See the endless angles tambled, garbled, jangled grim entangled
Crammed into the endless moral arc that’s curving there
Bending towards straight justice yet those angles bite, inveigle
Wicked teeth finagle, playing angles while the angels weep
An arc made up of angles is mere endless dead injustice shambling
Running from the truth and branding innocence with lies
Fogs waver, quiver-quaver shrouding justice there in shadows
While the monsters play the endless angles in the falling dark.
when death squads are operating
on the regular, in singles,
a liturgy of resignation and words of comfort
at a difficult funeral will not undo
what has been done, my God
what has been done!
the “disappeared” belong to a group
that doesn’t stop growing, never stops
being buried, displaced
(see the water underground,
same as it ever was)
can death and violence extinguish human value
and anguish make survivors expendable,
upendable? injustice and apathy
perpetuate this imagination
vehemently convicted to
dully persist in shameless silence.
forgetting tongues struck thick and dumb,
deaf, complicit, disinterested in
the disappearance of others
(see them burying hallelujahs
before death has even blossomed)
can we even mourn? will we ever hunger
for the pain of transformation
from eyeless golems into humans?
can we ever silence injustice and stop violence
remember all the ones that we forget
and call expendable?
It’s in this crawling darkness, in this
deep and grieving darkness, in insensate dirty silence
far beyond the limen’s limit
(“letting the days go by…”
“same as it ever was…”
“my God what have I done!”
“my God what have we done“)
Shoot me, shoot me if you can
for only then will I be still
be still among the long green ferns
and canted crooked in the grass
try to swallow, swallow then
and find it will be just like rocks
swallowing rocks so hard and brown
that rain can’t wash away, wash down
though I bleed, I bleed in grief
and mourn red, silver-grey, mourn black
I still am, still, in every breath
of wind and every star kissed cloud
because I love you love you love
because I conjure memory
because I choose my long blue path
I am ever always free
So shoot me, shoot me if you can
for only
then will I be
still
and so it was
in the end,
bleeding blossoms
on the wind, well
bleeding of the wind was blossoms
running from an artery
reaching thru eternity.
blossoms… just born days ago
fragile beauty, pinkish white
tongues of praise
and then, torn, taken
by the wind as its own song
of bleeding blossoms,
the blood of wind.
Softly blows the westling wind,
blows lovely in this blessing night.
And thus to love, and thus to mend,
to love softly just like the wind
loves everything it breathes upon.
Just like the dew upon the apple
branch that stretches to the stars
My heart’s desire does thus arise
to reach across the chasms far
that gape between us, Love.
So you must listen, close, my Dear
to Love’s Lost Song sung in the creaking
gate that dances in the wind
and hurries thru the rustling wheat
to tarry at your blessed feet…
For though I lay beneath a stone
and mortal coil lost its grip
and flesh be stripped to chalk-white bone
I shall escape death’s razor whip
and live there…in the wind…softly.
my neck is neon
neon black and blue
my neck is crayon
color unknown hue
your knee is on me
my neck is between you
and your cold smug insistence
my neck be colored always
neon, neon
black under blue
I am at an end of some kind, an end
of expecting pink when the sun arrives
and departs, an end of thinking
anyone gets it,
anyone actually understands
the shooting stars streaking thru the night
and my words piercing thru dull dark.
I, who am healed in words
healed in ripping away
the opaque screens of untruth,
I have been broken
and I cannot say if
I shall ever be clean again
ever be whole again
or fit for any service.
The light thru the window
only sharpens the separation,
the scraggly thin beams wait
to claw my heart to ribbons
and lick the talons clean
in the moments in between
sunrise and sunset
in the cruelty
of the ordinary
I am a broken girl and I am
not so easy to love like
carefree normal confident girls
next door in cotton and flannel and lace.
I live inside a fortress and I hide
inside shields and my soul
lives centuries in seconds
I am a survivor of wars
that break the strongest
men so flimsy.
Can you love me so strong that mountains
collapse into the dust of quiet surrender?
Can you melt my doubts and burn my soul
hotter than cold death and abandonment?
Can you endure my very worst days and stand
me not knowing that I am beautiful,
can you erase the thousand tormenting words
the sibilant whispers from hell’s pits of isolation and horror? 
Can you stand that I am thinking even now “Why would you?”
Why would anyone?
I run from you,
but do you see that I run
far slower than I could?
Do you even know
what that means?
Why won’t you chase me?
Could you provide me anything
that I can rely on, any routine
that will be as sunrise and sunset
again and again?
Could you give me a pet name?
Could you kiss me, touch me?
Then do it again, and again.
I am a broken girl and I am
thirst itself so strong that Sahara is oasis.
I am a broken promise but I love
with loyalty that is the stars
commitment to shine in the night.
I am a broken girl and I am
The Footprints of Ghosts
(commemorating my first Father’s Day as myself)
June 15th 2014
The fire crackles and pops
its diphthongs and phonemes
in that hot and feisty
rapid-snap delivery.
“Dad! Dad! Daddy! Father!”
It says this in living
letters of merry blazing
iterations of what,
repetitions of who,
and smoky, hazy eye-burning
questions of…
how?
I shiver and draw close,
grateful for warmth
this late spring day.
It is still early, and summer
slumbers in the dawn,
as I sit shiva with spring …
and the fire sings, keens,
quests, warms and shows us
the way of all things,
fading natural-like, and
giving up its ghost.
Ashes drift lazily,
footprints of wandering ghosts
free at last from their entombment,
in limbs of wood and sap,
and finally I see ashes
are ghostly release,
are seeds, promises of Phoenix,
gathering, bunching,
heaving and inevitable.
Smoke gets in my eyes,
clears my eyes, blurry and stinging
and stirs my memory pools
as I think back on 31 spectral years,
as a ghost encased in a word,
in a role, entombed
in limbs of alien thick
coarse wooly flesh.
Those long years of walking on water and anxious,
with no idea
what was a daddy
and inherent universal
knowing of love so deep it makes
the shores of the galaxy seem shallow.
Love was my fire,
my ghost, my ash-seeds,
and I my own Phoenix
sleeping, waiting,
looming, wanting.
I gave myself, my blood and sweat,
my upturned nose to fear and downturned face to them…
I threw me on the fire
and I screamed silent,
solitary inside no-one-else-here land.
I popped and hissed
and seethed and whistled
and snapped as I
gave up the ghost each day,
turned to ash each day,
diminished, but growing…
disappearing and becoming
until I walked
free and disembodied
and covered with ashy afterbirth
and filled with knowing
I could do nothing more
than give the love of one called father
even if I could not bear the
name of man.
Summer stirs, and my reverie is snapped
by the sharp chirp of robins
wanting to scritch thru the fire remnants for sowbugs.
Spring has closed her eyes,
her breath has slowed
even as mine has quickened
and I stand to face
my first father’s day of
fully knowing me.
Love calls 4 times.
And I know that somewhere,
somehow, someway
that feisty fire-voice
was naming and liberating
and I have been reborn
from all ash,
a ghost no more
but bodied, present,
and turning in my joy.
**********
The Blossom of Memories of You (Father’s Day 2015)
June 21st 2015
There’s a stone in your body
where heart used to be
there’s a hurt in my heart
where your smile ran so free
there’s an echo of you
deep within, here in me
but your voice trails off
and disappears.
