The sound of the surf is not apparent as the car pulls away; they are strangers doing me a favor, neither of us have much after-thought. We don’t touch every life we cross, not really. I am a sight, I suppose, with stitches still crisscrossing the side of my head and my distant gaze. I heard their whispers, “So what’s her story?” No reply was offered.
I shoulder my pack and realize I have no idea where the trailhead is. I don’t have to pray for guidance; I’ve been praying since before I stepped on the plane at LAX.
The Oregon coast is peppered with mysterious caves and roads ending into nothingness or the sea. Coves encircled with jagged rocks. Lighthouses projecting warnings and symbolizing more than we can articulate with every passing digitized year. Like fire, like rain, the lighthouse speaks to our primal and so to our eternal. The lighthouse, twenty-five miles south of my destination, will be my only visible companion not laid here by the hand of God.
I step into the forest and lose myself beneath the canopy of green, maple leaf stars come to light my way in filtered gold and dancing shadows. I think of the wonder of God. I think of my pack of clothes, bread, fish and water. I think of the ten mile hike ahead of me. I think of the sun glancing through the trees. I think of the twenty-seven years behind me. I think of the way that love weaves itself into our existence, indelible and unearthly. I think of how easy it is to walk away.
“I thought I heard your voice
say you love me today.
But it was only the sound
of my heart breaking."
In time with my boots on the trail (I think it’s the trail)... I remember how often I would turn to Christ as a child, as an adolescent. Every little thing was a group decision. I might choose a long-way ‘round but I always came to His way and He always told me, clearly, what that way was before my feet ever moved. I’m not sure when I decided it was okay to consciously go another path. Not a path *in conflict* with Christ’s but a path not quite as easy as He directed.
No... that’s a lie. I am sure when. It was when I refused to leave (performance college) and devote myself full-time to (visual arts college), to painting. That was the moment. That silver afternoon when my mother’s voice on the phone told me everything before she said the words. That moment when I threw down “easy,” and “comfortable,” and all the other safe ways of living... that moment when I told myself that the voice of God was needed somewhere else, by someone else, because everything brilliant with faith had been ripped from my chest.
An *accident*... not fate... the *mundane world* had taken my grandmother that day, the woman who was my spiritual center. Somewhere, in a dark mourning place, I decided to push myself to my physical, emotional, and spiritual limits. To do *everything* the hard way. To not just take the long-way ‘round but to take only the way littered with brambles and populated with beasts because... sweet Christ!... I wanted hurt, to remind myself to *feel*... because without her, it would have been so easy not to.
Then, when dual Masters didn’t kill me... I walked away from painting all together. And that made me understand what *hurting* really felt like.
* * *
The path is clearer now... and then lost among young trees. The cabin belongs to a casual friend, someone who has no qualms about our vast differences and mutual dissatisfactions. I have been hiking for two hours. I think sometimes, when the wind shifts, that I hear the sea... I think I may never leave here. I think I like the feeling of being lost with Christ.
She bought the cabin and surrounding land from a man with deep eyes of sorrow. She recounted his story to me with some bafflement and then shock when I couldn’t stop the tears that eventually grew to sobs that shook my shoulders. I murmured to her she must be a good story-teller then politely pushed her hands off my shoulders, got on my bike and went home. I climbed to the roof and lay under the sky on my tar beach. I wanted to be with someone empathic to man. I wanted to be alone with Christ.
Alyson said: The closing was so stressful. I thought it was just going to be me and my agent picking up the keys, signing some papers. The money stuff was done. But there he was. The owner, you know? Oh, sixty or about that. Tells me he wanted to see who was buying the house. That his wife – for real – had purchased the place before they were married, which was later in life, right? That she was drawn to the sea. That she loved the long hike in... no other way to reach it. The way the forest blocks the cabin for miles to the east and then opens suddenly to sheer, jagged rocks on either side and the tiniest beachy cove. That they lived there together for twenty years and then, one day, she just walked into the sea.
* * *
Because we all have our loves, great and small. Some of them romantic, rife with passion and compromise. Some of them poetic, like the best love between friends. Others simple like warm loam between my mother’s fingers in her garden, or fine wood-working to my father. Like living scripture was to my grandmother. Like praying is to me.
We have these loves. These sparks, embers that whisper and call to us. Tug us by our heart or along strings of passion... wake us up, turn us on, turn us around and point us the way... we have these jewels, like beads, woven into the cloth of our lives. And sometimes... they conflict. Sometimes they conflict *spectacularly.*
Brush, paint and canvas were my first real love. My first love affair, in every sense of that word. Before I was ever really kissed. Before I considered myself a woman. Before I really allowed myself to let go, let God, I allowed myself to let go and paint. And I walked away. Just like that. I walked away.
And I didn’t ask God about it. I just did it.
“Talk to me while I’m listening now
while this love has a voice
that we both can hear.”
“Before I let it go
this greatest love I’ve ever known
talk to me while I’m listening.”
After three and a half hours I can hear the sea. If I lift my face into the wind, I can smell it. My own personal tide pulls me forward at twice the pace even as my legs start to protest and my ears start to ring. I have no interest in the cabin, the deep tub or a long shower. I have no desire for the feather bed or posh leather couch. Let the fireplace stay cold. I want the waves, the sand, the bracing cold, the face of Christ upon the expansive horizon. I want to gaze upon that element of God that covers most of our Earth and fills most of our body. I want to stand there, unseen by mortal eyes, unseen by anyone who speaks my language or carries like burdens. I want to simply be with my God.
Not for the first time, I want this... hike... this... *struggle* to be over. I just want to give myself over to Christ as I did when I was a child. I want Him to show me the way that will not bruise my face, and batter my spirit. And I want someone... I want Him... to tell me it’s okay not to fight so hard, so often, so endlessly.
I want Him to just tell me it’s all right to stay, to love, right now, right here.
As I near my destination... this cove I have never seen before but that has invaded my dreams continuously over the past two weeks, I am so at peace... even riddled (what a perfect word) with joy, that I break into a run and I don’t care when I body starts to shout for rest or even when trees give way to old rock slide and I have to scrape my hands and rip my jeans to climb.
* * *
Christ reaches out and gives us signs – loud and clear and dazzling – forty-seven thousand times a day. I don’t think asking Him for any more than that -- as well as His constant guidance -- is really appropriate. But if I could... if I actually found one day that I *had* to ask my Lord for one thing... it would be this:
Before a person walks away... before someone leaves behind a love that fills them with joy, with you, Christ... make them stop and pray. Make it mandatory. Make it a prerequisite for retreat.
Because it is retreat. And yet again and again I hear the warriors among us talk about walking away from their loves because, though it is the hardest thing they will ever do, it is the thing they must do. It is the marching orders. It is the hard tack they must chew and swallow (and often gag on) to keep moving ever onward in the fight. It the mantel of the martyr.
But we continue to do it. I do it. Walk away again and again. Make the decisions that are hard, that are a burden, because I’m trying to prove I’m an adult, I’m courageous, I’m selfless, I’m faithful. We walk away from secular and religious. We walk away from mythical and mundane. Whatever it is... we walk away. I walk away.
But you know what? I’m kinda interested in *staying* now.
I think it’s okay for me to just... stay.
And Christ? Yeah. He agrees with me.
EJ
From: "me"
To: "you"
Subject: Under these stars...
Date: Saturday, June 28, 2008 11:35 PM
...beside this sea, I find myself wanting nothing but what I have, you in my heart. The whispers of water on sand in the cool stillness of the night is a presence here so far from everyone and anything. Christ walks with the tide and leaves answers among the shells and sunstars. I might be alone on the planet, in the whole universe, if it weren't for my absolute certainty that you exist nearer to me now than almost ever before. There is peace there. And I love you.
Maybe this message will bounce off a star or an arrant satellite. To find you in your rain forest surrounded by green. The water at my back and the wind in my hair, I love you purely and without need. We might be in separate places but the stars above us are the same. And our Christ is a Christ we share. Perhaps I came here to discover... that listening to Him is always enough.
“Leave the world behind you now.
Forget about the why and how.
I want to feel your body lie
beside the sea, beneath the sky.”
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Making it Happen
...The Difference Between Passive and Active Christianity
“This is the contrast
of white on white.
When in between the moon and you
the angels get a better view
of the crumbling difference
between wrong and right.”
And the unspoken divinity of Christ, the continuing conversation, pervades my brain, my inbox, reforms both cornea and retina to shape exactly how I see the world. Alive in my heart – whether remade, remaking, reborn or breaking – there is always that one certainty. That certainty of Christ.
There are but two churches alive on this only green world. There is His and there is other. Denomination synonymous with “filter” and “trappings” and “man” is the comfortable style we like our faith wrapped in. It matters so little – all of them are white on white, lace on cream, midnight on shadow – until they turn us away from the Living Word to focus on the life we live which has less to do with Christ and more to do with who we vote for and who we wrap our arms around.
In the End (of) Times, let me stand shoulder to shoulder, with my Buddhist counterpart who has lived in honesty, decency and purity, who sees Christ before us as Him of a Thousand Faces and a Hundred Names, rather than standing next to the pulpit preacher who force fed politics and hatred to a scared congregation more lost with each other than found, more drowning in socio-economic drama and titillating insular gossip about teen pregnancies, bad divorces and deviant relationships, than swimming toward the light of an eternal Christ.
Let me stand at the top of these towers of new Babylon, not to rival you, my Lord, my Christ, my guide and heart, but to stand upon these monuments to man, and look up, all the way up, to your sky, to your heavens, and feel powerful in my insignificance, feel seen and tiny in your eyes, feel alive beneath the expanse of your perfection.
Let no man light my way. Man has no light. Only God. Pave my way? Yes, many men (meaning, of course, men and women) have paved my path and I pray for their blessing. But man holds a match compared to the lightning of my Lord, and – dear Lord! – what a strike He wields, especially when we’re not paying attention.
“I walk in the air between the rain
through myself and back again.
Where? I don’t know.”
Rooftop jumping. I find myself here lately. Seems ironic. When riding became dizzy-dangerous, I thought instead to ride the air. Instead of speed, height. Instead of torque, vertigo. Embracing the feeling of midnight air the only thing between me and God. Like walking the pitch-black, silver-outlined trees, leaves and solemn paths through the forest that surrounds that place outside of time, where my friends reside so far away... and yet I walk those paths again, almost nightly now, see them in my mind, while my feet leave steel and iron behind, walking through nothing but air for the moment, that heartbeat, until my boots find metal grating again and my palms slap cold and stinging against the brick of a new building. Fire escape hopping. I’m testing the safety of each crumbling artifice. Maybe I should bill the LA fire department? Maybe I should just look up – all the way up – during those moments of flight, and see myself reflected in the eyes of my God, the only one who lights my path.
Why is it never easy until we let everything go? Giving it up to Him, living in the now-moment, waiting for inspiration divine, seems so passive to this biker chick painter who likes to claim her own speed, paint her own realities. Passive and me just don’t mesh so well. And yet... it’s so much *easier* to just hand it over.
So I jump again. In mid-flight there is a memory. Collides with me. My father, smiling, watching me from the corner of his eye, as I climb the forbidden sycamore in our back yard, that one that spans the space between our house and our neighbors to the left and behind. It is the connective tissue between three separate worlds, that from my perch, a perch shared by nests of newborn doves, I can gaze unseen into family rooms filled with strangers, can imagine Christ as a presence there even though the DeRossas were Catholic and the Williams spent every Sunday barbequing and sipping cola with extended family and friends.
Mother looked at the distance between my perch and the ground, grumbled: “What are you letting her do, Poulon?”
Father looked at the distance between my perch and the sky, turned the page of his newspaper: “I’m letting her climb, Pahmela.”
Because salvation comes after the climb.
“And she walks along the edge
of where the ocean meets the land,
just like she's walking on a wire in the circus.
But she says she's close to understanding Jesus.”
I suppose if I gave it up, let-go-let-God, I would no longer feel this desire in my chest to jump into the unknown night, to swing around corners I cannot quite see, to play devil’s advocate (oh! How apropos!) with my heart. But I truly do enjoy the journey more when I feel I’m getting my hands dirty, when I’m scrapping my knees, when I feel the growing pains required to stretch my limps... my mind... my faith... to the limits and then – in that crystal moment of divinity – beyond. Though I do believe, with all my heart, that Christ wants us to be able to shrug our shoulders for Him, that only He is Atlas and Great Turtle, I cannot accept the sweet autopilot that I know He would grant. That place where all decisions come quickly and easily – not that the “yes” or “no” are easy to act upon, just quick to come. That place where “go to her” is so simple... where “walk away” is just as clear.
I prefer to live this life that Christ has given me by transforming “endanger” into “entrust.” The active – not passive – form of letting Him light my path... and then climbing as high as I can to speak with Him about the subtleties of desire.
I would rather wait, hurt, want, cry, scream, laugh, *live* and find myself ten miles down my path at the very same decision I came to so long ago... but now with the knowledge from Christ of why, of how, of sweet secrets revealed like cosmic strings and solar winds enfolded in the petals of gardenias.
I would rather work, fight, bleed for my redemption.
“She knows she's more
than just a little misunderstood.
She has trouble acting normal
when she's nervous.”
She asks you if you’re coming to service. And you answer her, not with the easy “okay” or “not today” but rather with, “Mama, I’m in service right now. I’m in a constant conversation with Christ, my Christ, your Christ. I’m walking with Him every where now. I’m hearing Him.... I’ve woken up to a two-way conversation. A love affair with the Living Word. A new day at dawn. A rebirth. Reborn into His arms. Sorrow is less here. Loneliness is more time to speak. The midnights of my discontent and worry, of questioning myself, are lost because in His eyes, always upon me, I am found.” And she looks at you... carefully... as if you’ve lost your mind.
And you share this story with a mutual friend of ours who, in joy and laughter, shares it with me when I’m feeling low. Laughter fills my quiet room as I read her last line about you, so powerful:
“She said, she has always felt this way. This wasn’t about conversion, it was about realizing what was always there.”
