The Things We Say

…and don’t say.

We’re compelled sometimes by forces beneath the surface and even around us that evoke reactions and responses to different events. Events include the words of others because words are events. They are the movement of energy from within one human into the world. Our words, our facial expressions, our online posts, the way we drive, the threads of communication weave their way around and through us into our world. And sometimes we look back and cringe, and we hit the delete button because we don’t want to be misunderstood. Or because of wounds unhealed, we believe that anything we say in criticism of another is somehow wrong. There are so many reactions we all manage consciously and even more unconsciously.

I know personally there are freezeframe moments of reactions to the genocide taking place in Gaza (and yes, other vital places) that I wish I could put into context, the context of who I am and what motivates different reactions at different times. I have been severely harsh at times. I called Biden and Harris both vipers because they were ignoring, as far as I could tell, the genocide taking place in various places around the world. But do I know everything at play in the job of presidency? I do not. Sometimes there are times when the work of growth within your own heart and mind requires you call someone a viper. It’s that complex. And I sit with what I said then and know I opened something up within myself that needed it. And I know neither of them are vipers. They care.

(And if you want to get on with my main point, scroll to the last paragraph. I understand!)

At the very same time I utter a harsh rebuke, I am striving to see every human being on this planet with the eyes of love and hope. Love of our shared humanity and hope for our growing into truth and love as we weave our way into the stories of life. Yes, that love includes our favorite enemies. I want to always hold to a spark of hope that the worst out there will one day emerge free of the rule of all that would destroy and devour. At the same time, a number of them would likely only receive rebuke from me until I see change because the lives they’re devastating require it of my heart. This is what First Lady Michelle Obama meant when she said, “…we go high.” We hold to the good in all humanity.

We each have unique needs to assert, to support, to pull back and to ignore depending on where we are at any given point on our paths. Some of us may seem not to care about what many are screaming about. As a result, some folks want to declare those who are silent to be in agreement with bullies et. al. But are we going to see our own complexities and not see those of our fellow humans? I know that silence in the vicinity of turmoil or oppression is so very often, if not always, not agreement with bullies or “the enemy,” but confusion, exhaustion, trauma, ignorance and fear. Some folks are deeply into a work of healing and nothing else can take their time or attention. And they long for those who’re being oppressed to be free. But they just cannot give time to anything else. Silence can also be an awareness of one’s limits and a sensitivity to the causes one has committed to. And it can be about sensing the timing of when to speak up.

Given all these complexities, we often must choose a cause to devote our time to for seasons because there is that much need in our world. Some folks have so many things to tend to in their daily lives, they literally must prioritize the causes they feel deeply about so that the very point of life itself is not devoured by advocacy or fear of not supporting all who need support. You can advocate to the point of depriving yourself of your own humanity and losing sight of the needs of yourself and your loved ones to great detriment. But you will look very good to everyone else. What are you fighting for when you leave no time to love those around you? And with thoughtful strategy and intention, we can all pitch in where there is need. When more of us are in agreement about different causes, the burden is lessened. So, why not move with assurance that your needs are legitimate?

We also advocate by choosing to focus exclusively on our own lives and learning how to walk our talk and be there for those in our lives. Any time we honor our own value, we are honoring all value.

I believe we can and will all one day know that, just as this earth holds venomous creatures, she also holds butterflies and birds singing to the heavens in the same vicinity of what lies beneath. And as it is with the earth, so it is with the human. The hope we possess rests in a longing to see our lives ruled by a love and awareness of these polarities while we traverse a path up the middle, reaching sometimes into extremes as we weave the truth of all our value in love. We really don’t want the worst of our swamp creatures to decide what we do or say, do we?

So, the words we say empower or devour, inform or obscure, or, or, or…the possibilities are endless. What we desperately need is a world of people growing ever more aware that we have more than enough love to hold each other in faith that we will ultimately grow beyond any presumed failure of truth or justice or love. In other words, hopefully we can give people room to be who they are in love. And we do that by acknowledging that damning any one person for a thing s/he said (and yes, even what s/he did) way back when, serves none of us. It’s the pattern of the life itself and that life is still speaking, and we’ll know their truth by what they create in this world. Who knows, maybe if we hold the seemingly worst of us in love and faith for change while holding them accountable, our world will transform and truly new days will bloom beyond what seemed to be impossible wreckage.

