Pride Day Sabbath

Won a tiny little radio bud as a door prize at my favorite club. I think it was rigged but I didn't complain. In the accompanying tiny headphones, Jack FM plays it so well. The song reaches me and becomes the soundtrack as you walk across the lot. Your Raybans. Your classic LBD paired with six-buckle combat boots. Your hair wild and laced with peak-a-boo braids strung up with blood red ribbons. I can already smell your spicy perfume. Already taste your chapstick on my fingertips.

The song plays. It seems, impossibly, like you hear it too because you're stepping in time with the simple back beat, bobbing your head almost imperceptibly.

"I don't mind you coming here
and wasting all my time.
'Cause when you're standing oh so near
I kinda lose my mind.
It's not the perfume that you wear.
It's not the ribbons in your hair..."

They've given us permission to use an empty studio. The billowing whites and bright, bright lights cast you in perfect tones. I stand behind the camera (what a new change) and forget to take the lens cap off. I am watching you watch me. Forget the fan, the window is open. God's wind fills the room, creating ripples in the backdrop and sending your hair flying like a mane. We took the stairs up four floors to get here. You told me to stop staring at my feet, to take my hands out of my pockets. I wasn't staring at my feet. My eyes were closed. My hands stayed in my pockets. This grrl knows the limits of her self-control.

"I don't mind you hanging out
and talking in your sleep.
It doesn't matter where you've been
As long as it was deep, yeah.
You always knew to wear it well and
you look so fancy I can tell..."

You turn your back to me and lift your hair. You look over your shoulder at me. You know what you need, you ask me. I think the question is rhetorical or maybe not a question at all. You don't expect an answer but you neither do you look away. Bottomless eyes all full up with confident experience (Lord, where have I seen *that before? Heaven help me LOL!) give me all the answer I could ever muster. I can almost read the words, your careful cursive script. Then you say, You need a fighter. And you undress.

I wonder how in the world you hid your wings beneath such a tiny dress... and then I set the timer on the camera and step to your side.

"I guess you're just what I needed.
I needed someone who's free.
I guess you're just what I needed.
I needed someone willing to bleed."

* * *

My stomach tumbles
in anticipation
I fidget, shift my weight
shrug deeper into my leather jacket
straighten my cotton shirt
and feel my breath fast over parted lips
and I wonder what your name is

tonight.

There is a crackling between us
that lights the lantern in my chest
guides me, illuminates me
fills my hollow places
with a molten bronze and copper
glow of darkling dusk dawn
when you whisper to me
Christ be with you
and I answer
He certainly is

tonight.

Somewhere someone is playing
music like harp or violin and
I realize that my tie is crooked
as is your grin but it somehow
suits you when you wear the
little black dress
with the rich embroidered collar
that you're wearing

tonight.

You tuck your legs up under you
and the six buckles on your calf-high boots
are pressed against my thigh
through my pressed slacks and
I glimpse
(because I'm staring)
a tiny angel charm dangling
from one buckle is
laying still and serene on the pew
between us at Mass

tonight.

The pastor's voice is filled with hope
and his own faith to call to arms
all of us drawn here tonight
to hear the words of men like him
and women like him too
who have stepped outside the pens
of their shallow denominations
to offer their prayers and thoughts and
anger and all their pulpit votes
to show that we
(the we that includes you and me)
are actually, in truth, in the end
(like these end times most certainly are)
human beings
with rights
(imagine that)
and that we have a place
in their churches
in their cities
in their heaven
not just tonight
not just today
not just tomorrow
but now
then

forever.

EJ

Personal Revolution

Dawn arrives. We have been talking for so many hours I am startled by the transition into the Sabbath. It seems to manifest, to take shape around me like a living presence. Something told you to look at my recent photo and you didn't like what you saw. I could never fool you. Why would I want to? Dawn washes over the roof top and the world is white light reflected between white adobe and white clouds. I blink for a moment, transfixed by beginning again.

"Sometimes I find that I don't need to sleep." I think this is odd for you to say because you have Chronic Fatigue and you aren't supposed to be able to go two or three days with out sleep.

"Sometimes I find that I don't want to wake." I regret the words the moment I say them but equally so I know that lately they are the truth.

