...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
Sunday, June 22, 2008
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.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Returning to You with Every New Dawn
It is raining where you are. Where both of you are. Where all three of you are. My goodness. Tonight... this silent night... there are *eight* of you there in that house. Nestled in the woods, in the most beautiful temperate rain forest in the world. Under a roof I helped shingle. Surrounded by trees I have pruned. Bordered by roses I have cupped in my hands.
I am a world away; Los Angeles is practically another dimension, my friends, my love. I am dreaming. In bed alone with my hand on your pillow, with my ole one-eyed cat snoring loudly. I’m dreaming:
Bare feet against golden white sand. The pale blue-green waves around my ankles are like something carbonated, tiny warm bubbles in clean, popping foam. There are occasional stones in the sand but they are flat and smooth and completely clear. Skip them, angel, and they’ll vanish into the depths like cosmic fish. But they’ll also grant your every wish; Let me instead?
You are walking beside me. You hold my hand. Your hair falls to your waist. The white ties of your shirt are undone. Your white skirt is brushed cotton. You whisper into the wind, “I love you like moonlight, your heart like the tide.”
A gentle wave washes red rose petals around our feet and I wake to find you beside me.
“EJ,” said Jessica on the phone, her new-mom voice exhausted with joy. “Tell me again, Angel. Tell me again.”
Jess? Here, again:
At the end of my days I walk the shore of eternity with my Lord. And He has all the time in the world for me and all the time in forever. He is never rushed. He is never distracted. He is my own and I am His. I want for nothing and no one because everything I have ever loved is in His eyes. I looked all my life for a man to complete me... and only one could.
I look back over my shoulder. I see our footprints in the sand. I see where we ran hard. I see where we sank to our knees together. I see where we stumbled, fell, stood back up – oh, Jess... Brianne... Tricia... Cris... *stood back up!* -- and marched on. I see those places where there is only one set of footprints.
Shyly I look up at Him. I smile. I whisper, “I like it when you carried me.”
It's raining in Port Orchard, Washington. You are sleeping somewhere where you can hear it. It sounds like words from God against the roof. The thrumming carries His words down to you. Listen very carefully and His voice blooms in your mind and heart, no longer hidden away by the filter of the world. He is always insistent. He is always fair. And He always knows us far better than we know ourselves. His rain says:
“Oh, my soul, sometimes we don't know what to do.
We work so hard being tough on our own
But now it's me and you.
Let's give it up, these sad bones
'Cause we are following hard times.
But you don't have to stand up all alone
Just put your hand in mine.”
Climb on a back that’s strong. We are never alone. I am with you... Christ said that, too, you know. And:
I want to help you with everything. I want to comfort you when you're scared. Come to you, hold you when you are lonely. I want to make you laugh when you want to cry, to make you shout praises to God when you want to scream in despair. I want to be what you need. Do what you need. I want this like I've never wanted anything else. I feel it in my heart -- my immortal heart! -- like a physical ache. I want to be your everything. Because you are my everything. I love you this much.
Sweet Lord...
You whisper to me like this and I unravel into stardust and ribbons. I sink forward, my
brow in my hands, my fingers in my hair, my eyes closed, and I am praying without even thinking about it. I am so passionately in love. So completely in love. So willing to walk this path, your path, Lord. If this is the definition of enraptured, then, Christ? I am *so* there. I believe your every word. I follow you anywhere. I trust you. I believe you. I accept you into my heart like light, into my lungs like air.
“How can you love like that, EJ? How can you... *give it up* like that?”
Because it feels so good to give it up. It feels so right. I respond to the whispers of divinity. I embrace the silver moonlight. Drown me, Lord. You are all that I want... not to mention all that I need. My everything.
Divinely inspired? Hm. The blush across my cheeks says, “Yes... and hallelujah.”
I would give up anything for you. I would do anything for you. I would carry the world. I would let it fall at my feet. Crumbled or conquered, I willingly turn to you as my guiding light, my eternal love. Christ, break my heart. I can take it. Break my heart and remake it into the shape you want. Teach me a lesson. Make me feel it. I will learn like never before. Hand me this love, silver in the hours of the night, and I swear to you, I will stand so strong – apart or together, forever – you will see in me a soldier of divinity.
“You have saved me a place in heaven
With a clean well-lighted room.
So I muscle up to Armageddon
And wave, ‘Come on, love, we’ll be home soon!’”
I am more yours in this moment than I was yesterday, though not yet quite as much as I will be tomorrow when I wake.
We never stand alone. We always stand with Him. Whether or not we choose to see Him is our choice. But He walks with us nonetheless. His hand is not always in ours... because sometimes, yes, He carries us.
E.J.
I am so proud of all of you. Bless you for enriching my life like rain fall.
I am a world away; Los Angeles is practically another dimension, my friends, my love. I am dreaming. In bed alone with my hand on your pillow, with my ole one-eyed cat snoring loudly. I’m dreaming:
Bare feet against golden white sand. The pale blue-green waves around my ankles are like something carbonated, tiny warm bubbles in clean, popping foam. There are occasional stones in the sand but they are flat and smooth and completely clear. Skip them, angel, and they’ll vanish into the depths like cosmic fish. But they’ll also grant your every wish; Let me instead?
You are walking beside me. You hold my hand. Your hair falls to your waist. The white ties of your shirt are undone. Your white skirt is brushed cotton. You whisper into the wind, “I love you like moonlight, your heart like the tide.”
A gentle wave washes red rose petals around our feet and I wake to find you beside me.
“EJ,” said Jessica on the phone, her new-mom voice exhausted with joy. “Tell me again, Angel. Tell me again.”
Jess? Here, again:
At the end of my days I walk the shore of eternity with my Lord. And He has all the time in the world for me and all the time in forever. He is never rushed. He is never distracted. He is my own and I am His. I want for nothing and no one because everything I have ever loved is in His eyes. I looked all my life for a man to complete me... and only one could.
I look back over my shoulder. I see our footprints in the sand. I see where we ran hard. I see where we sank to our knees together. I see where we stumbled, fell, stood back up – oh, Jess... Brianne... Tricia... Cris... *stood back up!* -- and marched on. I see those places where there is only one set of footprints.
Shyly I look up at Him. I smile. I whisper, “I like it when you carried me.”
It's raining in Port Orchard, Washington. You are sleeping somewhere where you can hear it. It sounds like words from God against the roof. The thrumming carries His words down to you. Listen very carefully and His voice blooms in your mind and heart, no longer hidden away by the filter of the world. He is always insistent. He is always fair. And He always knows us far better than we know ourselves. His rain says:
“Oh, my soul, sometimes we don't know what to do.
We work so hard being tough on our own
But now it's me and you.
Let's give it up, these sad bones
'Cause we are following hard times.
But you don't have to stand up all alone
Just put your hand in mine.”
Climb on a back that’s strong. We are never alone. I am with you... Christ said that, too, you know. And:
I want to help you with everything. I want to comfort you when you're scared. Come to you, hold you when you are lonely. I want to make you laugh when you want to cry, to make you shout praises to God when you want to scream in despair. I want to be what you need. Do what you need. I want this like I've never wanted anything else. I feel it in my heart -- my immortal heart! -- like a physical ache. I want to be your everything. Because you are my everything. I love you this much.
Sweet Lord...
You whisper to me like this and I unravel into stardust and ribbons. I sink forward, my
brow in my hands, my fingers in my hair, my eyes closed, and I am praying without even thinking about it. I am so passionately in love. So completely in love. So willing to walk this path, your path, Lord. If this is the definition of enraptured, then, Christ? I am *so* there. I believe your every word. I follow you anywhere. I trust you. I believe you. I accept you into my heart like light, into my lungs like air.
“How can you love like that, EJ? How can you... *give it up* like that?”
Because it feels so good to give it up. It feels so right. I respond to the whispers of divinity. I embrace the silver moonlight. Drown me, Lord. You are all that I want... not to mention all that I need. My everything.
