
there, glim’ring…
I see
Susan and Harriet and Joanna…
Joan and Hildegard,
Thomas and Peter
and John…
I see them,
a sea of those
gone before
who beckon,
exhort…
Yes, weep…
pour it out,
and then
TAKE IT UP,
your tears now
jewels of fire
and precious
and eat them,
living coals
feeding the fires
of new stars
in your souls…
I await you
in the streets of life,
and I shall never
be silent,
I shall never
stop or waver…
forward!!
Onward!!
We have come this far by faith,
and we shall not turn back now.
See the enemy posture…
covering that cowering fear
as we loom, our faces bright
and fair with Love
and Mercy and Justice
our diadems and Mama
and Jesus Avatar of Love Eternal
our Sovereigns…
I await you.
This is your time.
Come out this weekend, ye privileged!
Cast your crowns in the gutters
so they can find purchase and grow
and their roots tear down
the walls of Massa’s farm.
Come.
Out.
Ye.
Shining.
Chosen.
Singing.
Ones.
I await your sacred steps.
Unfurling From A Set-Free Throat
I still struggle to dig it out,
that splinter you shoved into me,
down my throat without so much as
a shot of whiskey or
a shot in the dark.
and you are so certain, sure
of how to walk the world
and all her streets unfurled
when really you are justifying
dwelling in your fear.
But you look so damn normal and together
while I am flailing in the maelstrom of myself.
Here is what you do to me:
Idealize
Exoticize
Misunderstand
Validate
Vindicate
Vilify
Victimize
Re-traumatize
Reframe
Take out of context
Murder mysteries
You lecture me, slay me with
hidden sneers and resurrect me with
empty scripts and steal my mystery…
and mysteries become stories
and stories become reality
and stories shape the mind
that tells and gives them shape.
stories about “them”
stories about “me”
stories about “you”
stories that isolate us,
separate and set us apart
from the world at large.
You simply have no clue of how
the mind can terrify, filled up
with anguish, upset, turmoil, fury,
the mind makes meanings out of shadows
and is too easily taught
to fear what it does not know…
And that is your biggest blindest blunder:
You do not know what you do not know
and thus you fear the healthy YOP
unfurling from a set free throat!
Your mind assumes what it cannot
make out clearly or take out easily.
It’s a survival tactic.
But it inhibits you from being open to learning.
It inhibits you from being students of life.
You’d be well-served to sit your assumptions down.
A Potent Surrender
Trusting is just such a powerful challenge
to lay down my life without knowing for sure
it will ever get picked up again…by…anyone.
a potent surrender to God (and to others)
that commends my only possession (that’s me)…
to the Hands and the Head and the Heart of all things.
A turning away from the will to possess,
from power and reflex to cling and to clutch
with brazen heart, hard face and bravado whistling…
afraid in the night of the Breaking Day Coming…
the willing embrace of a breaking that gives birth
to wholeness and health…well…trusting is just such
a challenge
Nomad Wanderings
Nomad…such
a lonesome word
a wanderer, thru cold
crowded tangy deserts
drifting, homeless thru
fudgy thick neighborhoods
traveler in time and yet never
home in any singular moment.
Feeling like
the darkened sky
could swallow me up
in seconds, under silent stars,
I feel the same way “Nomad” sounds
I am a wanderer,
a refugee in this
gulag archipelago
of google connection,
a stranger in a homeland,
a foreign and yet familiar land.
I have a suspicion
we are living but
as aliens estranged, from
our thin past, from
our strained culture, from
our oh so tragic country, from
our neighbors (as ourselves), from
our friends and family, from
our deepest self
and from God.
Nomad…
walking in the silence
of an anguished lonely prayer,
lost in the distraction that
constricts and consumes years,
hopes and dreams annulled
by all that alienation welling up
within us…and yet…
*there is always an “and yet”*
and yet we wait
estranged and encouraged
in hope that all is not yet
as it will be, we wait in hope
Hoping in that blue Promise
that promises are real and full
and yet we wait
and know that Nomad
can only mean there is a home
we wander from and
wonder back home to.
A Whole Bucket Of Water
three women
are left widows
Ruth
Naomi
Orpah
(hers a different story)
one left (missing tooth in the wind’s mouth)
one bereft (missing river in the bank) and
one rooted in the cleft (present)
Naomi without water
on fire with despair
Ruth without a plan
on fire in the air
choosing simply never leaving
just simply remaining…
there
no matter what the cost
allegiance to the weakest
boasting in the vulnerable
feeding the dessicated
and comforting the desperate
and calming those who rave
when women stand together
for the sake of one
no matter what the cost
they stand, they hold…they save
it reminds me of the marvel
the wonder and the mystery
of Jesus in humanity
at home in shared adversity…
we all of us “Naomis”
As Jesus walked among us
“the very least of these”
and chose to share our horror
and chose to face our death
and bears now on His body
the marks of His great love
He shows God’s solidarity
He is our loving Ruth
The Difference Between
the difference between living and dying
can be found in the difference between
the Grand Canyon and the Milky Way
Another way to say it is
mutual dependence
Living Mutual Dependence Dying
We need the solidarity of the reaching skies
in swathes of silk and shades of grey
to close that gap completely
all the way
Solidarity…
Mutual Dependence…
trump cards over torture and unbridled ego…
habits that engulf so many with such ease and lack of effort
Adversity sometimes coaxes out
the best and the most beautiful
in human beings but only if
the sky can partner them
thru the gap
between
that unrelieved thirst
that threatens to engulf
and the utter madness
of misdirected sanity.
Ah…and the skies like banners unfurl
The Difference Between
On Living The Gospel
It is not so much our slogans and statements, our creeds and commitments as it is the way we walk them out with our flesh and blood. Documents are empty hulls of potential…and every single day that we truly live those commitments we give them flesh from our flesh and blood from our blood.
The challenge posed by staunch commitment to broken people is that you then will have dealings with broken people.
This can be troublesome if you unconsciously expect that broken people will live and act unbroken. If you dribbled a crystal globe, and it shattered, and then when you touched a piece and it cut you or poked you, the challenge you would be facing would be full blown in how you reacted to being cut.
That is where the reality of creeds, statements and slogans truly emerges…the ones who react in shock or outrage or horror are the ones who thought that globe was a basketball. The ones who recoil in horror or anger or disgust are the ones who believed it was a soccer ball.
That is the distilled essence of walking out the Gospel: realizing that it is a message that attracts the hungry, the lost, the broken and it is not the creed which transforms but the living Presence of Christ IN that creed that does the work of healing and restoration.
Which means to live the Gospel is to be inconvenienced, to be confronted with wounds that stink and are infected, to change the emotionally and spiritually incontinent…and to do it in patient joyful tenderness.
Someone can make their point with stern words and terse actions…it is not hard whatsoever to understand a point that has been made…and someone else can walk their love with gentle hands and consistent presence, and then ask for whatever they want as the broken heal, and slings are discarded and casts are cut off and the lame begin to walk.
And then…deeper…closer…at the pulsing core…the revelation that is couched in those words from the cross “Forgive them Father…they do not know what they are doing.”
Those words have such compassion and understanding in them…they assume that most people would do good things if they REALLY KNEW the impact their troubling actions are having.
