Dancing Double-Time

Posted on April 22, 2016 by charissagrace

the glacier moving blue
and stolid crushing step
inevitableness
occasionally makes noise
as it crushes rock
and crumbles it to dust
it listens to the waterfall
cascading off of granite cliffs
and hurling thru exultant air
and roaring in its falling flight

and does not understand
the tumult ringing loud
and shout of exultation
its liquid sister sings
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and so in all its stolidness
the icy glacier murmurs
that waterfall should fly
but quiet in the night
and careful in the day

and keep her singing heart
concealed within her breast
and hidden in the light
and tumbling down…
sssssllllloooooowwwww…
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as if a waterfall
could not sing, ever sing
in joyous flying freedom
and just gallumph along
like glaciers, crawling over
whatever may be there

glaciers grind all things to dust
but waterfalls can fly
and waterfalls can shine
and waterfalls can sing
and wash the stones so clean
and leave them shining there…
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glaciers…wearing vests
waterfalls…loud, blessed
and dancing double time
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“The Art of Blessing the Day” by Marge Piercy

Posted on March 25, 2016 by charissagrace

The Art of Blessing the Day

This is the blessing for rain after drought:
Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,
a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.
Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.
Enter my skin, wash me for the little
chrysalis of sleep rocked in your plashing.
In the morning the world is peeled to shining.

This is the blessing for sun after long rain:
Now everything shakes itself free and rises.
The trees are bright as pushcart ices.
Every last lily opens its satin thighs.
The bees dance and roll in pollen
and the cardinal at the top of the pine
sings at full throttle, fountaining.

This is the blessing for a ripe peach:
This is luck made round. Frost can nip
the blossom, kill the bee. It can drop,
a hard green useless nut. Brown fungus,
the burrowing worm that coils in rot can
blemish it and wind crush it on the ground.
Yet this peach fills my mouth with juicy sun.

This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:
Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store
sells in January, those red things with the savor
of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.
How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,
warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.
You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.

This is the blessing for a political victory:
Although I shall not forget that things
work in increments and epicycles and sometime
leaps that half the time fall back down,
let’s not relinquish dancing while the music
fits into our hips and bounces our heels.
We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain.

The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,
the blessing for love returned, for friends’
return, for money received unexpected,
the blessing for the rising of the bread,
the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental
about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote
with no more feeling than one says gesundheit.

But the discipline of blessings is to taste
each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet
and the salty, and be glad for what does not
hurt. The art is in compressing attention
to each little and big blossom of the tree
of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,
its savor, its aroma and its use.

Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
can’t bless it, get ready to make it new.
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Such A Beautiful Disruptive Moment

Posted on March 21, 2016 by charissagrace

the dam finally broke, and
I just kept smiling, smiling,
smiling like Aphrodite.
and why wouldn’t I?

tornados run across this fruited plain
fires race around these redwood trunks
each one natural, powerful, hungry,
and THOSE things, well…
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I think I would run
I know I would

but a dam? well, pshaw!
a man made that, thinking
to choke out a river? HAH!
stupid dolt, we just kept pushing

Aphrodite and I.
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I kept smiling because She
gives me Her Nod, Her
quick chin lift and dancing
bright flashing eyes that tell me

every hour is Holy
every sensual second
is Sacred in its quick
butterfly rise and its

sad sinking sunset.
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and that pile of patriarchy
eminent in threat and rattley-death
hard and straight and deaf and dumb
(fee fie foe fum!!)

jammed down Her fertile river-craw,
those dirty fingers down the throat of love
that choking violating deep and rough and raw
in turbine hums exploding in the cries of mourning doves
crosses
well it’s blown now…and on the run
in painful splintery disjointed strides
streaked with dirty water and rust
and ruined careful engineered remains.

and Aphrodite, that river, and me
lick at the bones with our eyes
and our waters and our ululating
triumphal throat-splitting ear-spitting

SCREAMS OF RELEASE!
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We suck, we clean, we set free and tear
the stench of man right out of marrow
and sow Sacred Communion, Holy Power
of Body and Blood anew across the waters,

alive again, alive
those waters once again
alive
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So…keep smiling and just yank
that unruly thread until it comes unfurled
and falls apart, all fall down
in one beautiful disruptive moment

such a beautiful disruptive moment.
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Me Moon

Posted on March 20, 2016 by charissagrace

when you speak of me
you speak of weeds and brambles
thorns, nettles and stoney ground.

when you think of me
it’s craters and dark
and bare landscape stark
and lacking curves.
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I am gardens, moon, roses, sea.
I am me, in bowers and blooms
and labyrinth beds of unusual growth.
I am small trees and tall firs
fragrance stirs, honey bees

I am Grace in the echo
of the moon’s deep wells
I am tides reaching and running
yearning and aching

I am reflected light
soft yet bright
sometimes yes often no
but always…always…
always aglow
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Please…think of what you know.

the endless ache of bones
the songs sung in your marrow
the shadow in your eyes
the light that holds your heart

think of who you know

vertigo
when gravity gives up
finally worn out
in my grave insistent
persistence at breathing.
tumblr_o46w3ckPYT1s93t2co1_540 And why…yes, this is important
the why of me
dancing on desolation
rhyming in respiration
overthrowing tables of treason

and though it is dark,
it is not night, My Love,
no.
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it is the season of silence
that speaks, that sings
sings in me garden
sings in me moon
sings in me roses
sings in me sea
sings in me
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A Seascape Moment

Posted on March 19, 2016 by charissagrace

the careless sowing of seaweed
in the currents, in the tides
in and out and out and in and in

the fog clinging melancholy
to its ever love green heart
hills, bristly beneath its touch

the singing needles verdant
joying in the glimmering sun
glancing off the bright dancing waters

the artful accidental masterpiece
of a world random in Intentioned Love
and the soft mercy of knowing eyes

and you, me, a part of everything
apart from everything
and everything in its place
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Marking Time

Posted on March 15, 2016 by charissagrace

i’ve been marking time since day one
day by day by day by day by day
and for each spin around the sun
i carve a line within

i haven’t figured it all out,
not quite, not yet, not all
whether those lines mark the way
out of these bars or just pass the days

but now they are my act of faith,
my memorials stark and blue
and some day i’ll slip between them
or simply pass thru to you

i am marking time, my countdown to you

At The Rim Of My Soul’s Furthest Reach

Posted on March 12, 2016 by charissagrace

There’s a universe inside me, bound
between my soul-yearn’s furthest reach
and my bleak body’s dullest beach,
a nexus edge, of light and dirt
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Bright pin-prick sharp stars pierce my heart
and shards, a thousand brilliant shards
release their shattered broken song
in full throat glory greater than…
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and I swallow my tears, my pain
and my hurt too and hope this gain
this extra gravity jars loose
those stars from my deep skies inside
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and shoot them streaming fiery
and hopeful and without limit
thru endless skies within my soul
until they finally hit that wall
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at the horizon where my body
and my spirit dance…just at
the limit…and if they, perchance? Should MEET?
Oh…the Fireworks!! The GLANCE!
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And then shall the night finally
become complete and my soft eyes
shall finally close and come to rest,
my heart shall at last breathe it’s best
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there…
at the rim
of my soul’s
furthest reach
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RECongress “Transgender Lives in the Church” Talk (Transcript)

Posted on March 6, 2016 by charissagrace

Wow.