And the fit is so perfect. You there. All of you together. Waking up. *Realizing what was always there.* I love that. I love that sentence. I’ve written it across blank canvases so that new images will be painted over the words. I’ve written it in chalk across the roof top. I’ve written it in silver Sharpie across my scripture boots. Because New Testament Christianity isn’t about *religion,* it’s about faith.
Another friend writes to me: “I like the ritual of my church. I find comfort in the stained glass windows. In the saints and the candles and incense and the chanting. I want to murmur in call and response. I want to kneel before the visage of my Lord. But... when my priest tells me how to cast my ballot, or when I see him shake his head at a young couple... I know in those moments that my religion is Catholic but my faith belongs to Him. I am as much a New Testament Christian as you are and that fills my heart with joy.”
“...We talk just like lions
but we sacrifice like lambs...”
Shouting into the storm what we believe, whispering it to one another in the moonlight, there is a *connection,* a unity, that cannot be denied. There is a smile, a pause, a nod, passed between us. A knowledge that we walk unafraid (or, if afraid, still willing!) not to be slaughtered like Old Testament lambs but, yes, to lay down our lives, our hearts, our sanity, in service of the Living Word.
Oh gracious, sweet Christ, how many times have I been entertained by that look of befuddlement! But that absolute gaze of, “Goodness, she’s crazy!” Even now laughter catches me up. Because, of course, it all seems crazy outside the confines that mold faith into a religion, into something that man can understand. If faith is allowed wild and free, not pulled and stitched into shapes a mortal can wear, than it’s crazy! It’s chaos theory! It’s radical fractals bouncing off the blue sky as our cathedral. It’s rock ‘n’ roll as prayer. It’s making love as worship. It’s constant whispers back and forth with our Christ.
Lord, I will be your lamb any time.
Because this little lamb, in her black leather jacket, feels very empowered by her gentle-eyed shepherd.
Amen.
EJ
“This is the contrast
of white on white.
When in between the moon and you
the angels get a better view
of the crumbling difference
between wrong and right.”
And the unspoken divinity of Christ, the continuing conversation, pervades my brain, my inbox, reforms both cornea and retina to shape exactly how I see the world. Alive in my heart – whether remade, remaking, reborn or breaking – there is always that one certainty. That certainty of Christ.
There are but two churches alive on this only green world. There is His and there is other. Denomination synonymous with “filter” and “trappings” and “man” is the comfortable style we like our faith wrapped in. It matters so little – all of them are white on white, lace on cream, midnight on shadow – until they turn us away from the Living Word to focus on the life we live which has less to do with Christ and more to do with who we vote for and who we wrap our arms around.
In the End (of) Times, let me stand shoulder to shoulder, with my Buddhist counterpart who has lived in honesty, decency and purity, who sees Christ before us as Him of a Thousand Faces and a Hundred Names, rather than standing next to the pulpit preacher who force fed politics and hatred to a scared congregation more lost with each other than found, more drowning in socio-economic drama and titillating insular gossip about teen pregnancies, bad divorces and deviant relationships, than swimming toward the light of an eternal Christ.
Let me stand at the top of these towers of new Babylon, not to rival you, my Lord, my Christ, my guide and heart, but to stand upon these monuments to man, and look up, all the way up, to your sky, to your heavens, and feel powerful in my insignificance, feel seen and tiny in your eyes, feel alive beneath the expanse of your perfection.
Let no man light my way. Man has no light. Only God. Pave my way? Yes, many men (meaning, of course, men and women) have paved my path and I pray for their blessing. But man holds a match compared to the lightning of my Lord, and – dear Lord! – what a strike He wields, especially when we’re not paying attention.
“I walk in the air between the rain
through myself and back again.
Where? I don’t know.”
Rooftop jumping. I find myself here lately. Seems ironic. When riding became dizzy-dangerous, I thought instead to ride the air. Instead of speed, height. Instead of torque, vertigo. Embracing the feeling of midnight air the only thing between me and God. Like walking the pitch-black, silver-outlined trees, leaves and solemn paths through the forest that surrounds that place outside of time, where my friends reside so far away... and yet I walk those paths again, almost nightly now, see them in my mind, while my feet leave steel and iron behind, walking through nothing but air for the moment, that heartbeat, until my boots find metal grating again and my palms slap cold and stinging against the brick of a new building. Fire escape hopping. I’m testing the safety of each crumbling artifice. Maybe I should bill the LA fire department? Maybe I should just look up – all the way up – during those moments of flight, and see myself reflected in the eyes of my God, the only one who lights my path.
Why is it never easy until we let everything go? Giving it up to Him, living in the now-moment, waiting for inspiration divine, seems so passive to this biker chick painter who likes to claim her own speed, paint her own realities. Passive and me just don’t mesh so well. And yet... it’s so much *easier* to just hand it over.
So I jump again. In mid-flight there is a memory. Collides with me. My father, smiling, watching me from the corner of his eye, as I climb the forbidden sycamore in our back yard, that one that spans the space between our house and our neighbors to the left and behind. It is the connective tissue between three separate worlds, that from my perch, a perch shared by nests of newborn doves, I can gaze unseen into family rooms filled with strangers, can imagine Christ as a presence there even though the DeRossas were Catholic and the Williams spent every Sunday barbequing and sipping cola with extended family and friends.
Mother looked at the distance between my perch and the ground, grumbled: “What are you letting her do, Poulon?”
Father looked at the distance between my perch and the sky, turned the page of his newspaper: “I’m letting her climb, Pahmela.”
Because salvation comes after the climb.
“And she walks along the edge
of where the ocean meets the land,
just like she's walking on a wire in the circus.
But she says she's close to understanding Jesus.”
I suppose if I gave it up, let-go-let-God, I would no longer feel this desire in my chest to jump into the unknown night, to swing around corners I cannot quite see, to play devil’s advocate (oh! How apropos!) with my heart. But I truly do enjoy the journey more when I feel I’m getting my hands dirty, when I’m scrapping my knees, when I feel the growing pains required to stretch my limps... my mind... my faith... to the limits and then – in that crystal moment of divinity – beyond. Though I do believe, with all my heart, that Christ wants us to be able to shrug our shoulders for Him, that only He is Atlas and Great Turtle, I cannot accept the sweet autopilot that I know He would grant. That place where all decisions come quickly and easily – not that the “yes” or “no” are easy to act upon, just quick to come. That place where “go to her” is so simple... where “walk away” is just as clear.
I prefer to live this life that Christ has given me by transforming “endanger” into “entrust.” The active – not passive – form of letting Him light my path... and then climbing as high as I can to speak with Him about the subtleties of desire.
I would rather wait, hurt, want, cry, scream, laugh, *live* and find myself ten miles down my path at the very same decision I came to so long ago... but now with the knowledge from Christ of why, of how, of sweet secrets revealed like cosmic strings and solar winds enfolded in the petals of gardenias.
I would rather work, fight, bleed for my redemption.
“She knows she's more
than just a little misunderstood.
She has trouble acting normal
when she's nervous.”
She asks you if you’re coming to service. And you answer her, not with the easy “okay” or “not today” but rather with, “Mama, I’m in service right now. I’m in a constant conversation with Christ, my Christ, your Christ. I’m walking with Him every where now. I’m hearing Him.... I’ve woken up to a two-way conversation. A love affair with the Living Word. A new day at dawn. A rebirth. Reborn into His arms. Sorrow is less here. Loneliness is more time to speak. The midnights of my discontent and worry, of questioning myself, are lost because in His eyes, always upon me, I am found.” And she looks at you... carefully... as if you’ve lost your mind.
And you share this story with a mutual friend of ours who, in joy and laughter, shares it with me when I’m feeling low. Laughter fills my quiet room as I read her last line about you, so powerful:
“She said, she has always felt this way. This wasn’t about conversion, it was about realizing what was always there.”
And the fit is so perfect. You there. All of you together. Waking up. *Realizing what was always there.* I love that. I love that sentence. I’ve written it across blank canvases so that new images will be painted over the words. I’ve written it in chalk across the roof top. I’ve written it in silver Sharpie across my scripture boots. Because New Testament Christianity isn’t about *religion,* it’s about faith.
Another friend writes to me: “I like the ritual of my church. I find comfort in the stained glass windows. In the saints and the candles and incense and the chanting. I want to murmur in call and response. I want to kneel before the visage of my Lord. But... when my priest tells me how to cast my ballot, or when I see him shake his head at a young couple... I know in those moments that my religion is Catholic but my faith belongs to Him. I am as much a New Testament Christian as you are and that fills my heart with joy.”
“...We talk just like lions
but we sacrifice like lambs...”
Shouting into the storm what we believe, whispering it to one another in the moonlight, there is a *connection,* a unity, that cannot be denied. There is a smile, a pause, a nod, passed between us. A knowledge that we walk unafraid (or, if afraid, still willing!) not to be slaughtered like Old Testament lambs but, yes, to lay down our lives, our hearts, our sanity, in service of the Living Word.
Oh gracious, sweet Christ, how many times have I been entertained by that look of befuddlement! But that absolute gaze of, “Goodness, she’s crazy!” Even now laughter catches me up. Because, of course, it all seems crazy outside the confines that mold faith into a religion, into something that man can understand. If faith is allowed wild and free, not pulled and stitched into shapes a mortal can wear, than it’s crazy! It’s chaos theory! It’s radical fractals bouncing off the blue sky as our cathedral. It’s rock ‘n’ roll as prayer. It’s making love as worship. It’s constant whispers back and forth with our Christ.
Lord, I will be your lamb any time.
Because this little lamb, in her black leather jacket, feels very empowered by her gentle-eyed shepherd.
Amen.
EJ
Friday, June 20, 2008
Always in Prayer, Sometimes in Love
And after you kissed me
and we walked from my room
with its fleur de lis wall paper
that feels like brushed silk
under my trailing hand
to a space more conducive to
clear thought
I wondered what I was doing.
There came a moment
of clarity when
I realized we inspire one another
in ways that surprise us both
but Christ not so much
as He nods His head and whispers
I told you so
I told you this
you were just busy
not listening.
I’m listening now.
There is a sound
like thunder on the horizon
darkened like coming-storm
quiet like my heart in my ears
absolute and ending
roiling, rolling, raging toward
a not so distant point between
God’s eyes and my heart.
Woke this morning on the fire escape.
Vaguely remembered telling you
about doves carrying you to heaven.
About the planks and ply I’ve
savaged from midnight construction zones
(my militarized zones of discontent)
to build the morning doves a shanty
up on the roof where the building super
can’t reach because of a key fused in a lock.
Hm. I have an interesting way
of wooing you.
There was something about olive prunings
that the ancient, gnarled gardener at the arboretum
gave me from his beloved tree
that his wife brought him back
from the Holy Land.
How I felt that doves should have olive twigs
because they carried it back to Noah.
Something about the white-haired little
woman on the street selling balls of yarn
and I bought one green (like stormy sea)
and one purple (like royalty)
and the doves unspun it all and tangled it
throughout their make-shift rafters.
Did I mention how someone told me
recently even
how the birds are called mourning doves
not morning and how that fills my chest
with a sadness I can’t explain away?
How when the silver sky is heavy
and it darkens like a bruise into twilight
how I climb to the roof and listen to the sounds
of them settling into their cluster of
feathers and Christ’s own collection of heartbeats?
That there is no better place to
cry silently, head bowed in prayer
than sitting with my back against the
concrete- and plaster-spattered cast-offs of
LA construction teams wrapped around
silver, white, and auburn birds
with their small, round, deep, wise eyes
that watch me from between planks
and wonder if they can steal a bit of my hair
for their yarn and olive twig horde.
I awoke to the Lord’s day fully upon me.
Nestled in my iron perch.
Stiff with cold, the pattern of crosshatch metal
stamped into my brown cheek.
“Good afternoon, Christ,” I murmured.
And crawled back in the window.
The cat was sleeping on the bed.
He had even drawn back the covers.
The apartment was empty and silent.
I dressed and made the cat a mug
of coffee with cream.
I looked at a plate of toast.
Where did it come from?
Who plans to eat this?
Apparently the cat.
Outside, crisp air becoming warm
ran my finger tips over my bike
cool metal in the shade of the garage.
Ignition like first breath.
At the arboretum I walked among spring roses
in riotous bloom. The sky segmented into hexagons
of protective glass reflecting heat and light
onto these small, round captives.
Today I keep my hands in my pockets.
I will myself not to touch them.
I think of you. Blooming in the rainforest.
The brilliant red of passion against
the lush million greens of God's own Earth.
There were honey bees.
There was a soft cross breeze.
There was Christ standing beside me
needing no words. Just knowing
everything, always, forever
so that tears running down my face
are never a surprise. Are never met with
pity, shock, worry
and always met with His hand in mine.
And I whisper, “Thank you.”
Because there is nothing else to say.
Except, “Why?” but I already know
that answer.
Riding not home
but somewhere else.
Somewhere, anywhere
trying to lose and find myself
in the same place.
Wondering how easy it will be
to find wifi in a community
where the average income is six figures.
The age of communication
granting voice to wallets and trust accounts.
I wonder at the four way stop
when the light will shine through
the silver clouds and touch my face
fill my eyes as I think of you
the way I think of all things holy.
Reverence and passion
irrevocably interwoven.
EJ
and we walked from my room
with its fleur de lis wall paper
that feels like brushed silk
under my trailing hand
to a space more conducive to
clear thought
I wondered what I was doing.
There came a moment
of clarity when
I realized we inspire one another
in ways that surprise us both
but Christ not so much
as He nods His head and whispers
I told you so
I told you this
you were just busy
not listening.
I’m listening now.
There is a sound
like thunder on the horizon
darkened like coming-storm
quiet like my heart in my ears
absolute and ending
roiling, rolling, raging toward
a not so distant point between
God’s eyes and my heart.
Woke this morning on the fire escape.
Vaguely remembered telling you
about doves carrying you to heaven.
About the planks and ply I’ve
savaged from midnight construction zones
(my militarized zones of discontent)
to build the morning doves a shanty
up on the roof where the building super
can’t reach because of a key fused in a lock.
Hm. I have an interesting way
of wooing you.
There was something about olive prunings
that the ancient, gnarled gardener at the arboretum
gave me from his beloved tree
that his wife brought him back
from the Holy Land.