Divinely inspired? Hm. The blush across my cheeks says, “Yes... and hallelujah.”
I would give up anything for you. I would do anything for you. I would carry the world. I would let it fall at my feet. Crumbled or conquered, I willingly turn to you as my guiding light, my eternal love. Christ, break my heart. I can take it. Break my heart and remake it into the shape you want. Teach me a lesson. Make me feel it. I will learn like never before. Hand me this love, silver in the hours of the night, and I swear to you, I will stand so strong – apart or together, forever – you will see in me a soldier of divinity.
“You have saved me a place in heaven
With a clean well-lighted room.
So I muscle up to Armageddon
And wave, ‘Come on, love, we’ll be home soon!’”
I am more yours in this moment than I was yesterday, though not yet quite as much as I will be tomorrow when I wake.
We never stand alone. We always stand with Him. Whether or not we choose to see Him is our choice. But He walks with us nonetheless. His hand is not always in ours... because sometimes, yes, He carries us.
E.J.
I am so proud of all of you. Bless you for enriching my life like rain fall.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
The Transcendent Power of Art
...or The Transformation from Art to Divinity:
The Other “Sweet Science”
I woke up this morning and had already lived the day. I knew exactly what to do. A certainty that has everything to do with you in my life and with the breath of the Sabbath when dawn comes.
My blog, of course, is personal revelations and realizations and musings and so on. But it is also far more private thoughts (despite being in the public arena) than I have ever shared with anyone before, let own with several thousand subscribers. Is this the comfortable anonymity of the Internet? Of course it is. But it is also the decades-long metamorphosis of the human condition, of ministering, and of the art of communication.
Welcome to the new day. Same as the old day. Nothing like the old day at all. Welcome to the beginning of the End (of) Times when everything will emerge and adapt. It is no longer the time for go-along-to-get-along, coasting by with the comfortable traditions of church and community. Now is the time for change. Organized religion likes to think that it corners the market on divinity. But there are too many yet to step into the living light. Too many to reach with the passive (-aggressive) modes of yesteryear. Now is the time for action.
How do we do it? Here’s how we do it:
You be where it is. You wade in. You go to the people. You learn the language, immersive study, without personal compromise. “Until you are of one man’s doctrine, you will never know it.” And you know exactly where I’m at, don’t you?
I am a visual thinker. I believe in the power of the written word. I do not believe that it takes a physical touch to fall in love. I do not believe that salvation comes from a pulpit. I believe in baptism by rain.
A friend writes to me: “Lovers, admirers, imitators, wanna-bes, will all come and go over the course of our lives, but the one relationship that remains constant is our relationship to our own art.”
Because our art lives inside us. It is the seed planted by God’s own hand and left to grow in that place where Christ resides. It is a place that can feel empty until we open our eyes to His living light but, in truth, it is never empty. He is always there and so is our art. Writing black words on paper or a white screen. Touching brush to wet paint to canvas. Holding you in the wee hours that mark the start of a new day with young bird song and poetry. Oh, snap ;) That’s the place where art has breath. That’s when we realize that art is the universal language.
Because art is transcendent and transformative. Art is what lifts us above the animals. Art is you walking across the room to stand in my arms, to gaze intently, to whisper hello and say nothing else for five minutes or ten until you know I’m breathing again, having climbed out onto the fire escape to stand in the cold midnight beneath the celestial eyes of Christ. Because if He can see the flush across my cheeks and chest, if He can hear my pounding heart, if He can experience the joyous tears that spill down my face... than I know that you can too.
Two dozen strangers in my inbox:
“I read your blog. I had to write to you because you’re the first to understand my:
passion
sadness
earning
desire
searching
wanting
life
The first to be like me, speak to me, walk with me, tell me I have never walked alone... and for the first time, I believe it.”
To be a New Testament Christian is to be without the stain glass windows that inspire and awe. Without the intelligent pastors that guide and shape. Without the help of concrete, tangible, undeniables. It is called “organized religion” for a reason. God is chaos theory and fractal geometry, limitless, nonlinear, noncorporeal, and immortal. We are limited, linear, corporeal and mortal! It isn’t easy to grasp God. The lesson taught by forty-two pages of churches in the Yellow Pages is that it takes at least thirty-eight pews of people to grasp God. I like to grasp God by *letting go.* By letting Him speak to me. Direct. One-on-one. He’s got my number on speed dial. Got every number on speed dial. Just let go, and let God. Just do it!
Another friend sips coffee while chatting with me online. She talks about the first time she ever sat in an art class. The first time she ever worked with a nude model. She remembers looking at him. He had a textbook perfect body. A gentle demeanor. A quiet presence. She remembers thinking, “If I saw him on the street -- fully clothed, of course -- he would turn my head. If I had him in my bed, he would turn me on. Yet, there in that class, staring at him for three hours, I felt only respect for him. Absolute respect.” Because art is transcendent.
And what is transcendent is transformative.
I’m talking about ministry by way of painting, dancing, music, writing. I’m talking about ministry by way of comment box poetry and VR environments that bring disparate people together. I’m talking about falling in love to prove that anything is possible. Because with Him the impossible becomes commonplace. And if you don’t truly believe that, without conditions, without justifications, without applying man’s filter... then I suggest you ditch your pocket scripture and go sit on a mountaintop for a while because God needs to have words with you. Don’t be surprised if shrubbery bursts into flames.
“While general culture contains a great deal of material that demeans the human body, you may wish to help your student understand that since before the time of ancient Greece and Rome, many outstanding artists have tried, in a variety of works, both secular and religious, to show the beauty, strength, and dignity of the unclothed human form.”
Art is the human heart laid bare. When I paint you, I am speaking to you, and to everyone else who sees that canvas. Cherry blossoms (did you get the connection?) fall from slim new branches. You are looking up and out. You are, of course, gazing at angels.
Anyone who dislikes the arguably overexposed “La Gioconda” (The Mona Lisa) has never heard the story of Leonardo in love with the composed Lisa Gherardini that he took sixteen years to paint. The one painting he carried with him from Italy to France and never sold. His love was endless, nonphysical, transcendent and divine. He loved her like endless summer skies. Full of possibilities.
Rock ‘n’ roll is dangerous. The Internet is dangerous. Sexuality? *Really* dangerous. The living force of human desire as it fuels art...? Oh, that’s the worst. That’s like super duper dangerous! Anything that they can’t wrap their minds around, is devious, deceptive and, oh yes, very dangerous. But you know what? So is a spork.
In the right hands – in the hands of someone who is no one who is only what Christ demands – the medium of art becomes that thing that can travel anywhere. That judges no one. That brings people to Christ.
Go back with me to that street corner in Seattle and ask again:
How many lives have you saved today?
Comic books, genre novels, websites, flash fiction, forums, 3D environs... how many lives have you saved, baby? Dozens. How many hearts have you opened? Far more. How many times do you reach out, reach up, and reach a breaking point? Every day. How many times must someone repeat, “You have value. You have worth. You will *not* call yourself an idiot.” The world is full of idiots who strip away the self-esteem of young people on mission. Who tear away our assurance in Christ with their abject inability to comprehend what is outside their tunnel vision. Who will not accept that their means are ineffectual.
(And it took me forty minutes to take your name out of that paragraph.)
I called a third friend today. I was feeling a blue sadness in my heart. She answered (I’d prayed she would) and I said without preamble: “Lift my spirits.” She silently put the telephone on the window sill.
Music is an art. Fine harp plays from my iPod today. It is flawed and original music made on Mother’s Day. It is mesmerizing and personal as all art is personal. It makes me cry with memories. It makes me feel something. It brings me closer to God.
You said, “Stop giving me so many outs. Stop saying anything is okay. Stop telling me that tomorrow I may change everything and that’s fine with you. Start making it hard for me to leave.”
The sound of birds and frogs and three children playing, drift up and over that window sill and fill the receiver with a beautiful spring day in the Pacific Northwest. There is something, I think that weird flowering holly thing, brushing against the window screen with a scritch-scritch sound and so I know there must be breeze.