This is one of the most amazing things I have ever read, and I cannot recommend it enough. Please please PLEASE take the time to read this.

Thank you Anna…brilliant and beautiful like you.

Such A Long Way Home

Posted on March 4, 2016 by charissagrace

I have such a long way home
such a long league of the sea
the last one, longest of them all
as I swim home to my True me.

I have come so far across
the desert sands so red, so hot
no water any where to dip
my tongue, my pen, my deepest thought
But here I am, the sand and sea
embracing in an endless dance
where there is both and neither here
as I transform in this last chance

to swim the promised depths, my home
in waters full of mystery
I have such a long way home
but I will get there, true and free

Afloat In Holy Black

Posted on February 14, 2016 by charissagrace

it’s a thousand points of light
stark against the black
reflected in my eyes
refracted in my heart
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a thousand thousand times
in gold, in yellow hues
embedded in the sable soft
stuck in molassess skies

amber warm and endless sloe
i feel the tête-à-tête
vibrate around me, in me too
and I begin to know

that I will never fade, burn out
or disappear in black
for I’m a thousand points of light
afloat in Holy Black The stars on the ceiling of the vault. Mosaic (mid 5th)

Meditations On Suffering

Posted on February 7, 2016 by charissagrace

The journey difficult and hard,
black and blue and bitter cold
upon the road thru long days old
and vales of death and darkness.

In hardship and travail we walk
and most of us will quit before
we reach the end, and yet that end
is still a mystery so vast…
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It strikes me that of all the ways
to make appeal to human hearts
They chose to magnify the cost
and left rewards as afterthoughts.

What exactly is Their point?
What is promised with this pain
and sacrifice…and…what? Comes next?
More mumble mumbo turbo trouble?
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Fatigue and hardship hand in hand
in times of darkness shared in light?
Not the cheery words that humans
think they need and want, but turn from.

Jesus looked at His best friends
and told them that in this hard world
they could be promised suffering
and then He spoke a miracle:

“Have courage, My dearest friends,
faint not! For I have overcome
the world and all that is there in”
And pain’s denied sour last say!
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Somehow the Son of God joins us
within it all and thru it all
So what exactly is success?
Is it simply winning? Tell me!

Because something shines beneath!
Something lurks Gold and Beyond!
I smell victory past defeat
and virtue is its own reward.
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The Forest Has Swallowed My Name

Posted on February 7, 2016 by charissagrace

The forest has swallowed my name, my face
Just like so many things before me
I entered the woods with my heart full of grace
but the forest just gulped and *poof* without a trace
I was lost, deep inside a birch tree.

I like to think it’s the same, just the same
as with so many things, just perhaps…
It mimics when God came to us, Incarnate
and They chained Themself to us both early and late
in the wood of our grim dark collapse.
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And so now we wait, here in the wood deep and dark
We share all things in this broken wheel
Them and us and the tree
and what was and will be
Bound together forever we kneel.

Sometimes I come out of the forest, I do.
I walk in the world full and free.
But the wood and the God go with me as I walk
And They soar as I wander like some Divine hawk
Cus the forest, the God, swallowed me.
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Sanctuary– For JD

Posted on January 11, 2016 by charissagrace

Remember Litter-Mate…the fact that they other and police you affirms your authenticity!!

City of Bones

Posted on January 10, 2016 by charissagrace

Barcelona,
oh City of Bones
laying hot and dry in the sun
beating down on streets, on tombs
and tiles so red over white and so hot
and shimmering radiant still,
oh ye bones!
barcelona_above___revisited_by_coigach-d9h3eeg 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.
barcelona_above_by_coigach-d9gyhp2

Gladly do I lay it there
(my sacrifice, not my purity)
on the bony altar of your burning eyes
hung there above the freezing flames
of your sharp haughty sniff and thus
do I seek sanctuary in the fires of
your hunger, games appeased and satiated.
And these words I leave
(my longing words so red, so sharp)
along the edge of your wet teeth,
hard teeth so white and glistening,
and there, blurred,

there they mingle
with your breath,
with the liquid you
and thus become
inflammable and ready
to leap up like the Phoenix
to take their ease in air and be
us, there, us there
be us there in the air.
Rise

And this city here,
right in plain sight and swaying
in the salty breeze blowing in stiff
off the racing aching blue seas,
this City of Bones dancing on air

with my words
there in air
like banners in the wind,
like thirsty golden kerchiefs
flying midst meteors, comets,
midst stars in the night

flapping in the solar flares
and furies of the sun and lapping
up the finest purest beams
of silver, argent grey moonlight tumblr_nw4iwesgqi1s2clnyo1_1280

And those fires
(of the night)
my words those silver fires
streaking, shooting across
the vast expanse of velvet
black thick nothing, silver flames
curling, licking at the bones
of the City hanging
in the deep dark void
shimmer And the music rounding there amidst
those handy banners sounds like owls
talking soft and hooty in the wind-torn branches
and our hearts are slender limber flexing long flagpoles
and we fly our flags of love like maidens flying
tokens for our champions… tumblr_o03sa8dubM1unv2uco1_1280 Together we all

(words and banners and bones)

shine upon your battlements

Barcelona
City of Bones
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The Song Of Loss And Gain

Posted on December 31, 2015 by charissagrace

Steeples and graves stand marked in memory,
by a crucifixion making way for the last to be first,
and the guilty pardoned, making way for
the creature and The Creator

(the Dying/Living One Living/Dying,
dying/living here, within me too,
I who lack in every grace
to just die already,
so full of Great
Grace to live
always)
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it’s a sign so mysterious and standing
at the core of history the core of the world.

CORE:
suffering,
death, tragedy,
and sad sorrow He
(Supremely human He)
submitted willingly hanging
doggedly broken and bleeding
holding our infirmities in
His bloody Holey Hand
(He’s Got The Hole
World In His
Hand)

it’s a gift of forgiveness
and assurance, depiction
of the depth of divine mercy
and hope of God and us.

Is this querulous song enough
to quiet restless running thoughts
and ease unanswered questions’ ache,
that burn so cold in hearts laid low
in suffering, hearts whose hope is seized
and despair left laying in its wake
(suffering-wake)
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But we must carry willingly
defeat and thirst and emptiness
through to the end of darkness, to
the end of self, and to the world’s long waited end
bringing meaning to suffering and peace to hearts in pain

in this symphony of blood
in this song of loss and gain.
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Advent Poem: Seeds of Sorrow

Posted on December 20, 2015 by charissagrace

The end of exile and darkness
began at the manger of Jesus,
where seeds of sorrow sprouted
(sorrow Theirs and ours)
in Joyful Birth, and drawing
near to earth from heaven
as angels’ song is hushed

in holy hesitation
as Jesus Christ is born.

