Wrinkles In Time

Posted on August 4, 2014 by charissagrace

Good Morning Constance Dear…gosh what a difficult night it was for me!

The deconstruction of my self in order to conform to who I must be in order to earn money is a very rough thing.

It tears me apart!

One of my helps that keeps me centered and knowing myself is the devotional writings of Jill Carattini…I share this morning’s here for you.

Love and Grace, Charissa, who is suffering

tumblr_n7toayaEkz1sifsb9o1_1280 “Uncanny” was one of the vocabulary words on my sixth grade vocabulary list, which was to be found within the book we were reading as a class. I remember thinking Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time was exactly that—uncanny, peculiar, and uncomfortably strange. Yet I also remember that it stayed with me—the story of a quirky girl named Meg, her overly-intelligent little brother, and their time-transcending journey to save their physicist father with the help of three mysterious beings. Madeleine L’Engle, the writer whose books invite readers to see time itself differently, passed away not too long ago. But her stories will continue to perplex sixth graders, and stay with us long after we have set them aside.

L’Engle is the writer who first showed me the incredible difference between two words in Greek, which we unfortunately translate identically. To the English reader, chronos and kairosboth appear to us as “time.” But in Greek, these words are vastly different. Chronos is the time on your wristwatch, time on the move, passing from present to future and so becoming past. Kairos, on the other hand, is qualitative rather than quantitative. It is time as a moment, a significant occasion, an immeasurable quality. The New Testament writers use the word kairos to communicate God’s time, it is real time—it is the eternal now.

So it might be said for the Christian that when Jesus stepped into time to proclaim the kingdom of God among us, he came to show us in chronos the reality of kairos. “Jesus took John and James and Peter up the mountain in ordinary, daily chronos,” writes L’Engle. “Yet during the glory of the Transfiguration they were dwelling in kairos.”(1) With this story in mind, L’Engle describes kairos as that time which breaks through chronos with a shock of joy, time where we are completely unselfconscious and yet paradoxically far more real than we can ever be when we are continually checking our watches.

Whatever your view of religion, it is likely an experience you can recount; a moment so sweet or magnified it seems to stop time. But L’Engle presses the Christian to see it as something to be expected. “Are we willing and able to be surprised?” L’Engle asks. “If we are to be aware of life while we are living it, we must have the courage to relinquish our hard-earned control of ourselves.”(2) If we have the courage to see it, the kingdom of God is close at hand,kairos breaking through like Christ into the world.

I imagine Jacob, too, discovered the difference between chronos and kairos when he set aside the past which was about to catch up with him, along with his paralyzing fear of the future, and found himself living in “none other than the house of God.” The prophets and poets describe similar moments of waking to the present and finding the eternal dimensions of time. The shepherds in Bethlehem were going about their ordinary work when the glory of the Lord captured the moment. “Do not be afraid,” the angel announced. “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you” (Luke 2:13-14). At this invasion of kairos into the routine of chronos, the shepherds chose to respond with action: “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about” (2:15).

Uncanny encounters with time are a part of the human experience. The Christian is given a language to explain these encounters. We live somewhere between the already and the not yet, caught by the eternal now and the one who dwells within it. The implications are both temporal and unending. Will we have the courage to look for glory in the ordinary? To release control of our calendars and watches and note the eternal in our midst? The apostle joins every prophet and poet who proclaimed the coming of the Messiah in history and the return of the king to come, “Behold, now is the time (kairos) of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).

Like Christ, glimpses of the eternal come quietly and unexpectedly; they come and upset our very notion of time and all we discover within it. Why should we be so unreconciled to time if the temporal were our only concern? Or could it be that the eternal Word stepped into flesh, into our bounded realm of time, and literally embodied the reality that time is meaningful because of the eternal one in our midst.

The Christian insists that kairos is breaking into chronos and transforming it. With Christ it proclaims, “The kingdom of God is close at hand”—and the temporal world invited to break in along with it. In ordinary moments that hint at such a radical invasion, might we have the courage to be surprised by one who comes so near.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (New York: Bantam, 1982), 93.
(2) Ibid., 99.

“Haunted By a Lovely God”: Final Update, and keys to the rhythms

Posted on July 31, 2014 by charissagrace

Sooo…”final update”…lol

I don’t typically do a ton of revising of poems. Generally I will post them up, and then notice just minor things here or there, and tighten them up…or a word that was too feisty and slippery for my muse’s grasp will be caught unawares and I catch it, lickety split and toss it in the poem-quarium for it to swim in, fed by it’s fellow words and nurtured by the kind attentions of you, Constance.

But “Haunted By a Lovely God” is different…it is dead serious. In its recounting of the stories that I lived thru, and in its telling to you of how I feel when I hear others relate their tales of woe and disappointment and abandonment.

Those events that happened…sometimes I wish they hadn’t! I wish that I was “normal”, and life was ordered and tame, even though dreary, cus then I would be maybe more received by others? Maybe not looked at with…oh god, I don’t know how to even interpret it sometimes…pity maybe? Pity that I “cling to the old legends and superstitious beliefs about some great skyfather…” I really don’t know…no. Really.

But that is not my life…nothing about my life has ever been “normal.” The body I am in, or if you prefer, the mind that I have in this body…the fact that the world is always all shimmery and sharp-glinty thrusts and tears of jagged brilliant eternity piercing and poking and pushing its way thru any weak spot in this semi-permeable sphere of atoms and molecules become a living and sentient world.

I am one of those weak spots…and it pounds in me, til it breaks forth, rends me and roars out rushing to chase darkness back into nothingness. It is not like it sounds…sometimes it feels like what I watched when my dearest darling became a living engine of life and brought forth to this world our children, our union and oneness made manifest. I was in awe at her concentration and bold resolute embrace of the pain for the sake of eternal gain!

Oh Constance…I dearly wish that each of you could experience living in a haunted world, one that is alive and laughing behind every tree and lurking in every flower to jump out and surprise you, one that is looming, impending in every sunset and mountain vista with its sharp razor Beauty to slash your heart to shreds and ruin you forever to anything ordinary ever again!

This poem is the best capture of me that I have birthed, at least up until now…as to the future, only They know.

When you read it…it is best read out loud, for I wrote it as a performance piece. The rhythm of the poem is the absolute key to it, and I have worked and re-worked it to make it as best I can carry a rhythm depicted such: “One two three, One two three” and so on…oh sure, there are the few lil carriers of the beat that are called for…but to apply the rhythm correctly, in nearly every case the first sound of the line is toe “downbeat” of “One”

If you get off-rhythm…it falls apart on you.

It is supposed to!

Because, it is just like allowing yourself to be haunted…you have to keep the rhythm, you must step in time, as They call the tune and change the tempo, and then everything is so heartbreakingly beautiful and precise in its place, so much so that words are trite and useless sounds far too small to carry such weight and loaded significance! But this is a balancing act, and it is easy to get distracted, discouraged, or simply grow dull in your attention…and the rhythm is lost and the “poem of your life” starts to stutter, and skip, and eventually, as some poet somewhere said: “…the center cannot hold…” (Yeah, I know, Yeats! Lol…great poem btw!)

But yeah…that was one of the things I have been working on…making the poem come into focus as rhythm is kept paramount in mind, and fall apart if it is neglected and some other part is allowed prominence.

It’s complex…and yet I am striving for a simplicity in the overall thrust, the summary effect it has, once you have read it, uttered the words aloud and birthed it into your understanding and heart…

I don’t know it it is any good. I really never do, with anything I write…I just know how I feel, how I felt before and how I feel once it is written, and then how I feel as I read it back to my heart. I dearly hope that you will be patient and perservere to the end with this one, Constance…it is long, for to shorten it is to give short shrift to the travails and trials and griefs of any human who has suffered abandonment in the hour of their greatest need, and it is to cheat Them of Their due in recounting and remembering the ways that They have apprehended me…

It is my fervent prayer and wish that you too would have opportunity to be

Haunted By a Lovely God.

With much love and heartfelt desire for blessings towering and overflowing unto you…

Charissa Grace

Haunted by a Lovely God

Posted on July 23, 2014 by charissagrace

(NOTE: If you wish, you can click here and be taken to a page where I emboldened certain words to try to convey the rhythm and meter of this poem, which is literally essential to it. But: if you wish to just wade in, first time thru and let the rhythms and meters rise and fall, fade and disappear and then come back, well that is ideal because that is literally written into the work as its own “poem of rhythm”. In either case, I hope you are able to read thru it…the things in this poem literally happened to me, with me).

Okay.

I get it. I do…in spite of what you might think, maybe
several of you, maybe dozens of you, maybe
hundreds, or thousands or millions of you
have endured deserts and mirage oasises
vanished in life when it comes to the subject of God.

I hear your stories, the bitter rants of some, the tired futility
of many others, I have taken venom, been covered in acid,
as I lead face first and I listen to tales of one
thing held in desolate common.

“God’s not here”.
“God wasn’t there”.
“God isn’t real”.
“God doesn’t care”.

I bleed when you cry in anguish, and weep as I
hear your recitals, and then in dark rage, and then
finally in grief, that pools on the dark other
side of the desert, in that null empty kingdom of
Ozymandias the great ruler of Vanity.

You might think I weep sanctimonious, sorrowful
supplicant of righteous standing, who’s crying for
those destitute and benighted, the distant, the stranger and
other, from my tower of ignorant pie in the sky…

You’d be wrong.

I weep in guilt.

Yeah…guilt.

For my tale of dark woe is so anti-tragic,
a Mysterium Tremendum, of a wretch so
shattered and shipwrecked in this desert island

…my body…

My story is different, and I feel so guilty,
confused as to why even in existential
despair I am still on the outside of
the common narrative swirling around me?

Contrary to you, in your longing and noble long
struggle to live, and to surmount desertion and
lost lonely silence by God in Their Heaven above…
I have always been

Haunted by a Lovely God.

When I was little and in my first dawning awareness,
and ageless, I recall that I always heard This Voice,
and at first I thought it outside me, I thought the wind had a
voice, or perhaps it was Trees, but it
never was dirt under my feet, no,
dirt is a tongue-tied dull mute.

As I grew I realized that the voice was inside me…in my heart, and I came to
treasure its company and the glad beauty of thoughts, and of musings. Then
I told my parents what it had told me, and,
flabbergasted, they asked where did I hear that?
And I told them “God. God told me”
(for that is Who the voice told me They were
and …Jesus like a Shepherd led me).

They laughed! LAUGHED! And while they were
not mocking, they merely thought
I was mistaken, had fantasized wonders.
So I cried then, and thought that
maybe my parents were right.

And then came the break, the thirsty sword stroke
that cut me to ribbons, my soft girly heart left in shreds…
then the slavery started with harsh words resounding, those
prison door words…and God was still there, holding
me in my tears, wrapped
around my hurt heart…and I longed for death, wanted to
jump in the river from that tall steel bridge I crossed
over each day but God asked me “please”, and…

well…

who can say no to God when They ask “Please?”

Then They would give me a joy for that day…and They
gave me a dog! Oh! How she and I bonded!
But you have already heard some of the tales of Millie…”Good Old Dog!” No…
this is the story of me being Haunted…

Haunted By a Lovely God.

One time, I was alone outside our house

(the one in the Pear Orchards down
near the cold creek where my Millie and me chased those
skimmer bugs and slippery pollywogs all live-long day…)

and it was warm in the soft early evening and dusky and glowing ethereal gloaming,
the good dusk…and wind softly rustling thru fruit trees so
heavy with life and the sounds of the living earth echoed around me…

…and then all was silent…

Suddenly, and it caught all my attention immediately! Slowly I
walked to the pear trees and stood, just to listen…and I heard it…something!
The call of a Mourning Dove

(or is it Morning Dove? I can’t distinguish the
One from the other, it seems to shift
back and forth always and ever).

It cooed and it called, and it seemed to me as if it spoke to me,
saying…”Come out to Me, Baby… Come out to Me. Come home to Me.”

(Lady Grace, She calls me Baby now, here today)

I was so skert! I thought it was a ghost! And this ghost it was longing for
my tender spirit and if I went out there, it would get inside me and
I would belong to it, always and be its flesh, its living body for
it to inhabit, its dwelling place then and forever.

I wasn’t far from the truth… I look back, I think it was Her, Lady Grace,
Dove come down, Her Voice was calling me, claiming me even then as Her own…
I wonder what would have happened, my life had I heeded Her,
gone to Her, run to Her heedlessly on that first day?

It’s not coincidence that our trees now, all around our house are filled with
Morning Doves (Mourning Doves too), calling, cooing…and pestering people in
our neighborhood, but so comforting to me as totems and emblems,
reminders of Mama’s first call to my hurt lonely soul and my soft tender heart.

Then: it was Veteran’s Day, fall, 1969.
We went to town several miles from home for the parade…I insisted that
Millie come with us, and after the music and marching had ended, we
went to the movies: “The Love Bug”. But Millie was left in our Volkswagen van.

(the one that was faded red
with canvas roll back top
and that relentless bamboo pole that
Dad used to poke us and hit us with
when we were clear in the
back and too rowdy and rude.)

and when we came back to the van…
she was gone.

I cannot tell you what that was like. I nearly fainted. I ran in the
street screaming her name, as cars screeched stop and Dad chased
me hollering “Get Back Here!”

We drove the streets hours and hours, me, head out the window, her name become
my tongue protruding and flapping and desperate in the cold wind.
I screamed that name loud, again and again until I was hoarse, and I kept
screaming, my grief-expiation for killing my dog with my stubborn insistence that she come along.

I tried to bargain with Them…in the sibilant cold and the darkness, I lifted my face:

“I will scream her name until I pass out and can never talk ever again, and then
You will receive my burnt offerings of me and give me what I earned with
desperate grief, what I bought with my service…my heart, Millie come back safe home.”

They remained silent, aloof (and I wonder if this is where They were in your tale of sorrow…).
Finally Dad said “she’s gone”…so we had to go home, in that cold rainy dark night of loss
on that day that we remember and honor the valor of
those who faced their fears and endured for me.

I threw up. I do that when I get distraught…I always have done…I cried, and
cried and I cried, and when I had no tears I groaned and keened, inconsolably moaning…
crying til dust poured from my eyes in place of the tears long drained empty by
grief so stark it was a terror strong, threatening to crush me forever.

My folks were hurting for me, so they used what they always had carved me with,
thought was the best for me, raw in my towering emotions and gaugeless deep passions…
words, stern and cruel, words so full of dark violence, and those words’ incarnated beast,
gawd…the spanking…well…yeah, the Red Raving and Hungry Beast.

