"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me. And there was no one left to speak up."
Pastor Martin Niemoller inspired these words with his speeches in 1946. My grandmother sat across the table from me in 1991 and spoke with quiet force, her eyes on me but her words in response to a conversation between my parents who sat with us:
“They came first for the Christians, and I did nothing because I am not a Christian. Then they came for the Blacks, and I did nothing because I am not a Black. Then they came for the women, and I did nothing because I am not a woman. When they finally came for me, there was no one left to do anything.”
I was eleven. My cheeks burned. I shook so hard I spilled my glass. I couldn't take my eyes off my grandmother. Of course, she was a Christian, and brown-skinned, and a woman. But that was not the point. The point was it means one thing to fight for someone just like us. Someone easy to love. And it means something completely different to fight for someone nothing like us at all.
Would you die for the person you despise the most?
Would you defend the person who makes your life the hardest?
It is so easy... so very easy... to bolster ourselves and attack those we hate and those who make our life harder. It is simple to hate the enemy. It is easier to rescue a friend than it is to rescue an enemy. It is simple to garner pity. It is easy to rally forces against someone who is Other Than you. We all do it. Complain about the boss with family. Nitpick a husband with friends. Gripe about the world and laws and conventions of culture at an anonymous forum. We are never at fault. We are often comforted and supported and "justified."
But it is not Christian. Nor is it excusable.
The sociological phrase is political apathy. When we only take up arms to defend those like us. The homogenized culture that will we never have in America. And PTL for that, baby, or this brown grrl wouldn't be here. Political apathy is the refusal to see community outside likeness and commonality. It is also the inability to claim identity. It is a seed for spiritual apathy.
I am...
I am...
I am not...
Socio-political labels exist so that we understand on what foundation we stand. They are not necessarily who we are. Five days after my grandmother ended that argument at the dinner table both of my parents marched in the Boston Gay Pride Parade. They were happily married all my father's life. I do not believe either of them ever thought of themselves personally as gay or lesbian. But they did consider themselves members of the GLBT community and the numerous organizations and helplines and centers they gave time and money to would certainty agree with that membership.
When we are feeling alone in the world we turn, most often, to those who are like us. Maybe they have the same skin color. Maybe the same economic status. Maybe gender, sexuality, religion. Whatever. But when we are feeling the most lost, we rarely turn to those truly alien and different. We don't want to learn and take risks. We want to be coddled and stroked. We do not turn to those who are the briers or wolves that hinder and hunt us.
But who did Christ turn to?
In the desert, in His life, in the years He walked and taught and fought on this, His own green world, did He turn again and again to those loyal and true to Him? Did He find Himself enriched by constant isolation with His inner circle of common men? Or did He turn to the thieves, the prostitutes, the lost men?
You are lost. You tear through briers to ask the wolf, “Do you know where we are?” Do you truly think the wolf would eat you when you have asked him a question?
I have not been afraid of wolves since that dinnertime with my grandmother. And though I have found that sometimes when I speak to the wolf, he still bites me, he has never taken me down. Maybe this is because I know so very strongly who I am that I am not shaken by anything anyone else might say. The bricks that make up my foundation have nice, clear, strong labels engraved on them. They are society's labels but not what society thinks they are (Christian. Grrl. Raver.). Rather they are words with my own definitions (Lover. Woman. Fighter.) that do not waiver in the quakes that life rocks me with.
Often the wolf sheds his skin to become my closest ally.
He rarely looks like me -- in or out of his hide.
I said to a friend recently, “Does your lover mind that you blog so explicitly about him?” It is beautiful, sexy, powerful, earth-shaking writing, but despite the fact that the names and places are striped away, it is *very* explicit. Hauntingly so.
My friend takes a long time to answer me. Finally he says, “The poet Minnie Bruce Pratt once asked her partner, transgendered writer and activist Leslie Feinberg, if it was alright with Leslie that Minnie wrote about them explicitly. Leslie answered, 'If you do not write of us, how will anyone know we existed?'”
We lived and loved and existed on this only green world. But we said nothing. We wrote nothing. We did nothing.
And then... none of us were left to tell our story.
I am writing on the digital cave walls.
For me. For you. For them.
Now then forever.
EJ
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
You Will Hear From Me Today
Lord? Walk me away from everything. Walk me closer to you.
I drive for twenty-three hours to find Christ. I could have found Him in three minutes on my roof top, or in no time at all just by closing my eyes. But I wanted to be here. This place untouched and almost unreal.
I stop for hot coffee before the final five miles to the trail head where I'll stash my bike in the brush and hope I can still find my way. The cook/owner/waiter asks me where I'm headed then cocks his head and an eyebrow. "The McAllen place. Waves rose up and took them both. Washed everything but the house out to sea."
I pay for coffee and tip. I buy two bottles of water. The door chime shows me out and, "It was two nights after Eve McAllen died. So heartbroken, Georg called up the sea."
And thirty minutes past the trail head, thunder rolls low and tumbling with danger and I think about the first time we made love.
The forest is close and unkempt. I think of my Lord in the wilderness. I remember His voice when I have been afraid or have felt lost; He has always said the same thing. "You will hear from me tonight." And I wait. And I always do.
I wonder over the nature of temptation and I write this sermon in my head, all in time, poetry, prose, beat, fall, beat with the cadence of my boots on the path more impassioned and far less traveled. I think about slam poetry and open mics and why I insist the sky is best silver, blue, black, orange, and not green on green on green like it is right now, here in the depths of wood. It is not long before darkness takes my way out from under my feet and washes color from this only green world. But it is then that I realize that I know my journey even blind. I am not afraid. I am not alone.
This knowledge in the world is more important to me than breathing.
