Chewing On That Stone

Posted on April 10, 2015 by charissagrace

Prelude
I’m still caught on teeth, those yellow jagged teeth
surrounded by liver-lips drawn up and back
in such a snarl (or is it a sneer?),
such a scream (or is it a moan?)…those teeth broken
from chewing on that Stone.

You’ve been infected with Ginsberg disease
and you howl at Allen-moons for no reason at all
(No, I don’t say there’s no reason that you howl,
I said you howl for no reason), and that is why
you snarl and sneer, scream and moan
and gnash your teeth on Living Stone.One
And me, writhing there and twisting, twixt your chewing jaws?
How does my blood taste? Like pusillanimous payback?
Like silver times 30? Like bright copper pennies
that make no sense…or something different?
Like strawberries in summer, cranberries in winter,
grapes in autumn…flowers in Spring?

Alas, you do not see those chosen chains that hold me there,
left wrist shackled, right hand extended,
left hand open in laughter, right wrist bound in life..
for there is room—and reason—for life and laughter…
and this you have not noticed, in your imitation howl,
in your false heroic snarl, your wild and bulging eyes
fixed ever on the chains you think hold me in jail
but are those bonds against which you strain and flail!Two
Even in the air besotted by your breath,
your breath befouled by hurt and haunted by revenge,
there is Joy beneath that pain, a presence that is Present,
a winsome invitation all around us constantly that beckons
“Come participate, in spite of buried questions, be honest in conclusions
and philosophies you claim explain the past, present and future.”

You chained in pain, me in pain and chained, and rooted
by choices to remain…deep rooted, ever-grounded
in joy, in life, in laughter, wonder-imagination
as a child who can be startled by the One I’m looking for…

…and I stumble there, across it, flickering on rainbows,
on the razor’s edge and caught between the past and future…
and then it disappears as present becomes Brilliant Present
and then fades…into the next one (the next present into Present
it’s apparent as a parent and it’s hidden to a child),
this stark stripping of the clothes of coming future,
this discarding of the grave-cloth of the past.Three
There is Wonder in this world, there is Laughter hidden here
deep within the very marrow of the dry bones long laid tender
in the ground to decompose, it remains, it ever-lingers
in the beauty, in the humor, in the unexpected joy,
in the child at play enraptured and delighted in each breath!
And it has a source, origin! Just as we do, there is meaning
to these fickle days that bob and weave
from logic unto laughter and then back again to wonder!

It’s the Image…and your railings and your rantings can’t deface it!
It will ever-shine so clearly, silver-startling against sunset!
It is resident inside you and it calls out to beginnings
in a loving Present maker who gives us immortal worth
in the image…in the image…in the Word become the Image…Four
You are haunted by what’s happened, I am haunted by what’s coming!
You are chained by your distortions, I am chained by this great Hope
that if we lay our burdens by the streams of Babylon,
by waters dark with mystery, with nothing left to gain or lose
then merriment will come again, hauntingly…to waken us
and we will play again, at last, and make merry our hearts alive.

And so we come to where we started,
gnashing teeth and heroes chained
and villains caught on points of light
and the central Player in the drama,
Resurrected Son of God, fully human fully God,
and the ringing Invitation sounding in our desolation!Five
We can set each other free, I set you free, you set me,
if we take the invitation of the Author of our story
and live full in our encounters, present in the desolation
drinking of the consolation that our present becomes Present
and the Gift is greater than the bitter rancid agony
of hope deferred and love-sick hearts.

And that door on which we knock? It will someday open for us,
swing wide and receive us Inside…Inside…where we will be Present…
So please come back from those fevered flights of fancy so infected
by the greatest poison ever known, the venom of a fallen Self…
seek and play, find and live, and be noble in the giving
of ourselves to one another new in every radiant dawn.

Who Speaks For You?

Posted on April 8, 2015 by charissagrace

…in baseball bat threats,
and shifting blame bloviations?

there is a narrative constructed
and characters are run thru the mill

Procrustean beds wait, rimmed in razor words
and made up in straight jacket axioms

of hero killing Zeus, Medusa slain
but ‘ware the mirrors lest the true face be glimpsed…

…and you, you both have hitched to this?
your bones know, don’t they?

Or do they? Crawl inside your skin
when you feel the truth dissolve

and lies (half and whole cloth)
kick like something wicked waiting

to slouch towards Bethlehem
in the kingdom of Ozymandias?

Your silent disengagement lets our history
be Big-Brothered in Orwellian style scripts

and becomes tacit agreement with things
that go against your grain like sand paper.

Oh may your grain glow gold and run deep
for ruin holds this day and devours the moon.

Inarticulations Articulate

Posted on April 7, 2015 by charissagrace

“Why is it so hard to articulate love yet so easy to express disappointment?”

—	Kaui Hart Hemmings, The Descendants

My Only Response, Ever

Posted on April 6, 2015 by charissagrace

Constance…the timing of God never ceases to amaze. Events of Holy Week this year…events of great import and significance took place.

And on In The Grave Day, I heard a missive written about me, a little to me, or maybe indirectly all to me, I don’t know.

It was the worst thing I have ever heard in my life, and as such it chokes my heart. I guess what was ultimately most sorrowful was to see how deeply broken and in pain the writer was in spite of what were my best and highest efforts and intentions…and obviously woefully short of the mark in every single facet, bar none.

It cut off response, for it declared all of who I was null and void and all of who I am pathetic and weak.

Well, I left that missive in the grave on Sunday, and simply have no choice but to go on, forgetting what lies behind and pressing on to be more yielded, more surrendered, taking hold of Them Who have taken hold of me.

But I will comment in this one way:

“Always Ever Treasured“

I love you with inexpressible beyond understanding love.
I miss you terribly.
I am so sorry that so much of what I desired, intended, was received and twisted into this present snarl.

I get it now, Papa…why Your one and only answer to every question hurled in Your Face by Your creatures was to take on our form, and come to our existence, and be crucified horribly suffering all things in Yourself.

Oh Love…if I could do that, and give you back yourself I would do so and gladly.

A House That Gleams

Posted on April 5, 2015 by charissagrace

Thru misty morning
dimly in trees
a House There is Gleaming
thawing the Freeze.

A House of Eight Gables
(the extra one Risen)
the stamp of Forever
broadcast to the lost.

The mist speaks of Avalon
Camelot too
but the House that is Gleaming
shines there more True.

It speaks of our Healing.
It speaks of our Hope.
A House that is Gleaming
shall cut every rope.

In Hell’s Hollow Halls

Posted on April 4, 2015 by charissagrace

I heard it, from the deep dark
rank with such fright
and masked in mean menace.

It woke me, from a sound sleep,
straight into stiff silent
screams bouncing off deaf night.

I listened, to the slow gait
shuffle shuffle slip late
and pondered what shade shambled there.

Then I heard, the slap of warm flesh,
bloody feet bare on stone,
cold stone worn slick and smooth

by great passing multitudes,
captives grim and without hope
bound for dungeons black and deep,

the sound of dancing holy feet
holey, bare, stepping light
stomping on a serpent’s head

as they walked down, down, down, down
over every cold hard stone
to the bottom to atone…

throwing open every door
shouting to all captive there
get you up into God’s Air!

And then the shuffle of a host
led forth from captivity
by a King in death alive

heaven inside death’s dark maw
plundering every taken treasure
sowing grace there without measure.

And I rested in this sound,
my heart echoed with each pound
on this day that He is crowned

with my past, successes, fails,
every sorrow past the pale
every shipwreck in the gale,

and I knew that at first light
I would place a tombstone bright
graven names there, writ just right

to show that I am me, not him
and that his life of sorrow grim
is laid to rest, its power dim

And in that grave I’d also place
the hateful words, a three-fold face
of judgement, lies and lack of grace…

and then tomorrow, when the stone
is rolled away with rocky moan
my forward path of grace is shown

and I will walk free without guilt
from that hovel judgment built
and live this life full, to the hilt!

I do not owe God anymore,
I do not owe you in your core,
I don’t owe 1, 2, 3, or 4

Because I am bought by that sound
of bloody feet on hell’s cold ground
So liberty in me abounds…

and thus I walk in grace
I’m free within my place
Delivered from the race.

Amen and Happy Easter tomorrow.

Good Parenting: Exhibit 1

Posted on April 2, 2015 by charissagrace

(overheard at work today)

6-year old:Mommy, why is that man dressed like a lady?

Mother:That is a lady. She was just born with the wrong body.

6-year old:How did that happen?

Mother:Nobody really knows. But she’s working to fix it, and that’s what’s important.

6-year old:Okay! *runs up to obviously self-conscious woman*

6-year old:Hey! Miss!

Lady:…yes?

6-year old:You look really pretty in your skirt!

Lady:Thank you!

*Kid skips back to her mom, and literally everyone in the vicinity smiles*

I’d just like to point out that it wasn’t hard to explain this to a child at all…… Next excuse please?

Scars

Posted on April 2, 2015 by charissagrace

Here on this side? See our scars.
Our wounds (both bloody and bloodless),
slashes (from sword-edge and word),
stand here stark, and they testify
in agonized aching hushed voices
of terrified troubling stories…

we hear them tell extreme tales
of widespread violence, of rape
of torture, and we the lost subjects
imprisoned in darkness and sadness
bear these wounds in our bodies, how long?
Permanent markings of violence?

These black tattoos left by oppression,
calligrified by sorrow’s stylus
that’s gripped in grief’s bony cold hand
to engrave deep its ravenous history
on our lonely hearts, carved here for…how long?
we’re identified by these curt scars.

Standing so quiet and still,
solitary smack dab
in the middle
of all that was, is,
and will be

the broken body of Jesus
the gushing stink of His spilled blood
but present with us now (like scars)
in the bread and the wine understood
to be broken and shed for our Good.

Jesus bore wounds of violent oppression
in His very own body forever!
Even after that morning so wrenching
that tilted this world on its axis
Heaven’s ringing eternal endorsement!

In that glorious bright resurrection
He stood there…just bearing those scars
in His hands, in His feet, in His side
and He showed them to all who would look…
He identified with us…in Scars.

There, on that side? New Creation
began with Resurrected Jesus
and included those scars that He suffered
by nail and by spear and by word
and the wounds of the Glad Risen Lord,
the reminders of the crucifixion
take on new light and meaning and joy.

They shout of the Power and Glory
Of God dirty with History’s story
and triumphing now and forever
over evil and death, over sorrow
and a work of redemption that’s reigning
now begun in us, marked by our scars
here with us now in our wounded world.

So the present time is streaked with mercy
acts of justice, creation of beauty,
celebration of truth kissing grace on the lips
deeds of love and forgiveness and kindness
and such generous Grace over all!
Resurrection gives us such relevance
and a future where meaning is possible!

meaning made possible in resurrection
of a torn body still marked by the scars
like diadems, medals
adorning the Sacred Heart
Faithful forever and ever…

That’s the reality of resurrection
as displayed by the scars that He bears
as our Hope, as our Joy and our Glory
that shines in our darkest lost places
giving us reason to live.

We work and we toil, perhaps
even pour out our blood, sweat, and tears
to tend to the woundings of others,
and our labor is far from in vain
for Christ has gone on ahead

and He beckons with smile that is glinting
with towering majesty cloaked
in such Kindness, such glad jubilation
He scarce can contain His good will
He is on His Throne, Alive and Well.

