Rivers and Roadways

In my dreams, my niece is driving us down a winding road through mountainous terrain as the trees call their colors, reds mixing in with lingering greens against a pale blue celestial expanse, golden leaves, too, all of fall’s offerings whispering of crisp air, hintings of magic twinkling through the scenery. And she’s being her thoughtful self, inquiring as to whether or not I’m up for her mind ramblings. Of course, I am. Somehow I manage to respond despite the fullness of color and feltness of beckonings from mountains and trees calling me. And she begins to speak as the yellowest vibrance reaches my eyes. I remember my heart breathing a sigh of kinship known, of finding home in the expression of another soul, of one so alive with wisdom and curiosity sublime.

Then we’re seated across from each other in the daylight, outside once again. But wait, were we outside while in the car? That is exactly how it felt. And our conversation continues. Would that I could reproduce the words, but what is communicated reaches deeply into my moment even now as I reflect, as the dog yawns loudly in the next room, as music flows softly into my ears and the door opens, leash clasps rattling the usual greeting with Apollo’s clicking nails advancing on the day. In my dream, my niece’s spirit reaches depths of me so accustomed to being alone the words to convey such communion don’t exist. She gave me snippets of herself, layers of our ease with each other and strands of eternal unity at once tailor-made for all humanity yet uniquely spun and weaving, woven into my own tapestry of comprehension and creation, of quiet and fullness. She was being with, being with herself as she shared of herself and in so being, with me, imparting a potent stillness within myself that opened my heart and arranged my mind in a peaceful reception of grace, of beauty, and of both our bond and of myself. And of the world.

And on that energy, with such fullness, I awoke to the dawn. Sitting with the images, sifting through their import, my heart feels our union healing, restoring layers of my own curiosity and my own wisdom that were not so much lost as they were jumbled and confused by my explorations and work of healing, finding memories so jagged and dark that the effort to reclaim the little girl drowning there eclipsed my sense of life’s song, and of synchronicities calling us all home to the within of the mother and father heart of God, the depths of the lover heart of that same divinity basking, emanating wholeness. And a ride in a car along a curve-rich roadway with an ancient soul I’ve so often known, lifetime after lifetime, transports me both home and onward into the dance of knowing and creating deeper meaning from life’s many and often overwhelming reckonings. I am stilled and moved, enriched and hungry, hungrier than I’ve been in a while now, the sort of hunger that opens the senses, digs out the ears of my heart and mind, my soul resonating fullness reaching for the stars, the moon.

And as I shifted in my bed before rising, the call of a train rumbled into my reverie, a hand extending through residual dark as it slowly retreated in the dawn of a new day. Trains have always bellowed out their hellos to me in the night. I’ve claimed them as a kinship, as a reminder of my union with everyone in this beautiful and daunting world. Their unique and almost shrill insistence that I am not alone reminded me, as I nestled in the warmth of morning, of how sweetly life’s details may reach us if we’re gifted with the connections and unions most nourishing, friendships so often encouraging us to hold on in love, to reach out with hope and to rest into the beauty of being who we are despite all the memories and goings on that might scare us away from our strengths and from the truth of our wholeness in love.

Where would I be today, every day, without the love healing my most ravaged layers of being? Each new day confirms for me, particularly as I traverse this path of healing the type of wounds, rape wounds, so often disabling, so often literally wrecking lives, each second confirms I am a miracle moving through space and time, that the divine has stalked me nearly constantly or I would be dead. I know it as surely as I hear the call of birds in the morning and the sound of trains in the darkest night. I know I would not be here if I had not been loved by forces I cannot see but know exist for all humanity to receive. But I also know that we aren’t all wired to receive such without instruction, and I know that despite the bounty of such forces, we all need the real and muscled closeness of arms around us holding us tight as we shake through the worst frights, as we pick through remnants of memories, seeking clarity. We need to be with each other, not only in spirit, but in presence, in physical closeness as we weave our lives through the mountains and greet each other across tables under trees freeing us from the lie that we’re alone.

