The sun rises and I wake on the bench that wraps around the floor to ceiling windows of my new studio... where I have never painted. The world wakes with the dawn and I slide down off the bench pillow, patterned with little roses, and kneel and pray. I think of fractal snowflakes. I think of origami hamsters. I wish for change but I pray for solace.
*aside begins* Today I have been asked by my friend Amel to speak at his church. It is a Mormon church. He tells me there will be forty-two young women in attendance. The gist of the talk will be a play on the idea that "Life Happens While We're Making Other Plans." The twist, of course is, "While You're Waiting to Find Your Impassioned Path, You're Standing On It Not Doing Anything." Amel offered me an honorarium. I stared at him until he looked away from me. In a horrible moment, he was not my friend. He was a cog in a machine that is as corrupt and fallible as any of man's machines. I found my voice. I told him, gently, that his money would be put to better use elsewhere. There was a moment. And then he held me. I did not cry. But even closer than we have ever stood, his body so near mine and so familiar to me because Amel is built like my father was... even standing in his arms, I felt a distance between us that was new and unrepairable. His understanding and defense of an organized action I consider heinous has placed us in separate realities. This tightens my heart in my chest. I enjoyed having Amel in my reality while it lasted. *aside ends*
The concept of presents is pretty universal. Many of us got a refresher course a few days ago. The idea of bright or elegant paper (mystery) wrapped around an unknown gift (pleasure) is ageless and exciting. Even virtual reality environments like IMVU (the Mardi Gras 3000 official chat client) offer gifting between members, going so far as supplying a large variety of wrapping paper. In person or in pixels, unwrapping a mystery and making a discovery speaks to a primal part of us that is delighted and untamed. Our inner child... more like our inner Wild Thing.
Just this last week, I thought two friends were punking me. They said the exact same things to me about each other and about themselves at the exact same time (one was in live-chat with me, the other was in my forum inbox). I blinked at the words -- black on white and white on black. I blushed, which annoyed me. I thought about how I had crafted this beautiful metaphor about oceans and sail boats and cresting waves to explain just a few days ago how they were very different and that was just darn okay.
And now here they were saying... the exact... same... things.
*sigh*
Women.
But this moment got me thinking. It got me thinking about how you can know someone for years, formative years even, but truly not see what is inside their shiny wrapping. Sometimes? You don't even have a glimpse or have a clue. It just isn't... what? You want to know what my two friends were saying? You want me to live up to my kiss-and-tell, little-gamer-over-share reputation? Well, duh. Yeah, I'll tell you, but I'll get there in my time, so deal ;)
*aside begins* I am talking to a spicy gal pal of mine who thinks about sex about as much as a seventeen year old boy, which, statistics show, is an impressive amount. She is not seventeen (add ten years) but she is gorgeous and, statistic show, that gorgeous women do actually tend to have brains and so my buddy has something to say about her favorite subject every day. Sometimes twice a day. Today she is bent about Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia. Her cousin is having a boring time with her new husband. She's starting to get frustrated with her lack of... err... fun. So my friend decides to send her an itty bitty, adorable personal and private, small and sculpted fingertip massager from the most trusted name in bedroom items, Trojan. Their website is very professional with articles about sexual health and the importance of release for both mental clarity, energy and just general happy happy joy joy. Unfortunately, the itty bitty helper is illegal to ship into AL, CO, GA, KS, LA, MS, TX or VA. Because, my pal can only assume, women are not allow to come in a Red State. Yes, I went there. *aside ends*
And I am certain they are punking me and I'm searching for the humor in the situation. They are both coddling the other one. They are both avoiding all labels (identity is so confining). They are both protecting each other from the truths of life which are 1) not PG-13, 2) not always easy, 3) usually sexually charged, 4) all full up of power dynamics that aren't easily defined, and, most importantly, 5) are truths which are identical for both of them.
Because the awesome thing about life is that people can be in very different places and living very different lives, but be feeling many of the exact same things. This is all universal issues. Often, novels and films and good tv shows tackles these undeniable elements of life. Other times, we deal with them by saying aloud, to our dearest friend, in the middle of the night:
"I don't want you to judge me. But I can't talk to anyone else. I want you back. I need you back. I miss you. But you won't find me the same grrl you did before. I have changed... or I have discovered the woman, person, lover that has been inside me all along. I want you to meet her and like her but she doesn't like the assumption that she is anything like I used to be. And, by the way, I have *got* to tell you about what happened two nights ago on the hood of his car!"
Sometimes we unwrap ourselves like an onion or a pomegranate. Other times, we are discovered by another. Send almost always, we want our closet friend to be there when that final layer of glossimer paper is pulled away.
Because a wrapped gift is beautiful... but it is never as interesting as the intricate puzzle art that awaits inside.
*aside begins* I play the Secret Word Game with some friends at Christmas. There are four of us (three are mothers). We each have four pieces of paper. We describe each other and ourselves with ten words each. Then we get all four lists about us. We get to see how many of the words are the same. There is no losing. It is an interesting way to pass the time while the coffee is brewing and the donuts are cooling from the fryer and the XBox is cooling down after an epic frag match. We are laughing and blushing and snorting and chuckling. My friend Gille describes herself with ten words that none of us see her as. She loves this and so do I. Her partner says, "I guess I have another gift to unwrap for Christmas." I don't think I've ever heard a sexier statement. *aside ends*
Wrapping paper is sometimes not so pretty -- or, at least, the pretty parts are all covered up. Sometimes all there is to see are those ugly things called labels (as opposed to that truths called identity). The labels are stuck there by us and by the world and they cover even the outer wrapping that hides our heart away.
Oh... I'm thinking about caterpillars again. They spin as a wooly guy. They *dissolve* into goo and cells and biomatter. And from that primordial ooze emerges the mothy buttery new guy. The new creature, not so much the same as the old creature. If you liked the caterpillar, you may miss all that fur. But you may also find the mothra just as much fun. Give change a chance. Transformation can be family fun for everyone!
It seems easy to say that we should always show our true colors. It is actually as easy to say this as it is to laugh it off and say we must be prudent and protective. After all, we could change again. Why reveal who we are *now* if we may very well change, transform, tomorrow? Why live honestly if your opinions are always shifting? Because living in another way -- in a way that does not show who we are, that stifles our voice and unique thoughts and ideas -- is not living. It's acting. And acting never pays as well as they say it does.
EJ
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Everything to Me
A photo of blue icicle lights nestled among the low angles of a honey-oak attic room. It's tucked in my wallet. The photo, not the room... though... I have opened my black leather billfold so often now to glimpse the soft focus of those lights and the romantic coaxing of those artistic angles like a personal cathedral... so often now that I have wished, so hard, that, that photo was a portal, a gateway I could step through and be *there.* Right... there... oh.
I think I need to go dancing.
And so...
The fourth club is the charm. I've driven more than a hundred miles. I've never danced here before. The music is haunting and dark, something between alt-techno and goth. I'd be laughing if the DJ weren't live and laying down beats unique and raw, danceable, entrancing. And my eyes close and my body moves, arms up, hands open, hips rolling, and you slide into place behind me.
Imagine it. Deep breath. Let go. Imagine if everything you knew was suddenly different. Not just everything you'd been taught. Not just everything you'd been told. What if everything you knew as certainty in your heart was suspect?
Wait. The music changes. You lean tight against me. I don't know you. But I saw you across the tables when I first walked in. You are wearing perfume, light, that smells like oranges and cloves. Your hair is long and straight. Your skin is moonlight beneath the pearl shimmer of a button up. You are here alone.
What if only half of what you knew changed? But the changes were random and unexpected and followed no pattern, rhyme or reason. What if you discovered lies? What if you discovered flaws? What if you discovered jewels that were connected to your ability to breathe, that you could not live without? What if you grew up, slow and easy, all along beneath a brilliant blue sky... and then you woke up one morning, and the city streets were gone, the bustle had vanished, and the sky was black. Jet black... scattered with five million stars.
You are very careful not to lay hands on me. Your hands stay above your head, which is a head and a half above mine. My shoulders to your ribs and chest, my hips against your thighs, you toss your hair and I feel strands like ribbons of satin, neither blonde nor brunette but somewhere in-between, fall between my fingers and then slide away. My palms tingle. You are wearing a bracelet of small bells and I catch my breath.
Raised within the safety of convention and tradition and denomination and culture. It is easier to live and wake without the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The snake's strange whispering is rarely black and white, good and evil, but rather mixed messages like, “I knew this would be a trial for you.” and “We've always known.” The snake murmurs dissent and false discovery. But in the end, he knows nothing and no one. He is not Christ. When we reach past the snake, not to pluck the fruit, but to pull ourselves into the Godtree, it is then that we understand. We need not eat for Christ is our fruit.
The lights are blue. They arrived in my inbox via PhotoBucket and were accompanied by snow and machines and gentle things that make a young woman a woman like armor-clad fairies hanging among solar system models and family portraits of smiling parents. The blue lights hang in slender strands from the ceiling which is only six feet at its highest point and three feet at its lowest. They glow with an aura both warm and cool, suspended somewhere between temperatures when sensation wipes away the need for yes or no, day or night, hot or cold. The portal to my blue room is in my wallet. My wallet is tucked into the outside pocket of my soft, loose leather pants. A chain, silver with charms (a key, a lock, a motorcycle, a heart, a dove), snakes up out of the deep pocket and latches onto the belt loop on my right hip. The chain and charms make urban jiggle bells. I like the sound mixed with your bracelet brass.
We are raised with what works for our parents for we are part of their world. We are not yet making our own world. The reality we see, no matter how much we accept and embrace it, is their reality. It is not our own. If we attend public school we start to glimpse foreshadowing of our own reality, we start to witness the overlapping realities of others. But still, we belong to the path of our parents. When finally we come through the fabric of their universe and cross over into our own (sometimes violently, sometimes without barely noticing) it can be easy or hard but it is always intrinsically different. Even if the surface and patterns are the same, at the core, our reality is different. This is because we are not our parents. It is only when we stop craving their approval, dreading their disappointment, and living for their eyes, that our reality will at long last be revealed.
I turn to face you. I tip my head back to look in your eyes. Your features are bird-like, chiseled, elegant. Your eyes are brown, gold and green. Just beneath my focused vision I make out a small cross hanging between your collar bones. It is gold. Two more of the tiny brass bells hang on either side it. I don't look down directly. Your shirt is unbuttoned three of six. You wear nothing under it. The music pulses now in time with the lights in time with my body in time with the chorus of miniature brass bells. You are wearing jet black CK jeans. I decide you are a herald of the End Times... one of the riders perhaps... and I wonder where you left your horse.
Of course, when everything is suspect we doubt even ourselves and what our own senses tell us. The comfortable certainty that comes from living in someone else's reality is like hard candy or chocolate – sweet and soothing and addictive. Nice when someone else carries the burdens. Nice when someone else makes the rules and takes the blame and builds the truth. Safer that way. But one reality does not fit all. Reality is not wash and wear. It is customized and tailored and fit to our bodies and our hearts and our souls in a way that will feel so right and so perfect – like armor and evening gown/tux with tails all in one – that we'll realize we're knowing and feeling and living for the first time, for never before were we fully alive.
I am aware in these moments lost in music that everything about my reality falls away except for passion. Desire is my companion when I dance. She stomps, rocks, sways, slides, rolls her way between lights and strobes and backbeat rhythms until she fills my body. She is light and heat and clarity of thought and balance of action. She is ache and burning, taut and pulsing, muscle, bone, heartbeat. She carries over. She fuels me. She never leaves me. She is my celebration of being alive.
Christ carries over. Christ moves with us between realities. Not Christ as we are told He is, but the voice of Christ that speaks, privately, to each of us. The whispers of divinity. This is the only truth. Rules, dictates, man's guidelines... these alter and adapt between realities. Even morals can change. Even your favorite food, color, pass-time. But that internal voice of Christ – that voice from outside yourself that lights that place in your heart... that voice from within yourself that sends a beacon into the heavens with every prayer – will remain your own. Once you discover Him, you can never leave Him behind.
I am straddling my Kawa in the parking lot. I am looking at the photo again, illuminated by the single distant street lamp... illuminated by the aura of small blue lights. An engine kick starts. I want to fall into that portal of blue and wake up looking up at those strands of stars. I look up. You ride a black and white steel stallion that makes my T1000 look like a sleek toy. I watch you pull out of the parking lot. Your hair streams like a short cloak beneath your helmet. I look up. The sky is black. It is scattered with thirteen million stars. I was taught the names of the constellations.
Tonight I rename all of them.
EJ
I think I need to go dancing.
And so...
The fourth club is the charm. I've driven more than a hundred miles. I've never danced here before. The music is haunting and dark, something between alt-techno and goth. I'd be laughing if the DJ weren't live and laying down beats unique and raw, danceable, entrancing. And my eyes close and my body moves, arms up, hands open, hips rolling, and you slide into place behind me.
Imagine it. Deep breath. Let go. Imagine if everything you knew was suddenly different. Not just everything you'd been taught. Not just everything you'd been told. What if everything you knew as certainty in your heart was suspect?
Wait. The music changes. You lean tight against me. I don't know you. But I saw you across the tables when I first walked in. You are wearing perfume, light, that smells like oranges and cloves. Your hair is long and straight. Your skin is moonlight beneath the pearl shimmer of a button up. You are here alone.
What if only half of what you knew changed? But the changes were random and unexpected and followed no pattern, rhyme or reason. What if you discovered lies? What if you discovered flaws? What if you discovered jewels that were connected to your ability to breathe, that you could not live without? What if you grew up, slow and easy, all along beneath a brilliant blue sky... and then you woke up one morning, and the city streets were gone, the bustle had vanished, and the sky was black. Jet black... scattered with five million stars.
You are very careful not to lay hands on me. Your hands stay above your head, which is a head and a half above mine. My shoulders to your ribs and chest, my hips against your thighs, you toss your hair and I feel strands like ribbons of satin, neither blonde nor brunette but somewhere in-between, fall between my fingers and then slide away. My palms tingle. You are wearing a bracelet of small bells and I catch my breath.
Raised within the safety of convention and tradition and denomination and culture. It is easier to live and wake without the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The snake's strange whispering is rarely black and white, good and evil, but rather mixed messages like, “I knew this would be a trial for you.” and “We've always known.” The snake murmurs dissent and false discovery. But in the end, he knows nothing and no one. He is not Christ. When we reach past the snake, not to pluck the fruit, but to pull ourselves into the Godtree, it is then that we understand. We need not eat for Christ is our fruit.
The lights are blue. They arrived in my inbox via PhotoBucket and were accompanied by snow and machines and gentle things that make a young woman a woman like armor-clad fairies hanging among solar system models and family portraits of smiling parents. The blue lights hang in slender strands from the ceiling which is only six feet at its highest point and three feet at its lowest. They glow with an aura both warm and cool, suspended somewhere between temperatures when sensation wipes away the need for yes or no, day or night, hot or cold. The portal to my blue room is in my wallet. My wallet is tucked into the outside pocket of my soft, loose leather pants. A chain, silver with charms (a key, a lock, a motorcycle, a heart, a dove), snakes up out of the deep pocket and latches onto the belt loop on my right hip. The chain and charms make urban jiggle bells. I like the sound mixed with your bracelet brass.
We are raised with what works for our parents for we are part of their world. We are not yet making our own world. The reality we see, no matter how much we accept and embrace it, is their reality. It is not our own. If we attend public school we start to glimpse foreshadowing of our own reality, we start to witness the overlapping realities of others. But still, we belong to the path of our parents. When finally we come through the fabric of their universe and cross over into our own (sometimes violently, sometimes without barely noticing) it can be easy or hard but it is always intrinsically different. Even if the surface and patterns are the same, at the core, our reality is different. This is because we are not our parents. It is only when we stop craving their approval, dreading their disappointment, and living for their eyes, that our reality will at long last be revealed.
I turn to face you. I tip my head back to look in your eyes. Your features are bird-like, chiseled, elegant. Your eyes are brown, gold and green. Just beneath my focused vision I make out a small cross hanging between your collar bones. It is gold. Two more of the tiny brass bells hang on either side it. I don't look down directly. Your shirt is unbuttoned three of six. You wear nothing under it. The music pulses now in time with the lights in time with my body in time with the chorus of miniature brass bells. You are wearing jet black CK jeans. I decide you are a herald of the End Times... one of the riders perhaps... and I wonder where you left your horse.
Of course, when everything is suspect we doubt even ourselves and what our own senses tell us. The comfortable certainty that comes from living in someone else's reality is like hard candy or chocolate – sweet and soothing and addictive. Nice when someone else carries the burdens. Nice when someone else makes the rules and takes the blame and builds the truth. Safer that way. But one reality does not fit all. Reality is not wash and wear. It is customized and tailored and fit to our bodies and our hearts and our souls in a way that will feel so right and so perfect – like armor and evening gown/tux with tails all in one – that we'll realize we're knowing and feeling and living for the first time, for never before were we fully alive.
I am aware in these moments lost in music that everything about my reality falls away except for passion. Desire is my companion when I dance. She stomps, rocks, sways, slides, rolls her way between lights and strobes and backbeat rhythms until she fills my body. She is light and heat and clarity of thought and balance of action. She is ache and burning, taut and pulsing, muscle, bone, heartbeat. She carries over. She fuels me. She never leaves me. She is my celebration of being alive.