I woke Saturday morning to another body in my bed, warm and bare and without pretense or complication. Still half in dreams, I murmur a name that is familiar to neither this audience nor this room. I blink. I stand. I realize I need to drive. This was, almost, too easy because it was an effortless fit.
"Do you think Christ put us on this Earth to have it easy?"
"I have fought so hard for so long... I want to lay it down."
"Go ahead. Lay it down."
"Yeah?"
"When you die."
The thousand plus miles between us shrink. I am racing toward the speed of sound. The sadness, secrets, sleepless notes of a hidden struggle. We must push away to push up, to grow... closer to God... to grow... stronger on our own. Christ gave us these bodies to discover range of emotion. Not repetitious but naturally cyclical, ever widening concentric circles. You channel it into music that no one else will ever truly hear. Your prayers whispered between strums of steel and brass and copper, wrapped within the reverb in some ancient tongue. Do you really think anyone understands? If they are fully alive they come close. You will know them when they look away, when they cannot meet your eyes for the tears that well there, in happiness or in sorrow. To anyone else, it is only noise. From your hands to Christ's ear.
Then one day, drifting, echoing past so many deaf ears, one single note will plant itself in the loamy, rich, fertile soil and by Christ's hand you will wake that dawn to a wild rose, blooming riotous blood red. And when you hold that blossom in your hand, you will know who hears you. Go to her.
By the time I hear the waves on rock and sand and shore, I am ensconced in thoughts of ageless prophesy and the eternal nature of art and the art of eternity. I consider stars, peeking through tree tops, as fires, as creatures, as living things with souls and dreams and every fine masquerade of life. I consider the way your words, your voice, your hands, move across me like Christ's own wind pushing, pulling and caressing the tide. I break from the forest and onto the coast, open and bare to this wind, to the world, to the waves and I wonder what difference is it that instead of standing here with me, you are found instead in the written verse tucked in my pocket. I believe I have found the truth, beside this sea, beneath this sky... tonight.
My memories and my desires mix and meld effortlessly into one existence and time slipstreams:
The moment I understood what "Come here..." meant. Tomorrow night, our hips (not our hips), locked into hard beat on the dance floor. The morning I realized that your "no" meant you didn't trust me. Strobes, raver glow, your eyes closed, your head cocked, you keep rhythm at the base of your spine, 2-2-3 when everyone else pounds 1-1-2. I want to stand in the open rain...
I didn't know this would all be so hard. No one told me this would be so damn hard.
And the thunder keeps her promise and shares her release, torrents of rain, fresh water passion throwing back salt water desire. Reciprocity, indeed, I scream. I throw my head back -- I see like in a photograph, like in a memory, like in the here-and-now, your wrist tucked against the small of your back, your other hand skyward, hallelujah -- and I scream.
The ocean, the thunder, the rain is louder. The whole world is louder than I am. But still Christ hears me. I play my notes, my voice bouncing off cresting waves and standing stones, and lone house filled with ghosts, and Christ hears them all. Who knows what other ears will hear. Right now, I need only for His.
As the storm realigns me, I know that this is Him. I knew I'd hear from Him even as He hears me. How can this compare to the feel-good bubble cast by mortal man's pulpit? I am aware, alive and on fire with His word, His voice. How can I be sustained, reset, lifted up by pews and politics and platitudes? I cannot. I need Him raw, real and eternal. I need Him to grab me, shake me, open my eyes. Christ is feast in famine, vaccine in plague, salvation in hell, this hell -- the only one that exists. He said, "Change it. Do it. Feel it."
Who am I not to listen?
EJ
I drive for twenty-three hours to find Christ. I could have found Him in three minutes on my roof top, or in no time at all just by closing my eyes. But I wanted to be here. This place untouched and almost unreal.
I stop for hot coffee before the final five miles to the trail head where I'll stash my bike in the brush and hope I can still find my way. The cook/owner/waiter asks me where I'm headed then cocks his head and an eyebrow. "The McAllen place. Waves rose up and took them both. Washed everything but the house out to sea."
I pay for coffee and tip. I buy two bottles of water. The door chime shows me out and, "It was two nights after Eve McAllen died. So heartbroken, Georg called up the sea."
And thirty minutes past the trail head, thunder rolls low and tumbling with danger and I think about the first time we made love.
The forest is close and unkempt. I think of my Lord in the wilderness. I remember His voice when I have been afraid or have felt lost; He has always said the same thing. "You will hear from me tonight." And I wait. And I always do.
I wonder over the nature of temptation and I write this sermon in my head, all in time, poetry, prose, beat, fall, beat with the cadence of my boots on the path more impassioned and far less traveled. I think about slam poetry and open mics and why I insist the sky is best silver, blue, black, orange, and not green on green on green like it is right now, here in the depths of wood. It is not long before darkness takes my way out from under my feet and washes color from this only green world. But it is then that I realize that I know my journey even blind. I am not afraid. I am not alone.
This knowledge in the world is more important to me than breathing.
I woke Saturday morning to another body in my bed, warm and bare and without pretense or complication. Still half in dreams, I murmur a name that is familiar to neither this audience nor this room. I blink. I stand. I realize I need to drive. This was, almost, too easy because it was an effortless fit.
"Do you think Christ put us on this Earth to have it easy?"
"I have fought so hard for so long... I want to lay it down."
"Go ahead. Lay it down."
"Yeah?"
"When you die."
