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Meager Wednesday Words

30 May

 

today I know I have something to say

but I don’t know how to say it

(seems to be the story of my life)

raging words

and silence

 

but no more

I stand under the shower

and hot water pounds on my mind

and slowly beckons

 

the rhythm and meter and

then

the words

 

unexpectedly

never forced

utter grace

 

“It’s easier,”

I think,

“To live with your

hands

mind

and heart

open.”

 

dust clouds had gathered for days

I felt listless

searching for meaning

 

it takes strength to walk through the mundane

as if it did not exist

as if it doesn’t have a hold on me

as days go by and nothing seems new

 

(but all things are)

 

and so I choose to live inside this pattern of words and cadence

I live

and know

I don’t need a mountain view

a foreign landscape

a near-death experience

to do what I do

 

“It takes bravery,”

I think,

“to live with your eyes

this open.”

Beyond the Squares We Stare Into

27 Mar

 

The best things in life are asymmetrical

They are curved and covered with beautiful flaws

 

life doesn’t give itself in perfect boxes

smooth and white

everything in rows, accounted for

 

the real world is wild, undulating

growing into odd shapes and bursting forth

 

it’s the crooks that form between locked hands

waves and snowflakes

the jagged lines on a belly that has birthed children

a half smile or quarter moon

 

the rough edges of nature

swaying boughs and broken limbs

brilliant chaos

 

it’s not organized

it doesn’t come with an easy set-up manual

you can’t just unplug or restart

despite our attempts to categorize

to tidy up

to sanitize and remove all the danger

and unpredictability

 

we may approach this in fear at first

our flat world is safer, neater, more controlled

but we’ll die there locked in square coffins

 

the best things in life are not symmetrical

they can’t be boxed

 

they are rounded and covered with beautiful flaws

Like Yellow and Gray

27 Feb

some days I wake up and I am not sure who I am or how I got there

perhaps I am hung over from being intoxicated on life

that’s a nice thought

 

or perhaps who I am feels like too complex of an issue before I shower and have coffee

and where I am changes too much

either way it’s unnerving

 

I stumble across the bedroom floor and think

maybe I am on a great ship sailing across unknown waters

and a sea monster’s tail just bumped the stern

 

or maybe that was the leftover lingering reality

from a dream I was rudely shoved out of at the sound of my alarm

 

some mornings my coffee cup is half full of goodness

and that’s enough to keep me out of bed, on to slay whatever  monsters arrives

whatever thoughts try to stop me from moving forwards one step at a time

 

I couldn't make this right side up. Sounds fitting.

 

some mornings my mug is half empty

expressionless and dull

and it’s a miracle to let three good sentences out on paper

and that I don’t get seasick doing it

 

some days are like yellow and grey

internally juxtaposed

and I see churning waters mixing

excitement and cynicism

passion and apathy

love and fear

 

and so I hold on and breathe the ocean air

because I’d rather have an adventure then stability

Like Air & The Sea

14 Feb

what if I were to told you that you are loved

extravagantly

violently

passionately

in a mad sort of way that makes no mental sense

but holds you together, stitching broken emotions, a tangible presence that fills your being with visions of the ocean

wide, deep, never unending

unfathomable

 

what if I told you the entire reason you exist

is to jump into these waters

to find yourself embraced by this warm liquid

 

what if I said to you that your biggest failures

your deepest regret and guilt

your moments you want to erase

the things done to you

the physical feeling of your heart ripping in half

those words that were said you’ve spent years trying to forget

those dark seconds when you wished you were never born

 

those are simply tiny shards of rock

tumbled by this oceans waves

becoming grains of sand

disappearing into the grandeur of this sea

 

what if I were to tell you

you are surrounded by the essence of grace

a sweet smelling mountain air

oxygen, after years of being locked up in

a dark, musty basement

gasping for a breath, longing for escape from a stale reality

 

what if I were to tell you, instead of searching endlessly for love

you could revel in the truth that you are loved already

what if I told you, all the forgiveness, purpose, pleasure, beauty, passion, life you look for

is as close as the in and out of your chest

 

this is the air

you can’t escape it, you can only choose to hold your breath

or to breathe

 

this is the ocean

you can’t contain it, you can only choose to stay on the dry sand

or to jump

When I am On Display

9 Feb

I really am my own worst enemy

I think I need to fight myself

when the war for my heart

has already been won

 

but I bleed mistrust

my wounds ooze insecurity

so I bandage them up myself

 

still acting like I don’t know my role

like I am ad-libbing this character

but the curtain is not there

there isn’t even a stage anymore

 

so I don’t know what to do with myself

alone in a room with my emotions arguing

my head reciting the lines

 

and all the while

Truth is in the room, cleaning up that ripped curtain,

tearing down that stage, saying,

 

“Show’s over. Give up the act.”