Christ carries over. Christ moves with us between realities. Not Christ as we are told He is, but the voice of Christ that speaks, privately, to each of us. The whispers of divinity. This is the only truth. Rules, dictates, man's guidelines... these alter and adapt between realities. Even morals can change. Even your favorite food, color, pass-time. But that internal voice of Christ – that voice from outside yourself that lights that place in your heart... that voice from within yourself that sends a beacon into the heavens with every prayer – will remain your own. Once you discover Him, you can never leave Him behind.
I am straddling my Kawa in the parking lot. I am looking at the photo again, illuminated by the single distant street lamp... illuminated by the aura of small blue lights. An engine kick starts. I want to fall into that portal of blue and wake up looking up at those strands of stars. I look up. You ride a black and white steel stallion that makes my T1000 look like a sleek toy. I watch you pull out of the parking lot. Your hair streams like a short cloak beneath your helmet. I look up. The sky is black. It is scattered with thirteen million stars. I was taught the names of the constellations.
Tonight I rename all of them.
EJ
Sunday, December 14, 2008
With This Ring
“We’re not a vendor. We're not your partner. We’re your gateway to this industry. If you think you run the show, you’re wrong. We’re the only game in town, kiddo. Everybody plays by our rules and so will you.”
And, for the first time in a long time, I am speechless not with delighted surprise or wonderment or laughter, but rather with cold, drowning shock.
I almost drop the phone.
* * *
Dictionary.com boasts thirty-three definitions of "ring." Some are nouns. Some are verbs. Two are idioms. If you a New Testament Christian, however, a ring is a noun and means only one thing: Now then and forever.
So you best be careful when you grant one.
In the lexicon of my faith there are English words that are commonly used in America (and elsewhere) that have slightly different meanings. “Offer” and “grant” leap immediately to mind, as do “pray” and “worship.” If I’m making a promise from the depths of my soul, I’m granting myself to another. If I’m bowing my head in prayer, I may as well be murmuring in conversation to Christ as I may be making love. But as a symbol, a ring, I think, is one of the most misused and misunderstood elements.
A NTC would rarely buy herself a fine ring. Street jewelry, sure, but rarely a quality piece of jewelry. A ring is a tangible symbol of a pledge or promise offered to you. Someone else has made a grant of themselves, in some way, by placing a ring in your palm. If you place it on your finger, you accept this grant for the duration never only intended but always specified at offering.
A traditional NTC wedding set is three rings which fit together or not, but which will always be worn. Though it is perhaps simpler in contemporary society to say these rings symbolize commitment, engagement and marriage, most correct would be to say that they are all rings offered and granted between two people who intend to spend the rest of their lives together. The first marks their time as lovers, private intimate partners without children, their focus on each other. The second ring marks a public acknowledgement of the relationship, a time of reaching out to friends and family and usually includes cohabitation and commitment ceremony beneath Christ’s own sky. The third ring celebrates the creation of a family, the adoption or birth of children.
And though wedding sets and love are often the first things people think of when rings are discussed, tonight my mind and heart keeps taking me to a different kind. A promise ring. A grant made and accepted. A simple silver ring with small block letters: MIND BODY SPIRIT. A ring whose twin has never left my finger outside of work in all these years. A promise that says: We will make the impossible possible.
* * *
“This friend of yours? The one with the *independent* CCG?” *scoff*
There is no friend but that’s not why with the scoffing. The scoffing is about the abject failure of every collectible card game launched by an independent company in the history of world since WoC invented the genre.
“They’ve chosen the hardest possible path and we’re not going to make it any easier for them.”
No duh.
“We’ll make sure their failure effects us as little as possible but refusing to list any product until we have stock in holding and proof of stock in their warehouse. We want their marketing plan, we want their exit plan, we want the insurance policy that pays for us to ship back stock when they go bankrupt.”
The sun is rising into my LA sky, burning away late morning clouds. On the East Coast, it is already noon and I feel like I’m playing catch up.
* * *
Cecil Adams over at www.straightdope.com answers questions, debunks myths and otherwise does witty, smarty stuff for people all over the world. He is research god of the universe and has a way of sharing information that is accessible and intelligent at once.
I had always thought it an urban myth that the Chinese word for “crisis” is made up of two characters signifying “opportunity” and “danger,” thus forming a kind of zen metaphor for life and business. And it is bunk, on the surface, seriously over simplified, but Cecil makes a bright and shiny argument for the connection between the three words that would entertain any linguist and intrigued this gamer grrl.
“We have to catch up!” one friend said to another.
“We’re *always* catching up!” snapped the response.
We’re always in crisis.
Well... yes. The Big Boys have been doing this – publishing books and games – since before our grandparents came to this country. They have massive revolving lines of credit and subsidiary sales that fuel small countries, let alone allow them to publish flops for four or five years without much more than a changing of the scapegoated guard.
As independent voices with independent presses – like Woolfe and Whitman – we should pray for a constant state of crisis. Because only in crisis are we driven to our best. Only in crisis do we find the chance for brilliant opportunities.
If it were easy... everyone would be doing it.
If it were easy... everyone would succeed.
I choose to do this, not because it is easy, but rather, specifically, because it is hard ;) I choose to do this because the struggle is sharp and painful and real and alive. I choose to do this for the same reason that women wake up in poverty and labor in factories and embrace their children.
If we waited until it were easy... if we waited until we were ready... no one important would ever be born and nothing worth doing would ever be done.
* * *
My cat has three legs and one eye, half a tail and one-point-five ears. I tried to PhotoShop him a second eye and a fourth leg and half-again more ear etc. I thought, “He’s a handsome beast. I could sell snaps of him at Dreamstime.” I tweaked and digital botoxed. I uploaded. He’s sold not a copy. And now he likes to bite me.
I learned my lesson.
“They’d have to have crazy store support.” The stranger, the corporate suit with the salaried position and the fat Christmas bonus, is still talking. I can tell he likes words like verbiage and lexicon and mind-share. I’d like to smack him up side the head with a piece of my mind-share. “Standing displays to be filled with their product right from our catalog. Banners. Posters. In-store experts. Decks in employee’s hands *months* before launch... and that’s just the beginning.”
“Just...?”
“I’d want to see care packages with gadgets and gizmos and crowd pleasers and tourney packs and a trophy. Incentive to learn the OS. Sex appeal, geek appeal, lock in the prime demo. This is the kind of finer details that independent companies have no idea how to lay down. Their idea of buzz is working the cons.”
My head is spinning. I wish you... I wish all of you... were with me.
* * *
Remember when I talked about my cup? My personal grail? Not half empty. Not half full. All full, all the time... just not all full of air. This is not a Polly Anna life approach. Because when a grail is all full up, all the time, you have to dance pretty dang well not to spill any of it.
And, baby, I am always dancing someone’s line. Sometimes man’s. Sometimes Christ’s. Almost never my own. But I’d rather be dancing than standing still.
Crisis averted = missed opportunity.
Don’t breath a sigh of relief that we have more time. Push harder now and then celebrate in the new quiet you earned at the end. Bring crisis. Bring it on, pour it down on me. Christ said, “How can you miss me when you hear my voice in your mind, in your heart, throughout your body like breath? My whisper is eternal and my body is only momentary, so why then would you desire my body rather than my word written or heard in your soul?”
How can I turn away from crisis? How can I rest and walk away? It is impossible for me to miss divinity.
“Later you said, ‘I cannot miss you when you're right here with me.’ I blink at you. I ache for you, miss you constantly. I miss you with every breath and every heartbeat and every impossible moment of time that I don't hear your voice. That, your voice, is my reality. Not your touch. Your voice. If you are speaking I can truly know you. I can taste the nuances of you, your emotional state of being. Your words are spoken with economy. You are not flashy. I have to stop myself, gregarious as I am, from talking over you because I come alive and awake when you speak with me. I overflow with joy, with living, when you express your inner thoughts, your interior process. We could be kissing, dancing, making love, and I would miss you if you were not speaking..."
Christ said, “You will hear me always for I will speak to you directly.”
I cannot miss this. This right now, right here. This moment. Seize the day? Seize the words we share. Claim the path. Know it better every day because it is hard to find the time.
Every day.
* * *
“Is there any way you would take on an independent line?” I finally ask. I cannot stop my voice from wavering. I’ve already pulled so many strings just to get this thirty minute conversation. This one question seems too much to ask. I don’t feel worthy. I am not in this league.
“No. The liability is too high.”
And I am about to hang up, to mutter thank you and good day and all the other things that spill from our slack mouths when our world has been crushed, dismantled and destroyed and we can’t let anyone know. And then:
“Except a brand like the Mardi Gras 3000 line. You know them? They have the elements. Built like a corporate property. But they have someone else handling them, maybe InCracker, because a brand that massive, that complex? You’d need a year of setup with us to really guarantee bank.”
And the niceties that spill from my lips are still all platitudes and my mind is still racing elsewhere and I still can’t let this stranger know how I am truly feeling... but Christ has whispered:
“He who makes a grant of himself to his fellow, in my light, in my name, and with faith, shall know that I walk now, then and forever, at his side to ensure the promise of that offering.”
Christ has, once again, broken my heart only to remake it. Crushed my world, only to rebuild it.
* * *
INTERNAL MEMO
The official launch of the Mardi Gras 3000 brand, collectible card game, novels, comics and role-playing game, has been moved to February 16, 2010.
Rejoice. Come walk the impassioned path with me.
Rally the troops.
EJ
And, for the first time in a long time, I am speechless not with delighted surprise or wonderment or laughter, but rather with cold, drowning shock.
I almost drop the phone.
* * *
Dictionary.com boasts thirty-three definitions of "ring." Some are nouns. Some are verbs. Two are idioms. If you a New Testament Christian, however, a ring is a noun and means only one thing: Now then and forever.
So you best be careful when you grant one.
In the lexicon of my faith there are English words that are commonly used in America (and elsewhere) that have slightly different meanings. “Offer” and “grant” leap immediately to mind, as do “pray” and “worship.” If I’m making a promise from the depths of my soul, I’m granting myself to another. If I’m bowing my head in prayer, I may as well be murmuring in conversation to Christ as I may be making love. But as a symbol, a ring, I think, is one of the most misused and misunderstood elements.
A NTC would rarely buy herself a fine ring. Street jewelry, sure, but rarely a quality piece of jewelry. A ring is a tangible symbol of a pledge or promise offered to you. Someone else has made a grant of themselves, in some way, by placing a ring in your palm. If you place it on your finger, you accept this grant for the duration never only intended but always specified at offering.
A traditional NTC wedding set is three rings which fit together or not, but which will always be worn. Though it is perhaps simpler in contemporary society to say these rings symbolize commitment, engagement and marriage, most correct would be to say that they are all rings offered and granted between two people who intend to spend the rest of their lives together. The first marks their time as lovers, private intimate partners without children, their focus on each other. The second ring marks a public acknowledgement of the relationship, a time of reaching out to friends and family and usually includes cohabitation and commitment ceremony beneath Christ’s own sky. The third ring celebrates the creation of a family, the adoption or birth of children.
And though wedding sets and love are often the first things people think of when rings are discussed, tonight my mind and heart keeps taking me to a different kind. A promise ring. A grant made and accepted. A simple silver ring with small block letters: MIND BODY SPIRIT. A ring whose twin has never left my finger outside of work in all these years. A promise that says: We will make the impossible possible.
* * *
“This friend of yours? The one with the *independent* CCG?” *scoff*
There is no friend but that’s not why with the scoffing. The scoffing is about the abject failure of every collectible card game launched by an independent company in the history of world since WoC invented the genre.
“They’ve chosen the hardest possible path and we’re not going to make it any easier for them.”
No duh.
“We’ll make sure their failure effects us as little as possible but refusing to list any product until we have stock in holding and proof of stock in their warehouse. We want their marketing plan, we want their exit plan, we want the insurance policy that pays for us to ship back stock when they go bankrupt.”
The sun is rising into my LA sky, burning away late morning clouds. On the East Coast, it is already noon and I feel like I’m playing catch up.
* * *
Cecil Adams over at www.straightdope.com answers questions, debunks myths and otherwise does witty, smarty stuff for people all over the world. He is research god of the universe and has a way of sharing information that is accessible and intelligent at once.
I had always thought it an urban myth that the Chinese word for “crisis” is made up of two characters signifying “opportunity” and “danger,” thus forming a kind of zen metaphor for life and business. And it is bunk, on the surface, seriously over simplified, but Cecil makes a bright and shiny argument for the connection between the three words that would entertain any linguist and intrigued this gamer grrl.
“We have to catch up!” one friend said to another.
“We’re *always* catching up!” snapped the response.
We’re always in crisis.
Well... yes. The Big Boys have been doing this – publishing books and games – since before our grandparents came to this country. They have massive revolving lines of credit and subsidiary sales that fuel small countries, let alone allow them to publish flops for four or five years without much more than a changing of the scapegoated guard.
As independent voices with independent presses – like Woolfe and Whitman – we should pray for a constant state of crisis. Because only in crisis are we driven to our best. Only in crisis do we find the chance for brilliant opportunities.
If it were easy... everyone would be doing it.
If it were easy... everyone would succeed.
I choose to do this, not because it is easy, but rather, specifically, because it is hard ;) I choose to do this because the struggle is sharp and painful and real and alive. I choose to do this for the same reason that women wake up in poverty and labor in factories and embrace their children.
If we waited until it were easy... if we waited until we were ready... no one important would ever be born and nothing worth doing would ever be done.
* * *
My cat has three legs and one eye, half a tail and one-point-five ears. I tried to PhotoShop him a second eye and a fourth leg and half-again more ear etc. I thought, “He’s a handsome beast. I could sell snaps of him at Dreamstime.” I tweaked and digital botoxed. I uploaded. He’s sold not a copy. And now he likes to bite me.
I learned my lesson.
“They’d have to have crazy store support.” The stranger, the corporate suit with the salaried position and the fat Christmas bonus, is still talking. I can tell he likes words like verbiage and lexicon and mind-share. I’d like to smack him up side the head with a piece of my mind-share. “Standing displays to be filled with their product right from our catalog. Banners. Posters. In-store experts. Decks in employee’s hands *months* before launch... and that’s just the beginning.”
“Just...?”
“I’d want to see care packages with gadgets and gizmos and crowd pleasers and tourney packs and a trophy. Incentive to learn the OS. Sex appeal, geek appeal, lock in the prime demo. This is the kind of finer details that independent companies have no idea how to lay down. Their idea of buzz is working the cons.”
My head is spinning. I wish you... I wish all of you... were with me.
* * *
Remember when I talked about my cup? My personal grail? Not half empty. Not half full. All full, all the time... just not all full of air. This is not a Polly Anna life approach. Because when a grail is all full up, all the time, you have to dance pretty dang well not to spill any of it.
And, baby, I am always dancing someone’s line. Sometimes man’s. Sometimes Christ’s. Almost never my own. But I’d rather be dancing than standing still.
Crisis averted = missed opportunity.
Don’t breath a sigh of relief that we have more time. Push harder now and then celebrate in the new quiet you earned at the end. Bring crisis. Bring it on, pour it down on me. Christ said, “How can you miss me when you hear my voice in your mind, in your heart, throughout your body like breath? My whisper is eternal and my body is only momentary, so why then would you desire my body rather than my word written or heard in your soul?”
How can I turn away from crisis? How can I rest and walk away? It is impossible for me to miss divinity.
“Later you said, ‘I cannot miss you when you're right here with me.’ I blink at you. I ache for you, miss you constantly. I miss you with every breath and every heartbeat and every impossible moment of time that I don't hear your voice. That, your voice, is my reality. Not your touch. Your voice. If you are speaking I can truly know you. I can taste the nuances of you, your emotional state of being. Your words are spoken with economy. You are not flashy. I have to stop myself, gregarious as I am, from talking over you because I come alive and awake when you speak with me. I overflow with joy, with living, when you express your inner thoughts, your interior process. We could be kissing, dancing, making love, and I would miss you if you were not speaking..."
Christ said, “You will hear me always for I will speak to you directly.”
I cannot miss this. This right now, right here. This moment. Seize the day? Seize the words we share. Claim the path. Know it better every day because it is hard to find the time.
Every day.
* * *
“Is there any way you would take on an independent line?” I finally ask. I cannot stop my voice from wavering. I’ve already pulled so many strings just to get this thirty minute conversation. This one question seems too much to ask. I don’t feel worthy. I am not in this league.
“No. The liability is too high.”
And I am about to hang up, to mutter thank you and good day and all the other things that spill from our slack mouths when our world has been crushed, dismantled and destroyed and we can’t let anyone know. And then:
“Except a brand like the Mardi Gras 3000 line. You know them? They have the elements. Built like a corporate property. But they have someone else handling them, maybe InCracker, because a brand that massive, that complex? You’d need a year of setup with us to really guarantee bank.”
And the niceties that spill from my lips are still all platitudes and my mind is still racing elsewhere and I still can’t let this stranger know how I am truly feeling... but Christ has whispered:
“He who makes a grant of himself to his fellow, in my light, in my name, and with faith, shall know that I walk now, then and forever, at his side to ensure the promise of that offering.”
Christ has, once again, broken my heart only to remake it. Crushed my world, only to rebuild it.
* * *
INTERNAL MEMO
The official launch of the Mardi Gras 3000 brand, collectible card game, novels, comics and role-playing game, has been moved to February 16, 2010.
