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…

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Material Commitment

Material commitment. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while in Berlin, used the words, “material commitment” in the midst of several powerful assertions. Why does that excite me? It excites me because the material is where we show what we value. And 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 see a material object, no doubt. But what your eyes don’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. Our values birth urges, urges birth values, back and forth we go with a desire to create, to do, to make real. So, that object you see exists because someone 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. And a microscope need not reveal the urge since the reveal is in the physically present molecular stuff created. Yet that urge is just as real as the jiving, vibrating molecular stuff of every object, and more significantly, every person the world over and every urge, every longing, every belief, every fear is just as real as the airplane flying overhead, as alive and significant as 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. It’s as if our bodies are the needle or the hook, depending on your preferred maker’s instrument. And we weave each day, the energy we house within our beings. Though our weaving work may not be as obvious as a coffee table, airplane or lovely bird, our work is very real.

And sometimes without realizing it, as a result of our many feelings, desires and urges, along with our creations, we have made commitments. We find that somewhere along the way, we committed to beauty, to creating beauty. Or we committed to expressing truths. And we get to such commitments by way of a series of very human experiences. We explored possibilities and we became aware of what we require to live in this life as authentically as possible. Through such explorations we arrive at a sense of our values and we recognize the commitments required to protect and nurture those values. Some of us may not realize it, but we commit when we consistently act on what we value. So many of us do this day in and day out, we lose touch with the fact that much of what we do was birthed by a commitment. Our lives feel more habitual than intentional. We literally require times of stillness to reconnect with our values, with our commitments. And for those of us with a more global sense of who we are, as we focus on our commitments, we realize the times constrain us and insist our focus be on our value and on the rewards of committing to the absolutely beautiful value of every human being on this planet. It doesn’t look very hopeful these days. Our backs are to the wall, in a very real way. How will we make real in this world the fruit of our commitment to our value? 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, we 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.

Because her values compel her forward into life, into appointments and many crucial events, 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. What are we weaving through time and space? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reminds us all that we create with every tick tock slice of time within the world we are placed and if we commit to a vision of love, we can create a beautiful world for us all.

So, calling all would be weavers of love…if you speak my language, you know what I’m saying here. Let’s not see our elected officials with the broad strokes of political partisanship. Let’s see them on a more molecular jive as they move their bodies through the timeline we all reside. Let’s see their actions, weigh the accumulation of their intentions and hold them in prayerful support that they be held by love, that they be led in truth and that we, too, be thus committed to the wellness of all humanity.

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 in such a way: 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. I would hope to be as courageous and consistent as Ocasio-Cortez.

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

Ocasio-Cortez 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. And we need to ask ourselves how intentionally we are living our love, and all that we claim to value as we go about our days.

On with it…

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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…

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Definitely…

I wrote the quote below here in 2009 in response to a quote from Alan Watts’ book, Nature, Man and Woman:

“Lose your mind, stop your go, find a place central within and unfold. It’s not bliss-ninny ohmmful denial of life’s demands or all those great plans. It’s a presence-centered way of being, always-the-lover-on-the-verge, but mentally sharp in response to life’s provocation, always deeply looking. Not so much the frenzied, grab-it-all-fast and figure and finagle and fret, but respond from the soil of your life’s lessons. Define what matters here and now and cultivate the awareness of how alive and beautiful is that one glimpse of sky you reach. And watch, look, breathe it all in as you realize that the craving quest finds it all within.

Then from there, from that fullness the going, grabbing, exploring times hum with one who is always right here now, drinking deeply in love’s peace.

Is this where we end the addictive processes, in the feast of here, now, opening heart in love not because we’ll get a prize but because being is the prize?

Maybe…”

16 years later I may have some things to say about the above quote from this blog.

Lose your mind, indeed. The past month and a half qualifies me for having lost my mind a wee bit after retrieving some repressed memories from my childhood. Those memories stopped my go and forced me to find a place central within where I might unfold. And unfold I did, perhaps a bit much.

