Tag Archives: Transformation

The Footprints of Ghosts (commemorating my first Father’s Day as myself)

Posted on by

3

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.

 

tumblr_n5rsyii6WR1qzcapfo1_500

 

The Crucible of Disappointment

Posted on by

0

Constance…have you ever been disappointed?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fear seeks to escape…Faith seeks to embrace.

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

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

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

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

Love,

Charissa Grace

tumblr_n6th972ggv1rw5ktmo1_400

 

 

 

Summer Snapshots in Haiku

Posted on by

3

rain-filled ruts reflect
an apple red summer sky
that highlights brown hills

in the wind my skin
revels amidst bitter-sweet
echoes of that day

wind, you will have a
terrible time smothering
my soft clarity

a good poem somehow
makes what’s true a little more
disturbing/profound

Poem within this poem
Grace inhabits this body…
image finds its Source

I love you, but it’s
not the finish, not the end
but the beginning

You say “I love you”
a sound so tender that the
dead could even hear!

tumblr_n3nzg5fIT31rrj3pro1_1280

 

A Futrospection

Posted on by

3

There is a tenderness
in your eyes
in your voice
a trembling

so I can never
tell whose mother
or little girl
you might be

and even I
must believe it
tonite, remembering
in your eyes

such a tenderness.

tumblr_n58cxkaQO61rtk6qmo1_1280

Wyoming Woman

Posted on by

0

you have such beautiful western legs.
when i see you walk away, i love you.
when i see your back, the curves of

your shoulders…

love is the exact reverse of self-desire.
in the act of love…
…and goes forth
continuous.  fluid.

what is tomorrow, that it cannot come

Today?

tumblr_n09hgi5ttW1qjr7k7o1_500

‘Neath Marvel Skies

Posted on by

1

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

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

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

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

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

tumblr_n62flujwaP1sh8g7no1_500

Bury My Head in the Sky

Posted on by

3

My wet red heart beats in time to music
flying in soaring skies and wonder-winds…
it is my womb, my temple and matrix,
at long last no more a stranger to myself.

Contractions, pangs, contraction, pang…
beating out my birthing, my being, my life,
long brownly-buried in dry dirt dusky,
deeper than an ostrich can see on its best blind day!

Strains, arpeggios, wildly dance and swirl
in bluey blasts and exultations and voices lift in high chorus
and wallow in jammy joy, crooning to me, babe in transit
from womb to shiny bearing-burst to tomb.

I, halfling of becoming, in and out of grave ground,
fidget fast and twiddle and twitch, touchy and unleashed
and free soon flying and yet bound, sommat
still in cloddy clutches of dust to dust.

But here…in this middle earth ethereal and having boundaries not yet charted…
I glance with gleaming glad eyes all round and see the ostriches burrowed down
and crammed, obliviate wings futile and folded and settled, serenaded
by secure and intentioned monotone unknowing.

I lift my voice and my words, and they drag dirty distressing fingers
from the tender white curve and arch of my throat
and my song squirms and heaves and lurches forth from fleshy grave
to live again in light and take its place in that Thundrous Sky Music Throng!

Words, familiar and yet never heard or said or sung spring
glad and fresh and ageless from my lips, and my yearning theme flashes brilliant
and dances on voices and notes, sings of birth and never wonders why
but simply shouts resounding “Bury my head in the Sky!”

tumblr_lqmuwcUAWP1r1xebmo1_1280

 

 

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

Posted on by

0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love, Charissa Grace

F     ear
I     nsecurity
G     uilt

L     oneliness
E     xile
A     nxiety
F     rustration

tumblr_n17tbuHkEC1rnchxso1_1280

He Cares (Song from Isaiah 43, 1988)

Posted on by

0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was bleak…for real.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chorus: 

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

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

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

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

Arise Our God (song from Psalm 44: 23-26, 1992)

Posted on by

0

Around the same time as “This Desperate Prisoner” was written, this song came to me.  I think it precedes Desperate Prisoner, and carries the same desperate cry.

 

Why do You hide Your face, and forget our affliction, our oppression?
Our soul is bowed down to the dust, and so we cling to the ground, arise for our help,
And redeem us for Your mercy’s sake, for Your mercies sake!

Chorus:  Arise our God, hear Your people cry! (2x)

As the purifying fire consumes all the stubble and ambition,
Our heart will not turn back, for we have chosen the flame, the Cross and Your Name,
so redeem us for your mercies’ sake, for Your mercies sake!

Chorus:  Arise our God, hear Your people cry! (2x)

tumblr_n4pqsiqjcE1rr2cq6o1_400

Judge Me Not

Posted on by

0

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

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

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

Love Mercy

Do Justly

Walk Humbly.