He, God’s seed of sorrow sown
into the earth in Hope
of such Divine rejoicing
and harvesting of many
children returned Home
and exile at last over,
that exile self-imposed.

Advent Poem: Holy Wassail Wine

Posted on December 19, 2015 by charissagrace

God,
rest Ye…

here in the midst
of the mess and the malls
and the masses of middling
and the muddles of mercy
needed, so badly needed.
pdx streets
Let nothing

Masquerade as something
filling hearts so full
(of nothing…nuffin)
that they “feel full”
and still hunger for
bread become stone
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For
Jesus Christ was
born upon this day,

again in the sound of muzak
again in the tread of tired
tramping feet tiptoeing
around grapes of wrath
unstored in stores
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again…be born
again upon
This Day

O tidings of comfort and joy!
For the final word
is not dismay
and darkness shall not
have the final say!
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here is joy
enfleshed,
mingled with
sorrow like
Holy Wassail Wine
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Feast Upon The Village Green

Posted on December 17, 2015 by charissagrace

I am the bristly nest from which the great blue heron springs.
I am the stones upon which stinging ice-churned runnels ring.
And there, those fires hot from which the Phoenix rare takes wing.
I’m scintillating embers, coals ablaze and life giving.

They named me foul pale heretic and laid me down to rest,
outside the white-washed churchyard walls, outside their ruddy fold.
And there my hot blood flowed rich-red to feed their bloodless grass,
I deep red died upon that emerald sward of murder bold.
And I do let my bones peek from the curtain of my skin
and thus do I me nourish every living thing herein
with my authentic self and my unconquerable song,
my passion unquenchable and my me a sacred throng

of birth from death and life leapt up in winds, in rain and dew
I am nest, stone and embers singing always clear for you.
and thus it is unholy ground is cleaned, hallowed once more,
and every living thing’s communion, ever opened door
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The Lense Thru Which I Read My Lil Red Songbird…

Posted on December 16, 2015 by charissagrace

I need my small, meaningless lies. I need all my self-created semi-truths.
It’s the only way for me to keep exclusive parts of myself to myself.
Believe me, I do not even perceive them as lies.
It’s something different that keeps happening inside my head.
At the same time, I long to tell you the truth about me, always.
I want to share with you each important or unimportant detail and feel and fully embrace the very act of sharing.
But it occurs to me that it’s the hardest of tasks; I hate it.
I hate unveiling bits and pieces of anything permanent or temporary that resides in me.
I loathe it with my heart.

You can find more honesty in the smallest of my gestures rather in my words;
my words are too impatient, too loose, too doomed in some way.

—

Anaïs Nin

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My Baby Loves God Like A Boss!

Posted on December 6, 2015 by charissagrace

My Baby loves God like a boss!

She ain’t no red-light winker
or Fleet Street wanker
when it comes to
loving Them, HELL NO…

She’s a street walking swinger
as long as that street glows golden
and is called The Way, or just plain
Beautiful, or if that street is a market

and she will buy Their wares…
pearls here, pears there,
peas and poultry right next
to peace and praise…

Ahhh…

My Baby loves God…loves God like a boss!!
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Advent Poem: This Waiting Time

Posted on December 5, 2015 by charissagrace

Sometimes frost grips limbs
once lean and limber in the wind
now long grown stiff and creaky
and I hear them crack and groan
in those sticky clutching fingers
cold and frosty, fingers
cold and frosty.
Processed with VSCO with t1 preset
Sometimes ennui (cold)
grips my soul (grown old)
and in its grip I groan
(groan old) and my soul
(my waiting soul) runs
around my heart and
around my heart

as the clock’s tail
ticks and twitches, chases
its tail like a cat relentless,
(useless) and that (waiting)
that frosty cold difficulty of waiting
remains there clinging tightly
in the fading day.
But Advent…

Advent
Advent comes again
and gives her gift.
In the cold and dead of winter,
trauma seems to sting much deeper,
and healing for the broken parts
of my life…and the people that I love?
Seems so much harder to obtain…
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When it comes to these things
things so staggering and important,
healing, peace and goodness
on the earth, freedom from suffering,
well…waiting is hard, so hard and painful.

But in these moments I’m remembering
I’m troubled in soul and looking
for something transcendent, greater
than the hurt and pain and suffering,
something, someOne warm enough
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persistent, faithful, warm enough

to breathe on us
to break the ice
and give us life
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Long familiar sweet hymns play
wherever I go, I remember
I am poor, imperfect, waiting for
the God Who comes down,
Comes Down, God With Us
Emmanuel! Hosanna!
In the Highest Holy Fire!
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and I feel again
the gentle nudge
of a knock deep
at the door
of my small
and icy lonely
heart.
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Advent is the time of waiting
waiting for the One (the One)
Who embraced body, embraced sorrow
Came to show us all the fullness
of just being home, present, and real.

And we are long reminded in
our cold dolorous longing
what we’re longing for actually
a Who, Who, Who we long for,
God…always coming nearer to us.
tumblr_nxyvx0qB8d1sbg1lmo1_500 I have found a place
inside (in Advent, inside you)
that place where once
you die, you…
you come Alive…
A place where pain
and pleasure weigh out
just the same
and all that’s left
is only Love,
tumblr_nveprpyg6U1tdo940o1_1280 And every sorrow touched
by the wild gold Promise
that in this very place
(of waiting)
Jesus has been born
(is born)
and will be born
again and again,
and again
breaking thru
tumblr_nvtonjz7IJ1qam6uto1_1280 that icy grip
thawing out
our longing hearts,
melting all
our sin and deaths
so we can
laugh again.

IRISH THANKSGIVING

Posted on November 30, 2015 by charissagrace

Reblogged on WordPress.com

Source: IRISH THANKSGIVING

It was a year ago on this day that I read this poem, and I am struck just as strongly today as I was on that day a year ago…by this work of such stunning power and beauty and longing and fulfillment.

Melissa Shaw Smith is a poetess that I respect immensely, and a woman that I aspire to be like. I have never met her, except thru her work, and thru a few emails in which she graciously allowed me to bloviate opinions about her work which in hindsight seems to me a bit like the 2nd grader who can do the times tables up thru her 5s talking to Madam Curie about the wonders of science!!

No matter…Constance, if you think my poetry is any good, just know that it is as if it were a child’s lego creation side by side with El Capitan compared to Melissa’s work.

Mel, if you are reading here…I love this poem with the marrow-bones of my tears.

Much much love…
Charissa

Advent Poem: To Go To Bethlehem

Posted on November 28, 2015 by charissagrace

Uncanny, peculiar,
uncomfortably strange,
I tend my fires and tell my story…
tumblr_n40izwKWgH1s5neh1o1_1280 the story of
this quirky girl
overly-intelligent
and stuck in time
that is not time, so
unreconciled to time
so bound up in its realm.
tumblr_n5np124LJd1s5neh1o1_500 I am strapped there
on Your wrist (watch)
a condor in a cage
passing from quick present
to some furious future
and thus so fast becoming
dim, and dark, and past
and wondering if I am tumblr_n3ng7oK9xj1s5neh1o1_1280 ever? present?
ever a moment?
ever a significant occasion
or an immeasurable quality?