The Minnesotans who sang from the streets, lifting their voices to ICE agents, telling them it’s okay to change, to see where you’re in the wrong, are an example of the truth that there is enough love to redeem us all and save our world from the forces seeking to destroy our humanity and to devour the work of love. The most extreme of us are literally in need of compassion along with accountability and you will find their wounds are what lead them. They don’t realize it, but their actions are weeping a call for healing and release from fear. But we can, by being sensitive to why we’re saying what we’re saying when we’re saying it, hear that call within ourselves and in the lives around us.

To many things there is a season, and knowing when and how to speak is a work in progress for everyone who gives a damn about life and love. I hope we can all cover each other in grace and love at every possible turn.

On with it…

jruthkellyLeave a comment

Material Commitment

Material commitment. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while in Berlin, said, “material commitment” in the midst of so many other equally powerful assertions. Why does that excite me? It excites me because we truly must create and nurture on the physical plane those truths that affirm and protect our value as a world of humans ready for love’s work.

Work. Material. Commitment.

If you look over at the piece of furniture to your left, your eyes will see a material object, no doubt. But what your eyes won’t see is the reality equally real, equally present and that is what we cannot see but through a powerful microscope: all the movement that is the solid object still there to your left or your right. We could go so far as to call that movement we’re not able to see with our eyes spiritual if we want to do that. But we don’t have to do that in order to see that someone valued something and created an object as a result of that value. They felt an urge within to create a thing and a thing now is and the urge that prompted the creation is that which no microscope can reveal. Yet that urge is just as real as the jiving, vibrating molecular stuff of every person and object the world over and every urge, every longing, every belief, every fear is just as real as the airplane flying overhead and every bird singing on high and when we act in the energy of any urge, we are literally weaving that energy onto the physical plane. Though our work may not be as obvious as a coffee table, airplane or lovely bird, our work is very real.

And sometimes without realizing it, we have made commitments. We commit when we act on what we feel and we feel when we commit to what we value and the intricacies and variations are myriad. We might lose ourselves in the possibilities. But we won’t because the time constrains us and insists our focus be on our value and on the rewards of committing to the absolutely beautiful value of every human being on this planet. And we’ll get there by seeing that just as a carpenter has the power to create a world of beauty simply because s/he wants to, we, too, have that power with every effort we put forth in agreement with the boundless value of every creature on this planet. And it starts within the one heart, your heart here and now. And you, me, they cannot do it alone. We are asked to see, in this age, how connected we truly are and in that seeing we can be encouraged by the love shown on the streets of Minneapolis in defiance of hate and, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, in the cities like Berlin and so many others all over the world where people refuse hate and build from love.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is weaving the truth of our value through her words and her actions as she boards a plane and lands on the other side of the world. And as she speaks truth, insisting on all our value. We, each one, literally do the very same thing daily though we aren’t often aware. My prayer is this: that we awaken to the energy we weave and begin to ask ourselves how we might be wholly who we are in love so this world can birth the age to come, a time of love and peace and plenty for all.

Calling all would be weavers of love…

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wakens my heart to truths that fell into a slumber in the tides of some surreal life challenges. And I know she will continue to do this everywhere she goes because her heart is on fire. And I will say this to anyone who thinks they know she didn’t do a thing the “right” way or think she should’ve done thus and so or she did well and oh, or said this and that: her whole life is speaking and the message is undeniably authentic and life-giving. If you or I were judged by any who misunderstand us, we would be bereft of the love we must all realize materially and spiritually in our lives, a love that gives room for us to become and grow into all that love calls us to be and create.

Read the full quote below and ask yourself where you fit into this work of love.