12 Transgender Christians Share Their Journey… | Believe Out Loud

Posted on April 1, 2015 by charissagrace

12 Transgender Christians Share Their Journey… | Believe Out Loud.

I think I will go ahead and press this. Constance, I haven’t read these links yet…but Ima take that small risk and put them up here for your perusal.

Let me know how it goes?

❤

Charissa

Going Nova On Palm Sunday

Posted on March 29, 2015 by charissagrace

In light of this nova-burst
I want to thank you for silver
I want to thank you for gold
I want to thank you for stardust
I am truly grateful that you would
check on me, earthbound here
and shackled by this self-gravity.I really feel so awkward all the time
Cus I look for freedom as a voracious reader
of pages, of faces, of hearts
and suns gone nova.

Going Nova…

that explains perfectly how disconnected I feel
in my heart from all that while grasping
in my mind exactly what they are saying
and why they are saying it!

And feeling so goddamned guilty for even being…
always, feeling so goddamned guilty for even being.
Never ever had a choice in that, and untold time and tears
toiling in trying to be other…
Going Nova…

I guess that’s a choice I make inside my heart
as I float between me and those shimmery stars
that woo me so…

anyway I am trying to say sorry to you for something
but I don’t even know what it is or how to say it…
sorry…nova…for what I am, who I am?
Charissa, trying to survive this human experience
in a body and brain at constant odds…is that me and what I am?I am a girl and have always been and have no need to prove that I am
(and couldn’t anyway, even if I did) God knows
patriarchal fists slam into me trying to beat the woman outta me,
feminist talons slash my skin trying to tear the woman offa me…
while my own nails I keep razor sharp and always ready to rip that male biology
right outta such dumb DNA that’s so much less than me. tumblr_nlj2o1V0qC1qllucco1_1280 Anything I say can be construed as lack of humility because
I never had a chance at solidarity in biological sisterhood with you
and remaining silent can be the height of arrogance because
it reeks of presumption and I am neither or both or all
(silent, arrogant, presumptuous)

I am Going Nova.

I try my best to be a tender soul, to be a gentle soul and do good
and bring honor to woman and women by how I live, how I draw close
to my God Who has been, is and always will be Mama…
the Wise, the Comforter, My Helper in this time of death
hiding behind Hosannas and Hail Caesars.

Please hear my heart, but if you don’t the fault is mine
in all my dark and clumsy lack, so let your eyes
do all the happy work of ears and see me in these words…

Going Nova on Palm Sunday

Naked Emperor

Posted on March 28, 2015 by charissagrace

When I exploded into myself
from nothing
and knew
there was

something
and
me

I heard something
wish that me
would never be.

I didn’t get over it,
but I got used to it.

Somehow
that wish got its way
in my bones
and now it seems
like all I know

and all that I
am known by.

Sounds, scents, storms sent
from that beyond
rail and wash
in curtains over me,
scour and scrub me

because maybe,
just maybe
I can one day
be released
from the curse
“shouldn’t have been”

and see
that self invisible
that everyone else
says is there
but just looks like
a naked emperor

to me.

A Bird’s Free Flight and Flower Feet

Posted on March 24, 2015 by charissagrace

i am a flower planted deep,
my soul a bird loose in deep skies

i should be free to soar and spin
but i am caught by roots in dirt
my body coarse in clumsy lurch
yearning for freedom’s feathered perch

i am a bird that cannot land
with soul that longs for roots at rest

i should be buried safe in soil
burrowing warm in dark rich nest
but i’ve no harbour, no still rest
no pillow for my aching breast

a flower trapped within a bird

a bird caged in a fragile flower

and God above my prison bower

may hear me in my darkened hour

On Level Ground, too, for taking two

Posted on March 21, 2015 by charissagrace

“It always takes two. For relationships to work, for them to break apart, for them to be fixed.”

—	Emily Giffin, Heart of the Matter

On Loving One’s Self

Posted on March 21, 2015 by charissagrace

Ya know how people say that before you can really be loved you have to love yourself?

Um, yeah no. No. I think this is one of those things that sorta sounds right, but is insidiously, horribly imprisoning. Loving yourself is hard, freaking hard. And I am not talking about selfishness or narcissism, both of which are symptoms of self-loathing. I mean genuine unconditional positive regard for self.

I will confess here: I don’t love myself. That is the truth. I am taking steps in the right direction to walk in unconditional positive regard for myself. But mostly no. I am told I am worthy of love and respect, and I find within myself the desire to be loved, but far too often I find no sense in this notion that I am worthy of anything.

And then, my heart hearkens, back back…back to these words in 1 John: “we love, because He first Loved”…it is an axiom, found in the Bible and it gives an axiomatic accounting for love, where it came from and why we all want it, and do it too.

I do know that They love me. They have shown this to me in many specific individual ways, as well as the universal ways we all are shown love (such as beautiful sunsets, the smell of baby’s breath, the sound of the wind in fir trees, the taste of exquisite food, the sweet sorrow of parting with a well-loved friend that you will see again)…and I am working on loving myself…learning how to abandon those who are abandoners.

But I ain’t there yet…and that’s okay

Why “What Would Jesus Do?” Isn’t Exactly the Right Question

Posted on March 21, 2015 by charissagrace

To put it another way, I don’t think we’re called to imitate Jesus, but I do think we’re called to follow Jesus. There’s a subtle difference. Following Jesus implies an ongoing relationship, not merely imitating a really good guy who lived and died 2,000 years ago. Following Jesus implies that we might end up somewhere new doing things that are new—things that aren’t reflected in scripture because we inhabit a very different world than Jesus did. Even if we believe that Jesus was fully God, that doesn’t mean that Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection tell us all there is to know about God. God is still working, God exists beyond the limits of history (even Jesus’s history as a man), and God promises to do a new thing within us.

Following Jesus implies forward movement, striving for a destination, which we might call “the kingdom,” as Jesus did. And as you know if you’ve ever taken a leisurely Sunday road trip or cross-country adventure or European rail journey, there is far more than one way to travel to get to the same destination.

via Why “What Would Jesus Do?” Isn’t Exactly the Right Question.

Unthinking Destruction

Posted on March 20, 2015 by charissagrace

All is not well
here in Destruction

on twisting trash-strewn roads
traversing heart topography
of hurt, humiliation and
yes, hate…

roads the arteries and veins
pumping mammon’s blood in vain
and kicking at every knee…
all is not well
here, in me.Storm clouds gather
around hard eyes,
flat, blank beneath,
seething inside
and then the sun
shines on those eyes

and I can see
behind those eyes,
lined with poverty like mascara
while calling it silver, but…

no redemption there,
nope, not, no
silver lining
there.Lurking,
poised to pounce
from eyes straight into mouths,
unthinking, uncaring, unfeeling
unaware and empty,

lurking light (incarnate words)
so black and blank (incarnate worlds),

darkened worlds of night,
down pitch-black alleys
reeking of menace
like a bad undertaker’s
over-liberal use of cheap cologne
to mask the smell of rot.

Then they speak at me
and words spark
from their lips like live coals,
like glowing tips of cigarettes
and sharp threatening glares
of drug pipes drawn deep
and harsh like sudden flares
and for split seconds
their illumined faces show to me
in that black light in that moment
I can truly see, past the blank indifference
and peer thru active hate
and around their lurking fear
and I can spot the person

that once lived shining,
feeling there.

It is late
and I am sick,
and drowsy,
I am sick,
and comfortable,

I am sick
and freaking out
in a world jarred
wide awake,
in a life,
a death,
a meal shared,
in this daily, physical reality
unchangedBut I hear
the whisper of a spider spinning
her web of promise,
and I catch
the sound of subterranean streams
and I remember
all is not quite what it seems.

See, I’m having these recurring dreams
that all was good from the beginning,
but then something went wrong,
oh so wrong and things
ain’t like they ought to be,
not for them and not for me…

and we dwell here,
drugged and deceived,
thinking that not-thinking is
the true sweaty work of unthinking!

Oh for the courage to unthink!

Unthinking the inevitability of sin,
unthinking the inevitability of violence,
unthinking the inevitability of exile,
unthinking the divisions,
unthinking the deceptions…

Oh to dwell in
Unthinking
Destruction

A Disjointed Incomplete Meditation…

Posted on March 17, 2015 by charissagrace

houses of grey blank walls decked out in smooth rich wood
panels and pictures of picnics and parties…
banal bacchanalia, all splattered in Blood.

Beds of spikes, hidden neath down comforters,
and wool knitted afghans of colorful,
threatening sinister pattern.

Houses in neighborhoods bereft of neighbors,
each one is serving themselves and alone
in community of this alienation…and all is
destroyed by their own bloody hands…

the work of rough hands…even rougher grave throats.

Our eyes are still bloodshot from staring at visions
of genocide done that we didn’t see coming
but now we continue to watch, in foreboding

but hoping in vain that the cute lil houses
are what’s really real and not all the horror,
lurking beneath in destruction and gore.

we are really in fear and wondering…
what happens when a killer comes home,
or (gulp) even worse

if that killer had never left home?

what then?

what happens when victims
*widows orphans*

and murderers

look each other in the eyes again?

what then, and who blinks first and looks away in shame?

What are these wounds on your chest?
The wounds I received in the house of my friends.

What is greater: the pain of being violated
or the bitter agony of forgiving?

a valley of dry bones cannot be forgotten
even in the face of forgiveness so costly.

This impossible for me to try to describe
or even conceive of apart from the cross of Christ.

Because forgiveness is also
it’s own rare and exquisite
form of great suffering.

And so now we get down to it:
there is no exit, no escape from the agony,
no pitstop from pain…
all we can do is exchange suffering’s form and it’s face,
from our own for the pain of another…
and us become willing to be bashed and broken
by those very ones we so desperately want
to reach out to and reconcile and leave pain behind.

This is the agony of a tortured soul wrestling
and a wrecked body there…offered in prayer
on the altar of sorrow…for the forgiveness
of torturers’ torments in this dank dark world
of violence and victims, laboring heavy
beneath weights unspeakable and even greater,
the weight of the cross.

And Him? The Reproached?
The Betrayed, Who was Broken?
Him The Despised and King of All Criminals,
King of All Victims, King of All Shame?

Perhaps He knows of the path thru this valley
of broken dry bones full of dust, full of death.

Perhaps He can see those small signs of life
that are hidden from eyes filled with blood, hate and rage
and only seen by the eyes washed clean with tears
of repentance and wonder to look for our Spring

and the signs there so gentle
of a coming glad day of Resurrection…

My 5 Nevers

Posted on March 14, 2015 by charissagrace

I will never stop pursuing Them
for only They have the Words of Life.

I will never stop seeking Grace
for only in it is there power and mercy.

I will never give death the satisfaction
of my total surrender.

I will never stop seeking yieldedness
as my steady state of being.

I will never stop giving.
It’s what I do. It’s who I am.