It’s such a good thing that we are coming to the place where we can even see that our statements and commitments and creeds have a unique calling to be expressed in our current climate…
it’s an even better thing when we count the cost…
it’s the best thing of all when we keep going and the word(s) become flesh.
Such A Long Way Home
I have such a long way home
such a long league of the sea
the last one, longest of them all
as I swim home to my True me.
I have come so far across
the desert sands so red, so hot
no water any where to dip
my tongue, my pen, my deepest thought
But here I am, the sand and sea
embracing in an endless dance
where there is both and neither here
as I transform in this last chance
to swim the promised depths, my home
in waters full of mystery
I have such a long way home
but I will get there, true and free
Afloat In Holy Black
it’s a thousand points of light
stark against the black
reflected in my eyes
refracted in my heart
a thousand thousand times
in gold, in yellow hues
embedded in the sable soft
stuck in molassess skies
amber warm and endless sloe
i feel the tête-à-tête
vibrate around me, in me too
and I begin to know
that I will never fade, burn out
or disappear in black
for I’m a thousand points of light
afloat in Holy Black
Meditations On Suffering
The journey difficult and hard,
black and blue and bitter cold
upon the road thru long days old
and vales of death and darkness.
In hardship and travail we walk
and most of us will quit before
we reach the end, and yet that end
is still a mystery so vast…
It strikes me that of all the ways
to make appeal to human hearts
They chose to magnify the cost
and left rewards as afterthoughts.
What exactly is Their point?
What is promised with this pain
and sacrifice…and…what? Comes next?
More mumble mumbo turbo trouble?
Fatigue and hardship hand in hand
in times of darkness shared in light?
Not the cheery words that humans
think they need and want, but turn from.
Jesus looked at His best friends
and told them that in this hard world
they could be promised suffering
and then He spoke a miracle:
“Have courage, My dearest friends,
faint not! For I have overcome
the world and all that is there in”
And pain’s denied sour last say!
Somehow the Son of God joins us
within it all and thru it all
So what exactly is success?
Is it simply winning? Tell me!
Because something shines beneath!
Something lurks Gold and Beyond!
I smell victory past defeat
and virtue is its own reward.
Sanctuary– For JD
Remember Litter-Mate…the fact that they other and police you affirms your authenticity!!
The Song Of Loss And Gain
Steeples and graves stand marked in memory,
by a crucifixion making way for the last to be first,
and the guilty pardoned, making way for
the creature and The Creator
(the Dying/Living One Living/Dying,
dying/living here, within me too,
I who lack in every grace
to just die already,
so full of Great
Grace to live
always)
it’s a sign so mysterious and standing
at the core of history the core of the world.
CORE:
suffering,
death, tragedy,
and sad sorrow He
(Supremely human He)
submitted willingly hanging
doggedly broken and bleeding
holding our infirmities in
His bloody Holey Hand
(He’s Got The Hole
World In His
Hand)
it’s a gift of forgiveness
and assurance, depiction
of the depth of divine mercy
and hope of God and us.
Is this querulous song enough
to quiet restless running thoughts
and ease unanswered questions’ ache,
that burn so cold in hearts laid low
in suffering, hearts whose hope is seized
and despair left laying in its wake
(suffering-wake)
But we must carry willingly
defeat and thirst and emptiness
through to the end of darkness, to
the end of self, and to the world’s long waited end
bringing meaning to suffering and peace to hearts in pain
in this symphony of blood
in this song of loss and gain.
Advent Poem: Seeds of Sorrow
The end of exile and darkness
began at the manger of Jesus,
where seeds of sorrow sprouted
(sorrow Theirs and ours)
in Joyful Birth, and drawing
near to earth from heaven
as angels’ song is hushed
in holy hesitation
as Jesus Christ is born.
He, God’s seed of sorrow sown
into the earth in Hope
of such Divine rejoicing
and harvesting of many
children returned Home
and exile at last over,
that exile self-imposed.
My Baby Loves God Like A Boss!
My Baby loves God like a boss!
She ain’t no red-light winker
or Fleet Street wanker
when it comes to
loving Them, HELL NO…
She’s a street walking swinger
as long as that street glows golden
and is called The Way, or just plain
Beautiful, or if that street is a market
and she will buy Their wares…
pearls here, pears there,
peas and poultry right next
to peace and praise…
Ahhh…
My Baby loves God…loves God like a boss!!
Advent Poem: This Waiting Time
Sometimes frost grips limbs
once lean and limber in the wind
now long grown stiff and creaky
and I hear them crack and groan
in those sticky clutching fingers
cold and frosty, fingers
cold and frosty.
Sometimes ennui (cold)
grips my soul (grown old)
and in its grip I groan
(groan old) and my soul
(my waiting soul) runs
around my heart and
around my heart
as the clock’s tail
ticks and twitches, chases
its tail like a cat relentless,
(useless) and that (waiting)
that frosty cold difficulty of waiting
remains there clinging tightly
in the fading day.
But Advent…
Advent
Advent comes again
and gives her gift.
In the cold and dead of winter,
trauma seems to sting much deeper,
and healing for the broken parts
of my life…and the people that I love?
Seems so much harder to obtain…
When it comes to these things
things so staggering and important,
healing, peace and goodness
on the earth, freedom from suffering,
well…waiting is hard, so hard and painful.
But in these moments I’m remembering
I’m troubled in soul and looking
for something transcendent, greater
than the hurt and pain and suffering,
something, someOne warm enough
persistent, faithful, warm enough
to breathe on us
to break the ice
and give us life
Long familiar sweet hymns play
wherever I go, I remember
I am poor, imperfect, waiting for
the God Who comes down,
Comes Down, God With Us
Emmanuel! Hosanna!
In the Highest Holy Fire!
and I feel again
the gentle nudge
of a knock deep
at the door
of my small
and icy lonely
heart.
Advent is the time of waiting
waiting for the One (the One)
Who embraced body, embraced sorrow
Came to show us all the fullness
of just being home, present, and real.
And we are long reminded in
our cold dolorous longing
what we’re longing for actually
a Who, Who, Who we long for,
God…always coming nearer to us.
I have found a place
inside (in Advent, inside you)
that place where once
you die, you…
you come Alive…
A place where pain
and pleasure weigh out
just the same
and all that’s left
is only Love,
And every sorrow touched
by the wild gold Promise
that in this very place
(of waiting)
Jesus has been born
(is born)
and will be born
again and again,
and again
breaking thru
that icy grip
thawing out
our longing hearts,
melting all
our sin and deaths
so we can
laugh again.
If It Were Not
I remember a time
when it seemed
quite obvious to me
that God was
what I wanted.
God-shaped vacuums
hearts restless til
they rest in God
the Holy God of faith.
But did I dare to sit
before this God
without this mask
(the one I didn’t know I wore)
is this longing
in and of itself
an assurance
of God’s presence?
What would longing be
if it were not?
Advent Poem: To Go To Bethlehem
Uncanny, peculiar,
uncomfortably strange,
I tend my fires and tell my story…
the story of
this quirky girl
overly-intelligent
and stuck in time
that is not time, so
unreconciled to time
so bound up in its realm.
I am strapped there
on Your wrist (watch)
a condor in a cage
passing from quick present
to some furious future
and thus so fast becoming
dim, and dark, and past
and wondering if I am
ever? present?
ever a moment?
ever a significant occasion
or an immeasurable quality?