Writing, pointillism, kicking against some restrictions and bantering with the allegedly unhinged bits within myself, I found bits of Jezness I’d long lost in the tides of motherhood. While it wasn’t bliss-ninny ohmmful denial of life’s demands, I certainly withdrew from those same demands and placed all my attention on processing those memories and all they implied, all they revealed about my present, not merely my past. The work continues, of course.

But I found myself responding from the soil of many life lessons and what I found is this: love chases you everywhere you go and sometimes especially where life insists you land whether you want to land there or not. The only way “the craving quest finds it all within” is through the presence of love within and the awareness of love beyond self, a resonance imparting strength, a roadmap to the place within where we may truly drink deeply in love’s peace.

So, when addictive processes have ceased clamoring, and they have on many fronts in my life, and when I open my heart in love no matter where the memory flotsam hurls me, the prize continues to be in the being itself. The sweetness of that treasure rests, too, in recognizing nothing, no memories’ hurl, no devastating revelations from those same memories and no resulting crash, can separate me (or you) from love.

The trickiest bit rests there in knowing that love chases us constantly. Do you know love is chasing you everyday? I sure hope so. I’ve found that the only way to know it is to believe or even just accept it to be true and then to look for the signs. Love inevitably turns up unannounced in the damnedest of places and sometimes, if you’re lucky, in the most healing ways possible.

Do you hear the birdsong outside, a flash of fawn beauty on the edge of woods? Hmmm…maybe love?

Definitely…

Photo by J. Ruth Kelly All Rights Reserved 2025

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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…

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2023 So Far…

How do I convey 6 months of epic challenge on many fronts, what has been going on?

Deep breaths, self-love and a lot of room for grieving.
Tense, gaining more awareness of the person I’m becoming.
Settled into the truth that my life belongs to me (as a former fundie, this is crucial).

But overall, I find myself defining this year as exactly that: definitive.

Someone absolutely, poignantly and beautifully precious to me and to my immediate family died suddenly.

She lived on borrowed time, but nothing prepares you. I’ve been unable to write any kind of memorial or much of anything at all. Instead I’ve either actively allowed the grief or ballistically refused any emotions associated with the grief. It turns out there’s only so much active and outward grieving a body can take within a certain timeframe.

So I’m finding the year punctuated by a few pauses. Particularly after the loss, pause/crash prevailed even if it looked like I was functioning. And when I’m not paused, I live in a way that feels like a tribute not only to the preciousness of my own life, but especially to all that Sarah couldn’t participate in for long, if at all. Just typing that little bit conjures tears. But I am seldom allowing much of their spill. It’s more about one step, then the next.

And along the way, the many newsworthy goings on hammer away at peace if you allow it. Need I state the obvious about our nation and the world? No. We all get it. But today, most of us awakened to the ongoing progress of holding the former president accountable. Fingers crossed for an actual measure of accountability and justice.

Besides all of that, I’m working even harder on what I think about and how I think while remaining aware of the energy I’m brewing. The aim is to cultivate everything that imparts creativity within myself and my world here. And I find the work of cultivation mostly to be about love and acceptance. Love informing the tasks at hand as I create and work to manifest a measure of financial abundance. “Manifest” is only used in that I acknowledge my attitudes and beliefs can either serve me or sabotage me. I acknowledge there have been times when it seemed like the universe brought me what I focused on receiving. There’s a bit of that sort of manifestation awareness at work, too. But the tricky, potentially upsetting bit rattles around reminding me that our main source of income is gone for now, daring me to indulge in fear, desperation.