And if we’re especially fortunate, we’ll know the beauty and love of nieces, of nephews, of daughters, of sons, of mothers and fathers chosen, of lovers and friends bestowed. We’ll know our unity with all humanity through the magical works of divine appointment, those sweet encounters in dreams and in our waking lives when we reach out to reconnect, when we hold our arms open wide to receive. And we’ll seek treasures in the night, even the darkest, and there we’ll find the within of heaven’s richest offerings.

I’m surprised in this moment, though I shouldn’t be, to find I’m immediately transported to the richest offering my heart conjures of all I imagine and know to be heaven’s offerings, and it is that of one man’s sacrifice. He was a man, truly. And he was divine, just as we all are. He lifted us out of the mire of defeat, of separation from the mother and father heart of God, of alienation from ourselves and from each other, of darkness so dire, of dejection wrought in destructive forces and he placed us, each one, on a path of possibility, of treading slowly but steadily towards the light. And he urged us to do the work. I find that he is not the Jesus the world at large proclaims him to be from time to time. I find that he is not the Jesus insisting we claim our Christian creeds and commitments and so this is why I’m surprised to collide with him as I reflect here. I walked so far away from all the indoctrinated world of religion had told me he was that I thought I had maybe lost the right to even declare him. But here he is, with me, holding me up through my darkest night. And despite my letting go of Christianity’s Jesus, I realize he never left me, who he truly is could not be lost, not by any of us, whether we believe his encouragement, his most precious offering or not. Who he truly is has been confused and blurred by dogmas and doctrines, by fears and campaigns of control and greed. He calls to us from within our own most deeply human moments, those moments we take for granted and even those moments we have easily demoted to secondary status. Those moments when we might otherwise stop and take a deep breath, soaking up the stillness, noting the beating heart within. Those moments when we’re caught with a gasp and a piercing longing to be claimed by another so fully and completely that we are never the same. Those moments when we laugh deepest. All the times we reach out our hands to grasp another’s when the feelings overflow and heads meet in a benediction more blessed than Sunday’s program. Those times when we know our value is something so precious, so beyond all that our world allows at this point that we feel a howl trembling ‘neath the surface of the stoic face required to remain in the day-to-day demands.

Every howl, laugh, gasp, piercing longing, every beat of our hearts, every deep and shallow breath, rends the lie of separation when we know ourselves as the hallowed and holy humans we’ve always been despite the evidence to the contrary. And when we refuse the lie of separation from each other and from the divine. It is sometimes most difficult to see our preciousness when we’re tattered and torn by rape culture, by rape itself, by toxic gender norms and rejection of the soul of being human. We’re trying not to drown in a world full of genocide, war, poverty, oppression, violence, desperation. And all I can do is run to my dreams and to the light and the love, the love both within me and beyond me, the resonance imparting grace to take one more step and then another in the eternal now. I pray that we may all be greeted in our darkest nights with the truth of our unity in love so that we might begin a work of healing, a work I know seems impossible but I also know will be accomplished by those who hear and weep the call.

And yes, I hear a passage of scripture I cannot leave out of this expression: “Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:19

Here’s to nieces and curving roadways, rivers of healing, autumn’s leaves gracing our reverie and love’s reach relentless…

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To Write Love

On Her Arms…

Along the same lines of cherishing humanity, creating a safe space for the many iterations of need and longing, I’m finding the folks of TWLOHA (To Write Love On Her Arms) resonating in love. And the serendipity in their outreach, particularly focusing on concerts and music venues, fits beautifully with a vision of empowered and active influences of healing.

I’m reminded that the same societal forces dropping bombs on refugees rip through lives in the forms of hopelessness, trauma and terrible loss. I’d like to say we’re stuck in a post-war culture, but we’re actually literally stuck in a war culture and that war is on humanity and especially on humanity’s power in love as love. It crosses all divides throughout the United States, into Europe, and on into Gaza and in the Congo and everywhere greed and lust for power rules. In so many places, the war is obvious with bombs dropping, people targeting people for death for the forces of greed and hate. In many nations, war as the most financially driven industry devours the immeasurable worth of human life, insisting on economic hardship, cultural overwhelm and loss of connection. Greed trumps heart. Power-over engulfs soul. Families are so burdened by the need to simply make ends meet, a deeper work of love falls to the wayside and our children suffer. And even when families manage to address all that matters, nurturing love and personhood, despair’s reach can still find a way to grab the well-loved.