Love, Charissa Grace

 

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

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

tumblr_n5ut1fDRHc1qmr38bo1_1280

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

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

tumblr_n3z6ezNhji1szrg39o1_1280

This song gets to some of the longings of my heart

Posted on by

0

Constance, perhaps you could take the time to watch this video…it’s lyrics also apply to me and my situation.  I am soo very lucky, in that my beloved loves me, from the beginning, and now, and to come.

But so many people are outcast from the circle of love and affection by the ways our culture has formed expectations and unspoken rules and allowances, based on specific understandings (or lack thereof) of moral codes, on binary gender expectations that do not even come close to fitting the wide expression of actual physical expression of gender, even down to the DNA…

As you watch, won’t you please resolve to be kind t everyone you meet?

Oh…and here is a clue:  being kind does not mean “hating the sin but loving the sinner”!  That is a nice and neat idea, and yet it is designed for the sake of the one who fancies themself not a sinner…it unconsciously creates a barrier, and regardless of how nice you are then?  You will be condescending, and you will undercut your message, and ultimately fall woefully short of the example of Jesus.

Remember Him?  Yunno, the One who drew so close to sinners He was accused by the conservative religious crowd of His day of being a sinner…and let a prostitute wash His feet with her tears (oh, you sin-haters and sinner lovers…have you ever cried such tears at the feet of Jesus, and then dried them with your hair because you were so grateful for His kindness to you?  Just wonderin’…), the One who ate lunch and dinner and celebrated with sinners everyday.

I know these things to be true…because long ago, when I was still deeply dissociated and yet drawn by Their love for me and thus had said Yes to Them, I was a staunch practitioner of that glib maxim above.  And I recall how finally it dawned on my how haughty I was, how like the man in the temple who was thanking God that he was not like the sinner over across the way who was weeping and howling and crying out for mercy as he beat his chest in agony and desperation…

A kind word to those in need.  Such a small thing really, and yet it is the biggest thing under the sun.

When Will I See You Again? (Psalms 42, a song from 1997)

Posted on by

0

When will I see You again?
When will I see You again?
When will I see You again, my Friend?

How can I come before You,
When my heart is broken in two?
How can I come before You again?

My spirit cries out night and day!
But the heavens are brass when I pray!
And the songs of Zion have all turned to dust in my mouth!
Hey-yeahhh (soulful singing groan)

Father please do not forget me,
Please see me, I’m broken and empty.
My heart has been blind and deceived by my pride.

I come to You wretched and lonely,
I’m lookin’ for life in You only,
Oh Father please gather me safe to Your side!

My soul longeth hard after You!
Let Your Loving-Kindness break through!
And the songs of Zion will all rise again in my heart!
Hey-yeahhh! (soulful triumphant sung note)

tumblr_mpu1h8KwIt1s3vv7jo4_1280

Burning Love (Song 1992 fr Habakkuk 3:17-19)

Posted on by

0

Found this in the stuff from the past I am going thru…it is a song, and seems appropriate to this lil stretch I am in when all tastes flat, and my heart hangs heavy in my throat and I want to cry all the time…

 

Burning Love

Even if the fig tree fail to blossom, and the fruit not come forth from the branch,
Even though the yield of the olive should fail, and the fields bring forth no food.
Though the flock should be cut off from the fold, and there be no cattle in the stalls,
Yet I exult in the Lord my God.  Still I will boast in the Lord.

The Lord God is my strength, I rejoice in His salvation,
Even so I sing of His great Love.
He will make me stand, and I will walk on His High Places,
He surrounds me with His Burning Love…His Burning Love.

All of you whose hearts are barren, lift ye up your eyes unto your King,
And you who weep with broken spirits, lift ye up your hands unto your King.
For He has pruned you with His favor, and He has purified you with His Love,
Cast away all your filthy rags!  Run to Him and find your life in Him!

Worship Him in Broken Beauty, Crown Him with your tears,
Lay your contrite spirits on His altar.
Let His fire consume your song, sweet aroma to Him,
Give Him everything you have, you are His Bride…you are His Bride.

tumblr_n4cidvxlSS1rw5ktmo1_400

Song of You

Posted on by

0

(this was written in 1979…and I just found it, and I was struck that it might well have been written to myself, hidden and lonely and imprisoned in all the things that I was bound by…shame, loneliness, distrust, abandonment, alienation…and all that in the midst of a life that appeared to be vital and outgoing and faithful and fruitful!

remember Constance…be kind to every single person you meet!  You never know what burdens they carry, and what the pebble of one word might do, with eternal effect.)

 

Song of You

I see you
not with my eyes
but with my heart
a face no darkness can consume,
no light can outshine,
with me always through-out time.

I hear you
not with my ears
but with my eyes.
I hear what lies behind the syllables
I see them, feel them deep inside
words you could never speak or hide.

I am touched
not by your hands
but by your thoughts,
feelings caution can’t erase
nor careless caprice…
you give me peace.

tumblr_n53f2oanty1r8cbwbo1_1280

Declaration

Posted on by

0

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

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

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

I recall the old song:

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

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

Amen.

tumblr_n5x9r0s1wA1s92p0go1_1280

Can’t Cry Hard Enough

Posted on by

0

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

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

…and I can’t cry hard enough.