The thousand plus miles between us shrink. I am racing toward the speed of sound. The sadness, secrets, sleepless notes of a hidden struggle. We must push away to push up, to grow... closer to God... to grow... stronger on our own. Christ gave us these bodies to discover range of emotion. Not repetitious but naturally cyclical, ever widening concentric circles. You channel it into music that no one else will ever truly hear. Your prayers whispered between strums of steel and brass and copper, wrapped within the reverb in some ancient tongue. Do you really think anyone understands? If they are fully alive they come close. You will know them when they look away, when they cannot meet your eyes for the tears that well there, in happiness or in sorrow. To anyone else, it is only noise. From your hands to Christ's ear.
Then one day, drifting, echoing past so many deaf ears, one single note will plant itself in the loamy, rich, fertile soil and by Christ's hand you will wake that dawn to a wild rose, blooming riotous blood red. And when you hold that blossom in your hand, you will know who hears you. Go to her.
By the time I hear the waves on rock and sand and shore, I am ensconced in thoughts of ageless prophesy and the eternal nature of art and the art of eternity. I consider stars, peeking through tree tops, as fires, as creatures, as living things with souls and dreams and every fine masquerade of life. I consider the way your words, your voice, your hands, move across me like Christ's own wind pushing, pulling and caressing the tide. I break from the forest and onto the coast, open and bare to this wind, to the world, to the waves and I wonder what difference is it that instead of standing here with me, you are found instead in the written verse tucked in my pocket. I believe I have found the truth, beside this sea, beneath this sky... tonight.
My memories and my desires mix and meld effortlessly into one existence and time slipstreams:
The moment I understood what "Come here..." meant. Tomorrow night, our hips (not our hips), locked into hard beat on the dance floor. The morning I realized that your "no" meant you didn't trust me. Strobes, raver glow, your eyes closed, your head cocked, you keep rhythm at the base of your spine, 2-2-3 when everyone else pounds 1-1-2. I want to stand in the open rain...
I didn't know this would all be so hard. No one told me this would be so damn hard.
And the thunder keeps her promise and shares her release, torrents of rain, fresh water passion throwing back salt water desire. Reciprocity, indeed, I scream. I throw my head back -- I see like in a photograph, like in a memory, like in the here-and-now, your wrist tucked against the small of your back, your other hand skyward, hallelujah -- and I scream.
The ocean, the thunder, the rain is louder. The whole world is louder than I am. But still Christ hears me. I play my notes, my voice bouncing off cresting waves and standing stones, and lone house filled with ghosts, and Christ hears them all. Who knows what other ears will hear. Right now, I need only for His.
As the storm realigns me, I know that this is Him. I knew I'd hear from Him even as He hears me. How can this compare to the feel-good bubble cast by mortal man's pulpit? I am aware, alive and on fire with His word, His voice. How can I be sustained, reset, lifted up by pews and politics and platitudes? I cannot. I need Him raw, real and eternal. I need Him to grab me, shake me, open my eyes. Christ is feast in famine, vaccine in plague, salvation in hell, this hell -- the only one that exists. He said, "Change it. Do it. Feel it."
Who am I not to listen?
EJ
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Someone Else's Touchstone
“I'm standing here until you make me move.”
I'm waiting. I'm waiting for your words. You don't know. You have no idea how much I crave the bread crumbs you sprinkle. I know they are actually stardust. You have not hidden your divinity from me. You can't. The first time I saw you cry, your tears washed away the mask. The first time I heard you scream, your anger burned down the facade. I used to pray you'd write for me. I never thought it would be like this.
I am waiting. Word of God speak.
...the music explodes in my headphones. The day seems like it took months to end. Oh dear God, I want only to hold you. Why did this Sabbath feel like so much work? The music is so loud that everyone is speaking like soundless mimes. I cannot take my eyes off you. I want to know baptism again. I choose it of my own free will, baby, as I chose it the first time...
“I'm closer to where I started
chasing after you.”
...can you read my thoughts as you read my heart? Can you recast this day for me in the eight hours before dawn? Can your touch reshape me into someone alive with joy, with passion, with strength? Will you open my eyes when you close my eyes? Will you read my desire across the scripture of my body...
“I'm falling even more in love with you.
Letting go of all I've held onto.
I'm standing here until you make me move.”
...I want to walk in the forest of your gaze. Bronze and emerald, you are tempered wild, fine sculpture in untamed domain. Sprinkle kisses along the path, little one. I will follow your lead. I will call-and-response to your gasp, your sigh, your breathless song...
“There's nothing else to lose.
There's nothing else to find.
There's nothing in the world
that can change my mind.”
And suddenly I know where I am. South by southwest, I have my North Star and she shines so blue, so cold, so sharp. I have seen the Southern Cross for the first time and since that night, tide rising, wind slicing, I have known why I came this way.
“I'm living for the only thing I know.”
There is a stone in my pocket. There has been a stone in my pocket since I was four years old. Not this stone. But a stone. Touchstone. Charged stone. Old world Christianity. “When the world gives us more than we can bare, love, we place it here,” and Grandmother tapped the small, river-rounded stone in my hand. She wiped my tears. She looked at the sky. She reached into her own pocket. She held up a single black stone. It was worn down in the middle. Like the power of rain drops, she had worn away the stone with her soft tapping, persistent touch. “Let go,” she told me and she turned and left me there. I was alone. I stared at the white stone. I tapped out my trouble like divine Morris Code. And I let go as I dropped it into my pocket.
Are we elevated from animals? Are we rulers and not ruled simply because scripture paints us that way? Or are we actually slaves to the power of the viral colony that awaits us around every unwashed public door handle? I think our lives are exactly as we make them. I think we are rulers of nothing but ourselves and guardians of everything else.
Action, reaction, chain-reaction. I am only the sum of what I hold. I am only the interwoven fingers of the hand I'm holding.
“What are you writing?”
“My Sunday sermon.”
“Do you have something to say?”
“I always have something to say, Summer.”