You have wandered so far afield
into the satin night
while I am touching
the circle of golden light
shed by the memories
of what we shared,
what we might share again,
if you’d stayed within sight
and let love be our shield,
let love be our shield…
But I wear your flowers in my tresses, braided
in my hair the scent of your laughter, it lingers
longing for you to return and to claim
those words that you uttered then, sitting so empty,
forlorn, blurred and muttered without clarity
and without true commitment
to something beyond the grave,
waiting to rise again,
new…rise again, new…
I wear
the blossom
of memories
of you…
**********
Beside This Ring Of Ashes One Year Later
June 21st 2015
One year later,
in this year of grace
I sit in stillness
ringside once again
but only with dead ashes,
no flame.
Instead, I warm myself within
with thoughts of fires long ago,
long gone out but flickering
strongly in this quiet night
of lonely memories.
I know it has to happen, yes
this death of me, this death
of who I was, no…
what I was, or rather
what you thought I was
and what I wasn’t too.
You thought me as a god,
and just a little lower than a god.
Your “glorious glorious father”
shining strong and tall,
quick and certain, no one knew
that was but wooly curtains drawn
over a stage making the ready
for a play to become real-life…
finally…at last…
But…what’s a child to do when god betrays?
When god is thus unfaithful and capricious…
that god must become monster,
and vicious harsh taskmaster,
when god must be recast as sick pretender
(your words, love, not mine, those are your words)
as just the “other”, empty, just a mask?
Well, Nietzsche showed the way, now dint he?
He sussed the death of God and birth of crisis…
He understood the very underpinnings
of everything are quivering like liquid,
all foundations kicked asunder
and this hollow edifice
left floating in the shell-pink air.
Nietzsche called for total transformation,
he demanded blood, the death of God,
and also everything He stood for.
I get it…I do…the death of god
No really, I know it’s me, not you…
Problematic in my breathing
and offensive in my joy, well
this aggression will not stand, man!
And so it is that I must die…well,
he must die and be defamed
for every single gripe,
complaint or wound or sling
he must be destroyed
because he wasn’t He
and now it’s clear
that he would never be…
but I will be…me.
Go ahead, beloveds,
it’s true that I must die
so you can be set free
and God at last can finally BE
that God of Wonder
far beyond the Galaxy,
high above and right beside us
bringing life again to you and me.
Use what silver knives you have
(I placed them in your hands so long ago,
carefully planned, bequeathed to you your
weapons of words, of music and of comprehension).
Use the ropes you find inside your packs,
laid lovingly from Lorien in wonder
and in sober long anticipation yes,
that someday your blood be required
of me and on my head as well
(but it’s in my heart forever).
No crucifix for me, how gauche,
how gothic and old fashioned!
No…a shiny scaffold glittery
erected stainless steel there, gleaming
austere, so implacable
and one thin razor wire noose
with my neck’s name writ there
*Charissa Grace*
(except it’s not so plain as all that)
no…the old name that speaks of
blood and
the price and all things made
white as snow again.
I have confidence in you
(this is not stupid or myopic,
this is love, Lovelies).
I see this execution
is but you living out
what I have taught you
that there is no god but God
(not even glorious father)
and all things that you love
descend from His Great Goodness
and Mama’s bag of riches
*beauty of the Leaves of Grass
haunting grace of purity ring
simple joy in eyes of beloved boys
furious flow of men and balls and love*
I wish you all good always
and hope that someday your mouth won’t be cursed
with this burnt aftertaste of death,
and me just acrid curse to you…
if my death expiate your soul
and bring release and freedom to you all
then quick, oh Hangman, let the black bell toll
and pull your lever that I may hard fall
and snap…snuff…poof
and on you live, free
building brave new worlds
but I will still be like those flickering fires
that linger in my mind while I sit here
beside this ring of ashes never warm
and those seats empty in this quiet storm
of memory, of love, of sorrow held so dear
God knows I gladly die and wish you near
and trust that I will rise and know no fear
forever, just Love’s Fires always here.
“The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. ‘Whither is God,’ he cried; ‘I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I! All of us are his murderers…Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder?…Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.’”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
she will be lauded
for persistence
and bearing up
in difficult circumstances…
and I?
Less than a memory
of a brief rainstorm
in the midst of a long
hot summer heat wave.
But I am more…
i AM MORE.
I am a maelstrom,
not a cute summer storm.
It takes more inner destruction and power
to restrain myself so ONLY sweet summer showers
come forth to water fragile egos
ERRR plants…
I am a whirlwind in harness,
an earthquake in red ballet slippers
I am a fire unleashed
and in a tiny hearth
crackling merrily
on the side of the audience
while I HOWL to the night and cold
I am a river deep and swift
that delicately plies at the banks
where the fearful creep to drink,
and I playfully splash their cheeks
while I rage in rapids at rocks
in the center until they are sent
in sandy squishes to the sides
swirling beneath the flick
of the silver salmon tail…
swishing away
less than
a memory
Darling, are you awake? Yes?
Good…do you remember our beginning?
A little hut by the sea
wearing grey cedar shingles like feathers
ruffled in rainy winds and shot thru
with browns and blacks…
the red round rock stacked
shambling into walls that just spelled home,
nestled midst woven thatches of
marram shot thru with sedges and dandelions,
clinging to shifty sands like picnic blankets
strewn round that heart…that little hut,
our beginning kissed by windy sands
scritching out beach music
on violin decks and cello chairs of cypress.
You were a wordless humming song
and tidal in my veins you moved
in rhythm, rhyme, in time to that
strumming music tidal
joyous humming in the dancing of the waves
and sand and wind and sky.
We walked each day steady
across those shores ever reaching
to the sea and the sea ever running
back to sands and sunset ever blessing
everyday each moment with its many colored kiss
in hues of pinks and purples, oranges, yellows, hues of bliss
in reds and blues, and greys… you…
always grey lining blue of mine with you,
in silver shot straight thru
with grey shot thru my blue.
We knew each sunset,
whiled away another day
closer to that sunset last
and that final mystic gateway
at the end thru which we enter
Lone and sundered, hoping that we yet may
walk together on a new shore
where there are no sunsets because
there is only sunrise
sunrise
sunrise
yet again
and yet again…
We walk still each day,
and every sunset bows to us,
and then bows to the night,
to the next day yet born,
to the next sun yet risen,
to the next sunset kiss…
and the stars always
over head and constant,
glitter chips of always-light
against the thick and sable night,
the stars nod in return, return…
ahh…the beach at night.
Air refreshing, breezy, flexible,
runs its loving hungry fingers
thru your hair pliable
as we walk, the sand
packed and wet and clean
and time at last is friable
in the smell of salty air
its kiss brushes against you,
trailing fingers across your cheek,
over your skin, and I too brush against you
(rush within you kissing,
trailing fingers)
We are Quietness
nestled deep in certain stillness,
and snuggled yet deeper
in the steady static roar
of the ever crashing waves
and the gurgling swishy swirling
of waves playing tag
with sand and seaweed
and seagulls refereeing
crying foul foul foul
so the waves run
and retreat in laughing ripples
back to the waiting deep safety
of the vast receptive sea,
and us safely snuggled
in our you and me.