You let me get away with nothing.

"You're either awake or you're dead, grrl. Make up your mind."

Tough love mama pushes me off the roof.

Which is exactly what I needed.

Message subject: Re: ...
From: Angel
Sent: Fri Jun 26, 2009 1:15 pm
To: Wings

I feel disjointed, disconnected. The world around me is raging, moving. I march with my cause but I do not hear the drums. My heart beats; The sound is hollow even to me. Reach me?

Opening my eyes (as I fall from the roof) I reach out my hand. A dove alights in my palm like a slow, warm kiss. She spills silk ribbon between my fingers embroidered with your message.

Message subject: Re: ...
From: Wings
Sent: Sat Jun 27, 2009 2:53 am
To: Angel

I remake my reality. I reshape my world. I place you in it.

We're walking down the beach. The clouds are overcast, the wind seems to come from every direction. I am listening to 'Diamond in the Rough.' I have one earphone. You have the other. We walk along the solid, wet sand and rocks, towards the cliff. We don't speak. We don't need to.

We reach the edge of the beach and the tide is still out enough for us to sit on the smooth four and a half foot rock past the driftwood. My mp3 player changes. 'Cobblestone Walking' begins, the original harp music by our mutual friend. The perfect mix of harp and wave combines to form something closer to divinity and forever and heaven, far away from the finite and momentary.

Here is where we find our peace.

Minutes pass. They are counted by the changing of songs if nothing else. Softly I begin to tell you of the ideas I have for a novel we will share. It is complex and complicated and I know it will speak to you because I was inspired by one of your favorite authors who I am reading for the first time. I am discovering fine literature and am startled that I spent twenty years without it.

To the right, the sun is beginning to set. The sky is, however, still lit by the day that remains. I find myself silent. I am anxious to return to the cabin. I am anxious to stay here with you.

You see my face and you calm my worries with only a few words that somehow always say so much. You help me find driftwood for our friend to create harps. You walk back with me to the cabin, your hand in mine. You settle my fears with your presence.

If you were not there in body, you were there in mind, in spirit.

I think they are one in the same.


And I think, just perhaps, you had no idea how much I needed all of your words but more than anything that one last sentence. For to me, to any true Christian, the word is the Word, and word and deed are one and the same. Word and touch. Word and song. Word and oath, benediction, passion, struggle. I watched a tv show recently where a young man wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan, "Actions speak louder than blogs." I would have to agree which is why I do march, whether or not I hear the drum, and especially in June. However, I am also very aware that blogging is an action.


Message subject: Re: ...
From: Angel
Sent: Sat Jun 27, 2009 5:18 am
To: Wings

On the other side of the world, in Iran, more than a million young people are fighting, dying, disappearing, standing up for the first time... it is a revolution that the world is watching.

And right here, crying, tears running between the keyboards keys, I read your words and I recognize that right here, with no one watching, there is a revolution. You are waking up. You are standing up. It is just as powerful because, in the eyes of Christ, one and many are the same.

It is easier to stand behind a national or global cause then to change the personal corruption in our own private, intimate lives. I have grown weary of talking about green politics with people who blame genetics for their drug addiction. I am tired of arguing morals with men who have made the mythology of denomination out of God's word.

Heal thyself. Revolution begins at home.

Actually... it begins in the heart.

Every Iranian fighting for a voice understands what I'm saying. Their movement is (globally) millions strong in support but every single person marching began the revolution alone, in their hearts, in the blood pounding through their own individual bodies.

No matter whether we sleep or wake, whether we are walking in friendship or struggling in conflict, we have the power within ourselves to overthrow the corruption that threatens us. We know what it is. We know the truth of what it is doing. No one knows ourselves as well as we do... with the exception of the Lord.

Perhaps it would be just a correct to say: Every personal revolution begins with Christ.

After all, He did away with the idea of being born with original sin, away with spare the rod spoil the child, away with women as dirty objects. He turned the tables and turned over the tables. No more blood sacrifices. No more mediation. Now then forever, He rose up made His revolution of salvation. Our revolution began in His heart and is carried in each of ours now.

Christ as brother, father, lover. Christ as revolutionist.