And the windows are open. The doves are making sounds. It is raining. There is rain on the tile floor. There is rain on my skin. Still hot from the shower. All the windows stand open. All the windows... there is no difference. Inside or outside. Night sky, skylights. I am just standing here, as seen and as hidden as anywhere else.
“Do you have anything to say?”
“I always have something to say, Lord.”
And we walked at dawn. The street was ugly. The concrete cracked from a long winter and a bad thaw. You handed me a stone from your pocket. The tears on your face were the silent kind I used to watch my father cry. You didn't need to tell me it was a touchstone. I took it and a shock ran up my arm and down my spine. “I can't carry it any longer,” you thought but I heard the words as clearly as I saw the fast moving clouds, white strands of eternity, across that pale morning sky. I slipped the stone into my pocket. It was heavy. It was beautiful. It was horrible. It now was mine.
We must surround ourselves with companions willing to recast our day for us over and over again. To reset the line of truth. To recharge the heart. We must do the same for them.
“What's new?”
“I hate the word 'actually.'”
“Hm.”
I am confident enough to be silent. I am sure enough to enjoy listening to another person talk. I do not have to weigh in. I like watching the way a mouth moves to form words only a moment after the brain has formed them. I have no desire to correct someone. I open my mouth when I am able to say, “Oh! That is something new. Thank you.” I have no interest in using my voice to prove to the world how great I am.
Whose life are you recasting? Who do you sprinkle stardust for?
“She has a lock of hair in her pocket
and a cross around her neck.
The hair is from a little boy
and the cross from someone she hasn't met yet.
She says she talks to angels
and they call her by her name.”
Christ, sometimes I cannot carry it all. Sometimes I cannot see my personal sky. Sometimes I am afraid to ask you because I am scared of what you will tell me. I am not ashamed not to have all the answers... I would be ashamed if I didn't fight and bleed to find them.
*whispering* Lord? Here I am...
Sometimes it is so much better to shut my mouth, open my ears and nod my head. Sometimes it is so much easier to carry the stone for someone else. I grow more when I listen than when I talk. I make a difference when I accomplish the impossible and tell no one but my God.
*whispering* ...covered in your rain...
Take a step. Keep stepping until it is no longer easy. Draw your own map and then make it real. Take a hand. Keep holding until it is no longer easy. Draw another's heart and then recharge it.
*whispering* ...it feels so right to remake my world.
When we reach out to the person least likely... when we see with another person's eyes... when we truly come to know our opposition... we finally see through the mirror clearly. We become full. We grasp the touchstone and shock runs through our body. We see for the first time.
We grow up.
When life becomes difficult, we become Christian.
EJ
Grandmother? I would have carried your stone. I wish, so often, that you had burdened me.
I'm waiting. I'm waiting for your words. You don't know. You have no idea how much I crave the bread crumbs you sprinkle. I know they are actually stardust. You have not hidden your divinity from me. You can't. The first time I saw you cry, your tears washed away the mask. The first time I heard you scream, your anger burned down the facade. I used to pray you'd write for me. I never thought it would be like this.
I am waiting. Word of God speak.
...the music explodes in my headphones. The day seems like it took months to end. Oh dear God, I want only to hold you. Why did this Sabbath feel like so much work? The music is so loud that everyone is speaking like soundless mimes. I cannot take my eyes off you. I want to know baptism again. I choose it of my own free will, baby, as I chose it the first time...
“I'm closer to where I started
chasing after you.”
...can you read my thoughts as you read my heart? Can you recast this day for me in the eight hours before dawn? Can your touch reshape me into someone alive with joy, with passion, with strength? Will you open my eyes when you close my eyes? Will you read my desire across the scripture of my body...
“I'm falling even more in love with you.
Letting go of all I've held onto.
I'm standing here until you make me move.”
...I want to walk in the forest of your gaze. Bronze and emerald, you are tempered wild, fine sculpture in untamed domain. Sprinkle kisses along the path, little one. I will follow your lead. I will call-and-response to your gasp, your sigh, your breathless song...
“There's nothing else to lose.
There's nothing else to find.
There's nothing in the world
that can change my mind.”
And suddenly I know where I am. South by southwest, I have my North Star and she shines so blue, so cold, so sharp. I have seen the Southern Cross for the first time and since that night, tide rising, wind slicing, I have known why I came this way.
“I'm living for the only thing I know.”
There is a stone in my pocket. There has been a stone in my pocket since I was four years old. Not this stone. But a stone. Touchstone. Charged stone. Old world Christianity. “When the world gives us more than we can bare, love, we place it here,” and Grandmother tapped the small, river-rounded stone in my hand. She wiped my tears. She looked at the sky. She reached into her own pocket. She held up a single black stone. It was worn down in the middle. Like the power of rain drops, she had worn away the stone with her soft tapping, persistent touch. “Let go,” she told me and she turned and left me there. I was alone. I stared at the white stone. I tapped out my trouble like divine Morris Code. And I let go as I dropped it into my pocket.
Are we elevated from animals? Are we rulers and not ruled simply because scripture paints us that way? Or are we actually slaves to the power of the viral colony that awaits us around every unwashed public door handle? I think our lives are exactly as we make them. I think we are rulers of nothing but ourselves and guardians of everything else.
Action, reaction, chain-reaction. I am only the sum of what I hold. I am only the interwoven fingers of the hand I'm holding.
“What are you writing?”
“My Sunday sermon.”
“Do you have something to say?”
“I always have something to say, Summer.”
And the windows are open. The doves are making sounds. It is raining. There is rain on the tile floor. There is rain on my skin. Still hot from the shower. All the windows stand open. All the windows... there is no difference. Inside or outside. Night sky, skylights. I am just standing here, as seen and as hidden as anywhere else.