Mostly the path has been massively stressful unless I insist my thoughts and actions along lines of resilience, faith and strength. And so, that is where I reside as much as possible. This insistence encompasses the ongoing work towards now keeping and improving my baseline of activity and rest. As a person with MECFS, the baseline can be lost and never retrieved depending on the circumstances. So far, retrieval has always eventually occurred for me. I’ve been very fortunate. Once a baseline is established, it’s wisest to maintain it for a period of 3 to 6 months (or longer should the MECFS experience be especially risk saturated). Beyond that, the path unfolds with gradually adding on new activities and then following those additions with maintenance months or years. It’s a tedious work wherein you seek to hold to a faith in your body’s ability to recover while recognizing MECFS can put you in the spin cycle out of nowhere. Maintaining a non-traumatized relationship to your health both challenges and galls simultaneously. So, insisting thoughts of resilience, faith and strength, saturating myself in love and patience bolsters and affirms as I work and play towards hopefully broader fields of living.

I would say that I can’t believe I’ve not posted since the holidays. But then I look at the trail behind me, and it makes plenty of sense. Throughout these challenges, the focus on Digital SoulSpeak continues, also experiencing pauses along the way. That I can even attempt an Etsy shop reveals how my world enables me, a person with MECFS, to focus on projects most folks with this illness can’t even remotely consider. I’m daily aware of the sheer luck and privilege at play in my life. My gratitude flourishes every time I recognize those bonuses as does a longing for everyone to experience the same. That’s not to say this has been easy. I’ve channeled the strength I’ve gained towards the shop and have had to rely on others for daily basics most take for granted. I would have visited my daughter when she noted how long it’s been since I’ve made the trip to see her, but now it’s just not possible. And though my visits have encompassed previously understood days of rest once I arrive at my destination, my energy needs to go towards creating and managing revenue streams. The risk is too high at this point.

So, it’s no surprise that the world of the ignored and underserved chronically ill remains uppermost in my thoughts. As I develop printables for Digital SoulSpeak, my aim is to shed light on that same world. In the meantime, my hope is to begin a website for the purposes of sharing and selling those products (and others) as I’m able. For now, my blog here should suffice as a platform for sharing the shop’s progress.

And that is it, in a rather large nutshell, the past 6 months.

Onward…

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Happy Holidays…

At this rate, 2022 is coming to a close and I’ve managed only a few posts. ME/CFS sidelined my progress as I scrambled to re-establish a baseline that appears to be taking shape now. But this isn’t the first time that baseline has appeared to be showing itself. So I’m semi-encouraged, but mostly holding my breath. In the meantime, I’ve been gradually developing a shop on Etsy and how I’m going to tie everything together remains to be seen/known. But I’m proud to have persisted in the fits and starts available to me here and there along the path.

What is a baseline, you might wonder. For someone with ME/CFS, it’s the level of activity and alternating rest that can be relied on, for the most part, to not trigger worsening of already existing/perpetual symptoms, a crash or relapse. It is found by mostly resting. Rest, good nutrition, supplements and medications take all of your time and can persist for months or years until you find you can get away with something like prepping a meal once a week (not doing the dishes afterwards or putting leftovers in the fridge, but hey, progress). So, you do the thing you can get away with, the one thing and it’s added along with resting, nutrition, etc. What’s glorious? Finding you can shower once a week without severe backlash. But it’s important to maintain the one new thing for at least a month before adding any other new things. The tenacity required shames every doctor out there who presumes this illness is psychosomatic or a result of mental illness. It asks for a level of mental stamina and willpower most never have to discover. Not that I’m bragging? I’m just fed up with what I see now emerging for folks with Long Covid. The same b.s. with people in key positions concluding the problem is the patient, not the lack of knowledge about post-viral illness. So, baselines. I had a beauty of a baseline before my 2nd Pfizer jab. That was over a year and a half ago. I’ve avoided the boosters for obvious reasons and having come close to a baseline previously, I’m clinging tightly to the progress made at this point.