Sworn this 14th day of March 2015
“pi day”.
vow expires when this day next happens

The Wrong Side of the Glass

Posted on March 14, 2015 by charissagrace

Come close, up here, on the porch and draw near where I sit,
hunkered down, clinging close, pressed with all I am
against this barrier thin, austere, and yet impermeable
thru which I see, and speak, and yearn but over cannot cross.

I get naked, bare and slick and covered in Her Oil
and hurl myself hard, fearless, face first pounding in wild flails
until the fists of my heart break and bloody grow within this cage
and sorrow rises right alongside all my heartsick rage

at being born here in this place so richly furnished wrong
at hearing music so distinct but dissonant from my song
Maybe we together can make a crack in this stark mass
and relieve my long days spent here, on the wrong side of the glass.

Jesus Blog: God’s Expectations Of You Are Not What You Think

Posted on March 14, 2015 by charissagrace

Jesus Blog: God’s Expectations Of You Are Not What You Think.

Read what Jesus might say to you today…

“It Would Falsify Everything You Taught Me…”

Posted on March 14, 2015 by charissagrace

Constance…most of you who are public followers of Grace Notes are cis-gender humans. Some of you are trans (thanks for the support, family!! 🙂 ), and as transgender humans you are intimately acquainted with the entity that dysphoria is, and you know that thoughts of suicide or talk of it is often our most noble and courageous act of the day, because we are speaking about it rather than…

But I want to talk to you Constance (and you lurkers, too…yes, you are there), you cis-gender humans, so blessed to be non-itchy in your skin and of limber-lung to draw in draughts of refreshing air…you live in a homogenous world…a world that sniks together and is of a piece. And where it doesn’t, it doesn’t in the same places as other humans and so you find an identity and community in that.

You don’t understand how alienation from yourself puts you at a distance from everyone else and everything else…always.

Because dysphoria is like missing pieces in a mosaic of being.

You say to yourself that you are shattered too, and you are…but your pieces are present, and as you glue them back together they form a sort of whole once again…whereas the dysphoric person diligently and urgently works daily to reassemble the shattered image into a whole, only to discover that the crucial core is absent…and the middle is void.

We are separated from you always…as if you are on the shore of the sea and we across on the opposite shore and lacking the voices of whales to sing to you across the leagues and the deep.

So there is that.

This morning I am mindful of dysphoria and the gulf that it is around me, alas, and the challenge that it presents me in my quest to be a yielded vessel yielding blessing…I am mindful that there is also, somewhere packed in all of this, an opportunity to know and understand Their perspective and methods as Gulf-Breechers and Core-Restorers…perhaps this is my destiny, to be a restorer of the breach and a crosser of the gulf.

But in this mindful place, I have been remembering the words that a man spoke to me last summer, upon being let into my secret world of confusion and horror, that world of the transgender person caught between body and brain. He is a man who has in the past been very open in expressing admiration for me, as a child of God, as a communicator of Grace, and as a caretaker of my children. He has said toweringly complimentary things to me, things that I felt were far too idealized and simply did not adequately assess how flawed I am, what a failure I am…

…but he had said them, spoken of my impact on himself and those around me.

On that soft and lazy August Saturday, by the waters of a small man-made lake (which seems appropriate), we spoke, and I shared with him the struggle of dysphoria and how suicide is as constant companion as the sensation of choking is to the asthmatic.

He burst out in a fit of passion “Don’t you dare off yourself! It would falsify everything you taught me, and all you stand for!” And he went on to talk about how negatively it would affect him, and how he would lose heart and likely not have belief anymore that what I taught meant anything worth trusting.

That is what I am thinking about this morning…how easily and how often my situation is somehow twisted around and becomes all about the other person. It was like another situation where I had been accosted by a long standing acquaintance (whom I would have called a friend, but now realize that was me putting my view of what a friend is on someone who sees it vastly different) who demanded an explanation for “why you have been seen around town dressed as a woman!!” (quelle horreur!!)…and since he had that place in my heart of “friend”, I gave the full account, but only half-way. He cut me off because “he was overwhelmed and couldn’t take anymore of this”. And then he looked at me in sheer misery and said “What am I going to tell my children??!!”

See? All about him. His place, and his burden…as if that question needed any other answer than tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and begin to study these things together to help out a people in chains.

Well…that is a very similar response this other man by the lake had, regarding discovering my daily battle with dark thoughts. His burden placed on me was that if I were to ever choose to not be here any longer then I would be the cause of his faith being weakened and diminished and his life harmed.

Since that time, I have spoken to this man two times, once a day or two after a big crisis that was brewing, and then again at the end of October 2014.

Twice.

And since then, nothing…and I get that there are complicating reasons for that, not the least of which is my transition and he is a man. Very few men have been “man enough” to handle my transition with anything other than rejection at best, and murderous, venomous looks at worst (and those looks threaten far worse is coming).

Constance…is this not something close to suicide? Friendshipicide? Is not this towering silence some sort of death? Does it not underline and highlight the gulf between us, because really all that changed was his understanding that he was interacting with a woman?

And those words ring in my heart, part of the voices that circle me like wolves and nip and slash and bleed me out…

“…it would falsify everything you taught me…”

Well, I don’t know if it would or wouldn’t. Things are true and worthy of living regardless of the source one receives them from. But I know that this staggering abandonment does indeed make me mindful of how those words are true from my perspective. Apparently, I am no longer those “three C’s” to him…Child, Communicator, Caretaker. Now, I am simply “It which must be avoided, lest whatever ails it somehow infect me”.

As to the other man…that was the last time we spoke, in September, with a terse letter being the final salvo and manifesto of that declaration of war religion has filed on me…and sadly, I have reason to know the sense of duty fulfilled and integrity maintained, and sweet sadness at doing the “hard but right thing” which follows the writing and delivering of such a letter…

…it is such an awful feedback loop of legalism and lies and lack of life (death).

It is difficult being the friend or relative of a transgender person. You get caught up in the punishments they are meted for their gender-crimes. You get branded with the Scarlet TL to match their Scarlet T (“tranny-lover” and “tranny”)…

…and you get confronted again and again and again with that gulf uncrossable, that breech unbridgeable, and the dysphoric human’s many-sided and alienated existence when you yourself live in a world where such concepts as sides and incongruency are understood in the brain alone and denied in the bones, those non-dysphoric congruent bones.

I am watching “Romeo and Juliet” right now, the 1954 version directed by Renato Castellani (huge giggles here, ddh)…this play has long been my very favorite Shakespearean play (followed closely by Henry the 5th). It is tragically striking, how I am in one being a Montague and Capulet, and both Romeo and Juliet…it is in a sense a tableau of dysphoria and the solution is inferred in the tragic ending…only loving acceptance and dogged commitment can validate a life and overcome abandonment.

And there is a timeless line (distinct from the rest of that genius’s timeless lines):

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

I am still whatever Rose I was…and still stink of whatever stench emanated from me under the old costume I sported. I still live in the dysphoric House of Mirrors, and sides all around me with everyone else there and me here…I am still “Fortune’s Fool”.

…and as to men? “Friends”…well, there is this, from the mouth of Juliet’s Nurse:

There’s no trust,

No faith, no honesty in men. All perjured,

All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.

Ah, where’s my man?—Give me some aqua vitae.—

These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old.

An Eloquent Life

Posted on March 10, 2015 by charissagrace

“It’s not ‘natural’ to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting articulate way.
People living in groups, families, communes say little—have few verbal means.
Eloquence—thinking in words—is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality.”

—	Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh, Journals & Notebooks

Constance, this may be so? But I will tell you what is not “natural” to me…it is not natural to not speak. It is not natural to open the heart and tell of its deepest places, and then shut it again and starve someone. It is not natural to draw someone into a place of intimacy and then stone them. It is not natural to tell someone how towering their significance is in one’s life, and then allow an event of life to tower so greatly that they never talk to the other person of “significance” ever again.

It is not natural to take the secrets of someone’s openness and then harbor them if they are your own and then not respond in kind and thus hold that person in your debt.

It is not natural to make a person feel like they are a burden for breathing, a weight for wanting, a dead body for desiring.

There are people I miss so badly, that I guess it is not natural to be separated from the ones you love.

I wish this wasn’t so. I wish that I wasn’t some chore to check off a list. I wish I wasn’t some shade to whisper of around campfires. I wish I wasn’t judged dead because an understanding of who and what I am was in error and must die and be reborn in a truer way.

I wish I was treasured more than memory.

I wish someone wanted to talk to me everyday instead of toss some Alpo in the dish and disappear until my ribs show thru.

I wish…I wish.

I wish I could forget the words a man told me of undying friendship and what I meant to him and how he is changed forever because of me…because his actions tell the truth that his words lied.

I wish I could forget the words a woman said to me that are undermined by her actions like the ocean undermines a glacier until it falls into the sea and is melted and gone…

I wish I wasn’t me…but who then would I be? Who should I be?

Well…I will be the person I wish these others were, and strive to not be the person who is like them.

I will try to be there, always. I will try to speak, and then do and do with all I have.

I will try to make a life that is full and not hollow, present and not absent, flexible and changing as time births new understandings of history.

I will try to forgive and remember, but remember in redemption and grace.

Oh Mama help me…I am so hollow.

Ask for Password…It’s Not All Glitter and Rainbows: 6 Harmful Myths About Coming Out — Everyday Feminism

Posted on March 8, 2015 by charissagrace

But we shouldn’t be pressuring people to come out. Instead, we should be challenging the expectation that others are entitled to our identities.

No one should be demanding that people take on the risks of coming out. No one except you can make that decision. Your identity is yours, and no one else owns it.

You don’t owe anyone anything – especially not people who are ignoring your personal autonomy and safety by demanding that you come out.

via It’s Not All Glitter and Rainbows: 6 Harmful Myths About Coming Out — Everyday Feminism.

Constance…I face a lot of challenges in life that are in addition to the ones faced by all people simply as a condition of being in this world. If you have read here for awhile, you are acquainted with the gamut of these, and if you are new, well have a gander at the other posts ;-)…giggle.

My point is that it is the additional ones that kill. They are like the difference between running a marathon, and running one chased by dogs, and running one when you aren’t fast enough to keep from getting nipped numerous times on the run. And it is the nips that bleed, get infected, and drain…of vitality, of energy, and eventually of hope.

Right now the hardest of these challenges for me is that of making myself known to other people that are of utmost importance to me. They are mourning what they perceive as the loss of the person they knew, rather than perceiving it as the loss of the explanatory narrative that stitched together our common history.

For a whole host of reasons, some of them spiritual, some of them developmental, and most of them cultural/paradigm related, the onus and burden falls squarely on me in this process…to be the bigger person…to walk the second mile, or the third or the fourth, or however many miles must be walked…to turn the other cheek again and again and again…

My own identity is in need of justification, of proving, of validating, and the ways I respond either contribute to or detract from my right to be.

Judgement is passed on the narrative that I have, as it compares to the narrative that was.

Again…I get it. Fairness is not the operative determinant. But I want it to be understood: this is a costly gift, and gift I do think it is. It is not something that I owe…to anyone except myself whom I owe the debt of authenticity inner and outward. I think that my perspective on things is equally valid, is equally valuable and to be treasured. The “things I have lost” or the sense that “what I thought I had never existed” is just as real, as vibrant and legitimate for me as it is for anyone else who feels like they are being robbed.