How I felt that doves should have olive twigs
because they carried it back to Noah.
Something about the white-haired little
woman on the street selling balls of yarn
and I bought one green (like stormy sea)
and one purple (like royalty)
and the doves unspun it all and tangled it
throughout their make-shift rafters.
Did I mention how someone told me
recently even
how the birds are called mourning doves
not morning and how that fills my chest
with a sadness I can’t explain away?
How when the silver sky is heavy
and it darkens like a bruise into twilight
how I climb to the roof and listen to the sounds
of them settling into their cluster of
feathers and Christ’s own collection of heartbeats?
That there is no better place to
cry silently, head bowed in prayer
than sitting with my back against the
concrete- and plaster-spattered cast-offs of
LA construction teams wrapped around
silver, white, and auburn birds
with their small, round, deep, wise eyes
that watch me from between planks
and wonder if they can steal a bit of my hair
for their yarn and olive twig horde.
I awoke to the Lord’s day fully upon me.
Nestled in my iron perch.
Stiff with cold, the pattern of crosshatch metal
stamped into my brown cheek.
“Good afternoon, Christ,” I murmured.
And crawled back in the window.
The cat was sleeping on the bed.
He had even drawn back the covers.
The apartment was empty and silent.
I dressed and made the cat a mug
of coffee with cream.
I looked at a plate of toast.
Where did it come from?
Who plans to eat this?
Apparently the cat.
Outside, crisp air becoming warm
ran my finger tips over my bike
cool metal in the shade of the garage.
Ignition like first breath.
At the arboretum I walked among spring roses
in riotous bloom. The sky segmented into hexagons
of protective glass reflecting heat and light
onto these small, round captives.
Today I keep my hands in my pockets.
I will myself not to touch them.
I think of you. Blooming in the rainforest.
The brilliant red of passion against
the lush million greens of God's own Earth.
There were honey bees.
There was a soft cross breeze.
There was Christ standing beside me
needing no words. Just knowing
everything, always, forever
so that tears running down my face
are never a surprise. Are never met with
pity, shock, worry
and always met with His hand in mine.
And I whisper, “Thank you.”
Because there is nothing else to say.
Except, “Why?” but I already know
that answer.
Riding not home
but somewhere else.
Somewhere, anywhere
trying to lose and find myself
in the same place.
Wondering how easy it will be
to find wifi in a community
where the average income is six figures.
The age of communication
granting voice to wallets and trust accounts.
I wonder at the four way stop
when the light will shine through
the silver clouds and touch my face
fill my eyes as I think of you
the way I think of all things holy.
Reverence and passion
irrevocably interwoven.
EJ
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Always Again
Never been here before. Heard about it. Tonight, wanted just this. Anonymous and alone. Waking up to parts of me that I thought were gone (bought the ticket myself, sheesh). Waking up in ways far too explicit to tap out in a blog... or maybe just explicit enough. There is a burning quiet here that is so holy it brings me back here, to these digital pages, again and again.
Drove. Dizzy. Didn’t care. Starting to think dizzy doesn’t come from the accident. Starting to think it comes from you. From some harmony of words written across my body. I strapped my helmet to my bike. Stood in line. Haven't had to do that for a while. I'm just arrogant enough to think it was the baseball cap... not arrogant enough to think I'd have gotten in much sooner had I taken it off. Open call for grrls got me through the door... noticed that the wave-through stopped with the first gaggle of white grrls. Hm. Segregation goes all ways I could smirk, but I know it's about the existing balance on the inside. Gotta keep the crowd looking just so mixed (not so stirred).
You look up from the bar. I knew you'd be here. Always you. Any club... LA, Boston, NYC, London... no matter. Never seen *you* before, of course, but I know you with a hundred faces and I recognize you every time. I look down. I touch my cross. I touch my wristband. You unbutton your polo. I lift my chin. You stand up. There is sound. Music, yes, but also that other sound. The one that I first heard at sixteen. The... clinical... buzz in my ears. That... sound.
“There’s another world inside of me
That you may never see.
There’s secrets in this life
That I can hide.”
I move to the hard, forget-it-all beat. Forgetting nothing. I watch you over my shoulder, then turn, walk backward, watch you openly. Take off my vest, tuck it through my belt. Flag football anyone? I'm on the dance floor. Crush of bodies I don't know. Your eyes are brown like mahogany. Your perfume is something musky. Something west of feminine. I have a pair of your biker boots in my closet. My thumbs through your belt loops, I can identify your lipstick as Chocolate Satisfaction (Revlon) which makes me laugh. You tell me you like that. But you don’t know why I’m laughing.
And I don’t intend to speak to you.
“Everything I am
And everything in me
Wants to be the one
You wanted me to be.”
My eyes are closed. The music pours down on me like liquid fire. There is nothing of release in this shower of sound. There is a tension across my shoulders, a taut urgency in my hands and arms, stomach and thighs. There is the snap of the floor through my boots, the heat of your hands on my hips, the truth that my faith is unshaken by the pounding of my heart. My eyes stay closed.
You murmur something to me. Something about “sense” appeal. You are being careful how you speak, trying to read me as I roll against you, trying to pick up what I’m laying at your feet... or not, as the case may be. You avoid the pop culture words like “hot” and “fine” and decide instead on “smolder” and “desire.” I hold one hand behind your neck, your long black hair a mane of satin curls over my fingers. I shake my head slowly without opening my eyes.
I thought I'd walked away from this feeling. Unimportant, icing on the cake. Too good to be true. Easier to live without. All those platitudes that allow women to walk away from their bodies. All those no-big, yeah-whatev, it-wasn’t-that-great shrug offs that really just mean: Was that all there is?
You run your left hand up my right thigh, skimming blue jeans, over my right arm tat, over the strap of my black tank, into my hair—
No. I catch your hand. Not into my hair. I put your hand back on my hip. I’m thinking about stitches and something else. Someone else. I look at you. My gaze says, Just dance with me.
You pick up my cues.
“Now roaming through this darkness.
I'm alive but I'm alone.
Part of me is fighting this
But part of me is gone.”
The things you do to me. No, not that you. Not the anonymous you in every club... in the quiet halls of conventions... in the after-hours lounges where I like to sit with my Coke while others hold pretty mixed drinks... not those yous. *You,* baby. The things you do to me... from a thousand miles away, with pixels and light and words like fine touches. With letters like lyrics and phrases wrapped in passion. The... person (and you know I typed something else originally) who transforms me nightly, who recasts me back into Christ’s own mold for me, who reminds me why “difficult” is worth it. You wake me up, you capture my attention, you take my breath, speed my heart, remake me as your own.
“You make me feel.”
“Tell me.”
“My skin, my heart, your mouth on mine...”
“You’re describing desire.”
“Is that what this is?”
I shake my head. Why aren’t you here now? I’m not sure anymore. Why don’t I wake to you beside me? I can’t remember. That’s what this does. Scrambles reason and logic like a Japanese puzzle box. Makes mysteries of requirements. Makes rock ‘n’ roll a prerequisite for sanity.
“I'll never let you down.
Even if I could.
I'd give up everything.
If only for your good.”
And as I swing my leg over my bike, the twilight of stars above me whispering your name, I am no more free than I was five hours ago when I arrived. But I have no interest in being free. I am quite content to live ablaze with my over-sized sense of responsibility.
EJ
Drove. Dizzy. Didn’t care. Starting to think dizzy doesn’t come from the accident. Starting to think it comes from you. From some harmony of words written across my body. I strapped my helmet to my bike. Stood in line. Haven't had to do that for a while. I'm just arrogant enough to think it was the baseball cap... not arrogant enough to think I'd have gotten in much sooner had I taken it off. Open call for grrls got me through the door... noticed that the wave-through stopped with the first gaggle of white grrls. Hm. Segregation goes all ways I could smirk, but I know it's about the existing balance on the inside. Gotta keep the crowd looking just so mixed (not so stirred).
You look up from the bar. I knew you'd be here. Always you. Any club... LA, Boston, NYC, London... no matter. Never seen *you* before, of course, but I know you with a hundred faces and I recognize you every time. I look down. I touch my cross. I touch my wristband. You unbutton your polo. I lift my chin. You stand up. There is sound. Music, yes, but also that other sound. The one that I first heard at sixteen. The... clinical... buzz in my ears. That... sound.
“There’s another world inside of me
That you may never see.
There’s secrets in this life
That I can hide.”
I move to the hard, forget-it-all beat. Forgetting nothing. I watch you over my shoulder, then turn, walk backward, watch you openly. Take off my vest, tuck it through my belt. Flag football anyone? I'm on the dance floor. Crush of bodies I don't know. Your eyes are brown like mahogany. Your perfume is something musky. Something west of feminine. I have a pair of your biker boots in my closet. My thumbs through your belt loops, I can identify your lipstick as Chocolate Satisfaction (Revlon) which makes me laugh. You tell me you like that. But you don’t know why I’m laughing.
And I don’t intend to speak to you.
“Everything I am
And everything in me
Wants to be the one
You wanted me to be.”
My eyes are closed. The music pours down on me like liquid fire. There is nothing of release in this shower of sound. There is a tension across my shoulders, a taut urgency in my hands and arms, stomach and thighs. There is the snap of the floor through my boots, the heat of your hands on my hips, the truth that my faith is unshaken by the pounding of my heart. My eyes stay closed.
You murmur something to me. Something about “sense” appeal. You are being careful how you speak, trying to read me as I roll against you, trying to pick up what I’m laying at your feet... or not, as the case may be. You avoid the pop culture words like “hot” and “fine” and decide instead on “smolder” and “desire.” I hold one hand behind your neck, your long black hair a mane of satin curls over my fingers. I shake my head slowly without opening my eyes.
I thought I'd walked away from this feeling. Unimportant, icing on the cake. Too good to be true. Easier to live without. All those platitudes that allow women to walk away from their bodies. All those no-big, yeah-whatev, it-wasn’t-that-great shrug offs that really just mean: Was that all there is?
You run your left hand up my right thigh, skimming blue jeans, over my right arm tat, over the strap of my black tank, into my hair—
No. I catch your hand. Not into my hair. I put your hand back on my hip. I’m thinking about stitches and something else. Someone else. I look at you. My gaze says, Just dance with me.
You pick up my cues.
“Now roaming through this darkness.
I'm alive but I'm alone.
Part of me is fighting this
But part of me is gone.”
The things you do to me. No, not that you. Not the anonymous you in every club... in the quiet halls of conventions... in the after-hours lounges where I like to sit with my Coke while others hold pretty mixed drinks... not those yous. *You,* baby. The things you do to me... from a thousand miles away, with pixels and light and words like fine touches. With letters like lyrics and phrases wrapped in passion. The... person (and you know I typed something else originally) who transforms me nightly, who recasts me back into Christ’s own mold for me, who reminds me why “difficult” is worth it. You wake me up, you capture my attention, you take my breath, speed my heart, remake me as your own.
“You make me feel.”
“Tell me.”
“My skin, my heart, your mouth on mine...”
“You’re describing desire.”
“Is that what this is?”
I shake my head. Why aren’t you here now? I’m not sure anymore. Why don’t I wake to you beside me? I can’t remember. That’s what this does. Scrambles reason and logic like a Japanese puzzle box. Makes mysteries of requirements. Makes rock ‘n’ roll a prerequisite for sanity.
“I'll never let you down.
Even if I could.
I'd give up everything.
If only for your good.”
And as I swing my leg over my bike, the twilight of stars above me whispering your name, I am no more free than I was five hours ago when I arrived. But I have no interest in being free. I am quite content to live ablaze with my over-sized sense of responsibility.
EJ
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Before Him Any Wall Crumbles
Today I went riding. The sun heated the back of my jacket and the snaps on my shoulders straps were hot by the time I pulled over to the burm that overlooked the sea. I held my helmet and just stood there, high above where I usually rail against the universe, asking Christ not “why” but rather to stand with me and allow me to hand myself over to His hands. Asking Him to see me alone, apart from any world I live in, just to be alone with my God. From that height, the water looked like a painting I might create if I felt the word “expansive” in my chest. The sky blended into the horizon line and made the two planes one. I thought of the art of geometry. I thought of the desire of physics. I thought of how dizzy I was and how it had nothing to do with vertigo and everything to do with the seventeen stitches in the side of my head.
I probably shouldn’t be handling 128 peak hp... but it’s been three days. I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty much pushing the limits of my sanity; I’m more an every-other-day grrl ;) How can I avoid a baby described as “...not an innocuous, bland two-wheeled tool, but rather a machine that exudes a distinct personality, distilled into a potent essence. Nasty but playful; elemental yet futuristic; it's bad and it's good. And there's nothing else quite like it.” And if you think I’m talking about a Harley... go shave your beard.
Bumps, bruises, stitches... a flipping ton of bricks... *nothing* can keep me away from my Kawi. Exploring torque and gradations of speed, I find my Christ.
“Take me now. Here as I am.
Hold me close. Try to understand.
Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe.
Your Word is the banquet on which I feed.
Oh, my Lord, I know you understand.
The way I feel under your command.
They can’t hurt me now....
They can’t hurt me now.”
It was Wednesday, June 11, a generic day that started bland and uneventful. The previous night had been heated... a friend being played... and me not convinced, won over or reassured by the “solution” that just seemed another polka dance spot in a cosmic game of invalidating our children. Rode to work. Liked it. Felt good. Always feels good even when I’m riding because life (oh, paint me a tear) hurts.
Walked on set to a crew member say, “!@#$%, man! When did *rock ‘n’ roll* become prayer?!”
To which I answered, “When isn’t it?”
And there was a high-five, a wink and a peck on the cheek from ahandsome boy who just had his point made (out of context) and all wrapped up in chaps.
In make up I sat patiently, tapping my foot to my mp3s, not watching in the mirror as Kat and Tara made this brown grrl pink. I’ve never been good at averting my eyes from God’s work being undone but if I want to keep this job, than I best play along and study the blue and silver specks in the lino. (Yes, you know which set now, don’t you, Felicia? Proud of yourself? You done found me out, grrl. Now whatcha gonna do? Build a website? Post a YouTube? I can spell both cease *and* desist. Gee, grrl, missed you like a plague of locust.)