I’ve managed the gradual work towards the shop on Etsy over the past 12 months by eliminating outings, cutting down on basics like meal-prep, dishes, laundry, avoiding news when it’s especially stressful (if possible), curtailing lengthy conversations, literally insisting on no-communication days sometimes and other things folks just take for granted. Multi-tasking has mostly gone out the window. One thing. At a time. And I have been sure to take long stretches of rest without doing the one thing I can do. I say no to others more often than I ever knew I could before and I say yes more often to my needs and desires as I’m able.

Can I just say…so few realize how precious each breath, each habit, each thing taken in stride is. I see pictures of a hike I went on a few years back with my sister and I just grin and catch my breath. It’s almost like you might expect someone to react if they’re coming across the photo of the time they met their most beloved actor or writer or athlete. Hey, look, I did a thing called living that day. I paid heavily for it. It was worth every ounce of pain and backlash.

Life is incalculably valuable. And that is all I have to say given the winding down of this day and my need to conserve.

Here’s a link to my humble, but gradually growing, shop: Digital SoulSpeak

Happy Holidays!

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Roe v. Wade…

Over two decades ago on May 4th, I was in labor for the first time. At that time, I still held to the programs indoctrinating me from the age of 4. Such indoctrination included what was then, and is today, known as “pro-life” or anti-abortion. With Roe v. Wade awaiting what appears to be its demise, I feel the significance of May 4th deeply.

It would be an understatement to say that I have changed on many levels. Having left the moral incoherence that was my evangelical childhood, I look back on the woman in labor. She did not realize it, but the birth of her first child would usher in a revolution, a Psalm 23 manifestation via the divine feminine, a restoration of her soul. As she pushed, and waited, pushed, and waited, the birth of her own true self became inevitable. A truth and beauty bundle, looking at the world through one eye while squinting the other in the harsh hospital light, my firstborn would begin the process of innocently and easily shattering everything I had constructed as “me”.

I look at what fundamentalism requires of a person and the toll it exacts and I can sum it up in one word: madness. But it’s a madness that creeps. Its insidious effects multiply silently over the years until the capacity to discern disintegrates. It begins with a sense of being right and of seemingly knowing what is right and righteous, but is warped as it passes through the lens of human dysfunction, misogyny and bias. You’re so right about how important life is that you have no qualms with jailing life, or condemning a pregnant woman to die for her fetus. The likelihood you’ll ever see this sick distortion is slim since challenging it would result in a domino effect of many other challenges to a whole system of identity you’ve erected a life around. And you’ve probably been accused of having a demon, directly or indirectly, if you’re habitually assertive as a woman or vocal about situations you think need to change.

My good fortune, the work of dismantling toxic programs created by fundamentalism, was made possible by the presence of my daughter, and then the relentlessness of that work continued with each of my children’s emergence. Humanity unfolded itself in front of me in ways I had never been allowed to fathom before. I couldn’t understand the attitude of suspicion and mistrust towards children for simply being children. From there, I could see myself as a child in the past, made to feel literally demonic for being human. Alongside these revelations ran the personal story of abuse one of my sisters was living in her marriage. So, I became the wicked witch advocating with/for her in our tribe. The collision of these factors broke me open. The friction with leadership in my life, the hypocrisy revealed how a woman was seen as controlling for asserting herself or not being agreeable and how this might translate to her guilt instead of the actual guilt of her abusive spouse. These layers simultaneously transported me to the epicenter of my own humanity, my early childhood and the question of authentic choice.

And eventually, though early on in my daughter’s life, I realized everything that had been communicated about God (by actions of parents presuming to embody divine right and by the group of Christians with whom they shared community), about the love of God, revealed a God who loved less than I did. But even in that, I recognized the possibility that the God I “knew” was not the God that is. So, instead of demolishing my idea of my creator, the revelation revolutionized my relationship with the divine. The only way out was through.