Rejoice. Come walk the impassioned path with me.
Rally the troops.
EJ
Sunday, December 07, 2008
The Secret Identity of Jackalopes
"For someone who fights labels so hard, you sure do care about what they say."
My friend Jess is teasing me. We're snooping around a leather and oddities boutique she likes and I'm checking brands. I laugh but I still won't buy Harley Davidson chaps. They never wear right and I hate the way they pinch my rear without even knowing my name.
As we drive home, I start to think hard about how some labels actually are important. They actually mean something. They tell the world something. Hm. And you know what, baby? I sure do hate feeling like a hypocrite.
"It seemed so easy to just use a label. But guess what? In the end, the label was as one dimensional as the word of man. And what I am, what *all* of us are is as far from one dimensional as divinity can take us. Christ did not mean for us to condense ourselves into MySpace Q&As or even eHarmony personality profiles. I want fewer labels and more faith. I want to be defined by my actions and my beliefs. I want to be hard to compartmentalize. I want to play hard to get.”
I am talking with Jess again but on another day, at Thanksgiving dinner with a house full of friends who either love us or hate us. What a day in H-E-Double Lizards. That day, I was thankful for a great many things but I was most thankful that it finally ended.
We are talking about a mutual friend we've known for years and known about (as a public figure) for far longer. He's dating someone fifteen years his junior. Dating for the first time in thirteen years after being a bit of a renowned playa. I mean, boy had fangrrl websites dedicated to him. The one with the pic of a red Corvette and a little hand-drawn arrow pointing to the slightly dented hood was my favorite. They used to line up (word of mouth, you know *snort*) and he was just alpha enough to oblige. Until he woke up one day and realized he was bored. So he up and became a happy daddy.
Jess says, "They're gonna hit a rocky place when they start to sleep together." (Jess is kinda blunt, btw.) "Because Gen Y grrls have this aversion to roles and, you know, labels. She'll expect him to be all top all the time." Jess took another bite of stuffing. She weighs 115 pounds and has the metabolism of a hummingbird. Jess builds mythological jackalopes in CAD for fun and has a career that some think is summed up by her body. (And did I already mention Jess is blunt?)
I thought about this statement of Jess'. I thought about it quite a bit. Maybe this because I once had a killer crush on this certain alpha wolf with wild hair, piercing eyes and a real-man, rock-my-world physique. *clearing throat* Yeah... maybe. But also possible is that I was thinking about this because I felt horribly *responsible.*
I know this young woman he is dating. I know she even reads my blog occasionally. By spouting off about labels and their inherit evils, did I just make my older friend's life kinda... well... awkward? Does this younger grrl expect him to be one way all the time? To be the label he wears most publically and nothing else? Will she be flexible? *crooked grin*
I mulled. I mused. I even kicked myself. They were swift kicks. Then my friend Cris wrote to me out of the blue:
"Hey, EJ. I've been reading your blog, of course, and something stuck out. Just wanted to share my thoughts.
"There is a difference between a label and an identity. A label is what others put on you; an identity is what you claim for yourself. There can be many labels and many parts to an identity. Labels and identities can change. They may have overlapping elements. As I watch the young women and the young men in my life struggle against labels, I wonder: Do they understand that an identity is something there for the taking? That they can take those labels that apply and claim them as their own? That claiming an identity, growing an identity, is empowering?"
This was the key I was looking for. This was a beautiful inspiration. And suddenly everything, all the little pieces, came together. Because labels can be claimed... and they can also be redefined. What it means for me to be a Christian... a grrl... a gamer... a biker... a lover... a raver... I have rewritten these labels to fit me. And more and more, as I feel life try to strip me of my strength and rob me of choices, I find myself proudly claiming these labels (and others) as something like armor and sword and shield. Something others might just call identity.
La-bel (ley buh l) noun, meaning 3: A short word or phrase descriptive of or defining the properties of a person or group, to indicate nature, ownership, etc.
I-den-ti-ty (ahy den ti tee) noun, meaning 2: The condition of being oneself or itself, and not another; a condition or character as to who a person is; the state or fact of being.
I-den-ti-ty (ahy den ti tee) noun, meaning 9: In mathematics, an equation that is valid for all values of its variables.
There is another reason to claim your own identity. A reason that not only helps us clarify who we are in the world and in our hearts, but that makes sure we live an examined life. Sometimes we have to add weaknesses to our armor... or, if not weaknesses, than cautions. What are the negative labels that you have assigned yourself or that the world has assigned you? Liar? Drama Queen? Quitter? Ask yourself: Is there any part of these labels that are valid? If you claim these labels as your own, you can (not so) jokingly warn others... and by claiming them, by accepting responsibility for them, you can begin to change them. Because possession is nine tenths of the law, baby, and if you own it, you have the control.
And with great control comes great responsibility. We may denounce the world and all the labels that it tries to paste on us. But we still have to find our identity. Yes, in the end, we are us. I am EJ. You are you. But who *am* I? Who *are* you? Just a name doesn't help us live in the world. With Christ, we need nothing but a name. In prayer, Christ needs no labels or even an identity plastered to us. But that is because we must come naked as new babies when we kneel before our Lord. We do not come dressed in armor and sword and shield.
But would Christ send us into the fray as babies? Does He intend us to fight without weapon, defense or protection? You know the answer. Our faith makes our identity glow in the dark. Soldiers of divinity.
There is yet another avenue to explore in this discussion of how we survive in this, the world of man. There is yet another reason to build our identity, that armor where every custom-made iridescent scale is carved from a redefined and tailored label.
When we claim a label, make it part of our identity, we claim a past. A history. A community. A heritage that often crosses race and gender and nationality. It is a past that can be good and bad, dark and light, but it connects us to the world and to the events of this world in a way that allows us to become educated and fully-realized citizens. We, in effect, grow up.
"When our supper plates
brim full of nightingales
and the gentle wren lays
dead but singing
it is then we stop, beloved.
Do not weep but rather realize
that those who have marched before
who have beaten back the thorns
that you do not see
back behind the thorns that remain
realize that because of them
you need not weep
for they have wept enough for you."
EJ
My friend Jess is teasing me. We're snooping around a leather and oddities boutique she likes and I'm checking brands. I laugh but I still won't buy Harley Davidson chaps. They never wear right and I hate the way they pinch my rear without even knowing my name.
As we drive home, I start to think hard about how some labels actually are important. They actually mean something. They tell the world something. Hm. And you know what, baby? I sure do hate feeling like a hypocrite.
"It seemed so easy to just use a label. But guess what? In the end, the label was as one dimensional as the word of man. And what I am, what *all* of us are is as far from one dimensional as divinity can take us. Christ did not mean for us to condense ourselves into MySpace Q&As or even eHarmony personality profiles. I want fewer labels and more faith. I want to be defined by my actions and my beliefs. I want to be hard to compartmentalize. I want to play hard to get.”
I am talking with Jess again but on another day, at Thanksgiving dinner with a house full of friends who either love us or hate us. What a day in H-E-Double Lizards. That day, I was thankful for a great many things but I was most thankful that it finally ended.
We are talking about a mutual friend we've known for years and known about (as a public figure) for far longer. He's dating someone fifteen years his junior. Dating for the first time in thirteen years after being a bit of a renowned playa. I mean, boy had fangrrl websites dedicated to him. The one with the pic of a red Corvette and a little hand-drawn arrow pointing to the slightly dented hood was my favorite. They used to line up (word of mouth, you know *snort*) and he was just alpha enough to oblige. Until he woke up one day and realized he was bored. So he up and became a happy daddy.
Jess says, "They're gonna hit a rocky place when they start to sleep together." (Jess is kinda blunt, btw.) "Because Gen Y grrls have this aversion to roles and, you know, labels. She'll expect him to be all top all the time." Jess took another bite of stuffing. She weighs 115 pounds and has the metabolism of a hummingbird. Jess builds mythological jackalopes in CAD for fun and has a career that some think is summed up by her body. (And did I already mention Jess is blunt?)
I thought about this statement of Jess'. I thought about it quite a bit. Maybe this because I once had a killer crush on this certain alpha wolf with wild hair, piercing eyes and a real-man, rock-my-world physique. *clearing throat* Yeah... maybe. But also possible is that I was thinking about this because I felt horribly *responsible.*
I know this young woman he is dating. I know she even reads my blog occasionally. By spouting off about labels and their inherit evils, did I just make my older friend's life kinda... well... awkward? Does this younger grrl expect him to be one way all the time? To be the label he wears most publically and nothing else? Will she be flexible? *crooked grin*
I mulled. I mused. I even kicked myself. They were swift kicks. Then my friend Cris wrote to me out of the blue:
"Hey, EJ. I've been reading your blog, of course, and something stuck out. Just wanted to share my thoughts.
"There is a difference between a label and an identity. A label is what others put on you; an identity is what you claim for yourself. There can be many labels and many parts to an identity. Labels and identities can change. They may have overlapping elements. As I watch the young women and the young men in my life struggle against labels, I wonder: Do they understand that an identity is something there for the taking? That they can take those labels that apply and claim them as their own? That claiming an identity, growing an identity, is empowering?"
This was the key I was looking for. This was a beautiful inspiration. And suddenly everything, all the little pieces, came together. Because labels can be claimed... and they can also be redefined. What it means for me to be a Christian... a grrl... a gamer... a biker... a lover... a raver... I have rewritten these labels to fit me. And more and more, as I feel life try to strip me of my strength and rob me of choices, I find myself proudly claiming these labels (and others) as something like armor and sword and shield. Something others might just call identity.
La-bel (ley buh l) noun, meaning 3: A short word or phrase descriptive of or defining the properties of a person or group, to indicate nature, ownership, etc.
I-den-ti-ty (ahy den ti tee) noun, meaning 2: The condition of being oneself or itself, and not another; a condition or character as to who a person is; the state or fact of being.
I-den-ti-ty (ahy den ti tee) noun, meaning 9: In mathematics, an equation that is valid for all values of its variables.
There is another reason to claim your own identity. A reason that not only helps us clarify who we are in the world and in our hearts, but that makes sure we live an examined life. Sometimes we have to add weaknesses to our armor... or, if not weaknesses, than cautions. What are the negative labels that you have assigned yourself or that the world has assigned you? Liar? Drama Queen? Quitter? Ask yourself: Is there any part of these labels that are valid? If you claim these labels as your own, you can (not so) jokingly warn others... and by claiming them, by accepting responsibility for them, you can begin to change them. Because possession is nine tenths of the law, baby, and if you own it, you have the control.
And with great control comes great responsibility. We may denounce the world and all the labels that it tries to paste on us. But we still have to find our identity. Yes, in the end, we are us. I am EJ. You are you. But who *am* I? Who *are* you? Just a name doesn't help us live in the world. With Christ, we need nothing but a name. In prayer, Christ needs no labels or even an identity plastered to us. But that is because we must come naked as new babies when we kneel before our Lord. We do not come dressed in armor and sword and shield.
But would Christ send us into the fray as babies? Does He intend us to fight without weapon, defense or protection? You know the answer. Our faith makes our identity glow in the dark. Soldiers of divinity.
There is yet another avenue to explore in this discussion of how we survive in this, the world of man. There is yet another reason to build our identity, that armor where every custom-made iridescent scale is carved from a redefined and tailored label.
When we claim a label, make it part of our identity, we claim a past. A history. A community. A heritage that often crosses race and gender and nationality. It is a past that can be good and bad, dark and light, but it connects us to the world and to the events of this world in a way that allows us to become educated and fully-realized citizens. We, in effect, grow up.
"When our supper plates
brim full of nightingales
and the gentle wren lays
dead but singing
it is then we stop, beloved.
Do not weep but rather realize
that those who have marched before
who have beaten back the thorns
that you do not see
back behind the thorns that remain
realize that because of them
you need not weep
for they have wept enough for you."
EJ
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Cobblestone Symbology
On our impassioned path: Are we walking alone? Are we walking peacefully, contentedly? Are we equipped? What are the things we carry?
These are the questions that came to me this week in my quiet moments. They came by email and PM and conversations online and off. They did not come by dove. My path turned this last week and it has taken me away from those Christ-eyed messengers. When anyone whispers that the impassioned path is not a path laid down with pain and hard choices, I will remember the moment when I turned my back on them for the last time and felt like I was cast from heaven.
Are we meant to hurt like this on our impassioned path? Are we meant to bleed? Are we meant to sing hallelujahs? Whisper amens? Are we meant to shout, to rail against the world and beat it into salvation? Are we meant to be content? Isn't contentment another word for death?
I do not know the answers to all the questions. Just a digital pastor here; at least that's what they call me. Not Christ by far. He has all the answers. I have answers that are only questions. Pickover writes (as a friend reminds me) that until we ask the questions that are outside our comfort zone, almost outside our capacity of comprehension, we will not begin to understand the face of God. For He is and was and will be so far more than us that to even begin to glimpse Him, we must go to that unexplored place within and without ourselves. That place that is terrifying and joyous, like the birth of a child.
I know:
That anger is a tool, not a right. My father always said, "Only those who walk an impassioned path have the right to use anger." My father was never angry.
I was raised that life can be hard, alone and cold, and it can also bring us support, comfort and warmth. But on the impassioned path, comfort is granted but by the grace of God. No light is cast that does not originate from Christ. The traveler on the impassioned path does not rejoice unless the joy is heaven sent.
"You don't have to do this alone," my beloved often whispers. But all my life and in my heart, I know I do, I am, I always will be. Even Christ had a beloved, after all, but I do not see that man who prayed and wept in the garden as feeling not alone. He walked only with God. I walk only with Christ.
De Vries writes, "It is the power of God that He need not exist to be our salvation." Guided by Christ and the principles laid down by His words, His deeds, we walk on those cobblestones that line the impassioned path. We affect the fabric of what we see and what we know as our world. We are rain on water. We are changer and changed; His hands as we carry on.
And sometimes we carry gear with us. We are equipped for battle. We sally forth with talisman and tools. We link ourselves to the water and to the rain and to each other and to our Christ.
"Living metaphor like our Living Word. What is this thing? This powerful desire that resides in my chest, that burns through me like my passion for you? This need to give you that vow, that grant and bond? We are kissing and my fingers trace the lines of your hand, circle your ring finger. I linger and my blood turns golden in my veins. I know what I want to do.
"These meanings we weave into the trinkets and treasures that pepper our days and years. These tokens of time and memory and magic. Each item like a prayer. Like a promise. Like a thread in the tapestry of who we are. I wear my symbols with joy and pain and everything else that memory entails."
This is armor on our path. Even when we bind each other with that most sacred exchange, the exchange of bands, two never-ending circles, we are still alone. We are only concentric with Christ.
A friend asks me, "What does it mean to be baptized by the blood?" She has asked this question of others and of Google, crossing denominations and pop culture. The answers have been unsatisfactory. I smile. I feel my smile. It is movement across my face, yes, but also an emotion that spreads like that first sip of hot coffee on a winter morning -- warming and stimulating and addictive as soft kisses. I answer:
"Do you know in your head that He died for you? Or do you accept on your shoulders, carry the cross, see the blood on your hands, your head? Do you walk your path armed with His death for you, His rebirth for you, His pain, His humiliation, His sacrifice? Do you think about how He asked if there were *any* other way for us to know salvation... if there were *anything* else that He could do or that could be done... if God could please, *please* just lift this fate from Him? Do you ever think about how young He was? Do you ever think about how *mortal* He was?
"Have you decided to be His missionary and soldier (same thing)? Do you comprehend what He did for you? Do you recognize and contemplate that no other prophet, pope or preacher has ever or will ever do the same? Would you walk and fight and die just to give others the *option* of salvation? Would you live even when you felt like dying?
"If yes, than you are baptized in the blood of Christ. Full immersion? Baby, you know it."
And He said, "If any man should want to come with me, to walk his path, than he must lose his life and carry his cross." To be baptized in blood is to come through your own trail by fire, to be burned, to be reduced to ashes, and only then be reborn.
"And there was blood on the floor, on the sheets, on the window and wall... all summer long. But I survived."
Christ's blood washes over us and becomes our own blood. This man, born mortal to understand us. This man, reborn our savior. The only man to speak with the voice of God is Christ. Christ is the voice we hear in our hearts. Christ is the Living Word. Christ and Christ alone. We are saved not by His tears or His gentleness or even His guidance. We are saved by His blood. Christ's mortal death becomes our own impassioned life. Now... how will we spend it?
This is the true question, perhaps, behind all those others I began with. How do we walk our impassioned path? How do we spend our days? They are not unending. They are expensive and rare and precious. The eternity that awaits us will not be like this. Only this, here and now, is this mortal coil. Throw it away and you have thrown away something beautiful and wondrous that even Christ relished.
Scattered among the cobblestones on my impassioned path there are garnets like drops of blood and sapphires like deep blue raindrops. Sometimes I dream they are d6s or d20s and I wake laughing but mostly that are teardrops of blood and rain. Each one holds a memory or a promise or a prayer. There are so many of them that I treasure this way, that I scatter like seeds on my path, that at times I cannot see the scripture-poetry that is engraved into the cobblestones except by gazing through a kaleidescope lens of red and blue.
How will I spend my days? I will celebrate my Lord, my Christ. In dance and prayer and making love. In song and gasp and new dawn in your eyes. In change and challenge and defeat. In choices and exclamations and claiming my identity. In back-beat and stomp and speed at midnight. In sky and stone and child's touch. In everything and everywhere. In pixels, in steel, in oil and rain. In you and me and honesty.