There was a stunt. I can do my own riding but not stunts. Liability. But I wanted to so bad. I was sneaky. I was sweet. I was subtle. I just suited up. Speaking of... a suit came trotting over (clippety clop, clippety clop). Shook his Gen X head of artfully shaggy locks. Little hand motion above his shoulder, he calls over a double, swapping me out. I grin. I joke. I slap fists with Rick and he goes to suit up. I watch him walking away... hold it.
“The ramp won’t hold Rick,” I call to the suit and then I look for Bobbi. Where’s Bobbi?
“It’s fine, EJ,” says the suit.
“Not fine, bubba,” says me.
“Not funny any more, EJ. Rick is doing the stunt. You’re walking a line.”
“I’m...” And this gamer grrl just stands there. Just... stands there. That heat rising from my belly... filling my chest. “Where’s Bobbi?”
But Bobbi has been pulled aside to be lectured about being too permissive. Rick is walking toward me. The suit snaps, “Rick? You fine with this?”
Rick looks between us. Cocks his head at me. Then, “Fine, Peter. Fine.”
“Don’t hit the ramp, Rick,” I say.
“Enough, (my first name)!” And bubba and I have a staring contest while Rick keeps his job security and swings his leg over the bike. The stunt is: Pop the ramp, catch a bit of air, spin left, lay her low, shoot along a real brick backdrop.
Ignition.
“Christ, be here...” I know He always is. “Christ...”
Rick hits the ramp but pop does not occur. Bust comes with a crack when the back wheel summits. No turn. Dumping her is *not* the same as laying her low. Rick grinds her across the asphalt with its guide lines, and she hits both wheels at the same time into the bottom of the faux wall (real bricks but only one layer or two).
All at once:
“Fire!” But there’s no fire.
“Get Johnson!” Fire marshal.
“Get Walter!” Paramedic.
“Is he conscious?”
“Is he—”
“Angel!” Bobbi screams, not knowing about the swap.
“The tank, man! The !@#$% tank!”
And people start running
*away*
except for Bobbi, screaming; except for me, running to Rick.
...
“And this,” I say then and now, wanting so badly to hold them both, those women I keep in my heart like flames and dawn. “This is that New Testament Christian belief. To give when no one is watching. To give when it does nothing for ourselves. To speak in quiet, one on one, when there is no one else to marvel at your wit and courage and flipping *drama.* This is that love I feel for you. This is that thing I bring to your table. That I didn’t ask for this, for any of this. I didn’t set out to write, to preach, to do anything in the light. I wanted only to walk in those shadows of safety cast for me by my Lord, to walk in this belief, to give when I have nothing. To give when it risks *everything.* To be no one and nothing and do everything in honor of our Christ....
“Can’t you see how everything else baffles and infuriates me?
“Isn’t it apparent when Christ did not stand, four days before, and say, ‘Let me announce that Judas will fail us all, yes, Judas there, standing right there, he’s the one. Traitor and coward. What a failure, yet still I love him! And I, I shall perish on their cross, and the pain will be great, but I am brave, so brave and will survive to rise again.’ Isn’t it apparent that all I want is to redefine Christian into what it is meant to be? Like Christ. Uncompromising and *controlled.* Uncompromising and *unconditional.* Uncompromising and removed from man’s most destructive behaviors. “Christ” as a verb. To stand, to shut our mouths, to embrace each other in darkness and silence, in only the eyes of our God.”
To run forward when everyone else is running away.
...
Rick is dazed but unhurt. The tank is intact. The engine is still warm. We push at the bike, unthinking. Seconds, literally, have passed. I kneel to him. He is shaking his head, reaching up to remove his helmet when the wall comes down.
Walking two hours into the unknown darkness... Watching while a partner dies slowly... Opening that door, that night, to see a stranger gazing at me... Sometimes we accept faith and change effortlessly. Other times, it hits us like a ton of bricks.
I remember the sound of bricks hitting my head and my head hitting the bike as the same sound but they must have happened a second apart. But I remember the sound as instantaneous. The feeling of being crushed. Of first impact followed by weight and secondary impacts that weren’t as bad. I think being stoned would be worse because the first rocks wouldn’t create an armor against the following ones.
I think: Christ as my armor.
I think: It ripped off my ear.
I hear: Stand up!
So I stand up.
...
“Pain,” I say then and now. “Pain is always a good thing. It stops us short. It makes us remember that these bodies are on loan. When it hurts to give, I know that was the right time to give. Christ didn’t hedge His bets. Christ gave. It’s the right thing to do. I know, because sometimes, it hurts.
“Life, by default, is hard. If it’s easy, you’re not walking an impassioned path. Catch up! ‘Hard’ doesn’t mean rife with sickness or financial hardship, btw. It means *hard*... it means, falling on your knees for Him. It means tearing open your chest to allow Christ to remake your heart. You strip away the stupidity. There is no death bed conversion. There is only now. Living now.”
The first time I broke my arm (fighting) my father held me while my mother drove to the hospital. He whispered to me, “You did the right thing. You just weren't quite big enough, Angel. Some day you will be. But for now... for now the pain reminds you that you survived, that you fought hard, and that you did as asked by Christ to do.” I was nine. I was never taught to turn the other cheek if the cheek being struck wasn’t my own. And even then... “Thou shalt not suffer tyrants, liars or thieves.” I could talk for *days* (weeks!) on what man can steal from another man... and a tv or a dvd player are no where on the list. New Testament Christianity is a warrior’s Christianity. A Christianity intended for the End Times.
You said to me, “I don’t like you seeing pain as a good thing.” And, of course, I don’t. Not pain like sadomasochism or martyrdom. Not pain as in tough love, shove them out into the world. I’m talking about joy that is indistinguishable from heartbreak because it fills the chest with a pounding, roaring sensation that God enabled on the day of our creation. This love I feel for you does hurt. And no number of sweet messages or bouquets of flowers or great white canvases or midnight promises will ever change that. The pain in my shoulders, back, head, is *mortal* pain. Passing and temporary. Change is painful. Growth is painful. The greatest joy begins as an ache. The mortal body has a unlimited range of sensation that unfolds with exploration and life. But some of that sensation just *hurts.* And it is *nothing* compared to the pain of being constantly remade by our Lord in order to love you. These stitches? They remind me that I'm strong and alive. That I can survive anything because now I have you in my life.
...
Rick is standing in his undershirt, holding his t-shirt to my head, saying my name again and again. The blue shirt turns brown. I smile at him, “What after-shave do you use?” And Bobbi laughs as she wraps herself around me and starts to guide me to the waiting car. Rick is attached to my head somehow. He won’t laugh yet but he will later when he and his wife bring me flowers and little chocolates in the shape of bricks.
We pass a sign on the way to the hospital: “If God is your copilot, you need to switch seats.” And suddenly I’m railing against (blind and dis)organized religion.
“Oh, of course! Of course! Because Christ should always be driving, right? Because He really wants to control us so completely so we have no free will so we’ll just be steered right through heaven’s big pearly gates! Sweet gracious, what a truck load! ‘I spanked my kid...’ but only because Christ was driving. ‘I bashed the freaking *homosexual*...’ but only cuz my Bible told me so. Like Christ wants us on autopilot?! Christ at the wheel... oh that’s just so stupid I wanna vomit... actually... seriously... someone open a window...”
And now Rick is laughing. And then, at his baffled face, his first exposure to my faith, Bobbi hands him her business card with my blog address written on the back. Starting to feel a little light-headed, I make up my mind to visit vistaprint.com and gets me some of them there calling cards. Sometime.
...
“Bobbi contacted me. I was so scared for you! Really, Angel. Love, are you okay?!”
“Yeah, baby, yeah. Really. I'm fine. It was just an accident. I got beat up briefly by a wall, that's all."
“... You do understand that you are the only person ever who could say that and be serious?”
Yeah, baby. I understand. Completely.
EJ
I probably shouldn’t be handling 128 peak hp... but it’s been three days. I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty much pushing the limits of my sanity; I’m more an every-other-day grrl ;) How can I avoid a baby described as “...not an innocuous, bland two-wheeled tool, but rather a machine that exudes a distinct personality, distilled into a potent essence. Nasty but playful; elemental yet futuristic; it's bad and it's good. And there's nothing else quite like it.” And if you think I’m talking about a Harley... go shave your beard.
Bumps, bruises, stitches... a flipping ton of bricks... *nothing* can keep me away from my Kawi. Exploring torque and gradations of speed, I find my Christ.
“Take me now. Here as I am.
Hold me close. Try to understand.
Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe.
Your Word is the banquet on which I feed.
Oh, my Lord, I know you understand.
The way I feel under your command.
They can’t hurt me now....
They can’t hurt me now.”
It was Wednesday, June 11, a generic day that started bland and uneventful. The previous night had been heated... a friend being played... and me not convinced, won over or reassured by the “solution” that just seemed another polka dance spot in a cosmic game of invalidating our children. Rode to work. Liked it. Felt good. Always feels good even when I’m riding because life (oh, paint me a tear) hurts.
Walked on set to a crew member say, “!@#$%, man! When did *rock ‘n’ roll* become prayer?!”
To which I answered, “When isn’t it?”
And there was a high-five, a wink and a peck on the cheek from ahandsome boy who just had his point made (out of context) and all wrapped up in chaps.
In make up I sat patiently, tapping my foot to my mp3s, not watching in the mirror as Kat and Tara made this brown grrl pink. I’ve never been good at averting my eyes from God’s work being undone but if I want to keep this job, than I best play along and study the blue and silver specks in the lino. (Yes, you know which set now, don’t you, Felicia? Proud of yourself? You done found me out, grrl. Now whatcha gonna do? Build a website? Post a YouTube? I can spell both cease *and* desist. Gee, grrl, missed you like a plague of locust.)
There was a stunt. I can do my own riding but not stunts. Liability. But I wanted to so bad. I was sneaky. I was sweet. I was subtle. I just suited up. Speaking of... a suit came trotting over (clippety clop, clippety clop). Shook his Gen X head of artfully shaggy locks. Little hand motion above his shoulder, he calls over a double, swapping me out. I grin. I joke. I slap fists with Rick and he goes to suit up. I watch him walking away... hold it.
“The ramp won’t hold Rick,” I call to the suit and then I look for Bobbi. Where’s Bobbi?
“It’s fine, EJ,” says the suit.
“Not fine, bubba,” says me.
“Not funny any more, EJ. Rick is doing the stunt. You’re walking a line.”
“I’m...” And this gamer grrl just stands there. Just... stands there. That heat rising from my belly... filling my chest. “Where’s Bobbi?”
But Bobbi has been pulled aside to be lectured about being too permissive. Rick is walking toward me. The suit snaps, “Rick? You fine with this?”
Rick looks between us. Cocks his head at me. Then, “Fine, Peter. Fine.”
“Don’t hit the ramp, Rick,” I say.
“Enough, (my first name)!” And bubba and I have a staring contest while Rick keeps his job security and swings his leg over the bike. The stunt is: Pop the ramp, catch a bit of air, spin left, lay her low, shoot along a real brick backdrop.
Ignition.
“Christ, be here...” I know He always is. “Christ...”
Rick hits the ramp but pop does not occur. Bust comes with a crack when the back wheel summits. No turn. Dumping her is *not* the same as laying her low. Rick grinds her across the asphalt with its guide lines, and she hits both wheels at the same time into the bottom of the faux wall (real bricks but only one layer or two).
All at once:
“Fire!” But there’s no fire.
“Get Johnson!” Fire marshal.
“Get Walter!” Paramedic.
“Is he conscious?”
“Is he—”
“Angel!” Bobbi screams, not knowing about the swap.
“The tank, man! The !@#$% tank!”
And people start running
*away*
except for Bobbi, screaming; except for me, running to Rick.
...
“And this,” I say then and now, wanting so badly to hold them both, those women I keep in my heart like flames and dawn. “This is that New Testament Christian belief. To give when no one is watching. To give when it does nothing for ourselves. To speak in quiet, one on one, when there is no one else to marvel at your wit and courage and flipping *drama.* This is that love I feel for you. This is that thing I bring to your table. That I didn’t ask for this, for any of this. I didn’t set out to write, to preach, to do anything in the light. I wanted only to walk in those shadows of safety cast for me by my Lord, to walk in this belief, to give when I have nothing. To give when it risks *everything.* To be no one and nothing and do everything in honor of our Christ....
“Can’t you see how everything else baffles and infuriates me?
“Isn’t it apparent when Christ did not stand, four days before, and say, ‘Let me announce that Judas will fail us all, yes, Judas there, standing right there, he’s the one. Traitor and coward. What a failure, yet still I love him! And I, I shall perish on their cross, and the pain will be great, but I am brave, so brave and will survive to rise again.’ Isn’t it apparent that all I want is to redefine Christian into what it is meant to be? Like Christ. Uncompromising and *controlled.* Uncompromising and *unconditional.* Uncompromising and removed from man’s most destructive behaviors. “Christ” as a verb. To stand, to shut our mouths, to embrace each other in darkness and silence, in only the eyes of our God.”
To run forward when everyone else is running away.
...
Rick is dazed but unhurt. The tank is intact. The engine is still warm. We push at the bike, unthinking. Seconds, literally, have passed. I kneel to him. He is shaking his head, reaching up to remove his helmet when the wall comes down.
Walking two hours into the unknown darkness... Watching while a partner dies slowly... Opening that door, that night, to see a stranger gazing at me... Sometimes we accept faith and change effortlessly. Other times, it hits us like a ton of bricks.
I remember the sound of bricks hitting my head and my head hitting the bike as the same sound but they must have happened a second apart. But I remember the sound as instantaneous. The feeling of being crushed. Of first impact followed by weight and secondary impacts that weren’t as bad. I think being stoned would be worse because the first rocks wouldn’t create an armor against the following ones.
I think: Christ as my armor.
I think: It ripped off my ear.
I hear: Stand up!
So I stand up.
...
“Pain,” I say then and now. “Pain is always a good thing. It stops us short. It makes us remember that these bodies are on loan. When it hurts to give, I know that was the right time to give. Christ didn’t hedge His bets. Christ gave. It’s the right thing to do. I know, because sometimes, it hurts.