Air Running

“Eliza Jean,

You do not sound like yourself. Your message to our mutual friend is alive with humor and healing. But to me you write brief and sad lines that linger with the cadences a young woman who has Christ but nothing else. And so, with the post-midnight sky my quiet state of mind, I'm writing you back with this message:

The trees are shadows
holding up my personal sky
asleep with low clouds
velvet black on black.
Stars are memories
like flowers and sunshine
and white clouds on
blue sky canvas.
Tonight
night is night.
And in this peace
in this place that is
my own and home
the children are running.
They call it air walking.
With no city lights
to show the way
they find their own
by running into the darkness
at full speed laughing
arms wide like flying
marveled by the truth
that this night is
their night
their world
their everything.

Somewhere, in this reality that embraces and lifts them, there is my love for them, there is Christ, and there is you. The influence you have on their lives is mysterious. They know your words, your creations, your bravery. They will grow up knowing their impassioned path because even now, in the absolute blackness, they are walking, running, flying on it.”

And I wake up to your words. I wake up.

Leap. You know what you do well. Now leap. Take your gift to the next level, to the next place. Don't look. Leap.

I am so tired of everyone doing the bare minimum. If there is a word count, it is met with none to spare. If there is a deadline, there is the hustle at the eleventh hour. I am interested in air runners.

There is a extreme nature to this path of mine. It attracts an interesting following. But everyone who *fantasizes* about being an immortal or a missionary (or a big rock star) doesn't necessarily want to *be* any of those. And even more so, very, very few of them want to *work* to become anything.

The whole idea of bleeding for your path is argued as anti-Christian.

Denominations preaching permission to be lazy: If it's hard, it's not from God. Unless it makes you happy happy joy joy all the freaking time, it's not from God. If you have to fight for it, work for it, bleed, cry and reach for it.. leap into the blackness with your arms outstretched for it... be crucified....

I pick up the newspaper. You subscribe. You believe that labels and politics are part of why we're on this planet. You have a t-shirt that reads: If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention. I am tired of, “What good does it do me to get angry.” I am tired of, “Well, I see their point of view.” Only an idiot couldn't see their point of view! That's not the point! A lot of life-changing, world-changing ideas have come from being angry. And trust me, baby, ideas from anger are far better than the ideas that come from fear.

Get angry now and you won't have to be afraid later on.

You have circled a personal ad in cherry chapstick. The scent of it lingers and the sheen still catches the pale dawn light. The ad reads:

Saw U dancing @ The Jinx. RU Angel?

The ad below it reads:

Me, you, zipties, daddy's car. Text me.

You slap a carton of orange juice down on the table, prop your elbow on your bare knee and don't bother to straighten down your (my!) black and white boxers. “They know you've arrived, Angel.”

And I stand up. And I go to the window of this new home and throw it open wide. I walk out onto the patio and breathe deep and slow in the brightening light.

Yeah, it's time. Time for them to know I...

Time for the world to know that we have arrived.

EJ

Listening

Here we are. The very same table. The checkered floor. The quiet music playing. The standard cafe din. You are not the same person who sat across from me all those months ago and told me it wasn't love but you are here because, in your own life, it wasn't.

It should be raining.

Beneath the table, my hand slips to the floor to ceiling glass. It is still cool beneath my fingertips which rest as soft as whispers, barely touching, hesitant and shy. It should be raining, I think again. My thoughts, it seems, are wandering.

"I miss her and she knows it. She's outed me at church, on the boards, at work. She says she just wanted to see me, hold me a moment... but she wrecks havoc every time she touches me. She holds him -- they'll be married in two months, the date is set -- too tightly and stares at me over his shoulder."

I watch you, my eyes still and intent. You are drinking decaf chai because you're trying to prove some point to her. She ceased to be a human being some weeks ago. Now she is a force in your life, a symbol. You think she is your test. You think this will make you stronger. The thick, hot steam from my tall double hides my sleepless eyes. Make up (for the first time outside of work) disguises the rest.

If that which does not kill us makes us stronger... why am I not invincible yet?

"I'm praying so hard. I know I can reach her. She wants me to reach her. She's destroying me but I can't give in, give up. She wants me to show her, save her."