I was forced to eat my dinner, and I threw it up…on the table, on all the food
laid there for others to eat. Then I got spanked and sent straight up to bed…
where God was silent and no where to be found… but hey, Ima talker, right?
So I cried out to Them into the darkness thick…

(now get this, and understand that I’d been thru the
wringer of Sunday School, Hellfire Sermons,
Damnation Devotions, and I knew enough to be good or the
devil would get me. I once was told: “I will not spank you…
I’m just gonna let satan get you”…and I roamed behind my mom
hours, and wailed agonizing in fear and stark terror, and
begged her to spank me, deliver me from evil on the cross
of my butt, and her hard paddle the hungry
propitiation for my sins and my wrongs…and
I knew that so many times I had done things,
hell-things like say “shit” or steal cookies, or
sneak out the window to sleep with my Millie and
her wriggly puppies though I was forbidden to,
or watch cartoons on a Saturday morning so
early and low before anyone woke up and caught me at it…and I’d
never been sent to hell…God had not bothered to notice or
even to thunder at me, or make trouble over me, and I
knew lots of people thought God was a fairy tale, which, frankly,
mystified me cus They talked to me so much when I was so little.)

That nite…I cried in a jagged blood whisper, my voice bleeding raw, and the
words, still they linger there, seared deep in me to this very day, now, here with you.

(and now, in this moment… I feel so damn guilty!
Why me??? Why did They talk to me of all people?)

I cried out “God…if You’re really there, real…bring my doggie home…PLEASE!” Then…
somewhere, somehow, I moved past bargains, and buy-offs and bribes…I had cried my way
thru the stark castle of filthy rags and entered into the place of no exit, the
inner sanctorums of grace, where there’s nothing to buy there with money, and
there is no bargaining, no supplicating, no pleas, there is just the
beginnings of Mercy Free…

and crying out the word please in that dark night, eyes
gummed shut with sorrow and tacky tears I at last faded off into sleep
dreamless as I grieved and wished I was dead, like I did every night, and at
last I knew nothing, released and insensate and absent within the lost
shoals of sleep’s gift of respite from my agony, sorrow and grief.

Until I woke, instant and on point, into an electrical dark of night
black glowing bright-black that cast light and filled the still air with a
presence, thick, substantive knowing, and threatening to
rend plain reality like the quick ripping of shrouds in the
hands of the dread faced and tall grim deliverers….

…and I heard scritching, and

(oh oh oh)

her whine (that lil ki-yiy-yiy she always used to call me heart to heart)
and I jumped from the top bunk with a thunderous thud loud enough to wake
even the dead and I got up and ran thru our house in that miracle moment:
“GOD BROUGHT BACK MY DOG!”
“GOD BROUGHT BACK MY DOG!!”

Babbling over and over again like a babe, Bartimaeus had nothing on me!
Shattering slumbering sundering darkness and giving voice
to that One Thing that I am:

Haunted by a Lovely God

Fumbling feverishly I rolled the gravestone away in my heart and threw
open the back door where she called me eagerly whining in joyous returning at sunrise…
she’d jumped a 6 foot fence out of obedience so she could come in thru the
Eye of the Needle: the back yard garage door. She limped and jumped on me
and I went down to the ground, I was crying and kissing her and she was
kissing me too and I ran my hands over her, scarcely believing that she was real,
she was returned, she was home and alive, and my heart was restored unto me.

Then she rolled over, so I could scritch her tummy like she loved
and when I ran my hands over her precious side, my fingers slipped inside
her skin and I drew them back from her side which was pierced and torn open…

(I swear!
I know, the metaphor seems so damn cheesy, right? It really
happened this way! That’s the kind of thing I feel so
guilty for… it’s like They shouted it from the Bright Heavens that
I was not ever escaping Their Undying Love never ceasing and
new every morning. I’m telling you that I have always been
Haunted by a Lovely God).

She had torn open her side, and I’d thrust my hand in just like Thomas and drawn it back,
bloody and warm and changed and I collapsed,

(cus I can’t handle blood, even though it has
handled me, covered me, branded me,
marked and commanded me
forever Under the Mercy)

I murmured brokenly “God hear my prayers, God heard my prayers, God hear my prayers,
God heard my prayers”.

Later, my parents made sure I knew that this was highly unusual, God has more
pressing concerns than my dear dog, or listening to me scream and demand…
yeah, there are all kinds of other prayers over the years, that went up and bounced off…

you know the kind…yeah, those

…and life went on…went on…until

Puberty hit and then hell came home hard to stay…in hair and voice and a
horror-beard (and oh god oh god, oh god down there, oh god please no).
And life required again its cruel ransom, and I wanted, longed to lay me on the gears and cogs
that turned in schools and the church groups that seemed to me incomprehensible
strangers, in their innate knowing of how to move and how to laugh and to be… again
I longed, desired to do away with me…this gender-joke…absurd and ugly mistake, just an
ironic blight on “There” and “Here” because I was neither…here or there, just a null thing

…and then…

…I had another time, deep in the darkness of night and numb tears and dumb talking to Them…

…Them…

1973…14 and awkward and lonely and numb from the bashing I gave me to
un-know who I was and was not supposed to be, allowed to be, allowed…
On that nite, cold and alone in the darkness I told Them that I was not going to follow Them.
I was resigning from being a christian and that I was leaving Them once and for all.

“No offense”, I said. “It’s not you, it’s me”

(I’d yet to discover how this trope is used when we
want to abandon an unwanted suitor or
how its thrown out…to hurt and to wound a familiar dull
lover become coarse and rank and too shrill)

“You have done nothing wrong, You have not failed me, no it’s I who’ve failed You, and
what’s worse, I cannot BUT fail You…always, because I’m a

“horrible boy, I’m an
absent mute girl, I am
nothing, and I count for
nothing and I live on
nothing and I mean more
nothing, just more black
horrible, lost empty nothing.

“I am not going to church anymore,”

(for in those days I, like others around me, assumed that if
you went outside and climbed into the
chicken coop then such a fat happy bird you’d become.)

“…when school starts up again, I’m going to say yes instead of
no thanks when they offer me pot, and offer me drinking, and
offer me bodies and no clothes and company there in the darkness and then I’ll be
numb and feel wanted at least…

“I cannot do it, walk blameless and upright, for
I am a constant habitual wallower in my sin
all the time in my heart, in my mind as I fail ceaseless,
besides, I don’t even desire to be in on this world full of Leavenworth walls…

“I will not fake it! I refuse to be like them, sitting in their pews…

“with hallelujah on their lips and wanna screw ya in their hearts!

“I’ll stay alive, take my medicine straight and deserved and so bitter…and
maybe if I try I will even manage to conjure up a hearty yummy while
I drain the draughts of despair bone-dry…

“I know You’ll send me to hell…I deserve that, and even more so…I don’t
hold that against You, for You are and You always have been so Beautiful…
no, it is me, blight and curse, it’s just me, a disease in this world and pure poison.”

Fountains of sorrow again welled up, even as I wondered why they could
never be fountains of joy? And I cried and cried…softly so no one could hear me…
my brother sleeping…as always in these cut-off times…and

Millie was newly dead, gone to run free in the fields of her dreams, yet another cruel
tribute collected by Usurper death…that left me so empty,
so cold, so cut-off and bereft.

Until I heard it…the Voice!

Calling me gently (as always), so I held my breath, listened to be sure it was Them, then
I heard a soft quiet question asked so plaintively…

“What would it take?” (Ummm…whaaa? I didn’t get it)

“What would it take, Precious One? Child, what would it take for you to not check out,
not go away, but to come here and spend time with Us everyday?
Talk to Us, listen and just be for Us… just be Ours always,
just as your dog, Good Old Millie was your friend, and she belonged
only to you?”

This was a careful and startling question and it was quick,
coming at me curving sideways! So I had to really think!
Something absurd, something so damned unusual, that there was no way it
ever could happen, I mean, don’t get me wrong…I still wanted to be with Them,
wanted to share in Their sweet soft communion, cus I LOVED my Jesus, my Shepherd who
I always dreamed someday would leave the 99 and come to rescue me, I dreamed that
He was my Jester to make me laugh joyously, dreamed that He was my best Friend

…I just wasn’t…His best friend…and I couldn’t fake it. Nope.
So it was crucial I create conditions that even the Almighty God couldn’t meet

…you know…

God cannot make a rock so big that They cannot lift it, but They can do anything
so They can make this rock so big that even They cannot lift it…wait…

I was searching for that Rock that God couldn’t lift… right? So

I said to Them “If, when I wake this morning, and my dad says ‘Kids we are moving’…
if there’s a strange town so distant where nobody knows me, and no one has
seen me, and I can start over, start fresh and anew, then I’ll choose you forever and
give my heart freely…lock, stock, and barrel, completely to You… I’ll be Your Millie,
all of my days till I die and my sentence is over.”

Silence gave answer…then after a bit…I drifted away breathing
deeply again as my tears crooned soft lullabies
to my hot cheeks, they ran down in such ancient deep
canyons of sorrow…down my face, down my heart,
down my soul to end up glistening in sorrowful streamers.

When I got up the next morning, things didn’t sparkle or gleam, and I didn’t
remember the Voice, the Epiphany…I was just staring at breakfast my mom used to
“cook” me in those days…Shredded Wheat with skim milk…and feeling
…that gulf, that dark feeling. That feeling. Yeah… The relentless sharp
razor slash cutting inside my soul, forever aching and Constant.

I wasn’t list’ning, as Dad droned on talking of somethingorruther… until I heard
him say the word…“moving”…something about that word…
why did it stick out?

Then in a quicksilver windstorm of memory-shredded, each piece was
hitting me, sticking, unripping its way to become one
coherent experience, and I recalled my reply to Their inquiry…
so I turned quickly and asked my dear father what did he just say…and he
said it again! He confirmed it! Just as I’d laid forth, to a T!

Haunted by a Lovely God.

(I feel so guilty… why am I treated thus?
Why me? Why not the prayers of parents
whose children suffer and die in horrible pain for
nothing that they ever did?
Why not the prayers of wives for soldiers
Cain has already marked for death’s dark
gaping foul maw, prayers supplicating
deliverance, protection, but
they go unheeded and
Death eats again?)

And of course, we moved, and I did…commit myself to Them…
once all for always…yep, I was in…And I’ve hated it sometimes, and loved it at others.
I’ve grown and I’ve changed, seen Them change before my eyes as they were
opened and I could see other than my own idolatrous self and that
small god I fashioned, so stunted, blind, deaf and so mute in the
vanity of my self worship when my box, my image of Them I had
made was so gloriously broken!

I’ve sorrowed and railed… I’ve been outcast by mean so called
spiritual family, been stunned by the towering cruelty of those who should
know better, done blindly in the Most Wonderful Name of Them…

Lovely God to me, and so ugly and coarse, buffoonish in their mocking mouths.

I met my darling, and we had our babies…
she/they are amazing miracles…I watch the
lives of my college acquaintances shipwreck, their
marriages foundering on the black jagged rocks of their alluring
careers and blood money…and I watch the children of
hard working salts, such dear people around me, more worthy than I, better
people than I, quaff drugs like their hearts are on fire, and join themselves
numbly to anyone there in those earthquakes of loneliness,
wreckages strewn in their wake and their orphans tossed
careless like litter abandoned.

And I have prayed with these people, so passionate, supplications far more
suitable than my own bumbling tongue-tied petitions and tall ebenezers…
and seen them bounce off, with dust poofing, dry-cloudy in
dull drifting mockery…

…and I feel so guilty.

Such. Guilt.

Because They have haunted me… They’ve apprehended me… taken me…
They have not let me go, not let me drift… and I,
transgender woman held in such derision by
most of the offspring of the Blood of the Lamb…
The Holy Spirit has even shown me Her Name and Herself, Lady Grace,
and She’s drawn so near to me, to be ma Mère…my Mama, and teach me
my secret heart and my self, so young and emerging.

And yet still I ask myself why am I haunted?

I could go on, forever recounting the
stories of Their faithful presence and meddling hands…of

Yosemite Sacred, cathedrals where mountains became the
Triune God, and I fell asunder to claw at the dirt in despairing blood-guiltness and
crying for mercy… and wonder of wonders!
El Capitan: Papa…Half Dome, cut asunder became My Friend Jesus…
Yosemite Falls: my Lady Grace, flowing and washing forever until I am pure…
Bridal Veil Falls was me, shifting emotions and prevarications blown
lacey and wandring across rocky faces but always to Them…
rising up from the ground, clean and unsullied as
Waterdeep sang for me They have been nothing but
Good in my life!

Each time I hear someone’s tale of woe filled with despair or with cynical bitterness flowing,
or just fatigue and futility…I am worse than any teller, and merit less than the askers, more
toxic than anyone else whose had issue with God, or
issue with Their present absence, or make issue with Them because

“there is this construct God which has come
out of nowhere, seemingly and thus doesn’t exist
(unlike anything else which its knowing of testifies to its being)…”

I have not told you this tale to shame you… I who am shame incarnate for so long.
Nor to claim privilege or power, position… I do not have an iota of that.

…I have not told you to lobby, convince you… or
proselytize, or evangelize you. God No!
I have made my expiation to you, my confessors…
The sin I am guilty of? Of this I Charissa Grace stand blood guilty:

Being

Haunted by a Lovely God.

The Work of Night’s Soft Hands

Posted on July 23, 2014 by charissagrace

Night has Her reasons for pulling plush sloe shades around our borders.
Searing sun scorches, scours sharp gimlet hot relentless purging.
(He cannot but shine in piercing prying shafts into our corners.)

But Night, silent Singer of Mercies creamy and thick,
harbor of ships in shattered turmoil, nestles and hovers
and grants sanctuary to all who would pause and gather.

Take stock, in yourself. Weigh, scrutinize those rugged rocks
you took on as “ballast”, your hedge against the smothering dust of fear.
Cast off that one (or two) by means of which you inveigle you.

And rise, treasure sure, to float free, to drift amongst swimming stars,
ice-fire diamonds brilliant and glitt’ry in the tenebrous skies
with face open and pumping vital heart well emptied and smooth.

And Night, She shall lift you dark, hold you high and smoky
until you catch the sun’s arc long before weary earth wakes
and abundant you shine, displayed and cultivated

as the work of Night’s Soft Hands.

The Doctrine of Trans, Part 2

Posted on July 14, 2014 by charissagrace

The Doctrine of Trans, Part 2.

Good Morning Constance…Part 2 from Trans-girl at the Cross.

Prolly of interest only to my readers who are Christian, but even if you aren’t it is worth a look, for it gives some insight into the subtlety of biblical interpretation, and the importance of letting the text speak for God instead of the reader reading her own opinions into the text and then taking the name of the Lord vainly by claiming that God has said something He has not said.

Praying that Lady Grace prevails in the hearts of the Church, and that a place for all LGTBQ people is warmly secured at the table of Their Communion and Fellowship,

Charissa

Tears of Joy…

Posted on July 13, 2014 by charissagrace

Mama just spoke this verse to me…and I found a cool image to post for it.