“Life, by default, is hard. If it’s easy, you’re not walking an impassioned path. Catch up! ‘Hard’ doesn’t mean rife with sickness or financial hardship, btw. It means *hard*... it means, falling on your knees for Him. It means tearing open your chest to allow Christ to remake your heart. You strip away the stupidity. There is no death bed conversion. There is only now. Living now.”
The first time I broke my arm (fighting) my father held me while my mother drove to the hospital. He whispered to me, “You did the right thing. You just weren't quite big enough, Angel. Some day you will be. But for now... for now the pain reminds you that you survived, that you fought hard, and that you did as asked by Christ to do.” I was nine. I was never taught to turn the other cheek if the cheek being struck wasn’t my own. And even then... “Thou shalt not suffer tyrants, liars or thieves.” I could talk for *days* (weeks!) on what man can steal from another man... and a tv or a dvd player are no where on the list. New Testament Christianity is a warrior’s Christianity. A Christianity intended for the End Times.
You said to me, “I don’t like you seeing pain as a good thing.” And, of course, I don’t. Not pain like sadomasochism or martyrdom. Not pain as in tough love, shove them out into the world. I’m talking about joy that is indistinguishable from heartbreak because it fills the chest with a pounding, roaring sensation that God enabled on the day of our creation. This love I feel for you does hurt. And no number of sweet messages or bouquets of flowers or great white canvases or midnight promises will ever change that. The pain in my shoulders, back, head, is *mortal* pain. Passing and temporary. Change is painful. Growth is painful. The greatest joy begins as an ache. The mortal body has a unlimited range of sensation that unfolds with exploration and life. But some of that sensation just *hurts.* And it is *nothing* compared to the pain of being constantly remade by our Lord in order to love you. These stitches? They remind me that I'm strong and alive. That I can survive anything because now I have you in my life.
...
Rick is standing in his undershirt, holding his t-shirt to my head, saying my name again and again. The blue shirt turns brown. I smile at him, “What after-shave do you use?” And Bobbi laughs as she wraps herself around me and starts to guide me to the waiting car. Rick is attached to my head somehow. He won’t laugh yet but he will later when he and his wife bring me flowers and little chocolates in the shape of bricks.
We pass a sign on the way to the hospital: “If God is your copilot, you need to switch seats.” And suddenly I’m railing against (blind and dis)organized religion.
“Oh, of course! Of course! Because Christ should always be driving, right? Because He really wants to control us so completely so we have no free will so we’ll just be steered right through heaven’s big pearly gates! Sweet gracious, what a truck load! ‘I spanked my kid...’ but only because Christ was driving. ‘I bashed the freaking *homosexual*...’ but only cuz my Bible told me so. Like Christ wants us on autopilot?! Christ at the wheel... oh that’s just so stupid I wanna vomit... actually... seriously... someone open a window...”
And now Rick is laughing. And then, at his baffled face, his first exposure to my faith, Bobbi hands him her business card with my blog address written on the back. Starting to feel a little light-headed, I make up my mind to visit vistaprint.com and gets me some of them there calling cards. Sometime.
...
“Bobbi contacted me. I was so scared for you! Really, Angel. Love, are you okay?!”
“Yeah, baby, yeah. Really. I'm fine. It was just an accident. I got beat up briefly by a wall, that's all."
“... You do understand that you are the only person ever who could say that and be serious?”
Yeah, baby. I understand. Completely.
EJ
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Preamble
Awake now.
Opened my eyes and
like in movies
(which I know
something about)
I was confused by
the pale pink ceiling
for a moment.
Boy band posters on the walls.
Butterfly sheets.
Then I remembered.
There's something surreal about
being hit by a ton of bricks.
Not figuratively.
There's something about
the nature of courage
when everyone else is
hanging back
(go ahead, guys, hate me)
and you're the one
running forward.
Isn't that the
nature of Christ?
I want to be
my Lord
always
running forward.
Take me where I need to be.
Take me there.
* * *
Dreamt of you.
You were riding.
The wind in your hair.
The sun glinted off the snaps
on your jacket.
You were intense.
It was raining.
You hit 90.
The sky was deep blue darkling.
It was a Kawasaki
but not a Z1000, a Ninja...
Then you were Brianne.
Your friend. My friend.
And the road turned
bent to the right.
The yellow line like the letter C.
And she had to lay it low
her shins almost brushing
the light speed asphalt.
At the center curve
her hand moves in slow motion
lets go of the bike
open and ready
fingers like feathers
moves into the turn
reaches out to caress the line
which turns into silk ribbon
that lifts from the road
uncoiling for miles
curling up and around
wild with life
woven into wings
that unfurl behind
you riding again.
* * *
Awake now.
Awake.
Opened my eyes and
like in movies
(which I know
something about)
I was confused by
the pale pink ceiling
for a moment.
Boy band posters on the walls.
Butterfly sheets.
Then I remembered.
There's something surreal about
being hit by a ton of bricks.
Not figuratively.
There's something about
the nature of courage
when everyone else is
hanging back
(go ahead, guys, hate me)
and you're the one
running forward.
Isn't that the
nature of Christ?
I want to be
my Lord
always
running forward.
Take me where I need to be.
Take me there.
* * *
Dreamt of you.
You were riding.
The wind in your hair.
The sun glinted off the snaps
on your jacket.
You were intense.
It was raining.
You hit 90.
The sky was deep blue darkling.
It was a Kawasaki
but not a Z1000, a Ninja...
Then you were Brianne.
Your friend. My friend.
And the road turned
bent to the right.
The yellow line like the letter C.
And she had to lay it low
her shins almost brushing
the light speed asphalt.
At the center curve
her hand moves in slow motion
lets go of the bike
open and ready
fingers like feathers
moves into the turn
reaches out to caress the line
which turns into silk ribbon
that lifts from the road
uncoiling for miles
curling up and around
wild with life
woven into wings
that unfurl behind
you riding again.
* * *
Awake now.
Awake.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
The Hundredth Name
I didn't know until tonight how you saying my name would unravel me, bring a small, soft sound from the back of my throat, a sound somewhere halfway between pleasure and pain, in that place where desire resides like Christ's own tide. I think in that moment, for just a moment, I understood what “longing” was... I thought I’d known before. How foolish I've been.
The wind yesterday beckoned you from your car and begged you to sit, shielded by that place where you go to worship, and watch from your shelter as the trees swayed, dancing with the wind in their ageless love affair, sky and land, never together, always touching. In those moments, you prayed. The wind was full of promise and promises. You told me that you wished me with you... I wish instead that you’d felt me with you. Because, with wind, I am carried to you always. If it touches your face, than it touches mine. If you see the clouds, swift and racing, than I am with you. The sky is big. The Earth is small. And space and time... I’m not so much bound by those. Not since I met you.
I told you once that I don't want a harbor. That I liked you unsafe -- wild and changeable and my own for as long as *you* see fit. That I turn to you as my perfect storm when the rest of the world is removed from me and so, alone, I am safe. You call me your danger addict and you know I court trouble. How telling that that's what Bobbi calls you. And I suppose I cannot escape the addict tag, though addict implies I could live without storm, tempest, speed and fight. Addict implies I might reform if I tried hard enough, wanted it badly enough. But there is only one thing I want badly and it isn’t safety.
You are unexpected, uncompromising, surprising, shocking, bold... you are half a hundred things that no one else assumes you are and that always catch my breath and force me to remake my image of you. Willingly. Breathlessly. Perfectly.
You are sweet spring dawns and hot summer nights. You are articulate passion and the folds of flowers in my hands. You are stormy eyes and thoughtful pauses. Artful conversation while you sort things out with our Christ. You are impossible to categorize. You are impervious to casual avoidance. You are everything a storm should be. Changer and changed. You say “never” and mean only “not now.”
In this world that I keep at a distance, that I balance out on scales of responsibility, creativity and shades of truth, you alone touch me. You alone breathe wonder and possibility into me. In my world of a hundred names, a half dozen resumes, a quarter gross of roles to play, you have found the secret key to the lock. You have swung open the heavy door, dressed in your royal finery like medieval cosplay, and you have found me... the real me, the simple me... just standing there. Gazing up at you. As though I’ve been waiting.
Christ is the reason I must open my eyes every morning... but you are the reason I actually do it.
EJ
The wind yesterday beckoned you from your car and begged you to sit, shielded by that place where you go to worship, and watch from your shelter as the trees swayed, dancing with the wind in their ageless love affair, sky and land, never together, always touching. In those moments, you prayed. The wind was full of promise and promises. You told me that you wished me with you... I wish instead that you’d felt me with you. Because, with wind, I am carried to you always. If it touches your face, than it touches mine. If you see the clouds, swift and racing, than I am with you. The sky is big. The Earth is small. And space and time... I’m not so much bound by those. Not since I met you.
I told you once that I don't want a harbor. That I liked you unsafe -- wild and changeable and my own for as long as *you* see fit. That I turn to you as my perfect storm when the rest of the world is removed from me and so, alone, I am safe. You call me your danger addict and you know I court trouble. How telling that that's what Bobbi calls you. And I suppose I cannot escape the addict tag, though addict implies I could live without storm, tempest, speed and fight. Addict implies I might reform if I tried hard enough, wanted it badly enough. But there is only one thing I want badly and it isn’t safety.
You are unexpected, uncompromising, surprising, shocking, bold... you are half a hundred things that no one else assumes you are and that always catch my breath and force me to remake my image of you. Willingly. Breathlessly. Perfectly.
You are sweet spring dawns and hot summer nights. You are articulate passion and the folds of flowers in my hands. You are stormy eyes and thoughtful pauses. Artful conversation while you sort things out with our Christ. You are impossible to categorize. You are impervious to casual avoidance. You are everything a storm should be. Changer and changed. You say “never” and mean only “not now.”
In this world that I keep at a distance, that I balance out on scales of responsibility, creativity and shades of truth, you alone touch me. You alone breathe wonder and possibility into me. In my world of a hundred names, a half dozen resumes, a quarter gross of roles to play, you have found the secret key to the lock. You have swung open the heavy door, dressed in your royal finery like medieval cosplay, and you have found me... the real me, the simple me... just standing there. Gazing up at you. As though I’ve been waiting.
Christ is the reason I must open my eyes every morning... but you are the reason I actually do it.
EJ
Monday, June 09, 2008
Speed Wind
And so the day began at dawn
waking up wanting you
closing my eyes and finding
unexplainable warmth across
your pillow.
Passed on the car
wanted to ride
wanted to take the long way 'round
take my time for you
with you
headphones in
breaking man's laws
to love you like this.
"Kept thinking of you.
Wanting you with me.
Loving you.
Staring at the ceiling.
So joyous that God
let me keep you."
Hitting 85 is like slow mo
compared to the pounding of
my heart in my chest.
Riding free of legalities
my hair caught in the speed
my body bent low over power
I'm thinking of being over you
and rock 'n' roll floods my brain.
"I didn't think
I could be so lucky.
That you are my path.
...So much."
I would do anything for you.
Oh sweet Christ...
Thank you.
Bobbi says:
Where's your helmet, Angel?
I look at her
my lips parted
my face cold from wind
hot from you.
What? I answer.
What?
My eyes are glazed.
My head is spinning.
My blood is racing.
My heart is counting down seconds
miles per hour
until I see you again.
And the song says:
With a kiss or with a dare...
At the end of an endless circle
I know what I'm searching for.
Somehow, every time that I leave you
I love you even more.
I walk on set.
This work day begins.
And "take no prisoners"
has been replaced with
"victory on my shoulders."
And I just gaze
as others jabber on
because I'm busy
thinking about us together
in so many ways.
Missing you.
Not missing you at all
because you are
right
here.
Amen, Lord.
Anything for you.
waking up wanting you
closing my eyes and finding
unexplainable warmth across
your pillow.
Passed on the car
wanted to ride
wanted to take the long way 'round
take my time for you
with you
headphones in
breaking man's laws
to love you like this.
"Kept thinking of you.
Wanting you with me.
Loving you.
Staring at the ceiling.
So joyous that God
let me keep you."
Hitting 85 is like slow mo
compared to the pounding of
my heart in my chest.
Riding free of legalities
my hair caught in the speed
my body bent low over power
I'm thinking of being over you
and rock 'n' roll floods my brain.
"I didn't think
I could be so lucky.
That you are my path.
...So much."
I would do anything for you.
Oh sweet Christ...
Thank you.
Bobbi says:
Where's your helmet, Angel?
I look at her
my lips parted
my face cold from wind
hot from you.
What? I answer.
What?
My eyes are glazed.
My head is spinning.
My blood is racing.
My heart is counting down seconds
miles per hour
until I see you again.
And the song says:
With a kiss or with a dare...
At the end of an endless circle
I know what I'm searching for.
Somehow, every time that I leave you
I love you even more.
I walk on set.
This work day begins.
And "take no prisoners"
has been replaced with
"victory on my shoulders."
And I just gaze
as others jabber on
because I'm busy
thinking about us together
in so many ways.
Missing you.
Not missing you at all
because you are
right
here.
Amen, Lord.
Anything for you.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Buzz
There are prophets and popes, gurus and guides, minsters, priests, pastors and missionaries. Everyone seems to have something. And stained glass windows too. We have Miriam.
New Testament Christianity revolves around the Living Word. The word of Christ passed through direct revelation to the individual and passed down family lines and across lines. Dangerous, huh? Yep. Cuz, wow, some freakazoid could bust out with “Christ told me to.” Yeah, right. NTC folks don't have time to be sociopaths. We're supposed to be walking our impassioned path by sixteen, waking with dawn, praying twenty-four times a day, fighting the good fight, plus schooling our kids, ministering to our neighbors, defending strangers, cleaning our house, celebrating the temple of our bodies by making love with our spouse... geez! There's hardly time to *breathe,* let alone go nutty crackers and strategize some hate-mongering. Maybe the “Christian” Right (which are neither Christian nor right/correct) just need more to do.
Hey, Pastor Don up in Alberta? Your wife is hot. How about you go home and *minister* to her instead of preaching to your youth group that bashing gay boys is crazy cool fun and oh-so-freaking Christian? And when you're through? Clean your garage. Your prayers are getting stuck behind all the piles of old magazines.