The air we breathe is the same air in which others starve and die. The same spaces war ravages afar reach us whether we realize it or not. Our souls know. And with or without conscious awareness of these influences, with or without struggles with mental health, we all need a world where we prioritize connection and nurture communities intent on reaching each other in loving authenticity. This means creating intentional and powerful spaces for healing and especially for those who cannot access the care so desperately needed to stay, to refuse the bullet the war culture surrounding us suggests we take.

I love how TWLOHA mobilizes people to be present for those in need. I long to see a world where no city is absent folks on standby to be there in person and with true presence for those without hope or help. I believe we can create such a world, city by city, person by person. And yes, concert by concert, venue by venue.

I think of concerts and tours as profound opportunities for people to reconnect with their spirituality and their deeper needs for community and healing, not only as platforms to voice support for those places ravaged by genocide and war’s many devastations. After watching the video I’m sharing here, and urge you to watch, I found myself even more appreciative of those musicians who take the time to focus on why we’re here, on the power of facing truths and seeking growthful, soulful ways to be human and healing, to live in love.

To write love on her arms
where once she wrote such painful condemnations of herself…
To write love on his arms
where once he felt the grip of horrible abuse…
To write love on their arms
where once they knew the terror of violation…

To live in a world more and more on fire for our power in love and healing,
oh love, let it be.

The image featured for this blog post is taken from the video above and belongs to TWLOHA.

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Sheeran/Macklemore

Not that I have a world stage here, but I’m going to jump in on the whole Ed Sheeran/Macklemore controversy and say that I’m with those who are in a position to protect what’s precious. Ed Sheeran is protecting something precious. Mackelmore et. al. is as well. But I’m wondering how many folks have read Sheeran’s remarks on the controversy surrounding Macklemore’s removal from the tour. Ed did everything he could, short of abandoning people for whom he is responsible. Livelihoods rely on Ed Sheeran continuing the tour. Whether or not he could personally take the hit, he is a business entity with attached participants who can’t afford the loss. And he has a unique fan base to protect.

I was ranting about Gaza before it was widely accepted, cringing every time I posted, waiting for the accusations. This was over 10 years ago. But then I went through a stretch in my life when I couldn’t keep up with Gaza or many other things. The stress & demand as mother of 3 & much else (chronic illness) pulled me into a time of mostly exclusive focus on my world & on non-stressful news. I didn’t have the pressure of folks judging me for not standing up for the same issues I’d always stood for.

My own experience gives me pause when I encounter controversy around advocacy & especially condemnation of those who don’t speak up. It’s complicated, peeling back the layers of moral accountability. On the world stage, those who wield decisions directly impacting lives are the ones most responsible. Then we could establish secondary accountability and group folks who’re able to influence the decisionmakers as thus accountable. And then we could look at influencers of all types and say that they reside in tertiary accountability. But we would need to ask ourselves what levels of demand and need exert limitations on the tertiary accountability and would those limitations move them down a notch or two in accountability. And on we go.

Besides looking at accountability, we need to also regard the ways people advocate. We have the most basic form of advocacy: using our voice. And we have other forms of advocacy: using finances, networking with folks who organize protests of varying types, using our platform, should we have one, to speak up or influence support for the suffering.