To be loved…nothing is better.

To be loved by Her, a birthday gift beyond compare.

Today…

Posted on July 13, 2014 by charissagrace

Dear Constance…

So.

I have thought about it for a few days…what I would say this morning, if anything. After all, there are some things that a woman just never tells.

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But:

I am different than other women, both in that I am myself and unique, and also because I am myself and transgender…in each way I am set apart, and thus have a strong sense of both my freedom to do or not as I choose, but also my “obligation” to report, to chronicle, to make my best effort to inform anyone interested in what life is like inside the oppression of the wrong gender.

The metaphor is just too perfect: We are, all of us, trapped in a wrong place, in a wrong time, with the sense that things ought to be different, and will one day be restored to “happily ever after”.

So with that said…

55 years ago today, I was gripped and smushed and pushed and eventually pulled into the rough light and harsh noise and frighteningly huge space of this world we live in. I was born July 13th, 1959.

It’s been such a long journey, and yet 55 years is literally nil when considered in the light of the days that have gone before.

But to me, it has been all I have ever known, and so I had a history of being on the outside, being outcast and no one knows, and being condemned to persisting in keeping my heart beating and my chest heaving, and my fruit sweet in the midst of a land that had no air, and weighed a million bajillion tons and was the stark backdrop for growing cactus and joshua trees.

Last year was a year of finishes, and it nearly finished me…so much ended, so many things fell apart in my world, and only a few things remained. At the time, it was unbearable. I would go to the mountains on my bike, and scream myself hoarse. It was either that or die.

Jesus told a church back in the day to wake up, and strengthen the things that remain. See, they had invested in transient things, and ignored what lasted. He exhorted them to get a grip, assess priorities and focus on eternal things.

When we don’t listen to the exhortation, He simplifies our options by removing the transient things…and this happened to me last year, a year of sorrow, loss, and ultimately deliverance.

I am glad to see it end, and so happy as well for the way that Mama took me in hand the last 3 months of the year and rooted, grounded my feet and heart in a renewed understanding of my worth and value and significance to Them, to Her…She taught me to begin to love myself, and thus I can with a true heart truly love others.

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I have always associated the number 5 with Grace, for a variety of reasons.

So 55…this is gonna be the year of double grace…Grace upon grace! Charissa (which means grace) Grace.

Moses said to the Lord, in that famous encounter that began with the Lord testing Moses’ heart with the declaration that He was sick and tired of the stubborn nature of the people of Israel.

CLUE: He really wasn’t, but Moses was!! I have found that the Lord often times presents Themselves to me as if THEY are like the attitudes of my heart, in order to mirror to me who I am in that moment.

So here was Moses, pretending on the outside (even to himself) that he was not tired of them, fed up with the dullness and stubbornness, and so the Lord tells Moses that He is done with them, but that He will take Moses himself and raise him up into his own nation of great and awesome people, just like their Progenitor was! (Sarcasm intended btw…this is the same guy that tried to become the great deliverer if Israel by killing an Egyptian slave guard, and then ran into the desert to hide for 40 years!).

But…thank God that Moses had hung out with Them enough to know that when this sort of word came, it was a really good idea to listen with the heart of hearts and not the heart of desire…and so as he thought it over, it became manifestly obvious that it was better to have God Themself over merely Their blessing and protection.

So Moses says this: “Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight.”

Did you catch that? Moses asks for grace to get grace!

Do you need grace in your life…undeserved favor unending, and the power to do whatever God requires? That is the biblical meaning of grace, by the way…it isn’t some cheap get outta jail free card fire insurance…

The lesson is that it starts with Them, it is by Their power and ability, and it ends in Them, while They in love loop us in to the joy and blessing of Their perfect fellowship.

They include us in Their family.

So…55 years…and new beginnings for Charissa Grace…me, this cursed child of loneliness who has been redeemed from the pit of emptiness, from death. I am walking in faith this year is going to be a year of grace upon grace. The wonderful undeserved unmerited Shalom They have extended over me, to me, in me, thru me, and the power to walk and be fruitful in the land of my afflictions.

I have gone forth sowing in tears. I shall return, harvesting in joy.

And this is the year it truly begins for me…and that is indeed a faith statement!!! It scares me, the gravity of 54 years pulls hard back to the pits of loneliness and despair, but the power of Their love and affection is a strong magnetic irresistible draw.

I cannot resist it.

I do not want to resist it.

So I surrender, and say Happy (yes…for the first time, Happy) Birthday (for I was in so many ways born last year too) Charissa

Happy Birthday, Charissa Grace, blest of God and most fortunate of beings

“

Suzanne Grossman Writes: “Why I Chose Grace as a Gay Christian”

Posted on July 12, 2014 by charissagrace

Suzanne Grossman

via Why I Chose Grace as a Gay Christian.

I love this young woman’s faith, courage, and orientation to grace!

Hang in there Suzanne…there are fellow believers who realize that Faith thru Grace in Love is the winning recipe for connection with Them!

Please…read the article, and then think if you had those obstacles in your faith journey, in addition to the common difficulties we face.

Grace and Peace…

Charissa

Give Ear to My Words…

Posted on July 12, 2014 by charissagrace

…oh Lord, consider my meditation.
Hearken unto the voice of my cry,
My King and my God.

For unto Thee do I talk each day,
it is my voice You hear in the mornings…

Oh Lady Grace, in the mornings will I direct my prayers
and heartsongs and meditations sweet, unto You, and
I will look up.

For Your lovingkindness is better than life
My heart sings, sweet and silent and ever grateful
so thus I will Bless Thee, and lift up my hands unto Your Goodness.

For it is Your grace that sustains me and Your mercy that
endures forever…

But Your steadfast Love…it never ceases…it never comes to an end.
It is new every morning!! Literally, new every morning!
Oh Mama! Great is the Wonder of it!

THE FREEDOM OF IT!

Great is Your faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.

And so accept me this day, my Lovely King and Lord
your daughter true, born of blood, and blooming with love
and receive my life for Your purpose in today.

Those I meet, those I pass by, and those whose hearts are breaking.

In the precious and wonderful Name of Immanuel, God with Us…

Christianity and being Transgender – Why I won’t justify my transition

Posted on July 7, 2014 by charissagrace

Christianity and being Transgender – Why I won’t justify my transition.

Hi Constance. I was delighted to run across this article. It is a decent essay regarding relationship with God and being transgender. It speaks also of the pain and sorrow of the religious reflex which kicks in and then kicks us in the butt when the fearful and narrow-minded and deeds-based church culture people decide to be judge, jury, and executioner over other’s faith status.

I am posting it because I am hopeful that if you find yourself in this place, as a person of faith who is weirded out by a transgender person, or if you have always assumed that a transperson is mentally ill, trapped in sin and sexually perverted. Hopefully you will see Meggan’s heart, hear her voice, and realize that she has a life lived in the Redemptive Arms of Love.

Me? If you really want to know? As far as being judged by other christians, I don’t give it a second thought. The presence of the Lord is simply too “there” everyday for me to even entertain the notion that They do not like me. They draw near, each morning and the conversations of our hearts is edifying and encouraging. Sometimes They are silent…and Their world sings to my heart of Their beauty and truth and love.

Besides…I have already been judged soo often in the past by people over basically everything you can think of! Sometimes on the same Sunday morning I would be judged for the very same thing by people who saw it from the opposite stand point! Sometimes my sermons were too full of scripture! Sometimes my sermons were not full enough!!

I got to know Abe Lincoln’s famous saying about pleasing people very well…

The last straw for me, the one that set me free, was when we were in the midst of a vicious power struggle as leaders with a spiritually abusive pastor who was far far FAR past his “pull date”, and knew it…but just…couldn’t…let…go…and I was one of the very few who refused to back down in the face of his rage and anger and horrible ways of making people pay. Many times the wrath would flow…the congregation was about 85% solid on moving on with our new leadership team (leading by plurality), but about 15% were the old guard…didn’t like the new fangled ways like playing guitar and singing choruses and raising hands and waving flags…yunno, really evil things like that.

So…during this time, my father suffered and died from frontal lobe dementia, a rather nasty variant on a nasty phenomenon.

It was so trying, so painful for me. I loved him so, and still do.

And…after he died, someone sidled up to me in order to “comfort me”, but managed to tell me that he was certain that the Lord would not have killed my father if I had not been in rebellion against the old pastor!!!!!

Yeah…that is why I really could give a rip whatever people think…except for God, and my family, and my friends, and those I serve everyday. Haters gonna hate…and show their black hearts like simpering socialites at the Cannes film festival.

Just remember…unkind words are never ok, for any reason…especially from those called to speak in the Name of Love Himself.

Love, Charissa Grace

How should we then speak?

Posted on July 2, 2014 by charissagrace

Hi Constance…I am recovering nicely after yesterday’s very difficult day, thanks for asking! 🙂 Writing those poems helped some, getting those feelings out there so I could see them, and somehow wrestle my own self into a somewhat numb place, to endure.

For anyone reading this who isn’t susceptible to the assault that feelings can be on your heart, think heavy rainstorm: you can walk around in it with regular clothes, or you can dress in rain-gear and an umbrella…but you cannot make it stop raining. It will stop when it stops.

Anyway…I am re-posting an article that I thought was very educational about gender dynamics and socialization in our culture…please read it and follow the numerous links for a pretty good layout of the issues.

But here is why I am re-blogging this: I am wondering, as a daughter of Lady Grace and child of The Father and sister to my older Brother Jesus, what should my speech dynamics and content look like? This question popped into my lil hamster brain and has been running on the wheel ever since.

I do believe that even a cursory search of the New Testament will give plenty of raw material directed at speech and conduct that is gender-neutral, and is directed at looking after yourself first instead of correcting and policing others in their behaviour according to your own pet view of what these verses say and mean.

It always does a ton of good to bite your tongue, literally if need be, before you utter one negative or harsh word to someone else. First, walk an entire week practicing the very thing you wish to lay on someone else. Second, read about beams and sawdust specks in the Sermon on the Mount. Third, walk another week practicing the thing that caught your attention. And then, lastly, finally let it dawn on you that Lady Grace was prompting you on the very thing you projected onto someone else.

You will then be so sweet that people will be drawn to you like bees to a sweet flower, and they will ask you for input.

Just some thoughts from Charissa Grace…now read on for far more erudite and informed ones!

Love, Charissa

Soraya ChemalyFeminist, Writer, Satirist… not always in that order

10 Words Every Girl Should Learn

Posted: 06/30/2014 1:57 pm EDT

This article updated from original, which appeared in Role Reboot.

“Stop interrupting me.”

“I just said that.”

“No explanation needed.”

In fifth grade, I won the school courtesy prize. In other words, I won an award for being polite. My brother, on the other hand, was considered the class comedian. We were very typically socialized as a “young lady” and a “boy being a boy.” Globally, childhood politeness lessons are gender asymmetrical. We socialize girls to take turns, listen more carefully, not curse and resist interrupting in ways we do not expect boys to. Put another way, we generally teach girls subservient habits and boys to exercise dominance.

I routinely find myself in mixed-gender environments (life) where men interrupt me. Now that I’ve decided to try and keep track, just out of curiosity, it’s quite amazing how often it happens. It’s particularly pronounced when other men are around.

This irksome reality goes along with another — men who make no eye contact. For example, a waiter who only directs information and questions to men at a table, or the man last week who simply pretended I wasn’t part of a circle of five people (I was the only woman). We’d never met before and barely exchanged 10 words, so it couldn’t have been my not-so-shrinking-violet opinions.

These two ways of establishing dominance in conversation, frequently based on gender, go hand-in-hand with this last one: A woman, speaking clearly and out loud, can say something that no one appears to hear, only to have a man repeat it minutes, maybe seconds later, to accolades and group discussion.

After I wrote about the gender confidence gap recently, of the 10 items on a list, the one that resonated the most was the issue of whose speech is considered important. In sympathetic response to what I wrote, a person on Twitter sent me a cartoon in which one woman and five men sit around a conference table. The caption reads, “That’s an excellent suggestion, Miss Triggs. Perhaps one of the men here would like to make it.” I don’t think there is a woman alive who has not had this happen.

The cartoon may seem funny, until you realize exactly how often it seriously happens. And — as in the cases of Elizabeth Warren or say, Brooksley Born — how broadly consequential the impact can be. When you add race and class to the equation the incidence of this marginalization is even higher.

This suppressing of women’s voices, in case you are trying to figure out what Miss Triggs was wearing or drinking or might have said to provoke this response, is what sexism sounds like.

These behaviors, the interrupting and the over-talking, also happen as the result of difference in status, but gender rules. For example, male doctors invariably interrupt patients when they speak, especially female patients, but patients rarely interrupt doctors in return. Unless the doctor is a woman. When that is the case, she interrupts far less and is herself interrupted more. This is also true of senior managers in the workplace. Male bosses are not frequently talked over or stopped by those working for them, especially if they are women; however, female bosses are routinely interrupted by their male subordinates.

This preference for what men have to say, supported by men and women both, is a variant on “mansplaining.” The word came out of an article by writer Rebecca Solnit, who explained that the tendency some men have to grant their own speech greater import than a perfectly competent woman’s is not a universal male trait, but the “intersection between overconfidence and cluelessness where some portion of that gender gets stuck.”

Solnit’s tipping point experience really did take the cake. She was talking to a man at a cocktail party when he asked her what she did. She replied that she wrote books and she described her most recent one, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West. The man interrupted her soon after she said the word Muybridge and asked, “And have you heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out this year?” He then waxed on, based on his reading of a review of the book, not even the book itself, until finally, a friend said, “That’s her book.” He ignored that friend (also a woman) and she had to say it more than three times before “he went ashen” and walked away. If you are not a woman, ask any woman you know what this is like, because it is not fun and happens to all of us.

In the wake of Larry Summers’ “women can’t do math” controversy several years ago, scientist Ben Barres wrote publicly about his experiences, first as a woman and later in life, as a male. As a female student at MIT, Barbara Barres was told by a professor after solving a particularly difficult math problem, “Your boyfriend must have solved it for you.” Several years after, as Ben Barres, he gave a well-received scientific speech and he overhead a member of the audience say, “His work is much better than his sister’s.”

Most notably, he concluded that one of the major benefits of being male was that he could now “even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man.”

I’ve had teenage boys, irritatingly but hysterically, excuse what they think is “lack of understanding” to [my] “youthful indiscretion.” Last week as I sat in a cafe, a man in his 60′s stopped to ask me what I was writing. I told him I was writing a book about gender and media and he said, “I went to a conference where someone talked about that a few years ago. I read a paper about it a few years ago. Did you know that car manufacturers use slightly denigrating images of women to sell cars? I’d be happy to help you.” After I suggested, smiling cheerily, that the images were beyond denigrating and definitively injurious to women’s dignity, free speech and parity in culture, he drifted off.