Baby steps, people. Baby steps.
I decided to go to an open mike poetry slam thing because I wasn't sure what to do between 10 and midnight on a Saturday night since I get my rave on pretty much every day but Saturday. I don't watch tv. It was raining too hard to ride. And... they were giving away cash money prizes ;) NTC don't gamble and get very frowny about competition... but I'm a *practicing* NTC... not perfect yet.
The Cornerstone is a coffee shop with thirty types of coffee, a wall of exotic herbal teas and chai blends, and the smell of old books, fine leather wingbacks, ebony wood floors and hot, spicy drinks with full cream and honey. Owned by a Buddhist couple with matching stocks of white hair and always-inclusive smiles, the shop is dimly lit, blacks, browns and cherry, with small golden warm pools from stained glass lamps. I love it here. Where nobody knows my name.
The theme advertised for Saturday night is “New Christian Artists” and this is part of the Cornerstone's charm. They've had a poetry slam for pretty much every group of people imaginable from “Biker Poetry” Wednesday to “Transgender Voices” on Sunday at 9. I asked what they meant by “New” Christians when I stopped by on Thursday for a pound of decaf chai with coconut and hazelnut:
“Oh, we mean, poetry by *new* Christians. Not the *old* kind. The newer, better kind that are cropping up nowadays. ... We even have prizes!”
Oh :) Of course. And so, I decided to go.
I arrive an hour early with a good book and my printed poem. In a long, black skirt with fine gold embroidery and a creamy-gold blouse, I try not to walk like a biker chick. My engineer stompers have been traded for slim, knee-high boots with a tasteful heel and I've swapped my random wild hair and street jewelry for a loose French braid, small gold hoops, some rings (of course) and a tiny cross. There are only two other customers in the shop but the one my age smiles at me when I walk in. That performance MFA must have paid off after all.
I fill out the 3 x 5 card with my name and by-line:
Eliza Jean Angel
Painter, blogger, and game designer of “Mardi Gras 3000,” a far-future game with heavy Christian overtones. Everyone says she looks like this one actor. Her friends call her EJ.
I drop the card into the fishbowl and sink into a corner wingback with a honey latte and a cinnamon scone. I start to re-read a book about a beauty and a beast.
Christians come in all colors, shapes, sizes and styles. If you seriously don't accept this, in your heart and completely, than you haven't been reading my blog very long and you're attending church too often. Try being a missionary for one day -- say, Monday... no, Tuesday, that's more random. Try leaving the comforting homogenized politics that seep (creep?) under man's steeples, and actually speaking to people in the world. Strangers. A mom walking with her children. A young man trying to jimmy open his truck door when he's locked his keys inside. A teen in a leather jacket. A grandfather waiting alone for the bus. I speak more sentences to strangers every day than I do to people I know. Surprisingly, I've found that a good portion of them bust out with, “But didn't God give us a beautiful day today?” And when they don't... well, then I certainly do. “Gosh, Kenny, I don't think Christ wants you freakin' over your keys. How 'bout we just unscrew the back slider window and I shimmy in... if that doesn't work, we can always hit the wing window with a great big rock. Let's take a deep breath. It's all good with God.”
There's a nine foot grandfather clock in one corner of the shop that usually chimes on the quarter hour, a deep, almost mournful sound, but the chimes have been silenced for the event and so the time passes before I'm aware. But suddenly, it seems, my cup is empty, I'm on chapter eight, and the Cornerstone is *full* of people. Couples, singles, a group of eight. Maybe forty people in all. The shop is absolutely pushing fire-safety limits. There are three generations, seven nationalities and the whole range of skintones. It's as though representatives from every other poetry slam that the Cornerstone has ever hosted have shown up tonight. Yet there's a Twilight Zone quiet about the place, as though all sound exists on a different dimension. Then I become aware of a whisper... a rumor being passed between strangers and friends. I wonder.... I stand and offer my seat (even the folding chairs – which materialized at some point – are filled!) to a small woman holding a black and silver rosary. She accepts gratefully and squeezes my arm in thanks; Her hands are tiny and soft as rice paper.
I turn toward the door as Miriam walks in.
Miriam Sunchild is 6' even and whipcord thin, ropey with long, spare muscles. When I first heard her speak I was twelve and she had long black hair to her waist. Now it's just growing back – silver as sterling, just brushing her shoulders – after chemotherapy. She is Native American. In her late-forties. Some say she grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation, but others say that desolate, tempering location is only a cover to protect her privacy and a truth more brutal. She and her partner – Helena Kerr, short and slender, twenty-two with short brown hair, pale skin and hyper-alert, protective eyes – are itinerant, nomadic. There are NTC families who take them in, in various locales, but mostly they are on the road, moving between college campuses, busy street corners and parks, any where, where Miriam might stop and speak. Simply stop, stand and speak. I even heard her open with that once:
“Stop. Stand. Speak. Bring them to Christ.”
Parking lots. Concert halls. The steps of cathedrals. Subway stations. Youth groups. In front of a McDonald's. Behind a baseball stadium. Never planned... and yet so many find her. Christ's Living Word but still just one woman (who insists she is no one and nothing) speaking without notes or preamble or preparation. Just a voice filling the silence.
Names are pulled from the fishbowl. A few people recite. My eyes are on Miriam. I'm glad I'm standing; NTC always stand to listen to the Word (See? We don't even get pews!). I wish I had a recorder. When I heard her speak on the UCLA campus one day, I scrawled quotes on the thighs of my jeans in black Sharpie. I wish that Helena had a camcorder and believed in YouTube.
Three poets in, the card is pulled and read:
Miriam Sunchild
Christian.
And this is it. There is no sound. Miriam never sat down but she pauses for a moment and just gazes ahead. Helena's eyes are on the audience, carefully looking at faces. I wonder what she's looking for. Miriam steps to the mic.
And the conversation continues:
“And this temple that Christ gave us? This body on loan. We are gifted this flesh and these bones by He who makes and remakes everything, everyone, every day. How do we service our temple? Do we fill it with filth – food, media, self-doubt – or do we tell ourselves that occasional abuse is fine? Occasionally it's acceptable to spit in the eye of God? To swear in the cathedral?
“I am not okay with dying tomorrow. In the halls of the hospital there are the ones that nurses call brave and calm and settled. They aren't actually going to die but they are at that place where they say, 'It's okay. I could go now.' God didn't make me this body to say, 'I'm ready to go.' God gave me this body to celebrate, to embrace, to embrace this life. He didn't put us here to let go. He put us here to fight hard and hurt and cry and scream and make love and shout His hallelujahs from every mountaintop, rooftop, at the top of our lungs. I am not okay with passing back into His arms because my work day is not yet done.
“I want to earn this gift. I am still saying 'thank you' to my Lord.
“A woman from a company saw me in the park. I stopped. I stood. I spoke. She asked me to come to the Center to speak at a celebration commemorating the legalization of gay marriage in California. Clearly she had no idea who I am, who is no one special but also no one's horse-and-pony show. She just wanted a speaker. Perhaps she thought a brown woman would be good publicity.
“I vote in the county in which I was born and in national elections for which we all owe our due. I vote for traffic lights and taxes and senators, for the men and women who should be our leaders. I do not recognize party lines. I vote along God's lines. And I could care less about man's laws.
“God made gay marriage legal when He made the universe. It is called love. God has never stopped anyone from falling in love with anyone else. God has never made it impossible for two people of any gender to raise healthy children, to support one another, to celebrate each other's bodies, to rejoice in the new dawn in your lover's eyes. To stay. With one person. Until death does not part you but only brings you forever together again.
“Marriage is a lifelong commitment and the legalizing of it for anyone is man's Earthly struggle not God's eternal struggle. I have no interest in speaking to this. What do I mind what man says about what certificates can be filed in my name? I have no interest in aping an system that creates immortality with written record. One heart. One love. Forever. Committed to one another in the eyes of God, my Lord, my Christ, my everything. Man can offer me tax breaks. God has already given us His blessing.
“Making gay marriage legal does not fix anything. It does not teach how partners should value and respect one another. It does not tell a young man to slow down for his young woman. It does not tell a masculine twenty year old woman how to respect the long hair and make up of her female lover. It does not teach that seeking drama in a partnership is a sin. That creating turmoil, having the last word, slicing at one another with glances or silences, is wrong. It does not teach us that despite what some denominations like to preach, we are owned by God and God alone, not by our partners. God shares but He does not allow His possessions to be owned by another. Marriage is in trouble. All marriage. It has become only what these organizations have fought for: Just a piece of paper.
“Man's marriage does not celebrate the body, the second greatest gift God ever gave us. Man's marriage celebrates the politics of desire. And I have no time for politics.”
There is a silence invaded only by the steady tock, tock of the grandfather clock... and... then... applause. Applause that resonants, that fills the space, that bounces off everyone there. And I see Miriam shaking her head, walking away from the mic, going to Helena's side, taking the offered glass of water. I'm not clapping. And there are others there who aren't either. Behind me someone murmurs, “Amen.”
And then my card is pulled. And read. And I can't make myself look at Miriam or Helena and I drop my printed poem into the recycle and take the hand-written poem out of the back of my book, the one I tucked there because it was secretive and secure, that poem I never shared with anyone before. I walk to the mic and somewhere between where I stood and there, I let down my hair.
“October 14, 2007. Untitled.
west of midnight
waves, wind
i'm dreaming
your shirt, my jeans
my thighs, your hips
like soft sand
pale moonlight
you are cool to touch
even near the fire
i want to stay composed
my eyes betray me
i'm afraid i'll wake
my mouth along ridges of bone
your jaw, your collar
your ribs, your hip
you say my name
so steady, cool, blue
or silver
beneath me, you are bold
confident, precise
never still
your hands on my face
in my hair
across my shoulders
down my back
fingertips explore my spine
dear God...
there's something about time
slowing down
please
speeding up
please no
something about the length of me
against the length of you
the way we fit
the way we don't
the way your white skin
blue eyes
burning gaze
meets my brown skin
brown eyes
open mouth
a storm has blown across the sea
the heavy marine layer of clouds
dampens the cabin
encases it in sky
you're kissing me
your hands on my back
fingers wide
holding us together
my arms tucked beneath you
fingers tangled in thick, coarse hair
your knees come up
our bodies slide together
i try to keep my eyes open
but your mouth
unlike your cool-silver body
is hot
and i can't watch
my own control
escape as a murmur, a whisper
a breath, long held
i feel its slow rise
from my chest to your ears
but i can't stop it
and i wake up
i wake up from dreaming
my whole life dreaming
i wake up and you're kissing me
i have brought you over
from the other side
from blue-shadow, quick-silver dreams
i wake up knowing
everything
i press against you
you hum, a buzz
you're pleased
your fingers
my back
wind, waves
power
in your arms
And I walk away from the mic and Helena catches my hand. “Do you have a copy of that?” she asks me. Miriam touches Helena's shoulder. I meet her gaze. She smiles at me, gentle, serene. “No need,” says Miriam. She touches her head. “It's all right here.”
And I don't remember if there was applause. But I do remember that a sense of *celebration* filled the room.
E.J.
(Enjoy the chocolate cake, babygrrl. “Audience Choice” prize paid $50. I filled my bike tank then PayPal'ed $6 for Double Fudge. Monday's dessert is on me.)
New Testament Christianity revolves around the Living Word. The word of Christ passed through direct revelation to the individual and passed down family lines and across lines. Dangerous, huh? Yep. Cuz, wow, some freakazoid could bust out with “Christ told me to.” Yeah, right. NTC folks don't have time to be sociopaths. We're supposed to be walking our impassioned path by sixteen, waking with dawn, praying twenty-four times a day, fighting the good fight, plus schooling our kids, ministering to our neighbors, defending strangers, cleaning our house, celebrating the temple of our bodies by making love with our spouse... geez! There's hardly time to *breathe,* let alone go nutty crackers and strategize some hate-mongering. Maybe the “Christian” Right (which are neither Christian nor right/correct) just need more to do.
Hey, Pastor Don up in Alberta? Your wife is hot. How about you go home and *minister* to her instead of preaching to your youth group that bashing gay boys is crazy cool fun and oh-so-freaking Christian? And when you're through? Clean your garage. Your prayers are getting stuck behind all the piles of old magazines.
Baby steps, people. Baby steps.
I decided to go to an open mike poetry slam thing because I wasn't sure what to do between 10 and midnight on a Saturday night since I get my rave on pretty much every day but Saturday. I don't watch tv. It was raining too hard to ride. And... they were giving away cash money prizes ;) NTC don't gamble and get very frowny about competition... but I'm a *practicing* NTC... not perfect yet.
The Cornerstone is a coffee shop with thirty types of coffee, a wall of exotic herbal teas and chai blends, and the smell of old books, fine leather wingbacks, ebony wood floors and hot, spicy drinks with full cream and honey. Owned by a Buddhist couple with matching stocks of white hair and always-inclusive smiles, the shop is dimly lit, blacks, browns and cherry, with small golden warm pools from stained glass lamps. I love it here. Where nobody knows my name.
The theme advertised for Saturday night is “New Christian Artists” and this is part of the Cornerstone's charm. They've had a poetry slam for pretty much every group of people imaginable from “Biker Poetry” Wednesday to “Transgender Voices” on Sunday at 9. I asked what they meant by “New” Christians when I stopped by on Thursday for a pound of decaf chai with coconut and hazelnut:
“Oh, we mean, poetry by *new* Christians. Not the *old* kind. The newer, better kind that are cropping up nowadays. ... We even have prizes!”
Oh :) Of course. And so, I decided to go.
I arrive an hour early with a good book and my printed poem. In a long, black skirt with fine gold embroidery and a creamy-gold blouse, I try not to walk like a biker chick. My engineer stompers have been traded for slim, knee-high boots with a tasteful heel and I've swapped my random wild hair and street jewelry for a loose French braid, small gold hoops, some rings (of course) and a tiny cross. There are only two other customers in the shop but the one my age smiles at me when I walk in. That performance MFA must have paid off after all.