The sand is crisp and cold and damp
as we walk, you and me, our steps
singing skritch skritch skritch,
singing in time
to the cry of those legalistic gulls
and our feet slide as we move from wet to dry
and we skim across the surface
walking like penguins
so we can move thru time
and yet leave nary a trace
and you feel so safe, like you are home
and you feel so safe in my feeling that…
find safety in my adoration
and you are home…
We can see
a vast array of stars overhead,
a broad expansive sea swelling before,
and stretching there a beach, the shore
beneath our sliding skimming feet,
comprised of endless grains of sand
uncountable but having number,
speaking of the days of time
since time began…
everywhere
are unique things uncountable,
innumerable…and you:
a one off, one and done
and rendered even just that much more special
on this stage of infinence
in the midst of audience
of blank uncountable conclave.
and there upon that stage
you are all the more substantial,
present, solid, singular,
just the endless treasure of your beauty
and the vast stretch of my love
(echoing stars and sand and sea)
singing harmoniously
in the presence of this eternal array,
this echo of infinity
we’re in.
And we walk, away from our little hut,
towards our little hut, and away again,
and time is scrolling out before us,
we two, we poised to write
with heart quills dipped in love’s well,
and then time rolls back into itself
(ah, it sees its the sea,
rolling out to kiss the sand
and rolling back to dump those kisses
into waiting heart so deep)…
time rolls out day by day by day, and back again
neath the stars,
in the night,
with the wind.
I wonder in the midst
of this sandy sacred setting
which thing it is my heart echoes
as it aches and hurts so fierce,
so good as it longs, yearns
so empty and so full,
so hungry, satisfied,
so intricate, complete…
my fiery core of passion and of promise
what…
Rolls in and out in waves?
Glitters fierce like diamond stars?
Never ends like grains of sand
everywhere there’s earth?
It aches too fierce, too good,
it thrills, thrums too ferocious
to identify and focus on,
and then it gets dim and blurry
when I look at you and see the quiet
gentle fierce glad brightness
of your countenance at night that
dims the stars, and
blurs the sands, and
makes the waves stand still
breathless and in awe, and
I know then my core
is ever always you you you
we married,
long ago beside this same vast ever sea,
on the same shore of sand golden, tan
and singing to the music
laughing in the running waves
beneath the glitter gaze of stars
overhead and hanging on angel visions,
we married…
and the moon officiated,
she gloamed before us
as we walked into her temple,
her the Officiant,
the Congregant of Always and gentle love,
we walked her moonlight aisle together…
some marry on mountainsides midst craggy peaks
to the wedding songs of brooks and creeks
and others still mingle in the firelight
beneath the tall stentorian witness of deep forests
redwood and sequoia who roll out meadows
soft and green, and arrayed more beautiful and
richer than the wealth of Solomon in their dress of flowers
and stalks and stems as the birds serenade
and sing their praise to them.
we visited there, you and me,
we heard that brooky song,
we saw that craggy might,
we lay in meadow soft
resplendent in love and
we have in our many walks found that
we were foundered, mired
in swampy lowlands funky, smelly,
decomposing rotten and releasing
the last gasp of life in its methane relief
but still stinking of that unbecoming…
we have thought us lost but then discovered
that it is here that wombs become impregnate,
become renewed as elements of used-to-be-alive
stick to our skin in longing desperate clingy clutchings.
But it is back,
always to the sea,
we are drawn, we,
to that intersection
of time and truth and bright eternity
that we see tangible
and with us in the sand,
and stars and sea.
and inside us,
you and me, burns a flame we share,
yes the same one, the same blade
of those fires that we see before us
in the night and yet to rise anew
in the day yet to be born,
the echo of stars and suns,
of the moon’s desires and passions
for lovers everywhere
and the twin of driftwood fires
that we kindle every night
as our offering to beauty,
to love, to us, to light midst
the crackling shouts of wood at last
consumed and released popping up up and away
in sparky eager pieces at last
free to become the stars overhead
that driftwood prophecies of old proclaimed their fate,
and the incense of their longing
drifting around us in thick vapours
that smell of longing
at last to be fulfilled,
smelling of worship,
smelling of Mama’s breath
and the courts of the Risen Lamb,
and smelling of Us,
you and me,
and our little hut.
like a river running…
dipped in for a drink
a pipeful, a turbine twist
and then running on
alone and so much more
ever questing to the sea
and no one knowing
what passed by
in the night unknowing
and unknown
I had it all together
rows and blocks
neat and trimmed
even if they sat
ragged round the edges
like clouds, like shadows
and then artesian wells
of soul, of spirit
invaded, armies
of color riotous
rejoicing round
those edges ragged
like clouds, like shadows
welled up out of
nowhere
and I am
now here
That’s close enough.
Do not cross my boundaries.
You are not welcome any closer.
“…or if they masquerade as friends to draw close,
sidling up so near to shove those pills dry
down our throats in rough and rooting
thrusting fingers ripping without a
drink to help them go down and
we, our own spoonful of sugar…
until we lie in thrall to
those fell jailers…”
smoke drifts on the wind
vanishes to who knows where
my soul, wind and smoke
I sat out one summer morn
I saw the wind gather her horn
and blow the fleecy clouds around
just because she could
I saw the redwing blackbird chase
those cotton clouds of wind and lace
until she caught them in her snoot
just because she could
And tufts collected in her beak
away to nest she dove, did streak
her home composed of earth and clouds
just because she could
It’s here, upon the threshold…
—hallowed (hollowed) spaces—
Thresholds are lurking in between
where veils are thin indeed
It’s here that we discover
the Shine of unseen presences
wait for us on the way.
We’ve chosen to attend the call
of our elysian journey
whether it long desired
or if it struck unbidden
like lightning from the hidden
We court holy disruption
just asking to be broken
and laboring to break
ourselves forever open wide
arriving in transition
We do confess this molten truth:
old structures have imploded
the old ways, habits, patterns
no longer serve to fill us
no matter how we gorge…
for the old has listless fallen off
And the new? Not yet emerged.
We put the Powers on notice
we’ve come to risk and open
ourselves, we’ve stopped our grasping
our frantic desperate scrabbling
for how things used to be,
We invoke every mystery chance
to change course, change perspective
And drain the unexpected cup
communion bread and wine
of earth, and of Sublime
We say yes! Take these moments
the journey takes us on
we become pilgrims, we resist
the siren call seductive
of mundane muddy matters
We feel it! things are changing
we hear the invitation
to open up ourselves and reach
Beyond, to mystery waiting
We walk into unknowing,
allow ourselves to shatter,
to be broken wide open
to receive gifts far bigger
than our tiny flat perspective
could even start to ponder…
Back home again we shall arrive
(perhaps before we’ve started
perhaps when we’ve departed)
we, salmon selves, return to us
in dawning spawned awareness
of the rooting inner journey
And what is left, remaining?
a deep,
abiding presence
…Oh, there are reasons to go into here…
creating life from every death, for soil is alive, you see
that living soil feeds on death, it feasts on death
and brings forth life…
It is the Resurrection writ, inscribed
into the smallest detail of
existence…life giving soil…
“Feed the soil, not the plant!”
The ancient wisdom speaks to us, feed the soil for it’s alive,
cares not a whit for ethics held except the ethic of its pangs,
it hungers for the blood and bones it wants to eat, especially us…
Bone meal, blood, and ash remain, the finer points, the amuse-gueule
betwixt the teeth, all of them sharp
and hungry…
We learn the ancestral grammar and feed the trees with blood and bones
of every creature near and far, take solace in this sacrament
that spices every meal to come…
And comfort rises in this practise.