“Do you have anything to say?”
“I always have something to say, Lord.”
And we walked at dawn. The street was ugly. The concrete cracked from a long winter and a bad thaw. You handed me a stone from your pocket. The tears on your face were the silent kind I used to watch my father cry. You didn't need to tell me it was a touchstone. I took it and a shock ran up my arm and down my spine. “I can't carry it any longer,” you thought but I heard the words as clearly as I saw the fast moving clouds, white strands of eternity, across that pale morning sky. I slipped the stone into my pocket. It was heavy. It was beautiful. It was horrible. It now was mine.
We must surround ourselves with companions willing to recast our day for us over and over again. To reset the line of truth. To recharge the heart. We must do the same for them.
“What's new?”
“I hate the word 'actually.'”
“Hm.”
I am confident enough to be silent. I am sure enough to enjoy listening to another person talk. I do not have to weigh in. I like watching the way a mouth moves to form words only a moment after the brain has formed them. I have no desire to correct someone. I open my mouth when I am able to say, “Oh! That is something new. Thank you.” I have no interest in using my voice to prove to the world how great I am.
Whose life are you recasting? Who do you sprinkle stardust for?
“She has a lock of hair in her pocket
and a cross around her neck.
The hair is from a little boy
and the cross from someone she hasn't met yet.
She says she talks to angels
and they call her by her name.”
Christ, sometimes I cannot carry it all. Sometimes I cannot see my personal sky. Sometimes I am afraid to ask you because I am scared of what you will tell me. I am not ashamed not to have all the answers... I would be ashamed if I didn't fight and bleed to find them.
*whispering* Lord? Here I am...
Sometimes it is so much better to shut my mouth, open my ears and nod my head. Sometimes it is so much easier to carry the stone for someone else. I grow more when I listen than when I talk. I make a difference when I accomplish the impossible and tell no one but my God.
*whispering* ...covered in your rain...
Take a step. Keep stepping until it is no longer easy. Draw your own map and then make it real. Take a hand. Keep holding until it is no longer easy. Draw another's heart and then recharge it.
*whispering* ...it feels so right to remake my world.
When we reach out to the person least likely... when we see with another person's eyes... when we truly come to know our opposition... we finally see through the mirror clearly. We become full. We grasp the touchstone and shock runs through our body. We see for the first time.
We grow up.
When life becomes difficult, we become Christian.
EJ
Grandmother? I would have carried your stone. I wish, so often, that you had burdened me.
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Making a Difference
Like with love, it begins with yourself.
And the music carries me. Cresting, crashing, falling down. Your hands are in my back pockets. Our belt buckles click together. Yours is a wolf. Mine is a star. You murmur, not a whisper, something more certain, like the confidence in your eyes: “I know where we can go.”
The hall is long and dark and narrow. Rebirth. Reborn as someone else. Someone no one here knows. An eight hour flight was never so worth it. You turn and smooth down my Silence = Death t-shirt. “It suits you,” you say somewhere left of my ear. You push my hair over my shoulder. I just look at you. You know my answer.
We turn onto the dance floor. Blackness in the middle of the Sabbath day. Shot in time with the beat with red, blue, green, gold. So many have come to worship this way. Someone... several someones are shouting call and response to the live DJ. I count a few rosaries but mostly the accessories of the faith glow neon or glint gold. Hm. Grrl... you sure know how to find a club. And you know it. You walk backwards, away from me, melting into the crowd, disappearing. You mouth, “Told ya... *Angel*....” Your dark hair braided into three dozen braids on the flight here falls forward, hiding eyes that burn.
We are not here together.
I am alone. I am perfect. I am with my Lord. I move into the crowd, arms up, boots stomping, already dancing.
Tokyo. Not today. Not NYC like now. It was Tokyo and I was running away from myself. Oh, dear Lord. *So* not like now. I just wanted to get away from LA. From the looks I found myself getting and receiving. From the words that all my “friends” were squinting and shaking their heads at me about. It was the first and last time I joined a Bible study group. Oh Christ... I had no idea how much damage it would do, it did, until years after the fact. Those tiny minds undid years of truths. Just reached into my heart....
Tokyo. It was cold. The club was hot. The cover was high. The floor was packed. The music was hard techno pop, raging beat, shotgun lyrics. I was there fifteen minutes when a dancer (boy? grrl?) offered me a tab and I considered it for the first time in my life. I was running so hard, so far, so fast. I wanted to lose myself... this waking up self. I said no. Thank you, God.
I danced. I danced and cried and prayed. At some point there was a pair of deep brown eyes, short spiked black hair frosted neon blue. There were hands unbuttoning my crisp white button up. The white tails fluttered at my hips, spun out behind me, brushing black leather pants. Angel wings. “Angel...” a whisper. I danced.
Lord...
I didn't ask for this.
I didn't look for this.
Slumbering in my chest.
It kills me to deny it.
It closes me down.
It spins me inward.
I want to open my arms.
Give me the courage.
Open my eyes.
Touch me.
I am alone.
Just you.
Just me.
Touch me.
Take me.
“You talk about Christ like a lover.”
“He is.”
“You talk about making love like prayer.”
“It is.”
“You see Him differently than I do.”
“Absolutely... PTL.”
Freezing Rain. Cherry Blossoms. On the Speedway. Move. Blast My Desire. Around the World. World's End. My Sweetest Nightmare. Dogfight. Hard dance songs. Techno crash. I imagine on a global stage, Terrapyres dance to music like this. Maybe they had their origins that night. That idea of angels finding Christ on the dance floor, or swimming in beat and bass line and searing vocals. Music is my blood and baptism. I find Christ beneath, behind, inside the music far more often than I find Him in the hollow words of any man. Here is primal and my Christ is primal.