Fundamentalism at its core divorces the human from her humanity. And with that divorce, all types of devastation and loss become possible. She can wish to jail everyone who has an abortion, everyone who performs and assists in abortions. She can do this because she has no idea how precious her own life is and it is only when that preciousness gestates and is born within her that she can recognize the lie in the pro-life movement. Ironically, that recognition stands more in agreement with seemingly divine patterns and the value of life itself than any notion of pro-life could do.

One of the aspects of fundamentalism that keeps it perpetuating is the annihilation of choice. Choice and agency are often sacrificed when a believer gradually and consistently immerses herself in fundamentalism. Or even just in the sort of blind faith so many fundamentalists require of each other. And yet choice is what God has presumably given us. New believers are confronted with the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve were presented with a choice. It is that story that, obviously or otherwise, ushers in the work of Christ, the one who repairs the damage wrought by…Eve. It is that moment pivotal when God says “do not”, but Eve goes ahead and does. Her “disobedience” is the main focus. And yet, what was it with this God who knows all and is in control and yet still presents a risk and a choice? We could call such a God sadistic or we could call such a God cautiously optimistic. Except he presumably knew everything. But I digress. The very act of commanding away from one thing is the presentation of choice. And ideally, choice, among other factors, is what leads us to seek a walk with the divine. Agency enables our faith that it might have muscle and movement. Acts, not merely words.

But in fundamentalism one of the strongest forces at work asks that we not think too much, that we offer up our will to God, that we trust blindly. As mentioned earlier, blind trust is so prevalent it is often the definition given of faith in God. You do not question. So, God commanded thou shall not kill. And all of this is Eve’s fault. Her guilt is the background drumbeat of everything that happened that required Jesus die for all of us. That drumbeat defines a Christian however much she may or may not realize. That drumbeat becomes the rhythm of war, war against women, war against being human. Misogyny reigns supreme in fundamentalism. It eats away at the heart of every woman inhabiting such a program. And every woman ensnared thus seeks desperately to find her value.

For the pro-life fundamentalist Christian woman, there is no cause like pro-life since it immediately condemns the other woman, ignores the ambivalent if not malignant apathy of the man, and worships conception above the actual value of one human being. How else can we explain the ease with which these same fervent believers ignore child welfare? The pro-life movement makes for the perfect vehicle by which a woman can arrive at her own perceived superiority, her own seeming redemption, her own heroic grandiose notion of herself. People who need grandiose notions of self feel deeply inadequate. I would know, unfortunately. So, in one fell swoop, a woman can decide another woman or a group of women is to blame and simultaneously become an “agent” of needful salvation through condemning any who might thwart the prolonged gestation and resulting birth of a child. She can see herself as superior to “those women”. And even better if she, too, births her own. Women, within fundamentalist Christianity, are at once the damnation and salvation of the world by sheer “virtue” of the presence of a womb. On the one hand, the womb-bearing Eve damned us all, and on the other, the womb-bearing Mary saved us. That fundamentalists mostly take the Bible literally, the moral confusion required to live within such a construct is breathtaking in its devastation.

Eating away at the heart of the fundamentalist Christian woman is this determination not to think or even question the inner tyrant/God. And when you’re encouraged not to think, you’re catapulted on a path of insanity, particularly moral insanity. Intellectualism is scorned, and by that fact, critical thinking is also lost. Besides, it is the thinking that got Eve in trouble. She entertained questions about God’s command. Hath God said? There’s no blind faith (hence no “authentic” faith) in asking questions of the great commander.

The program underpinning fundamentalism is the ancient equivalent of what any domestic violence shelter would identify on the power and control wheel. You will submit. You won’t question. You dare not even think there might be a question and you only do what the masculine deity deems doable. Also, have babies. Also, you owe God who delivered you from hell and damnation. But hey, freely you have received, freely give. Gaslighting 101.