There is the voice of a man and a woman, and someone I know. There is the sound of tension, of worlds colliding. There is the sound of angels. There is the sound of joy. There is the sound of your voice which breaks my heart and lifts it up simultaneously.
And that symphony of sound was art. Because it closed my eyes and touched my heart and filled that space where my seed of creation and Christ reside. It was real. It was meaningful.
Because art is always meaningful.
Take everything else, Lord. In times of cold terror, in panic and depression, in an age of unknowns and things unknowable, the two things that never leave us are Christ and art. And, in the end of our moments and at the beginning of this love for you, those two things are all that matter.
Ever forward. Despite the odds. Past the barriers. This ministry is shared.
E.J.
The Other “Sweet Science”
I woke up this morning and had already lived the day. I knew exactly what to do. A certainty that has everything to do with you in my life and with the breath of the Sabbath when dawn comes.
My blog, of course, is personal revelations and realizations and musings and so on. But it is also far more private thoughts (despite being in the public arena) than I have ever shared with anyone before, let own with several thousand subscribers. Is this the comfortable anonymity of the Internet? Of course it is. But it is also the decades-long metamorphosis of the human condition, of ministering, and of the art of communication.
Welcome to the new day. Same as the old day. Nothing like the old day at all. Welcome to the beginning of the End (of) Times when everything will emerge and adapt. It is no longer the time for go-along-to-get-along, coasting by with the comfortable traditions of church and community. Now is the time for change. Organized religion likes to think that it corners the market on divinity. But there are too many yet to step into the living light. Too many to reach with the passive (-aggressive) modes of yesteryear. Now is the time for action.
How do we do it? Here’s how we do it:
You be where it is. You wade in. You go to the people. You learn the language, immersive study, without personal compromise. “Until you are of one man’s doctrine, you will never know it.” And you know exactly where I’m at, don’t you?
I am a visual thinker. I believe in the power of the written word. I do not believe that it takes a physical touch to fall in love. I do not believe that salvation comes from a pulpit. I believe in baptism by rain.
A friend writes to me: “Lovers, admirers, imitators, wanna-bes, will all come and go over the course of our lives, but the one relationship that remains constant is our relationship to our own art.”
Because our art lives inside us. It is the seed planted by God’s own hand and left to grow in that place where Christ resides. It is a place that can feel empty until we open our eyes to His living light but, in truth, it is never empty. He is always there and so is our art. Writing black words on paper or a white screen. Touching brush to wet paint to canvas. Holding you in the wee hours that mark the start of a new day with young bird song and poetry. Oh, snap ;) That’s the place where art has breath. That’s when we realize that art is the universal language.
Because art is transcendent and transformative. Art is what lifts us above the animals. Art is you walking across the room to stand in my arms, to gaze intently, to whisper hello and say nothing else for five minutes or ten until you know I’m breathing again, having climbed out onto the fire escape to stand in the cold midnight beneath the celestial eyes of Christ. Because if He can see the flush across my cheeks and chest, if He can hear my pounding heart, if He can experience the joyous tears that spill down my face... than I know that you can too.
Two dozen strangers in my inbox:
“I read your blog. I had to write to you because you’re the first to understand my:
passion
sadness
earning
desire
searching
wanting
life
The first to be like me, speak to me, walk with me, tell me I have never walked alone... and for the first time, I believe it.”
To be a New Testament Christian is to be without the stain glass windows that inspire and awe. Without the intelligent pastors that guide and shape. Without the help of concrete, tangible, undeniables. It is called “organized religion” for a reason. God is chaos theory and fractal geometry, limitless, nonlinear, noncorporeal, and immortal. We are limited, linear, corporeal and mortal! It isn’t easy to grasp God. The lesson taught by forty-two pages of churches in the Yellow Pages is that it takes at least thirty-eight pews of people to grasp God. I like to grasp God by *letting go.* By letting Him speak to me. Direct. One-on-one. He’s got my number on speed dial. Got every number on speed dial. Just let go, and let God. Just do it!
Another friend sips coffee while chatting with me online. She talks about the first time she ever sat in an art class. The first time she ever worked with a nude model. She remembers looking at him. He had a textbook perfect body. A gentle demeanor. A quiet presence. She remembers thinking, “If I saw him on the street -- fully clothed, of course -- he would turn my head. If I had him in my bed, he would turn me on. Yet, there in that class, staring at him for three hours, I felt only respect for him. Absolute respect.” Because art is transcendent.
And what is transcendent is transformative.
I’m talking about ministry by way of painting, dancing, music, writing. I’m talking about ministry by way of comment box poetry and VR environments that bring disparate people together. I’m talking about falling in love to prove that anything is possible. Because with Him the impossible becomes commonplace. And if you don’t truly believe that, without conditions, without justifications, without applying man’s filter... then I suggest you ditch your pocket scripture and go sit on a mountaintop for a while because God needs to have words with you. Don’t be surprised if shrubbery bursts into flames.
“While general culture contains a great deal of material that demeans the human body, you may wish to help your student understand that since before the time of ancient Greece and Rome, many outstanding artists have tried, in a variety of works, both secular and religious, to show the beauty, strength, and dignity of the unclothed human form.”
Art is the human heart laid bare. When I paint you, I am speaking to you, and to everyone else who sees that canvas. Cherry blossoms (did you get the connection?) fall from slim new branches. You are looking up and out. You are, of course, gazing at angels.
Anyone who dislikes the arguably overexposed “La Gioconda” (The Mona Lisa) has never heard the story of Leonardo in love with the composed Lisa Gherardini that he took sixteen years to paint. The one painting he carried with him from Italy to France and never sold. His love was endless, nonphysical, transcendent and divine. He loved her like endless summer skies. Full of possibilities.
Rock ‘n’ roll is dangerous. The Internet is dangerous. Sexuality? *Really* dangerous. The living force of human desire as it fuels art...? Oh, that’s the worst. That’s like super duper dangerous! Anything that they can’t wrap their minds around, is devious, deceptive and, oh yes, very dangerous. But you know what? So is a spork.
In the right hands – in the hands of someone who is no one who is only what Christ demands – the medium of art becomes that thing that can travel anywhere. That judges no one. That brings people to Christ.
Go back with me to that street corner in Seattle and ask again:
How many lives have you saved today?
Comic books, genre novels, websites, flash fiction, forums, 3D environs... how many lives have you saved, baby? Dozens. How many hearts have you opened? Far more. How many times do you reach out, reach up, and reach a breaking point? Every day. How many times must someone repeat, “You have value. You have worth. You will *not* call yourself an idiot.” The world is full of idiots who strip away the self-esteem of young people on mission. Who tear away our assurance in Christ with their abject inability to comprehend what is outside their tunnel vision. Who will not accept that their means are ineffectual.
(And it took me forty minutes to take your name out of that paragraph.)
I called a third friend today. I was feeling a blue sadness in my heart. She answered (I’d prayed she would) and I said without preamble: “Lift my spirits.” She silently put the telephone on the window sill.
Music is an art. Fine harp plays from my iPod today. It is flawed and original music made on Mother’s Day. It is mesmerizing and personal as all art is personal. It makes me cry with memories. It makes me feel something. It brings me closer to God.
You said, “Stop giving me so many outs. Stop saying anything is okay. Stop telling me that tomorrow I may change everything and that’s fine with you. Start making it hard for me to leave.”
The sound of birds and frogs and three children playing, drift up and over that window sill and fill the receiver with a beautiful spring day in the Pacific Northwest. There is something, I think that weird flowering holly thing, brushing against the window screen with a scritch-scritch sound and so I know there must be breeze.
There is the voice of a man and a woman, and someone I know. There is the sound of tension, of worlds colliding. There is the sound of angels. There is the sound of joy. There is the sound of your voice which breaks my heart and lifts it up simultaneously.