I want real time! tumblr_nyhnrwYzEl1qllucco2_1280 time which breaks through
with a shock of joy
like a leap into Crater Lake
on a snowy New Year’s morning,
time where we are completely
un-self conscious and far more
real in some eternal now
I thirst for a moment jeweled!
tumblr_nycmluCX5a1qat5pio1_500 a moment
so sweet or magnified
it seems to stop time
but doesn’t because time
becomes a point so limply moot
and thus no longer dirty moat
between me and my true self
tumblr_mz5pbxrvwe1slvh08o2_1280 And here I sit, beside time’s bonfire
tumblr_nvpeukM0QC1u7b31go1_1280 and sparks fly up
and away so quick
to join the stars
and glimmer and
I poke at this fire
hot and tender
and tend it…
with my tinder 636e5f6d27dbf806212c969a3560ca33 and wonder how to be
here in this already
and not yet, between
That Eternal Now
and this one,
and the One
Who There Inhabits? tumblr_nxgij6jzXP1rnl2wvo1_1280 wonder how to be aware
of life while I am living it?

wonder how to limp courageous
and relinquish all control
of self and self awareness?

wonder how to laugh courageous
and look for glory
in the storied
wonder of the ordinary?

wonder how to live courageous
and be surprised by One
who dares draw near?

wonder how to love courageous
and take off rings and watches?
tumblr_n1uzzfw14n1s5neh1o2_1280
I burn calendars and open
my heart uncanny,
strange peculiar…
tumblr_nfi2j2A3Sf1t043jao1_500 to see eternity in
the midst of time
to go to Bethlehem
today and everyday
in this time and place

where glimpses of the eternal
come quiet, unexpectedly
they come and they upset
our every notion static about time
and all we discover there within.
and in the east her long shroud trailing
I open
my Uncanny Peculiar
Uncomfortably Strange Heart
to the story of All and Ever
ending Never

I choose
to live somewhere between
the already and not yet,
caught and held
by the One who
dwells within Outside.
tumblr_ny2xn8zBkj1trdezwo1_540 And so the fire burns away the moments
And we must choose our portion:
whether here we tarry or if
we choose to journey
Pregnant by some God

To Go To Bethlehem
tumblr_nygiapTyw51qat5pio1_1280

My Peculiar Love, Arise!

Posted on November 19, 2015 by charissagrace

Look up, arise
my Peculiar Love!

You tumble still
wracking rocks
wrenching ravines
clawing cliffs
and scratching
with nails broken
and bloodied in the plunge.

No…I have not left
your side, your side
(it’s only bruised, Love)
so vulnerable to that lance
and the stinky rough
warhands of that coward
masquerading as a shepherd
covering for a rapist

And on that note remember
He who lays by your side
He who took the lance
He who went all the way
coming to common terms
with loss
blind as wind…

But I float now…see?
You will too soon…

And this is waiting…
there…and so I lay these words of care
upon your lips like mountain blood
white and clear and clean and cold
to slake your thirst with sop
(not hyssop)
of beauty, healing, Promise…

Oh my Love…my Love Peculiar
the day will come to
Arise

and join me in the Liberty
you prophesied when you spied
your baby’s heart eternal.

The Truth About Transgender Suicide | Brynn Tannehill

Posted on November 15, 2015 by charissagrace

“Suicidal behaviors in LGBT populations appear to be related to “minority stress”, which stems from the cultural and social prejudice attached to minority sexual orientation and gender identity.

“This stress includes individual experiences of prejudice or discrimination, such as family rejection, harassment, bullying, violence, and victimization. Increasingly recognized as an aspect of minority stress is “institutional discrimination” resulting from laws and public policies that create inequities or omit LGBT people from benefits and protections afforded others.

“Individual and institutional discrimination have been found to be associated with social isolation, low self-esteem, negative sexual/gender identity, and depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders.

“These negative outcomes, rather than minority sexual orientation or gender identity per se, appear to be the key risk factors for LGBT suicidal ideation and behavior.”

Source: The Truth About Transgender Suicide | Brynn Tannehill

This.

I am sharing this truly scintillating essay, and the pull quote above is the core for me.

I just wanna say that I was raised white…but I was…raised white. Fortunately for me, I was never inculcated with racist bull shit, to the point that in college in the 80s I had a dear friend literally shock me when he told me I was the least racist person he had ever met…and yes, I did hear and note his use of the word “least”…which said volumes to me but in a language that I could not decipher or understand.

Well…since coming to terms with myself and understanding my gender journey, my life has changed in shattering ways, stunning and transcendent ways…but most importantly of all I was delivered from the ocean at last…

and became aware of so much that I never knew, could never see, even as a fish in the sea has no clue that it is in the sea.

I understand the comment of my friend now…”least racist”.

I wish I had the words and ways to let my friends, acquaintances and loved ones who are subject to that which they are subject to for the absolute worst and most insignificant of reasons KNOW that I get it now…

Oh, I will NEVER get it for the reason that they are made subject, anymore than any cis-gender person will ever “get it” in any way other than developing a deep and sincere sympathy and resolute commitment to love and live that love…

But I do get it now, the persecution, the othering, the abuse, the hatred and the fucking demonic unreasoning irrational stupidity of those besotted and drunk on the luck of the draw and the fate of biology.

My friends, and you know who you are…this post is for you…may I always find the joy I have found in solidarity with you and the love of your deep suns of being that shine undefeated and undefeatable! May I always have the heart, the eyes to see and to be inspired time and again with your indomitable spirit, will, but most of all your LOVE which just fucking never quits, CAN never quit.

You have no idea, the moments you have dragged me thru…you bearing the hate directed at you due to skin and me bearing the hate directed at me due to a variation on skin but essentially a common thing we walk in…times I was on the way out, and I would read sumfin, hear sumfin, think of sumfin…and be inspired and lifted up in your heart of hearts.

Now? I can at least have the means to find the remaining privilege I have and divest myself of it intentionally…it doesn’t always go, it is stuck to my skin color…but at last it is not stuck to me.

I regret only that it took as long as it did for my understanding and seeing eyes to catch up to what my heart must have known for my friend to tell me what he told me. We intersect…and for the rest of my days on earth I am expanding that intersection with every ounce of love, faith, hope, grace and mercy that is mine.

To the rest of my friends: please take it in faith that your privilege is there, is stuck to you, and is a legacy that you can use if you will but set your heart in a frame of humility and ask that your eyes be opened…hopefully you will gain insight without experiencing it being ripped away…but if that is what it takes, it is better that this occur rather than go thru your life blind while thinking you see. tumblr_lh6nzks1YS1qgnixvo1_1280

Morning Meditations

Posted on October 9, 2015 by charissagrace

When you lose the rest of everything
and the curb merges with the gutter,
wander on down the grey road
in the weak darkness, thin and sorry
for its skinny powers.