Four apple trees dance on edges of the grave and burial lands
Amidst the grasses and the hedges, above ground they flower, blossom,
Bare their ruddy fruit so sweet…
While down beneath, and out of sight
Below our hearing or our knowing
Those roots draw near the static graves…
So supple in the dirty night that closes, kisses, holds and grips
just like the roots that tender lick the bones and sigh in sweet relief
And breathe from bones in ever life
Transforming dust to living flesh
To feed our flesh and live again
And then to feed itself on us…
<snip>
And if you listen you can hear the long slow sign of skeletal roots saying
“you are here and I am hungry
for you, for your shape,
you are the apple of my eye”
And dirt clogged chuckle trickles up and filters thru the flowering grass…
Teach simple truths, learn to accept that death draws near to everyone.
Inevitable is that step upon the grasses growing in
the fields, flowering, fading, falling…
to the faithful hands of roots so hungry, sharp of tooth and eye
to eat your bones and drink your blood, inhale your ashes and your dust
and then at last to resurrect us…
when…then
become
The Apple of Their Eye.
The water singing, sending
fingers in the air, as mist
caressing, beckoning
to the regions
waiting there
across the bridge
and thru the gate
and home to the Singer
In the water on the mist
“Less is more” she scolded
clucking, fluttering
hither and yon
like her Dutch ancestor
needing to plug up the dike.
I sat there feeling banks caving in
choking out cloudy and clotty
as I backed up bulged up gasping
for my way round the mulberry bush
slid brackish into my brooky streams.
Then I looked out
and saw that sky
so impossibly starry
screaming in
gloryglory
barely even begun the Story
I heard those waves
surging
foreverforeverforever
breaking
and even one handful
of that beach so soft
and exponential and more
than anyone could count
and I knew it was not true…
less is more.
Less is less and more is more
less and less, more and more.
This is from 2016, and I think it is very relevant to right now, because there is so much here you have missed.
I really do not know how to interpret your “gifts”, quotations used because you have often used money to obligate, to create hierarchies, to…gawd, who can ever really know?
The heck of it is that I have zero trust to ever really find out, because I don’t think deep down that you are really prepared to understand that this is an existential path instead of a moral one.
Regardless…this day from 2016 is a really good day to take a look at, in that it records several really fine poems and a couple essays that are palpable…this one being the most salient.
…you say that I think I can do what I want and pronounce it all forgiven by my belief in my “make-believe god”? You say that I think I can justify whatever I want and call it a “Road to Damascus” experience?
You think wrong.
You will never know the depth of the pain and sorrow for each and every time that I have fallen short…
…and you also will never know the hurt and pain you caused me with your false accusations of abuse and physical harm, your violent anger and threats of murder…your false memories and placing words in my mouth that I never said or even thought…
You will not have a way of knowing that even in your falseness I see that as my own fault because I did not do a good enough job to birth you into wholeness and understanding of truth…and instead, you go on forever about things that are so insane as to be befuddling to me.
No. I am blood guilty of sins of commission, and sins of omission as well.
But I place my faith and my trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ, and in His Cross…and I ask Him to see me thru.
I trust Mama to Defend me, Advocate for me, Sustain me, Console me, and Comfort me.
I will do so all of my days, no matter how good or bad I was each day, no matter how deeply I fail or how high I fly.
This will never change, though I hope and pray that I will, continually becoming more like Jesus’ Lovely Heart by the Grace of God poured out liberally.
And there are others too…who read here like Nicodemus…you from the past, who used to come out into my working environment so you could criticise me, call me unsubmitted, tell me how I had no rule over my soul, and basically oppose every thing I attempted…I know you read here and think me tragically deceived, fallen away, or (one dude, you think this) in the clutches of “sexual sin”…
you think that being transgender is an act of sexual fulfillment, which absolutely cracks me up…like, I guffaw when I consider your ignorance and assumption.
You all have missed me in the midst of your judgement.
Here is me: this song forever, along with the other ones I have posted this morning.
If you want to understand me and be in my heart, you must understand and accept these songs. Whether or not you adhere to the songs is not my concern…that is up to you and your own convictions and choices. I seek to love and accept you regardless, from you who say you dreamed of murdering me for years to you who shake your head and waggle your beard because you have judged me outcast and shunned.
Sometimes I need to make these declarations.
Today is one of those days…and I am still here…like Papillon…I am still here…clinging to the precious Bleeding Side of Jesus.
I’ve been fingering the tears
again, the rents and runs and ruins,
where earth convulsed and absence ruled,
raw abandonment carved away
all solid ground for good and gone.
I have no earthly idea why
the silence swung its hammer blow
and shattered what I thought solid
showing me that it was shells
surrounding nothing but a hollow
lurk that waited mocking there
and empty.
Three months (a trimester) time,
and edges that were razor sharp,
that sliced my gentle fingertips
(the same ones that speak spirit braille
and dole healing for blackest ail…)
to bloody shreds and ribbons red
has birthed…just rain, the steady drizzle
constant, velvet soft it falls
eroding bleak bewildered grief
answering frantic questions asked
(but never spoken) just rainfall
that whispers just because…
Smoothing cliffside, washing clean
rinsing scouring the mean
and low and petty dissipated,
rivulets until my fingers
felt, felt, just moss, fresh grass
and fog mingled in sassafras
and orchids peeking from the ruin
The fearsome Wreck of the New Charissa
(on a reef she never saw
and doesn’t understand) has even
still again become redeemed
in absence. In abandonment.
Once again,
the Majesty of Absence
is Present
and Beauty
walks again
I am all crazy foothills
tumbling and topsy
milling round the mountain
that juts up so sudden
in bittersweet russet
and chromium slate
and silver so still
and so dancingly daring
to reach above treeline
and shout to lost rivers
I am little to love and yet
do have a draw
that compels a return
to be squeezed in the chaos
and lost in the hidden
the hidden, the hidden, get
lost in the hidden.
it’s a
foggy caul
a skein,
night’s skin
here under
galloping moon.
She rides, Her horse
grey and shadow
She bleeds silver
mercury drops
quicksilver seeds
i melt into Her
wet rivers, dripping
slick with desire
swollen with devotion
aching with longing
until i am breathing
underwater, under
galloping moon.
Night has gnawed grey brittle bones
clean, bare and thin as grave clothes, shriv’n
of warmth, sheer worm-worn sheets like stones
as cold as mercy never given
and weary…in the fires and flame
of time’s compressing screeching keen
as red heart slows, constricts in shame,
wings tangled in the chancel screen
In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death
Feel Her presence there in echoes
of bones nigh breaking, at least kneeling
to the moment’s cadence, throes,
within the Delphic Sanctum reeling
For a breath without drinking smoke
and thirsting throat, a coal black caul,
a scarf of soot round necks to choke
a masquerade, a pallor, pall
In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death
The loss of life and stone stilled tongues
and this is real, is bitter tart
It’s in a face, laces the lungs
It’s breaking in and on the heart
that continues rustling rough beneath
those sheets, and fearful to the touch
that long slow wet grief’s glistening sheath
and trembly tears the only crutch
In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death
Whoever dares to come, show up
with tears impudent, bold, absurd
and brave enough to take her cup,
enough to quench flames shaken, stirred
and break her crumbly mouldy bread
and eat and drink the Overwhelm
in numb mute witness, slow soft dread,
in courage, waiting in this realm
In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death
Yet…beneath the brown and chuckly dark
a river runs, it’s clear and deep
like liquid stars, a crystal spark
flowing, a fount in this stark keep
Yet…all who partake of her sup
can find their certain path to drink
of living waters springing up
and resonating in the ink
In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death
A tide lived backwards in the crush
A tide rolled forward far and wide
A resonance of life-blood gush
Love’s unstoppable great glad tide
The crisis of this time is met
in intimate authentic breath
that fears no evil, dreads no debt
and singing rises from short death
In The Temple Of The Queen Of Death
Ahhh, how I love this poem!!