I hear every single word you say. I could even repeat them (or write them verbatim in this blog). But I will not lie to you, friend, I am not listening. I am *hearing* but that is simply not the same. Listening happens with more than just the ears.

We are a hundred miles from the ocean and four hours away from that beach, but suddenly I hear the waves. My heart is pounding, racing... my blood is roaring thunder in my ears. But then the stranger at the counter turns around, tossing full, wild curls, and I do not know her. Our gazes meet. Her eyes are green. I look back at you.

"Why would God have brought me here to this place, to this church, if not for her? How can I walk away from something He so clearly is asking of me? It would be so easier to hate her. To forget her... fine, not forget her, but still, walk away. But every Sunday comes and I find myself there again... and again and again."

The sky was deepest black and so crisp and cold and full of milky way stars like cream and diamonds. I dreamt of children running and playing and laughing. I dreamt of waking every morning alive with passion and rejoicing impassioned. I poured your coffee and couldn't meet your eyes. I don't think I ever met your eyes again.

"I write to her every single night before I sleep. Even when we work killer twenty-hour days. I just want her to know everything in my heart. She never writes back but she always returns the read receipt. That's enough for me. It... it has to be enough."

A conversation returns to me:

What are you writing?
A treatise.
A what?
Words.
About?
No idea. And you?
Painting the sky.
With?
Clouds.
Which kind?
That kind.
Nice.
They remind me of you.
I don't see the resemblance.
They're cool.
Cold?
No.
Out of reach?
They're right here.
On your canvas.
Right here.
...and I kissed you.

"She doesn't understand. I never explained enough. Discretion, respect, boundaries. Where I've been, what I've felt, why I came to her with my everything. I never explained enough. She didn't know. She can't know how I feel."

And I am staring at you. Unblinking. I am disconnected from this place, this (one-sided) conversation. I don't think I was ready. I thought I was. I thought we were variations on the same theme, you and I. Like Sister Light, Sister Dark experiencing like events. When I find my voice suddenly I think I cut you off because all at once the only thing I was hearing... the only thing I was listening to... was my own voice:

"She may have heard you but she wasn't listening. We hear with our ears but we listen with our hearts. We hear for ourselves and what we need. We listen for someone else. We learn when we hear. We love when we listen. Real listening is like touching your lover with no thought of her touching you. You are there entirely for that other person.

"This is how we know whether or not we are hearing Christ or listening to Christ. If what we hear is about us than we are hearing. If we are listening than we receiving Christ. We are receiving Him. He speaks truth, we listen. Later, we apply those truths to our lives.

"Even when we ask questions of Him, we can choose to either hear the response or listen for the response. Hearing it is like picking an option off a multiple choice list. We always knew the possible outcomes. But listening for the answer will always be unexpected. Because man cannot know the heart of God. We can't know His depth, His complexity, His possibilities.

"When we listen, we are open to anything... to everything... to all discoveries, rediscoveries, and salvations."

And you stare at me. A hundred million events flood my senses. My (unexpected) tears fall over my jaw and splash like the rain I wished for on my one clenched fist. I realize that if I had listened to the sound of the waves and the stars and your eyes, I would have understood so much more about myself. But I wasn't listening; I was only hearing.

"I'm leaving," you tell me. But you don't get up. I know you aren't talking about the cafe. "I'm letting go."

And I think, in the silence that follows, I am listening to the voice of Christ.

EJ

Faith Under This Sky

It seems tonight that the midnight (post-midnight, my friends?) sky is my personal sky. That the stars, like gemstones on a fortune teller's cloth, only pretend to be randomly scattered but in truth are arranged very deliberately to tell me the events to come and the secrets in my heart.

I remember the stories as a child remembers – in bright snaps of emotion or image, never the more perfect memory of adulthood but always sharper, more alive with wonder. My grandmother and my mother and my father. All were story-tellers but each was so different in style and approach. The same mythology (personal mythology, family mythology... which was history and fact and faith and miracle all in one) could be woven for me by each of them until, at last, I would have every dimension of every event. They made it possible for me to step into stories fifty years old and older. To shrug into them like a favorite jacket, to recite and reenact them as if they had been my own life. Which, genetically, of course, they were.