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

…and I can’t cry hard enough.

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

…and I can’t cry hard enough.

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

…and I can’t cry hard enough.

tumblr_n5w0xt2Hwh1tyml48o1_1280

The Mountains of Myrrh (from Song of Solomon, 1992)

Posted on by

0

There is a tremendous subtext in Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs as some call it.  Like so many other parts of scripture,
this book is like a rose, and peels back layers of meaning and potentiality as you dig deeper into it.
One level that it has always intrigued me on was the allegorical level,
where it is speaking with poetry and metaphor to talk about a rich and fruitful inner life of devotion.
In relationship with Jesus, I have always been feminine, and thus the parts about Him being the Bridegroom, and me the Bride made sense to me.
Language that could be interpreted as sexual in nature is very effective to describe
the kind of connection that I have been so blest to receive from Him.

This song, taken from the Song of Songs, was written at a peak, devotional time.

I will lay down in my Lover’s arms.  I will lay down and open up my soul.
Draw me so close to Your heart, let me know Your sweet caresses,
My spirit yearns for You…and my heart burns for You…
I am lovesick with desire!  Your kisses fill me with Your fire,
the fires of love for the Lover of my soul.

Chorus:

Draw me after You!  Let me run with You!
Jesus, kiss me with the kisses of Your mouth.
I will go with You!  Giving all to You!
You are altogether lovely, my God.

I will say yes when He comes for me.  I will say yes, when He cries “Open for Me!”
Let us go out in the night to the mountains of myrrh,
I give my life to You, Lord I will die for You.
Jesus breathe upon my garden, so that my heart will never harden,
may the fruit please the Lover of my soul.

Chorus:

tumblr_mxosn4ZQtZ1qjr7k7o1_500

 

A morning stroll in my neighborhood

Posted on by

0

I was noticing
the rows, the order,
pretty enough…
splashes of
purple and pink
and blue and red
and yellow…
but the order
made me dizzy!

My mind
tried to smear,
to blur,
to mix them
again
ordered
but not in
order
rank and file.

Yet her furious
digging and stabbing
at everything that was
“not order”

distracted me,
clods flying
as if from between
a gopher’s brown legs!

Her mouth
grim as Patton’s
as he intently
urged Rommel
to the grinder,
she stalked
and tracked weeds,
rocks and sticks.

I scurried by
with my head low
and eyes straight,
lest she start
on me next!

Around the corner
I was back
to my yard,
a sprawl of
Western Oregon tangle
and blackberries,
wild strawberries
and everywhere
ferns ferns
FERNS…

The tweeties
flit and dart,
the robins rule
with bright wakefulness
and the stray cats
wallow in daubles and
puddles of warm
golden light
(seemingly somnambulant
but staring steely
thru slitted eyes)…

and beds here,
tousled and frumpy made,
and beds there,
letting any rooted thing declare
if it be flower or weed
(this bed knew
that “weed”
was a label made
by “Dictator Order”)

and tall oaks
gathered round
the fire ring
to watch their
cast-offs become
the wine and bread
of many a bonfire.

I know
she hates my yard.
She tries to
shame with sarcasm
and damn
with faint praise.

I get it…I do.
She gets unsettled
when control frays.

But I love it.
It comforts me
in its balance,
in its flavour

and in its eversong of liberty.

20140506_185447

Fragrant on the wind

Posted on by

0

In the field,
damp with dawn’s ablutions
in lakes, and mists
the wheat waves,
sways, whiles away
the time passing,
time dancing,
time light and lilting,
time ponderous and paunchy…
always the time…
And always the wheat,
ever returning to die
and rise again
and die and rise
undefeated and always
dancing its tango
with time.

And the moon watches,
and glows with delight
from dances of her own
in the bright and starry night.
She has been filled
and emptied
and filled again
these eons,
these mere minutes,
these seasons…
And always
she delights in sparking
wheat to rise,
tides to turn,
and the sun
to take heart
and shine again.

Into the field,
for the first time
in this river, this grind,
a graceful clear bright chime
blooms fertile,
lush life flourishing
midst flowy flux
and flowers poke,
they peer,
they peep out,
and then more boldly
they bloom and blossom.

At long last
the wheat connects and
the moon embraces and
the Promised Final End and Graces
of All Journeys wafts fragrant
on the wind.

tumblr_n50kllmWFx1rf4xjio1_500

A fantastic and very informative essay helping to clarify gender

Posted on by

0

Constance, I think the biggest obstacle between most people and acceptance of the multiple gender expressions in our world, is ignorance.

Ignorance.