Tokyo. I cried, “Show me!” Take me. Touch me. I will do the work. I will do the work. I. Will. Do. The. Work.
And He did. He reached down and touched me. Took my heart, that sheltered little grrl who was welding steel around herself, and with the strength of only my Lord, He shattered the armor and opened my heart to myself. I was alone. On that dance floor, in the world, I was alone. Just Him. Just me.
I don't need anyone else to know who I am.
And I did the work. First the body and then the mind. I gained fifteen pounds of muscle (which I needed). I gained an inch of height (by standing up straight). I walked five miles five times a week. I planted a garden, my hands in rich soil like life. I boxed three times a week, forty-five minutes hard.
I changed me. I celebrated Christ in me. I would not waste this gift, not this body, not one heartbeat, not one day. No motivator but my faith. I need no guide other than my Lord in my heart, in my ear, walking at my side.
And I did the work. Second the mind. I read a new book every week. Nonfiction. Theory. Fiction. Raw. Real. I opened my eyes to my world, to my politics, to my reality. I broke open everything I thought I knew. I wrote. Journaling first because that's what chicks do, and then blogging, cuz that's what everyone does, and then I pushed and Christ pushed back and I was writing to touch hearts and save souls. And Mardi Gras 3000 crested like a dream.
The music is in my bones now. Nothing quite like NYC clubs on the Sabbath. I am sure of myself when I walk out of man's world and into God's world. I could have gone mountain climbing. I could have scaled a rock. I could have chartered a boat and gone diving. I could have walked into any bar and picked a fight LOL! But the view here is so much nicer.
It was Tokyo and the rain was cold. It was Tokyo and I had certainly gone to the ends of the Earth to escape something that I carried within me. I felt branded...
...and now I feel branded. Marked forever. Touched by the flame of God. This brand is His mark. I accept my nature. I embrace who I am and what that means and what I must do. Word of God has spoken. And this angel dances. Sweet Christ, I'm dancing.
Remind me, Lord.
Of who I am.
Don't allow me
to run to hide
to waste the breath
you have given me.
Knock me down
so that I remember
how to stand back up.
I found myself
so as not to be lost.
You are my shepherd.
No one else.
I am
standing
dancing.
Warrior, heal thy self.
Less than 21,000 genomes make up every single living creature on this only green world. The same 21,000 genomes. Human beings do not have a single unique genome. Period. As in nature so in man. As in nature so in God. Stop just reading it, over and over again, and start believing it. Start feeling it. Start breathing it.
Start preaching it.
We are all the same 21,000 words written into just less than seven billion books. We are all the same words... each telling a different story.
Are you sharing your story?
EJ
And the music carries me. Cresting, crashing, falling down. Your hands are in my back pockets. Our belt buckles click together. Yours is a wolf. Mine is a star. You murmur, not a whisper, something more certain, like the confidence in your eyes: “I know where we can go.”
The hall is long and dark and narrow. Rebirth. Reborn as someone else. Someone no one here knows. An eight hour flight was never so worth it. You turn and smooth down my Silence = Death t-shirt. “It suits you,” you say somewhere left of my ear. You push my hair over my shoulder. I just look at you. You know my answer.
We turn onto the dance floor. Blackness in the middle of the Sabbath day. Shot in time with the beat with red, blue, green, gold. So many have come to worship this way. Someone... several someones are shouting call and response to the live DJ. I count a few rosaries but mostly the accessories of the faith glow neon or glint gold. Hm. Grrl... you sure know how to find a club. And you know it. You walk backwards, away from me, melting into the crowd, disappearing. You mouth, “Told ya... *Angel*....” Your dark hair braided into three dozen braids on the flight here falls forward, hiding eyes that burn.
We are not here together.
I am alone. I am perfect. I am with my Lord. I move into the crowd, arms up, boots stomping, already dancing.
Tokyo. Not today. Not NYC like now. It was Tokyo and I was running away from myself. Oh, dear Lord. *So* not like now. I just wanted to get away from LA. From the looks I found myself getting and receiving. From the words that all my “friends” were squinting and shaking their heads at me about. It was the first and last time I joined a Bible study group. Oh Christ... I had no idea how much damage it would do, it did, until years after the fact. Those tiny minds undid years of truths. Just reached into my heart....
Tokyo. It was cold. The club was hot. The cover was high. The floor was packed. The music was hard techno pop, raging beat, shotgun lyrics. I was there fifteen minutes when a dancer (boy? grrl?) offered me a tab and I considered it for the first time in my life. I was running so hard, so far, so fast. I wanted to lose myself... this waking up self. I said no. Thank you, God.
I danced. I danced and cried and prayed. At some point there was a pair of deep brown eyes, short spiked black hair frosted neon blue. There were hands unbuttoning my crisp white button up. The white tails fluttered at my hips, spun out behind me, brushing black leather pants. Angel wings. “Angel...” a whisper. I danced.
Lord...
I didn't ask for this.
I didn't look for this.
Slumbering in my chest.
It kills me to deny it.
It closes me down.
It spins me inward.
I want to open my arms.
Give me the courage.
Open my eyes.
Touch me.
I am alone.
Just you.
Just me.
Touch me.
Take me.
“You talk about Christ like a lover.”
“He is.”
“You talk about making love like prayer.”
“It is.”
“You see Him differently than I do.”
“Absolutely... PTL.”