Let’s focus on the one form of advocacy we seem to love the most here: speaking up. It’s easy to say that to not choose to speak up is to side with the bully or the killer or whomever is guilty of destroying what is precious. But it’s also so reductive it risks becoming that which targets what is precious. For instance, I’m healing early childhood sexual trauma at this point on my path, and as a result, my capacity for even looking at what’s going on in the world right now is massively diminished. Simple things, as well as stressful things can set me back profoundly. Then there are those who have wounds and are unable to deal with stressful dynamics because of those wounds and all they know is that they just don’t have it. They aren’t sure why they don’t have it to speak up; they just don’t have it. Our lives can become so besieged and beleaguered by demands and poverty and overwhelming situations that we aren’t able to develop the self-awareness to know why we turn and run when we see conflict that needs intervention. Or why we pause and cringe and can’t come up with the right words or find ourselves shaking all over when it’s time to face something challenging. Let’s look at that and ask ourselves which culture creates bombs. Let’s think of this and ask ourselves what societal constructs insist on productivity and profit over wholeness. And then let’s notice that same culture and society is what has injured people’s spirits such that they are not able to speak up without it costing more than they have to give. Every transaction we embrace requires something of us. You can argue that advocacy gives back, but I would argue that you are being reductive, once again. There are people who literally cannot afford to utter one word associated with controversy or war or destruction because they have been that profoundly injured and have yet to experience the counterweights of healing, recuperation and rehabilitation. Or they are that overwhelmed by the demands of their world.

We apply our standards of productivity, accountability and advocacy as if we’re all living in the same situations. As if going to work in a soul-killing job we can’t yet escape, as if living in an economy that works against our being human, as if many other factors don’t play out in each life, adding to the overall strain. On societal and cultural levels, we are stewing in the very vibes that have caused the conflict between Israel/Palestine. We have not wrested our world from the reign of power over and greed, from toxic patriarchy and misogyny (the stuff of rape & family of origin wounding which can disable and trap lives). The truth is, this reign is insidious, reaching into our daily lives and impacting how we look at our own preciousness, our value. If we truly care about the root cause of genocide, then we care to protect those who must choose to spare their spirit and wait to speak up or find other ways to support the marginalized. We either/or ourselves into destroying the very value we’re screaming about as advocates when we do not give room for people to choose their seasons of silence. Or we don’t give room for the fact that some folks are just so mentally and spiritually bankrupt, they don’t know why they can’t speak up.

Imagine a world where there is freedom to take the space to avoid controversy and political discourse and imagine such freedom is as valuable as human life. In fact, know that it is that valuable and know that it is as valuable as human life because humans literally require spaces free of controversy and political discourse so they may heal and be who they truly are in love and truth, beyond fear and shame. We must never assume that we are all able to raise our voices. And if we judge those who don’t raise their voices, are we not seeing the privilege we reside? We are privileged to see clearly since our lives have afforded us the room to know what matters. Many lives do not encounter the room to know what matters. We are privileged to speak up since the trajectory of our lives has not so crushed our spirit that we have no idea how precious we are, let alone how precious are those who live half a world away.

Look at your privilege when you rise to condemn the silent. Look at your privilege when you assume indifference and apathy are the root cause of silence. You must first be in tune with what is precious to then be able to become indifferent to what is precious. OR: You have never been in touch with your own preciousness and are thus disabled and thus indifferent to the value of all lives. You must first know the value of your own life to be able to recognize the value of action and movement in defense of life to then become apathetic to the causes that nurture life. And then, there are those who are active in advocacy because they’ve been guilted into action. Or they want the payoff. Or some mixture thereof.

I love Elie Wiesel. I agree with him. Indifference is deadly. We must be careful to avoid becoming indifferent to the complexity of being human and of creating a world free of toxic paradigms insisting our humanity march along a rote line of compliance to the truths we embrace. I bet Wiesel wouldn’t insist those with broken legs run to douse the burning buildings. Let’s agree that mental and psychological wounds, societal and economic burdens are as devastating, (often moreso in the long term) as broken legs.

Let’s also agree that we do have seasons in our lives when we are drawn to focus on specific things that pull us away from the turmoil in the world and into our unique purpose. We must not lose sight of why we advocate. We advocate because life is precious, every single aspect of what it is to live and be human is precious, including choosing our times of silence.