While it’s not the cure for all fundies, having a daughter wrested me from the power and control wheel that had run me over all of my life. She was, and is, sheer delight dancing, asking, insisting, disrupting, being human. Certainly, for a season, she reinforced my pro-life vigor. But not for long. There is nothing like motherhood to strip you of any fantasy that you are superior, or immune to failing and there’s nothing like feeling compassion for your children to awaken you to your own need to show compassion to yourself, and from there, to the world. I became obsessed with choice in general, with what makes a choice and resulting life paths and circumstances authentic versus choices made under a situation of duress. It struck me that inhabiting a situation free of a measure of duress was nearly impossible, but it also struck me that authentic choice might be the holy grail for healing my wounds. Having watched my daughter dance around freely in the love of her parents, I recognized I’d never known such freedom and so my choices had rarely been authentic. From there, it became obvious I had work to do to birth myself.

Where philosophies of choice and freedom are concerned, I’m a work in progress. But I’m clear on one thing: the right to choose is what births authentic living and makes love possible. If my daughter wanted or needed, and I make the distinction intentionally, an abortion, I would volunteer to drive her, be there, whatever is needed. I am changed. There’s no part of me torn on that. Do I have preferences? Do I wish we lived in a world where abortion wasn’t even necessary? Hell, yes. But we don’t live in such a world. Abortion is an honorable, legitimate human need. But Roe v. Wade stands today threatened by forces political and religious, forces feeding off the inadequacy and erosive moral insanity spreading like poison in the hearts of confused, lost people. People who call themselves found by Christ and saved. The irony reeks. That I rage within myself at once condemns me, since I know the enemy well, and reminds me of how complicated we all are.

What makes a pro-lifer tick? The ones that vote for the political contortionists pretending faith who would sooner keep women in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant and people of color in chains, what makes them tick? A million little pivotal happenings and woundings and poisonous winnings make them. I can look back on many such goings on in my upbringing.

I’m reminded of moments when I mentioned psychology to my parents. They would invariably dismiss me in disgust, using some retort that included the smear “it’s so humanistic.” As far as I could tell, to be humanistic equated to evil, to all that is not Godly. It baffled me every time. The only conclusion I could draw was the only one provided me and that was that just being human was wicked and that is what we were perpetually being saved from every single second of every day we believed in Christ. If within that atmosphere you are parented by even just one parent who feels it their duty to smash you in the name of Godly parenting, you are going to end up a hot mess raging at the one issue that somehow dovetails with your desperate need to be seen and known as legitimate.

Fundamentalists, those in the trenches living their lives in delusion and hate all while believing quite the opposite, are also capable of love, even of critical thinking. However, at any point where their thinking might collide with their faith, all cognitive capacity is subsumed in the perceived superiority of *the truth*. And *the truth* is the sum total of a hatred of being human, a hatred so insidious it would convince a woman to wish imprisonment on women who’ve had abortions. The men in these issues are so easily understood, it’s not worth dedicating a whole post to their motives. Thus far we have not managed to market or sell birth control pills for men though they have been created and ditched due to the side effects they would cause. All the while, women pop birth control pills whose side effects are the equivalent and even worse. All the while, many men, I realize not all, loathe condoms. All the while, many men distinguish themselves in their obviousness.

One phrase in particular became one of the many crowbars wresting me from the confines of my oppressed upbringing and all the programs that upbringing asked that I carry into adulthood. That phrase: “God saw that it was good.” Saw that it was good and the evening and the morning were the 6th day. Over and over, the creator saw that it was good, that what was created was good. My brain then said, oh, so, my brain is good. My having critical thoughts, seeking to discern when choice is authentic is good. My questioning who translated and chose the texts that would comprise the New Testament is good. My weighing what motives influenced the compilation of scripture was good. And not only that, but if love bears all things, then God can bear my questions. And if God knows all and I hide my questions in fear of being seen, then I have less integrity than if I presented them with a bellowing, angry cry.