“We all need to buckle up. That is the moment that we are in. But if there is any place that shows that good people can prevail over the horrors of inhumanity, it is Berlin. It is Berlin. And it is so many other places around the world that can be a front line to show that we can overcome and we can defeat fascism by a class-based solidarity that champions all of us. I think about this, I think about this, and I’ll end with this note, but I think about this very often because, of course, the universal health care systems in Europe are the envy of every American. And it is truly such a revolutionary environment that you all grow up in the universality of health care, because it really is a decision and an affirmative material commitment to everyone’s basic humanity, to human dignity. And to me, it is not a coincidence that universal health care systems across Europe were established in the wake after World War II. They are directly connected where you had all of this destruction, in all of this rubble that was built on a politics of persecution and division, but when we decided to move past that, we built material systems based on universality, affirming our human dignity. And I think it’s so important for us to recall those lessons for today as we confront many of the shadows of those similar movements.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

AOC is saying that at the worst of times a people responded to the devastation of war and hate by affirming value in love. And they did it politically. Amidst the rubble, the spiritual rubble. And we are, all of us, in a swirling whirlwind of rubble of every kind. We need to know ourselves in the center of the storm as the love we have been created to be and become, create and nurture.

On with it…

jruthkelly2 Comments

Social, Loving Nature

Fromm’s words, quoted above, on the nature of humanity and how it must intersect with, if not completely overtake, our social existence resonates powerfully with me every day. History, especially as it reflects negatively on us, suggests we’re divorced from our loving nature and the idea that we might devise a way to weave our loving ways into the social fabric of our world seems almost other-worldly. As if, as if we might actually manage to pull off a total revolution of love such that all of our social constructs and systems, sources and industrial complexes transform into a state we would identify as love-infused, the thought whispers something of heaven on earth. And all I can say to that is, “Why not?!”.

Truly, if we do not aim for the highest, the utmost best living for ourselves and for each other, we will not move beyond the now that appears to be solely dominated by greed, by fear and hatred, by war, by sexual oppression, by empire and by an industry-riddled human/body concept of being human. We appear to have been totally assimilated by the Borg, and in fact, many of us have been trapped. Without a tribe, without friendships and community, without healing, without neighborhoods standing up to the agents frozen in their icy refusals of love we cannot rise above the entrapments so many of us have endured generation after generation.

But there are such neighborhoods, aren’t there? We live in a world where ICE is sent packing and people come together in refusal of the big lie, the lie fear poses across the canvas of our world each day, the lie that we are not one, not truly knitted to each other for eternity. We truly are tied together. And that fact can guide our choices each day as we face the world roiling, as we choose to refuse defeat and despair (and get the help we need for defeat and despair). One way we can choose that refusal is to commit to befriending our own humanity and the humanity of those with whom we’re connected and those we encounter as strangers. Love must be fully embraced on deeply personal, life-altering levels by every precious human being on this wonderful planet.

Without love, we are all strangers in a strange land, alienated from any possible richness of living. But the wonderful truth here is that we are not without love. We are not without the presence of a divine source within and beyond us, a force calling us to reach higher and grasp more deeply. Love is not an airy fairy, pie-in-the-sky notional vibration. Love is play and toil, sweat and laughter, tears and healing, blood and strength, plans and shouts, integrity and intent. Presence. Action. Vision. Commitment. These are the stuff of love and they speak to the truth that any society can insist itself into a love-focus, a love-commitment that transforms and births a beautiful world where we are not only one in our hearts, but in our actions and in our creations.

A transformation embracing the whole world, a revolution that heals every life open to the truth of our unity is as simple as refusing any other motive force but love.

On with it…

jruthkellyLeave a comment

Selah

Weep the loss, darkness
falls around us here, but love
love carries us on,
and along we’ll flow,
a song of songs healing hearts,
love’s brightest colors
releasing our days
as our gratitude unfolds
for those who’ve gone on,
leaving us without
the song of their presence here,
but beyond they call
rallying hearts strong,
apprehending all
of love’s sweetest harvest, full
and overflowing,
bestowing wholeness
in the ever after of
all we claim here now.