But most of all, I will spend my days in awe of this life my Christ has granted me.
These are the questions that came to me this week in my quiet moments. They came by email and PM and conversations online and off. They did not come by dove. My path turned this last week and it has taken me away from those Christ-eyed messengers. When anyone whispers that the impassioned path is not a path laid down with pain and hard choices, I will remember the moment when I turned my back on them for the last time and felt like I was cast from heaven.
Are we meant to hurt like this on our impassioned path? Are we meant to bleed? Are we meant to sing hallelujahs? Whisper amens? Are we meant to shout, to rail against the world and beat it into salvation? Are we meant to be content? Isn't contentment another word for death?
I do not know the answers to all the questions. Just a digital pastor here; at least that's what they call me. Not Christ by far. He has all the answers. I have answers that are only questions. Pickover writes (as a friend reminds me) that until we ask the questions that are outside our comfort zone, almost outside our capacity of comprehension, we will not begin to understand the face of God. For He is and was and will be so far more than us that to even begin to glimpse Him, we must go to that unexplored place within and without ourselves. That place that is terrifying and joyous, like the birth of a child.
I know:
That anger is a tool, not a right. My father always said, "Only those who walk an impassioned path have the right to use anger." My father was never angry.
I was raised that life can be hard, alone and cold, and it can also bring us support, comfort and warmth. But on the impassioned path, comfort is granted but by the grace of God. No light is cast that does not originate from Christ. The traveler on the impassioned path does not rejoice unless the joy is heaven sent.
"You don't have to do this alone," my beloved often whispers. But all my life and in my heart, I know I do, I am, I always will be. Even Christ had a beloved, after all, but I do not see that man who prayed and wept in the garden as feeling not alone. He walked only with God. I walk only with Christ.
De Vries writes, "It is the power of God that He need not exist to be our salvation." Guided by Christ and the principles laid down by His words, His deeds, we walk on those cobblestones that line the impassioned path. We affect the fabric of what we see and what we know as our world. We are rain on water. We are changer and changed; His hands as we carry on.
And sometimes we carry gear with us. We are equipped for battle. We sally forth with talisman and tools. We link ourselves to the water and to the rain and to each other and to our Christ.
"Living metaphor like our Living Word. What is this thing? This powerful desire that resides in my chest, that burns through me like my passion for you? This need to give you that vow, that grant and bond? We are kissing and my fingers trace the lines of your hand, circle your ring finger. I linger and my blood turns golden in my veins. I know what I want to do.
"These meanings we weave into the trinkets and treasures that pepper our days and years. These tokens of time and memory and magic. Each item like a prayer. Like a promise. Like a thread in the tapestry of who we are. I wear my symbols with joy and pain and everything else that memory entails."
This is armor on our path. Even when we bind each other with that most sacred exchange, the exchange of bands, two never-ending circles, we are still alone. We are only concentric with Christ.
A friend asks me, "What does it mean to be baptized by the blood?" She has asked this question of others and of Google, crossing denominations and pop culture. The answers have been unsatisfactory. I smile. I feel my smile. It is movement across my face, yes, but also an emotion that spreads like that first sip of hot coffee on a winter morning -- warming and stimulating and addictive as soft kisses. I answer:
"Do you know in your head that He died for you? Or do you accept on your shoulders, carry the cross, see the blood on your hands, your head? Do you walk your path armed with His death for you, His rebirth for you, His pain, His humiliation, His sacrifice? Do you think about how He asked if there were *any* other way for us to know salvation... if there were *anything* else that He could do or that could be done... if God could please, *please* just lift this fate from Him? Do you ever think about how young He was? Do you ever think about how *mortal* He was?
"Have you decided to be His missionary and soldier (same thing)? Do you comprehend what He did for you? Do you recognize and contemplate that no other prophet, pope or preacher has ever or will ever do the same? Would you walk and fight and die just to give others the *option* of salvation? Would you live even when you felt like dying?
"If yes, than you are baptized in the blood of Christ. Full immersion? Baby, you know it."
And He said, "If any man should want to come with me, to walk his path, than he must lose his life and carry his cross." To be baptized in blood is to come through your own trail by fire, to be burned, to be reduced to ashes, and only then be reborn.
"And there was blood on the floor, on the sheets, on the window and wall... all summer long. But I survived."
Christ's blood washes over us and becomes our own blood. This man, born mortal to understand us. This man, reborn our savior. The only man to speak with the voice of God is Christ. Christ is the voice we hear in our hearts. Christ is the Living Word. Christ and Christ alone. We are saved not by His tears or His gentleness or even His guidance. We are saved by His blood. Christ's mortal death becomes our own impassioned life. Now... how will we spend it?
This is the true question, perhaps, behind all those others I began with. How do we walk our impassioned path? How do we spend our days? They are not unending. They are expensive and rare and precious. The eternity that awaits us will not be like this. Only this, here and now, is this mortal coil. Throw it away and you have thrown away something beautiful and wondrous that even Christ relished.
Scattered among the cobblestones on my impassioned path there are garnets like drops of blood and sapphires like deep blue raindrops. Sometimes I dream they are d6s or d20s and I wake laughing but mostly that are teardrops of blood and rain. Each one holds a memory or a promise or a prayer. There are so many of them that I treasure this way, that I scatter like seeds on my path, that at times I cannot see the scripture-poetry that is engraved into the cobblestones except by gazing through a kaleidescope lens of red and blue.
How will I spend my days? I will celebrate my Lord, my Christ. In dance and prayer and making love. In song and gasp and new dawn in your eyes. In change and challenge and defeat. In choices and exclamations and claiming my identity. In back-beat and stomp and speed at midnight. In sky and stone and child's touch. In everything and everywhere. In pixels, in steel, in oil and rain. In you and me and honesty.
But most of all, I will spend my days in awe of this life my Christ has granted me.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Skillz... You Gots 'Em
It is the question I receive the most. Through email, through PMs, in person. I see in eyes and words that certainty and hope that whispers either, "Tell me your secret? How you found it?" or, more honestly, "Tell me where mine is?"
The impassioned path.
At fast count, a hundred people have asked me for road maps to divinity. Not one of them was a New Testament Christian. (Defined: One who hears Christ directly. Who accepts personal revelation. Who embraces the journey. One who answers only to Christ.)
Scripture says that no man knows when the Rapture will occur. Period. Not prophets or popes, not preachers or teachers. This is almost universally accepted in sane denominations (did I just write that?) but rarely do they go so far as to admit that no man will know another's impassioned path. Cast not the first stone? Yes, and how about cast not another man onto a path not his own?
So does this mean I have the map but I'm just not sharing? That I'm pulling a caterpillar/butterfly "The Dream Tree" ego-trip and whispering to the wind, "You will know it when you get there, little caterpillar. You will know..." *voice trailing off as I spread my gossamer wings and fly*
*smirk*
No. I don't have a map and I never had one. Not to my path and not to anyone else's. If someone had handed me one (a helpful pamphlet perhaps or brochure with a ten-step approach) I would have dropped it at their feet or thanked them politely and dropped it in the recycle. If another man could tell us our way, we wouldn't need to shut up and hear Christ now would we? So... when someone tries to tell me my path, I can only assume I'm either talking to a well-meaning idiot or to satan. No *shaking head* this gamer grrl angel don't ask for directions. I've got what I need right here *tapping my heart*
So. Why are you here then, right? What good is it if I won't give you easy answers? I said to a friend lately, "If were easy, everyone would be walking their impassioned path, everyone would be a New Testament Christian and no one would care who kissed a grrl just whether or not cherry chap stick brings glory to God." The answer might surprise you.
It begins as a feeling. Maybe distant. Maybe overwhelming. You may confuse it at first with "passion" because the impassioned path is often passionate, enraptured truth. It will give your cheeks color. You will not be ashamed to think about it or talk to Christ about it again and again and again. You might keep it a secret from some for safety... but not from Christ. He will be your best friend. You will laugh and sigh and blush for Him when you share how you feel. You will feel like a child, free and alive. You will feel like an adult, strong and confident. You will feel like you have wings.
You will become an angel of the Lord.
The impassioned path brings glory to Christ. It rarely brings glory to you. If it does, remove that component. I waive my royalties. I changed my name. I don't run photos. I am not the story. I am the angel and everyone knows that angels are hard to find.
The impassioned path is different for everyone. It is a new age. Think outside the box. Some friends of mine walk impassioned paths. They are: Publishing a free GLBT-positive e-zine for Mormon grrls (Ginny and Kim); Educating young men about scripture and the "Way of Christ" through online gaming (Jason); Clean, straight-talk about our bodies and how they work through in-class lectures and a line of provocative statements on modest clothes (Bobbi). Thought the impassioned path was teaching Sunday school to five year olds? Not for everyone.
The impassioned path is not about loving a single person (no matter what); or only having children (oops, sorry); or being a good elder in your house of worship. Nope, nada, negatory. These are all too easy. However, all of these things might very well be part of an impassioned path.
Also... Christ didn't say we must all walk an impassioned path. Nor must we walk an impassioned path or stay on the path once we find it to achieve some goal called heaven. Heaven is not a tier system like the developer program at IMVU. Redemption does not come in flavors or levels of tasty goodness. Levels are called incentives. Incentives were invented by man (donkey, stick, carrot) not God. Salvation is not an incentive. Christ is our savior not our point-system prize. You cannot trade in two bottom shelf amens for a top shelf hallelujah. Mother bird doesn't bribe her children to do the right thing by dangling worms in the sky. She pushes them out of the nest. Either they fly or they fall. If she has taught them right, they soar.
Think about your life. Think about when you felt happy and worthwhile, truly worthwhile. Proud in a clean and humble kind of way. Think about when you felt passionately about something, doing something, being with someone. Now think about what has been even better than that. Where was there joy like a well-spring? It wasn't in creating drama with false importance. It wasn't in hubris. It wasn't in selfish pursuit. Where was it? Find it. Remember it. Take this moment, this day, this month, this year (next twelve months) to recognize and analyze the parts of your life. Deconstructionist theory is always best either taught by a dashing college professor or applied to one's own life vigorously over corn dogs and Jello. You'll find it amazing how easy it is to see the lay of the land when you clear out the smoke and shatter the mirrors.
And if there has been nothing yet? If you can't see the path, have never felt it... then start looking now. Expose yourself to as many new things and new experiences as possible. Find it. If you want it, find it. No one else can make it happen. No one else can stop it.
The impassioned path is not a group endeavor.
Hm. What say you there, angel gamer grrl? Not a great big juicy team effort? I thought we were all in this together?! We're all working for the Big C, right? Isn't it one great big wide path? Yellow brick fun and socialization with a Christian bent? Uh, in short, no. We are born with Christ, we will die with Christ, and we live with Christ. Ultimately, we answer only to Christ with no man our intermediary and no one fully able to understand us as He does. He is all knowing. All the rest of us are small knowing.
The impassioned paths may all lead, eventually, to the same place (the arms of our Christ), but we walk them of our own accord, with our own two feet, our own heart as direction and our gaze and our gaze alone on the sky, the path and the surrounding terrain. We are responsible for our own provisions, our own deadlines, our own forks (sporks) in the road and whether or not we actually move and act or just stand and bask in the light of impassioned goodness *snort*
There might be fifty people walking the impassioned path called "Mardi Gras 3000" but every single one of them has a different path. Not a single one of us should, could, would describe our paths as the same. And none of us are waiting for someone else to give us what we need to *move.*
Life gives us the tools we need. Christ gives us the skills. Lovers, enemies, crummy parents, human parents, strangers on the street, providence, terror, falling in love, feeling desire, holding a child, making a friend laugh... life gives us the tools. Software packages, good walking shoes, brand new paint brushes, used jeans... life gives us the tools. And sometimes we look at these tools (blank book, html how-to-manual, invitation to the local church to speak) and know instantly and deeply and surely what to do with them. Other times, other tools (yellow yarn, chop sticks, an angry preacher, a goldfish named Hans, a cranky child) we have no idea... at first (make a God's Eye and give it to the preacher; teach a child about the ocean of air that we swim in and how Christ made it just for us).
Take an inventory of your tools. Quantify your assets. Think outside the box and further outside your comfort zone. Think that Christ won't appreciate your deluxe garden rake or your experience with troubled teens? Think your skills as a live-gamer or BB RPGer won't measure up? Think again. Welcome to the new day, nothing like the old day. Pray in pixels, baby. Catch up. Christ needs your whole toolbox. List them all. Use an Excel spread sheet. Sort them by how well you wield them. 1 being you manage. 5 being mastery. Go.
Leverage your tool assets into your skill set. Brainstorm what you do well. Apply these skills, backed by these tools, to that thing in your life that is impassioned. One hour every day, do it. Mix it up. Make it happen. Repeat. Increase time as able. Go.
Feel it. Think about it. Recognize it. *Walk it.*
No one is meant to stand still on an impassioned path. No one.
Not ever.
EJ
Dedicated to Honesty and Sky, forever.
The impassioned path.
At fast count, a hundred people have asked me for road maps to divinity. Not one of them was a New Testament Christian. (Defined: One who hears Christ directly. Who accepts personal revelation. Who embraces the journey. One who answers only to Christ.)
Scripture says that no man knows when the Rapture will occur. Period. Not prophets or popes, not preachers or teachers. This is almost universally accepted in sane denominations (did I just write that?) but rarely do they go so far as to admit that no man will know another's impassioned path. Cast not the first stone? Yes, and how about cast not another man onto a path not his own?
So does this mean I have the map but I'm just not sharing? That I'm pulling a caterpillar/butterfly "The Dream Tree" ego-trip and whispering to the wind, "You will know it when you get there, little caterpillar. You will know..." *voice trailing off as I spread my gossamer wings and fly*
*smirk*
No. I don't have a map and I never had one. Not to my path and not to anyone else's. If someone had handed me one (a helpful pamphlet perhaps or brochure with a ten-step approach) I would have dropped it at their feet or thanked them politely and dropped it in the recycle. If another man could tell us our way, we wouldn't need to shut up and hear Christ now would we? So... when someone tries to tell me my path, I can only assume I'm either talking to a well-meaning idiot or to satan. No *shaking head* this gamer grrl angel don't ask for directions. I've got what I need right here *tapping my heart*
So. Why are you here then, right? What good is it if I won't give you easy answers? I said to a friend lately, "If were easy, everyone would be walking their impassioned path, everyone would be a New Testament Christian and no one would care who kissed a grrl just whether or not cherry chap stick brings glory to God." The answer might surprise you.
It begins as a feeling. Maybe distant. Maybe overwhelming. You may confuse it at first with "passion" because the impassioned path is often passionate, enraptured truth. It will give your cheeks color. You will not be ashamed to think about it or talk to Christ about it again and again and again. You might keep it a secret from some for safety... but not from Christ. He will be your best friend. You will laugh and sigh and blush for Him when you share how you feel. You will feel like a child, free and alive. You will feel like an adult, strong and confident. You will feel like you have wings.
You will become an angel of the Lord.
The impassioned path brings glory to Christ. It rarely brings glory to you. If it does, remove that component. I waive my royalties. I changed my name. I don't run photos. I am not the story. I am the angel and everyone knows that angels are hard to find.
The impassioned path is different for everyone. It is a new age. Think outside the box. Some friends of mine walk impassioned paths. They are: Publishing a free GLBT-positive e-zine for Mormon grrls (Ginny and Kim); Educating young men about scripture and the "Way of Christ" through online gaming (Jason); Clean, straight-talk about our bodies and how they work through in-class lectures and a line of provocative statements on modest clothes (Bobbi). Thought the impassioned path was teaching Sunday school to five year olds? Not for everyone.
The impassioned path is not about loving a single person (no matter what); or only having children (oops, sorry); or being a good elder in your house of worship. Nope, nada, negatory. These are all too easy. However, all of these things might very well be part of an impassioned path.
Also... Christ didn't say we must all walk an impassioned path. Nor must we walk an impassioned path or stay on the path once we find it to achieve some goal called heaven. Heaven is not a tier system like the developer program at IMVU. Redemption does not come in flavors or levels of tasty goodness. Levels are called incentives. Incentives were invented by man (donkey, stick, carrot) not God. Salvation is not an incentive. Christ is our savior not our point-system prize. You cannot trade in two bottom shelf amens for a top shelf hallelujah. Mother bird doesn't bribe her children to do the right thing by dangling worms in the sky. She pushes them out of the nest. Either they fly or they fall. If she has taught them right, they soar.
Think about your life. Think about when you felt happy and worthwhile, truly worthwhile. Proud in a clean and humble kind of way. Think about when you felt passionately about something, doing something, being with someone. Now think about what has been even better than that. Where was there joy like a well-spring? It wasn't in creating drama with false importance. It wasn't in hubris. It wasn't in selfish pursuit. Where was it? Find it. Remember it. Take this moment, this day, this month, this year (next twelve months) to recognize and analyze the parts of your life. Deconstructionist theory is always best either taught by a dashing college professor or applied to one's own life vigorously over corn dogs and Jello. You'll find it amazing how easy it is to see the lay of the land when you clear out the smoke and shatter the mirrors.
And if there has been nothing yet? If you can't see the path, have never felt it... then start looking now. Expose yourself to as many new things and new experiences as possible. Find it. If you want it, find it. No one else can make it happen. No one else can stop it.