Let me state it baldly: anything they are “robbed of” wasn’t real in the first place.

How about this: instead of the point of view that “a father I thought I had is now dead and replaced by you”, how about this: “I have a father who just happens to be a woman, and the idea I held that my father was also a male was an incorrect one. I am fortunate to be able to have this inaccurate understanding corrected while there is still time and life remaining to know this person that I valued and treasured as a father!”

Because this is my story…my history. I fathered four people…as a woman who inhabits a body that is biologically male. And as far as I am aware, my children always felt that I was a good dad to them, valuable in the love, acceptance and counsel that I offered them. And I am still here! The same person with the same ideas and same truths (and some newly understood ones too).

Perhaps instead of me saying over and over again I am sorry I am sorry…I am sorry for being…I am sorry for wanting to be, needing to be…maybe it could be thought about that a different sorry could be said…I am sorry that I held onto my own belief and insistence that a father has to be spiritually and biologically male and only that…I am sorry that I invalidated the lives and efforts of the millions of women who “fathered” young boys into men because there was no one else there.

I am posting this link, because it gets to a lot of the reasons why there is so much gravity behind the other narrative, the one that requires me to justify my right to exist, my right to pursue congruency, my right to be free from suicidal ideation, my right to feel okay about the truth that I did the best I could and while not a perfect parent did a pretty adequate job even compared to a cis-male…and as a transgender woman serving in the role of father and not knowing, well maybe I did an admirable job.

and maybe I suck. but I suck based on what I did and didn’t do, not based on whether I identfy as male or female…others who are insisting with actions that the actual measure of my being is in that identification are the ones who must grapple with the suckitude they frolic in!

Read the article…acquaint yourself with the myths…and then divest yourself of them for some clearer, more objective standards that we will all, together, be held accountable to…how we love one another, how we forgive one another, whether we divorce and separate ourselves or remain connected…those are things that will endure long after gender identification falls away as not needed.

Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.

The Wreck in Ruination

Posted on March 7, 2015 by charissagrace

This instrument, bound in time and dust and ashes
attacked by pressure and moments passing
wracked by neglect and careless stroking
of keys made of flesh and bone

has lost its continuity, lost its simple melody
cannot follow harmony
but mashes sound chromatic
and dissonant, dramatic
just echoes all the static

that rattles all around it,
neath the layers of grime
the passage of time
and each gender crime

In Hope of Dust and Ashes

Posted on March 3, 2015 by charissagrace

We start this life with such bright expectation,
each sunrise morn of discovery and
each eventide of hope, our lifetime passes
and time flows like tides constantly in waves

that wash in over us, the same and ceaseless
yet we, in ever-new anticipation
that this new day is diff’rent, something yet
to be discovered in the shell-pink dawn,
we lift our hearts up cheery with bright song.But there are ashes from the desperate fires
that we assemble in the long sloe nights
so cold upon those yawning yearning shores,
when stars hide behind black clouds of unknowing
and oceans hide in mists of dank despair,

and we are forced to burn all our Hosannas,
those palms fronds of our hopes so optimistic
waved innocent and arrogant and prideful
because we hadn’t seen the moon’s dark side.We built frail fires from those brittle branches
and clutched at weak warmth, bathed in dim wan light
and marked ourselves with those imposéd ashes
and mourned those days we sang triumphantly
unknowing of the coming loss of all
our innocence in suffering…

and sorrowing…

and death and…

Ashes…ashes…
we all fall down…

and we are mindful of our common crown,
our destiny of dust wreathed round our foreheads,
that destiny of dust around our hearts,
that destiny of dust from which we came

and thus departed

that destiny of dust and our return…

to dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
dust returned…And it is only at this place, in ashes
after our hopes and dreams have burned to ash
and we have lost our hope and optimism
that we can finally see that stony path

and squinting, see the bloody foot-print outlines
left by the One who goes before our hearts,
the One who walks the Via Dolorosa
the One who, living, there lays down His Life,

the One who shows the way of self-denial
the way of sacrifice, relinquishment
entirely unnatural, the opposite
of every longing of our liquid hearts
that wants to feast upon self-preservation
and turn from bitter cups of self-denial…And we must choose the place that we will walk:
the ceaseless shores of our naked ambition
and never finding ending place, or home?
Or…walk the path of ashes with this Shepherd
and lose our lives completely to His care
and thus spring from the ashes like a phoenix
leaps from the golden flames to live anew!

See, ashes are the opposite of owning
the mirror image of self-preservation,
the sign-post of the way of life He offers,
the insignia of the lifestyle that He models,
the mark He makes forever on His own
writ large in His own blood mixed with the ashes
of hopes consumed and dreams become dry dust!

This is the downward journey to the highest place victorious,
the deeps of Sabbath Rest and Victory Won. tumblr_njn61sFcPS1tsumipo1_500 Regardless of the gods you say you follow,
we all share in a common destiny:
“From dust you’ve come, to dust you shall return”.
Like Him, we too shall die, Life’s pressing question
becomes…how shall we live? How shall our lives
this day respond to death’s reality,
and answer to Life’s strident invitation
to leave all of our privilege and status,
and turn from lives marked for success and promise,
and turn from some potential undefined,
and turn from false things that we think are true,
and let go of wealth, power and consumption,
and deny that false god: accomplishment
and dare to love our enemies with candor
and dare embrace the heady risk of peace
without one stray thought of self-preservation,
take courage to live for the sake of others
and for the sake of Him who shows this way,
the way thru death, the way of blood and ashes,
will we walk in valiant hope in dust and ashes?

We can sing our songs
of life in dust and ashes
and thus return to God
our dust redeemed.

The Story of Ryland

Posted on March 2, 2015 by charissagrace

Constance, I think I have posted about this previously, but I think this layout here is succinct, accessible, and easy to digest. Ya know, I have been thinking about the backflips that some people do, the contortions they knot themselves in so that they can preserve a way of thinking about a topic and not have to deal with changing a point of view…

…sadly, they place that point of view over a person far too often, and end up contributing to a tragedy.

It really is the ultimate in idolatry…a human life slain on the altar of the idol of their point of view.

Thank God there are parents like these, who understand the appropriate reaction to the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance.

Upworthy Article

Video

Ryland’s story is real for people all over the globe. Please listen to your children. Be understanding and accepting. If only Leelah Alcorn could have known such understanding parents. Stop trans discrimination.

North Carolina mom believes bullying led to transgender teen’s suicide – LGBTQ Nation

Posted on March 1, 2015 by charissagrace

North Carolina mom believes bullying led to transgender teen’s suicide – LGBTQ Nation.

Constance…ears are deaf to our pleas…another one has gone over the precipice of despair.

This area is the same one where some of my own dementors hail from, those truly baffling souls so full of hate that they are compelled to speak spite and make sure that they attempt to infuse my heart with that poison…oh yeah, cus they love me so much.

I am deeply saddened but not one bit surprised that this poor dear despaired in such a caustic and hateful atmosphere as this.

Ima keep on posting these things…you cannot pretend it doesn’t happen. You cannot pretend that reading here is the same as supporting a transgender person. If you read here but do nothing, you are like the rich person who walks the streets in -20 degrees below zero and tells the ones who freeze in their nakedness “be warm, be warm.”

Listen: it is not going to stop until you get you up out of your ease and privilege and stand with me! With us! In your community…and yeah, you will lose face and reputation and may be called a name or two…quel horreur!

Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa Grace

http://www.wsoctv.com/videos/news/mother-believes-bullying-led-to-transgender-teens/vDH8L9/

A Poem Preceding Easter

Posted on February 28, 2015 by charissagrace

Messy houses filled with secret staircases
leading neither up nor down and built of starved excuses
stellar and extending to the past and to the future
as a hedge to make secure our souls against their cold inflation.Idols stand resplendent in their regal good deed rags
atop secure safe mantels stolid, still
in false security within these homes of disarray
and all the forlorn deeds of our own self-besotted hands.

No corner is untouched or deemed untouchable,
no conclusion inescapable, for we did soon discover,
no–we were shown–these messes low and broken,
jangly jagged in the pieces of our ruined hostile hovels.This is that tableau displayed of our lost searéd conscience,
disembodied, floating room to room and deeply mourning
what’s been lost, and worse, abandoned
in the losing of idealism’s living throbbing shine.

And our hearts, once lifted up and strong
are finally unadorned and brought down low,
so broken, so contrite and finally open to this Living Invitation
to be drawn at last into a bigger Story…to be remade and molded, gripped and filled, to be enfolded
in the new creation by a Mercy Stark and so unyielding,
by a Love Severe and so unwieldy in our messy rooms
and serial sin-stained walls and monstrous ways of utter horror.

It takes a broken body and it takes a different stain,
one indelible and permanent, scarlet red and bloody glowing
in the darkness of our tragedy’s pretentious phony triumph…
see the Hand that rips our masks away to make us whole again!Eat and drink, remember! Then forget the past and rest within those ruins
at last cleansed and emptied of their wreck, delivered of the dreck
and durm und strang of fallen souls, set free of weights unbearable,
interminable, mighty, proud and fell and flawed and haughty.

And then, look…out there, thru yon window broken, there!
Behind that dingy jagged pane of brittle separation,
see the Cross so Stark, transcendent, final ever resting place
of all our sin and wrong, and also Final ever new beginning

of this race, we human butterflies set free from chrysalises left behind,
discarded casually forever…yet never left for death to feed upon or to devour,
for they will someday be raised again
to catch up with us and to be made one again…to be made whole…
again…at last…again…
amen, again…
amen.

That Effigy

Posted on February 28, 2015 by charissagrace

after you’re dead, there’s a funeral, red.
i discovered this recently, except i wasn’t
invited to show up, new, old or otherwise.

in my place was piled up wood, grey,
and lotsa brush all crackly-brown,
a stand-offish, prickly thorny-crown.

they set that half-truth fire blazing and incendiary,
mis-remembers and other (missings) hidden inside
curses, excuses, judgements of indigo echoing depth.

they thought me bound and captive but epithets
were synonymous with white-washed choices made-unmade,
were effigies hanging in flames, in smoke, in spirits.

then that noose just snikked up tight around their heart
like a golden curtain drawn but never rising on a play
written and rehearsed but never actually performed.

just as that funeral, red, was really never
held for me, but just that phantom never-was,
that effigy.

Grace on Grace on Grace

Posted on February 1, 2015 by charissagrace

That prideful young fool who ran off to the pigs
and that old man who ran to the end of the lane again,
over and over and over again, and the hearts there revealed
in the choices they made and the actions they took…

And the hard man who stayed behind, bitter and stiff
in the work to be done and estate to be gained
and the putting in place of a lazy young fool
and an old sentimental man, soft in his dottery doting…

The Shepherd related this story of hearts, common,
ordinary and intertwined with each other
in intricate detail and boring old sameness.

This story, it echoes to all in the human race, ever…but
I always ponder in my heart another heart…
What of the mother of these slanted sons
and the wife of this kind-hearted father, what of her?

The hidden mother of the prodigal son?Was she allowed to the end of the lane
to look yearningly for her child headstrong and stubborn?
Did she put her healing hand on the strong haughty
arm of her eldest, so driven and hardened in countenance?