I want real time!
time which breaks through
with a shock of joy
like a leap into Crater Lake
on a snowy New Year’s morning,
time where we are completely
un-self conscious and far more
real in some eternal now
I thirst for a moment jeweled!
a moment
so sweet or magnified
it seems to stop time
but doesn’t because time
becomes a point so limply moot
and thus no longer dirty moat
between me and my true self
And here I sit, beside time’s bonfire
and sparks fly up
and away so quick
to join the stars
and glimmer and
I poke at this fire
hot and tender
and tend it…
with my tinder
and wonder how to be
here in this already
and not yet, between
That Eternal Now
and this one,
and the One
Who There Inhabits?
wonder how to be aware
of life while I am living it?
wonder how to limp courageous
and relinquish all control
of self and self awareness?
wonder how to laugh courageous
and look for glory
in the storied
wonder of the ordinary?
wonder how to live courageous
and be surprised by One
who dares draw near?
wonder how to love courageous
and take off rings and watches?
I burn calendars and open
my heart uncanny,
strange peculiar…
to see eternity in
the midst of time
to go to Bethlehem
today and everyday
in this time and place
where glimpses of the eternal
come quiet, unexpectedly
they come and they upset
our every notion static about time
and all we discover there within.
I open
my Uncanny Peculiar
Uncomfortably Strange Heart
to the story of All and Ever
ending Never
I choose
to live somewhere between
the already and not yet,
caught and held
by the One who
dwells within Outside.
And so the fire burns away the moments
And we must choose our portion:
whether here we tarry or if
we choose to journey
Pregnant by some God
To Go To Bethlehem
My Peculiar Love, Arise!
Look up, arise
my Peculiar Love!
You tumble still
wracking rocks
wrenching ravines
clawing cliffs
and scratching
with nails broken
and bloodied in the plunge.
No…I have not left
your side, your side
(it’s only bruised, Love)
so vulnerable to that lance
and the stinky rough
warhands of that coward
masquerading as a shepherd
covering for a rapist
And on that note remember
He who lays by your side
He who took the lance
He who went all the way
coming to common terms
with loss
blind as wind…
But I float now…see?
You will too soon…
And this is waiting…
there…and so I lay these words of care
upon your lips like mountain blood
white and clear and clean and cold
to slake your thirst with sop
(not hyssop)
of beauty, healing, Promise…
Oh my Love…my Love Peculiar
the day will come to
Arise
and join me in the Liberty
you prophesied when you spied
your baby’s heart eternal.
Mud-Spittled Eyes On A Rainy Fall Sunday Morning
Mud-Spittled Eyes On A Rainy Fall Sunday Morning
It’s the glory of eyes,
being blessed to be opened
with mud sweat and spit,
blind eyes become other
and seeing What others
insist isn’t there while
It pulses bright-brilliant
and shining with Glory…
the eyes tell the story,
it’s the glory of eyes.
And the glory of hearts,
jumpstarted by Pain
descended from heaven
to bleed on the earth?
It’s the glory of hearts
to demand that blind eyes
become windows of wonder,
pried savagely open to
that fire Burning
Behind the Beyond!
And thus all my ancient
inadequate questions
about life and death
shall be visible now
in my yearning mortality,
here in the midst
of the dark and the light
all surrounded by Light
and glowing with Glory
and glad in the grime.
And the Kingdom come in
looks into my heart-windows
thru mud-spittled eyes
at this Mystery Landscape
this Numinous-Journey
of Startling Story
(we are Their Mystery,
we’re Their Fire Burning,
we’re Their Numinous
Shocking Startling Story!)
That’s the Crux of it!
That’s the Implicative Crossroad
where heaven meets earth
and earth defines heaven
and we’re given eyes
(our very own crossroads)
to see things Beyond us
True things and Real
even though there are
tears in these
Mud-Spittled Eyes
on a Rainy Fall Sunday
Morning
The Crucible of Grace
If you seek to extend grace and love to cover over a multitude of sins, the worst thing you can do is undercut that extension by talking about it and pointing it out. Right?
This weekend has been excruciating, because the long-awaited and much dreaded article outing me to the entire world was published. And I am letting it stand uncommented on, because the person who wrote it apparently needs this as they deal, process, and move forward in becoming.
But it is awful having my voice stolen from me…it is awful being portrayed as a cruel caricature of who I am and who I was…it is tragic to see the consequences of what I chose and lived twisted so tragically as life spins on by and the gravity of the Fall pulls everything to that fierce collision with nothingness…and it is heartbreaking to see the person that I literally would instantly die for, right now this moment, if it would restore them to wholeness, flail around trying to recover their bearings and watch as they grapple with emotions and choices and basically just suffer a sort of death process.
The place this article was published did not contact me (though if they had, I would have said to go ahead…my loved one needs to speak unfettered)…the things that were written, well let’s just say that one person’s account sounds right until another person in a situation gives their lived experience, and then things are usually a lot more complicated and delicate in determining “what happened”.
Mostly what happened? The binary. The binary punished me from the beginning of my life, it trapped my parents into seeing me as someone I wasn’t…it tore my soul in half and left the only option forward for me a dissociation from self and adopting performance as my currency and agency in the world…it left a bloody gaping void within me that never ever could heal, and in which the Love of God was sufficient, but only just…it led to the birth of children who deserved more and got less in spite of me trying to give them everything…
What happened was a flawed imperfect person full of hope and love and wanting only to have kids and love them and raise them up into life did her best in the skin and role of a man…and is now vilified and excoriated for this…what happened is that I was born in a time and place and culture, and practiced the things that I thought were right and true and proper, and those so at odds with what I know now, what I matured into, grew into, and yet how does that undo things that happened 30 years ago?
And what happened was so much pain in my decision to transition that an entire narrative had to shift to account for the horror and the loss of a father…and I read of things, and am painted in ways that just do not match up with what I lived, what I remember, what emails and letters say to me, what other people who knew us and were around us a lot recall…
What happened was my dysphoria and depression and despair did indeed affect my heart and soul, and that affected everyone around me, and likely was the metaphorical equivalent to belts and abuse so does it really even matter if I never did the actual things I am accused of doing? Actually no…it doesn’t matter that I never did them, because it is clear to me that I was them…poisonous, toxic, radioactive, damned for being absent and cursed for being present and above all accountable for every last ill in those lives so precious to me.
I never really understood before why God’s answer to the horror of the Fall was to come as Jesus to this world, and suffer and die…I do now though. Because there are no words that I can say that would explain it, justify it, make it right, make it better, disappear it…all I could do would be to simply die in their place…
…and if I could do that, I would want it to happen hidden, without anyone knowing, and the provision of that death simply being wholeness and happiness for my hearts…
I love you, hearts…I will grieve until the day grief itself is satisfied and all things are made new. Say on. Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you must.
I only ask Mama, please hold me close and sustain me in Your Love.