So, new readers and potential “Constances” (Constance is the name I give to those who become “Constant Readers” and is my deep thank you of gratitude and wonder):
The best way to interact with my blog right now if you want to access all the living work and art that lives in the marrow is via the calendar in the Right Hand Column.
You can use that to jump around to various days.
Here is the important information though: it displays the current year…SO, to access a previous year and month, please scroll down to the BOTTOM of the blog and see the footer calendar (located at the very bottom left).
There, you can select a drop down menu that shows month to month from year to year.
What I find fun is to go to today’s month in other years…and then pull that down from the menu and load that page. Once it is loaded, use the calendar on the Right and click on the date…if I posted on that day, it is hyperlinked to that day’s postings…
And in this manner you can not only access my poetry, but the context it was birthed in and thru…and I think that it begins to show the depth and breadth of my heart’s reach.
I am not posting current writings because I am mostly keeping notes and drafts, filling my artistic ditty-bag. This is because I am doing other projects that involve visual arts and creating thru that means, as well as new spiritual practices and involvements.
Besides, I find that I must cry out against the thing with human skin that shits from its heart every time it utters something…that thing ttaf which is the mere familiar of the multitude of monsters that have become the living dead without even knowing it.
This poem though…what a treasure and delight to me it is. I think I captured it just right.
and it is in night…
like a babe in fresh blankets
snuggled and seeing,
quiet and jumping
in jammies with footies
singing of safety,
hot chocolate and nibbles,
then raindrops on rooftops
tingtingtingthrumthrumthrum…
I am posting my own poem again…because I have new readers and I want to introduce you to my true core rather than the prophetic broadsides I am compelled to post in the times of ttaf and monsters.
This poem speaks about what it is like to be “Othered”.
as i sit in tall grass
silky-lashing back and forth
quiet like tiger-tails talking
in air with movement
i think about the earth
spinning in space
circling the sun
amidst the stars
(but none of them close…
nine and
a half
minutes
too long…
that’s what
30 seconds
is
…and in the cool
of the quiet evening
it was women walking
silky, as yet unseen
in the garden.
Silver shears caught
slivers of sunlight,
captured them gently
like butterflies netted
with meshed moonlight
and given to a special
catch and release program
to each bush they bowed
in authority and grace
snipping deadheads
from verdant relieved stems
smiling and murmuring
in the gloam
and answering
alarmy squirrels
with sighs
of contentment
and moving on
men strode
by with eyes
so full of mirrors
they saw nothing
else and everything else
as reflections of reflections,
having used their silver
30 times in their
own name
and the
garden sang
and sang
because of
the women
It’s on this painful threshold here
we suck the bitter sop of grief
and cling to dust, cry for relief,
we seeds that die so You come near.
Our teardrops carve so deep and mark
with crystal joy and sacred sigh
our burnished face, our emerald eye
our hull that breaks…in rain, in spark
and make us, each one so unique,
each one our own and also owned
by every hurting heart of stone,
by breaking soul and grieving cheek
an offering of healing strong
a unguent for this wounded earth
restoring life and giving birth
again to Your Unending Song
Oh Mama come and make of me
a heart cut red, a spirit shorn
and bleeding Grace for all who mourn
along this path back to The Sea
It was a golden time,
a stretched out place back then,
twisting up and over there,
and underneath the sun and more…
a yawn opened in heaven’s floor
and down to earth came Joy and more…
he was and is our so much more…
When John had horrid accident
(Lafayette screamed outloud to Moraga)
and whistles blew so shrill, so quick,
while McElhenny dodged Nomellini oh so neatly
(but poor scared children could not know the drill)
and thus their roar for glory yet to come…yet to come
left them there bereft and frozen
while Joyful John slept, waiting…
and there in Heaven, bleachers full
gasped and held their breath…
one and then year two
until the smile that broke a thousand
cold cold hearts wide open once
again cracked the cold and silent night
and Heaven’s Bleachers roared in joy!
Quicksilver baton twirling,
sigil of the coming glory
and the battered Captain Tittle
smiling humble, signing Y.A.
and the whole beloved story
for a faithful fan of Joyful John
and his undying confidence
in Red and Gold forever held
in jubilance and wriggly ecstasy…
And as that silver wheel spun high
and slicing thru the pale blue sky
the years twirled out as quick as lightening
and slowly Heaven’s Bleachers swelled
with lookers on who cheered and held
the living in their love…
Until the Niners strong and true
(St Clair, RC Owens, Perry, all there)
emerged to follow greatness on
and on into forever…
and even Easter Bunnies stopped
with making eggs to cheer for Rice
and call out loud to old John Brodie…
These many years since then, it’s come
The Wicked Witch of Martinez, thrum
and screech and fear it brings to try
and make our Joyful brother cry
but we stand firm with him and sing
and Heaven’s Bleachers full do bring
their tidings here to us this day
that Joyful John is needed here…
STAY.
For earthly throng still cheers our team
Beloved Niners, see it gleam, as glory gathers
there beneath the coming dawn so gold, so red
I laid down on a rock
to have myself a sleep
the lichen whispered in my ear
of mystery-wonder deep
and even though the clock
spun round, toward death did creep
the rock just waited, patient, near
for me to make the leap.
this is about
silence
under the clouds.
silence defined
by noises here
and there too
and that
in between
glowing and
present
in the 
Come down to the old brown barn with me.
It waits under the milky moon dripping, travelling,
the pearly moon freshly dunked
in far and sighing opalescent seas
and then come flying, fat and flitting swallow here,
to these far mountains and awaiting our arrival,
peaceful you and shivering me.
Come dressed in silks and sighs
and nothing else remaining.
Come adorned with slings and arrows
to lay down long at last in love
unfeigning, unfainting here,
in the end of battle.
The barn sings low and swinging
all our wonder up and ever outward
while the silver moon is clinging
wringing high and deeply dipping down
into the gulf dividing us asunder
from the gods and from ourselves…
and the mountains…
ahh…the mountains there
so tall, so stark
and unrelenting in the dark
the mountains dare to root down and reach up
and hold everything together
as it twirls, spinning.
beneath the stars so bright
the mountains hold us tight
and all together in
this moon-drenched
love-slick night.
I wrote this 4 years ago…a lifetime ago…when I first began to see I really really REALLY had a shell over me…and that it was possible to live free.
I want to challenge you today, especially if you are cis-gender and not transgender: what shell are you living in? What transition must you make as a soul, one that is not a transition of gender, but your own answer to the call to “cross-over”?
Are you called to cross over into creativity and leave behind the world of grubbing for money?