And that symphony of sound was art. Because it closed my eyes and touched my heart and filled that space where my seed of creation and Christ reside. It was real. It was meaningful.
Because art is always meaningful.
Take everything else, Lord. In times of cold terror, in panic and depression, in an age of unknowns and things unknowable, the two things that never leave us are Christ and art. And, in the end of our moments and at the beginning of this love for you, those two things are all that matter.
Ever forward. Despite the odds. Past the barriers. This ministry is shared.
E.J.
Friday, May 16, 2008
This Passion for You
The air is filthy. I watch it shimmer on the horizon. I see text messages scroll across the distant haze. “You might be a thirteen year old boy” ...blending into... “Cut! @!#$%, E.J., what's wrong with you today? Can’t you even *look* aroused? You’re supposed to *want* him!” ...turning inside out... “I want you; I don’t know what that means.” ...the LED display blinks across God’s own sky. Christ is bouncing messages off satellites. I need an intervention. Direct revelation. Baby... lift me up, life my spirits. Take me down in your arms. Make me forget those golden gates at work that are nothing like heaven and everything about check-point, take my badge, you’re ours now, lock and key. Oh, what did I sign? Where was the dotted line that pointed my way to hell?
Every day, speed delivers me the way only three words from you can.
“How can you see into my eyes like open doors
leading you down into my core.
My spirit sleeping somewhere cold
until you find it there and lead it back home.”
The music rips through my skull loud enough to hear outside my helmet. The Cali dude next to me at the last red light before the ocean is all pose and bravado in his swank convertible. He is looking at me. I’m looking (not quite) straight ahead. A blue Honda Civic and a white Impala collide in the intersection. No one is hurt but there is glass everywhere. It shines in the pale, dirty light. We turn off our engines. I take off my helmet. Dude smiles at me. My eyes are on the wreck. My boots crunch. Everyone is okay.
I am not okay.
“Wake me up inside.
Call my name and save me from the dark.
Bid my blood to run
before I come undone...”
Two hours spent in the middle of the street. Strangers who stare at my riding chaps and my street jewelry cross and one, Jimmy, who finally asks if I’m a Unitarian minister. Asks me to pray for him... he has no money for repairs. He’s going to lose his job for being late. The world is crashing down around him. He sinks down before me. There is shame and failure on his face and he is crying loudly, unable to stop it, wanting on so many levels to be heard. There is a buzz in my ears. There is a low, roiling anger in my chest. There is this need everywhere I go.
Above us the sky is darkening with flash-rain clouds. I want it so bad. That rain. I want it to drench me. Christ’s natural baptism. Bring the second Great Flood, Lord. Wash this away. Remake this world in your image, Lord. ... I want to feel you in my arms. I want the quiet night around us. I want you standing beside me right now. Seeing the difference we can make. Feeling that difference. Because it is a *difference.* Other people don’t find themselves here so often. It is different, not traditional, not rote and mundane. I want to see the moment in your eyes when you arrive with me, when you stand in this place that I stand and feel the way I feel for you. I want us as one person, one path, one passion, God take the rest of it!
Mr. Convertible is staring at me as I sink to my knees in the glass with the boy who can’t be much out of his teens. And I’m taking his hands which are cold and stiff, rough like his work jeans covered in plaster. And you know what I say:
“I don’t need to pray for you, Jimmy. He’s waiting to hear from *you.*”
And he breaks. He breaks to be found. The shell that this world casts around its young men, shaping them into hard things that can’t tremble in the new rain. And I’m holding him without thinking about it and he cries something about his sister or a lover or a mom. I’m not sure exactly because I realize that my headphones are still in.
“Now that I know what I’m without
you can't just leave me.
Breathe into me and make me real.
Bring me to life...”
My heart is a wreck in the middle of the road. Strangers are crying in my inbox. Bobbing on tears I am buoyed back to you time and time again. Washed up on your shore, exhausted and wanting. I am the child gazing up at you with eyes of hope and trust, and you are the manifestation of that love that Christ promised me when I wanted nothing else but to die. Do you wonder how I can survive a thousand miles away? Watch how patient I can be with this miracle. It has been eternity (and back again) that I’ve waited for you.
“Frozen inside without your love, darling.
Only you are the life among the dead.
...Bring me to life.”
There is a rumbling of the coming tow trucks. There is a rumbling across the muddied sky. There is a rumbling in my chest, a thrumming realization that the struggle has just begun. I crush the lanky boy and glare at the officer who suggests we get out of the road.
“He can’t move right now,” I snarl. “Make them go around.”
Make them all go around! Make the twisted filter of man’s own doctrine – the church, the corporate line, the politicos and saints – make it change for us, for once. For twice. For now on! I am so angry! And the anger is pure and clean and lifts me up above the smog and into the clear stratosphere. Shine on me, celestial light. Remind me of divinity the way you whispering my name reminds me, transports me. There. Christ is standing right there.
5:42: What is he telling you, EJ?
5:43: *He
5:44: That God gave us these bodies as vessels of celebration. As sacred things that we share only with the one person who completes us. So take your time. And choose carefully. Because forever means forever.
He is saying: Why are you wasting your precious mortal time, the second greatest gift I have given you, not laughing? Not shouting for joy? Why are you – alone and together -- buying into man’s filter that I have given you the intelligence and the strength and the *courage* to see through? Rip away the veil! There is no veil in living Christianity.
“All this time I can't believe I couldn't see.
Kept in the dark but you were there in front of me.
I’ve been sleeping a thousand years it seems.
Got to open my eyes to everything.”
And finally the rain stops and the cars are dragging away the sounds of metal and ruin. Mr. Convertible got bored and left. He has his story to tell the guys. The story to take home to his girl. He will be the hero in his retelling even though all he did was cruise my skinny ***. Jimmy is standing on the street corner, looking up at the sky, then looking at me. He squints his eyes and raises his chin. There are tears and rain on his face. He looks all of sixteen. He is probably twenty-one. “You look familiar to me. Do I know you?”
I smile at him. The song continues on repeat. The sky has cleared. My anger has washed off my leather jacket and run down the gutter to swirl away. My faith remains as does my desire for you.
“Yeah,” I tell him, my eyes drifting to some point in the distance, around the corner of the buildings and the palm trees. “You know us Christian biker chicks. We all look the same.”
And I get on my bike and I turn her around. I return to the city and away from the ocean. No need to travel to that rocky shore today. Christ met me half way.
At home, I reach into my pocket and take out the fist full of broken glass. I let it fall through my fingers, scattering like frozen rain in the blue glass candy dish on the table. Usually I bring home a pocket full of sand and pebbles. Today is so much more apropos.
Break it open, baby. We will make our own way.
E.J.
Every day, speed delivers me the way only three words from you can.
“How can you see into my eyes like open doors
leading you down into my core.
My spirit sleeping somewhere cold
until you find it there and lead it back home.”
The music rips through my skull loud enough to hear outside my helmet. The Cali dude next to me at the last red light before the ocean is all pose and bravado in his swank convertible. He is looking at me. I’m looking (not quite) straight ahead. A blue Honda Civic and a white Impala collide in the intersection. No one is hurt but there is glass everywhere. It shines in the pale, dirty light. We turn off our engines. I take off my helmet. Dude smiles at me. My eyes are on the wreck. My boots crunch. Everyone is okay.
I am not okay.
“Wake me up inside.
Call my name and save me from the dark.
Bid my blood to run
before I come undone...”
Two hours spent in the middle of the street. Strangers who stare at my riding chaps and my street jewelry cross and one, Jimmy, who finally asks if I’m a Unitarian minister. Asks me to pray for him... he has no money for repairs. He’s going to lose his job for being late. The world is crashing down around him. He sinks down before me. There is shame and failure on his face and he is crying loudly, unable to stop it, wanting on so many levels to be heard. There is a buzz in my ears. There is a low, roiling anger in my chest. There is this need everywhere I go.