...the pass in the mountains, bitter cold and ragged with craggy rocks. The regiment cut down by snipers – half dead, then half again. The final climb by the moon's sliver of light. The narrow cave. The explosives. Trapped in darkness devoid of breath...

I was raised with truths that were quiet and steady. That were woven into everyone around me. My grandmother was so mortified when a career counselor at my school ran down my financial prospects. “She will do the Lord's work,” grandmother snarled, her hair, even decades later and an ocean away, still shorn military short. And she drew me away.

It didn't surprise me when she fought with my parents, and then called in favors and opened a dozen doors so that I'd be trained as a painter. She wanted my hands busy with art so that my heart would be filled with prayer. “Our family are artists or soldiers, Eliza Jean, and there are no good wars to be fought.” It was the '80s and she always made it very clear, “Either way, you will be a missionary. You were born to Speak.”

...the hours of the night extend. Consciousness is lost or fading for all the soldiers who are left. The highest in rank, she struggles to rouse them but she knows that hope is thin. When day breaks, the enemy will either dig them out and shoot them or set further explosives and crush them where they are. The air is thin. It cannot sustain them. She slumps against the floor, her cheek to the cold stone...

I am neither speaker nor writer (in our tradition, “Speak” could just as well mean “Write”). I have said it here before and I'm sure I will again. What I mean, of course, is that I do not write every day. I do not feel the need, in my soul, in my heart, to express myself in words on paper or screen. I cannot sit down with an assignment and a deadline and create. Though “I need inspiration,” seems, even to me, like a cop-out. For more than a year I certainly had just that (inspiration) and was able to post my Sunday sermon on time every Sunday without fail. Am I less touched now? Am I less worthy? Have I (*gasp*) wandered from that path that my grandmother saw so clearly for me? That she paved with her own blood and bones? After all, my weekly blogs are no longer posted right on time.

...and in that state, that state neither living nor dying, the stone beneath her cheek hummed, vibrated. A stone river, at once solid and liquid. She opened her eyes. There, running the current, were skeleton fish, swimming across the floor and out of the cave, out a crevice in the wall and into the mountain. Did they disappear there? Did the crevice open up and then end abruptly miles beneath the earth? Was it worse to die here, at the hands of the enemy, than to die in a space so small a soldier would have to crawl on his belly, face turned to the stone? But then she heard a voice...

I am no less interested, inspired, impassioned or enthralled. I do not crave the drama, the newness, the sparkle, glitter and gloss. I am simply more introspective. More realistic. More willing to take deeper risks. More able to Speak.

I have more to say now that I am no longer distracted. I have learned that all that glitters is not gold.

...and the voice, of course, was His voice and He said, “And these loaves and fish will be enough.” And she woke. And she roused her comrades. She commanded them to eat what little they had left. Then she lit the last fire kit and showed them all the fossilized fish in the floor of the cave. They followed the trail of bones to the crevice, all but hidden in the far corner. Following her with faith, each solider squeezed into the gap...

Sometimes the leap of faith one must take into the darkness is more literal than figurative. Sometimes we must walk a dark path because the street that leads home is not lined with street lights. Sometimes we have to plunge ahead because otherwise we are simply standing in the darkness screaming. What awaits outside and beyond that blackness may be something far more horrendous than staying, standing there in the dark, but it is *something* and Christ tells us again and again that doing *something* is forever better than doing *nothing.* Failure will occur sometimes... but the attempt itself will always be a successful try.

...the passage was almost impossibly low and tight and blacker than any hell and she sang to them and recited scripture to ease their moaning terror. Dawn came and went without them knowing. Day came and went. Onward they crawled. The next night was almost spent when fresh air and starry sky appeared above them and they clawed their way to the surface... so far from their enemies that together they could stand and embrace each other and weep and shout in praise to the Lord.

I am not interested in anything but the truth:

Christ exists. He is a force in our personal lives. He is brilliant and joyous and always asks us to do the right thing which is never the easy thing.

Christ is not man. The rules and interpretations and exploitations of Christ's Word by man's church is sin. It is sin because it is giving in to fear. This only green world, with its fractal perfection, is the only true church.