So, the most effective way to eradicate that obstacle is education.  In that spirit I offer yet another reblog of a post that does a great job providing such education.  As technology has advanced, the nuances of our universe are increasingly revealed…they have always been there.  We have defined things by what we see, what we know…it is only natural to do this.

So…I pray that your eyes would be enlightened and your horizons expanded by the following post.

Love, Charissa

1506901_799718696712678_6031042298859176871_n

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

 

Intersex: What is It, and What It Means for Sexuality

Kyosuke
Kat Callahan

Intersex: What is It, and What It Means for Sexuality

If some people are born neither male nor female, what does that say about our traditional views of sex and gender, and as these individuals will grow up to have sexual orientations, how can those orientations be defined? These are the questions asked by Michael Passaro in an essay which explores the possibility for a labeling system which validates and makes visible intersex individuals.

Lately I have been doing a lot of thinking about the gender and sexuality spectrum. I’ve discussed many things, from how we can and should define bisexuality, to whether sexual orientation should be a special class from other attractions. I will most likely do separate posts on each of these but one of the topics which interests me most is that of biological sex. What is sex? What are its defining characteristics? And how does it intersect with our many other characteristics and identities?

Lets start with the very basic. What is sex? Seems obvious to most. Sex is being male or female. Right? Well, yes. But maybe no. At least we can say that this is the widely understood use of the word. Let’s note that sex is not to be confused with gender. Gender is the social construct of categories of people and the behaviors and ways people are supposed to feel and relate to those categories/behaviors. But let’s explore a little bit into what it means to have a sex.

I suppose the simplest way to do this is to ask how do we know what sex you are? This is determined at birth by a doctor and is dependent on your developed sex organs. If you have a penis and testes you are male. If not, female. Simple right? We run into problem with this system when we encounter infants born with differences in their sex organs’ development so that they don’t really have a penis or a vagina or a clitoris. So which sex are these people? Well, doctors have decided in the past that they should be altered to fit into a binary system that cannot represent the form of the child.

As you can imagine, this worked for a time but soon came under scrutiny. People were slipping through the cracks. Because most of the children who were operated on were made into ‘girls’ these cracks were pushed open when people started to experience problems related to men’s health. This combined with the growing science around DNA moved sex’s definition to determined more by the the chromosomes contained within your cells.

This has led to even more interesting areas of what it means to be male or female. Almost everyone knows by the 7th grade that a female has two X chromosomes and a male has one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. However like all things in life, things aren’t this simple. There are many variations that can occur. There are people who only have one X chromosome. People who are XXY or XYY. There are XXX people and there are XXY people. What do we make of these? If DNA is the defining factor and there are so many different possibilities why do we only have 2 sexes?

Science has created a circular loop. We look at your physical characteristics at birth, and if needed we look at your DNA, but if your DNA isn’t fitting into the XX or XY categories we then look at your physical development again.

I, and many others, propose that there is a false sense of security in there being only two sexes. Anne Fausto-Sterling, a professor in biology and gender studies at Brown University, put forward that there could be as many as 5 different sex classifications (in a thought experiment). There is growing recognition in the scientific field that intersex is a legitimate claim against a binary understanding of sex. Germany and Australia have officially recognized that sex may not necessarily be only male and female. Australia allows for a sex “X” and Germany allows for children to be born with an indeterminate sex (to be determined at a later time).

There are many issues to deal with for intersex individuals. Issues of gender, issues of recognition, issues of bodily integrity and many more. All of these are best addressed by those who are directly affected by such things. So I would like to look at what this means for the rest of us who are (think we are) conventionally sexed. What does this mean for our understanding of sexuality?

The most glaring complication is what this means for our understanding of sexual orientation. In general sexual orientations are in relation to one’s self and the object of desire. Namely, if they are your sex, or the ‘opposite’. This is complicated when we talk about sexual orientation in terms of gender instead of sex but let’s focus on sex. Because now we do not have a binary what does it mean to be ‘heterosexual’? What is the opposite of male? What is the opposite of intersex? This is further complicated dependent on the number of sexes we allow. Can only some people be heterosexual then?

A further complexity arises when we look at what it means to be bi/pansexual. Again, operating under the assumption of sex as the object of sexual orientation, bisexual and pansexuality are the same (because traditionally there is only two sexes). However with the introduction of intersex this changes. Do we then interpret bisexual to mean two sexes? Do we adopt the view of many bisexual activists and say its attraction to one’s own sex and others? Maybe this would depend too on how many sexes we deem there to be.

Lets assume there are 3 (male, female, and intersex). Is a bisexual person still the same as a pansexual one? A person who is attracted to their own sex and others? Or is it a person attracted to two sexes? Many people might say the latter. To those I raise this question: Suppose I am a male, and I am attracted to females, and attracted to intersex individuals. BUT let us also say that I am only attracted to intersex people who resemble females. What is my sexual orientation? I seem to be bisexual. Because technically I am attracted to two sexes. However, am I really attracted to intersex people or am I actually attracted to their female-ness? It seems inaccurate to say that I am attracted to intersex people as a whole because its really only some.