Above us the sky is darkening with flash-rain clouds. I want it so bad. That rain. I want it to drench me. Christ’s natural baptism. Bring the second Great Flood, Lord. Wash this away. Remake this world in your image, Lord. ... I want to feel you in my arms. I want the quiet night around us. I want you standing beside me right now. Seeing the difference we can make. Feeling that difference. Because it is a *difference.* Other people don’t find themselves here so often. It is different, not traditional, not rote and mundane. I want to see the moment in your eyes when you arrive with me, when you stand in this place that I stand and feel the way I feel for you. I want us as one person, one path, one passion, God take the rest of it!
Mr. Convertible is staring at me as I sink to my knees in the glass with the boy who can’t be much out of his teens. And I’m taking his hands which are cold and stiff, rough like his work jeans covered in plaster. And you know what I say:
“I don’t need to pray for you, Jimmy. He’s waiting to hear from *you.*”
And he breaks. He breaks to be found. The shell that this world casts around its young men, shaping them into hard things that can’t tremble in the new rain. And I’m holding him without thinking about it and he cries something about his sister or a lover or a mom. I’m not sure exactly because I realize that my headphones are still in.
“Now that I know what I’m without
you can't just leave me.
Breathe into me and make me real.
Bring me to life...”
My heart is a wreck in the middle of the road. Strangers are crying in my inbox. Bobbing on tears I am buoyed back to you time and time again. Washed up on your shore, exhausted and wanting. I am the child gazing up at you with eyes of hope and trust, and you are the manifestation of that love that Christ promised me when I wanted nothing else but to die. Do you wonder how I can survive a thousand miles away? Watch how patient I can be with this miracle. It has been eternity (and back again) that I’ve waited for you.
“Frozen inside without your love, darling.
Only you are the life among the dead.
...Bring me to life.”
There is a rumbling of the coming tow trucks. There is a rumbling across the muddied sky. There is a rumbling in my chest, a thrumming realization that the struggle has just begun. I crush the lanky boy and glare at the officer who suggests we get out of the road.
“He can’t move right now,” I snarl. “Make them go around.”
Make them all go around! Make the twisted filter of man’s own doctrine – the church, the corporate line, the politicos and saints – make it change for us, for once. For twice. For now on! I am so angry! And the anger is pure and clean and lifts me up above the smog and into the clear stratosphere. Shine on me, celestial light. Remind me of divinity the way you whispering my name reminds me, transports me. There. Christ is standing right there.
5:42: What is he telling you, EJ?
5:43: *He
5:44: That God gave us these bodies as vessels of celebration. As sacred things that we share only with the one person who completes us. So take your time. And choose carefully. Because forever means forever.
He is saying: Why are you wasting your precious mortal time, the second greatest gift I have given you, not laughing? Not shouting for joy? Why are you – alone and together -- buying into man’s filter that I have given you the intelligence and the strength and the *courage* to see through? Rip away the veil! There is no veil in living Christianity.
“All this time I can't believe I couldn't see.
Kept in the dark but you were there in front of me.
I’ve been sleeping a thousand years it seems.
Got to open my eyes to everything.”
And finally the rain stops and the cars are dragging away the sounds of metal and ruin. Mr. Convertible got bored and left. He has his story to tell the guys. The story to take home to his girl. He will be the hero in his retelling even though all he did was cruise my skinny ***. Jimmy is standing on the street corner, looking up at the sky, then looking at me. He squints his eyes and raises his chin. There are tears and rain on his face. He looks all of sixteen. He is probably twenty-one. “You look familiar to me. Do I know you?”
I smile at him. The song continues on repeat. The sky has cleared. My anger has washed off my leather jacket and run down the gutter to swirl away. My faith remains as does my desire for you.
“Yeah,” I tell him, my eyes drifting to some point in the distance, around the corner of the buildings and the palm trees. “You know us Christian biker chicks. We all look the same.”
And I get on my bike and I turn her around. I return to the city and away from the ocean. No need to travel to that rocky shore today. Christ met me half way.
At home, I reach into my pocket and take out the fist full of broken glass. I let it fall through my fingers, scattering like frozen rain in the blue glass candy dish on the table. Usually I bring home a pocket full of sand and pebbles. Today is so much more apropos.
Break it open, baby. We will make our own way.
E.J.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
She Drives Me Crazy
...a Mother’s Day Blog
In 1994, I was fourteen years old and my mother had pretty much given up on rock ‘n’ roll. That’s not to say that once a month she didn’t disappear for the weekend into the midnight, all-night, wee-morning clubs of NYC, taking the train from Boston without a word, just an unspoken desire in her bottomless brown-gold eyes, to be lifted (or was it a lateral move?) from her life as mother and wife and dropped into the anonymity of the rave scene (before it was called raving). She was tall and lean, with long legs and full lips, a former model with an “exotic Mediterranean look” (because apparently geography is a dying art) who could play tomboy as easily as high femme. And she hated ’90s rock.
“...Love is like a bomb, baby, c'mon get it on
Livin' like a lover with a radar phone
Lookin' like a tramp, like a video vamp
Demolition woman, can I be your man?
Razzle 'n' a dazzle 'n' a flash a little light
Television lover, baby, go all night
Sometime, anytime, sugar me sweet
Little miss innocent sugar me, yeah!”
They talk in parenting magazines about the dangers of nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, and rhubarb on unborn babies. My mama, I’m afraid, passed her wild on to me in utero. Her love of clubbing to dance. Her desire for music in her blood. Her late-night eyes watching a crowd while she owns a room. There is something so fine... something that closes my eyes just to think about it. That deep warmth that starts in the pit of my stomach, that radiates out through my limbs, that stomps through my boots and raises my hands above my head. Who’s watching? Who cares, baby?! This is about movement in the darkness. This is about beat I can taste. This is about the crush of strobes and making love with that sacred thing called music. Mix it. Turn it on. Kick it up. I’m there. Right there. Realizing that there’s this power that God gave women. And with great power...
"You don’t have to read my mind,
to know what I have in mind.
Honey, you oughta know...
Now you move so fine,
let me lay it on the line.
...I wanna know, what you're doin’ after the show.
Come on, baby, do you do more than dance?"
I may not abide much with written scripture, with chapters of begot and begetted, when God is willing to whisper/shout/converse with us today and now about nuclear disarmament and green energy if we just ask Him, but you can’t argue that verse for verse we’re told that our children are our responsibility. It’s not man’s place to raise our children. It's not society’s place to educate, illuminate and elevate our off-spring. Public school may work for creating the perfect socialized, socialist community of pseudo-capitalist competitors (isn’t alliteration fun?) but it sure don’t teach our white grrls how to dance.
What my mama taught me, with her weekends away, was a lesson that stayed with me undeniably -- the way my parents stayed together, to the day my father died, and foreseeably beyond that. Her lesson, of course, was that being a mother didn’t make her not a woman. Being a wife didn’t make her not a person. She was forever alive with a spirit all her own -- all Christ’s own! She was fully realized. First thing in the morning or sick with the flu, agonizing over bills or devastated by the death of her parents, nothing – nothing! – stole away her presence... her *Presence.* Life did not pass by her kitchen window sill draped in herbs and aloe vera. Life was tucked in her pocket.
“If it feels all right,
maybe you should stay all night.
Shall I leave you my key?
But you’ve got to give me a sign,
Come on, girl!
Some kind of sign.
Are you old enough?
Will you be ready when I call you bluff?”
I wrote to two friends recently, to paraphrase/combine: “Is he all about you, babe? Do you believe that you deserve poetry, and roses and all-night conversations? Where’s the romance? Where’s the courting?! It ain’t all over just because there’s a license from the State. Your man needs to be *all* about you. Trust me, sweetheart, my mother is the most aggravating woman on the planet but my father was always – always! -- about her. No excuses. Always the sugar. Even when it got hard. Now. Tomorrow. Forever.”