It’s not hard to fathom why so many men tend to assume they are great and that what they have to say is more legitimate. It starts in childhood and never ends. Parents interrupt girls twice as often and hold them to stricter politeness norms. Teachers engage boys, who correctly see disruptive speech as a marker of dominant masculinity, more often and more dynamically than girls.

As adults, women’s speech is granted less authority and credibility. We aren’t thought of as able critics or as funny. Men speak more, more often, and longer than women in mixed groups (classrooms, boardrooms, legislative bodies, expert media commentary and, for obvious reasons religious institutions.) Indeed, in male-dominated problem solving groups including boards, committees and legislatures, men speak 75% more than women, with negative effects on decisions reached. That’s why, as researchers summed up, “Having a seat at the table is not the same as having a voice.”

Even in movies and television, male actors engage in more disruptive speech and garner twice as much speaking and screen time as their female peers. This is by no means limited by history or to old media but is replicated online. Listserve topics introduced by men have a much higher rate of response and on Twitter, people retweet men two times as often as women.

These linguistic patterns are consequential in many ways, not the least of which is the way that they result in unjust courtroom dynamics, where adversarial speech governs proceedings and gendered expression results in women’s testimonies being interrupted, discounted and portrayed as not credible according to masculinized speech norms. Courtrooms also show exactly how credibility and status, women’s being lower, are also doubly affected by race. If Black women testifying in court adopt what is often categorized as “[white] women’s language,” they are considered less credible. However, if they are more assertive, white jurors find them “rude, hostile, out of control, and, hence [again], less credible.” Silence might be an approach taken by women to adapt to the double bind, but silence doesn’t help when you’re testifying.

The best part though is that we are socialized to think women talk more. Listener bias results in most people thinking that women are hogging the floor when men are actually dominating. Linguists have concluded that much of what is popularly understood about women and men being from different planets, verbally, confuses “women’s language” with “powerless language.”

There are, of course, exceptions that illustrate the role that gender (and not biological sex) plays. For example, I have a very funny child who regularly engages in simultaneous speech, disruptively interrupts and randomly changes topics. If you read a script of a one of our typical conversations, you would probably guess the child is a boy based on the fact that these speech habits are what we think of as “masculine.” The child is a girl, however. She’s more comfortable with overt displays of assertiveness and confidence than the average girl speaker. It’s hard to balance making sure she keeps her confidence with teaching her to be polite. However, excessive politeness norms for girls, expected to set an example for boys, have real impact on women who are, as we constantly hear, supposed to override their childhood socialization and learn to talk like men to succeed (learn to negotiate, demand higher pay, etc.).

The first time I ran this post, I kid you not, the first response I got was from a Twitter user, a man, who, without a shred of self-awareness, asked, “What would you say if a man said those things to you mid-conversation?”

Socialized male speech dominance is a significant issue, not just in school, but everywhere. If you doubt me, sit quietly and keep track of speech dynamics at your own dinner table, workplace, classroom. In the school bus, the sidelines of fields, in places of worship. It’s significant and consequential.

People often ask me what to teach girls or what they themselves can do to challenge sexism when they see it. “What can I do if I encounter sexism? It’s hard to say anything, especially at school.” In general, I’m loathe to take the approach that girls should be responsible for the world’s responses to them, but I say to them, practice these words, every day:

“Stop interrupting me,”

“I just said that,” and

“No explanation needed.”

It will do both boys and girls a world of good. And no small number of adults, as well.

Follow Soraya Chemaly on Twitter: www.twitter.com/schemaly

Born On The Edge

Posted on July 1, 2014 by charissagrace

These days are tricky,
staying in that sweet spot
between futures and pasts.
They want to align
in tricky mutant ways
like my DNA did, matching up
that past with this future,
and presents…well God only knows
how that is determined!

I used to be, in that past,
not present and thus not known or seen.
Love was something
I gave to others, but never was
my picnic basket of many-splendored wonders
and that past shoots me,
injects me into a future that
threatens, withholds and starves
my soul with “tolerance”.

I also was, in this other past,
staunchly, substantially present
and accounted for…doing,
saying this thing and that,
and knighted with unconscious
privilege and place.
That history? Well it veers off
to insistence, self-serving demands
for attention and affirmation.

No…as a “there but not there” prisoner,
I have to struggle to keep
the strands straight, to not cross the streams,
and let my me
cry for love
and for acceptance,
and companionship
and intimacy
and affirmation

and for that label: Beautiful…
while my myself
walks firmly in
lands beyond sight,
unseen but lonely
and finding solace
in Her touch
and Her words
and Her cloak.

It is a knife edge,
and my options are few,
and costly:
selfishness, or abnegation,
and the fruits of those indulgent follies
or standing firm,
with sliced up soles
and a branded soul…

From the beginning, I have been born on the edge.

Deaf Earth’s Denial

Posted on June 24, 2014 by charissagrace

…I remember, sweet fields of red clover,
green stalks soft and new, tops dipped in crimson,
just before being baked by the shimmery sun
but after they’d stripped off their equinox frocks
to lay naked and sunbathe and snooze

… ‘neath verdurous bows I’d lay gentle
to be rustled and stirred by love-winds
strumming intimate, soft rustling flamenco strains
on red bursts and green wands stirring passionate pleas
and my longing heart yearned contrapuntal

…my head cradled by my dearest doggie,
become Jacob’s stone pillow made living,
and her smile was my ladder to heavenly places,
she my only friend, she my constant companion,
Faithful avatar of Lady Grace

…her sides rising and falling she slumbered
and her dog-dreams broadcasting to touch me
with love-notes that ran thru the magic and mystic
and knit her, my heart, and the clouds and the clover
together in one ever-moment

…and I stared at that limitless blue sky
that held up the clouds, and I was certain
I could stand on them, jump from them only to land softly,
safe in the next passing snowy-cloud heart
to be kissed and be kept from all harming

…I would watch them yield to the wind’s wooing
and change shapes and become different things,
one by one as blue held up their heads and they transformed
to tell of my stories, such longing and aching,
the tale of my breaking young spirit

…and then I would strain hard to become one,
so the cloud of myself would grow solid,
and take tangible shape on the outside of who I was
wailing within, keening desperate to be
what my body and deaf earth denied me

…I would concentrate, willing my rough flesh
to go soft, to go secretly supple,
so my dog’s dreaming tides would wash o’er me and mold me
the who I was destined to be, and not what I was,
dark and substantial and wandering

…but it never worked, so tears would find me
and use me as their surf board to ride on
over billows of longing that swept me away,
but not away away, alas never AWAY
just to Jonah’s lost island of longing

…and Millie would wake at my sobbing
and lift her head to mine so tender
and snap out her pink tongue full of wet doggie balm
dripping healing she’d lick out her quick canine psalm
don’t cry, whine-lick, don’t cry dear, Amen.

…I remember sweet fields of red clover
I remember their scent washing over
and I see them still gleaming, but here now, not dreaming
they are blooming within me and beauty is streaming
to carry me there, to the clouds.

Trembling

Posted on June 21, 2014 by charissagrace

When my doggie was bad, she would shiver,
and with eyes she would look sad and wet and long…
her trembling melted me always.

I remember how she would lay her ears back and soft,
how she would gentle her body against me and
beg for mercy.

I am trembling like her now, but not for being bad,
but rather for being, in a way not acknowledged
and frightening to others.

I am trembling like Victor’s abomination did
when the villagers rounded up torches and pitchforks
and came after it(him).

And I lay back my heart, my soul(ears), and
make them soft and earnestly yearn
for Her hand.

May I always quake, be transient, in my own
aspect and circumstance and
sojourn.

But please, may I be strong and forthright
a mountain unmoved on behalf of those lacking
even the resources to tremble.

Last night I was publicly shamed…

Posted on June 21, 2014 by charissagrace

I am sitting here, trembling and hardly able to see the screen, scrambling inside to find what my heart tells me is true, and Mama is telling me…but the titanic clash with self-loathing habits and rejection-reflexes is tossing me and turning me inside.

What I think the truth is: that Lady Grace, Holy Spirit, my Mama is proud of me and is honored by my actions tonight…what I fear the truth is: I am a freak and outcast and should just rid the planet of my blighting pimple on its butt. That is the realm of feelings and while I acknowledge they are real, I have chosen, do choose and will continue to choose to not believe their accusations.

So…in our town there are charity fundraisers, where it is a contest to raise money for several charities. We like to do charity fundraiser events. They are strong opportunities to serve, give, and also have fun with items that we would normally not buy…we actually spent some money on a wine country equestrian event, picnic, dinner, and overnight at the Inn at Red Hills…a fab fun thing we will be doing later in the summer.

So we were getting ready…and since it was not in the big city, but our small town, I was really conflicted about what to wear…all my tops are a lil too girl-side, and all my boy clothes are just…uuuggghhh! Grrr…I couldn’t find anything and had to settle for my jeans, and a boy pull over top. I wore my pink hat and pink vest (as they are wine oriented for outsiders, but me oriented for me).

We got there, and I did what I usually do in groups of strangers…be gentle and polite, smile a lot with soft eyes and stay off to the side. I used to do that even before transition, and even more so now. We were sitting off to the side, against the wall actually, just my baby and I, and the auctions began.

There were two local wags up there…young, facile vocally, glib, sorta dorky and full of themselves as any small town big fish is…and totally nice guys, just really asleep, ya know?

The epitome of white male privilege.

So even tho I sit off to the side, we bid pretty heavy, as it is Their money, and we feel very good about contributing it to things like that . So we were bidding, and an item got over our limit, which was substantial…and when one of the MCs looked over I gave a subtle head shake, and drew a finger across my throat, saying I am out. So he starts cajoling me…fair enough, that is the game.

But then he says…omfg…right in front of several hundred people!!!!…”Hey nice hat, I will give you $25 for your hat!”

I froze…I freaking literally froze. I mean, my mind wouldn’t work, my heart wouldn’t beat, I couldn’t breathe, and my face felt like it was frying off the bones…I felt like my skin had been shredded, and my heart was just clobbered, like blindsided by a car (which has happened to me on my bike several times, but this was worse, cus it was inside me and I couldn’t get away).

I was sitting there, and my darling figured it out but not right away, so she touches my leg and then the spell broke, and I was quietly ranting to her that I was gonna let that asshole have it, just rip him for what he did…total reactive thinking…and I started to tremble and tear up, and felt like when I was little and we would lose a game I would cry cus I was sooo upset.

Time passed, and as I sat there, I heard Mama talking to me, reminding me that She had made this man, and that he was a good person (She said this, not what I thought), and that he was just asleep, ignorant, tone deaf, a guy made from dirt, (not living flesh like us girls)…and that if I just took out my hurt as anger and vocal violence, I was demonstrating that I was a concubine to the patriarchy!!! Mama is a pretty radical political Holy Spirit!! Lol

Concubine to the Patriarchy??? REALLY??? Wow.

So I asked Her to please help me and She was soothing me and I was just bleeding, and then I thought “fine…I will just swallow hard, like women always have, wash his mess off my face and have done with it and be tough and move on…” and She was like “that is not what would bless Me either.” So I began to still myself and center down, and really open to Her will…and She reminded me of the 3^rd way…She reminded me of the situation in the jet way in Philly…She reminded me of the destiny of being someone broken enough to speak for the broken, and whole enough to speak to the broken ones who know not how broken they are.

And I started understanding what Her preference was…I had choice to embrace it, or not, but I knew that is what She would want from Her daughter.

So during a break I walked up to him, and I said “Excuse me, sir?” He turns, acknowledges me in a friendly but distant way, and raised his eyebrows like Yes? I said “Do we know each other?” He said no, and got ready for some pleasant schmooze…and then I said “we really have never even met before tonight…so I am wondering, what is an appropriate way of interacting with someone you have never met, never been introduced to, and you are interacting with in a very public situation when you have a microphone and I am merely sitting?”

He just stood there, deer in the headlights…and then I said “Did you notice where I was sitting? Off to the side? Out of the way? Not drawing attention to myself? Every signal I was giving was that I was here to support, but was not in any way desiring the limelight. And yet you called me out publically, in front of hundreds of people and you did so because my appearance was distinct. But you didn’t do it to any of the other dozens of people here with hats.”

He took off his glasses, and was suddenly deadly serious, realizing he had stepped into a huge crap pile, and that he was on very thin ice.

So I said, “Sir, I am speaking to you as hopefully a person who loves you enough as a fellow human being to gently confront you now, with little harm done, to save you from potentially harming someone in the future very badly in complete ignorance.

“It is never ok to joke with a stranger that you have never met, especially in front of other strangers, and have the basis of that joke be their appearance, or their orientation, or their gender presentation, or their race…” (and I named off all the categories of the oppressed in our society).

I continued “tonight your words hurt me, but I am not here because of that…I think I am whole enough and supported enough that I will work thru it…but I am here for the one you might speak to who isn’t, who is on the verge, on the edge, and they leave and kill themselves or take drugs to forget…or just get even more broken…”

He says to me “My name is Nathan, and I am soo deeply sorry.” I said “I forgive you freely…I also wanted you to know that I am in no way seeking to hurt you or wound you, but you need to know this to save you and someone else from a great regret…and I do believe that my therapist would be proud of me for showing the courage to speak with you but not in a bad way”…I know I felt Her inside telling me I was ringing the bell.

So I shook his hand (yes, he did crush mine, sheesh!), and said “well Nathan, just put it behind you, after you really think about it, and learn.”

He asked me my name…omfg he had no idea what a veiled threat that was! I freaked out inside it felt so sinister and risky to me…Mama gave me words and I said “Oh, my name isn’t important, but rather the hearts of the little ones with no voice and no strength…THEIR name is what is important, and really, their name is like unto the name of everyone that these charities here tonight are all about.”

And I excused myself and walked off…my baby was there and I told her about it, and was shaking very badly (it was in a break).

Got it under control, and the event continued…and we won a great auction, and then it ended.

She went to get the van, as we had to load some things into it, so I sat in my place and just listened to the night, enjoying being there, but out of the way…and I see him coming over. I was thinking “Oh crap, here it comes” but he takes off his glasses about halfway over to me (his nonverbal indication that he was speaking openly and with no mask)…

…he sits down and wants to shake hands again, but this time, he was very gentle…and he said to me “I want to say thank you, thank you so much for loving a stranger enough to tell me what you did, and save me from potential horror in knowing that I had messed up.”

I told him, oh you are soo welcome, and I am so sorry that it hurt you, I really was seeking to avoid that. He said no, it was perfect, seriously…I was totally wrong, and just talking with no thought whatsoever, and you really blessed me.