This seems to justify breaking sex down further than only 3 sexes. Lets say we adopt the 5 sex system put forward by Fausto-Sterling (or even more sexes). Now how do we deal with the bi/pansexuality issue? Does/should bisexuality apply to those who are attracted to 2, 3, 4 sexes (and on and on)? Or ought we have trisexuals, quadsexuals, etc.? I’m not sure.

For clarity’s sake maybe classification ought be specific to the number of sexes you are attracted to. But is it the same for a male to be attracted to a female and a male as it is for a female to be attracted to females and female-presenting intersex? I’m not sure. Maybe we ought overhaul our entire classification system? Maybe the number is not the important bit but the specific sexes we are attracted to. Is it better to have a more complicated but also more comprehensive/accurate system?

Its clear that the system that we have doesn’t work. We can’t decide how to determine sex, let alone tell how many there are. The current binary places people into tiny boxes and clearly others many. It has been used to justify altering infants bodies unnecessarily, not only dangerous for the child then but then altering their entire life (forcing them to take hormones and still have the risk of medical complications later). As for sexual orientations – as a classification system we need to make a judgment call as to what it is that is important. Is the defining characteristic the number of sexes your attracted to? Or is the sex of the person important? If all we want is simplicity then clearly numbers is the way to go but I would question the value of a classification system that doesn’t accurately reflect the diversity that exists.

Read more about sexuality here.

This essay was originally published at Issues of Humanity. Republished with Permission. Image via Shutterstock.

“Wadded with stupidity?”

Posted on by

1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charissa

tumblr_mwanwsOjox1s31miko1_1280

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

Posted on by

0

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

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

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

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

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

and the nursing babes…
and cry out to Him…

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

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

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

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

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

We are hungry Lord…
For our husband Lord…

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

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

Bridge & Chorus

tumblr_n1o53ba5sj1qjr7k7o1_r1_1280

What Cis Folk Have In Common With Trans* Folk — Everyday Feminism

Posted on by

0

What Cis Folk Have In Common With Trans* Folk — Everyday Feminism.

Constance, I signed up for this newsletter a week ago or so.  I have been thrilled with the articles they have been sending.  They are accessible to a broader audience than some of the other things I have read lately that, while extremely cogent and thoughtful, are nevertheless a bit more esoteric in that an understanding of some more uncommon philosophers is almost mandatory to truly comprehend and apply the thinking to lifestyle changes.

(Whew!  What a run-on sentence!  Giggle…that is the epitome of what happens in my brain as I wade thru those articles!  🙂  )

But on Everyday Feminism, the content is pitched a bit more at the generic level, the introductory level, and thus more accessible.  This article in particular was quite helpful to me.

See, I am still learning about myself…I always knew what I was, even while I dwelt long in the land of Nod (disassociated), but I am just now knowing who I am!  And I read the words of others who have long practise and great facility with these concepts, words, and are adept at translating them into a broader commonality, and I find my awareness and understanding growing well.

Please give it a read…there are very likely transgender people in your life, and you do not even know…heck they might not even know (consciously)!!  In your jobs, in your schools, in your churches, and in your own families.  We are not sexual deviants or perverts, we are humans, and we have been, for whatever reason anyone has been, created thus.

Love and prayers, Charissa

tumblr_n4vkgeMYHQ1r89lywo1_500

What Cis Folk Have In Common With Trans* Folk — Everyday Feminism.

Many Paths and Peace

Posted on by

5

Deep, in a tangled wood, damp,
sodden in velvet dew and drenched, perfumed
with cedar, with pine, with fir
and oak.

I have hunkered down here,
comfortable and peering out,
into the distant and clear cultivated field
with its timorous tractors trailing
droning beetle-like scrabbing and scritching
thru metal lined throats.tumblr_n2udhchnjO1s2z59jo1_1280Deeper in, one can get caught,
snared and snagged in the brackish brambles.
They clutch with needle-lined palms and
infect with greedy lassitude and
seduce you to stay, and become
part of the ever-tangle.tumblr_n4exm2jPku1qixiezo1_1280But here, in the copse on the edge,
I am free to nudge a bit deeper
into the tangle when I am low and tremulous, and
free to step out to the clearing and
wave my red-cape soul at that android bull
and holler out…

I love to linger here,
wrapped in my blanket and
huddled down with simple things.
Crunchy yeasty baton of pungent
bread broken, and chunks of Dunbarton Blue
growling explosive bass lines of
musky-meaty-briny-cream intertwining
the tangled wood’s sweat in the heat of the sun, and
simple thick garlic sausage, hard and chewy
and satisfying.