—

2026 ticks along as we face a world in turmoil and losses daunting, threatening our sense of power, of choice. And yet, love as the fully-muscled, ever-reaching force sings us a song of resonance to the father heart of a God within and beyond, urging us onward. May our vision encompass details never embraced before and may our work refuse despair, nihilism and all that clamors futility. What have we not yet done? How might we be who we are in ways more liberating for all? And how may our lives explode colors vivid and alive with soul?

Here’s to the comfort flowing from the heart of love and to all we can heal within ourselves and in a world on fire. And to the pause, the melting into being fully present with all we hold dear, let us know deeply the call of peace.

jruthkelly1 Comment

At One and the Same Time

Paulo Freire’s articulation of the human condition, of the divide between human solidarity and alienation, whispers to me of the grueling mission of working out our own salvation in “fear and trembling”, as the scriptures state. In his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire states:

“The oppressed suffer from the duality which has established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic existence, they fear it. They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalized.”

I stop here with these words and reach deeply within my own experiences of having been ravaged by violation and oppression in my childhood and beyond. The work of healing requires intimacy with these truths expressed so perfectly by Freire. We must literally face the danger of becoming a shell of who we truly are unless we own that our living has become, or might’ve always been, a reaction against the internalized mechanisms of oppression formed in the badlands of trauma. Our thinking, our comprehension of ourselves and others is held captive by the minds of those who grasped us and shaped our sense of self, of other and of the world by their violence against us. I’ve found many internalized strongholds of self-accusation, self-annihilation and outright fear of who I am stemming from the decrees and energy directed at me by those who wanted me to forget, to never recognize their hand of oppression and violence in my life. And the damnedest thing is, I’m seeing how these constructs against the oppressor within pose as my most discerning self, the one surest of my frailty or my inadequacy or my shameful power, and even my beauty.

Freire goes on to say:

“The conflict lies in the choice between being wholly themselves or being divided; between ejecting the oppressor within or not ejecting them; between human solidarity or alienation; between following prescriptions or having choices; between being spectators or actors; between acting or having the illusion of acting through the action of the oppressors; between speaking out or being silent, castrated in their power to create and re-create, in their power to transform the world.”

And with those words I’m lifted up to an altitude perspective where my vision encompasses all the intersecting threads of choices, fears and shame extending through and entwining with life after life after life the world over, institution after institution after institution after…after every human and every human construct. These threads unite us all, a tangle surreal, though we were already united in our value, however ignorant of it.

The oppressed are everywhere. We are, until we can reach into the fathoms of our losses, our traumas, our generational afflictions, suspended in a slow motion suicide while careening through the timelines so thin, so quickly consumed by history. I think of my sisters and how we, each one, morphed into reactions against tremendous violation and horrifying oppression and how we then turned it on each other in the ways families can become cauldrons of reaction, of actions desperate and even depraved. It, if you look on the whole of it from up high there in the air, appears hopeless.

And yet. We have found ways to heal our wounds in love. And love, as a muscled, visionary, relentless, courageous, undaunted force most creative, most transformative empowers us, each one, to seek and to find discernment and healing. Who am I really? Who am I when I’m no longer afraid of my power, my beauty, my voice? And why did I ever believe that which is beautiful is bad? Violation of a certain type creates such a mindset. And that mindset then determines to erect a “do not disturb” sign on a life languishing in hope for tribe, for unity. The irony bites. But love and unflinching determination to unearth all the corpses crying out within our being wrests us from the bitterest ironies. And eventually, as we work to lift some of the heaviest of weights, as we envision a work of restoration, much like the work of surgery and physical therapy, we gradually move ourselves into authenticity, into being who we are in love. But we cannot afford to overlook the wounds more deeply embedded into our souls.