Because, come those weekends when Mama went away, my father always got that little smile on his face. And he tied his hair back, and we’d put power tools on the dining room table, and eat tv dinners and way too much ice cream, and he’d kick his feet up with a sweet sigh. Because Dad knew... Mama *always* brought it home. She was out exercising that wild, exerting her force in the world, but she never crossed that line, and come Sunday night, she was tucking me in, checking the messages, planning for PTA... and quietly closing the door down the hall. Come Sunday night, there were always roses in the master bedroom.
"I can't stop
The way I feel
Things you do
Just seem unreal.
I can't get any rest.
People say I'm obsessed
Everything that's serious lasts
What we have, I knew was true.
Tell you what I got in mind...
She drives me crazy.
Like no one else.
She drives me crazy.
And I can't help myself."
Globe-trotting Mama, that’s my mother today. It has been some time since my father’s death. She stands alone like a willow, always drinking deeply from life, bending, dancing, but never falling. She is the epitome of elegance and ferocity. She is like fire and ice in the same body – still tall, still lean, still tomboy/femme... and still, of course, a mother, and a person and a woman. I asked her: “What should I write about for Mother’s Day?” She made that sound of impatience that I know so well – that hmph sound from the back of her throat, then, always accented, always black velvet smooth, “Well, most certainly don’t write about me, darling. I’ve already been saved. Don’t waste a blog.”
“She drives me crazy... ooh, ooh! Like no one else... ooh, ooh!” Oh, Roland, you have no idea. But she also gave me the strength and fortitude to demand the best from everyone and everything around me, including myself. She gave me the courage to look at myself in the mirror. To ask myself the hard questions... the *really* hard ones. Not the “Should I take this job?” or “Do these chaps make me look fat?” but the “Is this love?” and “Do I deserve more?” The questions that we can only ask ourselves and Christ in the quiet midnights of our discontent. In the still silence when we are alone.... Because of her, because of all that she is and isn’t, was and wasn’t, I can know that in those moments that stretch into hours, I am pleased with -- no, I am *proud* of -- who I am, what I am, and the life I keep in my pocket.
Yeah, Mom. This blog is for you and about you and all because of you. I believe in Mother’s Day because I believed in Mother’s Weekend. I believe in dancing until I can barely drive home. I believe in leather and silk. I believe in weight-lifting and motorcycling and grrls that box. I believe in Christ. I believe in pure love. I believe in angels. I believe in beat-pounding, head-banging raves peppered with tall, cold glasses of Coke and cream. I believe in ’70s and ’80s rock. And yes, I believe in you.
Now... where’s that mix tape?
E.J.
“Now it’s up to you,
can we make a secret rendezvous?
I’m a little bit high,
and you’re a little bit shy.”
Def Leppard, Pour Some Sugar On Me, 1987
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QWHSWPgi90
Fine Young Cannibals, She Drives Me Crazy, 1988
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7jG8EWr63k
Foreigner, Hot Blooded, 1978
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byKdSVYEjj4
In 1994, I was fourteen years old and my mother had pretty much given up on rock ‘n’ roll. That’s not to say that once a month she didn’t disappear for the weekend into the midnight, all-night, wee-morning clubs of NYC, taking the train from Boston without a word, just an unspoken desire in her bottomless brown-gold eyes, to be lifted (or was it a lateral move?) from her life as mother and wife and dropped into the anonymity of the rave scene (before it was called raving). She was tall and lean, with long legs and full lips, a former model with an “exotic Mediterranean look” (because apparently geography is a dying art) who could play tomboy as easily as high femme. And she hated ’90s rock.
“...Love is like a bomb, baby, c'mon get it on
Livin' like a lover with a radar phone
Lookin' like a tramp, like a video vamp
Demolition woman, can I be your man?
Razzle 'n' a dazzle 'n' a flash a little light
Television lover, baby, go all night
Sometime, anytime, sugar me sweet
Little miss innocent sugar me, yeah!”
They talk in parenting magazines about the dangers of nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, and rhubarb on unborn babies. My mama, I’m afraid, passed her wild on to me in utero. Her love of clubbing to dance. Her desire for music in her blood. Her late-night eyes watching a crowd while she owns a room. There is something so fine... something that closes my eyes just to think about it. That deep warmth that starts in the pit of my stomach, that radiates out through my limbs, that stomps through my boots and raises my hands above my head. Who’s watching? Who cares, baby?! This is about movement in the darkness. This is about beat I can taste. This is about the crush of strobes and making love with that sacred thing called music. Mix it. Turn it on. Kick it up. I’m there. Right there. Realizing that there’s this power that God gave women. And with great power...
"You don’t have to read my mind,
to know what I have in mind.
Honey, you oughta know...
Now you move so fine,
let me lay it on the line.
...I wanna know, what you're doin’ after the show.
Come on, baby, do you do more than dance?"
I may not abide much with written scripture, with chapters of begot and begetted, when God is willing to whisper/shout/converse with us today and now about nuclear disarmament and green energy if we just ask Him, but you can’t argue that verse for verse we’re told that our children are our responsibility. It’s not man’s place to raise our children. It's not society’s place to educate, illuminate and elevate our off-spring. Public school may work for creating the perfect socialized, socialist community of pseudo-capitalist competitors (isn’t alliteration fun?) but it sure don’t teach our white grrls how to dance.
What my mama taught me, with her weekends away, was a lesson that stayed with me undeniably -- the way my parents stayed together, to the day my father died, and foreseeably beyond that. Her lesson, of course, was that being a mother didn’t make her not a woman. Being a wife didn’t make her not a person. She was forever alive with a spirit all her own -- all Christ’s own! She was fully realized. First thing in the morning or sick with the flu, agonizing over bills or devastated by the death of her parents, nothing – nothing! – stole away her presence... her *Presence.* Life did not pass by her kitchen window sill draped in herbs and aloe vera. Life was tucked in her pocket.
“If it feels all right,
maybe you should stay all night.
Shall I leave you my key?
But you’ve got to give me a sign,
Come on, girl!
Some kind of sign.
Are you old enough?
Will you be ready when I call you bluff?”
I wrote to two friends recently, to paraphrase/combine: “Is he all about you, babe? Do you believe that you deserve poetry, and roses and all-night conversations? Where’s the romance? Where’s the courting?! It ain’t all over just because there’s a license from the State. Your man needs to be *all* about you. Trust me, sweetheart, my mother is the most aggravating woman on the planet but my father was always – always! -- about her. No excuses. Always the sugar. Even when it got hard. Now. Tomorrow. Forever.”
Because, come those weekends when Mama went away, my father always got that little smile on his face. And he tied his hair back, and we’d put power tools on the dining room table, and eat tv dinners and way too much ice cream, and he’d kick his feet up with a sweet sigh. Because Dad knew... Mama *always* brought it home. She was out exercising that wild, exerting her force in the world, but she never crossed that line, and come Sunday night, she was tucking me in, checking the messages, planning for PTA... and quietly closing the door down the hall. Come Sunday night, there were always roses in the master bedroom.
"I can't stop
The way I feel
Things you do
Just seem unreal.
I can't get any rest.
People say I'm obsessed
Everything that's serious lasts
What we have, I knew was true.
Tell you what I got in mind...
She drives me crazy.
Like no one else.
She drives me crazy.
And I can't help myself."
Globe-trotting Mama, that’s my mother today. It has been some time since my father’s death. She stands alone like a willow, always drinking deeply from life, bending, dancing, but never falling. She is the epitome of elegance and ferocity. She is like fire and ice in the same body – still tall, still lean, still tomboy/femme... and still, of course, a mother, and a person and a woman. I asked her: “What should I write about for Mother’s Day?” She made that sound of impatience that I know so well – that hmph sound from the back of her throat, then, always accented, always black velvet smooth, “Well, most certainly don’t write about me, darling. I’ve already been saved. Don’t waste a blog.”