Are you called to cross over into true relationship with God, leaving behind the shell of conservative evangelicalism that is nothing more than a gateway to the gas chambers, with a sign over it saying “Welcome to Hell?”
We all are called to trans…from death to Life…from works to Grace…I pray you find your courage and begin!! Cus the water is fine.
“It caged me in its cold confining bars.
Long have I been its lost and longing thrall,
its tenant-serf of weary plodding on.
It’s clung, tentacled round my throat, my eyes,
and darkness was its cruel confederate
who caged my strong uprising Ne’er-Say-Die…”
wave ever rising
hanging there eternally
wave ever falling
Source: Wave | Charissa’s Grace Notes
This, another poem from last year, comments on life like a vapor, yet must be captured within you, there in your body…
the fog gathers, nesting
over the deep quiet glen
dialing down sunlight
damping every sound
in this gloam my supple soul
nestles in, gives up control
and ceases struggle to be good,
or important, or subtle…
From last year…I really love this lil beauty!
Do you know the place where the light passes in?
That’s where you’ll find me when darkness is seeping
from crevice and cranny while Spring trudges weeping
I sit in the place where the light passes in.
You’ll find me there singing of beautiful life
and of faith like pure gold burnished shiny with hope
as my tears fall like diamonds so soft in the wind
In that place where the light, where the light passes in…
(continued at Source: Where The Light Passes In | Charissa’s Grace Notes )
look for the off kilter doorway
find where the street has no name
enter between the curb and the gutter
to stand in the light just the same
as the saints and the mystics before you
had to stoop and to crawl and to cry
for the straight way that looks oh so crooked
to the jaundiced and natural eye
mostly
behind
your back
it usually
looks
different
This is talking about my own life, my own family…and yours, too…because all of us have this brokenness. The evidence is irrefutable.
This poem is all about forgiveness…trying to give it and trying to receive it…and the incredible revelation that it is impossible.
There is no trying…there is only becoming.
“…And so now we get down to it:
there is no exit,
no escape from agony,
pitstop from pain…
all we can do is
exchange suffering’s form
and it’s face, from our own
for the pain of another…”
I admit I am surprised that there has not been more interest in my recent poem “Situla“. Perhaps it was layout?
Situla means “a bucket for Holy Water” by the way…Here is the poem, laid out without any images…
Just after dawn…
but before sunrise
I wait
ajar
a jar
of costly
perfume
I hear the sound
of music stilled
and waters hushed
hushed beneath
frost crystals clasping
roses’ leaves…
I rise and
wait, hushed and
clutching me
my
alabaster
jar
this
empty
situla
still reeking
of sorrow and nard
of fragrance and tears
and deep joy too.
I guess the guests
are still around
the table, I think
the gusty crowd
is still sitting in
the dark and staring
(eyes shut)
at the inside
of the veil…
as I travail
in silence,
as I writhe
in ecstasy
and groan
for separation
to give way
to liberation
and this coming
fragrant day.
The frost
gives way
as light and heat
sing gently ’round
the edges,
as the roses
are anointed
and
the alabaster jar
breaks open
yet again
and I
pour
out my
soul
Her
situla
Just after dawn…
but before sunrise
I wait
ajar
a jar
of costly
perfume
I hear the sound
of music stilled
and waters hushed
hushed beneath
frost crystals clasping
roses’ leaves…
I rise and wait,
hushed and clutching
me
my
alabaster
jar
this
empty
situla
still reeking
of sorrow and nard
of fragrance and tears
and deep joy too.
I guess the guests
are still around
the table, I think
the gusty crowd
is still sitting in
the dark and staring
(eyes shut)
at the inside
of the veil…
as I travail
in silence,
as I writhe
in ecstasy
and groan
for separation
to give way
to liberation
and this coming
fragrant day.
The frost
surrenders
as light and heat
sing gently ’round
the edges,
as the roses
are anointed
and
the alabaster jar
breaks open
yet again
and I
pour
out my
soul
Her
situla
“talking with you
sometimes is either
a slap in the face
or a slammed door,
and yet the Void…gaping gulf,
it is but exhalation
in the Light of your shadow!
And falling
into that seeming nothing,
yawning and gulping, well
it is but a dropped stitch
in the Banners over me
of You.”
The Fall of Ancient Time (A contemporary Re-write of Psalm 5)
****************
“…Barcelona, City of Bones
Baking before the gates of the Sun,
I sacrificed my purity for thee, such as it might be
(my purity, not my sacrifice)
Purity…
of thought,
of mind,
of heart and soul,
purity of
song and deed
and strong intention.
Barcelona, my sacrifice
so droll, so dirty is actually
sterility masquerading
as purity and thus is merely
the absence of jazz,
the absence of spice,
the absence of that
jagged noise of exultation
and thus there is no
purity and nothing
quite acceptable
enough…”
City of Bones
*************
“like the way
you touch my ankle
when we sit upon
the floor there,
by the fire
in the speckled-star-lit night
gathered close
outside the house
just like a mama bird who nestles
down so gentle on Her chicks…”
Something happened today which prompted me to want to repost something that I wrote in January of 2014…so long ago, and yet only 4 years…
In order to understand where I am at emotionally and spiritually in light of the event which transpired today, you need a bit of a refresher…an understanding that the repost at the bottom of the page was written BEFORE so much took place:
I wrote the words I am reposting before I wrote about the beginning of the shunning from the spiritual culture as defined by the vast majority of Christian Evangelicalism…these words, which talk about the nearly total experience I have had with Christians from my past (there is one…ONE person who has verbally, physically, emotionally and spiritually received me who is from my past. She did so with tears of joy and literal kisses all over my cheeks and forehead, and was stricken as she thought back to the prison I was in and she was amazed that God had loosed this captive so wonderfully).
I wrote them before I wrote about a baby step of coming out that was looming…and ended up being a devastating attack and shunning by the time it played out.
I wrote them before I wrote about the shunning that happened on a monolithic totality in regards to every single friendship from the past which happened when I came out…I received a letter from a person that I had known for 30 years…a person that I had worshiped beside, shared many meals with…a person who had lived in our home…a person who I had walked alongside as they sojourned thru the valley of the shadow of an addiction which nearly destroyed family and self…a letter that shunned me in the Name of Jesus, The One Being who welcomes me constantly and says that His Blood is enough and more than enough for me…
I wrote them before I wrote of the public shunning that happened, when it was the searing abandonment in public circles.
I wrote it before the 21 Gun Salute took place, that professional execution I endured…that death, and the subsequent resurrection from those Phoenix Ashes…
I wrote about it before the horrid attacks coming from supposed Christians which were filled with literal perversions, profanities, and exhortations to kill myself…all given in the name of Jesus of course.
Yes. That literally happened.
So what happened today that precipitated this reminiscence?
