The above excerpt is from a post here, ages ago. Click image above to be taken to the whole poem.
In Moon’s Music…
Begging Our Delusions
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…
Spread the Love!
I Am Somebody
Here’s to the beautiful voice and force that was and will always be Jesse Louis Jackson. My heart hurts…
Spread the Love!
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.
Spread the Love!
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…
Spread the Love!
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.
Spread the Love!
Earth Begging
In the woods somewhere
sweet swaying songs bear witness
to wounds deep, the worst sort
of gutting, how large the teeth,
and how far I’d seeped and seeped
and seeped completely down in seed
and in a gone-ing, a yawning crypt
held and holding eruptions,
creations’ secret reddest colors
for deeply hewn stutters fluttering
across a canvas as yet unknown
‘til my heart knew
and out I flew into one,
and one and one, (yet still One)
and yet still not knowing the known
and the hiding
from a creature lunging,
a bite’s longest reach
still bleeding,
but an ancient design called,
a bridge eternal healing,
deepest love promising,
then subsiding
‘til the singing resurrection,
a transformation from tomb
to tower to long desperate hours
within hours and hours blending
miracles wending, sending
every inch of me calling,
falling up and all over every spec,
dot, bindu, wreck not wrecking
as the beckoning out
of richest colors wrought whole
and healing a song
to raise the dead,
to know the unknowing
into love flowing
rivers, a heaven on earth begging…
Spread the Love!
Wander Here
Wonder, dear, wander here
where will and mystery meld
a history awaiting your discovery.
Beckon transformation’s song,
fiery orange paired
with faerie floral,
and your soul will know,
grow the you held by
your tenderest self,
the one back in time still
holding sway with music,
twirling grace and heart open
to a Creator your path
eventually stripped away.
Backtrack, backtrack, backtrack
and take your hand there in mid-air
as hope retakes your truth,
the deepest knowing of love
bestowing life to all and healing
to those who weep the call.
Spread the Love!
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…