Freezing Rain. Cherry Blossoms. On the Speedway. Move. Blast My Desire. Around the World. World's End. My Sweetest Nightmare. Dogfight. Hard dance songs. Techno crash. I imagine on a global stage, Terrapyres dance to music like this. Maybe they had their origins that night. That idea of angels finding Christ on the dance floor, or swimming in beat and bass line and searing vocals. Music is my blood and baptism. I find Christ beneath, behind, inside the music far more often than I find Him in the hollow words of any man. Here is primal and my Christ is primal.
Tokyo. I cried, “Show me!” Take me. Touch me. I will do the work. I will do the work. I. Will. Do. The. Work.
And He did. He reached down and touched me. Took my heart, that sheltered little grrl who was welding steel around herself, and with the strength of only my Lord, He shattered the armor and opened my heart to myself. I was alone. On that dance floor, in the world, I was alone. Just Him. Just me.
I don't need anyone else to know who I am.
And I did the work. First the body and then the mind. I gained fifteen pounds of muscle (which I needed). I gained an inch of height (by standing up straight). I walked five miles five times a week. I planted a garden, my hands in rich soil like life. I boxed three times a week, forty-five minutes hard.
I changed me. I celebrated Christ in me. I would not waste this gift, not this body, not one heartbeat, not one day. No motivator but my faith. I need no guide other than my Lord in my heart, in my ear, walking at my side.
And I did the work. Second the mind. I read a new book every week. Nonfiction. Theory. Fiction. Raw. Real. I opened my eyes to my world, to my politics, to my reality. I broke open everything I thought I knew. I wrote. Journaling first because that's what chicks do, and then blogging, cuz that's what everyone does, and then I pushed and Christ pushed back and I was writing to touch hearts and save souls. And Mardi Gras 3000 crested like a dream.
The music is in my bones now. Nothing quite like NYC clubs on the Sabbath. I am sure of myself when I walk out of man's world and into God's world. I could have gone mountain climbing. I could have scaled a rock. I could have chartered a boat and gone diving. I could have walked into any bar and picked a fight LOL! But the view here is so much nicer.
It was Tokyo and the rain was cold. It was Tokyo and I had certainly gone to the ends of the Earth to escape something that I carried within me. I felt branded...
...and now I feel branded. Marked forever. Touched by the flame of God. This brand is His mark. I accept my nature. I embrace who I am and what that means and what I must do. Word of God has spoken. And this angel dances. Sweet Christ, I'm dancing.
Remind me, Lord.
Of who I am.
Don't allow me
to run to hide
to waste the breath
you have given me.
Knock me down
so that I remember
how to stand back up.
I found myself
so as not to be lost.
You are my shepherd.
No one else.
I am
standing
dancing.
Warrior, heal thy self.
Less than 21,000 genomes make up every single living creature on this only green world. The same 21,000 genomes. Human beings do not have a single unique genome. Period. As in nature so in man. As in nature so in God. Stop just reading it, over and over again, and start believing it. Start feeling it. Start breathing it.
Start preaching it.
We are all the same 21,000 words written into just less than seven billion books. We are all the same words... each telling a different story.
Are you sharing your story?
EJ
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Black Sky, Red Silk
You think, in the cold and the dark, the wind that bites -- winter fighting back -- the clouds that spin, that I perhaps do not think of you. That I am lost to the concrete forest. My love, my friend, my angel, guardian, lady. You drift, ebbing with the tides, and when others deconstruct and turn their lives upside down and inside out to change like origami birds, to take flight, to soar, you ride the swells and gaze at the sky.
Or perhaps, beloved, you do not gaze at the sky enough. For if you did, if you were, if your eyes were on the sky as much as mine are than you would know:
I love you like sunlight on the sea. Like swift white clouds, thin and spread like feathers. I love you like the wet stones of the shore at Second Beach, cast there to tell my fortune.
I want you like candle flame, the heavy egg-shaped votive burning in my palm. I want you to tell me yes as you have never before. I am done writing stories; I want you on fire for me as I am for you. Want to dance these flames together. Amen.
I miss you as if I am dead. I am controlled and working hard, throwing myself into everything like there is nothing else. Showing half-a-hundred strangers around me that I can meet every demand. I miss you because I miss us and so I miss myself. I walk unknown here -- for my passion for you is not a label for me. It is part of who I am. The heart of me.
Will you recognize me in this new-found militance?
I read between the lines when you write for me. I buy a red silk scarf and tie it snug, a right wristband, caressed for hours beneath my fingertips. I think perhaps we match now, yes? No, not a scarf there, I know... but something else, something more fitting... but this love, this passion, this heart... it is the same.
Look up, my lady. Look up.
Do you see how much you are loved?
Or perhaps, beloved, you do not gaze at the sky enough. For if you did, if you were, if your eyes were on the sky as much as mine are than you would know:
I love you like sunlight on the sea. Like swift white clouds, thin and spread like feathers. I love you like the wet stones of the shore at Second Beach, cast there to tell my fortune.
I want you like candle flame, the heavy egg-shaped votive burning in my palm. I want you to tell me yes as you have never before. I am done writing stories; I want you on fire for me as I am for you. Want to dance these flames together. Amen.
I miss you as if I am dead. I am controlled and working hard, throwing myself into everything like there is nothing else. Showing half-a-hundred strangers around me that I can meet every demand. I miss you because I miss us and so I miss myself. I walk unknown here -- for my passion for you is not a label for me. It is part of who I am. The heart of me.
Will you recognize me in this new-found militance?
I read between the lines when you write for me. I buy a red silk scarf and tie it snug, a right wristband, caressed for hours beneath my fingertips. I think perhaps we match now, yes? No, not a scarf there, I know... but something else, something more fitting... but this love, this passion, this heart... it is the same.
Look up, my lady. Look up.
Do you see how much you are loved?
Sunday, March 01, 2009
If You Aren't Rejoicing...