This: there is a man from my past, a person that I met in the late 80s and who I was in close proximity with until the year 2005…this man operated (and perhaps still does? I really do not know. Lord knows that I have grown up, been pruned back, become more and become less, been adjusted, and healed of terrible blindnesses…so I do leave room for the possibility that this has happened with him as well. But I do not hold out a shred of hope, or a scintilla of expectation that this has happened, for the need of those who are deeply in thrall to a certain assumption and paradigm to punish me and punish me utterly is far greater than the ability to actually live out the sacrificial Love of Christ that went straight for every single person who was “yet dead in sin”…and not just to the so-called righteous)…
This man operated under a deep orientation that assumed all the doctrines related to “submission”, and truly felt it was the loving thing to enforce that notion…I have many many hurtful memories of those years, from the comments regarding my supposed “cheesy grin” that I supposedly wore (likely, it was whatever mask was on me during the deep dissociation of living trans in a male role and carrying the burden of remembering every detail so I could forget that I was a woman, and thus related to the fracturing events of early childhood) to the interactions which accused me of seeking to utilize my role as a worship leader on Sunday morning in service of self, to the utterly devastating final blow given in such “sad sorrowful tones” which said that my father was suffering and dying in the way he was because I was not properly submitted to “the leader” of this group…
There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that every single one of these actions was done from true conviction that it was the right and loving thing to do, based on the paradigm in which he (we) swam…indeed, I myself interacted with people who approached me for help and counsel as they struggled with their sexual orientations in light of the teaching assumptions we were under…and I gave the “answers” I had learned…and I grieve over that…so deeply…
I myself bought into attitudes and distortions of good teachings that I sincerely and 100% believed, and I thought those with other understandings to simply be sinners who were seeking to justify remaining in sin yet still retaining connection to God, and I simply…well, I simply did not have an ounce of compassion…
I shared the privileged view of the privileged…and had NO CONCEPT of the Other…
And it wasn’t until I was no longer “one of them”, not because I resigned membership in privilege, but because when I transitioned I was executed swiftly…
In the personal-relational realm
In the spiritual-religious realm
In the professional-economic realm…
So I know that the intention of those times was, within his own heart and self, “good”…
We also shared many other times too…good times where somehow who was submitted to who wasn’t that important and was never even thought of…such as working on each other’s houses…putting out a fire that started on a hill and nearly burned the entire area down…eating meals together…
Those years…I believe it was about 17 years…during those years I did a lot of dying, and had a lot to die to…and that place was the crucible of purification, in which I gained much wisdom thru death to self. I was so fractured…so young…and so deeply in the grip of dysphoria and dissociation which was the hidden reef under everything in my life.
He did not know anything about this…neither did I. And looking back, sooo many things just SHOUT it out so loudly, and while it is occasion of grief and mourning looking back, it also is comforting to know that at least there was a reason for it!
Well…Charissa’s Grace Notes is a public blog. And this man is a reader…regularly…how frequently, I really could not say, but based on my own internal tools I have as the creator, I suspect it is fairly regularly.
How did he even know I had a blog? I have not exchanged a word with this man for years…a good 7 years before I even transitioned, and certainly not a word since transition….God forbid! I am pretty sure he would not, and I KNOW I would not because I decided in 2014 that I would never again submit myself to spiritual abuse and attack from anyone to whom I was a priori a demon-possessed hell-bound apostate.
It is obvi that he found out about my blog via word of mouth…because it is funny: the biggest evils that scripture has volumes of teaching about (the tongue, the heart) are so easily ignored in Christendom in order to condemn the phantom evils which scripture never even speaks about (gender variance and orientation)…and wowsa did the word spread like fire!!
In fact, the person mentioned here even swore to me that he considered it his spiritual service and duty to God to out me to every single person he met, lest he be tainted by my “sin” of intentional self-deception and thus have my blood on his head. Yes…these sorts believe this: “If you see your brother approaching destruction and you do not restrain them, their blood is on your head”. They interpret this old Proverb as the license to attack anyone doing anything that is to them “a sin.” He told me that he needed to warn every single person he could that I was anathema and not to be received among “the brethren”…
try and imagine how this felt, and feels…
So anyway, I know that the man I am writing about this morning found my blog fairly easily, but after hearing the words of the tale-bearers, those morsels of gossip that go down so sweet and titillating…
But he has stuck around…and has been reading…for a long time, if I am guessing right…and because I am made who I am, and because of my heart towards God and understanding that I have been made thusly to break down walls and uproot lies and then to plant and build true kingdom attitudes, I have held out hope…a very very teeny tiny shred of hope…
…that maybe he has done the work, read the research…maybe he has examined the scriptures and his own assumptions…maybe he has the courage to know that in spite of anything he might believe about gender variance, the person he knew was truly a child of God and is still one now…that maybe he has met other transhumans…
I am not optimistic about this, or myopic…the odds are VERY slim.
But this man has done something, not once, but twice.
He has contributed money to my transition fund, each time choosing an amount which is significant to me as the number of my name.
But I am leery. It is not inconsistent with the old assumptions of that paradigm to do acts of charity or service for those considered lost and perishing. It is thought of as heaping coals of fire upon the head…it is thought of as setting an example…and sometimes it is flat out a genuine expression of God’s heart of love.
How do I know this? Because I have been there, done that…myself. Previously.
I am also skeptical and very wary because one of those donations referenced my children…and there is a huge assumption in play in those circles that a righteous relationship with God is able to be detected in the condition of relationship with one’s children and other family.
(Remember the remark about my dad suffering because I was “not submitted” and “rebellious”?)
It is not by any means whatsoever a stretch to see that particular donation coupled with that particular remark about my children as the “coin of unsanctified pity” and ultimately as a dig, a cut, an arrow shot in hopes of providing a wound that cleanses and restores…and if it was that, it was an arrow that shot and wounded and brought death because there literally is not a cleansing and restoring relatable to gender variance and orientation.
God knows there are plenty of areas in my heart that need adjusting and cleansing…it just so happens that being a woman who was assigned male at birth is not one of those areas, anymore than anyone need repent of their gender orientation, or their hair color, or leg length.
So I am very wary. (Oh yes: the donation this morning simply said “thinking of you”…and that was both a very simple comment and a very pregnant comment.)
The first time it happened, I accepted the donation, spent it on my legal costs in fact…yeah, dude…you helped me change my birth certificate, a great day in my life!! LOL!!!! But I did not reply or interact with the person, because I do not expect that interaction to be life giving and healing, but rather to be a battle and ordeal.
And then it happened again, this morning, and this one is significant to me…
…you see, just before the end of the year, on New Year’s Eve morning in the early morning, I dreamed about this person! In the dream, Jane and I had a place we were building up in the hills. We went up there one day to do some work in our structure, which was framed and roofed and wired and plumbed, but lacked sheetrock or siding and finish work trimming…and when we got there, we were shocked to discover that the entire area around us had been developed and had structures on it of various states of completion…all told, the area had around 30 houses, where there had just been ours and a lot of wild land.
We looked around a bit, confused and concerned, when who should approach us but this man who donated to me this morning! He walked up to us and called out to us…and looked me full in the eyes and greeted me with “Hello, Charissa, may I walk close to you?” I was very taken aback that he used my true name rather than my dead name and that he knew he needed to ask permission before moving close to me!!!
I said yes, and watched as he approached, and saw tears in his eyes. He extended his hand to shake hands, and I impulsively brushed his hand aside, greeted him by name, and gave him a hug. He did not shy away from the hug OR from the double reminders of who I truly am…and then he broke the embrace and held my by my shoulders at arms length and said that it was really good to seem me, Charissa…and his tears were streaming down his face.
I motioned around me and said “So what is happening here, and why are you up here?” Meaning the development and his presence where there had been nothing but our house and no one but us.