I think that she was with her youngest child
in her heart and her mind and her lullaby songs
in the lonely nights as she was sleepless and wakeful
and weeping compassionate tears for the blindness of youth…
and then holding the household together by day,
the buffer between tender father and bitter son
cut off by care from the heart of the other…She is the one who transformed ordinary pain
into foundations of all sins forgiven,
she is the agent of grace in this story
and that is why she is unmentioned and hidden,

as quiet as grass growing, loud as a heartbeat
the roar on the far side of silence at dawn,
she pulled back the curtain of tragedy so the next
Act of Amazing Grace could flow unceasing,
filling the infinite distance between lost humanity dark
and God in Their grandeur resplendent and generous
so full of Mercy and such Lovingkindness.

The prodigal son, the hard elder brother,
the father so tender, the Shepherd so gentle
and there…Mama…pouring out
Grace on Grace on Grace. tumblr_n4xx9l5k781tqglaio1_1280

…”and a little child shall lead them…”

Posted on January 31, 2015 by charissagrace

Constance, I ran across this account from a blog aggregate site. I am going to post it here without much comment, other than to say yes, I am aware of the scatalogical vocabulary, and urge you to overlook it in order to access the deeper truth.

It is towering to me that there is more of the gospel expressed in the lives of hearts that are simply oriented to love, regardless of dogma, orthodoxy or persuasion.

I wonder what would happen if we all practiced this sort of love, and left the judging and convicting and convincing to the One Person in the Entire Universe Whose job it is to do those things (Mama)?

Hmmmm…

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

spaceyacey:

Fuck i’m crying now

So my mother was up to her usual shit; calling me useless and entitled. Saying that I’m no longer allowed in the bathroom with a shower and I need to clean the other one by noon tomorrow morning or else keep in mind it hasn’t worked in 3 years.

I was hiding in my bedroom while my parents argued over who’s fault I was when my sister came in. She walked up to me and opened up her fist revealing a rainbow popsicle ‘best friends’ necklace. She thrust it into my hand and whispered that she wanted me to have it.

“because it’s a popsicle?” I asked

“no silly because it’s a rainbow. I know- I mean- I thought you’d like it.”

She then winked and told me that I no longer needed to worry about cleaning the bathroom because she had spent the past hour doing it for me.

This seems so petty and small until you realize that for the past two years my parents have been doing their darnest to get rid of me. My sister will admit that I’ve always been the scapegoat but since I came out it seems their attacks are more pointed.

My sister is 11. She has grown up in a homophobic home and listened to my parents bitch about “those damn gays” her entire life. A couple months ago I came out to her and told her the reason our parents have been threatening to kick me out or send me away. I explained that sometimes gay girls and gay boys are even beaten up by people, just because of who they love.

I cannot express how much her support means to me; perhaps I am not the one who’s wrong. If an 11 year old who has been taught nothing but hate, perhaps there is hope for the future.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’

“Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’

“When Side B is the New Ex-Gay”

Posted on January 27, 2015 by charissagrace

“When Side B is the New Ex-Gay”.

Oh Constance…what a poignant and well written post awaits you behind the above link! Please head over and read it, and while you do, keep in mind something:

As John Pavlovitz says, it is no longer possible for you to bury your head in the sand of platitudes and assumptions about what it means to be gay or lesbian or transgender and be in love with God all at once.

Let me be clear with you all: my gender journey is not like the one that gay and lesbian christians are on, in that my journey is not about who I feel sexual attraction to, but rather it is an adventure that involves living out my female being in this body that is biologically male…okay? It is important you know that.

I also want to again reiterate and confess something: much to my great sorrow, before I was personally confronted by Mama about my gender identity, in inescapable ways, before that incredible and sacred day? Well, I really didn’t do a whole lot more than mouth platitudes myself. I didn’t really think about it much. Oh, I have talked with many gay men who have sought me out to confide in me…but while I was kind and loving to them? I really had nothing to offer other than the same old junk that I had been taught myself.

I was not capable of walking in their shoes! I had no true empathy with their plight and path. And thus I had no true motivation to really discover what their life is!

We made friends with a lesbian couple who have become very dear friends…in fact, they were the first people I came out to…but even in that friendship, I still didn’t know.

Well, I do now.

I do…cus I get it now, I get the same discrimination. I get the same hatred. I get the same rejection. I get judged the same way with virtually the same judgments. I pay some of the same prices, and I pay additional different ones.

But besides that? What I got was a huge dose of Humble Pie from Them…because it was so absolutely clear to me that I had not been truly like Jesus when I thought I was being like Him. I was so blinded by my own arrogant preening righteousness. I was so certain that the people that I talked to were just trying “to justify their sin”…as if every single other f***king christian in history hasn’t done the same g*dd*m thing!!

Every. Single. One.

Friend…you who “prays for me, that I will be delivered from this deception”, you should rend your own hearts and pray for yourself, that God would send you to Damascus and perhaps knock you off your ass and the scales from your eyes.

You just don’t know. You think you do…but you don’t.

People deal with all matters of interaction with God in all manner of ways…and you aren’t qualified to pass muster on them. But you are qualified to lay down your weapons, lay down your platitudes and easy caricature-arguments, and simply love…lift…and laugh.

Point to Jesus, not at sin. Point to the Cross and not to anything else. And then actually spend some time with people. Go to the Gay Christian Network Conference…Go to a Reconciling in Christ Meeting…Go to a welcoming of LGTBQ church…talk to the clergy…talk to the congregants…listen…listen.

And when done listening…well, listen some more.

Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.

Charissa Grace

My Mama, and Spiritual Awakening

Posted on January 22, 2015 by charissagrace

Good Morning Constance! 🙂

Lately I have been waking and finding myself more rested…spiritually, emotionally, and physically. There are a lot of ways that dysphoria burdened me…a lot of ways. For years I didn’t know what dysphoria was and thus attributed so much of the trauma I lived as just being a function of being me.

It was the primary thing that drove me…straight past religion and into the arms of the God behind the curtain of religion that humans have erected. If it were not for Them, Their love, acceptance, and encouragement, I would have long ago despaired and taken my own life.

Then I began to face my gender issues, get educated on what they were (and weren’t), and the relationship between me and Them blossomed and flourished even more…depths and heights I had no idea of…and the sense of destiny and mission and purpose began to take shape and form! No longer was I here merely to serve out a life sentence in the penitentiary of this flesh, just slogging thru until release. No. I had been formed and fashioned in just such a precise and intricate way so as to be in this place at this time to help set other captives free, to break down walls of oppression and to be part of that rolling river of justice, that mighty stream of righteousness to all peoples.

So that was cool.

But these mornings…finding this new place of peace, liberty…I think it is a deeper connection to God that is derived from congruence and alignment of brain and body due to the HRT that I have been doing…there are fewer filters and a wider open field to run in. And for the last few years, the Person of God I have been encountering most is the Blessed Holy Spirit, the One I affectionately call Mama.

*Oh, and to you, prisoner of patriarchy, who rebuked me for “feminizing God and reducing His Divinity”? To you I say don’t go away mad, just go away…you who “masculinize God, and reduce Their Divinity” The Bible teaches that God created man in Their Image, male and female, and it is very broad in how this is worded, indicating that not only are there some humans assigned to biologically female bodies, and some humans assigned to biologically male bodies, but also that each human being made is both male and female in their creation…because each one is in the Image of God. This would by inference prove that God Themselves transcend gender, as the origin and agency of the creation of human beings! So again…just go away. I don’t receive your judgment and your fear. Perhaps if you just stop, exhale yourself out of yourself so you are at last empty, you may find a humble path to repentance for doing the very things you judge me guilty of. Then inhale the God…who made you…and me…and owns us both.*

Mama…I have written poems about Her, and I urge you to search the blog for the word Mama, and check them out. I rather like them. Mama is so incredible and, well, I am not gonna try to describe Her.

The reason for this post is because a lot of you have been in contact with me and have indicated you would actually show interest in and desire to be in relationship with a God like Mama…but that She is different than the god they were taught of as children when they attended church. That god they want nothing to do with! And who could blame them?

Well, I want to invite you to try out something: I would like to invite you to talk to Her. She was telling me in my heart that She will talk to anyone who approaches Her with an open heart and humble spirit (that means a spirit that knows that it doesn’t know but would love to be taught). And She said to suggest this to you:

If you would like to know Mama…then talk to Her and simply say “Mama, the One that Charissa talks about…I would like to start a dialogue with You. I will show up everyday at the time and place that is established, and I will literally talk with You just as I would my bestie when we go out to coffee.”

If you do this…She will not disappoint, though She will indeed surprise and confound, often times will bring things to you that may make you uncomfortable or downright angry! I know this for a fact from experience. But hang in there, stay present, and above all, be honest. If you get mad, tell Her. Speak from your innermost core…hey, She is God and already knows what is there anyway, so you might as well. I have said literally the worst things I have ever said to anyone to my Mama in those moments…but I didn’t stop there, for She talks back, yeah? She will bring thoughts, new understandings, revelations…

…and awakenings. Spiritual awakenings.

Spiritual awakenings are such a crucial component of being in this life, and they are common to nearly every religious experience and cultural expression. They share a lot of common factors in spite of the various trails that people walk to arrive in them. Here are some components of them:

☾Increased tendency to let things happen rather than making them happen
☾Feelings of being connected to others and nature
☾Overwhelming episodes of appreciation
☾A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears of past experience
☾A loss of the ability to worry
☾A loss of interest in conflict
☾A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others
☾A loss of interest in judging others
☾A loss of interest in judging self
☾Gaining the ability to love without expecting anything in return
☾To be so strong that nothing disturbs your peace of mind.

I saw that list this morning, and I wanted to share it with you, but with the Charissa-twist that comes with my connection to Mama:

☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have an increased tendency to let things happen rather than making them happen.
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have feelings of being connected to others and creation
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I experience overwhelming episodes of appreciation
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears of past experience
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a loss of the ability to worry
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a loss of interest in conflict
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a loss of interest in judging others
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a loss of interest in judging self
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I am gaining the ability to love without expecting anything in return
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I am so strong that nothing disturbs your peace of mind

(I was trying to make a rainbow, by the way lol!!)

My point is this: Spiritual Awakening is not an experience…it is a state of being that can be entered into through relationship with a Person…through Mama.

Oh no…you don’t have to enter into connection with Her…there are many beings out there to connect to and not all of them good…but I am in relationship with Her, and I can testify of Her goodness, Her faithfulness, Her steadfast unending love and acceptance, Her humor and fierce sense of Justice, Her unending Tender Mercies…

Mama.

I Love You, Mama
Your girl, Charissa Grace

How to Respect a Transgender Person: 9 Steps (with Pictures)

Posted on January 21, 2015 by charissagrace

How to Respect a Transgender Person: 9 Steps (with Pictures).

Good Morning Constance! 🙂 I hope all is well in your life today. If you are facing obstacles, may our wonderful God provide you with the Grace needed to transform obstacle into opportunity, resulting in the joy of having overcome.

I am linking to this article today, because I think there are many people who read here who are allies, but still learning how to demonstrate that alliance in fruitful and effective ways. It is simple and direct without being buffoonish and reductionist.