The impassioned path is not a group endeavor.
Hm. What say you there, angel gamer grrl? Not a great big juicy team effort? I thought we were all in this together?! We're all working for the Big C, right? Isn't it one great big wide path? Yellow brick fun and socialization with a Christian bent? Uh, in short, no. We are born with Christ, we will die with Christ, and we live with Christ. Ultimately, we answer only to Christ with no man our intermediary and no one fully able to understand us as He does. He is all knowing. All the rest of us are small knowing.
The impassioned paths may all lead, eventually, to the same place (the arms of our Christ), but we walk them of our own accord, with our own two feet, our own heart as direction and our gaze and our gaze alone on the sky, the path and the surrounding terrain. We are responsible for our own provisions, our own deadlines, our own forks (sporks) in the road and whether or not we actually move and act or just stand and bask in the light of impassioned goodness *snort*
There might be fifty people walking the impassioned path called "Mardi Gras 3000" but every single one of them has a different path. Not a single one of us should, could, would describe our paths as the same. And none of us are waiting for someone else to give us what we need to *move.*
Life gives us the tools we need. Christ gives us the skills. Lovers, enemies, crummy parents, human parents, strangers on the street, providence, terror, falling in love, feeling desire, holding a child, making a friend laugh... life gives us the tools. Software packages, good walking shoes, brand new paint brushes, used jeans... life gives us the tools. And sometimes we look at these tools (blank book, html how-to-manual, invitation to the local church to speak) and know instantly and deeply and surely what to do with them. Other times, other tools (yellow yarn, chop sticks, an angry preacher, a goldfish named Hans, a cranky child) we have no idea... at first (make a God's Eye and give it to the preacher; teach a child about the ocean of air that we swim in and how Christ made it just for us).
Take an inventory of your tools. Quantify your assets. Think outside the box and further outside your comfort zone. Think that Christ won't appreciate your deluxe garden rake or your experience with troubled teens? Think your skills as a live-gamer or BB RPGer won't measure up? Think again. Welcome to the new day, nothing like the old day. Pray in pixels, baby. Catch up. Christ needs your whole toolbox. List them all. Use an Excel spread sheet. Sort them by how well you wield them. 1 being you manage. 5 being mastery. Go.
Leverage your tool assets into your skill set. Brainstorm what you do well. Apply these skills, backed by these tools, to that thing in your life that is impassioned. One hour every day, do it. Mix it up. Make it happen. Repeat. Increase time as able. Go.
Feel it. Think about it. Recognize it. *Walk it.*
No one is meant to stand still on an impassioned path. No one.
Not ever.
EJ
Dedicated to Honesty and Sky, forever.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Rain
...in celebration of passing the 4000 subscriber milestone.
Like green growing things need rain and sunlight, I need your whispers, your touch. Divinity made flesh, you are my living prayer, my heart, my everything. I love you.
It is raining. With rain, comes cleansing. Sweet baptism of the world.
In the café, where once a “friend” tore out my heart over you and laid it on the checkerboard table, I sit now and laugh. Extended dinner break from work, our mutual true friend (a sister in Christ) laughs with me. “Well, they don’t *know* you...” and she inflects a perfect talk-show guest accent, complete with head bob and street attitude. “Maybe they should worry that their daughter is dating a pastor. That’s a big responsibility. I mean, she’ll always have to come second to Christ.” And I look down, a hot blush flooding my brown cheeks.
And Christ turned to His apostles, and His body was not quite the flesh it once was. This was risen flesh. This was form held between Earth and Heaven. Marked by the evil of man, wounds at His side and feet and palms of hands. His brow still marred by their mockery of thorns. Yet to look upon Him was transcendent. They knew He was not long for their world. He had given enough.
“What shall we do? Where shall we go?”
They were voices of fear, tangible and terrified, and this was their moment of truth. He looked at them. They already looked so alone.
“We belong to the light.
We belong to the thunder.
We belong to the sound of the words.”
There is power in numbers. Power in hands, voices, votes, belief, all joined in union so strong and unshakable that they become blind to opposition only aware of attack and survival. There is power in numbers. Binary. Prime numbers. Factual truths that are the foundation of science and the proof of my Christ. There is a golden thread between us that thrums with the certainty that our path is not accepted by the blind masses in the same way that Christ’s path and the path of His own were not accepted.
There are palm boughs. There are rocks thrown. There is a silver web that connects all true Christians, Christianos, that allows us to share truths instantly, across time and space and ignorance. This is web is often called: faith
The Terrapyres and Celestials aren’t the only ones with racial knowledge. Our bloodline is His bloodline. The blood He shed for us is our lineage. Our inheritance.
What do you say in His name? What do you do in His name?
A true Christian is found not in words, man’s rituals or dictates, but in his actions. Does he live as Christ did? Or does he wrap himself in the drama of man’s world, the egocentric construct of the church? Pedestals are for fine art. Ignorance is not pretty.
And I realize, looking up into His sky, feeling His baptism on my face, that I am still... very… angry.
Or is it hurt?
No.
I prefer anger. My heart is yours. It cannot be wounded except by your hand.
Christ looked at them. His eyes were that maelstrom of gentleness and strength that they had seen so many times before. “You will not be alone,” and His voice was benediction, was truth, was Living Word. “As you hear my voice now, you will hear my voice again. I will speak directly and divinely. I will find you, touch you, hold you, wherever you are, wherever you are lost or found. You will write my stories and make them your own, but the truth will be passed to each of you, to each of them, forever, revelation to your own hearts alone. For only then is the word alive.”
Whether I am here or there. Close or far. Whether the distance is two thousand miles or a single breath, I stand with you. Perhaps the first trial you felt alone because I had never given you the words. I had never verbalized this truth, this promise, this reality. They cannot strip you down because I will not let them near you. Let them step close. They may not see me, golden armor wrapped around you, but I will be there. And their darkness with strike me and shatter away from you like glass. Close your eyes. Just breathe easy. We will fight together.
It is raining. The rain falls from low clouds that limit my world, encasing it in something safe and manageable. Life happens around me while I pray for you. How I dread and love Sundays. My Sabbath with Him. Your Sabbath in what I have come to see as a den of lions. There is great faith there, where you walk, but I believe it resides in you alone. All else is laid there by man. Such clarity you possess when you speak with me of Christ. In the last month alone we spoke for 84 hours. In those hours we spoke of Christ, said His name, 115 times.
“I hope she knows what she’s getting into.”
Yes. It’s called service. Praise the Lord she’s found it. My heart breaks that she can’t share it with you.
“There is one mission. One goal. One path. Bring the people to Christ.”
“This is the path I walk with you.”
“This is our path.”
“Come what may.”
“Amen, my love.”
“Amen.”
My father, before he died, lived with me in a home in Washington that was up on a cliff, looking out over the Puget Sound and the ferry lines. On Sundays, before we went walking and spoke of Christ, before we went trekking about town, finding others, naturally, to start up conversations with, to invite for dinner out (to mention Christ over chocolate cream pie for dessert), he would watch the preacher men on tv. My father loved all things American and that meant tv. He liked to do this with a demitasse cup of espresso with thick spices in his hand and his hair down about his shoulders. He had a gentle demeanor and a quiet voice. He never teased, was incapable of sarcasm and simply blinked his eyes when startled by anyone’s anger or rudeness. His eyes were always gentle.
“Do you see this, Eliza? Do you see how denomination always turns back to itself? It does not spin outward to reach Christ. It must fold back in to support its own survival. Denomination is a beast. It is hungry. It is business and market strength. It is the opposite of divine.”
And at my easel, my back to the tv because I truly despise tv (LOL!), I would fake a laugh or a chuckle, “I know, Dad. I hear it.” How I loved to hear his accent roll with tender inflections. He meant them – those evangelists – no harm or malice. He was amused by them. Like children playing grown up. Like scared children making up stories to stop themselves from fearing the dark.
I sometimes prayed that I could have his calm. My father’s calm. That I could stop saying “denomination” like a four-letter word. It took me twenty-seven years and falling in love with you for that prayer to be answered. So now, at least, I don’t breathe fire when someone proclaims, “The church says...”
But, babygrrl, really? Churches don’t speak.
What is the opposite of Living Word? Huh.
Christ drew His apostles to Him one raw winter night when the wind battered the humble shelter that they huddled within. He said to them, "Do not be afraid. You will weather this storm with me."
But one of the apostles said, "What if the shelter fails us, Lord?"
And Christ answered, "Then I will stand with my arms around you in the rain and wind, and we will weather the storm."
Then another apostle said, "What if we are bruised and broken by the falling trees?"
Christ answered, "Then I will lift the tree from your back and carry it for you."
A third apostle asked, "What if falling rock crushes us from the cliff above?"
Christ only smiled His most gentle smile. "Then you will be crushed and remade."
"In Heaven?" groused a doubting apostle.
Christ shook His head patiently. "No. Those who stand strong for me, shall be imbibed with my courage and filled with my light. And so should he fall, that light eternal will remake him. He will not be in Heaven. He will be on Earth. But nonetheless, he will lift the stone that crushes him."
“Whatever we deny or embrace.
For worse or for better.
We belong together.”
It is raining. My grandmother, ex-soldier, used to say: “Go stand in the rain, Eliza Jean. My Angel. Go stand and find new scripture in every rain drop.” And so I stood.
When you touch your lips to mine, do you taste divinity? Shh. Let them think we’ve never met.
“No distance, no time, no darkness, can take me from you,” and His words were benediction and His benediction was truth.
There was a pastor. A youth pastor. He ministered each Sunday to the children and teens. They gave him a chance to speak to the adult congregation. They mixed the children and adults and let Alan speak.
My dear friend, my mentor, the mother I always wanted, she was thirteen then. It would be six years until I would meet her. She sat, hair to her waist, pale blue eyes like washed denim sensitive to every light but the filtered light cast through the simple stain glass windows. She wore a robin’s egg blue cotton dress with antique white lace edging. Black patent leather shoes. A small gold cross. Her Bible, dog-eared in her lap, sat beneath still, small hands. She was already a survivor of kidnapping and rape. She was already a survivor of clapboard poverty. She was already so many things. She was not sheltered. She was not blind. She was simply alive.
Outside the small, nondenominational, nonaffiliated church, it was raining. The sound was the torrents of the world. The sound of existence. Alan spoke to forty rows of packed pews. Alan spoke to my friend:
“Why are you here? Is it because it’s raining? Is it easier to sit here, on worn smooth pews, than stand out there where it is wet and cold and dark? Do you see Christ here? Why would Christ sit in a building and huddle and pray? Why are you here? Do you see blind eyes here? Hearts that bleed for the light of truth? Get up! Go! Find Christ and walk with Him to where He can change lives with His hands -- your hands -- in His world. Go!"
And people *stood up.* Not one. Not two. Ten. Twelve. Twenty. People stood up and left. But my friend wasn’t one of them. With her grandfather’s hand firm on her arm, she stayed where she was. But her eyes burned and she never returned to that building. She spent her Sundays in service to Christ instead of sitting in a service about Him.
The church “lost” members that day when Alan preached. And they never let him preach again... until they asked him to take the pulpit as his own fifteen years later. They “lost” members (faith is *not* supposed to be a club) but how many souls did those ex-members save? More than have ever been saved from any pulpit. Because that pastor didn't care about the building. He cared about Christ.
The rain continues to fall. It is softer than it sounds. I shiver, but not from the cold, rather from the feel of Christ all around me. I thank Him for everyone in my life. Even the people I wish would wake up or shut up or look up. I sit in silent contemplation with our Christ. I wish I could record the sounds and send them to you. The wind. The city. The doves. The rainfall. I don't want to move. I want to stay in this moment. It is divine. Living transformation. And I love you.
“And I miss you.
Like the deserts miss the rain.”
Christ whispers: Look up.
Faith whispers: Look up.
You whisper: Look at me.
It’s really all the same whisper.
* * *
From: ej@email.com
To: jo@email.com
Subject: Rain like diamonds
Date: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 12:43 PM
Google says it's still raining in Port Orchard. Close your eyes a moment. Imagine shrugging into my leather jacket, which smells like my perfume, and stepping out into the rain with me. I take your hand, lead you up the path into the wood. Don't worry I'll knock down any spider webs. Half way up I won't be able to wait, I'll turn into your arms, tip my face to yours, reach up, my hands in your hair, and guide your mouth to mine. After a moment, I'll back away a tiny bit, touch your lips with my finger to hold the kiss there, then turn away, take your hand, and lead you further into the woods.
Past the little shed cabin to the right (West) and looping around the hidden trail to Owl Tree. We'll walk carefully so not to lose the path. It will take ten or fifteen minutes. By the time we reach the old lightning-struck tree, the leather jacket will shine like armor across your shoulders. Under Christ's own perfect sky, silver and heavy, I'll kiss you again, tasting rain on your lips, finding the heat of your blush with my fingertips, finding the heat of your mouth with my own. It will be enough. In His eyes. In His time. It will be enough.
I love you. I cannot help but think of you this way. Somewhere North of a letter, but Northwest of poetry. You have made me what I am today. You have taught me to be loud. You are the first to walk with me. Christ bless and keep you always. You deserve so much more than I could ever give. But I am so willing to try.
Angel
* * *
And I was on my knees and I flung the laptop out of my hands, didn’t care as it bounced off the fire escape railing. I was powerless to stop them from hurting you. And I wept and I begged and said to Christ, aloud... very loud... “Why won’t you tell her to leave me?!” Because goodness knows I was telling you to. Over and over again. Six hours... eight hours... with every possible argument I could dream up.
And He was so quiet. But just as He promised the apostles, the first apostles (and please note that the word is not capitalized), He was with me. Quiet. Still. But so there. Such a presence that I could feel His hands on my shoulders. You said: “He told me to love you. Are you asking me to turn away from Him?”
It was the first night you ever wrote Him instead of him. It meant more to me than you may ever know.
* * *
From: ej@email.com
To: jo@email.com
Subject: The rain arrives...
Date: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 3:00 AM
...and with it my passion for you rekindles and I recall your face in a dozen photos, your voice, poised and worried across the sound of an early summer day, and the feeling of my heart, pounding in my chest, flooding my cheeks with heat, when your words, live and slowly rising, first meet my eyes every Monday and Friday evening. It has, I think, been raining for you all day and into the evening.
The formations of clouds and wind and heavenly turbulence are far harder to read and decipher than the emotional punctuation you use to show me you. It is now... this is my "midnight"... these are my quiet hours when prayer is possible and probable and always so real. The power of prayer, like the power of creation, floods my chest and fills my eyes with thankful tears. The rest of the world around me has left me behind. The clock chimed twelve and they have all changed the day on their calendars and moved on. I am here, alone with my Christ, in what remains of His good day. Fools rush in. But I am content to stay and wait out the hours with my thoughts of stars and conception and salvation and conversion.
You have seen me in panic and in stress. You have comforted me. You have turned me on. You have teased, argued, cried, played, prayed, worried and fallen asleep with me. But if you messaged our mutual friends and asked, "How is she most?" their answers would be the same: She is quiet. She is thoughtful. She watches everyone and everything... she looks and *sees.*
My eyes drift closed, my prayers are done... two hours each morning, two hours each night... continual throughout the day... often more when it rains. I should sleep. My call is at 8. But I linger here. I do not want to leave the window seat. I like the feeling of the wind sheering mist off the rain drops and enfolding me in tiny sparkling gems. I close my eyes... and look up. You are standing in the doorway, the faint recessed light of the hall is behind you. You are tall and confident. You know that I like what I see. You are silent. You are asking without words if I have returned from walking with my Christ, our Christ, to stand again on your golden shores, rose petals at my feet. Am I dreaming? No, I think you are here with me. Always near.
Good night, my love.
Your Angel
* * *
Christ whispers: I am with you. I am with all of you.
Hear me.
EJ
Like green growing things need rain and sunlight, I need your whispers, your touch. Divinity made flesh, you are my living prayer, my heart, my everything. I love you.
It is raining. With rain, comes cleansing. Sweet baptism of the world.
In the café, where once a “friend” tore out my heart over you and laid it on the checkerboard table, I sit now and laugh. Extended dinner break from work, our mutual true friend (a sister in Christ) laughs with me. “Well, they don’t *know* you...” and she inflects a perfect talk-show guest accent, complete with head bob and street attitude. “Maybe they should worry that their daughter is dating a pastor. That’s a big responsibility. I mean, she’ll always have to come second to Christ.” And I look down, a hot blush flooding my brown cheeks.
And Christ turned to His apostles, and His body was not quite the flesh it once was. This was risen flesh. This was form held between Earth and Heaven. Marked by the evil of man, wounds at His side and feet and palms of hands. His brow still marred by their mockery of thorns. Yet to look upon Him was transcendent. They knew He was not long for their world. He had given enough.
“What shall we do? Where shall we go?”
They were voices of fear, tangible and terrified, and this was their moment of truth. He looked at them. They already looked so alone.
“We belong to the light.
We belong to the thunder.
We belong to the sound of the words.”
There is power in numbers. Power in hands, voices, votes, belief, all joined in union so strong and unshakable that they become blind to opposition only aware of attack and survival. There is power in numbers. Binary. Prime numbers. Factual truths that are the foundation of science and the proof of my Christ. There is a golden thread between us that thrums with the certainty that our path is not accepted by the blind masses in the same way that Christ’s path and the path of His own were not accepted.