He looked down in what appeared to be sorrow or shame or conviction or regret, I really couldn’t get a good read on it…and then he looked up and said to us “I am so sorry, and I have been wrong. God has been working in my heart…in our hearts…and we wanted to learn.” I said “Who is the we you refer to and what are you sorry for?”
He said he was sorry for all the same things that I sorrowed over about what I used to think regarding LGTBQIA issues and Christian teaching, he was sorry about the same things I sorrowed about in terms of the expression of God’s heart in such a cancerous and poisonous way that evangelicalism has become…and that most of all he was sorry that he had automatically condemned transgender people to the label of (fill in your favorite slur, I am not using it today)…
and he said that the “we” he referred to were all people from this little group that grew up, insular and inbred, from a “school” that he helped to start and keep going…that around 30 people all had this deep repentance and wanted to walk away from that old set of beliefs, and that he had bought all the property around us, in order to live close to us and learn from us…
…and would we please teach him, teach them?
Well, Jane and I looked at each other, shocked, suspicious, wary, and on the verge of running.
(Credit: Tyrus Wong
Tyrus Wong, Bambi (visual development), 1942. Watercolor on paper)
But one this is so clear to me…more clear to me than nearly anything I have ever heard from God: It is completely and utterly inviolate to me that God Themself planned and intended to create me as I am from the start: A Transsexual Woman, who would grow up wounded and fractured and driven to God as my only hope of salvation from despair and ruination…and that it was a very sobering thing to Them to do this, for They knew full well the horror and pain this would be to me…and each of Them stepped forward and said “I am enough for her”…and the reason for this is that They had assigned my life destiny to be a prophetess to the people of God who forgot the Heart of God…to speak to them of God’s Heart for the ones who are slaughtered in every realm and sacrificed on the altar of gender…
and that it should be easy for those people to receive me and God’s message, for in those old days I doubt any of them would have thought I was hell-bound, and in those days virtually all of them thought that I heard from God regularly…even though “there is so much wrong” with me LOL!
And so because of that mission, that quest…and yes, the desire to set them free of their blindness and prejudice and hatred, we did not run…but stayed…and said that we would consider it, but had many things to be worked out, many boundaries to be defined…
The man was joyous in our response and agreed to this…
and then I woke up.
Of course, since this was a dream, I interpret the details and events symbolically. I got up from bed and sat and thought and prayed for awhile, wondering what in the world I was dreaming about that dude for!!!??? I had not even thought about him for a couple of years. Jane held similar puzzlement about it…and we both thought that it was talking about “a neighborhood of understanding/teaching/thinking/transformation” rather than an actual sub-division, and we saw both the man and the people he referenced as symbolic of that whole group of “white, cis-gendered, straight, evangelical Christian conservative” human beings who literally have NO IDEA how much they are bequeathed things on the basis of their race, their sexual orientation, their gender purity, and their religious understandings.
So we said a quick prayer…and I promptly forgot about it.
Until this morning.
Here is this comment “Thinking of you” and this monetary amount…and the dream rushed back…along with all the wariness, suspicion and other emotions which come from the experienced trauma and trial of those years.
The crucial thing to know is this: a bell, once rung, cannot be unrung. A woman who gives birth is always a mother, even if the child dies. There is no “going back” because there is no back to go to.
It is this way with me: I will never go back. He is dead, Caterpillar Dude…he is no more. He is the “back” and is gone. So there is no “going back”.
Any “kind indulgence” will not “induce to repentance” because there is nothing to be repented of in terms of my transition! As to repentance of any kind? Oh yes…the continual joy of beholding Jesus and being transformed by degrees from the glory of the letter which kills to the glory of the Spirit which is life…yunno…the same repentance we share in common.
I am not sure what I will spend this amount on…probably on my HRT, and this is a valued and well received gift.
I am always open to the generosity of heart and spirit that flows in God’s economy from they that have abundance to they that have need…and would always in that spirit welcome such donations/gifts…other gifts I have actually passed on to others in far greater need than I.
But if the spirit and intention of the gift is anything related to “getting me to go back”? To “repent” of “gender heresy” and “assume my old name and role?”
There is not a chance.
Those things are further from me than East is from West.
And if that spirit and intention is thus impure, then I consider the donation to be “the spoils of Egypt” and still put it to good use.
Wow…what a ramble, eh? If any are still with me, thanks for reading patiently.
Blessings to you today from our wonderful counselor and our comforter and the lover of our souls,
Charissa Grace White
God’s Graceful Gleam
I noticed a thing that
when
two people kiss
they
move like the tide
but I
could not tell
if it
was coming in or
going out or
if
it even
mattered
it’s been a year…
a year gone down whimpering,
a drowning swimmer foundering
who sought salvation by drinking
the river and instead sinking
beneath the waves of themself.
it’s been a year…
a year that is a dying finger
pointing at the trembly beginning
of a situation hardly noticed coming…
that few saw in its ever-morphing
bones exploding thru ancient dark depths.
it’s been a year…
of slaughtery reeking rank death
(deifying) defying reality
as we had known it
exposing all over again
the worst aspects of humanity
it’s been a year…
of intoxicating home-brewed hooch
swilled carelessly amidst mockery
merciless crushing of human decency
beneath the rotting soles of intolerance
and arrogant fear…
it’s been a year…
that cheated in plain sight and laughed
in our faces preening psychotically
in backwards congratulations and exposé
both of side-scuttling cowardice
and band-wagon jumping by far too many.
it’s been a year…
in position of power flimsy yet fancy,
a hulking brute that let us know
in no uncertain terms that evil is always
waiting round the corner, ready to sell us
poisoned swamp land and expired lottery tickets
it’s been a year…
burning bright with flames
of wild fires gone too far and seething
maniacally in immature hostility and failure
to curb the desire to lash out
at one another…
it’s been a year…
that frolicked, bathing in
the steady yellow shower
of the devil’s bloated trump card
who gloats and hulks and bloviates
and sings the song of wrong…
ill thoughts
ill words
ill deeds
it’s been a year…
a year gone down
while death has come
Happy Birthday, Dearest One…
…but i will never sorrow o’er that day, that moment
when Heaven spoke and told me of Their gift,
and my heart was blessed forever after.
i remembered, all day long…and sang.
If i ever forget, may my hand forget to live,
and may i forget to breathe again.”
Spinning like leaves
loose falling and slow
and scurrying brownly
to nowhere…no when…
fast flakes flying, fleeing
the huffy long Storm
of The Great Tree of Life
abandoned indifferent
for the dim tree of EGO
dried out, lacking relevance
and fading, and fading
disconnected and done
just a leaf…just a me
and lost in the pile
And the stormings of Autumn
turn cold here, outside,
clammy and indifferent
to everything else
but the deep dark long job
of laying down still
in the cold cooling earth
and The Long Sighing slower
and slower.
I have lost my True North
and grown cold and weary
in my mission to Grace:
to be Grace remaining
in roots, to drink Grace
clean raining so free
to walk on Grace quick
in the wind, to swim deep
in Grace beneath the vision
to fall like Grace landing
like swans white and dolorous
to crash…to settle, to touch
like Grace.
The fallen brown flakes
they smolder and smoke
as skies above tense
and bunch and blow white
and acrid smells clench
all around me and promises
piles disappeared…
into ashes…and yet…
I can’t find a flame
and can’t feel the fire
on my skin, in my bones
and real tears on my cheeks
and I find
I have come
Full Circle
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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