Least Of All The Past
Mostly, people don’t realize
time is a living thing, a tree
whose roots stretch back
to the beginning (and before?)
whose branches reach high,
broad and all around into
the “what-is-coming-what-may-be”
and we the fruit hanging there
swaying in the breezes
of the breath of Jesus
and Mama at His side
and all creation spinning out
inside this circle dance…
see, the past flows up, into the future
the future slides down, slides deep
sinks into the roots and makes its
transformations silver, shining
or is reclaimed and overcome, choked off
and laid, still born into the red dirt slick and packed.
and fruit? tossed and kissed in space and growing
in the currents from beneath and from above?
fed by rivers subterranean, drinking from
the rain that falls down from the clouds
of all that lies ahead…
we fruit are sweet, or bitter, or savory
in the grip of God and how the past is eaten
does predict the future…
but what the future holds
can quickly change the past
in just an eyelash twinkle
and we all are changed!!
Ahh…I hold to the past
and cling tight to my future
and throw my arms wide to the sides
and hug all “what-may-comes”
into my heart so soft, so strong
and thus shall my heart ever sing
the song of great becoming
and the song of all forgetting
do you get it now?
nothing is “just itself”
nothing at all,
least of all the past. 
As Is
The sounds it made were bold, cavernous,
an opera in a wooden box.
The grown ups said this was an early model
and it was in mint condition.
They spoke in hushed tones.
A perfect treasure, a magnificent and flawless toy.
It was not sold “as is”…
“As is” marked the clock that had stopped ticking,
or the rocking horse that had a crack in one of its legs.
That label also conveyed a certain sense of defeat,
a lost cause—a treasure bearing some distinguishable,
irreparable flaw.
I have always felt “As is,”
that label covering over
the tag inside my collar
that says “As I long to be”
and the treasure of me
going awry…in only a matter of time.
Well, thank God
They delight in “As Is”
rather than sacrifice,
They dote on broken spirits
They comfort contrite hearts
and will not despise the humble.
“Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows…
But he was pierced
for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities.”
Isn’t it strange
that we who are saved
by One who was broken
should struggle in the presence
of brokenness at all?
we are never nearer
than when we come
with nothing in
our hands to offer.
And “As Is” gives a certain hope,
for in this recognition of brokenness
we see the promise of
wholeness.
Catacombs and Caverns
I heard caverns deep behind your words of wonder.
I heard water dripping softly from wet ceilings
in those hollow places that you talked
so gingerly around…I heard your words resound,
your words of wonder…
in catacombs within so dark with dying
and dismal longing smothering and sighing,
the death to self and terrible becoming
in places of deep grief and self-discovery
those spaces once full, quick became so hollow…
I hear your hollow places faintly filling
with sorrow bleeding, and thus filled becoming
drained, emptied in the lonely tearful crying
that hallows fearful places looming darkly,
places of slow death so severely emptied,
bereavement fresh yet ancient,
everlasting and then grief become
dark resurrection hinted at
in every birth brand new,
in every dying….
I found your trails familiar, well worn, hidden
so deep within the kidneys of your words
and yet those trails well known in rising darkness,
(a left at that root ragged there, then quickly
around that rugged rock jutting sharp right here).
I have been walking word roads too, becoming
and finding that my caverns dark and thrumming
catacombs full, then empty, full then empty
more times than I can count or e’en remember
and I wonder in such a holy horror
when my wonder became wander…wander…wander!
Yet I am here! Alive and breathing! Singing!
I’m here to tell you, it gets better, Darling
But only on this singular condition:
the losing of your everything in dying
and thus it is
you can be born
again and live
so lively new,
again.
Today, as I sit, listening to your heart, Dear
I look back at what I have lost…oh my God!
The stuff of Titans, losses heaped and horded,
my trinkets, treasures tossed, honors awarded
all tumbled in the twilight, gleaming dully
in the hot noon listless sun, laying there lifeless
and in the evening gloaming calling mutely
midst catacomb become my living darkness,
that cavern now my womb filling with wonder
all finally lost…and now? And now…The finding…
truly nothing
can compare
to the all surpassing
wonder of a world
made brand new
and my
Catacombs and Caverns
filled forever,
never failing, filled
and brand new
every morning,
every mourning
every warning
made brand new
and full of wonder
full of wander
full of You.
To The One Who Seeks My Faith’s Tender Throat With Teeth
I will never turn back.
I will never not Love God…why do you keep making that a condition?
When God has chosen (for what reason I know not, certainly not based on any merit I have, being the worst example of a human being that has walked the planet) to reveal Themselves, Their Beauty, well…
…the one to whom the revelation is given is slain forever…wounded forever and will forever bleed
love
and love
and love and love and love.
This is not about me, or about righteousness…it is about adoration.
I shall always always love Them, for They are Good and Kind, Clean and Pure, and have no shadow or smell of evil in Them.
If me renouncing Them is a condition for you, then you might as well go rave at Kilauea, go worship Krakatoa (if you can find him, blown apart in his own powerous pouty poofery)! Go lay hands on gouts of liquid rock, let them run through your fingers and clench down their flow and see what happens…
your flesh will not burn nor melt neath their heat…for you are ice and icy, austere in your inviolate Olympus of self, and I find myself cast out of your heaven and consigned to your outer darkness midst the sound of your gnashing teeth…
But you have thrust me deeper into that side pierced and bleeding…you have pushed my face into His Heart Bloody with Boundless Love…you have cast me on my Mama’s Breast (the one for me, contained in Her deeps, She: El Shaddai, the Many Breasted One with place for whosoever will…even you, dearest, even you…no…especially you).
I am my Beloveds’ and They are mine…it is by Their Hand and Word and what can I do?
To even renounce is to affirm for I use the Voice They gift to utter forth a word and thus it turns and leads me home again…
I will never
EVER
turn from Them, for with Them have I trusted my soul and I shall seek Them all the days of my life.
And the rest of you…who think that I have fallen into “sin”, into “sexual perversion”, into (you don’t even know, you just “know” it’s bad and tragic)…to the rest of you?
I cannot convey to you how truly irrelevant to life and love your gossip and gibbering is. It is as consequential to me and my fate in the Hands of the Lord God Almighty as a flea is to the ocean.
I love Jesus and follow Him, for He has accepted me and declared me His own and worthy.
I love Holy Spirit, blessed Holy Spirit, my Mama who calls me Her own and instructs me in Her way.
I love Father…who is good and kind and generous and forgiving and always always smiling on me in the darkness.
I care not if you read this and judge me…don’t you get it yet? My faith is not about you, and it never will be. It just isn’t. I no longer live to try and impress you, or please you, or deserve you.
I do not require you to say or do or believe or be like me in order to connect and laugh and love and live…why do you lay such requirement on me? Because you will never get it.
I will never leave Them. Never.
Found, at last, and in Them I shall dwell forever.
*All others, forgive this lil soliloquy…it is not for you unless you know it is…nothing to see here, move along quick*
From The Writings of King David
This.
Gives me hope.
Always.
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise.
Eternal Continuum (Part Two)
a central point
lurking somewhere
between nothing
and all—
and infinitely far
from understanding
either…
blind to nothingness
from which
we flashed
at the call
of Fiery Lips
and numb
to the infinite
glories that engulf
and hold us.
this point unchangeable
this chameleon point
containing all contradiction
and inconsistency
(desire to be a friend
the bent to manipulate friends
the being of a neighbor good
the compulsion to walk away
cold hearted without helping)
this point,
this tipping point
has honour enough
to erect the head
of the poorest bum,
and shame enough
to bow the shoulders
of the greatest king.
that Point,
that Mediator
of Merciful Hope
(drying the tears of a broken world
reviving the Image of the Divine within
overcoming the enemies
of our Death and Sin)
Sure, grounded
obviating and containing
all contradictions
in this point
that point provides
the only grounding
and offers hope
for the contradictions
within, and more
than mere hope
for escape.