There are palm boughs. There are rocks thrown. There is a silver web that connects all true Christians, Christianos, that allows us to share truths instantly, across time and space and ignorance. This is web is often called: faith
The Terrapyres and Celestials aren’t the only ones with racial knowledge. Our bloodline is His bloodline. The blood He shed for us is our lineage. Our inheritance.
What do you say in His name? What do you do in His name?
A true Christian is found not in words, man’s rituals or dictates, but in his actions. Does he live as Christ did? Or does he wrap himself in the drama of man’s world, the egocentric construct of the church? Pedestals are for fine art. Ignorance is not pretty.
And I realize, looking up into His sky, feeling His baptism on my face, that I am still... very… angry.
Or is it hurt?
No.
I prefer anger. My heart is yours. It cannot be wounded except by your hand.
Christ looked at them. His eyes were that maelstrom of gentleness and strength that they had seen so many times before. “You will not be alone,” and His voice was benediction, was truth, was Living Word. “As you hear my voice now, you will hear my voice again. I will speak directly and divinely. I will find you, touch you, hold you, wherever you are, wherever you are lost or found. You will write my stories and make them your own, but the truth will be passed to each of you, to each of them, forever, revelation to your own hearts alone. For only then is the word alive.”
Whether I am here or there. Close or far. Whether the distance is two thousand miles or a single breath, I stand with you. Perhaps the first trial you felt alone because I had never given you the words. I had never verbalized this truth, this promise, this reality. They cannot strip you down because I will not let them near you. Let them step close. They may not see me, golden armor wrapped around you, but I will be there. And their darkness with strike me and shatter away from you like glass. Close your eyes. Just breathe easy. We will fight together.
It is raining. The rain falls from low clouds that limit my world, encasing it in something safe and manageable. Life happens around me while I pray for you. How I dread and love Sundays. My Sabbath with Him. Your Sabbath in what I have come to see as a den of lions. There is great faith there, where you walk, but I believe it resides in you alone. All else is laid there by man. Such clarity you possess when you speak with me of Christ. In the last month alone we spoke for 84 hours. In those hours we spoke of Christ, said His name, 115 times.
“I hope she knows what she’s getting into.”
Yes. It’s called service. Praise the Lord she’s found it. My heart breaks that she can’t share it with you.
“There is one mission. One goal. One path. Bring the people to Christ.”
“This is the path I walk with you.”
“This is our path.”
“Come what may.”
“Amen, my love.”
“Amen.”
My father, before he died, lived with me in a home in Washington that was up on a cliff, looking out over the Puget Sound and the ferry lines. On Sundays, before we went walking and spoke of Christ, before we went trekking about town, finding others, naturally, to start up conversations with, to invite for dinner out (to mention Christ over chocolate cream pie for dessert), he would watch the preacher men on tv. My father loved all things American and that meant tv. He liked to do this with a demitasse cup of espresso with thick spices in his hand and his hair down about his shoulders. He had a gentle demeanor and a quiet voice. He never teased, was incapable of sarcasm and simply blinked his eyes when startled by anyone’s anger or rudeness. His eyes were always gentle.
“Do you see this, Eliza? Do you see how denomination always turns back to itself? It does not spin outward to reach Christ. It must fold back in to support its own survival. Denomination is a beast. It is hungry. It is business and market strength. It is the opposite of divine.”
And at my easel, my back to the tv because I truly despise tv (LOL!), I would fake a laugh or a chuckle, “I know, Dad. I hear it.” How I loved to hear his accent roll with tender inflections. He meant them – those evangelists – no harm or malice. He was amused by them. Like children playing grown up. Like scared children making up stories to stop themselves from fearing the dark.
I sometimes prayed that I could have his calm. My father’s calm. That I could stop saying “denomination” like a four-letter word. It took me twenty-seven years and falling in love with you for that prayer to be answered. So now, at least, I don’t breathe fire when someone proclaims, “The church says...”
But, babygrrl, really? Churches don’t speak.
What is the opposite of Living Word? Huh.
Christ drew His apostles to Him one raw winter night when the wind battered the humble shelter that they huddled within. He said to them, "Do not be afraid. You will weather this storm with me."
But one of the apostles said, "What if the shelter fails us, Lord?"
And Christ answered, "Then I will stand with my arms around you in the rain and wind, and we will weather the storm."
Then another apostle said, "What if we are bruised and broken by the falling trees?"
Christ answered, "Then I will lift the tree from your back and carry it for you."
A third apostle asked, "What if falling rock crushes us from the cliff above?"
Christ only smiled His most gentle smile. "Then you will be crushed and remade."
"In Heaven?" groused a doubting apostle.
Christ shook His head patiently. "No. Those who stand strong for me, shall be imbibed with my courage and filled with my light. And so should he fall, that light eternal will remake him. He will not be in Heaven. He will be on Earth. But nonetheless, he will lift the stone that crushes him."
“Whatever we deny or embrace.
For worse or for better.
We belong together.”
It is raining. My grandmother, ex-soldier, used to say: “Go stand in the rain, Eliza Jean. My Angel. Go stand and find new scripture in every rain drop.” And so I stood.
When you touch your lips to mine, do you taste divinity? Shh. Let them think we’ve never met.
“No distance, no time, no darkness, can take me from you,” and His words were benediction and His benediction was truth.
There was a pastor. A youth pastor. He ministered each Sunday to the children and teens. They gave him a chance to speak to the adult congregation. They mixed the children and adults and let Alan speak.
My dear friend, my mentor, the mother I always wanted, she was thirteen then. It would be six years until I would meet her. She sat, hair to her waist, pale blue eyes like washed denim sensitive to every light but the filtered light cast through the simple stain glass windows. She wore a robin’s egg blue cotton dress with antique white lace edging. Black patent leather shoes. A small gold cross. Her Bible, dog-eared in her lap, sat beneath still, small hands. She was already a survivor of kidnapping and rape. She was already a survivor of clapboard poverty. She was already so many things. She was not sheltered. She was not blind. She was simply alive.
Outside the small, nondenominational, nonaffiliated church, it was raining. The sound was the torrents of the world. The sound of existence. Alan spoke to forty rows of packed pews. Alan spoke to my friend:
“Why are you here? Is it because it’s raining? Is it easier to sit here, on worn smooth pews, than stand out there where it is wet and cold and dark? Do you see Christ here? Why would Christ sit in a building and huddle and pray? Why are you here? Do you see blind eyes here? Hearts that bleed for the light of truth? Get up! Go! Find Christ and walk with Him to where He can change lives with His hands -- your hands -- in His world. Go!"
And people *stood up.* Not one. Not two. Ten. Twelve. Twenty. People stood up and left. But my friend wasn’t one of them. With her grandfather’s hand firm on her arm, she stayed where she was. But her eyes burned and she never returned to that building. She spent her Sundays in service to Christ instead of sitting in a service about Him.
The church “lost” members that day when Alan preached. And they never let him preach again... until they asked him to take the pulpit as his own fifteen years later. They “lost” members (faith is *not* supposed to be a club) but how many souls did those ex-members save? More than have ever been saved from any pulpit. Because that pastor didn't care about the building. He cared about Christ.
The rain continues to fall. It is softer than it sounds. I shiver, but not from the cold, rather from the feel of Christ all around me. I thank Him for everyone in my life. Even the people I wish would wake up or shut up or look up. I sit in silent contemplation with our Christ. I wish I could record the sounds and send them to you. The wind. The city. The doves. The rainfall. I don't want to move. I want to stay in this moment. It is divine. Living transformation. And I love you.
“And I miss you.
Like the deserts miss the rain.”
Christ whispers: Look up.
Faith whispers: Look up.
You whisper: Look at me.
It’s really all the same whisper.
* * *
From: ej@email.com
To: jo@email.com
Subject: Rain like diamonds
Date: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 12:43 PM
Google says it's still raining in Port Orchard. Close your eyes a moment. Imagine shrugging into my leather jacket, which smells like my perfume, and stepping out into the rain with me. I take your hand, lead you up the path into the wood. Don't worry I'll knock down any spider webs. Half way up I won't be able to wait, I'll turn into your arms, tip my face to yours, reach up, my hands in your hair, and guide your mouth to mine. After a moment, I'll back away a tiny bit, touch your lips with my finger to hold the kiss there, then turn away, take your hand, and lead you further into the woods.
Past the little shed cabin to the right (West) and looping around the hidden trail to Owl Tree. We'll walk carefully so not to lose the path. It will take ten or fifteen minutes. By the time we reach the old lightning-struck tree, the leather jacket will shine like armor across your shoulders. Under Christ's own perfect sky, silver and heavy, I'll kiss you again, tasting rain on your lips, finding the heat of your blush with my fingertips, finding the heat of your mouth with my own. It will be enough. In His eyes. In His time. It will be enough.
I love you. I cannot help but think of you this way. Somewhere North of a letter, but Northwest of poetry. You have made me what I am today. You have taught me to be loud. You are the first to walk with me. Christ bless and keep you always. You deserve so much more than I could ever give. But I am so willing to try.
Angel
* * *
And I was on my knees and I flung the laptop out of my hands, didn’t care as it bounced off the fire escape railing. I was powerless to stop them from hurting you. And I wept and I begged and said to Christ, aloud... very loud... “Why won’t you tell her to leave me?!” Because goodness knows I was telling you to. Over and over again. Six hours... eight hours... with every possible argument I could dream up.
And He was so quiet. But just as He promised the apostles, the first apostles (and please note that the word is not capitalized), He was with me. Quiet. Still. But so there. Such a presence that I could feel His hands on my shoulders. You said: “He told me to love you. Are you asking me to turn away from Him?”
It was the first night you ever wrote Him instead of him. It meant more to me than you may ever know.
* * *
From: ej@email.com
To: jo@email.com
Subject: The rain arrives...
Date: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 3:00 AM
...and with it my passion for you rekindles and I recall your face in a dozen photos, your voice, poised and worried across the sound of an early summer day, and the feeling of my heart, pounding in my chest, flooding my cheeks with heat, when your words, live and slowly rising, first meet my eyes every Monday and Friday evening. It has, I think, been raining for you all day and into the evening.
The formations of clouds and wind and heavenly turbulence are far harder to read and decipher than the emotional punctuation you use to show me you. It is now... this is my "midnight"... these are my quiet hours when prayer is possible and probable and always so real. The power of prayer, like the power of creation, floods my chest and fills my eyes with thankful tears. The rest of the world around me has left me behind. The clock chimed twelve and they have all changed the day on their calendars and moved on. I am here, alone with my Christ, in what remains of His good day. Fools rush in. But I am content to stay and wait out the hours with my thoughts of stars and conception and salvation and conversion.
You have seen me in panic and in stress. You have comforted me. You have turned me on. You have teased, argued, cried, played, prayed, worried and fallen asleep with me. But if you messaged our mutual friends and asked, "How is she most?" their answers would be the same: She is quiet. She is thoughtful. She watches everyone and everything... she looks and *sees.*
My eyes drift closed, my prayers are done... two hours each morning, two hours each night... continual throughout the day... often more when it rains. I should sleep. My call is at 8. But I linger here. I do not want to leave the window seat. I like the feeling of the wind sheering mist off the rain drops and enfolding me in tiny sparkling gems. I close my eyes... and look up. You are standing in the doorway, the faint recessed light of the hall is behind you. You are tall and confident. You know that I like what I see. You are silent. You are asking without words if I have returned from walking with my Christ, our Christ, to stand again on your golden shores, rose petals at my feet. Am I dreaming? No, I think you are here with me. Always near.
Good night, my love.
Your Angel
* * *
Christ whispers: I am with you. I am with all of you.
Hear me.
EJ
Sunday, November 09, 2008
I Don’t Want You
for Wings, Meg, and Sarah
“Every now and then
I can see that I'm getting somewhere.
But where I have to go is so deep.
I was angry back then
and, you know, I still am.
I have lost so much sleep
but I'm gonna find it....”
“Wings, baby. Stop. Stop it.”
And it begins. That buzz, that voice, that thing that pegged me crazy at sixteen. That angry sound that’s my own Second Coming. Sweet Lord, how many times has Christ walked this Earth since Ascension? Three times last week... at least twice when we made love. Seven, eight hundred times in just shy of twenty-eight years. He returns in these moments, when He is needed more than the air we take in, in sharp, short gasps.
“No, Wings. No more.”
And I’m shaking my head and standing up and cocking my head to the side. And staring at her message and re-reading. “No...” And then, resounding: “NO.”
And someone wrote her back. But it wasn’t me. Because the hot tears on my face were too heavy for me to see the keys or the screen or the thick mason jar of brushes now shards of broken glass on the floor of my room. Or maybe... maybe what Dad said is true: “Women don’t see with their eyes, Eliza Jean. Women see with their hearts. Where Christ resides.” And so someone, that someone maybe me, wrote, and the words were hot and furious, tempered by the cool, crispness of the medium. Neutered by the distance between our bodies. But so full of everything... so elevated by the passion I feel in this life, for her, for everyone he touches and destroys, for every green-eyed (blue-eyed, brown-eyed) grrl who has ever been bent and almost broken. I know she heard me. Or heard Him. Whatev.
“Baby. Stop it. Just stop it. Listen to me. Hear me the way Jo hears me. My arms around you, us sitting together, fitting like two parts of a strong whole. The overheads are off and the glow of the red strip light reminds me of a club in NYC but my thoughts are with you and only you. Hear me with my cheek against yours and your eyes closed and my voice steady and warm. Just the truth. Always just the truth: You. Don't. Want. Him.
“There you were silent. There you were bent to his will. There you were alone. You are not there. You will never be there again. You are not silent. You will never be silenced again. You are not powerless to him. He does not own you. He will never own you again. No one but Christ. He is the only one. And He cannot be displaced.”
“’Cause when they own the information
Oh, they can bend it all they want.”
You know it. You are smarter than the statistics. You are not a victim. Say it. Say it, grrl. You are *not* what the newspapers say you are. You are at the other end of the bell curve. You *see.* You get it. Open those beautiful eyes for me. Look at me. You see through the smoke and break the mirrors. You don’t wanna stand around, baby, and wait for the world to change. You’re standing up beside me. You’re shouting with me. You want to wait on *him* to change? You wanna live like *that*? No *shaking head* No, baby. You can’t jump off this mountain now. You’ve climbed too far. You’ve fought too long. If I must, I’ll carry you. You haven’t been climbing alone. I’ll drag you kicking and screaming, if I have to. But I won’t let you jump. No. I won’t let you jump.
The Warren Street bridge is not that pretty. I know. I’ve been there.
“Charm is seduction. Anger is exhausting. It is easier to believe the lies. Always easier to believe the lies. Fighting is hard. Oh baby... I just wrote all this last Sunday. Don't you see? I know you do... but you're working so hard and feeling so bad that just a little bit of easy must feel *so* good. Just a little bit of easy... seems like you’ve earned it. But this ain’t the easy you want. This easy is pain all dressed up as rock candy.”
“As a little girl, I came down to the water
With a little stone in my hand.
It would shimmer and sing to me.
And we knew everything.
As a little girl, I came down...”
Here we are. Our End Times. Let me join the ranks of my fine friends, the Rapturists. Let me herald our end. Watch and I’ll call down the sky. All those nighttime clouds are flocks of End Time angels. The stars in the hilts of their swords mesmerize me. I am a little girl (grrl) again... eight or nine... standing in their gaze. The temperature drops to 60... I drop my jacket over the side of the roof. 55... I pop the buttons on my shirt, my eyes on the angels. 52... winds from the Northwest, ten miles per hour. Five storeys high, but lower than the sky. Tank top, jeans and boots. Might be chilly if I wasn’t burning with indignation.
My heads falls back. I close my eyes. It seems so easy. This, right here. Me and Christ and my thoughts of you. On the raised edge that has become my friend. I lay myself back. I own my moment beneath the angels.
“But in a little while, I got steeped in authority.
Heaven only knows what went wrong.
There is nothing so cruel than
to bury that jewel
when it was mine all along.
I'm gonna find it...”
There is glass in the carpet. There is an angel on my canvas. There is a warm stillness in the apartment that doesn’t fit my current mood. Woke up this morning with heat in my cheeks, in the pit of my belly, in thoughts of Cherry Coke. I couldn’t shake the idea that you were right around the corner of my room... you were leaning against my door frame. “Awake at last, Angel? ’Bout time.”
Awake at last.
And my earbuds turn this warm silent softness into a world that reflects my interior space. Echo on. Rolling in. Play it twice. Once again. Slower... now. Dance with me.
“Don’t take it. You make the rules. Don't let him twist up your world. I will talk with you about this every night if you need me too. I will hold you and laugh with you. Don't dream yourself there with him. Dream yourself here with me. I won't hurt you. I won't lie to you or insult you. I won't crush you except in my arms. Dream yourself laughing with any of us who love you. Dream yourself plotting and scheming and fighting and *living.* Dream yourself raving with me. Hiking. Drawing. Singing. Dream anything with anyone but not him. No. Not him.”
Alone you are so strong. I see you. I hear your words. I know you. Let me know you? We only need them when they tell us we do. In those magical moments when the alchemist turns our gold to stone and then fills our pockets and pushes us under. You think I haven’t sunk beneath that current, baby? You remember, right?