Day passes, and I sip strong dark roasted coffee soused with cream
and peaty scotch, and let its tides stir me, calm me, open me…
And I hear the throaty gurgle of the deep tangle calling,
and I hear the scuttling hurly-burly stylings of distant throngs…
and the birds, surfing that in-between gulf, smudging that line,
that threshold with magic singing  seamlessly weaving
a spell of sound, of longing, of contentment…and wistful peace.tumblr_n2oewarUKo1s2z59jo1_1280And I wonder at what I hear.
I wonder how long the oaks have sat,
humming oaky thoughts that transcend
the transient Kingdom of human history?
I wonder if the Oaks sang the vines awake,
or did the Vines, pregnant with fecund waking
sap and summer, thrust up and reach with their
familiar and low-rhythmic song to wake oaks and
taunt the tangle with merry fingers waggling
and grateful and greedy and hungry
and content?

Later, in the early soft gloaming I rise from my
den of antiquity and ancient comforts.
The tangle, the clearing, the fields and fowls
… and the vines…
have pierced me, are in me,
have made me one of them now,
one with them, and I amble home
full of many paths and peace.tumblr_n43zooElHv1t3jtfro1_1280

Spitting Bones

Posted on by

7

I remember the bones…smooth
with the thick patina of reverence and religion.
Pushed thru the bars of my crib, one by one,
proffered by priests and priestesses
frantic in the grip of their god.
Their god of two faces, only two…
and bones, always endless bones.
I cried fearful and turned away from
the face their god thrust into mine,
wrathful and hungry to eat me,
and spit me out as bones.

I remember the birth of days, endless continuum
of spitting bones (they fed) forced into my heart
by fingers of dread and violation.
Their food was wormwood, was fungal,
was necrotic and charnel charcuterie,
it was bones thrown, divining that
never-never-land, that future of failure
and folly-laced affliction offered
as communion that roundabout me
all partook of, eating the body and drinking the blood
of a god breaking them all for itself!
Wretch that I was, east of Eden and hungry,
alone and spitting bones.

But the days when my cradle concealed
only an ash heap desolate and bleak in the wind,
and the nights where my bars branded themselves
into my soul to make me their always-prisoner,
began to be cracked by winds, by tremors, by thunders
and by storms, always storms railing,
leaving me soaked to my bones
and raw from my bars,
but slick and wet, ready for birth.

And even as I had spit the bones of that god
bitter from my velvet mouth, I reached,
and gripped hard, and wrenched in desperate anguish
until at last those sharp teeth
(that hungry god’s unwisdom teeth)…
those brands burnt sizzling into my heart tore loose!
Bloody and gore spattered, glistening
with dread power draining, diminishing.
I welled up my outrage, my despair,
my affliction and conjured from them
alchemal ancient power and found my niche,
found my mission spitting bones!

And now?
I sit on downy green mounds,
on high hills become mountains!
I forage in fields of gold, omnivore
and gleaning food from gods forgotten,
gods ignored, from Grace Herself
Who is bounty and variegated victory!
And I eat, freely, with no fear or terror
of the old god who died and cannot rise again!
I draw strength from the meat of complicated cuts
that must be cured and marinated and braised off
until they loose their grip on gore and their poison is annulled.
For all my days, I will be one who can consume all things
and grow to grace others and thrive,

eating the food… and spitting bones.Luna

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

Posted on by

0

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

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

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

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

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

tumblr_n4lg9pZv1z1r2zs3eo1_1280

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

And They were faithful to be there…

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

and the moments resumed, commenced once again.

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

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

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

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

Charissa Grace the Grateful Girl forevertumblr_n4mf72qUM41rk1cbbo1_1280

Hezekiah Walker New Video “Every Praise” – YouTube.

Comments on Creation’s Communion

Posted on by

0

I rarely take the trouble to interpret my poems for you, Constance…I think it is part of your own pleasure as a reader to dig in and chew, or to imbibe deep and feel the intoxicating buzz later when it enters your blood and sings its song there…dare I even insinuate it is also your responsibility as a poetry lover to allow it to disturb you, or trouble you, or even flummox you until you suss it out?

My poems are hidden inside themselves very frequently.  They are one thing on one level, multitudinous other things on other levels, they are always the same unless one word is read with different meaning and all is transformed…

…hey I am a transgirl, so is it any wonder that my poems are like me, someone hidden inside something?  Giggles!

Anyway, I want to provide a bit of background to a few things:  First of all, I want to tell you what happened after I birthed the poem, and began to go back to clean up my baby, dry off the afterbirth, feed and nurture it to vitality.  I immediately began to adjust the women-seasons metaphor.  Everyone knows that Spring is the gay and skipping girl, flouncing boldly into Old Lady Winter’s mouldery austere house, throwing up the windows and letting the stale and leaden air out!

Right?  WRONG!!!!