At that I was crying hard inside, but I bit my lip bloody to stay together and not fall apart…so I said to him can I tell you a statistic? He indicates yes, so I said out of the population of people who are even willing to acknowledge they are transgender, 41% of them have attempted suicide, and even a higher percentage think about it constantly. This compares to 2-4% in the general population.

He was so still…and so I pressed in and said again that something like that could literally put someone over the edge…and then he said how wrong he was, on every level regardless of my status or identity.

It was a true apology! I think he really meant it? So I told him how just a couple of years ago his words would have shattered me, but now I was able to at least talk to him…and he said something about how in his church there was a m2f who was coming out in the community, and how ignorant he was, but that I had connected so many dots for him, and he was deeply grateful.

So Constance…it seems like it was all a success, right? Good fruit, wholeness exceeding brokenness, educated ruling class member…So why do I feel so bad right now? Why am I still crying, bleeding, and having all those tiresome hounding jackal voices yipping at me?

One Q, and he knows my name and who I work for…one comment and everyone knows…but part of me wants that, they have to deal with me as I am…and part of me wants to just disappear down a rabbit hole.

Constance,I beg you, on behalf of those whom you will talk to, interact with and relate to who are transgender or gay, or some other hidden brokenness and you have no idea, to take stock of your words…I am pretty whole, very loved by Them and I know it…but your words could literally kill someone, and I am not joking with wild hyperbole. If I wanted to do something after tonite, imagine…and the power of some kind word…again you have no idea how powerful your words are…my friends here, when they comment have at times given me courage to face my day, my life.

Silence can kill too…but it is better than saying the wrong thing, which can never be unsaid, unheard.

Oh…and one more thing: if you are of the opinion that being transgender or gay or transgender friendly or gay friendly is an inherent sin and that it is your duty as a member of christendom to “represent” and make sure that everyone you meet knows that you are so devoted to God that you will kill them in the process, Please…don’t bother speaking…you wear your own pride and your own opinions masquerading as the so-called heart of God like a butcher’s apron. Our eyes can see the blood stains of your victims, we can see the steel silver flash of your butcher knives in your eyes, we can smell the stench of death on you (and no it isn’t the savory aroma of the gospel which is the aroma of death to the perishing!) It is the decaying smell of horror become ho-hum and your own comfortable wallowing in your worship of yourself in God’s Precious Name.

We tremble at your approach…and at your fate, when the word “mercy” finally has meaning to you as you are judged by the children of your slaves that diligently work your gospel plantation!

That is my experience…and I still cannot sleep. But perhaps you would join me in a vigil…until all are cherished from the least on up.

Love, Charissa

The Crucible of Disappointment

Posted on June 11, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance…have you ever been disappointed?

“Yeah, riiiiggghhhht, ‘Rissa!” you are prolly thinking! “Who hasn’t!!?”

And that leads me to my topic. See…lately I have been experiencing a lot of disappointment…plans made with loved ones and deeply anticipated, only to find that they have changed so the loved one can serve someone else…understandable…but disappointing.

Or trying hard to nail down an appointment, only to get no reply regarding which of a number of dates would be best…and then worse, feeling like I am making a pest of myself in seeking to simply get this thing scheduled…wondering if I am being avoided, if I have been intrusive or over-bearing…and yeah, disappointment.

We all experience it, but here is a secret: disappointment can be a crucial and pivotal agent of transformation in your life…or rather, the way that you handle it will lead to radical transformation.

I think the most crucial thing to grasp is this: Disappointment is divinely planned to result in death. Think about it…frequently when we are disappointed, something inside us dies–a dream, a desire, a hope, a plan…but as has so often been the case for me, the death of those things opens the gateways for the resurrection of those things in some far more pure and properly motivated form.

It is a tool that is similar to a surgeon’s blade. It is wielded with great skill by the Ones who love us best. But there is a team aspect to passing thru the death of disappointment and int the realms of resurrection! Like so many things, what is most crucial is not what happened, but rather how we choose to respond. The power to choose is what separates the Mandala’s from the Mansons!

Generally, we tend to deal with disappointment in one of two ways:
#1: Fear. I know that I am guilty a lot of being so confused when I get disappointed, and then to think, and react in fear…fear that I am being rejected, fear that I am unloved, fear that I have driven someone away with a careless word or mis-timed joke, fear of pain or sorrow.

#2. Faith. Faith that love bears all things, and never fails, and Joy will always find a way. When we are able to faithfully continue to the person we wish to be, to keep our eyes on the vision and keep them off ourselves, it is miraculous how disappointment becomes the catalyst for the transformation we so deeply desire.

I am struck by a series of contrasts in the lives of several Bible characters, and please, remember that the things in the Bible contain truths that we are privileged to suss out in our day and age. It is possible to learn from the truth of the stories without necessarily subscribing to a specifically Christian position or theology.

I see a vast difference in the lives of 2 men, who at one time were very close, who both were destined to rule as king, who both endured disappointment and sorrow…and yet one of these men we have heard nothing from or about other than the things recorded about in in the Bible, and the other of the men wrote poetry and prayers that are still to this day echoing in the highways and byways of the human heart and soul! I am talking about Saul, and David…one walked with fear, and one walked with faith.

Saul is said to have encountered a big disappointment when the prophet Samuel did not show up when Saul had planned for him to. Samuel told him to wait…wait until Samuel arrived! But Samuel delayed several days…and then the people began to grumble, began to demand that their king take action…and Saul’s disappointment became infected by fear, and he began to move and think and decide from a basis of fear.

In the midst of the crucible of disappointment, Saul fearfully decided that he could not rely on or trust anyone else, so he chose to embrace self-reliance, in a twisted way. And within a few chapters he is in the grip of self-deception, which bore the bitter fruits of despair and ultimately destruction…and we see this cycle of disappointment/deception/despair/destruction repeated in Saul’s life over and over again.

By the end of his days, Saul is alone and finds himself in the house of a witch, seeking dark and sinister remedies for disappointment. A few days later, Saul commits suicide, and the life of a talented and promising human being came to a tragic and futile end.

David, on the other hand, found himself in the crucible of disappointment over and over again just like Saul…but instead of responding with fear, he responded with faith. He made a choice, to delight himself in whatsoever was true, good, noble and worthy. He spoke of his choices to do this, to trust, to have faith. He wrote about them, and about the Ones with the power to deliver him according to Their riches and mercies. David declared over and over again that even in the midst of disappointment, God is good.

And ultimately, David experienced deliverance from that crucible and resurrection into a more yielded and humble vessel.

Disappointment met in fear=> deception=>despair=>destruction=>death. The root force behind this whole path is self-reliance, in its unbalanced and unhealthy form. The soundtrack to this path is the song “What about me? Me, me, meeee!!” Tragically, death here is the ultimate and final end.

Disappointment met in faith=>delight in what’s right=>declaring what’s true=>deliverance=>resurrection and life! The root force behind this whole path is a yielded spirit. The soundtrack to this path is the song “I Surrender All”. Miraculously, death here is the gateway to life, and is just a new beginning!

There are many other contrasts available for your examination…consider the man of fear (Samson) vs the man of faith (Samuel), and how each one dealt with disappointment, how each one walked a road that was determined by their choice of fear/faith, and the fruit that came from their lives by the end…

…or consider Judas and Peter (who aren’t that much different! After all, both men betrayed the Lord in His hour of travail!). Judas encountered such disappointment that the Messiah was not setting up a physical kingdom in which he would be an important governor, but was instead setting up a kingdom that was not made from wealth and fame, but from love and sacrifice and kindness…and so he stole things (out of fear), and justified it to himself to betray Jesus (deception), and then when he saw that every attempt he made to force Jesus to show His power physically and save Himself had failed, he wept bitterly (despair), and then hung himself.

Peter, on the other hand, entered into the same crucible, and was guilty of the same things, having taken up a sword and cut off the ear of another person (it took the touch of Jesus to heal that person!)

And as an aside, have you ever noticed that before? When Peter got militant and angry and attempted to bring the Kingdom in by human strength, he effectively rendered another person incapable of hearing! Ask yourself: how many times have YOU with the best of intentions but firmly ensconced in your own strength and agenda taken your sword and hurt someone, deafened them to the very message you so deeply wish to communicate? I think we need to take a hard look at ourselves, and consider hard the lesson Peter learned here!

So when Peter did this, he was rebuked by the Lord, and got disappointed, and even more so when Jesus allowed Himself to be taken away…and then he walked in fear, which led to deception that he would be safe from harm if he just kept quiet…which led to his denial of Jesus vehemently…which led to his despair as he saw His friend and Lord taken and tortured…

…but Peter then found the space and the grace to hold on, and a few days later, the Risen Lord appeared on the shores of the sea and called to Peter who in faith took action! He dove into the sea and swam to the Lord, and there in faith he let disappointment be turned into resurrection as he found his way through delighting in the Lord, declaring Who He is, and thus being delivered into new life.

Constance…I encourage you to take a ramble thru these stories. Whether you have a Bible or just use aan online tool like Bible Gateway…whether you consider the Bible authoritative in your life, or a collection of wise spiritual stories…do not lose the opportunity to glean some wisdom and a skill set to assist you in dealing with a very common assailant in our lives here in this time and place.

The contrasts between the two ways of dealing with disappointment are stark and meaningfully salient:

Fear seeks to escape…Faith seeks to embrace.

If you have chosen a lifestyle that is fear based, this is sort of attempting to save yourself by yourself, and essentially that is tantamount to spiritual suicide eventually. Ultimately, none of us is big enough to bear all our burdens all by ourselves! We need each other, and in my own world view, we need They who love us utterly and completely!

But if you choose to take the risk of responding in faith to disappointment, and to embrace your life rather than attempt to flee, then you will find the peace and relief in laying down your life into Their loving hands…trusting Them that you can be who you really are with Them, and that They will be who They really are with you!. You take your eyes off of the fires, off of the hurts, and you fix your eyes on the promised prize waiting on the other side…waiting thru the crucible of disappointment.

Disappointment: it brings us to the crossroads…and we can travel to that cross, and then thru that cross and into new life and deeper peace and joy.

Thank you so much for reading, and may you be blessed this day with oodles of grace, and boodles of joy, and blankets of peace.

Love,

Charissa Grace

The Dive

Posted on June 10, 2014 by charissagrace

Bobbing in the silver lake like a cork, or maybe a pink bobber trailing a hook for catching fish,
I looked around and saw no sight of land, no brown, no yellow,
no dry tang of sand.

Just water (blue and turquoise, purple and green waves
moving, flowing deep and wide)
…and me, floating.

I heard a voice on the waters, in the waters, so near yet so far
and perhaps from outside the in, and clear…calling me, calling.
Come. Deeper. Calling and beckoning.

I looked down thru the shimmer and saw a dim glimmer of a figure far
below and hanging, floating, and waving Her arms like seaweed become God…
or was God become seaweed?

Adrift and alone, I had no other place to be or way to go, and so
a breath for luck–I dove…and swam…until I was red, was bursting red and
kicking water-doors in, swimming thru that choking and wet desperate desert din,

trying to get to Her, to be found, deep in the waves and whole,
deep in Her sea, Her song and Her smile…alas! Faltering I had to choose…
If I kept on I’d fall short and drown, but if I turned back, I could surface again,

but only to the lonely still, and outside Her in…so I pressed on,
down, having decided if I were to die this day it would be swimming to Her
and never running away.

And then suddenly I was there, or She was here, my choked lungs
burned bursting-black like Chicago and Her Lips ageless and fresh on mine, cool and sizzling…
and Her breath became forevermore my life’s air.

‘Neath Marvel Skies

Posted on June 3, 2014 by charissagrace

I sit, quiet in morning, in a fuzzy gold dawn of…yet another.
This day, like them all, like none before, stretches out horizontally
(my cramped and sleepy legs), stretches out vertically
(my free unfurling soul), hums with eternity’s pulsing center
and calls my name with its wafting breezy mouth.

My heart pulls, rises with the sleepy sun and warms
to its task of pulling me up to the easy estate of becoming.
Flowers send fragrant potions in answer to beckoning
gestures from cloudy gentle giants floating in graceful skies
bluing up for warmer dances coming when the sun opens its eyes.

There is a space for you here…beside me on this soft and leafy bench.
But you must turn a quarter turn, and step three times to your left and hop,
and fall up out of that dreamy safe sameness and routine slumber.
You must say the words and rub that dull and tinny lamp
that stands beside your desk, your bed, your chair, and then…come here.

The air shimmers, blades and branches sense your approach, your desire.
They lean, beckoning, they sing and lark in this breezy vibrant dawn.
There is quiet at the heart of this singing day, but deeper, within that quiet
burns an ever-flaming core of wonder-song, facets flashing, gleaming, fiery
like some magic carpet woven from Auroras and last night’s wild starry strays…

I wait in the quiet, I wait in the core, I wait ‘neath these plush and pearly-gold skies
swimming before a broadening emboldened sun. I wait for you…
I feel you turn, your first, second, third step, your hop…
I see rose air displace and bulge and nearly tear,
I hear that lamp purring ‘neath your eager hand!
And I join the flowers, blades, branches,
birds to herald your arrival, here ‘neath marvel skies!

F.I.G. L.E.A.F.

Posted on May 29, 2014 by charissagrace

Ever lived a life of cover-up? A life that maybe you were even hiding from yourself?

I have. And I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that I was authentic, honest, and transparent to God, others, and myself.

HA!!! Just as my father and mother from eons ago, I had fig leaves for coverings. A fig leaf is anything other than the glory of God that you take refuge in. When the scripture says that Adam and Eve were naked and ashamed, it wasn’t talking about that they suddenly knew they had no clothes on! What it meant was that the inner life of God, the Spirit of Life that Shines and gives Life had been extinguished…had died.

They had died, spiritually. And now they were dim, burned out, diminished, and it was obvious to one another, Thus, they sought a cover-up…fig leaf…just as we do to this day.

Thankfully, through the love and mercy of God Jesus who is the Second Adam has made a way for us to get a bulb change, and get our god-light turned back on, and gain in our confidence and faith in His work to the point where we can discard our fig leaves and stand boldly with unveiled faces.

But they are tricky…they are subtle and insidious…and of many and divers forms. I guess I was/am sorta an expert in wearing them and hiding. But no more! 🙂

As I was/am walking away from these, LG has given a funny little acrostic as listed below…do you see yourself there anywhere? I know I said OUCH!

Love, Charissa Grace

F     ear
I     nsecurity
G     uilt

L     oneliness
E     xile
A     nxiety
F     rustration

Beautiful King (Zephaniah 3:8-20, song from March 1992)

Posted on May 29, 2014 by charissagrace

This song comes next here, for though I had written it a year earlier, I had not done it publicly, but rather worshiped it in private. You see, some men in our congregation, influential and controlling guys who ran the congregation, got very uncomfortable with my songs…they were either too tender, or too tough, or too sappy, or too sharp edged. Whatever.