Like you, it has been stripped
and hollowed out by pillars
of strange orange man-made lights
that pulse to rhythms eldritch
and out of whack.

Turn left at the golden arches
and meander downhill toward
that weedy field of thistles and look
beneath its frosty veil for the path, no…
the part traversing that bristly mane
low and lurking deep in the foot
of the silent graveyard speaking so insistent
of what it cannot say.Head to the pylon, pushing thru the wild roses
and brambles and you can find me, sleeping and still,
swathed in brilliant reds that have been infected with
the sicknesses of too much and too little.

Cast-off Goodwill wannabes swaddle me
in the mangy light so far away from even
Bethlehem let alone a stable, and I struggle
to stay beneath the thready stream of thin sleep
doled out to me like penitentiary-gruel
to dulled-out dwellers in the dimness
that masquerades as just desserts deep-deserved.

Feel that moist air clinging to your cheeks
like my fingers used to cling to those faces
cherubic and innocent and unaware of the plague
awaiting outside the place we all used to live.Smell that rank faint scent that lives only
at the foot of graveyards and only creeps
out in the dead of night…and take a deep breath,
for that breath is your inheritance now, in this
long first night in the fake wilds beneath
the petty-coats of this town but no longer with
a place to call home, or even a cover to keep out
the creeping dread of realization that this will happen

over and over and over and over and over and…

you can curl up behind me and we can spoon and
maybe our touch will lure the moon over
the crouched hump of the bridge that sings once
in a while with the passing of scrabbling
metal beasts scurrying thru this place
on the way to nowhere.

Or if that small comfort is too slow and uncertain,
trek across the creek and look under the bridge
by the trestle beams so dark and still and
certain of their strength.

They sweat in cold beads
and if you stick out your tongue
you can trap a few drops there and here
that will cool your ravaged hot throat torn
with such thirsty longing for what used to be…

and if you stick out your arm, well then
swift flows the river current for those
who would brave the rapids and ravages
of those waters.

But then again, you may as well
take the shortcut, up the twisty hill
and lay down amidst the still stone angels
and the lumpy skeletal headboards
amidst the sighing dead awaiting
for the Rising Morning…

I live here now, in this red infected light
of lone loss and dewy violet memory and
I’ve learned to thrive off things despised,
I’ve learned to sift the dregs and love
the cast-off lees and living here
wrapped so warm in Autumn Leaves
and with The Least of These…

I think I prefer authentic life even
in light somewhat diseased rather
than the full on blind brilliance
of that time past asleep in true light
but wasted light streaming on by
while my eyes were shut and sealed
and my heart full of things I knew
that just weren’t so.

Wander on
down the grey road,
for I am waiting
here.

Kintsukuroi

Posted on September 25, 2015 by charissagrace

time is the greatest distance
between two distant places…

me then. me now.

Today I am grateful
for that excruciating
powerlessness I felt
over and over
again and again
as a young child

and I would just cry
and cry and just cry
and I would just try
and try and just try
to summon some presence
in the midst of such absence.

Today, I know how to
think differently, how to
give up, how to
lose hope without (how to)
losing Hope.

Then I was empty,
and full of a void
inside the abyss.

Today I am flexible
dynamic, resilient,
I am a willow
and never an oak
and my golden harps
which were hung
on my branches
forgotten and rusty
are now soft being
strummed by Hands
not yet seen playing
songs of resilience.

Today I feel grateful
for knowing incredible
unutterable sadness,
washing in ocean waves
of the world’s sorrow
and my growing awareness,
of dissolving, surrender,
of letting go over
and over again.

All my jagged pieces
pulled out and untangled
untwisted unwrapped
washed clean of the muck
so healing can commence

Forever In My Bones

Posted on September 9, 2015 by charissagrace

The echoing of silence
implications of ashes
a song inside my tears
a signifying bond
the moan within my blood.

The writing of a moon
engraven on this water
and carried by the winds
into your heart beyond
the reach of tongue or pen…

this is my ever burden
my sentence that I carry
forever in my bones

In This Fresh Forever Air

Posted on September 6, 2015 by charissagrace

after a storm the air
scrubbed and electric
and crackling with ancient
newness, fresh like a goddess
reborn in wonder and at home
moves across my face
and into my lungs
like eternity alive
and shouting
singingafter we clear the air
and our words sparkle
fresh, cracks highlighted
by tears like raindrops
offered in falling curtains
of feeling, of love, of joy
lingering slightly stained
crimson like liquid crystal hearts tumblr_nlh0bryEtH1tc258so7_r2_1280 it’s then we see each other
again for the first time ever
and our hearts say hello you
while our eyes scream missed you so
and our voices twine again in song
like the sound of rivers
with the light of mountains
in the fresh forever air
in this fresh forever air

The Ruin and The Wreck

Posted on August 26, 2015 by charissagrace

It’s the ruin and the wreck
of what has been, what might have been
that stands so stark, abrupt against
the soft caress of night and in
the harsh daylight that shows the stress
and strain and bite of time…
so cruel, so kind

in dismantling artifice
and taking more to leave it less
and thus confer a grace upon
the mess of pride and prejudice

there…in the gentle wind’s soft kiss,
that which remains and sanctified
by tears from skies so gray and eyes
so blue and thus made holy in
the loss they gain substance
and stretch across

our hearts
our spirits
our souls
that yearn forever,
ah forever
it will burn
there…that fire

and those bones that burn so bright
in the ruin and the wreck
of what has been, what might have been
become what is

Least Of All The Past

Posted on August 15, 2015 by charissagrace

Mostly, people don’t realize
time is a living thing, a tree
whose roots stretch back
to the beginning (and before?)
whose branches reach high,
broad and all around into
the “what-is-coming-what-may-be”
and we the fruit hanging there
swaying in the breezes
of the breath of Jesus
and Mama at His side
and all creation spinning out
inside this circle dance…

see, the past flows up, into the future
the future slides down, slides deep
sinks into the roots and makes its
transformations silver, shining
or is reclaimed and overcome, choked off
and laid, still born into the red dirt slick and packed.and fruit? tossed and kissed in space and growing
in the currents from beneath and from above?
fed by rivers subterranean, drinking from
the rain that falls down from the clouds
of all that lies ahead…

we fruit are sweet, or bitter, or savory
in the grip of God and how the past is eaten
does predict the future…

but what the future holds
can quickly change the past
in just an eyelash twinkle
and we all are changed!!Ahh…I hold to the past
and cling tight to my future
and throw my arms wide to the sides
and hug all “what-may-comes”
into my heart so soft, so strong
and thus shall my heart ever sing
the song of great becoming
and the song of all forgetting

do you get it now?
nothing is “just itself”
nothing at all,
least of all the past.

Selective Hearing

Posted on August 13, 2015 by charissagrace

We live in a world full of flaming individualists,
flailing consciences lashing out everywhere
except where it really counts!