The poem did not give that contented groan (like my doggie when I scratched her secret spot) as I attempted to edit!  No…it went Dustin Hoffman under Laurence Olivier’s drill in Marathon Man!  Screamed in horror, fear, and outrage, it did!!  So…I went with it, and actually I love the way it turns the expected and familiar on its head, and it challenges our ideas that each season is representative of a different stage of a woman’s growth (for to me, the seasons have always been feminine)…it poses the notion that each season has a complete cycle within itself, and in its usurpation of the fading queen, it dooms itself to the same overthrow!  That clash thus takes on a fascinating depth and the iterations of metaphor grow in multiplicity.

Secondly, the word haint is an old slang word for haunt found generally in southern and rural locations.  Consider the variety of meanings layered in haunt, and understand that application of haint.  It is also a funny contraction of “have not” and/or “has not” together with “ain’t”…haint.  So ponder the reference to places as that contraction, and the elevator begins to move rapidly in its own directions thru the poem.  Lastly, haint eventually took on the connotations of a scary-mean woman, or an evil bitch…and thus the poem circles around on itself (even as the seasons chase each other endlessly in a game of Tag) and references the women mentioned in the first stanza, and the whole understanding of who is the biddy and who is the bouncy flouncy Queen B gets tripped topsy turvy.  It plays back in to that cycle of usurpation.

When people see me, they “see” me…and then if they spend any time with me with open heart, they SEE me…that is how my poems are.

I invite you to reconsider this poem with these clues…perhaps it will help with this one.  I quite like it, but only time will tell us if it an unruly towhead that gains dignity, gravity and gusto as it grows…or if it is a juvenile delinquent that is hellbent to be the lovechild of Meatloaf and AC DC!!

 

Blessings, Charissa

 

Today…somewhat grey, overcast

strewn with intense undercurrents of lurking blue…
the panties of summer hidden under
prim and proper petticoats of spring,
the Old Biddy!!

Spates of lacey rain which pretend to be huffy tuffy winter rain,
but her joy and laughter caresses as drops light onto vines,
and perfume the earth deliciously.
Smells of loamy soil and green gritty saps running,
and flowers broadcasting fiercely and fragrant!

Birds serenade along, as earth and sky, lovers always,
vie and embrace, and join,
and then retreat to their corners of creation between rounds…
lovers rounds, music rounds…and sounds.

My heart walks, LEAPS into favorite territories, and haints…
moors and hills and lanes…
forest tangles and rows…

and High Mountains. 

Always High Mountains beckon me…
years of riding their stringent intractable slopes,
dizzying switchbacks,
and punishingly friendly gradients….oh High Mountains!
Sweat and tears my offerings,
and fitness and expiation
the blessings They bestowed upon me. 

How I long to share with you these feasts,
deep and austere
On this Golden Gravid Spring Day

Julia Serano: Amazing Quote from “Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity”

Posted on by

0

Hi all…I can’t recall if I already posted this, but it made me cry when I read it…fierce tears of passion and purpose, as it summarized everything I aspire to someday be as a person, and as a woman.

Trans or Cis:  I challenge us all to aspire to these sorts of heights, and leve behind the lowland easy conquests of outward appearance and sloppy confirmity to the slavish requirements of the current paradigm of what make Beauty.

 

Love,  Charissa

 

“My friend, still seemingly perplexed, asked me ‘So if it’s not about genitals, what is it about trans women’s bodies that you find so attractive?’

I paused for a second to consider the question. Then I replied that it is almost always their eyes.

When I look into them, I see both endless strength and inconsolable sadness.

I see someone who has overcome humiliation and abuses that would flatten the average person.

I see a woman who was made to feel shame for her desires and yet had the courage to pursue them anyway.

I see a woman who was forced against her will into boyhood, who held on to a dream that everybody in her life desperately tried to beat out of her, who refused to listen to the endless stream of people who told her that who she was and what she wanted was impossible.

When I look into a trans woman’s eyes, I see a profound appreciation for how fucking empowering it can be to be female, an appreciation that seems lost on many cissexual women who sadly take their female identities and anatomies for granted, or who perpetually seek to cast themselves as victims rather than instigators.

In trans women’s eyes, I see a wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be recognized as female, a raw strength that only comes from unabashedly asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world.

In a trans woman’s eyes, I see someone who understands that, in a culture that’s seemingly fuelled on male homophobic hysteria, choosing to be female and openly expressing one’s femininity is not a sign of frivolousness, weakness or passivity, it is a fucking badge of courage.

Everybody loves to say that drag queens are ‘fabulous’, but nobody seems to get the fact that trans women are fucking badass!”

tumblr_n3zd7r2VF01qllucco1_1280

― Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity

On Notice!