“She drives me crazy... ooh, ooh! Like no one else... ooh, ooh!” Oh, Roland, you have no idea. But she also gave me the strength and fortitude to demand the best from everyone and everything around me, including myself. She gave me the courage to look at myself in the mirror. To ask myself the hard questions... the *really* hard ones. Not the “Should I take this job?” or “Do these chaps make me look fat?” but the “Is this love?” and “Do I deserve more?” The questions that we can only ask ourselves and Christ in the quiet midnights of our discontent. In the still silence when we are alone.... Because of her, because of all that she is and isn’t, was and wasn’t, I can know that in those moments that stretch into hours, I am pleased with -- no, I am *proud* of -- who I am, what I am, and the life I keep in my pocket.
Yeah, Mom. This blog is for you and about you and all because of you. I believe in Mother’s Day because I believed in Mother’s Weekend. I believe in dancing until I can barely drive home. I believe in leather and silk. I believe in weight-lifting and motorcycling and grrls that box. I believe in Christ. I believe in pure love. I believe in angels. I believe in beat-pounding, head-banging raves peppered with tall, cold glasses of Coke and cream. I believe in ’70s and ’80s rock. And yes, I believe in you.
Now... where’s that mix tape?
E.J.
“Now it’s up to you,
can we make a secret rendezvous?
I’m a little bit high,
and you’re a little bit shy.”
Def Leppard, Pour Some Sugar On Me, 1987
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QWHSWPgi90
Fine Young Cannibals, She Drives Me Crazy, 1988
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7jG8EWr63k
Foreigner, Hot Blooded, 1978
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byKdSVYEjj4
Sunday, May 04, 2008
A Whole Lot of Nothing
“Think you can't pray in VR? Try again. Christ in everything – in rain, in wind, in kisses and sighs, in harp music and children's gazes – means in pixels too. Catch up, baby. It's the post-modern, post-high tech revolution. Forget milk. Got quad processors?”
It was the summer I was eighteen but let's say I was twenty-two because that's better for my demographic. I had completed my first year in a fine institute of higher learning and had traded Boston night clubs for NYC's (as well as the fake ID that got me in – never to drink but always to dance and often to woo a handsome raver home for a little acrylic... or henna tat... practice) with an amused shrug, my first bike, and a murmur of, “Yeah, I'm game.”
Yeah. Sure was. The zero-sum playa.
Much to my parents' chagrin, my grandmother – ex-military, so not American, short-haired, and globe-trotting – requested/required/demanded I accompany her for the summer instead of going home. It would become the only summer I didn't take courses and the last summer I would ever have with her. But I didn't know that then and neither did she. She was ripped and dashing, carded at sixty-two (perhaps a pick up line used by our waiter? perhaps not), a no nonsense, no bluster kind of woman who rarely raised her voice unless she had already won the argument. She would survive front lines, a dangerous penchant for photographing militarized zones, and an uncanny sense of where trouble was going to happen, only to prove mortality a force with a red light that a London stranger claimed he “never saw” at 80 miles an hour.
Special circle, Keith. Christ forgives. The granddaughter? Not so much.
We seemed to go everywhere those ten weeks. It wasn't my first time aboard with her but my first time with just the two of us. I saw a side of her that was lyrical and joyous. Flirtatious and glowing. The sharp, wily, brilliant woman I had known all my life – who seemed to go out of her way to clash with my sharp, opinionated, brilliant mother – took a back seat to the woman who wanted to show me the midnight side of dancing in Spain with a man twice my age, and reading books of scripture on crackling parchment while she murmured in whispers with monks who called her still by her military rank. I was entranced with the world. With a world I had never seen before even as we revisited by favorite locales.
Grandma had always been the holder of my passport. My proud parents struggled with bills and property tax. They refused help. So Grandma would let herself in and make sirloin and brussel sprouts, and red potatoes with dill and garlic. They couldn't argue when dinner was already on the table. Car broke down? Simple replacement appeared. She co-signed on my first loan for a bike... and helped pull strings and pull together patrons for scholarships and loans for school. Canvas? Brushes? I worked for those. I paid her in originals... many of which she resold to galleries and fine hotels just so she could take me to lunch and there it would be on the wall. “Fancy that, my angel,” she would say, and raise one sculpted eyebrow in mock surprise while she sipped her dark espresso and thrummed her short nails on the mahogany table.
“This is unreal, Grandma!” I laughed one night, the streets full of dancing and masks and the scent of perfume and heat and spices.
She straightened the clasp that held my hair then decided against it and took it out, throwing it to a passing boy wrapped in green silk and stain leafs, his body almost bare. He called something to her but my French wouldn't be good enough for four more years to understand him or her husky response.
“What is real, my angel?” she asked me, so seriously. “What is unreal? If you feel it,” and she tapped my heart, the ribbons across my chest almost all undone from dancing. “Then it is real.” Ten years before I first found VR.
And then someone, small, wiry, with flashing eyes, a sly smile, and small hands, caught her wrist and danced away with her, laughing into the crowd. Leaving me to think, for a moment, that she was a celestial body, surrounded by a swirl of white and gold silk and lace and taffeta.
You wrote to me tonight, my friend, “Make my faith stronger.”
I wrote to you yesterday, “I am no one. I am best invisible.”
When I was four I was terrified of death. It would be better for my demographic to say when I was fourteen but I was four. So there. I would have these panic attacks... they came out of no where and nothing. Daytime, night time, lunchtime at school. I'd see shadows on sunny days and was certain they were death, tangible and hungry.
One night I panicked and locked my bedroom door and crawled under my bed and screamed. And screamed. And kept screaming. And the doctor on the phone said, “Let her scream herself to sleep.” But after an hour my parents called my Grandma instead.
The door knob opened in her hands. Of course. She closed it behind her with a click. She walked across the wood floor and I remember the feeling of her boots. Then she reached under the bed with one strong hand and my little bunny pj top bunched in her fist and she slide me out in one smooth motion like someone might drag a cat out from under the couch. She gathered me in her arms, there on the floor, me still screaming no word nonsense in unexplainable fear.
She had been speaking, the same prayer, over and over and over again, for quite some time by the recitation that I heard... but I did finally hear her:
“Imagine stepping on shore
and finding it Heaven...
Taking hold of a hand
and finding it God's hand.
Imagine breathing new air
and finding it celestial air...
Feeling invigorated
and finding it immortality.
Imagine passing from tempest and pain
into unbroken calm...
Waking up
and finding yourself home.”
Shadows became shadows. Panic didn't occur. Not in daytime or night time or even in the lunch line. I was never afraid again. (Not even at 100 mph along the California shore.)
I told Grandma years later, “You made my faith stronger.”
She said with a smile, “I am no one. I did nothing.”
We ended the summer, our summer together, on shores draped in fog and emerald earth, on silver-green seas so cold it took my breath from my lungs but still I came and swam. That sea turned this brown grrl blue so many times I think tears froze on my cheeks and fell among the round pebbles that made the shore.
And one morning there you stood. I had seen you once before, I think, when we hiked an hour for fresh meat and eggs. I think Grandma knew your name and you spoke English with an accent that I could have listened to for hours... okay, weeks. You invited us to service on Sunday, talking to her while you looked at me, while I looked at a deep barrel of pickled something (beets? potatoes?) that I seemed to have dropped my bravado in.
One morning there you stood. “You swim?” you asked. I was certain you weren't real. We were leaving in two days. No one had been here for fourteen. I was starting to believe that the universe was me, Grandma, and Christ. I walked past you without speaking because you were obviously a hallucination.
“Did you see any selkie, E.J.?” But you didn't say E.J., which everyone calls me, you said my birth name which no one does.
I turn around and look at you. Really look for the first time. I realize that I had mistaken your gender in town. I realize that you are breath-taking. I realize I never want to leave Ireland. “Did any selkie see me?”
Duh. Wow. My way with words came late, didn't it, babygrrl?
I am 98% frozen to death by this point. And let's not talk about what I'm (not) wearing. You gave me your coat. It was brown. It was soft leather. It was not made of seal skin. We walked back to the house. Grandma had two hot cups of coffee and two hot plates of breakfast sitting on the table for us. She took her Bible, hand-written, and left us.