 

(but I am comfortable and afraid)

 

so I move to the museum

putting a replica of myself on a shelf

summing up briefly on a sign

who I am

 

(It’s easier than standing for something)

 

and all the while

Grace is in the room, a wild look in her eyes, saying,

 

“In case of emergency, break glass.”

 

and I know I can’t breathe while I am on display

I know this room is for old things, dead things

I know that stages are for pretending

 

and just then I realize

Choice is standing there, reminding me,

 

“You don’t have to live like this.”

 

he points to the exit sign, lit up, blood-red

 

and I smash through the glass,

a self-imprisoned convict

 

and I run towards the door as fast as I can

knowing life waits on the other side

The Divorce of Things From Their Names

19 Jan

“The world is babbled to pieces after the divorce of things from their names.”

-Wendell Berry

We speak and write, but speaking and writing isn’t enough

we want charts and definitions to tells us what we mean

words are meant to communicate but

we’re always trying to read between the lines

to see things that may only be in between our consciousness

and our desire to find the answers we want

the ones we think satisfy our longings

 

I write this because I love words 

but sometimes I get tired of how they fail me

 

How they never seem to be enough

Even if I had a “genius” vocabulary

people will always read things differently

they will want neat clean definitions

to tell them what to do and help them win their arguments

besides, it’s not about loquaciousness

 

Brevity is clarity

true “genius” is saying more with less

So while I have this romantic notion improving my vocabulary

will cause the world to finally hear what I have to say

I know deep down it’s a fallacy

 

Because the world doesn’t need knowledge for knowledge’s sakes

we can “know” whatever we want  (Google it)

and it still doesn’t change the ache in us

 

Sometimes I lie to myself and think I need to fit it with these

intellectual and witty writers

but the truth is

 

I am not them

(this is me)

 

Just a girl trying to put a face on beauty with my few shallow words

Trying to strip away bad definitions of

big things that matter

 

Like happiness and success and desire

and God

 

I am simply trying to name what can’t necessarily be named

 

So much of defining is about trying to prove a point

instead, I’d like to use it to allow the beauty of a thing to unfold

 

There’s something in a name

when we name, there is an intimacy attached

 

and so maybe I can reunite ideas with their right definitions

and be sure to speak the sacred names

all of life has

not leaving out vowels or writing around the issues

because that will never move us forward

 

And so

I leave you with this;

the one definition, the one name that needs to be communicated above all else:

 

God= Jesus= pure love.

 

If that is the only conclusion you arrive at the end of reading this blog

If that is the only thing I know at the end of my life

that is enough

The Madness Of Celebrating Death

21 Nov

I walk, as I do, before the sun goes to bed

it happens early these days

despite it being hot enough to sweat

I sit on a hill facing some trees

I pick up a leaf dead and nearly colorless

and crinkle it in my fingers

I laugh for no reason

other than life being funny

then it comes as a rush

torrents of joy through my body

and I see above myself

a bird watching this being

alone on a hill shaking with giggles

I wonder if maybe I am

a child

ripe with newness

or a mad old woman who has seen

too much of the world

or maybe I am both

laughing and crunching leaves

enjoying the sound it makes

crazy and free and whole

feeling too young or too old

for my twenty-six-year-old skin

never getting “used to” being me

in all the coming and going

all the madness and beauty

and I stop laughing for a moment

and stare at the trees

so long they seem to shift

what’s left of their colors melding

their branches beckoning me

to join their yearly party of temporary death

and I concur with myself I must be crazy

and laugh a little more for effect

then I pause to catch up with

the narration in my head

and I realize

I am seeing again

and like the ruined leaf

dying a bit

so I may live a little more bravely

next spring

From Starvation to Drunken Joy

13 Nov

It’s hard to swallow sometimes
the sweet liquid that You are enough
it burns my pride as it cures it

but when I get pills stuck in my throat
(self-made medicine
from a factory in my heart
in that smoggy part that doesn’t fully believe)