I fill out the 3 x 5 card with my name and by-line:
Eliza Jean Angel
Painter, blogger, and game designer of “Mardi Gras 3000,” a far-future game with heavy Christian overtones. Everyone says she looks like this one actor. Her friends call her EJ.
I drop the card into the fishbowl and sink into a corner wingback with a honey latte and a cinnamon scone. I start to re-read a book about a beauty and a beast.
Christians come in all colors, shapes, sizes and styles. If you seriously don't accept this, in your heart and completely, than you haven't been reading my blog very long and you're attending church too often. Try being a missionary for one day -- say, Monday... no, Tuesday, that's more random. Try leaving the comforting homogenized politics that seep (creep?) under man's steeples, and actually speaking to people in the world. Strangers. A mom walking with her children. A young man trying to jimmy open his truck door when he's locked his keys inside. A teen in a leather jacket. A grandfather waiting alone for the bus. I speak more sentences to strangers every day than I do to people I know. Surprisingly, I've found that a good portion of them bust out with, “But didn't God give us a beautiful day today?” And when they don't... well, then I certainly do. “Gosh, Kenny, I don't think Christ wants you freakin' over your keys. How 'bout we just unscrew the back slider window and I shimmy in... if that doesn't work, we can always hit the wing window with a great big rock. Let's take a deep breath. It's all good with God.”
There's a nine foot grandfather clock in one corner of the shop that usually chimes on the quarter hour, a deep, almost mournful sound, but the chimes have been silenced for the event and so the time passes before I'm aware. But suddenly, it seems, my cup is empty, I'm on chapter eight, and the Cornerstone is *full* of people. Couples, singles, a group of eight. Maybe forty people in all. The shop is absolutely pushing fire-safety limits. There are three generations, seven nationalities and the whole range of skintones. It's as though representatives from every other poetry slam that the Cornerstone has ever hosted have shown up tonight. Yet there's a Twilight Zone quiet about the place, as though all sound exists on a different dimension. Then I become aware of a whisper... a rumor being passed between strangers and friends. I wonder.... I stand and offer my seat (even the folding chairs – which materialized at some point – are filled!) to a small woman holding a black and silver rosary. She accepts gratefully and squeezes my arm in thanks; Her hands are tiny and soft as rice paper.
I turn toward the door as Miriam walks in.
Miriam Sunchild is 6' even and whipcord thin, ropey with long, spare muscles. When I first heard her speak I was twelve and she had long black hair to her waist. Now it's just growing back – silver as sterling, just brushing her shoulders – after chemotherapy. She is Native American. In her late-forties. Some say she grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation, but others say that desolate, tempering location is only a cover to protect her privacy and a truth more brutal. She and her partner – Helena Kerr, short and slender, twenty-two with short brown hair, pale skin and hyper-alert, protective eyes – are itinerant, nomadic. There are NTC families who take them in, in various locales, but mostly they are on the road, moving between college campuses, busy street corners and parks, any where, where Miriam might stop and speak. Simply stop, stand and speak. I even heard her open with that once:
“Stop. Stand. Speak. Bring them to Christ.”
Parking lots. Concert halls. The steps of cathedrals. Subway stations. Youth groups. In front of a McDonald's. Behind a baseball stadium. Never planned... and yet so many find her. Christ's Living Word but still just one woman (who insists she is no one and nothing) speaking without notes or preamble or preparation. Just a voice filling the silence.
Names are pulled from the fishbowl. A few people recite. My eyes are on Miriam. I'm glad I'm standing; NTC always stand to listen to the Word (See? We don't even get pews!). I wish I had a recorder. When I heard her speak on the UCLA campus one day, I scrawled quotes on the thighs of my jeans in black Sharpie. I wish that Helena had a camcorder and believed in YouTube.
Three poets in, the card is pulled and read:
Miriam Sunchild
Christian.
And this is it. There is no sound. Miriam never sat down but she pauses for a moment and just gazes ahead. Helena's eyes are on the audience, carefully looking at faces. I wonder what she's looking for. Miriam steps to the mic.
And the conversation continues:
“And this temple that Christ gave us? This body on loan. We are gifted this flesh and these bones by He who makes and remakes everything, everyone, every day. How do we service our temple? Do we fill it with filth – food, media, self-doubt – or do we tell ourselves that occasional abuse is fine? Occasionally it's acceptable to spit in the eye of God? To swear in the cathedral?
“I am not okay with dying tomorrow. In the halls of the hospital there are the ones that nurses call brave and calm and settled. They aren't actually going to die but they are at that place where they say, 'It's okay. I could go now.' God didn't make me this body to say, 'I'm ready to go.' God gave me this body to celebrate, to embrace, to embrace this life. He didn't put us here to let go. He put us here to fight hard and hurt and cry and scream and make love and shout His hallelujahs from every mountaintop, rooftop, at the top of our lungs. I am not okay with passing back into His arms because my work day is not yet done.
“I want to earn this gift. I am still saying 'thank you' to my Lord.
“A woman from a company saw me in the park. I stopped. I stood. I spoke. She asked me to come to the Center to speak at a celebration commemorating the legalization of gay marriage in California. Clearly she had no idea who I am, who is no one special but also no one's horse-and-pony show. She just wanted a speaker. Perhaps she thought a brown woman would be good publicity.
“I vote in the county in which I was born and in national elections for which we all owe our due. I vote for traffic lights and taxes and senators, for the men and women who should be our leaders. I do not recognize party lines. I vote along God's lines. And I could care less about man's laws.
“God made gay marriage legal when He made the universe. It is called love. God has never stopped anyone from falling in love with anyone else. God has never made it impossible for two people of any gender to raise healthy children, to support one another, to celebrate each other's bodies, to rejoice in the new dawn in your lover's eyes. To stay. With one person. Until death does not part you but only brings you forever together again.
“Marriage is a lifelong commitment and the legalizing of it for anyone is man's Earthly struggle not God's eternal struggle. I have no interest in speaking to this. What do I mind what man says about what certificates can be filed in my name? I have no interest in aping an system that creates immortality with written record. One heart. One love. Forever. Committed to one another in the eyes of God, my Lord, my Christ, my everything. Man can offer me tax breaks. God has already given us His blessing.
“Making gay marriage legal does not fix anything. It does not teach how partners should value and respect one another. It does not tell a young man to slow down for his young woman. It does not tell a masculine twenty year old woman how to respect the long hair and make up of her female lover. It does not teach that seeking drama in a partnership is a sin. That creating turmoil, having the last word, slicing at one another with glances or silences, is wrong. It does not teach us that despite what some denominations like to preach, we are owned by God and God alone, not by our partners. God shares but He does not allow His possessions to be owned by another. Marriage is in trouble. All marriage. It has become only what these organizations have fought for: Just a piece of paper.
“Man's marriage does not celebrate the body, the second greatest gift God ever gave us. Man's marriage celebrates the politics of desire. And I have no time for politics.”
There is a silence invaded only by the steady tock, tock of the grandfather clock... and... then... applause. Applause that resonants, that fills the space, that bounces off everyone there. And I see Miriam shaking her head, walking away from the mic, going to Helena's side, taking the offered glass of water. I'm not clapping. And there are others there who aren't either. Behind me someone murmurs, “Amen.”
And then my card is pulled. And read. And I can't make myself look at Miriam or Helena and I drop my printed poem into the recycle and take the hand-written poem out of the back of my book, the one I tucked there because it was secretive and secure, that poem I never shared with anyone before. I walk to the mic and somewhere between where I stood and there, I let down my hair.
“October 14, 2007. Untitled.
west of midnight
waves, wind
i'm dreaming
“Don't open it.”
“The couch? But the arms are--”
“Hard?”
“The couch? But the arms are--”
“Hard?”
your shirt, my jeans
my thighs, your hips
like soft sand
pale moonlight
you are cool to touch
even near the fire
“Did you hear...?”
“The ocean.”
“No. That.”
“My heart. Feel?”
“That's not your heart.”
“Close enough.”
“The ocean.”
“No. That.”
“My heart. Feel?”
“That's not your heart.”
“Close enough.”
i want to stay composed
my eyes betray me
“I love your eyes.”
“You make me shy.”
“Not your eyes.”
“You make me shy.”
“Not your eyes.”
i'm afraid i'll wake
my mouth along ridges of bone
your jaw, your collar
your ribs, your hip
you say my name
so steady, cool, blue
or silver
“You're unaffected?”
“I'm older than you are.”
“Not impressed?”
“Hardly.”
“Not interested?”
“I'm praying.”
“I'm older than you are.”
“Not impressed?”
“Hardly.”
“Not interested?”
“I'm praying.”
beneath me, you are bold
confident, precise
never still
your hands on my face
in my hair
across my shoulders
down my back
fingertips explore my spine
dear God...
“I can't find your wings.”
“Pretty primal right now. Not very divine.”
“I disagree.”
“Pretty primal right now. Not very divine.”
“I disagree.”
there's something about time
slowing down
please
speeding up
please no
something about the length of me
against the length of you
the way we fit
the way we don't
the way your white skin
blue eyes
burning gaze
meets my brown skin
brown eyes
open mouth
“I know what you want.”
“So do I.”
“So do I.”
a storm has blown across the sea
the heavy marine layer of clouds
dampens the cabin
encases it in sky
“Now.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
you're kissing me
your hands on my back
fingers wide
holding us together
my arms tucked beneath you
fingers tangled in thick, coarse hair
your knees come up
our bodies slide together
i try to keep my eyes open
but your mouth
unlike your cool-silver body
is hot
and i can't watch
my own control
escape as a murmur, a whisper
a breath, long held
i feel its slow rise
from my chest to your ears
but i can't stop it
“It's all right, baby.”
and i wake up
i wake up from dreaming
my whole life dreaming
i wake up and you're kissing me
i have brought you over
from the other side
from blue-shadow, quick-silver dreams
i wake up knowing
everything
“It's you.”
i press against you
you hum, a buzz
you're pleased
“There they are.”
your fingers
my back
“What?”
wind, waves
power
in your arms
“Your wings.”
And I walk away from the mic and Helena catches my hand. “Do you have a copy of that?” she asks me. Miriam touches Helena's shoulder. I meet her gaze. She smiles at me, gentle, serene. “No need,” says Miriam. She touches her head. “It's all right here.”
And I don't remember if there was applause. But I do remember that a sense of *celebration* filled the room.
E.J.
(Enjoy the chocolate cake, babygrrl. “Audience Choice” prize paid $50. I filled my bike tank then PayPal'ed $6 for Double Fudge. Monday's dessert is on me.)
Sunday, June 01, 2008
God Bless CBS
And if you think I'm being blasphemous, then feel free to click away. I'm not... but working on 46 hours without sleep, this Christian grrl is not in the mood for itty bitty minds. This Sabbath blog is all about the transformative strength of human prowess, the sacrament that is bearing a child, and the real reason why 954 miles is way too far away.
In truth, I suppose that all these blogs are about transformation. “You Move Me,” (Susan Ashton) right, Abbie? There is something about CCM singers... and I'm not even a country fan, honey. Because without Christ telling us to get up and *change,* without:
“...Frozen solid with fear.
Like a rock in the ground.
But you move me.
You give me courage I didn't
Know I had.
I can't go with you
And stay where I am...”
It is *all* about the transformative everything, the event, the sour grapes, the cherry pits, and lemonade-making that threatens us when we least except it. The getting *stuck*... the getting *unstuck,* the moving on, the moving up, the life and death and growing and dying, those things we can't change that we wind up being changed by and so we do change them because we change how we see them and the world around us.
Every moment we draw breath is about being ready for transformation. You've seen the t-shirts, right? “Got Christ?” Are you ready? And you once said to me, “Of course. I've been waiting all my life.” Stop waiting. Find it. Seize it. Not the day, sweetheart, the change. Unfold it like a note from a high school friend or a birthday gift or an origami crane that wants to lay its secrets bare in the palm of your hand. Take this moment *now* because it's yours from Christ.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgQLEfSi9ys
So I got the heads up from a buddy in Washington who used to be my sparring partner. CBS. Saturday. 10 o'clock. EliteXC MMA. That's league-style mixed martial arts, three matches (women's, middleweight, heavyweight). I don't own a tv (stop laughing, Alyson) because the only one who ever turned it on was Mom and after she went a'wandering I found it a better use of space to hang a 4' x 3' painting there and pawn the flat screen for exactly what she bought it for on sale.
So that meant there was me (danger addict) and there was a tv show that I wanted to watch... and there was the biker bar six blocks away that had a flat screen (maybe from the pawn shop?) mounted above the old school jukebox.
Fire her up, baby. Time to take the Kawi into no-grrl's land LOL ... Okay, I'm not an idiot. I walked. You don't take a half-nude sports bike to a hardbody bar. I just threw on my jacket, buckled up my boots and *pretended* I rode... I imagined a fiery red Harley, of course. The bike everyone and their brother (and their sister) assumes I ride when I say, “Yeah, I'm a biker chick.” For the record: It's a hot green Kawasaki Z1000.
To say I was the only woman in the bar that night would be too dramatic. So let's continue to make believe, Trolley, and say the place was crawling (*snort*) with chicks, all hanging on their bearded daddy figures (but goodness, Jenn, do you really love mountain men?). Yep. Let's just click our ruby engineer boots together and pretend that.
For the first time in two months I was acutely aware of the fact that I weighed the same as a Labrador Retriever. I pledge to eat more pasta as I order my Coke with Cream (eyebrows are raised... tiny smirks hide behind great big beards (*seriously,* Jenn?).
The show starts. During preamble I remember talking to you once about bikes. No, not BMX, the “crotch rockets,” as Tricia (and Google) calls them. Super sport and other tricked, cowled bikes that rock my world. It seemed strangely illicit to explain to you the difference between nude and half-nude, between dumping, laying her down, and rolling her over. It was almost a relief when the conversation shifted to hardbodied babies because then I was detached and removed and could stop imagining you on my Z1000 saying something breathy like, “That was really... *fun.*”
If you don't like watching boxing because it's bloody, aggressive and you get a testosterone high off your tv set, than MMA is not for you. If you don't like boxing because you find yourself screaming, “Oh, just *kick* him!” then you have found your sport. Smoosh boxing, karate, wrestling and jujitsu all together and you've got MMA. Smoosh combatants against the mat, against each other, or against the chainlink that wraps around the cage and you've got MMA.