It was very painful, and also confusing, for the sweet Holy Spirit would hover and draw so close, and when I did the songs with the downtrodden, they loved them!

So I had been holding out…but in the same meeting that Arise our God was played, this one was the song that led us upward again, and out of the trough of despondence and repentance and back to a place of hope and confidence in the Lord.

Later in the night (and after the obligatory drawing aside by the “leaders: to rebuke me for my over-emotional songs), Lady Grace drew near me, and as I cried myself to sleep She nestled over me and I knew that They were pleased, and that was enough. (I never could figure it out…why they criticized virtually every single thing…and yet continually asked me to lead worship. Go figure. I guess it is evidence of the verses in Psalm 27

“Teach me Your way, O Lord, And lead me in a smooth path, because of my enemies.
¹²Do not deliver me to the will of my adversaries; for false witnesses have risen against me, and such as breathe out violence.
¹³I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

¹⁴Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the Lord!”)…yeah…YES LORD.

PS: there are 7 lines in each verse on purpose lol!

All ye who weep with hearts that are broken, lift up your eyes to your King
All who desire Holy Devotion, Bow you down, and call on His Name.
And He will give to you purified lips.
And you will give to Him purified lives.
And He will remove from you dullness of heart.
Pour out your lives to Him,
Your Beautiful King.

Shout for Joy, Oh Ye Daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, Oh Israel!
He has taken away all His judgements against you! And He dwells in your midst, let not your hands fall limp!
He sings over you in joy, mighty and tender!
Victorious Warrior, gaze on His Splendour!
He turns all your shame to song, He brings us together!
Pour out your live to Him…
Your Beautiful King.

He Cares (Song from Isaiah 43, 1988)

Posted on May 28, 2014 by charissagrace

In 1985 I got very sick with a kidney disease called Nephritis. There was no cause that could be found, but there was a prognosis of immediate dialysis, followed by transplant at the first available organ.

For 9 months before this manifested on October the 4th, 1985, I had been getting a specific biblical reference virtually every morning during my prayer time. It was Lamentations chapter 3. This is a famous passage where the prophet Jeremiah is vicariously repenting to the Lord on behalf of the nation of Israel, and also lamenting his own personal hardship. The verses that stood out, as if in flames to me, were 12-13…

“He has bent His bow and set me up as a target for the arrow.He has caused the arrows of His quiver to pierce my kidneys…”

Of course they were a huge puzzle for me, and I delved into the chapter, and had fruitful study for months, but could not for the life of me figure out what was so significant about those fiery words…

So there I was, in the doctor’s office while they laid out my future for me, and by then, I knew the meaning of those words, in all their dread. I knew that this was some sort of trial/discipline/classroom/reproach/something that was from God, and only God would be able to help me. I had a deep certainty that I was going to survive this (and I was not very happy about that, to be frank. It was during this time that I tasted gun oil on a barrel, if you get my drift), and I decided before things got too far, that I was going to seek Them and beseech Them for mercy and see what happened…why it happened…what was happening.

I refused the options they laid out. The doctors told me I was crazy…but I didn’t care. When they asked me what I was planning, I simply told them the verses, what God had been putting in me for 9 months, and that this was something divine that had to be dealt with on that level. Of course they ridiculed me, sought to belittle and demean me for my stupidity.

It was rough to take. I knew how it looked…Jesus Freak outta yer mind etc etc.

But I was firm in my understanding, and knew that anything else they did would be futile, so instead I sought help through natural means and prayer and repentance. I did intense research and found several herbs that had verifiable healing qualities for kidneys. I prayed a ton.

And I had to work during this time. I had no time off available, and my new wife and baby needed to eat, right? So I went out to my very physical job picking up trash in our town, and I slogged zombie-like through the days. I had a constant 101 degree fever. My muscles constantly ached like the worst flu you have had. I felt so sick, so full of toxins, and so absolutely alone.

Imagine the silence, after virtually everyday for 9 months there had been active voice in my spirit from Them.

Imagine the horror and lonely realization that I was literally dying, and I had chosen to either live or die by Their intervention, and They were not talking.

It was bleak…for real.

But in a few weeks, I began to hear stirrings, and eventually They established dialogue again with me, and then came weeks of gentle revelation to me of my own carnal dependence on religion, theology, and the word itself. They showed me that I basically worshiped the Bible instead of Them. I could quote the word 9 ways to Sunday, but I didn’t properly care for Their down-trodden and weak and lost sheep. I was self-righteous, boasting in my credentials, my position as a life-long christian, and my status as a “good person”. They showed me my dependence on my own abilities and gifts (which THEY gave me, btw), and finally, how I had put my trust in an ethic of law and right behaviour, instead of trusting Them in relationship, with an ethic coming from righteousness equaling right relationship with Them.

These revelations were in some ways more painful than the physical issues I was dealing with. OOooohhh my pride was sooo stinky and offended! But They were right…They always are.

There was no immediate relief, no instant healing after I got the message and began to pursue repentance…repentance: simply a changing of the mind resulting in traveling the opposite way you were traveling. Metanoia. But there was a coming along side, an empowering while I was so weak, to complete each day, everyday, and slowly but surely embrace the fellowship of His sufferings (sanctification and death to self)…until finally…the day this song was born.

I was working in a neighborhood in our town, and as I was picking up trash, I saw a young woman in her mid twenties come out of her house, and walk to her car. She had been weeping, and was bruised (literally). She was smoking a cigarette, and was somewhat unkempt. And above all, underneath the veneer of hurt, pain, sorrow, and slow hardening of her heart, I saw that she was incredibly beautiful. Now…I think what happened is that They gave me eyes to see her as They see her! And in that moment, the lyrics to the song came into my heart, and the melody out of my mouth, and basically I got the song in about 5 minutes. I quickly pulled around the block and jotted down the words, finished the day, and went straight home to the guitar and firmed it up.

I went back to that house a few days later. I intended to sing that song to that woman…but the house was empty. Whatever violence that had occurred had flowered into its bitter and deadly fruit and no one was there any longer. I went back to my car and sat…and cried. I cried for her, for whoever hit her, for the sin and brokenness we were hemmed in by, and I prayed loud and without thought for how I appeared to others or what words I used or how spiritual I sounded or looked…and I begged Them to watch over her, draw her to Themselves, and other things as well.

The tears finally stopped, and I was ready to leave…and I heard Lady Grace speak to me, and She said that what I had just experienced was why They had pierced my kidneys with Their arrows…Their discipline had at last resulted in the good fruit They desired. She basically told me it was the first time I had ever prayed for someone else with a whole heart aware only of the person, and not of my own role as the spiritual champion, warrior, super-christian, etc. etc. And that I was incapable of hearing that song from Them previous to Their scouring and wounding stripes.

I will never, ever forget that…and the lesson of Their Faithfulness. “For I am confident of this very thing: that He who began a good work in you shall be faithful to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ!”

In light of my posts taking a very sharp prophetic stance against misogyny, I think it is timely that I found this song today in the annals of my past…“He Cares” (it is in waltz time in a country gospel style)… tumblr_n64n4yXMxA1qbc8lko1_1280

Don’t let the world steal your beauty.
Don’t let the world take your joy.
When you’re too hurt to cry, and your spirit is so dry,
oh don’t let the world steal your beauty.

When you pass thru ferocious deep rivers,
when the water is chilly and cold,
Though the floods be so grey, you will not be swept away,
when you pass thru ferocious deep rivers.

Chorus:
Cause He cares, He cares.
Jesus cares for you.
He will gently lift you up. He will fill your empty cup,
Jesus cares for you.

Don’t let the world steal your victory.
Don’t be defeated by the pain.
When you’re wounded in the fight, when you can’t see any light,
oh don’t let the world steal your victory.

When you walk thru the lonely hot fires,
and dark flames of despair lick your soul.
Do not be concerned, for you will not be burned,
when you walk thru the lonely hot fires.

Chorus:

Bridge:
Do not call to mind what has happened before,
don’t ponder the things of the past.
I will make a broad roadway in the wilderness,
and rivers of life in your deserts.

What My hands hold, none can snatch away.
What I do, none can undo.
By My Blood and My Name, you are fee from all shame,
Oh! I LOVE you, come to Me!

Chorus:
Cause I care, I care!
My people, I care for you!
I will gently lift you up, I will fill your empty cup.
Oh My people I care for you!

Don’t let the world steal your beauty.
Don’t let the world take your joy.
He will gently lift you up…He will fill your empty cup,
So don’t let the world steal your beauty.

This Desperate Prisoner Song from Psalm 69 July 1992

Posted on May 26, 2014 by charissagrace

I remember the season that I wrote this…one of the worst of my life. A parent of 4 marvelous children, married to an amazing and wonderful woman, successful, respected…and absolutely terrified constantly inside, haunted by feelings of suicide and alienation, and carrying the deep shame that I was not really a man at all. And what I was I had not been allowed to think of since I was 6 years old.

The pressure would build, to almost intolerable levels, and then somehow They would give me grace, carry me, and another period would pass where I could tolerate the pain and sorrow.

I didn’t think I was gonna make it thru this one. I thought for sure that I was gonna lose heart and kill myself, and there was no one to talk to about it, for I was ashamed that I was not “strong enough!” And then I ran into Psalm 69, and this song was born.

Looking at it now, I can hear that I, Charissa, was beginning to shout…I was the desperate prisoner. In many ways, we are all that desperate prisoner…and He is always the Liberator…for I was set free, and never have I known such peace and contentment.

Thank You Father…thank You Jesus…thank You my Mama Lady Grace.

I love You all!

Save me oh God, the flood o’er whelms my broken heart, my throat is parched!
I’m weary, Lord, from crying, my burning eyes fail while I wait for Thee!

Oh God You see my every folly, and all my wrongs are know to Thee.
May they who seek Thee be not dishonoured, because of me, because of me!

Reproach has broken me, and I am sick and shame covers my face.
I look for sympathy, but there’s no comfort there, no life for me.

Answer me Lord, and have compassion, and do not hide Your face from me!
Deliver me from the deep waters, draw near to me, please draw near to me!

O ransom me, my God, set me on high and I will sing Your song.
Zeal for Thy House consumes my soul and I will ever seek Your face.

The humble see, and they are filled with gladness, and those who seek Him, He will revive.
For Jesus sees our every trouble, and sets the desperate prisoner free…
Oh Set This Desperate Prisoner Free!

Open My Heart (October 1997, a song of desperation)

Posted on May 26, 2014 by charissagrace

(Often I mistook the existential agony I was in due to feeling null, as a sinful and hard heart. I have always wanted God from my earliest memories…and have always felt so puny and wanting in His sight. Now, I have learned that what I was feeling mostly was the horror of dysphoria, and “not belonging” in either gender. But those feelings drove me to Them…I mean, when it gets down to it, where else was there for me to go??

Anyway, I am thankful for Their love, Their unending compassion and tender mercies…and above all for Their unending grace. They brought me thru the fires and floods)

Open my heart dear Lord,
Open my heart dear Lord.
For I am hungry Lord
for Your living Word.

But my heart is hard, oh Lord!
Tattered and Scarred, oh Lord!
Spirit please soften me,
let Your Love set me free, to love You in purity.

Capture my heart, dear Lord!
Capture my heart, dear Lord!
So when my race is run,
my heart would be found in Your Son!

Just one thing I desire,
the baptism of Your Fire!
Come set my heart aflame!
With passion for Jesus’ Name, forever Amen.

The Black of Night: A modern psalm after David

Posted on May 26, 2014 by charissagrace

Sometimes, in the black of night, haunts and ghosts of long ago
return and bite me…in the heart.

Their teeth, no form or body, sound slashy and ugly dull discord
and pierce me, hurt me, haunt me and my soul runs panicked and stampeded.

Their corpusant claws, red wreathed and skin-ister
slash my gut and leave their venom of panic and despair.

I groan, under decades of their torment, and futiley
stopper my ears with torn fingers and tears.

“Miscreant! Blight! Dark Blemish on dark night!
You are nothing! You should die! You are ridiculous and alone!”

And they also say other things much worse.

I writhe, squirm, and cry out in desperate agony,
and have never known anything else but to stand and endure.

Even when it is poison-pitch-black, I remember You Mama,
Your promises and Your comfort, which has preserved me.

And in the morning I rise, exhausted, defeated, and torn
but still, my “no-matter-what” is intact and strong.

Jaws aching from grinding anxiety and heart dripping
the blood of wounds and the sweat of grim life, I tremulously sing

You are my refuge and my strength, and as the troubadour sang
I will follow you…and see Your goodness in the land of the living!

Judge Me Not

Posted on May 24, 2014 by charissagrace

This poem (or is it more just verse?) is attempting to say that if you ever find yourself looking at the outward actions of someone and coming to a conclusion about their motive or heart, it is a dead giveaway that you have unconsciously or consciously begun to trust in your own self as the source of righteousness and goodness, and have poised yourself as the standard of measure…otherwise how would you come to such a conclusion about the person’s heart??

A wise man told me once, “We judge others by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions.”

Wow. So true, right? No, instead, when you are filled with the wonder and majesty of the glorious work Jesus FINISHED when He became our sacrifice and ransom, and when you truly grasp that when you say Yes to Them it is no longer you who live, but Christ in you, and that ALL old things are passed away and you are a brand new never have been creature that is a human being incarnating Very God…well, then…you are free, to simply be Their Ambassador of Love and Mercy and Kindness.

Love Mercy

Do Justly

Walk Humbly.

Love, Charissa Grace

Judge me not by the deeds I do, e’en if they tower tall
Or if they glower and echo failure and show all the ways that I fall
Judge me not by my actions, for actions only tell a part,
Judge instead the Deeds of Them whose works show the True Heart.

The True Heart gives, in lavish ways, compassion, joy, and grace,
It knows our frame, that we are dust, and knows we lost our face,
It responsibility takes for every step astray
And makes a way for us lost sheep to run from night to day.

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When actions you look only at, you show the god you trust,
Your own soul’s will and naming good, your own judgement…your lust
To at the core be your own captain, commanding your own soul
And God’s Name becomes vanity as you crash on ego’s shoals.

So judge me not, for I will fall beneath your scrutiny
But look instead at Lady Grace, at Jesus, at the sea
Of Love unceasing, perfect and fulfilling all the law
Indwelling life in me…judge Them…and then kneel down in awe.

Becoming

Posted on May 22, 2014 by charissagrace

Dirty with me,
dirty with Your love for me,
You plunge Your tender hands
into the messy miry clay I am.

You grip,
grab,
grapple, and
pedal,
whirling me,
spinning and scattered
becoming
moving from
Your heart to me.