I nearly lost myself in the years and years of bellowing angry cries, parenting three complicated humans. And while this post might be construed as propaganda for women having children so they, too, might be born and wrested from their fundamentalist confusion, it is not. I am one person, former fundie. By no means do I make the argument for anything except this: fundamentalists are a terribly wounded, confused slice of the population who should not influence the outcome of Roe v. Wade, and if we’re to avoid this in the future, we may need to consider our attitudes towards them as human beings. Demonizing them will only feed their delusions of grandeur.

The problem with fighting for Roe v. Wade and choice is wrapped up in the fact that those who most oppose it do not even value choice in their own lives and most especially in their faith. Certainly, any state or federally declared mandate is something that will get their hackles up about their freedoms and choices because they can see it as an attack, ultimately, on their faith as it is an attack on their person and the two are one and the same. An example … mask mandates. That they can say, “my body, my choice” in that instance is proof of their insanity while simultaneously proof that they have been taught that their only allowed use of the right to choose is in protest of anything that might threaten their religion. For diehard fundamentalist Christians, agency and choice are only valid so long as they are utilized in defense of or perpetuation of their faith. The basic human need for autonomy is consigned to any possible crusade in defense of their beliefs. The amassed frustration crouches, awaiting any opportunity for expression.

So, when we scream in contempt, when we mock, when we hate their hatred, we feed their sense of righteous persecution. We throw fuel on the fire. There’s not one single word of contempt that drew me out of fundamentalism. Kindness birthed my true self and continues to this day. Critical thinking, as a gift from my creator, liberated my mind.

I’m not proposing that we not scream and fight against the lies bombarding our liberties in this time. We just need to look on our work to protect basic freedom as a work that includes a slice of humanity enchained in lies. It’s important to recognize that generational fundamentalist nonsense requires epic soul-level disruptions and awakenings to be ousted. Most of these disruptions ideally come through love’s work. I find myself at a loss as to how I might voice my valid rage over the onslaught against women’s rights without fueling the enemy who is my fellow human.

I don’t know the answer for how to avoid fueling the insanity fire except that I might avoid contemptuous, hateful, insulting expression hurled in their direction. I confess there are times it is impossible to be anything but those three destructive things. In fact, today I retweeted something about this very issue and referred to the lawmakers in Louisiana as demonic, life-hating, murderous jackals. There are times when the truth, when hurled in the direction of those who are fundie who have wounded you, will be brutal. That truth is made brutal by the fact of the offenses against you, not by your calling it out for the brutality it is. The line between truth that is brutal by default and truth that is contemptuously destructive is a fine one. I would know. I have crossed it repeatedly in my rage and in my experimenting with what advocacy does and does not look like. The good news? Love has found me on either side of that line and I’ve been able to grow.

The challenge is to not confuse contempt and hate for advocacy, the real sort of advocacy that facilitates liberty and hopefully captures eternal truth, truth like the fact that we are all of us, each one, immeasurably precious, complicated humans. No one, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, Wiccan, or otherwise is immune from fundamentalism’s poison. And my hope is that we will become more and more creative in our efforts to further champion a truly humanistic work. As far as I can tell, humanistic work best defines itself when that work encompasses a love whose natural by-product is the gradual dissolution of the ever-encroaching threat that is fundamentalism.

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Blessed are…

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called…” the masculine children of divinity, depending on which version of the Bible you may read. And yet many are those of varying gender identifications who make peace by the way they live their lives. Some stay real with themselves about their growth processes, seeking out accountability and listening to those who can constructively school them on their need for change, their toxic exceptionalism and passive/aggressive denial of systemic oppression. Some simply live it out, opening their hearts and minds to the viewpoints and lives of those who will expand their minds to move beyond the status quo, the status quo that lulls us all to sleep when our wakefulness is most needed. We are a many-varied and colorful tribe of humans hoping towards fulfillment on different levels as we struggle to recover from the oppressive backlash of centuries of authoritarianism and the resulting mindset. Some of us seek our recovery by means conducive to capturing truth, fostering freedom and encouraging growth and prosperity for everyone as we confront our demons, the darkness we all wrestle when egos clash and righteous rage collides with denial and judgement. And we wonder, “is it righteous, really?”. Apparently, according to the wise ones, we are all acting out in the wake of trauma. Some of us embody the traumatizers, and some of us war against them, but we all began in the oppressive authoritarianism that ultimately seeks to destroy soul. No one with even just a modicum of awareness will deny that abusers have been abused and neither will they deny that some who’ve been abused manage to avoid the abuser’s program through hard, painfully aware work.