That point redeems the tension this point is.
We have born
the image of
the man of dust.
We also will
bear the Image
of the One
in Heaven
overflowing
with
thankfulness.
For Elli
I have become aware that there is some good traffic for older poems/posts.
I also have had the genuine blessing to cross paths with a true friend at distance, but close at heart, my friend Elli.
I have decided that I am going to be re-posting some of my personal favorite old poems, to make accessing them easier for the traffic…but the real reason?
Jus mostly for my friend, Elli…may you find blessing and peace in some of these, and may you always have the faith to await the sunrise, and the courage to lift up your eyes to the mountains…
Love, Charissa Grace
With that…here are two…
The First “Contemporary Christian Music” I Ever Heard
I didn’t even know there was this genre of music, and shortly after Mama did some miraculous things in my life, I heard about this concert of these dudes called “Lamb”…and I was like “what the heck, let’s go”.
Well, I started to cry about 2 minutes in and wept the entire time, just so moved by their down to earth love of God and love of humans.
If you put this on and let it play, I think you will be glad you did…
Bird In A Golden Sky
Constance…in spite of the betrayal, in spite of the abandonment, the lies and distortions…this.
Just. This.
This is how I feel, like I just learned how to fly.
I am Charissa Grace, and I finally got here. I really did.
The Truest Transition
From the book of Job:
But He knows the way that I take;
When He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold.
Tattooed On My Heart
I have seen some gawd-awful tattoos
Oh, it isn’t the theme so much…
it is the foolishness of letting
a needle that is marking permanence
and making marks that will last forever
be wielded by a clumsy hand,
a hand unloving, a hand unkind
worse, a hand that simply doesn’t care
or even know to care or have a clue
what Tender Mercy is
(on the wings of a snow white dove…)
I am thankful for Their Needle, Their Words,
Their Implacable Mercies that zing
again and again and again
to render marks eternal
indelible on my soul, forever
and rend my skin irrelevant
because They have become
Tattooed On My Heart
I Call Bull Sh*t!
Constance, I reject this notion that is going around these days, as it is stated in the graphic below:
…the part about forget the ones who don’t treat you right, and love the people who do?
Are you f-ing kidding me??
That stampede of people running the other way? That is the stampede of people taking the easy way, the low way, the lazy and unloving way, running away from those that they will forget because they “didn’t treat them right”…
Ah.
And who will stand for you? Because to you, your “bad day”, your “bitchy moment”, your “lashing out in anger to cover up your grief”…?? That is you…not treating other people right, and thus they run away.
Except this stampede is everyone running from everyone else, and so no one runs together…after all, they might not treat you right.
And then we come to the last part…the part about it not being easy…
What in the f-ing hell is so G Dam difficult about running away? That is the path of least resistance!!
All the world loves Gentle Jesus meek and mild, the kind teacher, the good man, platitudes about him unending…unless you really listen to His Lion Roar Word terrifying. I dare you to listen to them…right now…and then join me on the front lines in this war of Love on the war on love…oh, and I have heard it said that the only words in the Bible that are trustworthy are the words in Red…and here ya go, oh ye of such courage and fortitude that you will dwell in the strongholds of cold love, words in Red for your imbibing.
May you become drunk on Love, and reckless enough to find your courage once again.
But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you. To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also.
And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who asks of you. And from him who takes away your goods do not ask them back.
And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise.
But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back.
But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High.
For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.
Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.
…Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into the ditch? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher.
And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye?
Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother’s eye.
For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil.
For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say?
Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock.
But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell.
And the ruin of that house was great.
Across the Rolling Plains of Time
I laugh like summer breezes light and airy
at those cloudy fulminators who, like Old Faithful
blow off sulfurous steam every 75 minutes, or every 75 years,
even every 75 decades (yeah, this tired rant is that old)
and froth and belch all bothered about how Faith
is merely an emotional crutch…(can I LOL in a poem?)
They are clouds who promise rain and then
just blow right on by bone dry, unable to accept
life’s difficulties, they, not I, are needing an escape
to another world, an other-world…it almost breaks my heart
in its sad naivety, foolishly blind and blinking hope in nothing.
Almost.
They call me blind, my faith blind? When I am someone marked
by an inability to accept (no, an unwillingness to accept)
the cruelties of this world as status quo…
I have taken my raw courage in hand to declare this life marred
is not the way it is supposed to be! We must live alert, aware we were
created for something so much more, so glad and so beyond!
It is the ones who call nothing something, who insist that life
without God is “freeing” and imbibe the fantasy that life
is of no significance and death is even less, who are blind and will
not see…and so they seek to dwell…where…reassured? With no one
there to hear, to answer, to see injustice done and judge accordingly?
(“Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”)
we attempt to dress such naked poor philosophy
in beautiful robes, but in the end we always find
it was all an act upon a barren storefront-stage.
Well, this Christian(neé) does not make her pilgrimage to new abundant life
by way of ambulance, sounding sirens on its merry way to some lost fantasy!
Quite the contrary! Golden glimpses of new life can be seen even now…
glorious gifts worth searching for as if for treasure prized and buried
or silver wink of coins lost in a house long needing a great sweeping…
We can live as people gloriously transformed by the Humility of Christ
Who, Grizzled Bison on the banks of those stinky threatening geysers,
rolls in those flats sulphurous, then gallops off unstoppable
Across the rolling plains of time, across the Rolling plains of time,
across the rolling Plains of time, across the rolling plains of Time.
I Will NEVER Not Believe
I will never not believe,
my dearest one, who, sitting there
in lashings out and shifting blames
and broken memory
and cursed names…
you hate me for most everything
and hate the things I hold most dear,
the only Things that kept me here,
for that you hate the most, I fear
for I did by Them to Life cling
and midst death’s horrors tune and sing.
There is nothing I can say
I have no avenue or road
though if I could I would,
and time thus slowed
to return to each and every time
to lay me down and pray the Lord
my soul to take in payment there
to give you wholeness now, my dear.
but to not believe? Never…
it’s not that I would not give you
the gift you think you need, I would
but I cannot, because They can
in “my life”, this dead woeful run.
No matter what is said or sung,
no matter every fist that shakes
or heated voice above the fray
I always wait for coming day
to shatter this long “marish night”
oh this is me, Childe of the Light
and I ever will believe
that Jesus will my pain relieve
and heal the wrongness of my hands
and gather all the scattered sands
and run them back into the glass
and help you regain memories
of glad joy, life, of you-and-me’s…
I will never not believe
I will ever just believe
while ravens pull my innards out
may this restore something in you
if there is anything called grace
may it give you back your face
and everything that got ripped off
restoring everything to you…
mostly I wish you had your history true
and shared together with us but
I will never not believe.
Never
If You Are A New Reader…
…I want to invite you to look back thru the months to dip into prior posts. There is a plethora of plenty there! Poetry, posts about a wide range of the issues faced in life that are poignantly illustrated by gender orientation, theological musings and spiritual experiences recounted.
