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.

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Prayer #5 (for the self-proclaimed reformed womanizers)

May you know the value you trivialize by believing any form of womanizing is worthwhile.

May you know your worth without first shooting up intellectualism,
riding the high so high and icy cold.

May you come home to the earth of acceptance, not the mind palace constructed
against itself and in that coming home awaken the warmth of uncloaked knowing.

May you take a massive nose-dive into the divine feminine grace eschewed
by your grandiosity, and as your face hits the dirt there,
may you experience an actual fullness,
the presence of true welcome unadorned by any methodology or presentation.

Let all that you claim to be break open,
the husk falling away to reveal what you’ve refused.

May you recognize your need, your deep, deep need for love,
especially the love you disdain and declare fiction,
and when you find it, may you finally know what you’re gonna do with it.

May you take a great rolling leap into the truth beyond your carefully constructed dogma
as your face melts away, shining your visage,
a sun of authenticity feasts and open-hearted screams.

May your dance of control, your Georgie Porgie role reverse itself and succumb
to the surrender you chase, as the skirts all fall down around your face naked.

May you find there the map drawn by the lines of your perpetual retreat
posing pursuit and finally begin the treasure seek as one not master,
not switch, not submissive, but one, just one you.

May your knowing strip you of the sign you hide behind
and dart back and forth from as you desperately evade true connection.

May you turn to grasp that bowl of Peanuts at the bar of life
and find you were the one both setting up the kickoff and aborting it in turn,
over and over again, so sure the spurn was not within you.

And finally, may you learn that in spite of posing, gaming, playing and hopscotch skipping
‘round the block another umpteenth time, your true essence managed to shine,
making revolution alongside the confusion, the obviousness of the game,
breaking at least one heart in ways never broken before,
and leaving a wake of pieces to gather on the floor of a soul
trying now not to hope you know the breadth of the misstep your reformation made.

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Prayer #4 (in the aftermath of rape)

Let me not do more than slam, hammer, pound
and send all the contents smashing against the ground,
the wall, glasses, books, whatever in the vicinity of this holy rage.

Let me not grind my teeth endlessly or linger too long
in the fantasy of obliterating the one who trampled innocence.

Call the gatekeepers, please.

Call the standard bearers, too.

Rouse the warriors against the wave of scurrying human cowardice
that reaches rapidly to blank out, redact accountability
and stroke, stroke, stroke the enablers.

Let me not be so done with children posing adulthood
so fury-blind that I alienate them every last one
in the fallout of the brutalization of one actual child.

Open our eyes to the beasts we pursue in the hopes to subdue,
subsume and subjugate, feeding our own inner monsters
while we weep under the light of the moon
wondering why our children have been devoured.

Stop the generational wreckage smash and crash
rolling through the fast lane in the here and now.
For once, end the long game, the one where the children pay
and pay, and pay for the violations of the fathers.

Keep us all sane, keep us all open to being better people
so the ones who’ve paid a price not their own,
can know safety in our presence.
Make our lives, our days, our minds, our hearts
and our actions a refuge from delusion and insanity.

Waken the dead, the walking dead
who thrive more in pretending love
than the doing of care, of forethought, of protection.

Wash over the blistering wounds made,
the whispering haunt and the innocence fade.
Conjure from the cracks a tree more resilient,
refusing that perpetual derision as it rolls downhill,
mocking how precious the sighs and pulse
of our children, our heritage, our hope.

Conjure creation’s cure, a resounding war cry,
calling from the heart of mother and father divine a raging justice,
insisting growth, smashing lies and building newness in the after.

photo by j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved

 

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Prayer #3 (for protesters)

Each step taken, every chant and cry,
every movement for justice,
every insistence on equal rights,
every standard and arm raised for safety,
for the end to brutality and racism at the hands of…

police, government, the system,

each one land home, right to the heart
of what brings true change, what sets aright
the system set in motion against humanity itself.

Revolutionize hope, radicalize grace.

Every effort met with heaven’s support,
earth’s nurturance and the flesh and blood strength
of all who embody truth and justice.

Each one held safely by love.

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Prayer #1 (For Michael)

May your whole body/soul/spirit shift in alliance with the well-being
of eternal and perpetual grace, renewal and wholeness.

May you breathe deeply into your worth and know the love that upholds your life
and has held you close all of your days, even when you least felt that comfort.

May you stretch your arms out wide, reaching far and further still out to places
you feel most inhibited, afraid to reach for fear of rejection, for fear of vulnerability,
for fear of your own beauty being more than you can contain.

May every corpuscle, muscle, vein, artery, organ, system,
neural impulse, heartbeat, rumble of your being vibe with the jive of clarity,
unobstructed, unhindered, blossoming wellness.

May you soak up the sun of healing.

May you know the love that upholds us all as a bliss-force flowing
through every fiber of your being
as you breathe in, breathe out,
breathe deeply the life force sustaining us all.

j. ruth kelly, 2020, all rights reserved

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