It’s that individualistic ear,
at once so very deaf and yet
so quick to hear!

Deaf when thunder sounds towards us
but oh so sensitive to all offense
or lightning lash at others!

This is perhaps why the prophets had to weep
and yell so loudly. We might be listening…
but only for someone else.

Our selective hearing leaves us dull
and blind and deaf to everything
except the symphony of self.

And yet the words still echo
down canyons of time
Prepare Ye The Way of the Lord!HA! How does one do that!?
Prepare the roads for God?
How does anyone do that?!

Make straight the paths of God?
What does that even mean? Roads?
Make Straight? Prepare…

Can you picture men and women
preparing roads *effective roads*
that bring God down to earth…

Bring God down to earth,
and who needs that more?
Them or us?

Prepare Ye The Way of the Lord!
Make Their Paths Straight!

All the great promises, early/late,
reversals we anticipate
fulfilled because Their Presence here?

Beauty springing from the ash
Mourning turned to lively dancing
Waters flow from wilderness

Streams cascading from the deserts.
swords beaten into plowshares
spears transformed to pruning hooks,

wolves lying down to sleep
in fields with soft and peaceful sheep
and lions and lambs in love knee deep

justice rolling down like waters
and righteousness ever-flowing streams
the desert blossoming like dreams

the blind seeing
the lame at dance
the lowly lifted up

the hungry filled up with good things
the Road of God, my heart still sings
when I can hear that cry so clear

May we be cured, delivered from
our terminal affliction
Selective Hearing. tumblr_ns4zf4tBCu1s5neh1o1_1280

We Are Come At Last

Posted on July 26, 2015 by charissagrace

Marshal your forces, you protectors of the crown,
send your dogs running, your dogs of dreams,
your dogs howling, full noses of my fur, my pelt!

Bring on your hunt, your horses in full gallop
and chase for all you’re worth, your lust and fear
of free blood running red, and full, liberty’s blood!

Your coats, scarlet! Your smirks, affixed with tax,
and become terrible twisted rictus in your sweaty efforts
to hunt this free fox leaping, yipping, dancing on the dawn!

They shall come to me, your dogs, and wriggle ‘neath my touch!
They shall hear my dog-whistle words, too high for your dull ears
but so keenly attuned and pitched to their own straining hearts!

And they shall call to their comrades, your horses, who will alert and thrill
and leap into the air to gallop freely there…and you unhorsed…you laying there
upon the blood-stained grass of yesteryear…

Your time is up, for we are come to hunt you down
and tear that red coat straight away right off your back
and tossed into the sky, our banner free unfurled and our war cry…

No Longer! Not Anymore!

As Is

Posted on July 14, 2015 by charissagrace

The sounds it made were bold, cavernous,
an opera in a wooden box.
The grown ups said this was an early model
and it was in mint condition.

They spoke in hushed tones.
A perfect treasure, a magnificent and flawless toy.
It was not sold “as is”… dscf4606

“As is” marked the clock that had stopped ticking,
or the rocking horse that had a crack in one of its legs.
That label also conveyed a certain sense of defeat,
a lost cause—a treasure bearing some distinguishable,
irreparable flaw.

I have always felt “As is,”
that label covering over
the tag inside my collar
that says “As I long to be”
and the treasure of me
going awry…in only a matter of time.

Well, thank God
They delight in “As Is”
rather than sacrifice,
They dote on broken spirits
They comfort contrite hearts
and will not despise the humble.

“Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows…
But he was pierced
for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities.”

Isn’t it strange
that we who are saved
by One who was broken
should struggle in the presence
of brokenness at all?

we are never nearer
than when we come
with nothing in
our hands to offer.

And “As Is” gives a certain hope,
for in this recognition of brokenness
we see the promise of
wholeness.

I Think It’s Memory

Posted on July 11, 2015 by charissagrace

There’s deep green truth
in the spectral grey heart
of this ghastly pale notion
haunting our desperate minds:
our own truest blue heart
is most deeply discovered
in desperate ragged edges,
jagged, sharp, contrasted,
in tight precipice moments
(both high, and oh so low).It’s on those thresholds,
in those moments
of “life”, of dismal death,
weighted and full moments
where indecision and decision
wrestle for supremacy,
where comfort lulls,
boredom deceives,
and indifference dulls…Tell me, what’s the essence of a heart
delivered from this life lived badly
to a certain death well-died?
And there and back again
into life lived and risen
from the bony spectral grip
of that small death called
cowardice?

Iris Fox ©2013 Gretchen Powers all rights reserved

I think it’s memory,

(and of course courage
to forget what is dead
and press on in pursuit
of those matters that matter)

to bravely (courage)
recall (re-member)
those things long ago
when first love was
fresh, free, fragrant…
that gives us perspective
to risk a decent death
and choose to lay down all
in hopes that we will rise
before the Great Rising.It’s when we remember
in poised precipice moments
that we can see most clearly
how our affections flow
and what and who we are…

But:

what we remember deeply,
all that we have ingrained
into identity assumed
(like costumes for the play)
it’s far more likely we’ll recall
when crisis, pain or comfort make it
hard to remember anything,
the deep memory will hold against
temptation of forgetfulness in
“the Forgetful Green.”If we refuse to actively remember
the story in which we participate,

(moments where God
has acted mightily,
the times humanity
has learned in tears
of reality and immortality,
of the autonomy of God
even in this)

then in sickness and in health
undoubtedly we will forget
that memory even is a thing
in this world that’s forgotten
and bids us forget as well.Lay aside the panaceas, cure alls,
life supports, and take up courage
to embrace a good death given
Die a Decent Death, in faith
that such thing does exist!

What is a good death?
The question’s asked and answered
by people who mourn and lament,
who weep at gravesides lingering,
who live and die and live as those
who follow That One gone before
in boldness and then risen high
above the false finale of
the gasping gaping grave!

A decent death, a certain hope…

I think it’s memory…
I think it’s memory.

Reaping Waves

Posted on July 7, 2015 by charissagrace

I’m no Viking, not me!
Charissa Grace?
Pshaw…I do not sail
on waves like crops,
oars for ploughs
and battle lust for seed.
I shudder at the thought!
Of harvest moments
in peaceful lands
and no limits but my lusts
and the certainty of loss
at the end of Ragnarok.

I sail on clouds, on streams
on brook-magic mists rising
in the gentle night and dusky dawn
and sow in rose-glow song
to the fields of new morning
by the light of the Morning Star…

tears are my seed
laughter my harvest
in grace taken and shared
in the cycle of that itty bitty seed
so small, so unstoppable
so certain at the beginning
of the Endless Day

The House of My Heart

Posted on July 7, 2015 by charissagrace

If you sit down in my life
and find it snug, merry, warm
and full of the smells
of bread baking and
food cooking…

then you have made it to the porch.

If you stand in horror
at the mess you see
the dirty laundry next
to the washer running
24×7…

then you have made it to the mudroom.