…becoming…

Becoming?
Mama,
with pain pulsing, and
Ache throbbing and
that void crying within?

Becoming?
Mama, with
the spin and
the pull…

And WET! Ugh!
You drench me, and
drown my
Objections
(which meander forth like mewling kitty-cries)
in floods of word,
of blood-sacred and red,
of water alive…

Til I am soft and tender too,
and moldable by You.
I cannot but trust You,
Mama, Faithful Potter,
busy and intricate,
tender and tough,
Teacher and Creator.

Yet Fire awaits, I fear…
no, I know.
Fire to dry,
to bake,
to cure,
prepare…
And then use,
filling and pouring,
and all the while

Feeling
Your hand on me, and
Your life in me,
and seeing flowers
bloom and blossom…

so my Mama,
take me in hand,
and redeem my days
in Your Becoming.

Like a Rose (Come Holy Ghost)…song for Mama from 1994

Posted on May 22, 2014 by charissagrace

As you know if you read here regularly, I love to refer to the Holy Spirit as Mama…and back in the 1990s I started calling Her “Lady Grace”, based on the stories my baby was writing back then “Tales of the Blood King.”

I have always had a very deep interest in and affinity with Holy Spirit. As a child, I used to be scared of our orchards, because I was certain that I heard a “ghost” calling me to come out in the orchard and meet her. It frightened me because it was so unusual, not so much because I thought harm would come to me. When I tried to talk to my parents about it, they just laughed at me, and marveled at “the imagination on that kid!” Yeah, that sorta hurt…but why would they think or do otherwise? It certainly is not “normal”!

In college, thanks to my beloved Dearest Darling, I met Holy Spirit very personally face to face (in my heart of course…the literal face to face is still to come!). And since that time, She has been very present and with me…with the exception of last year in the autumn, when They strategically withdrew to break me out of dry dock, and launch me on a voyage.

This song was my attempt at conveying the beauty, the blessing, and the healing of Lady Grace’s presence. Whenever I played it, the reaction was dramatic…some people were transported into a deeper realm of devotion and union with God…and other people literally at times tried to stop me from playing it, to the point of threatening to kick me out of church if I persisted. I persisted…

Take a look for yourselves…and may you always find a door to open in your heart to Lady Grace, the most gentle and comforting and powerful of beings!!

***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Like A Rose (Come Holy Ghost)

The fragrance of Your Presence here is all I need.
You fall on me like dew on thirsty ground.
You pour out golden oil on my hungry heart,
I will drink of heaven’s love come down.

Chorus #1:

Holy Spirit come (echo). Holy Spirit come (echo)
Come and pour the Wine of Father’s love.
Holy Spirit come (echo). Holy Spirit come (echo),
Come and fill our hearts with Love again.

The fire of Your Presence here is like a Rose,
You blossom in the dark night of my soul.
Your steadfast love surrounds me and You melt the snows,
And I am set aflame by First Love’s coal.

Chorus #2:

Holy Spirit Fall! (echo) Holy Spirit Fall! (echo)
Fall like Holy Fire from Father’s Throne.
Holy Spirit Fall! (echo) Holy Spirit Fall! (echo)
Come and set our hearts on fire again.

Declaration

Posted on May 21, 2014 by charissagrace

In the midst of pain, lonely ache and terror,
in the midst of the grasping clingy gloom and
thistley despair raining in cold fire around me,

I choose to lift my eyes up, lift up my heart,
lift my lips up and again resolve to sing and give my
pearls of praise in offerings of trust…and faith…and standing.

Resolved: to stand, weeping though I may be, but not to turn back,
not to be silent, stand and wait. Wait. wait.
For the Goodness of the Lord to rise again, and again.

I recall the old song:

“We’ve come this far by faith! Leaning on the Lord, trusting in His Holy Word,
He hasn’t failed us yet! Oh, we won’t turn back, we’ve come this far by faith!”

This is my boast…that They are faithful, and will work and will and do
in me to Their Good Pleasure, and I shall not be left bereft
come what may.

Amen.

Hymn in the midst of Shame and Sorrow

Posted on May 21, 2014 by charissagrace

Hold me close, I beg Thee.
Never let me go,
though I pull like wild horses at Your tether.
Wrap me in Your love please!
Tender, tough, and total
as it presses me and puts me back together.

Father, You have reached me!
Taken me back home, into
Your house that is the essence of Your Heart.
Jesus, You have breached me!
Leapt the walls and plumbed the gory
depths of death and caused shame to depart.

Oh Mama, my Help and comfort,
You are healing, changing,
breathing in me Hope and Joy and Grace on Grace,
So hold me close, I beg Thee!
In Your wonders and Your Love,
so someday I will look upon Your Wondrous Face.

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Can’t Cry Hard Enough

Posted on May 21, 2014 by charissagrace

The shell is brittle…
like dry bones fallen like leaves
from the table of bone.

It clasps,
grasps, and
feeds on my
gristly gasps
with my every breath,
every sob…

…and I can’t cry hard enough.

They must be pierced,
these bone-shield
prison walls that comfort
and secure me safe.
She is knocking…
knocking over my defenses
and my usual.
But it hurts so…

…and I can’t cry hard enough.

Discovery’s pain is surpassed
only by the pain of hiding,
and what terror there is
as She sees,
and knows.
She reaches,
and grows,
and tears me
out of myself
into Life…

…and I can’t cry hard enough.

“Today’s tears are tomorrow’s treasured triumphs, ‘Rissa!”
shouts my Mama,
Lady Grace,
Queen of Grace,
Heart of God
to God & man.
She promises victory,
and being,
and glad Joy…

…and I can’t cry hard enough.

Why Do So Many Folks Hate Transgender People? | The Bilerico Project

Posted on May 21, 2014 by charissagrace

Why Do So Many Folks Hate Transgender People? | The Bilerico Project.

Constance, I have not pressed this right away, as I am really in a hurting place for reasons that are unrelated to this topic…just aching, longing, missing what never was, and finding it difficult to believe that it will ever be…trying to hold onto Jesus hand and be drawn thru this valley of the shadow…trying to hold onto Mama’s waist, and hold tight as She crashes time and space, and makes a way for me…birth is HARD!

But the topic needs to be looked at…posted and reposted so that you can see some of the basic things faced by transgender people. And, you know what? Hate of anyone really boils down to these areas.

Think about it.

Love God.

Love yourself.

Love your neighbor.

More Than I Have Known You (a song of desperate longing, 1995)

Posted on May 14, 2014 by charissagrace

This song is from my life book, and specifically my life passage: Philippians 3:8-12 (do you have a life book and/or passage? Something to think on). I remember that the nights were getting worse…nearly unbearable, and my poor beloved who suffered beside me, holding me as I shook and trembled and cried and suffered in the dark.

I remember getting up around 2 AM one morning just a few weeks after the first of the year. The thought of enduring another year towered over me like King Kong over Faye Wray! Suicide was not an option, as it is so unfair to the ones left behind, and it is the ultimate self-oriented act…but going on was not an option either.

I longed to just simply “never-have-been”…because it was as if I wasn’t there anyway, and yet horribly and terribly aware and having being…rough.

I got out my guitar, and began to strum softly in my favorite chords, and just hum…and a lil melody bubbled up inside, and the chord changes manifested themselves to me, and then I spontaneously started singing these words…but I actually believe that Lady Grace sang them for me, for I was without mouth, without tongue, and screaming…

It got me thru. They are enough…always, always enough.

(I am crying as I recall, in total and complete gratefulness)

When my life is shaken in the storm,
You are there…and You draw me near You.
In Your Arms my heart is made secure,
as You kiss my tears and call me Your own.

Chorus:

I want to know You, I want to know You!
Deep in my heart, Lord…I want to know You!
I want to know You, I want to know You!
More than I have known you Lord…I want to know You.

When the dark night presses in on me,
You are there, You’re shining so brightly.
Then Your sweet love brings the dawn again,
and my heart is filled with only one cry…

Chorus

So I come and kneel at Calvary.
You are there, and You draw me near You.
Then Your Blood, Your River washes me,
Jesus, I surrender my life to You

Chorus

Hear, Oh Lord (Song from 1990)

Posted on May 14, 2014 by charissagrace

Another devotional chorus from years ago…as I read them now I understand so much better that dark desperate despair that I had to battle constantly…and I am also more impressed than ever by the mercies and faithfulness of our God! Thank You, again and again and again!!! 🙂

Hear, Oh Lord and answer me! For I am poor and needy.
Guard my life oh so close to Thee, for I am devoted to You.

Chorus:

You are my God (3x)

Save Your servant who trusts in You! Let me drink deep of Your Mercy.
I cry out to You all night long! Oh Father I must have You!

Chorus

“Wadded with stupidity?”

Posted on May 7, 2014 by charissagrace

“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.”

George Eliot, Middlemarch, (London: Penguin, 1994),

Do you find this quote describing you at all? Once in a while? Frequently? All the time? Never?

I know that Mary Anne Evans, writing under a male pen name (a different post altogether!!!), describes a dilemma for us, and I think everyone knows, knows it deep down inside…feels it.

Here is the dilemma: if you allow yourself to really see…if you are living so as to strengthen and establish eyes of the heart and soul that truly see, then all the wonder and glory and brokenness and tragedy and beauty swells in sound and presence so as to be a magnificent and overwhelming symphonic tide! Standing on the beach of perception, and staring out at that vast and glorious sea, every living thing a player in the cosmic orchestra. But, this life is costly, often lonely, and can be overwhelming, especially without companionship…and companionship worthy of the challenge, and not “crabs in the bucket” who will pull you back down into the miasma with them.

The alternative: choose to not be overwhelmed by simply stuffing “cultural cotton” in your ears! Music, video-oriented media, fashion, objects, hobbies, the list goes on…even friends and family can serve to “dull the roar”.

Sadly, you do indeed become spiritually blind, spiritually deaf, and thus inevitably spiritually dumb, …and then you walk, the living dead thru a wonder world, having eyes and not seeing, and ears and not hearing, and a tongue stilled from the soul’s truest longing to sing in gratitude and wonder at the living and vital home we have been given.

I think that Ms Evans was a bit cynical, and who could blame her given the sorts of barriers and prison walls she was thrust into as a woman in that time…I’m not so sure that we “wad ourselves with stupidity”…but I do think that she accurately describes the results, when we choose not to engage our world with living hearts and souls: we become stupid in the older sense of the word, and stumble zombie-like thru our days, miserable and hungry and desperate to consume anything that looks living, only to infect that with our death, instead of being infused with its life.

No wonder zombie themes are so huge in our culture right now!

Here is an exhortation: take a chance, and make a change…if you need to. Set your heart on higher things, and actively seek to see, to hear, and then finally to speak! Ask someone to work within you…She has many names, and will never turn away a true request made with humble heart. And then practice some form of expression as your outlet.

Hey…why do you think I love poetry so much? This whole thing is one Amazing and Wonderful Poem!

Blessings to you this day, and oodles of love, peace and joy as always shmeared with mounds of Grace!

Charissa

Between the Porch and the Altar (Scripture song, 1992)

Posted on May 6, 2014 by charissagrace

One thing I used to love to do is take a passage of scripture that got into my heart and took up haunting residence there, and turn it into a song. Often times, I tried to make these songs something that most people found current to their situation, or the situation of the body of believers at that time.

There is a creative art to first hearing the melody, and then to making words in English that fit the meaning of the passage with integrity.

Often, the end result was that there would be free singing at the end, and it was remarkable how often coherent, meaningful and very touching moments occurred with this, as the one with the impromptu song would sing, and the group would then echo call and response style.

This is one of those songs, taken from a highly prophetic and symbolic book, the book of Joel, and it is chapter 2:1-12)

Even now return to the Lord with weeping,
and rend your hearts and not your garments.
Come and sanctify the congregation,
and assemble the elders and gather the children

and the nursing babes…
and cry out to Him…

Let the Bridegroom rise from His holy mountain
Let the bride arise from her bridal chamber
Let the priests who pour out their lives before Him
Weep between the porch and the altar, crying,

“Spare Thy people Lord…
Show us mercy Lord…”

Bridge:
Oh God of mercy please hear our cry!
Do not forget our desperation!
Why should the nations mock “Where is your god?”
Oh Jesus, we cry out to You

Chorus:
Between the porch and the altar,
We consecrate our hearts!
Between the porch and the altar,
Pour Your love over us in the Beauties of Holiness!
Pour Your love over us in the Beauties of Holiness!

Lord, we come before You by Your LovingKindness,
And we seek You boldly in abundant Grace.
May Your Blood Atonement make us clean and holy,
For we long to see You face to Face

We are hungry Lord…
For our husband Lord…

And the King will sing to His chosen people
“I will send you grain, and new wine and oil.
I will pour My Spirit out in fullness,
And remove the stigma from My Bride

I will dwell with her…
In her very midst…”

Bridge & Chorus

Wasted For You (worship chorus 1995)

Posted on May 6, 2014 by charissagrace

(Back in 1995, I was a full time worship leader for the body of believers that I was attending…the place where I taught, led, and tried best I could to serve. This is a chorus I wrote in those days, to try to indicate a total resolve to follow Jesus where He led, regardless of the cost or place.

Little did I know that the journey would lead here!! Honestly, back then if someone had told me the road would lead to a discovery that I was a transgender person, I would have thought they were crazy! See, I was like most people…I thought that being transgender meant being sexually interested in dressing as a woman and having homosexual activity with another man.

I was totally ignorant, but in my own “righteousness” and view of anyone different, I automatically assumed that A: they were “weird” and B: they were sinful. Oh, and of course I “loved” them…Hah!

SO much has changed, and Jesus and Grace did indeed take me up on my bold words. I never knew how much pain and wrenching would be involved in such a revelation as They brought…and I also could not even imagine the liberty and healing that has resulted.

The good fruits in me are wonderful, and they in essence build my trust, to issue another bold proclamation to surrender even more…and that is scary, because the last one was so difficult, that the thought of something else like that makes me quail!

But here is the truth: I would rather die running towards Them instead of running away.

I hope that the next phase involves opportunities to tell people about the real People I know…the real Father and Jesus and Mama…the tender and loving and humorous and creative and accepting and teaching and transforming Beings that They have been for me.

Constance…please, if you are not used to reading about God, or talking about who they are, or if you have past wounds, bad experiences or pollutions from people who took Their Name in vain, give what I have to say about Them a chance.

I assure you: if They accept the likes of me, they will accept anybody!!)

There’s a cry in my spirit, an unquenchable flame.
I’ve been captured by Jesus, and I will never be the same!
I’ve been branded forever. I’ve been cut to the core.
By the Lion of Judah, shaken by His Mighty Roar!