Back when I first came to LA, there was a club all in blue (you know which one I mean) where I loved to dance. I was on the floor at least three times a week. It was my release from the day, from life, from reality... I thought it was enough. Then a fellow dancer (name not important, never knew it) said, “You like to fight?” And the rest was history so much sweeter than that movie with Brad What's His Name and so much more release than dancing, sex or anything else under God's blue sky. It was the second night, when I pulled my red mesh top over my head to step into the chalk circle drawn on the cold concrete floor in just my boots, jeans and sports bra that someone in the gathered fighters saw the wings tattooed across my lower back... and someone else called out, “Who wants to lay odds against Angel?” All these years later, it appears the name stuck and every time I hear it I remember that night and walking out with a broken finger, a black eye and two grand. Because back then, *everybody* bet against the grrl.
I was in college when I first read Camille Paglia. Her ideas were transformative for me in that my beliefs in some things were changed and in others were moved further forward. Whatever her take on sexuality or women's responsibility, I will never forget her simple statement: We don't want our men effeminate and flaccid. We want our men, *men*... fully aggressive, fully engaged, erect and alive. Anything else is neutered. Anything else is not a man.
The MMA announcer drones during the second match: “Look how they touch each other's gloves like that again and again. Even in the heat of the match like this, they are showing their sportsmanship, their warriors companionship.” The next morning my old sparring partner deadpans to me in email: “Spare me. They touch gloves to spot check their opponent, to place where he in space so he can kill him.” And I laugh so hard that the cat runs out of the room.
I have never met a male boxer, pro martial artist, or a soldier who didn't exude a certain masculinity. A fully-realized male *adulthood.* Which isn't to say that all these men were burly, brawny, bawdy men. Far from. But they were self-possessed. They carried a certainty that I have never seen in other men. It was as though these men had not just lived their lives but embraced, however briefly, a primal danger, a side of themselves that God gave men and men alone. The alpha warrior. Protect. Serve. Survive. They have a *calm* that I don't see elsewhere.
The same is true for women. There is a fully-realized adulthood that seems to settle around women who have borne children. Yes, my friends who have *raised* children but not carried them also have a sense about them, a certain wisdom and way of being different in the world, but there is something deep and still about the women I have known and seen change over the course of those nine months and into their first year:
“And I was
forever changed
from woman
to mother.”
These women have tapped into that same thing as male fighters. That primal base of excellence that God granted to women and women alone.
Mother. Fighter. These demand unyielding conviction. This is the unwillingness to walk away from any situation and simply “let it be.” This is proving that nothing is impossible and nothing is outside our influence. This is the creation of life... this is the creation of power... which, of course, is the same thing. This is when mettle is tested. This is when life falls into perspective. This is when the sacrament is received.
Now I understand that what I'm saying here could be construed as disgustingly anti-feminist and down-right primeval. But take a step back and just consider before you bombard me with PC-laden emails of picket sign slogans. I am not saying that men who don't fight are less than, just different. I am not saying that women who don't bear children are less than, just different. And I am certainly not saying that all fighters and all mothers have captured this calm. I am simply saying: God gave us a genetic blueprint. Our bodies carry it. When we embrace it, when we live it, we experience a growth, a change, a transformation. We receive a sacrament that we can absolutely live without... but that by partaking of we reach a new place.
It also deserves to be shared that I am not a mother and I am a fighter. My desire to be a mother is a palpable thing inside me and has been since I was a little grrl, but it isn't something that will ever be a reality. Maybe I find myself positioned in the world as a fighter because I don't have a cycle. I never have. Sorry for the over-share, there, buddies, but I say that like someone else might say they get headaches or are prone to hives when they read about campaign reform. I nannied for three years and I surround myself with my friends' little ones... but it isn't the same. Nor is fighting the same for me as I feel it might be for a man. But this are the closest I can come to these transformative moments and I embrace what I can reach with great joy. I embrace these truths in my life:
My physical strength and skill, my ability to control my body, my bike, my mood, is a thing of pride for me.
My willingness to take the next step into a dark place, to listen to the faint whispers of Christ, to loudly say, “No. You are wrong.” when faced with man making pretzels of the holy word, my utter belief that I am never alone (and that I am always with you), is the core of who I am.
I may never be as fully realized as my beloved friends Jess and Jenn, who I watched transform before my eyes over those nine months, but I strive daily to be the fully realized *me* that Christ intended.
And that includes having a great upper cut.
EJ
A personal P.S.: When you told me you had watched the bouts – a casual aside – I have to admit I was shocked. I know you as fine and articulate, beautiful and introspective... most certainly not impressed with a solid left hook, fluid form or blood sport. Most absolutely not aroused by the base prowess of the fight. ... I really should have known better. All the best signs were there. Your digital grin when a mutual friend informed you of the brawl on set (on camera!)... or your delighted “mean streak” when the security monitor displayed a certain “Pipi” slam a double against the side of a Tahoe because she jabbed my chest with one pointy finger. Fight club? “Hmm. You're quite a grrl, Angel.” Looking for a new sport? “Gee, street fighting looks fun.” Now, when I replay that last featured match in my mind, the brutal left jab, right hook that sprayed Jimmy's ear all over his face, the mat, and Kimbo Slice, I can see you grimace even as you mutter, “What a combo!” Suddenly... I have a burning desire to be with you next Saturday night ;) God bless CBS.
In truth, I suppose that all these blogs are about transformation. “You Move Me,” (Susan Ashton) right, Abbie? There is something about CCM singers... and I'm not even a country fan, honey. Because without Christ telling us to get up and *change,* without:
“...Frozen solid with fear.
Like a rock in the ground.
But you move me.
You give me courage I didn't
Know I had.
I can't go with you
And stay where I am...”
It is *all* about the transformative everything, the event, the sour grapes, the cherry pits, and lemonade-making that threatens us when we least except it. The getting *stuck*... the getting *unstuck,* the moving on, the moving up, the life and death and growing and dying, those things we can't change that we wind up being changed by and so we do change them because we change how we see them and the world around us.
Every moment we draw breath is about being ready for transformation. You've seen the t-shirts, right? “Got Christ?” Are you ready? And you once said to me, “Of course. I've been waiting all my life.” Stop waiting. Find it. Seize it. Not the day, sweetheart, the change. Unfold it like a note from a high school friend or a birthday gift or an origami crane that wants to lay its secrets bare in the palm of your hand. Take this moment *now* because it's yours from Christ.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgQLEfSi9ys
So I got the heads up from a buddy in Washington who used to be my sparring partner. CBS. Saturday. 10 o'clock. EliteXC MMA. That's league-style mixed martial arts, three matches (women's, middleweight, heavyweight). I don't own a tv (stop laughing, Alyson) because the only one who ever turned it on was Mom and after she went a'wandering I found it a better use of space to hang a 4' x 3' painting there and pawn the flat screen for exactly what she bought it for on sale.
So that meant there was me (danger addict) and there was a tv show that I wanted to watch... and there was the biker bar six blocks away that had a flat screen (maybe from the pawn shop?) mounted above the old school jukebox.
Fire her up, baby. Time to take the Kawi into no-grrl's land LOL ... Okay, I'm not an idiot. I walked. You don't take a half-nude sports bike to a hardbody bar. I just threw on my jacket, buckled up my boots and *pretended* I rode... I imagined a fiery red Harley, of course. The bike everyone and their brother (and their sister) assumes I ride when I say, “Yeah, I'm a biker chick.” For the record: It's a hot green Kawasaki Z1000.
To say I was the only woman in the bar that night would be too dramatic. So let's continue to make believe, Trolley, and say the place was crawling (*snort*) with chicks, all hanging on their bearded daddy figures (but goodness, Jenn, do you really love mountain men?). Yep. Let's just click our ruby engineer boots together and pretend that.
For the first time in two months I was acutely aware of the fact that I weighed the same as a Labrador Retriever. I pledge to eat more pasta as I order my Coke with Cream (eyebrows are raised... tiny smirks hide behind great big beards (*seriously,* Jenn?).
The show starts. During preamble I remember talking to you once about bikes. No, not BMX, the “crotch rockets,” as Tricia (and Google) calls them. Super sport and other tricked, cowled bikes that rock my world. It seemed strangely illicit to explain to you the difference between nude and half-nude, between dumping, laying her down, and rolling her over. It was almost a relief when the conversation shifted to hardbodied babies because then I was detached and removed and could stop imagining you on my Z1000 saying something breathy like, “That was really... *fun.*”
If you don't like watching boxing because it's bloody, aggressive and you get a testosterone high off your tv set, than MMA is not for you. If you don't like boxing because you find yourself screaming, “Oh, just *kick* him!” then you have found your sport. Smoosh boxing, karate, wrestling and jujitsu all together and you've got MMA. Smoosh combatants against the mat, against each other, or against the chainlink that wraps around the cage and you've got MMA.
Back when I first came to LA, there was a club all in blue (you know which one I mean) where I loved to dance. I was on the floor at least three times a week. It was my release from the day, from life, from reality... I thought it was enough. Then a fellow dancer (name not important, never knew it) said, “You like to fight?” And the rest was history so much sweeter than that movie with Brad What's His Name and so much more release than dancing, sex or anything else under God's blue sky. It was the second night, when I pulled my red mesh top over my head to step into the chalk circle drawn on the cold concrete floor in just my boots, jeans and sports bra that someone in the gathered fighters saw the wings tattooed across my lower back... and someone else called out, “Who wants to lay odds against Angel?” All these years later, it appears the name stuck and every time I hear it I remember that night and walking out with a broken finger, a black eye and two grand. Because back then, *everybody* bet against the grrl.
I was in college when I first read Camille Paglia. Her ideas were transformative for me in that my beliefs in some things were changed and in others were moved further forward. Whatever her take on sexuality or women's responsibility, I will never forget her simple statement: We don't want our men effeminate and flaccid. We want our men, *men*... fully aggressive, fully engaged, erect and alive. Anything else is neutered. Anything else is not a man.
The MMA announcer drones during the second match: “Look how they touch each other's gloves like that again and again. Even in the heat of the match like this, they are showing their sportsmanship, their warriors companionship.” The next morning my old sparring partner deadpans to me in email: “Spare me. They touch gloves to spot check their opponent, to place where he in space so he can kill him.” And I laugh so hard that the cat runs out of the room.
I have never met a male boxer, pro martial artist, or a soldier who didn't exude a certain masculinity. A fully-realized male *adulthood.* Which isn't to say that all these men were burly, brawny, bawdy men. Far from. But they were self-possessed. They carried a certainty that I have never seen in other men. It was as though these men had not just lived their lives but embraced, however briefly, a primal danger, a side of themselves that God gave men and men alone. The alpha warrior. Protect. Serve. Survive. They have a *calm* that I don't see elsewhere.
The same is true for women. There is a fully-realized adulthood that seems to settle around women who have borne children. Yes, my friends who have *raised* children but not carried them also have a sense about them, a certain wisdom and way of being different in the world, but there is something deep and still about the women I have known and seen change over the course of those nine months and into their first year:
“And I was
forever changed
from woman
to mother.”
These women have tapped into that same thing as male fighters. That primal base of excellence that God granted to women and women alone.
Mother. Fighter. These demand unyielding conviction. This is the unwillingness to walk away from any situation and simply “let it be.” This is proving that nothing is impossible and nothing is outside our influence. This is the creation of life... this is the creation of power... which, of course, is the same thing. This is when mettle is tested. This is when life falls into perspective. This is when the sacrament is received.
Now I understand that what I'm saying here could be construed as disgustingly anti-feminist and down-right primeval. But take a step back and just consider before you bombard me with PC-laden emails of picket sign slogans. I am not saying that men who don't fight are less than, just different. I am not saying that women who don't bear children are less than, just different. And I am certainly not saying that all fighters and all mothers have captured this calm. I am simply saying: God gave us a genetic blueprint. Our bodies carry it. When we embrace it, when we live it, we experience a growth, a change, a transformation. We receive a sacrament that we can absolutely live without... but that by partaking of we reach a new place.
It also deserves to be shared that I am not a mother and I am a fighter. My desire to be a mother is a palpable thing inside me and has been since I was a little grrl, but it isn't something that will ever be a reality. Maybe I find myself positioned in the world as a fighter because I don't have a cycle. I never have. Sorry for the over-share, there, buddies, but I say that like someone else might say they get headaches or are prone to hives when they read about campaign reform. I nannied for three years and I surround myself with my friends' little ones... but it isn't the same. Nor is fighting the same for me as I feel it might be for a man. But this are the closest I can come to these transformative moments and I embrace what I can reach with great joy. I embrace these truths in my life:
My physical strength and skill, my ability to control my body, my bike, my mood, is a thing of pride for me.
My willingness to take the next step into a dark place, to listen to the faint whispers of Christ, to loudly say, “No. You are wrong.” when faced with man making pretzels of the holy word, my utter belief that I am never alone (and that I am always with you), is the core of who I am.
I may never be as fully realized as my beloved friends Jess and Jenn, who I watched transform before my eyes over those nine months, but I strive daily to be the fully realized *me* that Christ intended.
And that includes having a great upper cut.
EJ
A personal P.S.: When you told me you had watched the bouts – a casual aside – I have to admit I was shocked. I know you as fine and articulate, beautiful and introspective... most certainly not impressed with a solid left hook, fluid form or blood sport. Most absolutely not aroused by the base prowess of the fight. ... I really should have known better. All the best signs were there. Your digital grin when a mutual friend informed you of the brawl on set (on camera!)... or your delighted “mean streak” when the security monitor displayed a certain “Pipi” slam a double against the side of a Tahoe because she jabbed my chest with one pointy finger. Fight club? “Hmm. You're quite a grrl, Angel.” Looking for a new sport? “Gee, street fighting looks fun.” Now, when I replay that last featured match in my mind, the brutal left jab, right hook that sprayed Jimmy's ear all over his face, the mat, and Kimbo Slice, I can see you grimace even as you mutter, “What a combo!” Suddenly... I have a burning desire to be with you next Saturday night ;) God bless CBS.
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