You can discover who “Constance” is…and you are invited to join her if you wish.
You can definitely see growth and development in me, as I live and breathe in transition from a not-out but self-aware very dysphoric transgender woman who is perceived as a white male of power, position, and privilege to a more congruent and out transgender woman who is now regularly othered, policed, and yes occasionally even perceived as who I actually am and received in joy.
You will see the journey of nearly every transgender person who endures the loss of so many things, so many people, in the desperate quest to gain themselves. You will witness how this quest is defined by the defenders of the paradigm as selfish and self-centered…when it is far more about finding a fort of safety from suicidal ideation and death.
But above all…hopefully…you will find a person who is making the transition that every single human being must find a way to make: that transition from death to life…from works to grace…from self-centered ego-oriented pursuits to other-oriented sacrificial service.
And maybe, just maybe? That life motto of mine can at the end of it all be found true:
Yielded Vessel Yielding Blessing
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Much Love,
Charissa Grace
PS: The best way to investigate the archives of Grace Notes is to use the calendar at the bottom of the blog page…or utilize the search function in the right hand margin.
Chewing On That Stone
Prelude
I’m still caught on teeth, those yellow jagged teeth
surrounded by liver-lips drawn up and back
in such a snarl (or is it a sneer?),
such a scream (or is it a moan?)…those teeth broken
from chewing on that Stone.
You’ve been infected with Ginsberg disease
and you howl at Allen-moons for no reason at all
(No, I don’t say there’s no reason that you howl,
I said you howl for no reason), and that is why
you snarl and sneer, scream and moan
and gnash your teeth on Living Stone.
One
And me, writhing there and twisting, twixt your chewing jaws?
How does my blood taste? Like pusillanimous payback?
Like silver times 30? Like bright copper pennies
that make no sense…or something different?
Like strawberries in summer, cranberries in winter,
grapes in autumn…flowers in Spring?
Alas, you do not see those chosen chains that hold me there,
left wrist shackled, right hand extended,
left hand open in laughter, right wrist bound in life..
for there is room—and reason—for life and laughter…
and this you have not noticed, in your imitation howl,
in your false heroic snarl, your wild and bulging eyes
fixed ever on the chains you think hold me in jail
but are those bonds against which you strain and flail!
Two
Even in the air besotted by your breath,
your breath befouled by hurt and haunted by revenge,
there is Joy beneath that pain, a presence that is Present,
a winsome invitation all around us constantly that beckons
“Come participate, in spite of buried questions, be honest in conclusions
and philosophies you claim explain the past, present and future.”
You chained in pain, me in pain and chained, and rooted
by choices to remain…deep rooted, ever-grounded
in joy, in life, in laughter, wonder-imagination
as a child who can be startled by the One I’m looking for…
…and I stumble there, across it, flickering on rainbows,
on the razor’s edge and caught between the past and future…
and then it disappears as present becomes Brilliant Present
and then fades…into the next one (the next present into Present
it’s apparent as a parent and it’s hidden to a child),
this stark stripping of the clothes of coming future,
this discarding of the grave-cloth of the past.
Three
There is Wonder in this world, there is Laughter hidden here
deep within the very marrow of the dry bones long laid tender
in the ground to decompose, it remains, it ever-lingers
in the beauty, in the humor, in the unexpected joy,
in the child at play enraptured and delighted in each breath!
And it has a source, origin! Just as we do, there is meaning
to these fickle days that bob and weave
from logic unto laughter and then back again to wonder!
It’s the Image…and your railings and your rantings can’t deface it!
It will ever-shine so clearly, silver-startling against sunset!
It is resident inside you and it calls out to beginnings
in a loving Present maker who gives us immortal worth
in the image…in the image…in the Word become the Image…
Four
You are haunted by what’s happened, I am haunted by what’s coming!
You are chained by your distortions, I am chained by this great Hope
that if we lay our burdens by the streams of Babylon,
by waters dark with mystery, with nothing left to gain or lose
then merriment will come again, hauntingly…to waken us
and we will play again, at last, and make merry our hearts alive.
And so we come to where we started,
gnashing teeth and heroes chained
and villains caught on points of light
and the central Player in the drama,
Resurrected Son of God, fully human fully God,
and the ringing Invitation sounding in our desolation!
Five
We can set each other free, I set you free, you set me,
if we take the invitation of the Author of our story
and live full in our encounters, present in the desolation
drinking of the consolation that our present becomes Present
and the Gift is greater than the bitter rancid agony
of hope deferred and love-sick hearts.
And that door on which we knock? It will someday open for us,
swing wide and receive us Inside…Inside…where we will be Present…
So please come back from those fevered flights of fancy so infected
by the greatest poison ever known, the venom of a fallen Self…
seek and play, find and live, and be noble in the giving
of ourselves to one another new in every radiant dawn.
My Only Response, Ever
Constance…the timing of God never ceases to amaze. Events of Holy Week this year…events of great import and significance took place.
And on In The Grave Day, I heard a missive written about me, a little to me, or maybe indirectly all to me, I don’t know.
It was the worst thing I have ever heard in my life, and as such it chokes my heart. I guess what was ultimately most sorrowful was to see how deeply broken and in pain the writer was in spite of what were my best and highest efforts and intentions…and obviously woefully short of the mark in every single facet, bar none.
It cut off response, for it declared all of who I was null and void and all of who I am pathetic and weak.
Well, I left that missive in the grave on Sunday, and simply have no choice but to go on, forgetting what lies behind and pressing on to be more yielded, more surrendered, taking hold of Them Who have taken hold of me.
But I will comment in this one way:
I love you with inexpressible beyond understanding love.
I miss you terribly.
I am so sorry that so much of what I desired, intended, was received and twisted into this present snarl.
I get it now, Papa…why Your one and only answer to every question hurled in Your Face by Your creatures was to take on our form, and come to our existence, and be crucified horribly suffering all things in Yourself.
Oh Love…if I could do that, and give you back yourself I would do so and gladly.
Whatchya Looking at ME For?
“Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.
He is not here; for He is risen, as He said.
Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead, and indeed He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him. Behold, I have told you.”
So they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring His disciples word.
Reposting My First Easter Poem: 1980
In Hell’s Hollow Halls
I heard it, from the deep dark
rank with such fright
and masked in mean menace.
It woke me, from a sound sleep,
straight into stiff silent
screams bouncing off deaf night.
I listened, to the slow gait
shuffle shuffle slip late
and pondered what shade shambled there.
Then I heard, the slap of warm flesh,
bloody feet bare on stone,
cold stone worn slick and smooth
by great passing multitudes,
captives grim and without hope
bound for dungeons black and deep,
the sound of dancing holy feet
holey, bare, stepping light
stomping on a serpent’s head
as they walked down, down, down, down
over every cold hard stone
to the bottom to atone…
throwing open every door
shouting to all captive there
get you up into God’s Air!
And then the shuffle of a host
led forth from captivity
by a King in death alive
heaven inside death’s dark maw
plundering every taken treasure
sowing grace there without measure.