Posted on by

1

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

Let the Tetrarch know
that I will step forward
in grace and upon grace
a wounded-healer to be.57dcca2a25c7abbce57b0b42f3e53cd9And let the Prideful Patrons and
Practitioneers of Patriarchy
be put on notice:
If the sword of the healing-wounder
should ever bless my grasp
with its blue-bejewelled hilt and
silver redemptive sharp blade,
I will wield it with
remorseless pity, and soft relentlessness!
I will the rivers and seas follow,
to overcome by giving way.tumblr_n3004aNe8v1qllucco1_1280

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

When Rain Runs Backwards

Posted on by

0

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

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

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

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

tumblr_ms8vftuUnp1s5cyzso1_1280

Landscapes

Posted on by

1

Tell me landscapes are frames of mind.
I believe words have meaning!
No gift will do…tell me what this means

to you…

I’ll come at summer’s end,
Your spirit’s sky, the highlands of your

Bearing, your heart’s Blue Night
Here, the rainbow above winter is your
Banner, your face a masterpiece

a landscape

Tell me landscapes…
I believe words…
No gift…
Tell me…

tumblr_n3mwwbkYQ51rp4thho1_500

Thank You in the Pain (December, 1979)

Posted on by

0

O Boundless One, in Whom Wisdom doth dwell
You calmly exercise Your purging blade.
One cut, and I scream Cease! This pain is hell,
But You heed not this reckless renegade.

Strife finds the wounded sparrow of my soul,
and stalks it without quarter through the heat,
in dark-fire trials of purgation patrol
strife captures its cut quarry in deceit.

And then You demand thanks in all the hurt!
With that command my sparrow falls from flight!
Yet only in its fall am I alert
to the reasons for praising Your foresight.

Thank You for the pain’s sweet overthrow,
a sparrow cannot fall and you not know.

tumblr_n4c4qiJua41rw5ktmo1_500

Gifts you give yourself

Posted on by

3

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

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

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

tumblr_n0mir2xaMN1r47bczo1_1280

Your Happy Daughter

Posted on by

2

Unquenchable, I sally forth in song
Unbreakable, I shatter into view.
Unmakeable, I plop onto the wheel
Unanchored now, I give myself to You.

Come down, come close, come change this mottled clay
Into the Living Woman that I am.
Take every barb and barrier stinging sharp
And give Your song, that bright celestial jam

tumblr_myq7vuvWLK1s2z59jo1_500

Let Heaven flow into my tattered soul
Let earth be rent and give up all my dead.
I rise remade, renewed from sorrow’s bed
Your daughter, touched, delivered, and made Whole.

tumblr_mxahpypALn1rdyojao1_500

Find Me

Posted on by

0

Look.  Past appearance, past hair and smell
and braying wheezing dischord as my soul
Strives to sing.

1310a349f850dd15dcb03d256b5d490e
I am HERE!
Singing, dancing and waiting.
I groan and ache.
Who I am is not here,
Who knew that emptiness,
null could be so
concrete, so staunch,
so unyielding and
sternly hard?

My absence is a pit that breaks my teeth.
PULL ME OUT OF MYSELF ALIVE!
Let me live, be.
Please? Deliver me.

God grant me grace,
chance to let the knife
Cut away the bray
and set my heartsong free.

tumblr_mx7jm2mnNl1sn57dio1_500

From Whirling to Spinning

Posted on by

3

She spins,
drawing down and deep
from her most secret treasure.
She carries with her silk,
gossamer strands and strategy
and patiently she makes
from who she is inside…
her one and only option.
And need.  Her One Desire.
She gets life, sustenance,
exists for transformation
and creation
of her web of life.tumblr_ldlhpe2nsW1qdnbr8o1_500And I watch, fascinated
by her patience,
her diligent patience,
her perseverance.
Mama, teach me
to take the traumas,
desires, longings,
emptinesses, hurts, wounds,
deposits and experiences,

tumblr_ms0faipPls1qibhgro1_500

Teach me to yield
and let this whirling
confusion become spinning,
and spinning out of who I am,
that I might spin a web
to catch Your Sacred blessings
and life.

tumblr_mxzav3akpm1r89lywo1_500

Surfacing

Posted on by

0

I’ve swum and I have paddled
For years, all senses addled.
To finally break thru
And surface, all things new.tumblr_mmyku34hNY1rkukq7o1_500
Today is a beginning
I’m somber and I’m grinning
I’m in, but coming out
Grace protect this tender sprout.

My Heart a Book of Love

Posted on by

0

My Heart a Book of Love

A book of love, composed by stilted hand
And tongue, stilled by True Beauty’s Blessed Face
Ah! Crippled yet compelled to rise, to stand
And take my heart and blood and make my case.

But ’twere ink blood, and tongue a fearsome sword
I’d be dry, drained before I’d scarce begun
To transcribe my desire and cut the cord
That binds my soul to earth’s dark woeful run.

A  thousand swains, a thousand thousand more
Slain by this tongue become the sword of love
Would give but just a drop of ink, no more
The blood of every poet’s not enough!

Doomed if I write, doomed if I do not write!
Ah Blessed Doom! I yield to your sweet Light.

tumblr_ng74k4eMMq1ru18duo1_500