“Can’t imagine a woman being so stupid...”
“You’d be beautiful if you gained a little weight...”
“Is there anything you’re actually good at...”
“Took you long enough...”
“I love you sometimes...”
“EJ. I’m not actually listening.”
Jo says to me that anything that hurts us, that makes us miserable, is not by the hand of God. Christ doesn’t hurt us *here,* at our core. I bleed for Him, yeah. I fight. I struggle. But He doesn’t hurt me here *tapping my heart* Satan does not manifest like a horned beast with a leery glare. He struts and charms and seduces. He peer pressures and murmurs and twists the cultural dictates. He weaves magic so shiny it blinds us to the snakes that are biting us. He wraps us up in his arms of smoke so that we can’t see ourselves and our own pain... so that we’re hidden from the ones who truly love us.
But I can see you. I see you.
“You're shining. I can see you.
You're smiling. That's enough.
I'm holding on to you
like a diamond in the rough...”
He knocks. Our door is almost always open. But he can’t cross that threshold. We have to invite him in. He might be obvious. He might be less so. He might come as the stranger on my porch (why did I open the door?). He might come as a lost child. He might be brother, grandmother, lover, mother, friend. He might come as denomination, holy and structured. It is hard to realize that sometimes the people we have known the longest and love the deepest can have moments of weakness when they allow that possession to take them. When they become conduits for him. When Satan manifests in our lives (as lover, mother, friend) we have to be brave enough to turn away. No. More. We have to say, “Go. Leave me be.” We have to see past the vessel to him. We have to make the decision not to let him in.
Wings? Don't let him in.
“I'm not here for your entertainment.You don't really want to mess with me tonight.Just stop and take a second.I was fine before you walked into my life.”
This is my Sunday sermon. This cold winter air that cuts to my bones and makes my eyes bright. Here, alone, alive, my muscles taut and my breath misty with desire, I feel in control of everything I see and everything I feel. My world is here, somehow held between Rapture and Earth. Beneath this sky, I find it. That jewel, that stone that authority buried, that woman that you tried to break. I reclaim me, take back my night (which has never been silent), rediscover my truth, here, beneath my angel.
Beneath this sky of my Lord’s. I am smiling. And that’s enough.
“Thank you, terror.
Thank you, disillusionment.
Thank you, frailty.
Thank you, consequence.
Thank you, thank you, silence!”
We are born so ready. So pure. And we are broken again and again as our parents try to form us. Their hands sometimes move with love but we are impossibly fragile. Like dandelion tuffs, a million seeds on the wind, scattered just as easily to stones as to fertile ground. We are rarely witnessed, more often molded. We are hemmed in, fenced in, taken down, taken out. Even those of us who buck the system fall pray to the whispering commands of culture. We love, hate, take, give, live, die, as we are told is right, moral, expected.
Christ was rebel among the rebels. Christ was warrior-brother. Gentle man. Furious and brave. Articulate in the voice of the people. The working man’s Christ. The Christ of whores and children. The Christ of nonbelievers. A real man. A real changer. My Christ.
I am whispering to you on canvas. Fingers in feathers. My breath passes your lips, gives you life. I am praying. I am alone in the darkness. I am every where under the sky. I stand on the edge. I close my eyes. I jump.
“How about how good it feels to finally forgive you.
How about no longer being masochistic.
How about remembering your divinity.
How about unabashedly bawling your eyes out.
How about not equating death with stopping.”
End Time Angels, carry me home. I am as bold as I need to be. I am stronger than I ever thought I could become. Let me walk with these apostles I love. Let us change the world. Together.
I am tired of waiting.
“Snakes in the grass
gotta step on the gas.”
EJ
“Every now and then
I can see that I'm getting somewhere.
But where I have to go is so deep.
I was angry back then
and, you know, I still am.
I have lost so much sleep
but I'm gonna find it....”
“Wings, baby. Stop. Stop it.”
And it begins. That buzz, that voice, that thing that pegged me crazy at sixteen. That angry sound that’s my own Second Coming. Sweet Lord, how many times has Christ walked this Earth since Ascension? Three times last week... at least twice when we made love. Seven, eight hundred times in just shy of twenty-eight years. He returns in these moments, when He is needed more than the air we take in, in sharp, short gasps.
“No, Wings. No more.”
And I’m shaking my head and standing up and cocking my head to the side. And staring at her message and re-reading. “No...” And then, resounding: “NO.”
And someone wrote her back. But it wasn’t me. Because the hot tears on my face were too heavy for me to see the keys or the screen or the thick mason jar of brushes now shards of broken glass on the floor of my room. Or maybe... maybe what Dad said is true: “Women don’t see with their eyes, Eliza Jean. Women see with their hearts. Where Christ resides.” And so someone, that someone maybe me, wrote, and the words were hot and furious, tempered by the cool, crispness of the medium. Neutered by the distance between our bodies. But so full of everything... so elevated by the passion I feel in this life, for her, for everyone he touches and destroys, for every green-eyed (blue-eyed, brown-eyed) grrl who has ever been bent and almost broken. I know she heard me. Or heard Him. Whatev.
“Baby. Stop it. Just stop it. Listen to me. Hear me the way Jo hears me. My arms around you, us sitting together, fitting like two parts of a strong whole. The overheads are off and the glow of the red strip light reminds me of a club in NYC but my thoughts are with you and only you. Hear me with my cheek against yours and your eyes closed and my voice steady and warm. Just the truth. Always just the truth: You. Don't. Want. Him.
“There you were silent. There you were bent to his will. There you were alone. You are not there. You will never be there again. You are not silent. You will never be silenced again. You are not powerless to him. He does not own you. He will never own you again. No one but Christ. He is the only one. And He cannot be displaced.”
“’Cause when they own the information
Oh, they can bend it all they want.”
You know it. You are smarter than the statistics. You are not a victim. Say it. Say it, grrl. You are *not* what the newspapers say you are. You are at the other end of the bell curve. You *see.* You get it. Open those beautiful eyes for me. Look at me. You see through the smoke and break the mirrors. You don’t wanna stand around, baby, and wait for the world to change. You’re standing up beside me. You’re shouting with me. You want to wait on *him* to change? You wanna live like *that*? No *shaking head* No, baby. You can’t jump off this mountain now. You’ve climbed too far. You’ve fought too long. If I must, I’ll carry you. You haven’t been climbing alone. I’ll drag you kicking and screaming, if I have to. But I won’t let you jump. No. I won’t let you jump.
The Warren Street bridge is not that pretty. I know. I’ve been there.
“Charm is seduction. Anger is exhausting. It is easier to believe the lies. Always easier to believe the lies. Fighting is hard. Oh baby... I just wrote all this last Sunday. Don't you see? I know you do... but you're working so hard and feeling so bad that just a little bit of easy must feel *so* good. Just a little bit of easy... seems like you’ve earned it. But this ain’t the easy you want. This easy is pain all dressed up as rock candy.”
“As a little girl, I came down to the water
With a little stone in my hand.
It would shimmer and sing to me.
And we knew everything.
As a little girl, I came down...”
Here we are. Our End Times. Let me join the ranks of my fine friends, the Rapturists. Let me herald our end. Watch and I’ll call down the sky. All those nighttime clouds are flocks of End Time angels. The stars in the hilts of their swords mesmerize me. I am a little girl (grrl) again... eight or nine... standing in their gaze. The temperature drops to 60... I drop my jacket over the side of the roof. 55... I pop the buttons on my shirt, my eyes on the angels. 52... winds from the Northwest, ten miles per hour. Five storeys high, but lower than the sky. Tank top, jeans and boots. Might be chilly if I wasn’t burning with indignation.
My heads falls back. I close my eyes. It seems so easy. This, right here. Me and Christ and my thoughts of you. On the raised edge that has become my friend. I lay myself back. I own my moment beneath the angels.
“But in a little while, I got steeped in authority.
Heaven only knows what went wrong.
There is nothing so cruel than
to bury that jewel
when it was mine all along.
I'm gonna find it...”
There is glass in the carpet. There is an angel on my canvas. There is a warm stillness in the apartment that doesn’t fit my current mood. Woke up this morning with heat in my cheeks, in the pit of my belly, in thoughts of Cherry Coke. I couldn’t shake the idea that you were right around the corner of my room... you were leaning against my door frame. “Awake at last, Angel? ’Bout time.”
Awake at last.
And my earbuds turn this warm silent softness into a world that reflects my interior space. Echo on. Rolling in. Play it twice. Once again. Slower... now. Dance with me.
“Don’t take it. You make the rules. Don't let him twist up your world. I will talk with you about this every night if you need me too. I will hold you and laugh with you. Don't dream yourself there with him. Dream yourself here with me. I won't hurt you. I won't lie to you or insult you. I won't crush you except in my arms. Dream yourself laughing with any of us who love you. Dream yourself plotting and scheming and fighting and *living.* Dream yourself raving with me. Hiking. Drawing. Singing. Dream anything with anyone but not him. No. Not him.”
Alone you are so strong. I see you. I hear your words. I know you. Let me know you? We only need them when they tell us we do. In those magical moments when the alchemist turns our gold to stone and then fills our pockets and pushes us under. You think I haven’t sunk beneath that current, baby? You remember, right?
“Can’t imagine a woman being so stupid...”
“You’d be beautiful if you gained a little weight...”
“Is there anything you’re actually good at...”
“Took you long enough...”
“I love you sometimes...”
“EJ. I’m not actually listening.”
Jo says to me that anything that hurts us, that makes us miserable, is not by the hand of God. Christ doesn’t hurt us *here,* at our core. I bleed for Him, yeah. I fight. I struggle. But He doesn’t hurt me here *tapping my heart* Satan does not manifest like a horned beast with a leery glare. He struts and charms and seduces. He peer pressures and murmurs and twists the cultural dictates. He weaves magic so shiny it blinds us to the snakes that are biting us. He wraps us up in his arms of smoke so that we can’t see ourselves and our own pain... so that we’re hidden from the ones who truly love us.
But I can see you. I see you.
“You're shining. I can see you.
You're smiling. That's enough.
I'm holding on to you
like a diamond in the rough...”
He knocks. Our door is almost always open. But he can’t cross that threshold. We have to invite him in. He might be obvious. He might be less so. He might come as the stranger on my porch (why did I open the door?). He might come as a lost child. He might be brother, grandmother, lover, mother, friend. He might come as denomination, holy and structured. It is hard to realize that sometimes the people we have known the longest and love the deepest can have moments of weakness when they allow that possession to take them. When they become conduits for him. When Satan manifests in our lives (as lover, mother, friend) we have to be brave enough to turn away. No. More. We have to say, “Go. Leave me be.” We have to see past the vessel to him. We have to make the decision not to let him in.
Wings? Don't let him in.
“I'm not here for your entertainment.You don't really want to mess with me tonight.Just stop and take a second.I was fine before you walked into my life.”
This is my Sunday sermon. This cold winter air that cuts to my bones and makes my eyes bright. Here, alone, alive, my muscles taut and my breath misty with desire, I feel in control of everything I see and everything I feel. My world is here, somehow held between Rapture and Earth. Beneath this sky, I find it. That jewel, that stone that authority buried, that woman that you tried to break. I reclaim me, take back my night (which has never been silent), rediscover my truth, here, beneath my angel.
Beneath this sky of my Lord’s. I am smiling. And that’s enough.
“Thank you, terror.
Thank you, disillusionment.
Thank you, frailty.
Thank you, consequence.
Thank you, thank you, silence!”
We are born so ready. So pure. And we are broken again and again as our parents try to form us. Their hands sometimes move with love but we are impossibly fragile. Like dandelion tuffs, a million seeds on the wind, scattered just as easily to stones as to fertile ground. We are rarely witnessed, more often molded. We are hemmed in, fenced in, taken down, taken out. Even those of us who buck the system fall pray to the whispering commands of culture. We love, hate, take, give, live, die, as we are told is right, moral, expected.
Christ was rebel among the rebels. Christ was warrior-brother. Gentle man. Furious and brave. Articulate in the voice of the people. The working man’s Christ. The Christ of whores and children. The Christ of nonbelievers. A real man. A real changer. My Christ.
I am whispering to you on canvas. Fingers in feathers. My breath passes your lips, gives you life. I am praying. I am alone in the darkness. I am every where under the sky. I stand on the edge. I close my eyes. I jump.
“How about how good it feels to finally forgive you.
How about no longer being masochistic.
How about remembering your divinity.
How about unabashedly bawling your eyes out.
How about not equating death with stopping.”
End Time Angels, carry me home. I am as bold as I need to be. I am stronger than I ever thought I could become. Let me walk with these apostles I love. Let us change the world. Together.
I am tired of waiting.
“Snakes in the grass
gotta step on the gas.”
EJ
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Trinity: Three Trains of Thought
...or...
Daddy Always Told Me, Women Weren’t Simple
Daddy Always Told Me, Women Weren’t Simple
Train 001: My Country
"I'm going to go home and listen to country music....
The music of pain."
--Xander, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
A few weeks back I made a generalized comment about the American South and this week, I’d like to make another. Having grown up in Boston, come of age in New York City, fallen in love for the first time in Seattle, and finally found myself in LA, I owe the South for my unshakable sense of patriotism. Or... more specifically... I owe it to country music. Country music, after all, isn’t named after rural regions, the bread basket and rolling fields o’cotton. It’s Country (read: My Country, America) Music.
“I thank God for my life.
And for the stars and stripes.
May freedom forever fly, let it ring.
Salute the ones who died.
The ones that give their lives
so we don’t have to sacrifice
all the things we love.”
In America, freedom is an extreme sport. Even with terrorists, planes and death scarring our memories, we whine about the long lines at airports. We like our freedom wild, dangerous and... free. “Live Free or Die,” reads the license plate tag in New Hampshire. No where near the South but it might as well be.
As a brown grrl, it was considered acceptable in school for me to beat the drum of common knowledge and claim that the South is all full up of ex-slave-owning, white, red-necked bigots. I could beat my chest and shout about burning their dang Confederate flag. But you know what? The Civil War was more about economics and State freedom than about skin color. The freedom to create the culture that speaks to us. To protect our way of life. To keep near and dear that which means the most to us.
“A cold Coke on a Friday night.
A pair of jeans that fit just right.
And the radio up.
I’ve seen the sunrise.
Seen the love in my woman’s eyes.
Felt the touch of a precious child.
And known a mother’s love.”
Country music reminds us of the simple, indelible, undeniable truths that should (and in so very many ways *do*) rest at the center of this system that is our country. The basic freedoms that were laid down in that thing that isn’t just a character attribute in an rpg. Roll the d20 to set the limits on your constitution? I don’t think so.
When I hear people complain about the corrupt American government and the evil Electoral College and the lying politicos... I want to grab them by their collar and shake some geography into them. We are a sweet little cakewalk into corruption compared to the rest of the world where you whine about a leader and your family disappears. We are a game of dress-up-make-believe evil when other countries have white-washed words for contemporary day genocide. And those lying politicos? The Latin root for “politician” is “lying scum bag” so, yeah, we’ve *all* got those. But you know what, friends? We have the singular pleasure of saying we voted in our scum bags so let’s show our short-term leaders some respect. Think you could speak eloquently to a country when airplanes are falling out of the sky? I think not. I know I couldn’t.
“It's funny how it’s the little things in life
that mean the most.
Not where you live or the car you drive
or the price tag on your clothes.
There’s no dollar sign on peace of mind
this I’ve come to know...”
Part of this extreme sport is perhaps our most heated right. Freedom of religion. Stop with the snorts and guffaws. They truly drive me nuts. Because no one – not our white-wigged founding papas or our current grim-mugged ringmasters – ever said freedom *from* religion. Freedom *of* religion is the ability to stand in a country, to worship in a country, and not be gunned down or exiled or imprisoned because your god isn’t Their god. It may really bite (and remember, I’m a Christian here... and not a casual one!) when our law-makers argue for or against based on scripture (which, I’m sorry, but is *wrong*) but we’re still not sticking “Free America” bumper stickers on our SUVs. It’s “Free Tibet” (Google it). Church should *not* dictate State... but we *are* a Christian country (look at a penny for proof) so let’s all deal, okay?
And even that (church dictating State) isn’t as insane as elsewhere. Other governments dictate... we kinda... poke along with a dull stick. And still, if we turn out in enough numbers at the polls, we do get our way. Maybe it just so happens that some of us like those scripture-based dictates :)
We have crazy rights. Mad rights. More rights (literally) than we know what to do with. And guess what else? We’re still fighting for more! We’re still bringing all our peoples up to date. We’re making progress (and equal rights *are* progress) and equalizing. We’re finding a balance in a country that is less homogenized than any other in the world.
Southern Pride? Patriotism? Of course! The South is all about *America.* It’s all about the cars, the dreams, the star-crossed lovers, the rebellious teens, the hard-working, dying-young daddies, the soldiers, the ranchers, the belles. America is all about:
“Cause I was thinkin’ bout a little white tank top
Sittin’ right there in the middle by me.
I was thinkin’ bout a long kiss
man, just gotta get
goin’ where the night might lead.
I know what I was feelin’
but what was I thinkin’?”
The election is quickly approaching. Some of my friends and I are getting together at the local biker bar with the great big, big-screen to watch the results. America has voted in white men since our get-go but this term our white boy is backed by a chick and our little-Democrat-who-could is a brown man. Oh yeah. There’s no freedom here. We’re all just dreaming the impossible dream *snort* What have we got? We’ve got *choices.* Make ’em. Be decisive. B E Decisive!