Please take these things seriously…they matter to us. I will never forget how small I felt when I was told by someone who claimed to love me that they refused to compromise their faith and they were compelled by their conviction towards God to tell everyone they interacted with about me and that they considered me disobedient to God and in sin and deception because I had decided to transition.

To this day, I can feel that sharp sting, followed by that numbing zing like powerless electricity thru my bones…not good for anything but hurting…

I think the thing that really strikes me is how many things are done in God’s Name that are really a mere reflection of an individual’s own attempts to prove to themselves or to others that they are really and truly a Christian. In my case, it was as if this person was worried that someone would think ill of them if they did not make sure and let everyone know first of all that I was transitioning and second of all that they “knew” that I was “sinning”, but most importantly that they themself had sought to warn me and were thus the heroic rescuer who had valiantly attempted to save me…and their efforts were “unsuccessful” but only because of my deceived, rebellious and unsubmitted state.

That interaction left its marks. It showed me, sadly, that love is too often only word deep, and is forced into the template of self and put under the pressure of self-serving agendas, and what is extruded from that certainly is not love. And it is interesting that I have not heard from that person since…I think primarily because they were “shaking the dust off of their shoes” after warning me of what was going to happen to me: I was going to be outed at their own discretion, and then each person that I was outed to was going to be fed a version of me that came from another person…not from me.

But God is faithful…God is good. They have added people into my lives of such amazing quality and genuine heart! I have acquaintances now who I see a lot, present in my life and feeding in encouragement, truth, goodness, and love.

So it is not really so much about me, whatever “ruination” is come my way reputation-wise…but rather, it is about the words said about someone to someone else and then repeated again and repeated again take on a “telephone game” quality. Eventually they will come to someone who has gender issues themself or knows someone who does…and the full implication will communicate to them that they are not okay and loved, valued in and of themselves for who they are…and bam.

Another Leelah Alcorn.
Another statistic.
Another life tragically lost…

…and in the name of “love”.

So: head on over, read…get educated…and resolve in your heart that God is God and you are not, and that loving someone with kindness in word and deed is never going to sully Them or yourself. This would be the “walk humbly part.”

Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly.

Charissa

7 Reasons the Church Should Be Afraid NOT to Affirm LGBTQ

Posted on January 19, 2015 by charissagrace

7 Reasons the Church Should Be Afraid NOT to Affirm LGBTQ.

Okay, so this post is startling in its implications. The author relates a Q she was asked by a friend, who was fearful for her. Her friend asked the author “What if you’re wrong affirming LGTBQ people as loved of God and worthy of being received as part of Christ’s Body”…

She turns that Q on its head in her post, and asks “What if you are wrong in fearing and rejecting LGTBQ human beings?” And then she goes on to list 7 potential consequences of that wrongness.

Her plea? Just love. Since you really aren’t the Holy Spirit, you are off the hook in correcting anyone and you are free to just love and trust that God is big enough to get the message across.

I mean…hey, They got it across to you, didn’t They? If They are powerful enough to get it across to you, well then They can get it across to anyone! Right?

Right!

To a Church That Dehumanizes Gays

Posted on January 19, 2015 by charissagrace

To a Church That Dehumanizes Gays.

This letter.

Read.

Constance…pure and simple, the church simply must search its heart and come up with a better response than it currently has towards LGTBQ people.

I fear that it may never but for the same reason that so many cis-gender people may never grapple with the discrimination and hatred that is exuded towards transgender people: if it doesn’t affect you, you generally fail to really let it impinge upon your comfort.

When you are impacted by either of these issues, or really any issue, then it changes your heart and opens your eyes.

Blessed are those who would humble themselves and ask for a heart like Jesus and eyes like Mama.

Loving LGBT People Well, 12 Suggestions for Traditional Churches | A Queer Calling

Posted on January 18, 2015 by charissagrace

Loving LGBT People Well, 12 Suggestions for Traditional Churches | A Queer Calling.

Good Morning Constance! 🙂 Once again I want to thank you for being here, on Charissa’s Grace Notes with me, and journeying in your own ways from works and death to Grace and Life…your presence here, your comments, your shared humanity brings me hope and adds ammunition for those lonely times in the night when all are sleeping, all is still, and I watch…awake on the walls. ❤ Thank you ❤

So the link above is from an interesting blog that is worth perusing. It lists several suggestions for Christian people to love and serve in ways consistent with the gospel, and likely far more congruent with the heart of Jesus Himself, the Great Friend of Sinners.

We have all heard the old saw “love the sinner and hate the sin”…heck, prolly a whole lot of people who read here have even said that. I have before…much to my great regret…I have indeed. When I did, I didn’t really realize what that said and implied about the person I was speaking to…and even worse what it said and implied about my own heart and self evaluation.

Alas…what I and others were usually saying is we think the loving thing to do is make sure the person knows they are a sinner. And quite simply, this is just not the way that Jesus did things…oh wait! There were times that He outright called people out on their sins! I forgot about those!

Yeah…it was to the Pharisees! Ya know those folks of that day who were the ones who loved to point out how everyone else was a sinner! He ripped them a new one over and over and over again because who they were in their own eyes was more important than who their neighbor is in God’s eyes…and that is fatal.

Of course I am not advocating “loving sin” by opposing the use of that phrase! Don’t be ridiculous! What I am saying is you ought to major in people, and minor in sin management. After all, your skills at sin management must suck, or Jesus would not have felt the need to descend from His state in Heaven, take on human flesh, and then suffer and die for you (ya know, a sinner). Right? If you were capable of managing sin, well then He would have just encouraged and taught you until you got it right!

Jesus never said “love the sinner but hate the sin”, and no one believes that meant that Jesus was compromising, prevaricating, or condoning anything evil. No…Jesus understands one crucial thing:

Saying Yes to Love is far more effective and powerful than saying No to sin.

The true YES renders the no moot.

And that brings me to why I link to this article, because if we are going to discard futile harmful platitudes, then how to we pick up effective and edifying alternatives?

They list a dozen, and they are “process oriented” and not items that you can check off on your daily righteousness list.

They demand that you see the people in your life as your moral equals.
They demand that you give the people in your life the same standing as worthy of God’s love as you have.
They demand that you understand that your perspective is extremely limited and insufficient by definition, as you are a very finite, very imperfect, and very limited being.

As you go, take with you my lil motto that I have pulled from Micah 6. It is a superb guide for keeping it simple and loving. And it has an order of listing for a reason.

Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa

Her Name is Terri, and She’s a People-Mover

Posted on January 11, 2015 by charissagrace

‘it’s like a roller coaster!” she said.
her eyes caught the dim light, dark light
that swam in that murky place
awash in muddy music
and clattery chattery din,
they reflected it back
changed and amplified,
pure and clarified
and charged with
that thrill of being alive,
that thrill of being.“ya gotta let go!” she went on.
my heart was stirred by her words,
like a drink sitting and then a straw
just hops into the drink
and rattles and revolves and churns
the spirits and icecubes
until it refreshes and is spritely
and cries out for lips
on its rim…and sips…yeah…
my heart was ready to be sipped.

“just raise your arms
while you drop and scream
your fool head off
in joyful terror midst the fall!”
and her smile, so lovely to us all
sitting entranced and inspired
must have been so fell, so grim
so terrifying to the forces of hell
that lurked nibbling at the edges
and stealing bites of hearts and souls
with electric metered music teeth
and measured shot-glass jaws. tumblr_ng2uonFfDW1rhpg9vo1_1280

“cus you’re gonna be held in place
and when you’re done you’ll be
so glad you did…raise your arms!”
and then she tossed her head back
just a couple inches
but whole tides turned on that sweep
like the moon across benighted skies
tugs whole oceans below in some
heavenly waltz or dosie-do!

her name was Terri
her name is Terri
and i was forever encouraged
in the meeting…and for me the word
terrify
will ever have layers and connotations
because of her,
towering red and turning
the dim to shiny from the inside out
her there across from me
and shiny red and clear all at once
amidst the dim and the dark and the din.

she leaned forward and laughed
a brilliant smile into my soul
and I felt Mama kiss the world
and rested in the moment
a little bit more whole.

Mama Comments on Charissa’s Comments on Leelah

Posted on January 3, 2015 by charissagrace

Dear Constance…

Nights are not good.

Almost every night of my life since I was around 4 I wake up in the night, and I am petrified. Skert stiff, and I mean that literally. I don’t know why. And inner voices that say horrible things that crush…flat, inflectionless, as if I am so worthless that those voices will not even waste their powers on one as meritless as I. No need to tell you what they say.

In 1966 I was exposed to a horror movie that really hooked into my dysphoria and an extremely traumatic event that had taken place a few months earlier, and since then, I have bad dreams, too. tumblr_lyzkcoRLuB1qc0cxpo1_500

That’s a lot of years.
That’s a lot of fears.
That’s a lot of tears.

As I grew, I discovered that talking with God helped…some. And after I had grown some more, I learned to recognize Their voice back to me…each one distinct and each one full of Love.

Well, if you have been reading here lately you know that I have been in a rough patch. A bit challenging in fact. And those voices? The ones that say crushing and horrible things? They have utilized the raw materials in my life of trial, betrayal, abandonment, loss, and sorrow, and added that weight and depth and breadth to their curses…and I could not escape their toxin. I had to just listen…and endure.

Until last night…after waking, freezing, cramping, clenching, crying…and ripping apart again…

I heard my Mama’s voice quiet and sure, certain underneath the Mordor doom-drums and orc snarls…and we talked. A long time.

At the end, She exhorted me to write some of what She told me…here on Grace Notes…as a faith step and an exercise…an attempt to call myself into fullness and being, because I have languished for so many years encased in roles, expectations and binary bondages. I have even torn myself in two in my desperate attempt to perform and thus be worthy of love and acceptance…and so all those voices whispering all those years are like a gravitational pull to be overcome.

So here is a bit of what Mama told me…translated from spirit/soul/heart talk to written words:

I am Charissa Grace, and I am not the person everyone thought me to be (including myself). tumblr_nhf6qrQfda1rpe84qo1_1280

I am made sensitive and tender…so I feel the pains and sorrows and hurts and worries of everything and everyone around me…in the same way that a tuning fork hit with vibrations will itself vibrate in frequency, or a crystal goblet will sound when it is circled with a finger.

It is not a function of something wrong in me when I feel all of that…it is a function of how my Mama created me, and so I am to stop calling myself names and blaming myself for things that are not my fault…they are simply the things that I feel because of how I am made by Her.

I am made to drink cups and drain dregs…many of them bitter and some sweet.

I am made to transform things…to catalyze their becoming into who and what they are destined to be, but I myself am not made a part of that…rather I remain apart…alone, and in my Mama’s Hands. mamas hands

I am precious to Her, and She watches over me in such Joyous Jealousy, having purposed to allow me to experience pain in order for Her good riches to be birthed into this world.

I am Mama’s womb of Life…having no womb of my own and born so barren and lonely. She intentionally formed me intricate, delicate and robust, so easily woken but desperately determined to hang on…hang on…hang on.