And I rested in this sound,
my heart echoed with each pound
on this day that He is crowned
with my past, successes, fails,
every sorrow past the pale
every shipwreck in the gale,
and I knew that at first light
I would place a tombstone bright
graven names there, writ just right
to show that I am me, not him
and that his life of sorrow grim
is laid to rest, its power dim
And in that grave I’d also place
the hateful words, a three-fold face
of judgement, lies and lack of grace…
and then tomorrow, when the stone
is rolled away with rocky moan
my forward path of grace is shown
and I will walk free without guilt
from that hovel judgment built
and live this life full, to the hilt!
I do not owe God anymore,
I do not owe you in your core,
I don’t owe 1, 2, 3, or 4
Because I am bought by that sound
of bloody feet on hell’s cold ground
So liberty in me abounds…
and thus I walk in grace
I’m free within my place
Delivered from the race.
Amen and Happy Easter tomorrow.
This Shocking Interruption
on my way in, fresh from the country,
to Great Jerusalem, the Holy City
to celebrate Passover, thinking of freedom
and feasts and those deep songs,
ah those deep songs, the deep songs of Zion…
singing of our God’s core act in our history
when our sins were placed on that innocent lamb
and we huddled safe ‘neath that thick crusty blood
drying over our heads on the lintel…
and dripping down over us…
But I didn’t know what this day held for me!
A burden offensive I did not deserve,
A shame I did not seek to bear for myself!
I was suddenly thrust in the middle of angry men
and wailing women rushing to Golgotha,
the place of the Skull and such sinister lack!
I was seized from the crowd! What the fuck!
Take your hands from me!
Who are these crowds and who is this crushed Man?!?
Lynch mob? A Riot? What! A crucifixion!?
Take that crossbeam off my back and unhand me!
Why do you hurt and defile me with this offense?
Oh…cus my skin is black. That’s it…again
Black and dishonored, blatant offensive
and reeking with less than, no station in your sight
you burden me with this beam meant for that broken king
staggering there right in front of my eyes
so bloody, so beaten, such shame and affront!
I reject your hate burden and wash my hands clean!
But the soldiers and swords at my neck said otherwise,
and I walked behind the condemned shameful shamble
who clearly was cursed and would hang from this tree,
dishonored by Rome, so repugnant to me…
and then back we went, outside the city walls
climbing that desolate hillside so distant!
Wrong place, wrong time, how did I get here,
walking behind this weak beaten Jesus
and my beautiful Passover torn from my hands
in stark interruption and shadows of crosses?
There I walked, behind him and lost in my thoughts
and I ate the dirt gritty outside that great city.
Then Jesus stopped, His chest heaving in agony
and dripping blood, He turned to the women
who mourned there and wailed, and He spoke to them
something so strange and unusual, mayhap just farcical
In this absurd tableau, in this mockery here
of the beautiful Passover there!
“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me;
weep for yourselves and for your children.
For the time will come when you will say,
‘Blessed are the barren women,
the wombs that never bore
and the breasts that never nursed!
They will say to the mountains,
“Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”‘
For if men do these things when the tree is green,
what will happen when it is dry?”
I recognized these lines as the words of a prophet
and spoken of old by our God Who would show heart
with love that would not quit or come to an end…
and then Jesus walked on, up that hill on that path
to the place of the skull where they stripped Him stark naked
and took His piece and mine, and nailed them together
and propped that cross in the sky and nailed Him there to die…
and me, stood there, dumbly
looking on stupidly
not understanding
this rank act so coarse
and bloody and final
Then I was shoved to the ground and they kicked at me,
told me my work here was done and it wasn’t
my problem or burden to bear, it was all on His shoulders
so get out of here! But I stayed, and I saw how His red Blood ran ragged
and dripped from those beams, His and mine there united
I heard Him cry out to His Father in Heaven,
I wondered if that was Our God of Passover???
I saw Him speak to a criminal there right beside Him
He told this man Paradise waited! He spoke to His mother,
He suffered in agony, said He was THIRSTY, so thirsty for comfort!
“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do”
and then they mocked and called Him King of the Jews!
Then He gave up the ghost to the Hands of His Father
And that lamb then, this Lamb now, merged one with the Other!
Now, these years later and older (and younger)
I think of the words of a poet disturbing
the beginning is often the end, and I think of that Cross
such a stumbling block to every toe of the living and dead,
and the Man who had hung there, and died,
and the earthquake that followed and the curtain of Presence
was torn from the Top to the bottom (just like my heart).
Twisting inside me, entwined there in red and white
lamb and Lamb, Passover and that odd “Pass-Under”
knitted together and stuck in my craw
in the echoes and memories of that long walk
that I took, there behind Him, and His piece and mine
and the stories of death conquered, stones rolled away
and a risen sun dawning on Risen Lord Laughing!!
I was on my way somewhere else…
the cross, this shocking interruption
on that day, on that red death day…
and so it remains now
and forever more.
“The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood-
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.” T. S. Eliot
Scars
Here on this side? See our scars.
Our wounds (both bloody and bloodless),
slashes (from sword-edge and word),
stand here stark, and they testify
in agonized aching hushed voices
of terrified troubling stories…
we hear them tell extreme tales
of widespread violence, of rape
of torture, and we the lost subjects
imprisoned in darkness and sadness
bear these wounds in our bodies, how long?
Permanent markings of violence?
These black tattoos left by oppression,
calligrified by sorrow’s stylus
that’s gripped in grief’s bony cold hand
to engrave deep its ravenous history
on our lonely hearts, carved here for…how long?
we’re identified by these curt scars.
Standing so quiet and still,
solitary smack dab
in the middle
of all that was, is,
and will be
the broken body of Jesus
the gushing stink of His spilled blood
but present with us now (like scars)
in the bread and the wine understood
to be broken and shed for our Good.
Jesus bore wounds of violent oppression
in His very own body forever!
Even after that morning so wrenching
that tilted this world on its axis
Heaven’s ringing eternal endorsement!
In that glorious bright resurrection
He stood there…just bearing those scars
in His hands, in His feet, in His side
and He showed them to all who would look…
He identified with us…in Scars.
There, on that side? New Creation
began with Resurrected Jesus
and included those scars that He suffered
by nail and by spear and by word
and the wounds of the Glad Risen Lord,
the reminders of the crucifixion
take on new light and meaning and joy.
They shout of the Power and Glory
Of God dirty with History’s story
and triumphing now and forever
over evil and death, over sorrow
and a work of redemption that’s reigning
now begun in us, marked by our scars
here with us now in our wounded world.
So the present time is streaked with mercy
acts of justice, creation of beauty,
celebration of truth kissing grace on the lips
deeds of love and forgiveness and kindness
and such generous Grace over all!
Resurrection gives us such relevance
and a future where meaning is possible!
meaning made possible in resurrection
of a torn body still marked by the scars
like diadems, medals
adorning the Sacred Heart
Faithful forever and ever…
That’s the reality of resurrection
as displayed by the scars that He bears
as our Hope, as our Joy and our Glory
that shines in our darkest lost places
giving us reason to live.
We work and we toil, perhaps
even pour out our blood, sweat, and tears
to tend to the woundings of others,
and our labor is far from in vain
for Christ has gone on ahead
and He beckons with smile that is glinting
with towering majesty cloaked
in such Kindness, such glad jubilation
He scarce can contain His good will
He is on His Throne, Alive and Well.