If you walk, amazed
and cannot find words
for those rooms unfolding
and full of art, of music
of funny lil knic-knaks,
and the only uniting theme
is wonder…

then you have made it into my heart.

And if you find the stillness
filled with golden light
and fierce joyful gladness…

then you have made it to my soul.

Catacombs and Caverns

Posted on July 1, 2015 by charissagrace

I heard caverns deep behind your words of wonder.
I heard water dripping softly from wet ceilings
in those hollow places that you talked
so gingerly around…I heard your words resound,
your words of wonder…

in catacombs within so dark with dying
and dismal longing smothering and sighing,
the death to self and terrible becoming
in places of deep grief and self-discovery
those spaces once full, quick became so hollow…

I hear your hollow places faintly filling
with sorrow bleeding, and thus filled becoming
drained, emptied in the lonely tearful crying
that hallows fearful places looming darkly,
places of slow death so severely emptied,

bereavement fresh yet ancient,
everlasting and then grief become
dark resurrection hinted at
in every birth brand new,
in every dying….

I found your trails familiar, well worn, hidden
so deep within the kidneys of your words
and yet those trails well known in rising darkness,
(a left at that root ragged there, then quickly
around that rugged rock jutting sharp right here).

I have been walking word roads too, becoming
and finding that my caverns dark and thrumming
catacombs full, then empty, full then empty
more times than I can count or e’en remember
and I wonder in such a holy horror

when my wonder became wander…wander…wander!
Yet I am here! Alive and breathing! Singing!
I’m here to tell you, it gets better, Darling
But only on this singular condition:
the losing of your everything in dying

and thus it is
you can be born
again and live
so lively new,
again.

Today, as I sit, listening to your heart, Dear
I look back at what I have lost…oh my God!
The stuff of Titans, losses heaped and horded,
my trinkets, treasures tossed, honors awarded
all tumbled in the twilight, gleaming dully

in the hot noon listless sun, laying there lifeless
and in the evening gloaming calling mutely
midst catacomb become my living darkness,
that cavern now my womb filling with wonder
all finally lost…and now? And now…The finding…

truly nothing
can compare
to the all surpassing
wonder of a world
made brand new

and my
Catacombs and Caverns
filled forever,
never failing, filled
and brand new

every morning,
every mourning
every warning
made brand new
and full of wonder
full of wander
full of You.

Silences and Storms

Posted on June 23, 2015 by charissagrace

…and as these moments roll along
across the mountains, over hills
and I listen to soft windsong
because your voice has grown so still

and time passes, by waterfalls
while clouds grow black and threatening
and sulfurous gouts of thunder roll
and lightning graphs your fearsome name

it’s silences and storms these days
my heart is torn in these two ways
the words I need, you fail to speak
the words that kill…they slice my cheek

and also cheek I turn to you
and that one, that one, then…adieu
i find myself alone, just me
winds, waterfalls have set me free

to see you in your silent tower
and you in thorny violent bower
and you who will not talk at all…
it’s you who’s deaf to Love’s pure call

I’ll sit me here in peace, just so
and breathe the earth’s exhales, and know
I’m fine in Jesus’ nail scarred hand
And marked forever with Grace’s Brand

Beside This Ring Of Ashes One Year Later

Posted on June 21, 2015 by charissagrace

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 tumblr_nm27mtsR1i1qkevp7o1_1280

*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

To The Ones Twisting In Agony

Posted on June 19, 2015 by charissagrace

Dearest Hearts:

As time passes it becomes increasingly clear to me that you are incredibly shocked and perhaps even traumatized by recent events. What started as a journey rooted in solidarity and a narrative of history held in common, stitched together by memories of holidays, traditions, and countless days in the sun has been blown apart by a story describing a life experience so different and distinct as to seem like the most crazed and addled of fictions.

Except it is far more complicated than that…both your experiences of it and ours.

And trying to put the spotlight of truth on “what really happened” is as fruitful as running on the beach to try and catch a seagull…memory and our past flies up and away when we run hard at it.

Certainly there is a plethora of artifacts that buttress my own experience…but here is the rub for me:

So much of those days is fuzzy to me, blurred by time and by the assumption that we were pretty fortunate to have one another…but most of all so much of it was swallowed whole and robbed from me by a Leviathan called Dysphoria. In the bone-frying terror of trying to survive the assaults of despair, a lot of my memory is reduced to memories of just hanging on.

As you all have been processing things, you have gone silent, gone angry, but mostly, just…gone. Nothing. And what reports do trickle back have been shocking in their vehement accusations and recollections, have been utterly astonishing in the gaping holes where context tells a radically differing tale…and completely and totally devastating to read and encounter.

It has been like a pogrom on my history…and what is worst of all is that whatever or however it happened, you have come to this time and this place where you have these driving needs to tell your story and write your history thus.

And thus the heart of this post: I want you to know that it is okay.

I want you to be and do and say whatever it is that will bring you expiation and freedom.
I want for you liberty and fruitfulness.
I want for you life and wholeness.

I want for you what I have always wanted for you and sought to provide you.

And I love you…regardless of what you might think or not think, say or not say, remember or forget.
I will never not love you.

Never.

Perhaps someday there will be enough said or done that you might begin to feel those relentless scales within entering into a sort of equilibrium…the doors of my heart are flung wide open.

Perhaps someday you might be handling the artifacts that my fingertips and heart tendrils trace daily, and you might find the tracks of my tears and the perfume of my love…in letters, in cards and emails…in memories other than the ones who swell and swarm our landscape like Red Tides…

…and if that ever happens, please do not waste one moment of your lives in regret or remorse…while it is evident to me that it is highly unlikely that this will ever happen, there is a chance that you might feel as if you have in some fashion or way done wrong in the process of this becoming of ours, and if this is ever the case I say to you

I love you
I forgive you
I have no record of wrong
I believe everyday in who I know you are
I want the best for you as you are able to discover it and access it
It is my honor to have had a part in your coming to be and it is my doom to be accountable for the innumerable ways that I failed you and caused you pain and horror.
I hope everyday that you are finding the sort of strength in becoming that I am experiencing.

Should you ever glance my direction, I am here at the end of the lane of home, everyday standing on tippietoes and my eyes combing the horizon and my heart listening to the wind and my nose sniffing the air for your presence…

…hoping to see you, praying for your safety and shalom…and never ever failing to hold you in my heart precious.

I also want you to know this: whatsoever you need to write, need to shout, need to throw, need to yell, need to think or tell or believe…whatever you need to do or be in order to be whole, it is okay with me.

I refuse to ever be “a betrayed one”
I refuse to ever be “a wronged one”
I refuse to ever be “offended”

I choose you and your wholeness.
I choose you and your horror that you lay at my feet and at my accountability. Let it be on me, to make things lighter and easier and more fruitful for you it is my glad and sacred honor.

If the narrative is now that I was the worst abuser, a victimizer, a (fill in the blank)…whatever it is…as long as it is an assignation of responsibility that enables you to be delivered and put in a place where you can choose life and choose wholeness and becoming, then it is a sentence that I want to have over me that I shall do my absolute best to carry in the way that creates the freedom and deliverance and cleansing within that brings you the very best that can be brought.