And to say it is a work of “fear and trembling” is not to exaggerate. I’ve quaked, sobbed, shook and shouted my way through some memories so unreal and seemingly unending and the work continues. And I hear, “it is for freedom Christ set us free…” and “I am come that you might know my Father…” and a passage speaking of the “love of Christ” surpassing understanding and I find myself embracing a work of salvation wrought first by one who walked this earth, one human and holy, just as we all are in love, just as we all are when we face fear, shame, and the death wrought by trauma and the ravages of alienation. And this is the Jesus I always knew though he had morphed into the oppressor by way of those internalizations only trauma etches on the earth of our being. People of every color and creed have experienced Jesus as the oppressor ‘though his life shouted freedom and love, his words whispered of union and truth. And he was presented to me via the minds and hands of those who’d brutalized my soul, eventually brutalizing my sense of the flesh and blood, bone and hum of Jesus’ most beautiful self, of his wholly being human and Divine.

As are we all…whether we embrace religion or embrace the truths present within those human constructs, constructs inspired by Divine awareness. On this side of a growing awareness of a deeper walk with the Divine all I can say at this point is this: Do not call me Christian. Do not speak to me of sin. Speak to me, instead, of the love and the relationship, the union within, the dominion of freedom and Divinity found in the deepest wells of our being, that deep calling unto deep, making us whole as we face the work of becoming who we truly are…in love and beauty. If all some of us ever desire to realize in our lives is a vision of Christ as symbol and his life as guide, if we can take that and apply it in love, facing the shame that binds us, we will find that we are at one and the same time, both human and Divine. Many people within every religion, and even within agnosticism, do the work of salvation within their souls via a process so closely resembling the Christ process we really cannot afford to lay claim to the one true path, can we? We are, ultimately, each one of us a part of the One in love and we carve our paths from the soil of our experiences, hopefully finding that unity Christ so deeply longed for us all to experience whether we embrace him or not.

On with it…

jruthkellyLeave a comment

Do It Now

When you would grab me down there
and grasp and stare, boring into windows here
I would scream until I wouldn’t scream
for fear of implicating not just me, but you

And the implications of one who fought hard
to reclaim her windows, the deep pools you
raped for spoils you could never claim
despite your name, despite your preeminence
screams for justice here, screams my names:

Ruth, which rhymes with truth, and Jez,
perhaps the sweetest treasure,
the name I grew in my depths,
the ones your eyes sought to plunder.

But I never let you reach the me you
could never be, never produce
for all your raping of the tRuth,
and plowing sweet songs for sooth,

but not saying the violence your nature
exacted on my silence, my song wrenched
from my throat by your spinnery,
a bamboozlery, wickedry cinching,

clenching the nothing of your reach.
I seethe here, a love fiercely seeking,
finding voice you took. the song my soul
never forsook sings here, sings here, sings here

And yours I will never be for fear,
or for the claim so dear you could never be.
Open up your own eyes, set yourself free.
I see our history and love,
only love dares to free you, too, whole, see?

Dear ones, stop wrecking thru windows,
the little ones, innocent and defenseless
against ravages only you can satisfy
when you bow the knee to love…do it now.

photo by j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved

jruthkelly2 Comments

Sol/Sunna

Starting the process for filing for absolute divorce today and we’re both seeing it as time, no ripples or obstructions. I’ve been appreciating runes of late and got Sowelu for today’s big decision. Suffice to say the sun and the goddess Sol inhabit much of the meaning in that particular rune. So, the image I got AI to come up with for how I’m feeling is shared here along with my commentary about divorce and relationships and love.

In short, it’s clear to me that the final decree means everything and sets everyone free so the best iterations of agency, prosperity and love beyond the milestone can grow in each life. Relationships don’t always do what you think they’ll do, just to be simplistic in my assessment. Love changes and the love I had for the husband of my youth is now the love I feel for the co-parent and brother I know and appreciate. We’re grateful for and to each other on a lot of levels especially given our commitment to be under the same roof long enough to be there for the needs of our precious, complicated and beautiful, neurofantastic children. And love itself…it defies all the rational, ideological and practical notions, sustains and sometimes crashes lives into new manifestations of being human. Love transports people across space and time, emboldening, encouraging, embiggening and empowering life to thrive, create and renew purpose. I would not be where I am or who I am at this point on my path had love not turned me upside down, inside out and spun me completely, while also constantly nurturing my soul in the various beautiful forms and iterations love embodies.