12 Transgender Christians Share Their Journey… | Believe Out Loud
12 Transgender Christians Share Their Journey… | Believe Out Loud.
I think I will go ahead and press this. Constance, I haven’t read these links yet…but Ima take that small risk and put them up here for your perusal.
Let me know how it goes?
❤
Charissa
This Peculiar Gleaming Beauty
Events leading up to the cross,
they seem like something of a game
of push and shove or pull and push
in this cult of honor/shame
and I wonder and I ask
Does anything really stand a chance
here in this fatal tug of war?
And what about Him? Jesus?
Clearly shamed and shamed profoundly,
publicly rejected and abandoned,
clothed in stark humiliation,
torn by jaws of victimization…
and willingly choosing
this broken ground
(this broken me).
What kinship does He speak of,
what kingship does He claim when
He dons my crown of thorns
and He takes my purple robe
and He lets Himself be branded
with my fetid Scarlet A?
What shame and ridicule
does He siphon
from our darkling hearts?
We are such a clouded vision
jockeying and jostling
for power and position,
trembling in our lust
for quick liberated feet.
We have occluded vision
caught between the blind that see
and priests and prefects that do not.
And then there is that copper matter
of His blood spilled shamefully and
His death sprawling shamelessly
across the breadth of history,
a kingly shepherd dying here
His life laid down so lovingly,
a risen savior reigning there…
At the intersection
of honor and of shame
can you see?
That Shining Ever Moment?
That Peculiar Gleaming Beauty?
It towers there, quiet, unobtrusive
and starkly interrupting
That Abandoned Empty Cross…
The sight that says it all.
On Being Friends With Jesus
As I sat in the hard wooden pew, enjoying its solid familiarity and reassuring simplicity, I listened to the preacher talk about the swirl of events that ran unchecked during the last several days before Jesus met death face to face on the backside of the Cross.
I heard him tell of Jesus warning everyone around Him that He was going to the place of the skull, to get a death-grip on suffering and never let go, and then to eat it…all. I heard him tell of how Jesus warned that anyone who wanted to be His friend had to come with Him, had to see, had to get a belly-ache too…
…and I was off in my thoughts, back, back back to those days and I heard the sounds of cattle and crowds, tasted heat and dust and slid sideways through the slant orange light from a beating throbbing insistent sun.
I was in the house of Martha, her sister Mary, and Lazarus their sickly brother, and Mama was telling me that these were the very best friends of Jesus.
They had chosen Him…they liked Him…as a person. His humor and tenderness, His wrestle with being called a bastard His entire life when He was more True-Son than any of us, back then anyway. Now? Well the Adoption Agency is open for business…but that story is presaged by this one…this story of what it was like being friends with Jesus.
Jesus always was about another story, in everything He did. Each encounter, each miracle, each glance was full of metaphor and creative import, was a beam or a brick in this House that He began then and is still working on even now.
So He is befriended by these…perhaps parents long lost to death and tragedy…and He has decided that it will be His closest friends that He will entrust His priceless gift to: the understanding of Resurrection.
You realize, don’t you, that understanding a thing means knowing its front and its back, and it by definition means knowing what that thing is not. So let’s recall what happened to these, the best friends of the Shepherd.
One of them becomes very sick…Lazarus…who was never that strong anyway. He had to live with his sisters, one of whom was of a strength so as to make Patton seem like Gomer Pyle, and one of whom was gifted with such sight as to make Joan of Arc seem like Helen Keller.
Formidable…and in that patriarchy, a sick and weak man who had to be cared for by his sisters was held in contempt and thought to be of no consequence…except to Jesus. To Him, this family was the one that would together take that voyage across the river Styx…and back again.
The sisters immediately send word. Martha marshals forces and gets the message to Jesus faster than the telegraph that would come along centuries later…and Mary sends word thru the heart currents which brought the knowing immediately to Jesus and added such sorrow to His already increasingly agonizing heart.
And Jesus, knowing the Father was doing a work of instruction, answered to everyone in earshot that they would tarry where they were. Which shocked everyone, for it was well known that Jesus had a deep affection for the weak and unadmirable Lazarus (which of course made them all even more leery of this odd carpenter!), and everyone figured He would fold space and high tail it up to Bethany to heal His friend.
But He waited.
And everyone wondered if there had been a falling out…in fact Martha was certain that Jesus was angry with her…and Mary was certain that Jesus was disappointed in her…and Lazarus, well, he felt like Jesus’ companionship was good while it lasted but was too good to be true.
But inside Himself, Jesus ached for His Beloved True Friends. Because He was going to use them to make a bigger point…and it was going to break their Hearts…so they could be healed even stronger.
One day passed by, and He waited (foreshadowing another dark day coming).
The next day came and went (and the second day was prophesied of then).
And on the third day, the sun rose and dawn fell flat on her face in the silent still absurdity of an absent best friend (just to be sure that the coming 3rd day would stand in stark contrast).
Oh there was still hubbub and the frothy surface dwellers all held out hope like icing called dinner…but Jesus was not having any of that either!
“Lazarus is dead.” He said this…flatly, tonelessly. Expressionless…like the voice of the grave itself.
And then He started His journey to their house…to face them. To face their agony, their confusion. To face their betrayal and let down. To face the accusations hidden in their bewilderment about His absence.
Constance…I refer you to John 11 when you are done reading this post, for there are a few things He said that are vertical things that stretch from the bottom of beneath eternity to the top of the beyond eternity. They are worth contemplating for a year or two…but stay with me here…
…because to everyone else around Him it just sounded like Wwah Wwah Wwah and Yadda Yadda Yadda…even to Himself, His human ears, it sounded thus.
He spoke in faith.
And then He had to face Martha Patton…and then Mary Arc…and Mary said to Him, with my voice, your voice, the voice of Rachael in Rama… “Lord, where were You?”.
And He wept. Bitterly. Deeply.
Why? Because His lesson was manifest now…on the fourth day since Lazarus had died…one more day than The Third Day…and the very first day beyond that Third Day which was the first day of a forever separation from their beloved brother for His surviving besties Martha and Mary.
And then He called Lazarus forward from death, back across the river, back to the land of the living and the loving arms of his sisters…and his True Friend as well.
All around Him, people marvelled, rejoiced, and then wept in relief and reunion and resurrection.
But Jesus? He still wept in sorrow, for He knew the full weight of the pain He had knowingly inflicted on His best friends…He knew the looming agony that was fast falling towards Him, and He knew that He had no shield against it, no weapon to fight it with, only faith in His Father for Whom He had embraced this Mission Impossible, and that promise that Father would bring everything out of death with this Obedient Son.
Jesus wept because He knows that He does His friends dirty because He can trust them to see it thru to the end, past Friday and into Sunday. It hurts Him that it hurts them…it hurts Him that He does it anyway because it is the Ultimate Good and overarching Impartation of Eternity…thru broken hearts and broken spirits.
I came back to myself, and the sermon was drawing to a close. I had a fresh perspective on my life, my agonies, and the lessons that have been shown forth.
I think I am going to continue, seeking to be a friend of God. Because everyone has sorrow and trial, everyone goes thru meaningless suffering and horror…but it seems the friends of God get to have the Presence of God with them midst the fires of pain’s crucible, and the Kingdom is birthed.
Much Love,
Charissa…an aspiring Bestie of God
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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