So I will spend every moment, and I will waste all my wealth,
Jesus, come break me open, and pour me out for Yourself.
For I have burned all my bridges. I’m past the point of no return…
Jesus, let me be, yielded totally, and wasted for You.

Descant: I want to be wasted for you Lord (repeat) tumblr_myrya9xwTw1sv2qqoo1_500

The “Ditz” Factor: Loving Liberty

Posted on May 5, 2014 by charissagrace

I am a huge ditz these days…and loving it! I mean, the last several weeks has been nearly a laugh a minute for my baby and me as I forget things, or fail to see an obvious joke or factor, and then repeat it…you know what I mean, don’t you?

The ditz factor

What I used to tease her over, and she is not a ditz very often, just once in awhile.

She thinks payback is sweet, and she is right! Because this is something that never. could. happen. before.

Nope…never a ditz. Why?

Vigilance.

Self check, 60 times a minute, 60 minutes an hour, and 24 hours a day.

I had no idea how deeply and firmly I had me by the throat, choking down everything that might get me in trouble, that might get me called names again that scarred my memory forever like burns…I had developed these elaborate means by which to censor myself, and do it all unseen or “unknown”.

Except my baby knew…because I was not happy at the core, and I was not full at the core, and I wanted to not be without any good reason at all. It is only because of the Love of the Father, and Jesus and Lady Grace that I am here at all, and that is a pure fact. I find myself well within the 41% of all transgender people who consider suicide strongly, and yet by Their grace alone, not in the larger statistic of those who follow through.

So now? My estradiol works a wonder war on my poverty of soul, as it connects my body and my soul/mind/heart.

At last my brain is finding congruence and affirmation (slowly) whenever it talks to my body in their own talky language…they don’t fight and argue and separate anymore.

So I don’t check. Double check. Triple think. And the ditz factor climbs…I do theorize that the estradiol snickers as it runs around and lights the “ditz onboard” lamps in my soul. My baby says she laughs more now than in all the years combined (and I did make her laugh lots then, cus I figured that it was the least I could do for her, and it covered the sorrow in my core).

And the love keeps flowing, the light keeps growing, and my heart keeps knowing that

I am Charissa Grace, and I am under the Mercy and I’m okay.

“Do not despise your past, Charissa”

Posted on May 4, 2014 by charissagrace

These words have been echoing thru my heart for the last several days. Mama has been digging, turning over ground long gone fallow. She has taken me back…over old sermon notes, thru old class outlines and conference messages and topics. I am remembering so many things, and most of all…

…I am remembering the songs.

Yeah. I was a songwriter. Big surprise to you all over here, right???? LOLOL!

I would imagine I have written well over a thousand songs, or more, if you include worship choruses and what not.

I only have a few dozen laying around now, and so many forgotten, gone into the history of my walk of devotion along with the yesterdays and yesteryears. They are all part of the “us” that They and I are now, in the same way that the food you ate when you were 5, and 15, is still a part of you.

But I sense a purpose in all this:

Mama does not like Her daughter to be divided, has never liked the dissociation that I was forced to adopt. And now that I am set free, She is bound and determined to bring all those things that were good materials and lay them in a work basket…and teach me to weave. She and I will weave them into our relationship. She says She will strip away my shame, my self loathing, and my sorrow and despair.

So for a while there will be appearances here in the blog of old simple songs…old funny songs…strange things…outlines of talks and homilies…whatever I think is still of value to anyone other than myself. I think that sometimes I might try to turn them into poems…who knows?

One thing is for certain: you are gonna get a glimpse into a heart…a heart that They chose to be involved with, and one that in its towering imperfection loves them as my only true light, life and hope…a hope certain and sure, and not merely wishful wistful thinking.

Love, Charissa 248852_10150212535558180_823713179_7141081_5708839_n

What I Like

Posted on April 30, 2014 by charissagrace

I like good books
under a snuggly blanket
while the rain scritches
at the gutters and windows.

I like preparing fresh food
chop by pile, and then
going to heaven on the aromas
and dance as they come together
into a dish of delicious love.

I like singing
on my bike
while I ride
through the mountains
as trees sway
and rivers prance
and wind roars
in my heart
while the hawk
glides above all.

I like writing,
and writing poetry
especially.

I like talking with people
about their hearts.

I like saying that
just right word
of kind encouragement,
and then seeing someone
do the impossible.

I like studying out new insights.

I like spending time
with Mama and
feeling Her love for me
where once I felt
only lonely shame.

I like Jesus
and His funny jokes
and sometimes capering ways.
And that He cries.

I like romance movies
where it all ends like it’s supposed to
but surprises me anyway.

I like teaching people
about wine, and watching them
wake up to a
whole new world.

I like hearing my kids
tell their thoughts and
being taught by
their fresh perspective.

I like making music
and listening to music.

I like having
a whole bunch of people over
and making a huge feast for them,
insisting they be free
to take joy in the food and drink
and fellowship.

I like being kind
and being a blessing.

I like driving
in the flow.

I like shopping
all day
with my oldest daughter
and then getting great food
and chattering together about
our awesome bargains
and red hot new look!

I like being with my baby,
me small and safe
in her loving arms
while we
talk the blackness
away.

Charissa is a sloppy happy teary mess o’ praise after watching Hezekiah Walker New Video “Every Praise” – YouTube

Posted on April 26, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance…when I hear my blessed Mama living in the music of Her children as they sing, I burst into tears…literally every time. When Precious Jesus is inhabiting the praise of His peoples, I cannot help the tears of joy that simply jump out of my heart and stream tangible baptisms of gratitude, and flowing fountains of inexpressible and unutterable thankfulness that The Lord has had mercy on me, this broken and alienated stranger in a strange land.

Even as a small child, this happened to me…and then I was ashamed, because boys don’t cry. I always cried!!

Oh, it just feels sooo good to let my heart overflow and offer Him my own soul’s inner waters out from my eyes.

It doesn’t happen to me everytime I hear a worship song, or every time I hear a hymn, or sing even…but there are those times…if you were lucky enough to be in a church that wasn’t so freaking oppressive that Mama simply looked on from a distance, silently, Her incredible generous and compassionate essence quenched by the soul-stealing stench of pride and haughtiness…then you know that moment I am talking about. Something just…changes! The ceilings are gone…the floors are gone…horizons expand, and suddenly you know…you. know. That God is alive, and love. That you are alive and loved.

As a small child, as a teen, and as a young adult, these times would happen, and I would hide myself away in Them, snuggled down my tearful face buried deep in Their side, and I would breathe my thankful utterances that in this awful and desolate land that I was sentenced to dwell in until I died, through no request or doing of my own was I born and then born a prisoner…I would tell them…Oh Lovely Lovely Shepherd (for that is who I talked to then, to Jesus the Good Shepherd who left the 99 and came to get me…Jesus the compassionate who had mercy on the prostitute caught in the act of adultery…Jesus the Healer who felt the touch of faith’s heart at the hem of His garment in the throng of thousands of grabby greedy desperate hands)…Oh Wondrous Shepherd of my soul…if I can have my sentence of life in prison punctuated and pierced by these moments of furlough and reprieve, however brief…then I will follow You always. I promise and do so choose forever, come what may.

And then I would often weep all night long…literally…draining out the sorrow, the self-loathing and the shame and despite for my awful awful self…I would pour out my thankfulness that even to a wretch like me They would draw nigh and commune with me…even humble Themselves to TOUCH me!

And They were faithful to be there…

And They were faithful to continually work over me, labor over me, in the womb of my imprisonment and dysphoria to ready me for birth…and when labor began They went silent, for the pangs and contractions had to be strong, had to be ultimate, had to take me past my limits. Well, they did that, and I came home finally, came out finally to live and be born…

and the moments resumed, commenced once again.

Now? Oh. My. God. Mama took me under Her wing, and has been teaching me, Her tongue a good Theme.

So I would ask you to give the vid a shot, for at minimum you can hear the soundtrack that played while I bawled in utter thankfulness and total gratitude for life, for Life.

And at the maximum? Have some tissues on the by!

Love and Grace be unto you in the richest most lavish extreme…

Charissa Grace the Grateful Girl forever tumblr_n4mf72qUM41rk1cbbo1_1280

Hezekiah Walker New Video “Every Praise” – YouTube.

On Notice!

Posted on April 23, 2014 by charissagrace

Let the powers know
that I am being found,
am finding myself
and I am glad, and scared,
and soaring to depths, heights
hawking my way
through chasms and
slamming into depths and crevasses and
then piercing velvet dark
frosty air, rising, rising,
an eagle golden and free.

Let the Tetrarch know
that I will step forward
in grace and upon grace
a wounded-healer to be. 57dcca2a25c7abbce57b0b42f3e53cd9 And let the Prideful Patrons and
Practitioneers of Patriarchy
be put on notice:
If the sword of the healing-wounder
should ever bless my grasp
with its blue-bejewelled hilt and
silver redemptive sharp blade,
I will wield it with
remorseless pity, and soft relentlessness!
I will the rivers and seas follow,
to overcome by giving way. tumblr_n3004aNe8v1qllucco1_1280

And let the humble hear,
let the lost perk up to the echoes
of turtledoves and
the heralds of hummingbirds
and the buzzing of many drowzy
busy bees that Mama has
opened Her hives, and
honey pours once again
to all those
famished and forlorn. Von

When Rain Runs Backwards

Posted on April 22, 2014 by charissagrace

How can I find draught
when rain runs backwards,
rivers reverse and earth swallows up all…
waters, grains and grits?
In a topsy-turbulant epoch,
chained to hate and fear
I grow parched, thin
and desperate for drink.

Mama stands tall,
open and frank and
waiting for me.
But courage fails,
fears follow and
dog me knackered
And so I thirst, I thirst…

until driven I
fly to Her face,
and flit low to
Her Gentle Power
and there I drink
till I am sated and renewed…
and fly fly fly
safe…whew!

It is only then
that I realize that
She drank from me as I from Her,
and my fear,
my pain and sorrow
has been drained and I am
full of the freedom of never-more!

Infection Crucinfection (Easter 1980)

Posted on April 22, 2014 by charissagrace

{I have been contemplative over the difference of this Easter compared to any other one in my entire life. It has me looking back, at old poems, old journals, etc. Thus the spate of poems 3 decades old.

I have changed a lot, and I think that is good. I think my poems are better now, too…Terraces, right??

This poem was the first poem about Easter for me.}

He sat in the straw
mute as a rock
crudely undone.

Ranker than swine
coarse to our nails
we swung to our job.

Infected with Truth
He hung in the dust
Drenched to His Skin,
Bleached to His Bones.

Then He went
all the way
coming to
common terms
with loss as
Blind as Wind.

Gifts you give yourself

Posted on April 11, 2014 by charissagrace

Forgiveness, towery and meritorius
when viewed from the lowly valleys and dales
of hard hurt and wounded ways
stands, stentorian and stark and stately.
To approach such lofty heights from there
seems tough, seems stubbornly sacrificial,
and requires a great provisioning
of the heart’s overflow into Mercy’s Rivers.

Acceptance twins from the next ridge over,
and it seems to wounded eyes
that these noble and lofty houses
aspire to heaven,
aspire to grandiose airy grounds
to weed out the weak-willed and shuffling supplicants,
the plodding and pitiful pilgrims
who failed to fully count the cost.

And yet if one but persists and never lets go
their grip on the Garment’s Hem
they will themselves be drawn up and sunder,
like doves mounting up in the velvet dawn
And discover comely cottage, cozy cabin,
home at last and free,
And finally receiving
the gifts you give yourself.

Through the Broken Window

Posted on April 10, 2014 by charissagrace

And yet,
through that shattered pane
there whispered a Presence…
an echo of days long dead
and left behind.
A time when the sun glowed gold,
the moon kissed all benighted
with her mellow silver lips,
and the wind sang instead of snored.

In the crucible of destruction,
Joy flits at the edges
like a quick-silver bird
and takes
residence in the ruins.
In her nesting
I find peace and
come to terms
with promise.

In the Aftermath

Posted on April 8, 2014 by charissagrace

But in the aftermath,
emptied and drained,
but strangely at peace
and still…

…I ponder new spaces,
discover new places,
and watch hard
for Grace’s Hand
and Heart
And Healing.

She specializes in negative space,
and the restoration of Majesty.

Her Mercy Womb

Posted on April 3, 2014 by charissagrace

All the relentless blows,
the pains, the wounds.
All the mummy-wrap wadded and
shoved roughshod down my throat
and through my heart…
The searing letdowns,
the cold denials of
heaving and wrenching begging.
Burdens allowed to pile up,
build up, bury me
in desperation and despair.
And silences…towering,
looming, lurking, leering,
mocking, unlistening…
All of these things
were horror to me…
But to Mama,
they were the womb that She wove
to carry me full,
carry me careful,
pregnant with me,
Her Daughter,
Her Offspring of Grace

Charissa

Piled, Pierced, and at Peace

Posted on March 31, 2014 by charissagrace

See her, here.

Broken tops and
edges gathered softly and
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
with gentle timing.
Rubble, rubbish,
ruin and remains

racked up,
rock
on
rock
just so…just so.

Holes and wounds gaping,
whistling and singing in
every flickering breeze,
and light running
full and free
wherever She sends,
wherever She leads.

I am Her Tor,
Her Tribute,
Her Trophy
and my heart
is Her Altar
Spilling Grace
Always

Robbed No More

Posted on March 27, 2014 by charissagrace

The thief had tightened his bright red cawl
over his dusky-dim face of shadows.
Sneaking snaky-quick past slumbering guards
awash in smoky-hazy
maisy lazy thoughts
(and assumptions)
he stole to the cradle and breathed
ice and death in stark puffs.
And then he touched what was not his
and rent eternity bloody within.

I have screamed for 5 decades
WRONG WRONG WRONG!
The tear, jagged and oozing in my soul
gapes, stupid and dull and empty like
that cradle was, ever after.

But Grace has been walking,
from then forward to now,
a gryphon on steady paws
beating breaths of golden Life
to the ever-ache within.

She, with unveiled face and shining glad,
has caressed, crossed
the vast and rheumy spaces
with Promise and Her Red and blazing
tender love to ease my throat,
my heart,
to transform
that empty achy cradle
into a vacant tomb…

and let my voice now say
in thankful praise

ENOUGH

How I LOVE this Quote

Posted on January 11, 2014 by charissagrace

I have never encountered it before, but I have been told similar things before…accused of sincerity. Oh, and accused of being “enthusiastic” also. I cried when someone said that to me with the intent to injure me…until Mama directed me to go read the definition. It literally means “filled with God, infused with God”. I have proudly been sincerely enthusiastic ever since, in the most intentional of ways. 🙂

“I adore the struggle you carry in yourself. I adore your terrifying sincerity.”

—

Anaïs Nin

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Concubine to the Patriarchy??? REALLY??? Wow.

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