Now then forever, Christ walks with us, died for us, rose for us, created us, speaks to us, and shows us both the tiny spark that is our lives and our personal path, and the cosmic bang which is the grandest big picture. We are part of everything around us, all things connected, because Christ's hand guides it all.

And Christ is the Alpha and the Omega. There came and has come and will come no other.

Great big statements. Tiny, personal truths.

It is very hard to despair when all filled up with Christ.

EJ

Cry Sanctuary

...and I will hear you, so says our Lord.

Come down here. Take me. Take me in the ways we always write about but have never done. Take me in your arms. Take me against your body. Take me dancing. Take me riding. Take me to the ocean where I first knew her eyes molten. Take me away from this starry sky beside this abandoned dove house, high above the wrought iron, rusty metal acidic fire escape where I first realized that she loved me, she loved me not, she didn't know me at all.

The words haunt me. They come again and again like they burn in my blood. Every time they cycle again through my heart it beats and they come like the edge of the knife a dream told me to send.

I am speechless. I am also not who you just called me.

And the fast tumble of sorry meant so much less than I thought it would.

I was not raised to forgive this.

“I wanted you.
I wanted no one else.
I thought it through.
I got you to myself...”

Your words haunt me. “She gave me sanctuary. Her home was my safe house. I would do anything... even deny everything I am, everything I was, to have one place that was stable and sane.”

I am nodding my head. Yes. I wanted that. A safe place. A home I could count on to return to. A haven, a heaven, a heart... oh Lord. I can't believe I ever said yes. I want my laptop to the edge of the roof and let it drop. I can't burn the letters if they're all digital. But the sound of silicon and plastic and steel splintering through the alley is the sound I'm making when I open my mouth and scream.

You have no idea, my dear friend, my sister, how alike we are. How I avoid (shunned even) the labels for so long. I am above them, I insisted. I am woman, hear me (not even close to) roar. It was so much easier. I played both sides against the middle. I danced the lines between this and that, light and dark, wrong and right. I walked the fence. I rode the centerline.

Why did I finally? Why did I finally come to yes? Was it my mind or my body that betrayed me? Was it hope because it certainty wasn't faith.

I am crying now. But not in mourning. You, my companion, my comrade, have cried enough of those tears for both of us. Six months? Six months you have mourned? My voice bounces back at me. I rip my jacket off and throw it after my computer. My t-shirt: Silence = Death. How apropos. Tear it off, grrl. Tear off your mourning veil. Throw it down. Let it catch fire and turn to ash. Channel all that burning into making love with *your* woman. What Christ has granted you cannot be taken away. Pull her close and her choice will be obvious between every gasp, every sigh, every time she cries your name against your heart.

Throw it down, baby. Throw it down.

“You got off
every time you got onto me.
Was it wrong
to go along with insanity?”

You will never find safety with man. My father used to say that. I thought sometimes he was telling me something nonlinear and literal. I am a rape survivor. I am a lesbian. Was he telling me something I didn't know about myself then? Something that hadn't happened yet? Other times I thought he meant it as a comment on denomination. The vice grip that holds and twists and mutilates decent souls into not knowing right from wrong. The factories that encase their children in shells of fear so thick they finally combust and burn down everyone around them. Today... today I think he just meant that in Christ we find safety. Not in the mortal coil but rather in the Holy Ghost.

Yes. There it is. The trinity returns to recast herself as a reality in my life, in my heart. The three made one. Father, Son and the Being that lives in my heart and in yours. They are talking now. They know we have laid on the bed when it was already on fire. We bared our everything and worked our hours and bleed and sweat and cried and did The Right Thing. Again and again and again. But our reward is Christ. Not a world of man that hands us what we have handed them.

Cry sanctuary, and I will hear you. Let me be your safe place. Build this house with me. Dance this beat with me. Watch me show the world how dedicated I can be. And they thought they'd seen me before. Christ has stripped everything else away and showed me the essentials. Do you see the same? Everyone who robbed you of your confidence has been removed from your life, shown for what they are. They have reared up and you have stood up.

You stood up, baby.

“I guess it wasn't really right.
Guess it wasn't meant to be.
It didn't matter what they said
cuz we were good in bed.”