I am Her Instrument and She delights in my unique and utterly singular voice, and so She tunes me…constantly…to be sure I am in tune to Her song, Her heart…She tightens me, She loosens me. tumblr_nh5lyiVPc31qgk7mfo1_500

Above all…I am not evil. I am not “wrong” or “null” or “nothing” or a “monster” or a “freak”. What I endure is a function of Her goodness and intention and not a function of my flawed-ness and failures, and there are many of those by the way…flaws and failures. But to Her they are akin to the chiseled away wood or stone…they are like the clay She pushes away as She makes me into Her Own.

I am the daughter of Holy Spirit, Great Lady Grace…my Big Mama…and I am good. She has said it and my Precious Merciful Jesus has made it true in His own Love dripped completely over me and washing totally thru me cleansing me and making me Their Righteousness.

I will live, and still pine and long…grieve and mourn…but I will also see the Dawn morning by morning and I will keen under Her loving caresses to my hair and cheeks as She wipes away travail and gives…

…gives me Beauty for ashes…and the Oil of Joy for mourning…and She clothes me in Songs of Praise glorious and radiant and She disappears the spirits of heaviness…as She plants me in Her Own Orchards of Righteousness and calls me Her Very Own…and I will indeed day by day glorify Her Name and call Her good and only good as She brings me to the Father of Lights from Whom every good and perfect gift comes.

I am a prophetic declaration to a world that is spiritually cross-borned, just as I am physically thus. Yes, each and everyone of us is “transgender”…walking around with this knowing inside us that we were not destined for death and dissolution and destruction, knowing that we are victims of time, knowing that who we are in our hearts is somehow choked down and held down and thrown down by something that ought not be…

…and so as I live and love, as I trust and talk, as I weep and write, I am becoming a living word of love to whoever will listen, and let their own hearts awaken the dawn.

These things I say in faith…believe me, they are not said in boast, or even really anything that I think about myself. But I do know that I have heard from my Mama…and these sorts of things, the things I have written here? They aren’t even remotely like anything the voices have ever cursed at me, and like nothing I tell myself…wait, correction: told myself…so I know that they must be Her.

Mama said She was so thrilled when I picked out the name double-grace…She promises She will make good on it.

I am Charissa Grace, and I am in my Mama’s Hands. May my song ever be sweet and my tune ever triumphal, even in tears.

Silken Tears: Written in the memory of Leelah Alcorn

Posted on January 2, 2015 by charissagrace

i saw her there, in the dark woods,
so fair of movement, fair of face
she walked beneath the milky moon
and bathed in silken light like lace.

she glowed with beauty’s blessing kist
upon her brow, but knew it not
for hatred choked her slender throat
and in its death grip she was caught.

i ran to her, and called her name
my voice it was a whippoorwill
my voice a falcon stark and shrill
i called her name in terror-trill

but she could not hear me approach
her, buried under long reproach
so cut off from a future hope
and bound by hate’s black biting rope

so I just stood beside her there
just her and me, her broken stare
and dirges echoed through the night
and she in tragic silken light…

and then she ran straight to the moon
it rushed at us! alas, i swooned
upon the snowy cold fields fair
and when i woke, she was not there tumblr_nbehmpPs4v1smipnlo1_500

i asked the owls and talked to trees
and heard the moon had stooped so near
had come down to grant her release
from stony hearts and hatred’s sneer…

so now i haunt those woods, those vales
and listen hard inside the night
in case a singer runs for me
as i to her ran desperately

but silence croons so clear and cold,
the lonely moon is wreathed in gold
so distant, never drawing near
to where we stood in silken tears. LeelahEdit

This Brilliant Indifference

Posted on December 31, 2014 by charissagrace

tumblr_nh5lyiZ6JT1qgk7mfo1_500 I am a childe of dark, a childe of light.

I was born beneath the shining moon
but just outside it’s golden touch
there, on dim green meadows blanketing
the warm red earth in comfort midst the singing dark and stars.

I was born upon the stones that radiate residual heat
as they remember blazing suns so brilliant beneath that blue sky
that blankets those same meadows green and glorious in the day
but now those stones lay bare in the cold night, as I am bare as well, uncovered.

I was born in darkness, and outside
looking in upon the singing stars
hung in night sky velvet-soft and sable
surrounded by splendors from some lost fable.

Outside.

I was born outside the secret knowledge that every other person seems to have
of just how goddam dull and ordinary everything around them “really is”. I mean
just look at them, shining so brilliant each day and acting like it’s only night! I see
their flaming hearts a-fire and blazing but they just trudge by feeling bored, uptight.

I watch events unfold and want to sing in joy and caper!
But when I open up my heart and shout and point in wonder…
well, those fish eyes turn and stare and those mouths gape and mock, hung open
and I am named too much, inglorious and out of order…out of order…out of order.

Childe dwelling in the swelling dark of gloomy bored indifference
Childe dwelling midst the dazzle vast and glory of a day

(just One Day that unfolds brand new
over and over and over and over and over
Full, expressed complete miraculous
in every single same lily white
in every single same bird flight
in every single whispering wind
that echoes ever over the same ever different waters bright)

I am a companion with no company to keep because I’m
elated and afraid,
curious and fearful,
confused and wide awake
and seeing all around me
the marvels that they fail to see

(or rather, what they see and call the same?
the same ole same ole same ole same ole same
and let the repetition rob them of the vision
and leave them drunk and sober but
out of proper phase for when intoxication
is called for in this moment and when sobriety is come
to sing us back at last to proper sanity). tumblr_nh5isnxmlS1rk1cbbo1_1280

And on the cusp of Dark and Light I’m homeless in the day, the night,
homeless and repudiating that blank stupor of disinterest
that surrounds me…tries to drown me, pull me in it’s vicious grip
and trap me in its undertow of

violence unfolding
suffering repeated
oppression and injustice
become mere background noise
to serenade those bored yawns
and sighs of such indifference
that boredom has become
a way of life.

Out of phase (childe of dark)
and out of synch (childe of glad day)
delighting in monotony…
another walk beneath beauty…
another page before I sleep…
do it again! do it again, God!
another minute sharing hearts
because our moment is delight
alas…this childe born but belonging
not to day and not to night.

Living Bread or Primal Soup

Posted on December 25, 2014 by charissagrace

believe in a virgin birth?
implausible, absurd, immature!
a miracle problematic and troubling!!
inconvenient, that! disruptive!
Why, I don’t prefer it!

go walk on water, or multiply yeasty slices!
but inside…my body…my body…MY body!?!?
Nay! Do as You please with Yours but

git Yer greezy paws offn mine!

(it’s my precious!)

what’s that? why not?
Why not this birth inconvenient and impractical?
Why…because there is no mystery about this whole mess!!

Simply:
somehow, somewhere, sometime, someway
there was a soup

(not mine, I assure you, and whose?
well that ain’t my department!!)

a group of molecules

(from somewhere, sometime, someplace)

got together without knowing

(because: before knowing, ya ken?)

they just got together and became self-replicating

(i don’t know about that…
but we have that problem yet today:
self replication…ah self, you cursed demon!)

Hmmm…this sounds ummm,
well, I don’t want to be a smart ass
but I will risk becoming a talking donkey
and ask you:

If there was a Virgin Birth, what happened?
Molecules insensate unknowing
tasting soup without primordial tastebuds
and becoming out of nowhere
the Bread of Life?

And that’s different…how?
(except it excludes Love, oh such Love contained therein!)

Our smartest blindest tell us this:

‘…the universe can and will create itself from nothing.
Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something
rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.’
(ima duck my head now and giggle!
and the tome called The Grand Design…
design…
by a not-Who
in a not-Where
for a not-Reason
but Grand.
and Design.
lol…molecules just laffed out loud)

Look: this never happens, not anywhere.
So, accepting that mystery, well then
we’re all the same and somewhere we leap

in faith.

‘Cept I leap at Mama…not molecules.
I eat of Miracles, not primal soup,
but I will dunk such Living Bread
as given to me
into the cup of suffering
for the sake of Love
and a Baby
born of a virgin
and my Mama dancing.

Seeds Busy Becoming

Posted on December 12, 2014 by charissagrace

I live in longing wonder
I’m mindful I’m a seed
buried deep within time’s flower garden
and sprouting there so quiet
and working hard to flourish
while everything takes place beneath the surface.

And those who throw dirt on me?
Why, they do God the favor
of releasing me, breaking me out prison
inside that hell, that hull
that thick and clumsy null
and so I am immune to their derision!

Every single person (every single one)
is living the greatest triumph ever witnessed
while also walking thru the hardest tragedy
this world has ever seen in all its seasons.
So therefore when you stand in anybody’s presence
remember that before you run your mouth.

And let that knowledge tender
be the only hoe you handle,
the only rake you wield to labor worthy
Because you are surrounded
by seeds busy becoming
Eternal blossoms in Their Garden Sacred.

Myths About Transition Regrets | Brynn Tannehill

Posted on December 12, 2014 by charissagrace

Myths About Transition Regrets | Brynn Tannehill.

Constance, I have pressed several articles by Brynn…here is another scintillating one, very informative and helpful in educating those who wish to learn.

As to those who don’t wish to learn, don’t waste your breath there, that is what I am learning! tumblr_nfyhwvKKif1sym2bco1_1280

The main reason that I am pressing this: it gives me opportunity to talk about regret.

Regrets…oh how they haunt me. tumblr_mumeduCow21qiz3j8o1_500

I regret that some how some way I am distanced from the ones I love most (except for my baby and Them, thank GOD!).
I regret that I have a different understanding and experience of what love and relationship is than they do.
I regret that I then blame myself for this.

I regret that I no longer have any idea what it means to be a friend…the things that I think it means are so vastly different than the things that other people think it means…at least, in the language of deeds…

I regret that there are people who have turned on a dime and cut me out of their lives because they found out I am transgender…and even more who have simply faded away, carrying on as if I have died.

I regret that my pace and that of the rest of the world are so out of sync, so different. In some ways I wander lands so free and boundless that they seem to never come to an end…and in other ways I am so chained and static and marooned behind prison walls that bar me from my true north place.

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I regret that I feel like anathema to some, and a trophy to others…these two groups are mirror images of each other…neither of them likes me, knows me, but each of them loves to have my pelt mounted to their heart’s wall.

I regret that I am not a better person.

But transition? Come out? Be honest with myself and the world?

Well, I will never ever regret that, and only wish I had found my moment sooner.

God knows the timing of that moment, and just as when the Child came to us “when the moment was perfect”, so too did my moment come.

Listen to me Constance: if you know someone who is transgender, and they have chosen transition, you can either be a cause of gratefulness, or a cause of sorrow…but your reaction and choices either way will not make them “un-transgender”. So wouldn’t you rather have it on your eternal resume that you brought joy and gladness, kindness and comfort to the lowly and hurting

…than have it written of you “this person kicked them when they were down, and helped them to kill themself”?

This Advent…be a bearer of tidings…

…comfort and joy, Constance.
Comfort and Joy.