I can see no other alternative
and I wouldn’t want to

truth is too delicious

because there is no cure
other than Your bread and wine

and that is my sustenance
and my drunken joy

I’ve tried  to get meat
bloody and rare
left overs from an altar somewhere

but it’s a carcass filled with maggots
I  couldn’t see that because I was
so busy counting up
what I thought I owed you

so bent on a payment plan that
I sold my last bit of grain to the poor
only for it to be lost in transport

it was only then
in my feverish aches
in my grand delusions
in my starving hallucinations
that I could somehow provide
what I needed to survive

I finally collapsed and saw
my bloated belly
and emaciated face

(and I knew I was one of them too)

I knew that the grocery stores were empty
I knew that the garden was dead
I knew that the store houses were rotting

only then was I able to be fed

carried to a feast, a banquet, a buffet
endless and guiltless and always mine

because there is no cure
other than then Your bread and wine

and that is my sustenance
and my drunken joy

“The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred-proof grace-of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the gospel-after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection your bootstraps-suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.”

-Robert Capon, Between Noon and Three (as quoted in Brennan Manning’s, The Ragamuffin Gospel)

I Saw The Ugliest Sight (And It Was Me)

27 Oct

last night I saw the ugliest sight
she emerged out of this deep place
of not believing good things
that place where anger feels better than sadness
where selfishness encompasses like a too-warm blanket
growing tighter until you have no circulation

last night I saw the ugliest sight
(and it was me)

I should be used to that, but I am not
as the new creation becomes the reality
the old is so grotesque
I can’t even look at her

she speaks out of an overflow of negative emotion

I don’t need you, I am fine on my own.

What about me?

she pleads for the world
not realizing everything is already lost to her

when I saw her
I did my best to control her
to keep her under wraps
to try to reduce the amount of damage she did

she appeared in a dream again this afternoon
as I tried to nap off this affliction

in dreams, you see
she’s always trying to go somewhere else
always searching and always coming up short
always seeking pleasure to mask her misery
always alone and unsatisfied

she’s more tame then, at least
in nightmares I can wake up
start all over again

so today I walked
I walked off my storm
walked off my angst
walked until I knew
she wasn’t real anymore

but for a moment I was glad
she still shows her ugly face at times

glad to be reminded of my frailty
how else could I remember the need for Love outside myself?

I knew in that moment
she is a part of me
the dead part
and you don’t just love me
you love me

the thought almost pushed me off balance
that she would be the recipient of such a Great Love
such a non-deserving Grace

Isn’t that the point?

I saw the ugliest sight
and it was me

(Not anymore)

I looked around the neighborhood at the houses decorated for Halloween.
It used to annoy me, people celebrating death. Hanging cobwebs and skeletons, ghost and witches, why all that when there is so much life?

And then I knew, as I watched a plastic ghost tied to a tree flutter in the wind, its body moving in a moment,

That the small difference between death and life is in the Wind.

God is a DJ

19 Oct

the music begins and I look around
I already kicked off my worry with my shoes
I already left my self-consciousness at the door
I am assuming it gave up and walked away
along with my pride and fear
cause no one here is aware
of their own inadequacy
it doesn’t exist
this isn’t a competition
this is a celebration
no one is trying to get with anyone
everyone is already together
no one is going to go home lonely
we are already home
the music ebbs and flows
jungle beats and mountaintop flutes
jazzy, then epic rock
simple guitar
carrying into the fullest orchestra
we dance
as one humankind
all shades of black, brown, white whirl into one
with the synchronization of professionals
the silliness of children
the familiarity of a couple on their fiftieth anniversary
the lyrics tell our stories
and our lips move
our voices strong
singing with the melody
It becomes singular: our story
sworn enemies grab hands
formal cripples swinging round
sons lifting up with strong arms
daughters twirling
the music shifts
we turn with it
all bodies fluid in this
river of joy
the music fades
in unison we shout:

ONE MORE SONG!

 

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