...you don't know what's going on.
Shh. Quiet now. Let me bring you there.
I once promised you that I wouldn't publish poetry on Sunday. This was a day to sermonize. To guide and council. This was my day to be an angel.
But I am not interested in Puritanical angels. They bore me and rarely leave evidence of their passing. Plus, if the stain glass windows are right, they're all very, very white, and baby, last time I checked, I was more cinnamon than driven snow.
Tonight, stars spinning above me, clouds fast across this open desert so bracing cold... tonight, surrounded by brush and cactus and night time creatures that can find me so much easier than my human handlers... tonight, with my player shuffling the same five songs... tonight, I am caught, captured and held by you. I am alone with my Christ and whispers of divinity, falling like stardust.
The roaring riffs
of sweet salvation
in cascading
tumble-tight lyrics
that carry me to
another place and
wash over me like
baptism, like
rain showers like
storms in the air
around me
inside me
lifting me up
taking me down
... oh dear God
I just described
how I feel
when you touch me.
Christ Almighty, you placed us here. You laid us here in the double helix of who we are and what we can be to each other. What cell holds gentleness? They have mapped the one that holds song. Where in my muscles does this desire for you slumber then jump, alert, alive, aching when I look into your eyes? Sweet Christ, this is how you have made us. This is how you have spun still matter into flesh, bone and thought all wrapped around twenty-one grams of soul. You have made us able to write words erotic, romantic, touching, inciting. You have made us able to touch so softly we trace fingerprints, or to possess so fully we are shaken and left shaking.
In my celebration of you, I celebrate this body. In my honoring of you, I honor this body. To deny my heart is to deny you and I will never deny you. Lord? I am shouting from mountain tops. I rejoice to find you... find myself... find us together.
You are born
of sound, my
music made flesh
of beat and bass
the bright
sharp brilliant
edge of you
beneath my
praying tongue.
You are born
of the ocean
the cresting
waves calling
whispering
shouting my
name throughout
the cold night
meeting
the cool dawn
burning in
your arms.
I promised you only poetry on Thursdays. Sermons on Sunday. But there are some messages that can only be given in verse. There are some promises that can only be exchanged in touch. Sometimes we must embrace the truth that there is a time and a medium and a reason for everything. It is written into our genetic scripture. It is coded and expressed, activated and mutated just for me, just for you, just for this love that beats between us, Christ. There are times when the educated sentence fails us. It only confines. Free form, freefall, is the only way.
Christ coded our genome. Christ coded this universe. If you think you know, you don't. If you think you're right, you're wrong. It is all a mystery. It is all a hundred times more than our wildest discovery.
There are at least ten thousand ways to love somebody.
And I
have never
loved you more.
For your strength
for your fire
for your constance.
And I
sometimes
know so very
little, but only
that I love you.
That I would do
anything for you.
That I could be
that I will be
that I am
anything that
you need.
EJ
Shh. Quiet now. Let me bring you there.
I once promised you that I wouldn't publish poetry on Sunday. This was a day to sermonize. To guide and council. This was my day to be an angel.
But I am not interested in Puritanical angels. They bore me and rarely leave evidence of their passing. Plus, if the stain glass windows are right, they're all very, very white, and baby, last time I checked, I was more cinnamon than driven snow.
Tonight, stars spinning above me, clouds fast across this open desert so bracing cold... tonight, surrounded by brush and cactus and night time creatures that can find me so much easier than my human handlers... tonight, with my player shuffling the same five songs... tonight, I am caught, captured and held by you. I am alone with my Christ and whispers of divinity, falling like stardust.
The roaring riffs
of sweet salvation
in cascading
tumble-tight lyrics
that carry me to
another place and
wash over me like
baptism, like
rain showers like
storms in the air
around me
inside me
lifting me up
taking me down
... oh dear God
I just described
how I feel
when you touch me.
Christ Almighty, you placed us here. You laid us here in the double helix of who we are and what we can be to each other. What cell holds gentleness? They have mapped the one that holds song. Where in my muscles does this desire for you slumber then jump, alert, alive, aching when I look into your eyes? Sweet Christ, this is how you have made us. This is how you have spun still matter into flesh, bone and thought all wrapped around twenty-one grams of soul. You have made us able to write words erotic, romantic, touching, inciting. You have made us able to touch so softly we trace fingerprints, or to possess so fully we are shaken and left shaking.
In my celebration of you, I celebrate this body. In my honoring of you, I honor this body. To deny my heart is to deny you and I will never deny you. Lord? I am shouting from mountain tops. I rejoice to find you... find myself... find us together.
You are born
of sound, my
music made flesh
of beat and bass
the bright
sharp brilliant
edge of you
beneath my
praying tongue.
You are born
of the ocean
the cresting
waves calling
whispering
shouting my
name throughout
the cold night
meeting
the cool dawn
burning in
your arms.
I promised you only poetry on Thursdays. Sermons on Sunday. But there are some messages that can only be given in verse. There are some promises that can only be exchanged in touch. Sometimes we must embrace the truth that there is a time and a medium and a reason for everything. It is written into our genetic scripture. It is coded and expressed, activated and mutated just for me, just for you, just for this love that beats between us, Christ. There are times when the educated sentence fails us. It only confines. Free form, freefall, is the only way.
Christ coded our genome. Christ coded this universe. If you think you know, you don't. If you think you're right, you're wrong. It is all a mystery. It is all a hundred times more than our wildest discovery.
There are at least ten thousand ways to love somebody.
And I
have never
loved you more.
For your strength
for your fire
for your constance.
And I
sometimes
know so very
little, but only
that I love you.
That I would do
anything for you.
That I could be
that I will be
that I am
anything that
you need.
EJ
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