Looking at musicians or artists, we cannot afford to be any less in tune with what is precious. The humanity of each musician, each artist, every layer of their lives and the lives influenced by these folks is as precious as the causes we embrace. Ed Sheeran is one who wants to provide space for youth, and for those whose needs require minimal to no exposure to politically-charged causes, or even just stress. I massively appreciate both Sheeran and Macklemore because of who they are uniquely and hope they’ll be able to share a stage in the future. But we need to live in a world that gives room for humans being human. I believe we can embrace advocacy without losing sight of our needs and limitations. If Sheeran were cheering for genocide, I’d be booing him off the stage. I’d boo anyone cheering for genocide, if I had the strength to do so. I’ll say this again: Ed Sheeran fought to have Macklemore and others stay. He hates genocide.

Toxic masculinity bombs refugee encampments and creeps into dogma and arrests compassion. It seizes the stuff of being human even if we’re not strapping ourselves into a B-52. The effects of toxic masculinity (oppressive patriarchy) is everywhere and does not discriminate against advocates. Beware the bully within, insisting we all goddamn get our asses in gear, bootstrap pronto, and start screaming right this minute about the genocide. Seriously. Also, Free Palestine.

Yep. I’m continuing the commentary on Sheeran. The above screenshot depicts Sheeran in a freezeframe example of his heart.

If we start calling each other out for which horror we’re not remembering to scream about, then we’ll be stuck on the stage for hours listing all the atrocities and the singing will end. We have every right to choose not to speak up at times. And any artist/musician/public figure out there has that same right. And that right is inherent, residing in the immeasurable value of each life. We can’t tear each other down and not ask ourselves what energy we’re actually partaking of in doing so. And if you take that same energy and weaponize it, do you have the makings of a war, the type of war that bombs people for not being like us? And no, it’s not a given that you do have that same energy.

I love that the group from Ireland bowed out with a bow to Ed and their friendship, not trashing him or their bond. They honored his vision while honoring their own and I imagine they’ll sing together one day because they both protected what they’re committed to and they did so in love and truth.

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Reminding Centuries

“The Moon’s Say So”

The design shown here showcases Part II of III of my prose poetry published here titled, The Moon’s Say So.

“And to my end this may be the most these soles know: to grow old in the hum of an ancient song & wait for the next expression of love, to know that only those gifted with fortunate favor & a timing divine make it beyond the mountain and across the sea…”

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No Ounce of Will…

“The Moon’s Say So”

The above design showcases Part I of III of my prose poetry published here titled, The Moon’s Say So.

I’m particularly feeling this bit of the quote today “No gumption of the reddest desire can re-write the years gone by or shift the mountain aside.” as I continue my work of healing. On the one hand, I wonder why I couldn’t have remembered these devastating events sooner, and on the other hand, I know remembering them before this stretch of the road would have short-circuited my focus as a mama. So, here’s to “the moon’s say so” and all that love heals as we yield to the work of becoming who we truly are in love and truth.

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Take Me There…

Love Point

Design by J. Ruth Kelly, All Rights Reserved

Many, many moons ago on this blog I wrote the following in recognition of how precious is the work of being and becoming who we are and how I’d wanted so many goals to have been accomplished by then. And well, here I am in this now. So many hopes still seemingly languish, but I feel their hum and they keep telling me love is the way and the play of being. And from being, all will emerge at the right point, perhaps not all hopes fulfilled, but I trust the pattern unfolding before me.

“I wanted so many things to be accomplished by now and yet, the time hasn’t made room for those things to emerge. Other things are growing, emerging slowly. More precious, deeper knowings of purpose, of resonance, of acceptance of this path. When healing the amness layer of self, the heart cries out to act, to do, to express in the life what is brewing deep within. But timing can make the difference between a fractured movement and a whole flowing vision-in-motion.”

I like how the poem in the above design ties it all together. It’s lovely to discover the gems here from ages ago are not only still relevant, but they infuse my soul with renewed purpose and a distinct feeling of being “a whole flowing vision-in-motion” … as I heal on even deeper levels.

Original poem post: Love Point.

Post quoted above: Just Keep Going.

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Sway Play Me

Oasis of the Light

Design by J. Ruth Kelly, 2026

The above excerpt is from the whole poem titled, Oasis of the Light. Found here.

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