Across the table from each other I realized that your eyes were two different colors.
You whispered to me, “Make my faith stronger.”
I shook my head, “I'm no one. I'm just her granddaughter.”
And it wasn't until ten more years that I realized:
The paths of our lives are lined with trees of no ones, are laid with cobblestones of no ones. Our personal revelations, that unfold (or fold?) like origami boxes, other dimensions with each step we choose to take along our impassioned way, are lit internal and eternal with no ones. There are no “I am someone!” along the impassioned path. There are no “I am the one!” that truly help you. Because, He said to us, quietly, with His deep brown eyes and deep brown skin, “I am the one. I am the only one. And I am with you. Always.”
So everyone else is no one.
And I feel so blessed to be of them.
With all my love, on this sweet Sabbath,
E.J.
It was the summer I was eighteen but let's say I was twenty-two because that's better for my demographic. I had completed my first year in a fine institute of higher learning and had traded Boston night clubs for NYC's (as well as the fake ID that got me in – never to drink but always to dance and often to woo a handsome raver home for a little acrylic... or henna tat... practice) with an amused shrug, my first bike, and a murmur of, “Yeah, I'm game.”
Yeah. Sure was. The zero-sum playa.
Much to my parents' chagrin, my grandmother – ex-military, so not American, short-haired, and globe-trotting – requested/required/demanded I accompany her for the summer instead of going home. It would become the only summer I didn't take courses and the last summer I would ever have with her. But I didn't know that then and neither did she. She was ripped and dashing, carded at sixty-two (perhaps a pick up line used by our waiter? perhaps not), a no nonsense, no bluster kind of woman who rarely raised her voice unless she had already won the argument. She would survive front lines, a dangerous penchant for photographing militarized zones, and an uncanny sense of where trouble was going to happen, only to prove mortality a force with a red light that a London stranger claimed he “never saw” at 80 miles an hour.
Special circle, Keith. Christ forgives. The granddaughter? Not so much.
We seemed to go everywhere those ten weeks. It wasn't my first time aboard with her but my first time with just the two of us. I saw a side of her that was lyrical and joyous. Flirtatious and glowing. The sharp, wily, brilliant woman I had known all my life – who seemed to go out of her way to clash with my sharp, opinionated, brilliant mother – took a back seat to the woman who wanted to show me the midnight side of dancing in Spain with a man twice my age, and reading books of scripture on crackling parchment while she murmured in whispers with monks who called her still by her military rank. I was entranced with the world. With a world I had never seen before even as we revisited by favorite locales.
Grandma had always been the holder of my passport. My proud parents struggled with bills and property tax. They refused help. So Grandma would let herself in and make sirloin and brussel sprouts, and red potatoes with dill and garlic. They couldn't argue when dinner was already on the table. Car broke down? Simple replacement appeared. She co-signed on my first loan for a bike... and helped pull strings and pull together patrons for scholarships and loans for school. Canvas? Brushes? I worked for those. I paid her in originals... many of which she resold to galleries and fine hotels just so she could take me to lunch and there it would be on the wall. “Fancy that, my angel,” she would say, and raise one sculpted eyebrow in mock surprise while she sipped her dark espresso and thrummed her short nails on the mahogany table.
“This is unreal, Grandma!” I laughed one night, the streets full of dancing and masks and the scent of perfume and heat and spices.
She straightened the clasp that held my hair then decided against it and took it out, throwing it to a passing boy wrapped in green silk and stain leafs, his body almost bare. He called something to her but my French wouldn't be good enough for four more years to understand him or her husky response.
“What is real, my angel?” she asked me, so seriously. “What is unreal? If you feel it,” and she tapped my heart, the ribbons across my chest almost all undone from dancing. “Then it is real.” Ten years before I first found VR.
And then someone, small, wiry, with flashing eyes, a sly smile, and small hands, caught her wrist and danced away with her, laughing into the crowd. Leaving me to think, for a moment, that she was a celestial body, surrounded by a swirl of white and gold silk and lace and taffeta.
You wrote to me tonight, my friend, “Make my faith stronger.”
I wrote to you yesterday, “I am no one. I am best invisible.”
When I was four I was terrified of death. It would be better for my demographic to say when I was fourteen but I was four. So there. I would have these panic attacks... they came out of no where and nothing. Daytime, night time, lunchtime at school. I'd see shadows on sunny days and was certain they were death, tangible and hungry.
One night I panicked and locked my bedroom door and crawled under my bed and screamed. And screamed. And kept screaming. And the doctor on the phone said, “Let her scream herself to sleep.” But after an hour my parents called my Grandma instead.
The door knob opened in her hands. Of course. She closed it behind her with a click. She walked across the wood floor and I remember the feeling of her boots. Then she reached under the bed with one strong hand and my little bunny pj top bunched in her fist and she slide me out in one smooth motion like someone might drag a cat out from under the couch. She gathered me in her arms, there on the floor, me still screaming no word nonsense in unexplainable fear.
She had been speaking, the same prayer, over and over and over again, for quite some time by the recitation that I heard... but I did finally hear her:
“Imagine stepping on shore
and finding it Heaven...
Taking hold of a hand
and finding it God's hand.
Imagine breathing new air
and finding it celestial air...
Feeling invigorated
and finding it immortality.
Imagine passing from tempest and pain
into unbroken calm...
Waking up
and finding yourself home.”
Shadows became shadows. Panic didn't occur. Not in daytime or night time or even in the lunch line. I was never afraid again. (Not even at 100 mph along the California shore.)
I told Grandma years later, “You made my faith stronger.”
She said with a smile, “I am no one. I did nothing.”
We ended the summer, our summer together, on shores draped in fog and emerald earth, on silver-green seas so cold it took my breath from my lungs but still I came and swam. That sea turned this brown grrl blue so many times I think tears froze on my cheeks and fell among the round pebbles that made the shore.
And one morning there you stood. I had seen you once before, I think, when we hiked an hour for fresh meat and eggs. I think Grandma knew your name and you spoke English with an accent that I could have listened to for hours... okay, weeks. You invited us to service on Sunday, talking to her while you looked at me, while I looked at a deep barrel of pickled something (beets? potatoes?) that I seemed to have dropped my bravado in.
One morning there you stood. “You swim?” you asked. I was certain you weren't real. We were leaving in two days. No one had been here for fourteen. I was starting to believe that the universe was me, Grandma, and Christ. I walked past you without speaking because you were obviously a hallucination.
“Did you see any selkie, E.J.?” But you didn't say E.J., which everyone calls me, you said my birth name which no one does.
I turn around and look at you. Really look for the first time. I realize that I had mistaken your gender in town. I realize that you are breath-taking. I realize I never want to leave Ireland. “Did any selkie see me?”
Duh. Wow. My way with words came late, didn't it, babygrrl?
I am 98% frozen to death by this point. And let's not talk about what I'm (not) wearing. You gave me your coat. It was brown. It was soft leather. It was not made of seal skin. We walked back to the house. Grandma had two hot cups of coffee and two hot plates of breakfast sitting on the table for us. She took her Bible, hand-written, and left us.
Across the table from each other I realized that your eyes were two different colors.
You whispered to me, “Make my faith stronger.”
I shook my head, “I'm no one. I'm just her granddaughter.”
And it wasn't until ten more years that I realized:
The paths of our lives are lined with trees of no ones, are laid with cobblestones of no ones. Our personal revelations, that unfold (or fold?) like origami boxes, other dimensions with each step we choose to take along our impassioned way, are lit internal and eternal with no ones. There are no “I am someone!” along the impassioned path. There are no “I am the one!” that truly help you. Because, He said to us, quietly, with His deep brown eyes and deep brown skin, “I am the one. I am the only one. And I am with you. Always.”
So everyone else is no one.
And I feel so blessed to be of them.
With all my love, on this sweet Sabbath,
E.J.
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