May it be my meals for the rest of my days if in eating it there is even a modicum of relief and wholeness for you.

Everyday without you is like Kafka’s world with no exit…unless in the absence I have the assurances it is resulting in your liberty and gladness and joy…

…and in that case it is the greatest of honors to be in this place.

I think I know who I was…and who I wasn’t too, finally. I think I acted in good faith, but who really knows? When one is dysphoria’s ball of yarn it gets a bit discombobulating to be batted around for 5o years.

But now? I know I know who I am, and who I am not…and while I can do nothing about what has happened, the future is mine to write, each and everyday that is left in God’s coffers for me to walk out.

I love you with all my heart, and I am honored by each of you in your strength of voice, your commitment to one another, your loyalty to truth and your heart for justice.

There are many who could have loved you more perfectly.

There are none who could have loved you more.

I loved you utterly, totally…I still do.

And I always will. Love you.

Say on…it’s okay, let it rip…do what you must and need and want…be…become.

Cus I am here now: Charissa Grace, and I am finally free and not a helpless bystander any longer, and nothing can ever lock me up ever again.

Written in my blood and tears and sweat…and the tattoo ink of forever love,

Me…the one who was there and now is here…the one who engendered you…

Your loving parent

The Gates of Departure

Posted on June 17, 2015 by charissagrace

I feel odd, dislocated
for no reason visible
or known, when I am
about to enter thru
the gates of departure… tumblr_nptr07xEoF1risr9ko1_1280

connections of time and place
and meaning, these I shall miss
though they are not yet gone
they tremble on the cusp
of the convergence of now and then

I imagine the person I will be
and start to miss the person that

I am before I am
even gone but somehow I am
in that when then right now.

It’s because I know it
in my bones deep
that I will never be
this way, ever again
and that is such a mystery.

In Consolation’s Loving Arms

Posted on June 17, 2015 by charissagrace

Consolation…
such a beautiful word.

con- “to be”
solus- “with the lonely one”

Offering consolation is caring
like that early summer mist

cares for the thirsty ground

dreading the coming sunny heat.

It does not take away
the coming pain

but rather covers over
and assuages that fierce dread

and says I’m with you

you are not alone

together we can face the sun

though I dissipate

I shall return
always I shall return

to bear the burden with you

a gift of union joyful.

That Page? TURNED!!

Posted on June 11, 2015 by charissagrace

For The Page To Turn

Burnt Offerings

Posted on June 10, 2015 by charissagrace

These words are my offerings burnt
singed in fires of pain and hurt
written as gouts of bright blood spurt
from my contrite soul.

I take treasure from my heart
pleasures, pains, my every dart
burn them for a brand new start
the incense of my spirit.

I will rise, all clothed in red
from my tear-stained sodden bed
walk into dark woods instead
and scatter these lost dreams

to leave a path of grace behind
and light remaining there to find
a way thru hurt to Your Home kind
I sing a new song now.

From The Writings of King David

Posted on June 10, 2015 by charissagrace

This.

Gives me hope.

Always.

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise.

Mama With Me, Near Today

Posted on June 9, 2015 by charissagrace

Constance…

How I wish that you could know…know…the Love of God…the Presence of Them in your core essence.

God has been so polluted and trashed by the low things that oppose Them. God has been so misrepresented by complete morons who spin out of their corrupted souls a god made in their own image, and it is ugly, it is gross, it is cruel and it is crude…and most of all it is blind, dumb, and deaf, just like them.

God is Humble. They pounce thru every single crack in human perception that shows the least openness to Them, and They shine…oh how They shine.

They have loved me.

And that is a wonder that breaks me open again and again and again and again and…

Holy Spirit of God…Holy Spirit is Their Presence here in this creation. Jesus has ascended and is in heaven in this time and making all things ready. So Their presence is Holy Spirit…and oh the honor of Her drawing me near Her, opening the Word to me to see Her…

She is like one of my poems…layers, hints, indirection, inference, and sometimes subtle in its baldfaced straightforwardness…this is Her.

And She is altogether good, and I love Her.

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

Reader: I will never not love Her.

Never.

Your statements and judgments of Her are dust and lower than irrelevance.

Why do you fulminate and foam at the mouth because I love Her? If indeed She was just a myth, why would you even care? I love Her, and it is to Her that I have surrendered, and willingly laid down control.

Does It Matter?

Posted on June 9, 2015 by charissagrace

So I used to wonder about this…will I be missed. Does what I do make a difference in the world. Do I matter.

But Purposive Grace…remember that?

Now, when I read things like this graphic above, I know that it really doesn’t matter if I am missed or not, if what I do makes a difference in the world.

I am living with my purpose for being…and that makes every difference in the world!

This world doesn’t happen to me. No…I happen to it!

If you are reading this, struggling with depression and despair, consider the things I write of in Purposive Grace…

…and join the ‘Rissa Roo Party! Woo HOO!!

Above The Carnival Below

Posted on June 2, 2015 by charissagrace

Under this full moon I am crashing
thru clouds of popcorn kernels
shedding their hard shells
and giving up their ghosts in gasps
of heated pleasure and anguish.

I am splashing into pools of people
faces upturned, hands upraised
giving up the ghosts of burdens
long ago swallowed and peaking now
in the heat and the oil of these times

and the cotton candy I ate tastes pink
and blue and orange and tells me
it is really Skittles in my heart

(I know the truth as I fall
down in a rush amidst the screamers
and the ecstasy of a ride certain and sure
in their hearts and minds but oh so
frightening and uncertain to me).

But this moon is full, and true
and makes room for me to rise
up up up faster than gravity
and flush with glory into the night
that hugs the earth like a fierce maiden aunt.

And I am learning to let go and enjoy
the ride under this full moon and high
above the carnival below.

Eternal Continuum (Part Two)

Posted on May 31, 2015 by charissagrace

a central point
lurking somewhere
between nothing
and all—
and infinitely far
from understanding
either…blind to nothingness
from which
we flashed
at the call
of Fiery Lips
and numb
to the infinite
glories that engulf
and hold us.

this point unchangeable
this chameleon point
containing all contradiction
and inconsistency

(desire to be a friend
the bent to manipulate friends
the being of a neighbor good
the compulsion to walk away
cold hearted without helping)

this point,
this tipping point
has honour enough
to erect the head
of the poorest bum,
and shame enough
to bow the shoulders
of the greatest king.

that Point,
that Mediator
of Merciful Hope

(drying the tears of a broken world
reviving the Image of the Divine within
overcoming the enemies
of our Death and Sin)

Sure, grounded
obviating and containing
all contradictions
in this point

that point provides
the only grounding
and offers hope
for the contradictions
within, and more
than mere hope
for escape.

That point redeems the tension this point is.

We have born
the image of
the man of dust.

We also will
bear the Image
of the One
in Heaven

overflowing
with
thankfulness.

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