Advent Poem: The Season of Hope

Posted on December 12, 2014 by charissagrace

I set off on this journey full of hope.
And wrapped in splendours of belonging here…
or there…it doesn’t really matter there or here
which far exceeds being nothing nowhere

But as I walked the crowds all fell away
and cruel branches raked across my face
disfigured me, tattooed with brutal scars
my garments stripped and used to block the stars
and so my world grew dim and I alone
and my companions left me trapped within

The last straw to which I desperate, clung
was dashed from my hands, hope was trashed and flung
to the four winds and blown away in dust,
left me un-moored, an object of disgust.
tumblr_ng4x5plD3Z1qccjsuo1_500
But hope is funny, indomitable
and it is sneaky, looking empty, full
and when I dried my eyes, what did I see?
But hope returned to heal and rescue me.

That Absent God so silent and so cruel
had made a move, become the Supreme Fool
and suffered as a lost and lonely peasant
and in absence became Supremely Present

It’s Here, in this fog, everything in shroud
Listen, hear that coming footfall loud
Lion, Lamb and Baby through the smoke
Paying every Promise that They Spoke

There…wet…thin…starving and alone
that’s me abandoned wet, drenched to the bone
and nothing beautiful, nothing of worth…
to this manger…that’s me…comes Christmas birth

And so I will press on, and I will grope
thru deep darkness in this season of hope.

Just Because He Breathes: Learning to Truly Love Our Gay Son | Linda Robertson

Posted on December 3, 2014 by charissagrace

Just Because He Breathes: Learning to Truly Love Our Gay Son | Linda Robertson.

Crying so hard that it took this sacrifice: this child sacrifice in order for

these pitiable people to realize something about God…

He does not ever require us to sacrifice our children to Him, because He has already given Jesus to us who chose to be our sacrifice of love.

Listen…make it really easy: you are not God. Thus, your one and only job here in the earth is to Love Them, Love your neighbor, and be kind. Believe it or not, God really can get thru to people…way better than you can.

And pray that it doesn’t take something like this for you to see clearly.

Bleeding Light and Memory: On Transgender Remembrance Day

Posted on November 20, 2014 by charissagrace

Here is my first poem written regarding this thing called Transgender Remembrance Day. I wrote it last year on this day. It is located here:

Bleeding Light and Memory (Without Images for Structure)

I present it to you again today…and it has grown, shrunk, matured and gained its presence a bit.

In other words I edited it.
Please…read it and let the reality of it hit your heart with the tattoo needle and not the jester’s feather. Please be changed…how can we live if you won’t unbend, unfold and become? I am right there with you Constance, wings straining for every weft of breeze, sails hoisted and praying for that puff divine and transformative…

Love, Charissa

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Bleeding Light and Memory (2014 version)

When light struck my soul I blazed fierce and exultant!
Into awareness, I bled joy so radiant just like the horizon
bleeds sunlight at dawn. I gazed in the gawky glass of exultation
(and I in my youth seeing darkly thru that glass)
I knew myself and was gaudiloquent and I was so glad and full,
I was so wonder-full.Til it rained, titters fell tinkling down on heart-tin, then rebukes raging,
lashing at my roof and thrumming and drumming til I saw no more thru that
bright young glass darkly, but dull thru a lonely storm dimly and starkly
and everything eerie and glowing in green, and radioactive remarks so redactive
and careless cerulean comment, alas! I came to know what I was
and was not and I melted misshapen and crippled.

Then came the days long and same and repetitive,
passing by people of 2 kinds that easily pass, they belong
but they never see beyond, they never see inside the rose.
So I plucked throbbing buds, thorn blood price cheap and held them out
from my side of that dark glass wet with stormy tears, washy with rivers
of arrogant vain assumed presence attributing value and worth.
Life ground me down as it moved without mercy, a glacier inexorable
grinding in glances so cold and so frozen, that flow moving over
the dark silent boulders of being…I saw bones strewn round me
like gruesome pick-up sticks, cast-offs from careless hands,
players who tired of children’s games, children’s cruel nicknames,
grown weary they tore out their hearts with bare hands mad with grief
but the world grinding by didn’t care. tumblr_mv21x4W9Lk1rk1cbbo1_1280 Until at last long from those dizzy heights brilliant awareness burst over me,
bleeding in fullness and in terror tinklings, thrumming and cold and that
startling certain blue clarity…I finally remembered who I am, and know
finally what I am, that I am, and my long lament “alas” nevermore uttered!
For I am become me…at last, me…a lass.

That’s me in a nutshell, my story and journey transgender…but what about you?
Will you take time to think and remember? Will you find mercy today?
Will you find the care? Will you go gently with us into our long night,
will you rage, rage with us gentle and bless now the living of the light
that’s straining to dawn bright and final in blazing clear beauty?
You too are dual natured, corrupt and dying and incorrupt rising!
We share one grim struggle, together the dead and together alive
in one deadly bold dual to live. You….are US. and we are you…
but you without arms, without eyes, without mouths
we scream loud and cry for release! We cry out
for the midwives of mercy to meet us and make us
so beautiful for situation at last and delivered of our awful charge.

OPEN YOUR EYES AND EARS FOR US. tumblr_mv2wk5jIW71spa6l5o1_500 See us…and hear us…don’t fear us, don’t fear to see yourself,
come stare down your own stormy floods, sit and listen!
Don’t be afraid to hear us, we’re the voice of the echoes you hear
in your own fearful nightmares of being, oh Daughters of Pharaoh!
Reach down and lift us up out of the reeds and mud! Because of you
a whole nation was freed, and we too are Eve’s sons and the daughters of Adam,
but trapped and acutely aware we are helpless! Too often we’ve fallen
to dread hands and dead eyes of no grace and no mercy
and no compassionate symmetry!

Today…here…
Light strikes in blacksmith blows,
soul sparks chip off and away on this day…
I intention…remember
my own radiant flood
bleeding light and day’s promise,
remember the resonant thunder,
remember the frowning floods
the gushing gouts
and the othering stares
and the brutal don’t cares
of long years I walked
in the country of lost men
and longing despair…

I remember the pangs and the waves and the lurching
of labor as I, pregnant with my own measureless mystery
and full of such knowing began to emerge and break forth
deep-touched forever warded by Grace, and kept safe
from that pit which has tripped far too many and eaten them,
chewed them like Goya’s devourer,
Zeus eating every last child in his madness and horror…
incarnate in this patriarchy that rounds us up
into its abattoir death camps like cattle
and herds us into chutes and charnal house horrors
of slaughter and blood-spattered baptism.(let their fate haunt you
and give you holy hush
and give you sacred silence).

Dare. Look. Feel.
I will too, and somewhere
we will fight off those demons
compelling and fell
that haunt us and cause us
to rave and destroy…
Then we shall be set free to fly again
all together in one flock of birds
of all feathers and all calls
become One Glad Song!
We will dare to fly off
to the sun and beyond
where our song will bleed joy
and rain down on the earth
to bring healing and hope
home in Love…

forever…
together…
we’ll
Bleed
Radiant
Light.

The Practice of Grace

Posted on November 11, 2014 by charissagrace

The Practice of Grace.

Constance…I am in tears right now (I know, I know, I can hear you sigh and hear your eyes roll and say “What’s new, Charissa!!” giggle…always in tears)…

but it is true, I am. Because this devotion by Margaret Manning is about grace. And as you know, I picked that for my real name. Charissa…grace. Grace…grace.

Grace for me has always been about the power to do what God requires. It is the power given freely to us, and it is given to us regardless of what we “deserve”. And this power has two vital expressions: the power to overcome the challenges we face in our lives, and the power to be forgiven for the ways we fall short morally and spiritually, for the times we hide and cower in fear instead of walking with our heads high and our eyes clear, for the times we are petty and cruel, or mean and insensitive, or dull and totally unaware of our blundering tromping of toes and hurting of hearts…

Grace. A golden coin with a Heads and a Tails, spent as needed, and replaced as soon as it is spent.

Wanna hear something amazing about Grace? A writer long ago was inspired by Mama to tell us this: everywhere sin is and triumphs, Grace is as well, and is there in quantities and amounts that increase in availability exponentially relative to the presence of sin in those moments and places! If there are 10 “sin units”, then there are 10 x 10 Grace units! If there are a hundred sin, there is a hundred times hundred grace…and so on! The more sin there is, the more grace there is too…but not just coin by coin, but gold mine of grace for farthing of sin and diamond mine of grace for shilling of sin!!!

It’s just like light: the greater the darkness, the more power even one tiny light has!

But Margaret brought out something that was soo salient to me right now, right here…in the midst of extreme anxiety and distress and inner turmoil that really pushes hard against me to give up and leave forever…she spoke of Grace as a way of life! OH! How my spirit BURNS with those words!!!!

Grace…as a way of life. The way of Grace.

And that is why I am crying. In the midst of all the absolute falling apart of everything (except for me and my darling, ddh, and a few friends who know who they are cus I told them), I found myself looking at the betrayal, the accusation, the defamation, abandonment, judgement and malicious savage written and verbal attacks…looking at all that I “once had” disappear and in its place piles of pain and heaps of hatred…I had fixed my eyes on that.

But Constance…am I not gifted with opportunity most miraculous and glorious? Seriously: for one who has prayed for decades to be a person of grace and mercy, how can this come to pass without opportunity? And thus the onslaught…yes?

Grace as a way of life…the way of Grace. Because of her article, my eyes are lifted up again and onto the source of Grace, the one who’s Name is Grace.

Here is the takeaway for me, to whet your appetite:

If the grace-full life of Christ is the intended goal for those who claim to follow him, each day presents the opportunity to practice—to grow in the very grace Christ embodies. Instead of fear, there is empathy and hope. Instead of pride, there is humility and hospitality. Instead of bitterness and resentment, there is forgiveness and laying down one’s life. There is always a choice. And thankfully, there is always one who extends flawlessly the very grace we need ourselves.

I am in the oven.
Baking in the heat.
But I am also becoming a loaf of the bread of Grace.
May Grace ever abound in me and thru me and add to the superabounding of grace wherever wrong is present.

Charissa Grace

The Courageous Debi Jackson

Posted on November 8, 2014 by charissagrace

Constance, I am posting here a speech given by Debi Jackson…it speaks for itself very well. Debi is a woman who loves God, loves people, and has a transgender daughter whom she is championing in a way that I am totally certain makes Mama proud.

Please check it out and let your heart be encouraged that hate can never ever conquer.

Debi…from me my deepest thank you’s and admirations for making a way for your child.

If only…if only…

Love, Charissa

Debi Jackson PFLAG Speech

The Last Faint Spark

Posted on November 7, 2014 by charissagrace

The Last Faint Spark.

Constance, this devotional is by my favorite devotional writer Jill Carattini, and rather than copy and past it I decided to press it…

…and then copy out a poem here that she quotes. I was stunned by this poem…and Constance? You think I write poems?? *charissa laffs and shakes her head in wonder at the thought*

No, dear Constance…this is what a real poem, a grown up poem looks like!! Just wow.

Still Falls the Rain

Still falls the Rain—
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss—
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potter’s Field, and the sound of the impious feet

On the Tomb:
Still falls the Rain

In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.

Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us—
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.

Still falls the Rain—
Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man’s wounded Side:
He bears in His Heart all wounds,—those of the light that died,
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,
The wounds of the baited bear—
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh… the tears of the hunted hare.

Still falls the Rain—
Then— O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune—
See, see where Christ’s blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree

Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world,—dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar’s laurel crown.

Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain—
“Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee.”

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Bleeding Light and Memory (2014 version)

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