A shooting star. There are fighters and lovers and teachers and preachers. The best partner is all of those. The waves. That night. The paint brushes scattered on the floor. The growl crack shout of my body waking up for the first time. The knowledge of Christ in the room. The realization of no. We, you and I, share so much – not just wings. I feel we are soldiers together at war. We work the system, run the lines, and know how to dance around the mines.

She tells me your personal myth. She has woven you into the tapestry of her muscles. She says in words, white on black: She is uncorruptible. She is bronze and forest eyes still and quiet and sure. She is passion like flame across my skin. Yes was never a question. When was the question. I cannot exist without her. She was angel or other and threw herself down for me. I was... so hurt... and she had seen enough. She wanted it done. The damage was done. But the certainty was I would find salvation in her arms. It would take almost forever, it seemed, but the first time... in blood, and tears... breathless... salvation.

She says that you snuck up on her. She didn't know until your feathers tumbled over her body, bare in the blue light of midnight. She didn't know until you wouldn't take no for an answer. She cried sanctuary. You provided one without tearing apart her world.

Step outside under these stars with me. The celestial dome is perfection, flawless, effortless in the singular purpose: To give the trees something to hold up. Christ said: I am here because you will never love each other as I will love you. You will never understand each other as I will understand you. You will never hold each other as I will hold you.

There are no lies, no deceptions, nothing but Christ when you hold each other. Keep each other in that truth.

“Guess I stuck around for
all the wrong reasons...”

I am, once again, laying here, renaming constellations. Without my connection to the digital world. Without my armor. Even my steed is far away. My feet, my hands, my muscles and bones brought me here. I am alone. But you are here. I knew you would be. You want nothing from me. You are in my world one day and the next and five months from then. You are not daily, weekly, monthly, scheduled or neat. You are not conditional. You are constant. Now then forever. I name my North Star after you. My fingertips trace lines and curves. I discover hosts of angels in the sky.

How will this story be retold to strangers I will never know?

I cannot deny the smile that slides across my face. Shh. Come closer. Lay down beside me. I have found the Southern Cross above the streets of LA. I have found something, someone, so good for me. All this was worth my discovery of you.

“Singing amen, amen.
I'm alive.”

EJ

The Holy Trinity

Father. Son. Holy Ghost. The Holy Trinity as we have come to know it, including the words Holy Trinity, do not actually appear in the recognized scriptures, which I have always thought fascinating since the Roman Catholic church has held huge sway over what verse and laws were laid down and officiated. It would seem in their best interest that concepts like sainthood and tri-aspect divinity would be better covered.

I am enjoy very much sitting and talking about comparative religion. This is when, often, people like to argue about who did what first. Like, the church co-opted all the pagan rituals and holy days to better woo the people. And the pagans were just co-opting the seasons (ahem *cough* made my God) and so the natural order of things (*cough* also laid down by God). I like to talk about all the different religions that have their own Great Flood, or Virgin Birth, or Risen Savior. Some of my co-workers like to think they can unravel my faith if they just read enough ancient history and human mythology. What they fail to comprehend (in all their textbook comprehension) is that my Lord is as nonlinear and universal (literally) as their lord (facts) is black, white, and all straight lines.

And you all know how I feel about straight lines.

The true Trinity, of course, is God, Christ and us. God, our Lord of Lords, the force that created the universe as His own divine Bang. Christ, as the physical, mortal manifestation of that force who walked on Earth and taught us before returning to that force (without ever leaving it, nonlinear awesomeness and all that). And us, the thinking, feeling, mortal, physical, limited, loving, scared and sacred by-products of that before mentioned Bang and so creations of God and Christ and pretty much awesome... *just as we are made.* (Yes, I went there. You know what I'm talking about... or do you? We'll see May 26.)

Is God in all of us? Of course! He made the whole universe! He's everywhere! Are we all God? Of course not! We are creations of Him. We are part of His masterpiece that is this existence. Just as my paintings are a reflection of me, are a mirror to my heart, my hopes, but they are not me, so are we the reflections and hopes of God without being Him.

And yet... my paintings mean so much to me. Didn't He say, we mean *everything* to Him?

Yes. He did. And so did He.

EJ