And please, not this week, don’t get me all stoked on the sweet courtin’ (after all, Froggy done did it with a banjo... or a shotgun dependin’) that lives in country music. I won’t lie. I will walk out of a club that starts twanging country when I want to dance (Angel don’t line up for no one, baby) but I’d rather stay home in my little white tank top than dance to hiphop’s courting sounds of simulated sex acts, bitches, hos, and butts so big only snakes can love ’em. Hand me over to a grin on my face and aw-shucks boys painting my name in John Deere green while crooning:
“So won't you lay back down beside me.
Just like I know you want to do.
Yes, it's gonna take forever, darlin'.
Girl, I just got started lovin' you.”
Mm-hm. That’s the freedom I’m talking about.
Train 002: My Battle
--Xander, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
A few weeks back I made a generalized comment about the American South and this week, I’d like to make another. Having grown up in Boston, come of age in New York City, fallen in love for the first time in Seattle, and finally found myself in LA, I owe the South for my unshakable sense of patriotism. Or... more specifically... I owe it to country music. Country music, after all, isn’t named after rural regions, the bread basket and rolling fields o’cotton. It’s Country (read: My Country, America) Music.
“I thank God for my life.
And for the stars and stripes.
May freedom forever fly, let it ring.
Salute the ones who died.
The ones that give their lives
so we don’t have to sacrifice
all the things we love.”
In America, freedom is an extreme sport. Even with terrorists, planes and death scarring our memories, we whine about the long lines at airports. We like our freedom wild, dangerous and... free. “Live Free or Die,” reads the license plate tag in New Hampshire. No where near the South but it might as well be.
As a brown grrl, it was considered acceptable in school for me to beat the drum of common knowledge and claim that the South is all full up of ex-slave-owning, white, red-necked bigots. I could beat my chest and shout about burning their dang Confederate flag. But you know what? The Civil War was more about economics and State freedom than about skin color. The freedom to create the culture that speaks to us. To protect our way of life. To keep near and dear that which means the most to us.
“A cold Coke on a Friday night.
A pair of jeans that fit just right.
And the radio up.
I’ve seen the sunrise.
Seen the love in my woman’s eyes.
Felt the touch of a precious child.
And known a mother’s love.”
Country music reminds us of the simple, indelible, undeniable truths that should (and in so very many ways *do*) rest at the center of this system that is our country. The basic freedoms that were laid down in that thing that isn’t just a character attribute in an rpg. Roll the d20 to set the limits on your constitution? I don’t think so.
When I hear people complain about the corrupt American government and the evil Electoral College and the lying politicos... I want to grab them by their collar and shake some geography into them. We are a sweet little cakewalk into corruption compared to the rest of the world where you whine about a leader and your family disappears. We are a game of dress-up-make-believe evil when other countries have white-washed words for contemporary day genocide. And those lying politicos? The Latin root for “politician” is “lying scum bag” so, yeah, we’ve *all* got those. But you know what, friends? We have the singular pleasure of saying we voted in our scum bags so let’s show our short-term leaders some respect. Think you could speak eloquently to a country when airplanes are falling out of the sky? I think not. I know I couldn’t.
“It's funny how it’s the little things in life
that mean the most.
Not where you live or the car you drive
or the price tag on your clothes.
There’s no dollar sign on peace of mind
this I’ve come to know...”
Part of this extreme sport is perhaps our most heated right. Freedom of religion. Stop with the snorts and guffaws. They truly drive me nuts. Because no one – not our white-wigged founding papas or our current grim-mugged ringmasters – ever said freedom *from* religion. Freedom *of* religion is the ability to stand in a country, to worship in a country, and not be gunned down or exiled or imprisoned because your god isn’t Their god. It may really bite (and remember, I’m a Christian here... and not a casual one!) when our law-makers argue for or against based on scripture (which, I’m sorry, but is *wrong*) but we’re still not sticking “Free America” bumper stickers on our SUVs. It’s “Free Tibet” (Google it). Church should *not* dictate State... but we *are* a Christian country (look at a penny for proof) so let’s all deal, okay?
And even that (church dictating State) isn’t as insane as elsewhere. Other governments dictate... we kinda... poke along with a dull stick. And still, if we turn out in enough numbers at the polls, we do get our way. Maybe it just so happens that some of us like those scripture-based dictates :)
We have crazy rights. Mad rights. More rights (literally) than we know what to do with. And guess what else? We’re still fighting for more! We’re still bringing all our peoples up to date. We’re making progress (and equal rights *are* progress) and equalizing. We’re finding a balance in a country that is less homogenized than any other in the world.
Southern Pride? Patriotism? Of course! The South is all about *America.* It’s all about the cars, the dreams, the star-crossed lovers, the rebellious teens, the hard-working, dying-young daddies, the soldiers, the ranchers, the belles. America is all about:
“Cause I was thinkin’ bout a little white tank top
Sittin’ right there in the middle by me.
I was thinkin’ bout a long kiss
man, just gotta get
goin’ where the night might lead.
I know what I was feelin’
but what was I thinkin’?”
The election is quickly approaching. Some of my friends and I are getting together at the local biker bar with the great big, big-screen to watch the results. America has voted in white men since our get-go but this term our white boy is backed by a chick and our little-Democrat-who-could is a brown man. Oh yeah. There’s no freedom here. We’re all just dreaming the impossible dream *snort* What have we got? We’ve got *choices.* Make ’em. Be decisive. B E Decisive!
And please, not this week, don’t get me all stoked on the sweet courtin’ (after all, Froggy done did it with a banjo... or a shotgun dependin’) that lives in country music. I won’t lie. I will walk out of a club that starts twanging country when I want to dance (Angel don’t line up for no one, baby) but I’d rather stay home in my little white tank top than dance to hiphop’s courting sounds of simulated sex acts, bitches, hos, and butts so big only snakes can love ’em. Hand me over to a grin on my face and aw-shucks boys painting my name in John Deere green while crooning:
“So won't you lay back down beside me.
Just like I know you want to do.
Yes, it's gonna take forever, darlin'.
Girl, I just got started lovin' you.”
Mm-hm. That’s the freedom I’m talking about.
Train 002: My Battle
“I love rock 'n roll, put another dime in the jukebox, baby.”
--Joan Jett
The doves are looking at me strange. Up here on the roof top, under the quickening sky, they think I’ve lost my mind in my tank top and leather pants in the 50 degree weather. But Christ’s sky is so dang open to me, so unencumbered with clouds, so bright and sharp like His own steel blade scythe. The chaff falls away beneath this sky. I’m bowing down, on my knees seems my natural resting state. Sweet Lord, I wish it were for another reason.
“It's not fair
to deny me
of the cross I bare
that you gave to me.”
I stood here, on the raised edge for so long. Five storeys beneath my feet. People and lives I never knew. And I’m staring out over a city that bustles 24/7, spinning its wheels, chrome and steel. And Christ stands right beside me. As tangible and real as any brother. As solid and strong as any lover. And He waits for me to speak but I don’t. He knows everything all ready, but I won’t. I refuse to acknowledge this living presence... because right now I need to feel alone.
“My shadow is the only thing
that walks beside me
My heart is the only thing
that's beating.”
The music bleeding out of my cheap ear buds. The player in my back pocket seems like an extension of me. A pod of my emotional state, upgraded as needed with a buck-a-tune or Google hack. Never deleted, just augmented. If I had wings right now, I’d jump. If I had wings, you’d already be holding me in your arms.
Will you be gentle with me?
So gentle, lover.
I'm scared... butterflies.
Feel me, baby? See, so gentle.
Hm.
Just the tips of my fingers.
Oh.
Just slow...
Yes.
...over all these feathers.
*nodding*
I love your wings.
...
I love you.
“Every whisper,
every waking hour,
I'm losing my religion.
Trying to keep an eye on you.
And I don’t know if I can do it.
Oh no, I've said too much.
No, I haven't said enough....”
The doves are staring at me... or not staring at me. Hard to tell with doves. Their heads are cocked away. Their deep black eyes are fading into the darkling that takes my sky. Their house is full. Their little cathedral. I added the bench from the Catholic church on Fifth that was remodeling. Got it for a day’s work lifting and hauling. The new window is from Amel’s temple. It’s double-paned and the frame has beautiful scroll work, knobs and turns in the wood. It was out by their dumpster when we met for lunch on the day he finally asked me if I was yours.
I told him yes, btw. I blushed when I said it. I had been yours since long before baptism. Since long before waking up again in those bright white lights. We spent an hour discussing the death that occurs before rebirth. The growth that happens before we split our chrysalis and stretch our wings. We spent another hour looking at each other in some wonderment. I don’t think I ever stopped blushing. Somehow, it was like looking at you.
Fugees’ voice like warm honey and chai:
“Killing me softly
with His song.
Telling my whole life
with His words...
killing me... softly.”
The doves don’t know what to do with me. So still and silent... just hands on keys, itty bitty laptop on knees. At least, they think, she’s sitting now. Away from the vertigo. Away from the edge. But I’m more on edge here, my back to their House of the Lord, than I ever was far above the street. Muscles jump. Breath not misty but cold over my hands. Eyes dark like doves at night. Anger... where does that come from? Where is it taking me?
We're dancing. I’m dreaming. Nickelback. I’m not. It’s real. It’s now. It must be. Lord... let it be. Your hips fit perfectly in my palms. Your fingers play softly in my hair. You make jinglebells of my d6 earrings. You whisper, “Tell me where you want me.”
“There's broken glass
on the freeway.
I've fallen apart.
I'm barely breathing.
But in every pain
there is healing.
And I'm holding on.
I'm still holding on to you.”
This city has a history with me and within me. It’s not my darkest place. It’s not all bite and chew. But it has this way of finding a grrl on a roof top like this, under her Christ’s own bright-dark, dark-bright sky... confusing stars for satellites, singing amens beneath my breath... and somehow, everything turns inside out and I start to consider that everything is not as it seems. I start to puzzle together the riddle of this even before your messenger arrives on transgenic wings.
“But if the bright lights don’t receive you
you should turn yourself around and come on home.
Let that city take you in (Come on home).
Let that city spit you out (Come on home).
Let that city take you down.
For God sakes, turn around!”
The doves are wondering why I’m board casting music into their domain. They want to know why my head is buzzing like a hive. They are curious enough to lift a strand of my hair off my goose-bumped shoulders. They escape with a few threads but still they wonder.
Christ is standing on the edge of the roof top. He has stepped into a beautiful body to greet me. I wouldn’t acknowledge Him and so He made Himself flesh. He is standing here now, hands on narrow latina hips, head cocked. You might think He had attitude but He’s just mimicking the doves. He’s the last soldier in the long line that it took to reach me. He’s not amused to have been ignored.
“You knew it was a lie. If you had looked into your heart, if you had stopped and heard me, you would have known. I was whispering the truth to you all along. But it was easier to be afraid. It was easier to accept failure and crumble. It was easier to give her the out you wanted her to take. To liberate your shoulders of your own doubt.... But I won’t let you. Carry your cross, Eliza Jean. Walk your path even if you bleed for me.”
And I realize that tonight, beneath this now nighttime sky, beneath the treasure horde of heaven’s stars, I realize that tonight Christ sounds a lot like Jessica Alba.
“My stomach's filled
with the butterflies
and it's alright.
If I said I didn't like it
then you know I lied.”
Sometimes the fighter wants to lay it down. Sometimes the soldier wants to close his eyes. Sometimes the natural state of kneeling beneath the weight of the world and worry and wonderment is enough to make even Atlas cry. Sometimes... we want to believe the lies because they are easier than the truth. They are less complicated. Sometimes fact is so much stranger than fiction that we pray for the fictionalized novelization where everyone is played by archetypes and, if we’re lucky, Eliza Dushku plays the lead.
Sometimes we need saving from ourselves.
“The little things
you do me.
I want to show you
this beating heart
crazy beats
stuck here
in this place.”
The danger of that edge draws me back, moth to streetlamp. I look out over the city. Somewhere out there lies my enemy. Somewhere inside my heart is his sanctuary. Take off my armor of Christ for one day, one hour, and this hell-bent herald creeps in and takes root. He reads weaknesses and worries in my eyes wide with exhaustion and hope and trust. He calls himself friend and tries to make amends with bashful murmurings. His sweet-talking, turn of phrase is legendary, prime time.
I gave him the benefit of a doubt. My doubts.
He took them to an alchemist and poisoned my latte.
“This is so surreal,” I wrote to you. Even more so now.
“Every time I look
you're never there.
Every time I sleep
you're always there.
When I close my eyes
it's you I see...”
You’re everything to me.
Now Angel is going out to do some hunting.
Train 003: My Love
Wings: You rock.
Me: Because?
Wings: You write her a story *every* night!
Me: No... just on Mondays and Fridays.
Wings: And you do it *live!*
Me: Well, I’m certainly not dead, baby ;)
You: Tell me a story? To help me sleep.
GamerAngel: Just make one up?
You: Yes.
GamerAngel: Just right now?
You: Can you?
GamerAngel: For you? Anything.
You: Tuck me in :)
GamerAngel: In the winter is the best time to travel to Moscow because no one can get there in winter. Only locals.
You: Oh, winter in Russia? I must have a *big* coat or I'm going to be a whiny baby. :)
GamerAngel: And many of the smaller churches close their doors because there isn't enough to keep them running. I dress you in a full length, soft, fur-lined coat because there's no freaking PETA in Russia and you'll freeze in fake fur.
You: You're dressing me? LOL
GamerAngel: Actually... We've been together ten years at this point... so yes, I often *dress* you.
You: LOL :)
GamerAngel: :) There is a hat vendor braving the elements to sell his last two hats and I buy them. The one I buy for you is brown and white and covers your head and ears. You look like a puff ball and you're warm. Your hands are protected by my favorite pair of leather gloves that I bought in
You: :) My cocoon! The portable form!
GamerAngel: France when I was eighteen. They cost me almost $600 USD but they're as soft as satin. I like these on you because you have a habit of reaching out and touching my face,
You: Wow. That's an amazing pair of gloves.
GamerAngel: stroking my cheek, and if I can't feel your bare skin against mine, then I want something almost as soft.
You: Really? I didn't notice that I like to stroke your face :)
GamerAngel: We walk together, stealing smiles at each other. We hold hands because... well, because it reminds us that we're together now, no longer apart.
You: :) I like that.
GamerAngel: We come to a small blue-stone church called St Michaels (which really exists) but it's closed. You look up at the high windows. The stain glass is rose and crimson and gold. There are hints of purple and deepest green.
You: That sounds amazing.
GamerAngel: "What denomination is this?" you ask. "I never knew," I say. "It closed the summer I visited here with Grandma." You blink at me. "It's abandoned?" It is very late, the sky is dark above us, the last of the people seem to have fled from the descending cold. I gaze at you for so long that you wonder if I've frozen in place.
You: Oh no! Don't freeze, EJ!
GamerAngel: I am wondering... I am waiting for a sign. You take off one glove and touch my face. I reach into my pocket and take out a key. I press it carefully into your hand.
You: Where did you get that, you magical creature, you?
GamerAngel: "This was my grandmother's," I whisper to you. Your lips part and I have visions of kissing you, slowly, on the other side of the world, that place we call home. But I also know that home is wherever I am with you.
You: :)
GamerAngel: You have carried home in your words and in your trust since the day we promised ourselves to one another. You squeeze my hand and lead us up the old stone stairs. The door is massive and the key is small but you don't pause. The lock is most likely frozen shut... no... the key turns in your hands like my life turned in your hands, from lost to found, so long ago. The door is soundless as you push it open. We step inside.
You: Oh, you are so sweet. Amazingly so.
GamerAngel: I close the door behind us to keep out the chill. There are pews, worn smooth by the faithful long, long ago. They are olive wood, golden and streaked with russet. Without cloth you know them as Puritan (as well as New Testament Christian) style. There is no pulpit but there is a raised dais (sp?)
You: Spelling is fine.
GamerAngel: "Eliza?" you are looking up at the small domed ceiling. "Do you hear...?" And, of course, I do. The silence of the night does not fill this place. It is alive with something not silence. Not harp or keys, not flute or strings... it is music, a sound, a celestial tune that drifts through the open space and vibrates in our chests.
You: Oh wow.
GamerAngel: "This is... beautiful..." you murmur, turning slowing in a circle to take it all in. I catch your hand again. "Hold me?" And you do.
You: Of course I would.
GamerAngel: Your glove still off and your bare hand against my cheek. Your other hand on my shoulder. I wrap my arms around you, bow my forehead to your shoulder, surrender myself to your arms, to you, as I have never with any other.
You: :) Thank you.
GamerAngel: "I think that heaven may be like this," I admit quietly. "I think it is heaven," you say and I can hear your amazement and a smile. We stand like that for what seems like just a few moments... maybe half an hour at the most. Then we walk the space and touch the stain glass and the pews. You put your glove back on. I retie your hat.
You: Gorgeous.
GamerAngel: We open the big heavy door... and find that night is gone. Completely spent. Dawn has come and past.
You: :)
GamerAngel: The new sky is full of fast moving silver clouds mixed with white. And peaking through now, catching the stain glass like jewels, is the first sun we have seen all season. Our light. His light. Always perfect and complete.
Amen
EJ
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