The problem I have with identifying us all as victims of trauma is that such an identification could be seen as a uniting truth when there are those of the grand us who are not wanting actual unity or truth. (Truth like, love is what we do and not simply what we feel. And truth like, we’re all valuable, precious human beings. Not “truth” like, there is one God and one way and those who don’t believe will burn. Not “truth” like, we say so and so it is so.) So, sure, we’re all victims of trauma, participants in reactions against the power-over model of authority. But we’re not all growing and we’re not all seeking accountability, and on the other side of it all, we’re not all perpetuating violent and destructive acts that divide us. These distinctions deserve regard because they distinguish between those who seek to empower others and those who seek power over others, even if only vicariously.

While it’s likely true that those who are openly seeking dominion over others are victims of trauma, my experience in moving from a place of forgiveness and understanding with this slice of the population has only netted me betrayal, slander, loss, isolation and more trauma. I literally unknowingly signed up, in the name of forgiveness, unity and hope, for another round of soul-bruising loss. I thought my faith in love would prevail. It did not. I’ve learned that you can’t afford to smile and approach abused abusers with the assumption they want to actually be anything other than what they are. You can’t project your own hope for a truly noble, truly valuable, truly life-affirming legacy onto those who are “in the same boat” with you. It’s just not that simple. It’s like inviting Leviathan to tea and hoping the beast won’t be a beast. Sure, we all came from the same sea but some of us are walking on two legs and hoping to not regress to more beastly behavior while others of us are glorifying the beast by way of denial-based, narrative-skewing belief systems. The perversion of truth and rationality is unprecedented. Shift blame, redirect focus and make the victim pay. But hey, we’re all in this together? As much as we may technically be in this together, trauma bonds as they are, we are at least as much not in this together in unity, and we are not going to experience true unity with each other when anyone in the boat is eagerly perpetuating the power-over authoritarian model of “community”. The best we can do is sit on the other side of the boat and pray that our work to end generational carnage actually takes while hoping those on the other side finally wake up and join us in the work for emancipation from oppression.

And writers and historians like Rebecca Solnit help me solidify and give voice to what I see and feel during this epic time of both loss and hopeful growth here in the US. Solnit’s following expression fills up the gaps made real by a confusion of intentions on a boat adrift in the wild sea of meaning.

“The middle ground is not halfway between Nazis and antiracists. The reasonable position is not a compromise between rapists and feminists, slaveowners and abolitionists, Natives and General Crook. The truth is not midway between the liar and the truthteller. That has to be a factor in all those calls for reaching out and unity. The murderer and his intended victim don’t have to agree on what’s right. The people who were harmed don’t have to reach out to those who did the harming. The people who told the truth don’t need to make liars feel better about themselves or what they said. Those who were targeted by this war don’t have to do all the peacemaking. If reaching out and finding unity is good, the haters and liars can go find some olive branches and apologies and do the work to leave their will to destroy the rest of us behind. Then it begins. The party of hate never had a mandate; they lost the popular vote last time and this time; they may think of themselves as the real American and the gatekeepers but we don’t have to, and we don’t have to enter their gates or play by their rules. We don’t have to hate them either, but we don’t have to protect them from the consequences of their choices or sell out our principles for their comfort. When you stand on the ground of truth and justice, let others find their way to you. If you stand firm, many will in the end. Not everyone will; that does not change what truth and justice are.” Rebecca Solnit

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