There’s not much of a safety net that I can actually see in my life beyond this point besides the ongoing kindness in the bond with my beloved family, the amazing family of my soul, precious friends and the father of my children. I’ve decided that is more than sufficient. Vastly so.

Onward…

jruthkelly6 Comments

Dance

A rhythm hums and jives
beneath the fear,
the rage, the tears, desires,
grief, multiple stress fires,
under all the dross a drumbeat
defies loss, gains,
and suggestions of inadequacy.

But first: feel, wail, stomp,
tell the story yet another time,
grind your teeth, your hips,
your angst and every fucking fit.

Don’t stop there, let your face display
the rage, the sorrow,
the joy, the lip-curling bliss
and the sweetest ecstasies.

Let it all roll through,
tips of toes to top of head
and everything, everywhere
in-between… roll up, roll down
a spine afire, not finished
with living, not done giving, filling,
jumping, gyrating this being human.

Don’t let disaster freeze your body
for fear of losing sight
of the decimated, losing the fight
for a kinder humanity ’cause grief and rage
clamor loudest.

Run to the pleasure,
the places sweet and tender,
and howl ‘til animal you births
a truer you, resilient, feet moving,
hips swaying, shimmying flow,
plotting overthrows of fear, greed,
and oppression by a love refusing defeat

‘Cause your feet, yes, yours,
mine, theirs, crave the sweetest trance
dance delighting, satisfying, magnifying,
electrifying every fiber of our being one,
every last one of us…

photo by j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved

“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future?” Herman Hesse

jruthkellyLeave a comment

The Silver Cup

Listening to America’s “Lonely People”, I remember hearing this song when we would sneak radio time in my sisters’ room. “The world”, forbidden and made sweeter by the alleged taboo of wicked rock music, felt so far away.

I imagine looking back over my life and finding many forbiddens bidding me come out and play.  Stray and sneak away outside the gate. Songs and goings on whispered outside my world, bidding me run fast from the realm of religious zombies and their kool aid.

How appropriate the line: Don’t give up until you drink from the silver cup. Even fundies can be saved, y’all.

I eventually ran. I’m so glad I ran.

Today, sitting with the melody and the impression, it strikes me how life/humanity/freedom pulled at me even then, a sort of promise of days to come. Certainly, the times have included some loneliness. But the final impression filtering into my awareness as I see myself, ear up against the little radio, grinning while “Lonely People” greets me on this side of things and leaves me, not lonely, but deep in my sense of inclusion. I feel myself as a voice among millions, crying out for peace.

I ache daily. Hostages, cobalt mines, “terrorists” and refugee camps in danger as I brew one steaming cup in my world of immense wealth however financially limited. I hate, I loathe the unfairness. The inequity. There is no good reason for what has been happening in Palestine for decades. Not one, not a single good reason.

And truly, Zionism triggers my fundie warning system. My newsfeed is full of Zionism’s fallout, bodies torn. So, I run to music, to birds, to working with my hands. There’s no way to engage that belief system, to pry it open and let the light in, set minds free. And yet, I wish. I know well the truth that no one can know until, well, until they know. And as a fundie, no amount of shame or ranting would’ve brought me out of that darkness. Only love, love and life breaking me open.

So, enough with fundies, and please know that I know that not all Zionists feel the same way about things unfolding in Palestine. People are complicated, but what’s happening to Palestine is quite straightforward: genocide. The purpose of the trigger, the purpose I make of it, is one of reaching out to life as I am now. Today. I’m not “chosen” anymore. The sea of humanity may well engulf me, wipe me from all memory eventually. And that is a beautiful thing, to be in the flow of being human amongst humans, flowing towards the next expression of love.

And as I flow, some things remain. I still pray. I pray to the love that was, is and is yet to be. I pray to the love within me, the love within every soul. Let our longings grow, our clamoring souls shout us all towards deeper truths and a love that refuses oppression of any and every person on our planet. May our *chosen* values embrace everyone, and our holiest lands spread far and around and through, to our precious one and only earth.

jruthkellyLeave a comment